get her properly pushed by a few lessons from Bishop. As to little Charles, she was herself pushing him in his arithmetic. Never was there a mother who so pushed her offspring: it is no fault of hers that we are not every one of us flat on our faces long ago.

Dinner being announced, the Great Man took his seat at the right hand of my mother. He was helped to a large slice of turbot, whereupon he tapped the extremity of the fish with his knife. This denoted his want of some of the fins, and my mother accordingly dealt out to him a portion of these glutinous appendages. Common mortals send a plate round the table for whatsoever they may require; but, when the Great Man of the Family graces the table, every thing is moved up to him. The buttock of beef being a little too ponderous to perform such a visit, the Great Man hinted from afar off where he would be helped. "Just there: no, not there: a little nearer the fat: or stay : no it is a little too much boiled: I will wait a slice or two: ay: now it will do: a little of the soft fat, and two spoonfuls of gravy: put two small parsnips with it; and, Thomas, bring me the mustard." It may be well imagined that these dicta were followed by prompt obedience. There are only two viands for which I entertain an aversion-parsnips and tripe. The former always give me the notion of carrots from the catacombs, and the latter, of boiled leather breeches. My politic mamma, aware of my uncle's partiality for parsnips, had lectured me into the propriety of assuming a fondness for them; adding, that Sir Nicholas had been married five years without children, and that I should probably be his heir, and that one would not lose one's birthright for a mess of pottage. It is whispered in the family that my uncle is worth a plum. It would, therefore, be a pity to lose a hundred thousand pounds, by refusing to swallow a parsnip. I contrived to get down a couple; and was told by Sir Nicholas that I was a clever young man, and knew what was what. My mother evidently thought the whole of the above-named sum was already half way down my breeches pocket. "Has any body seen Simpson and Co." enquired the Great Man, during a short interval between his mouthfuls. I was upon the incautious point of answering yes, and that I thought it a very good thing, when my father, with the most adroit simplicity, answered, "I met Simpson this morning at Batson's his partner is at Liverpool." Hereat the Great Man chuckled so immoderately that we all thought that a segment of parsnip had gone the wrong way. "No, I don't mean them-come, that's not amiss-Simpson and Scott, of Alderman's Walk. Ha, ha, hah! No: I mean Simpson and Co. at Drury Lane." "No," answered my mother, "we none of us ever go to the play." Lord, help me! it was but a week ago that my Father, Jack, and I, had sat in the pit to see this identical drama! Now came in the mutton chops. The process was electrical, and deserves a minute commemoration. First, the Great Man had a hot plate, upon which he placed a hot potatoe. Then our man Thomas placed the pewter dish, carefully covered, immediately under our visitor's nose. At a given signal Thomas whisked off the cover, and my uncle darted his fork into a chop as rapidly as if he were harpooning a fish. What became of the cover, unless Thomas swallowed it, I have not since been able to form a guess.

I pass over a few more white lies, uttered for the purpose of ingra

tiation. Such, for instance, as none of us liking wine or gravy; our utter repugnance to modern fashions in dress; our never wasting time in reading novels; our never going westward of Temple Bar, and our regularly going to afternoon church. But I cannot avoid mentioning that great men bear, at least in one point, a resemblance to great wits : I mean in the shortness of their memories. Bedford-square and a carriage have driven from my poor uncle's sensorium all geographical knowledge of City streets. He regularly asks me whether Lime-street is the second or third turning: affects to place Ironmonger's Hall in Bishopsgate-street; and tells me that, when he goes to receive his dividends at the India House, he constantly commits the error of directing his coachman to Whitechapel. Lord help me again! this from a man who, for the first ten years of his civic existence, threaded every nook and alley in the City, with a black pocket-book full of bills, as Dimsdale and Company's out-door clerk!

I yesterday overheard my maiden Aunt Susan giving a hint to some body, who shall be nameless, that Lady Sawyer, notwithstanding her five years abstinence, is certainly" as women wish to be who love their lords." I mean to wait with exemplary patience to establish the fact, and to ascertain the sex of the infant. If it prove to be a male, I am of course cut out of the inheritance. In that case, I shall unquestionably throw off the mask, and venture to eat, drink, talk, and think for myself. At the very first uncle-given dinner, after that dénouement, I can assure you, Mr. Editor, that I shall hate parsnips, take two glasses of port wine, tilt the dish for gravy, see Simpson and Co. at least six times, and read every novel in Lane's Circulating List. I am, &c. ROBERT RANKIN.

PETER PINDARICS.

The Handkerchief.

A JUDGE of the Police and Spy

(For both are join'd in Eastern nations) Prowling about with purpose sly,

To list to people's conversations,

And pry in every corner cupboard,

According to his dirty calling,
Saw a poor woman passing by,
Who wept and blubber'd,

Like a church spout when rain is falling,
Which strives in vain to vent and utter
The overflowings of the gutter.

Our magistrate thought fit to greet her,
Insisting on the dame's declaring
What caused this monstrous ululation:
When she averr'd her spouse had beat her
Black and blue beyond all bearing,
Without the smallest provocation.
To work the Judge's pen and ink went,
Taking the rogue's address and trade,
And the next morning the delinquent
Was duly into Court convey'd:
When he asserted, that his wife
Was such an advocate of strife,

That she would raise a mighty clangour,
And put herself into a pucker,
For trifles that surpass'd belief,
And, for the recent cause of anger,

He swore, point blank, that he had struck her
With nothing but his handkerchief.

The Judge, convinced by this averment,
Dismiss'd the case without a word;
When in the Court there rose a ferment,
And the wife's angry voice was heard-
"To cheat your Worship is too bad!
My Lord, my Lord! do interpose,
And stop the knave where'er he lingers;
The villain! he forgot to add

That he for ever blows his nose

With his own fingers!"

The Jester condemned to Death.

ONE of the Kings of Scanderoon,
A royal Jester,

Had in his train a gross buffoon,

Who used to pester

The Court with tricks inopportune,
Venting on the highest folks his
Scurvy pleasantries and hoaxes.

It needs some sense to play the fool,
Which wholesome rule
Occurr'd not to our jackanapes,

Who consequently found his freaks
Lead to innumerable scrapes,

And quite as many kicks and tweaks,
Which only seem'd to make him faster
Try the patience of his master.

Some sin at last, beyond all measure,
Incurr'd the desperate displeasure

Of his Serene and raging Highness.
Whether he twitch'd his most revered
And sacred beard,

Or had intruded on the shyness

Of the Seraglio, or let fly

An epigram at royalty,

None knows;-his sin was an occult one;

But records tell us that the Sultan,

Meaning to terrify the knave,

Exclaim'd-" "Tis time to stop that breath;
Thy doom is seal'd:-presumptuous slave!
Thou stand'st condemn'd to certain death.
Silence, base rebel!-no replying!—
But such is my indulgence still,
That of my own free grace and will,

I leave to thee the mode of dying."

"Thy royal will be done-'tis just." Replied the wretch, and kiss'd the dust;

"Since, my last moments to assuage, Your Majesty's humane decree Has deign'd to leave the choice to me,

I'll die, so please you, of old age!**

H.

SHAKSPEARE'S POEMS.

I OFTEN find a pleasant literary recreation in turning back to those neglected works of great men, that rank but secondary in merit to the performances from which they have derived a lasting reputation. Their earliest works, in which may be traced the unfoldings of future greatness, are to me particularly interesting, and shadow forth to imagination the intervening gradations by which they mounted to eminence. By most readers these are passed over, and in some instances forgotten, in the splendid labours of brighter and more mature genius. Yet if the study of the mind of man in its progressive advances be worthy of particular attention, and no one will affirm that it is not, nothing will better serve to develope its movements than a perusal of this part of our literature. The blaze of glory which encircles the dramatic writings of Shakspeare, has eclipsed his earlier poems, and few have ever read them through; yet they are not without great merit, and some of them are remarkable in that the traces of passages in his more celebrated works may be met with among them. It appears as if the first and last literary labours of Shakspeare had not been dramatic. Some of his sonnets prove (though he must have died in ignorance of the extent of his own great fame, and even without a guess at the lofty situation he was to occupy in the temple of immortality) that he had prophetic feelings that he should be remembered by his writings; for he plainly shews them in several places in those his last published works, written, perhaps, during his retirement at Stratford-on-Avon, when he had ceased to be concerned with the metropolitan theatre. He says in his fifty-fifth sonnet.

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, &c.

Venus and Adonis appeared in 1593; his "Rape of Lucrece," in the following year. Romeo and Juliet can only be traced with certainty to the year 1595. These poems were therefore his first productions, and had he not written for the theatre, would have given him no inconsiderable reputation among the writers of his day, though they have been naturally thrown into shade by the dazzling lustre of his dramatic productions.

Johnson says that the dawn of Paradise Lost is to be found in Comus, and it is also certain that Shakspeare's knowledge of the human mind, and his wonderful skill in delineating the workings of passion, are to be clearly discovered in his Venus and Adonis. This poem, we are told, went through six impressions in thirteen years. Its whole cast is in unison with the taste of the time, and was suggested to its author, as some think, by the third book of the Fairy Queen. He calls it himself "the first heir of his invention." The subject forbade any delineation of manners; but the spell by which this poet above all others, commanded the mysterious emotions of the heart to come before him embodied in language, was never more potent than in the description of the love of Venus for her favourite.

This composition is agreeable to the coarseness of manners in the time of Elizabeth, being deficient in that delicacy which has happily been introduced by modern refinement. It is rather for the purpose of directing attention to the links which connect incipient genius with

maturity-the character of primitive attempts with more finished excellencies to shew how the poet's genius may be traced from its juvenility to manhood, and to display, besides his surprising knowledge of our common nature, the great power of description of the author in his first productions, that I would draw the attention of the reader to this poem. It is not a proper book to be in all hands, and of late years has not been much read; nor can it be so in future, because it is out of keeping with our times, and is on a subject which the most pure pen could scarcely be expected to delineate and escape the censure of conveying indelicate impressions. It is to be perused by the discriminating and curious in literature, rather than by those who seek amusement only.

The story is simple:-Adonis goes to the chase, Venus meets him, and discovers her passion for him, which he resists-he is killed by a boar, and the goddess laments over him. There are a number of those quaint figures and conceits in the poem which appear in his dramatic works. Where Venus solicits a kiss of the youth, he is said to raise his chin,

Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave;

and of the dimples on Adonis's cheek

Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,

He might be buried in a tomb so simple:

Foreknowing well if there he came to lie,

Why there Love lived, and there he could not die.

The love of the goddess, her fruitless efforts to move the obdurate heart of the youth, her actions, her addresses to him, her solicitations, her ungovernable passion, have never been exceeded in truth and force of description by any poet. There is every where in the picture easy and beautiful drawing. In colouring, the artist knew every rainbow hue in nature, and dispensed all with the prodigality and confidence of a master. It satiates the eye with richness, but it is not overwrought; and, in contemplating it, one is more than ever disposed to wonder by what means the painter could have acquired such a knowledge of the subject and its details, unless he felt himself all which he represents others as feeling, and depicted every separate emotion as it arose in his own bosom. There is great inequality in the poem: some parts are written with carelessness, and are unvaried and formal; others are exquisitely beautiful. It is a work of genius not touched by a hand of critical skill and learning, but left with its sharpness of mould and defects of casting about it, noble in outline, and graceful in proportion.

Some of the descriptive passages are of rare elegance, as that where Venus recommends herself to Adonis, and describes the ethereal nature of love.

Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,
Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green;
Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.
Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie,
These forceless flowers, like sturdy trees, support me: