Where Grattan, Curran, Sheridan, all those

Who bound the bar or senate in their spell?

Where is the unhappy Queen, with all her woes?

And where the Daughter, whom the
Isles loved well?

Where are those martyred Saints the Five per Cents?

And where-oh where the devil are the rents!

Than might suffice a moderate century through.

I knew that nought was lasting, but now

even

Change grows too changeable, without being new:

NOUGHT'S PERMANENT AMONG THE HUMAN RACE,

EXCEPT THE WHIGS not GETTING INTO PLACE."

Now, my dear North, I sincerely hope you will gratify me so far, as to

Lady That?

The Honourable Mistresses and Misses? Some laid aside like an old Opera hat, Married, unmarried, and remarried: (this is

An evolution oft performed of late.) Where are the Dublin shouts and

London hisses?

Where are the Grenvilles? Turned as usual. Where

My friends the Whigs? Exactly where they were.

"Where are the Lady Carolines and Francesses?

Divorced or doing thereanent. Ye annals

So brilliant, where the list of routes and dances is,

Thou Morning Post, sole record of the pannels

ment, and that for three good and sufficient reasons, viz.—

1st, They occur in the original work in the midst of so much beastliness, gross filth, outrageous filth, abominathey should have been seen by far the ble filth, that it is quite impossible greater proportion of your readers. Don Juan is a sealed book to the ladies of our time, (to say no more,) and you will be doing them a great favour in thus affording a few extracts, upon the

Family Bowdler" principle, from a work, which, as a whole, they have no chance of seeing; or, if they did see it, of reading three pages in it without blushing to the back-bone. This will be a benefit.

2dly, Another great benefit will be this, that you will, by doing as I sug

sies

days always distinguished you from what Plutarch calls," the rest of the hunters;" and which I was very sorry to see my worthy friend Timothy Tickler, of all men in the world, doing his best to erase and obliterate. You will shew the world that you are still the old Christopher-too manly to deny anything that you feel, too just to contially separate and distinct-the quesfound together two questions essentellectual power. tion of moral tendency, and that of in

3dly, By vindicating your character as to this matter, you will give your own voice a chance of being really listened to by this singular man when you happen to address him in the words of admonition. A man like Byron will feel when any one calls him a devil for a piece of blackguardism ; but he will only laugh at being called a dunce for a piece of brilliancy, even by You. That there is a prodigious deal of blackguardism in these three cantos, who can deny? What can be more so than to attack THE KING, as

this Lord does, with low, vile, personal buffooneries-bottomed in utter falsehood, and expressed in crawling malice? Nothing, nothing. What can be more exquisitely worthy of contempt than the savage imbecility of these eternal tirades against the Duke of Wellington? What more pitiable than the state of mind that can find any gratification in calling such a man as Southey by nicknames that one would be ashamed of applying to a coal-heaver? What can be so abject as this eternal trampling upon the dust of Castlereagh? Shame! shame! shame! Byron ought to know, that all men of all parties (for Cockneys are not men, and saloop-parties are not parties,)unite in regarding all these things, but especially the first and the last, as insults to themselves, and as most miserable degradations of HIM. But he ought to be told this in a sensible manner. He ought not to be treated as if he were a driveller, or capable of being mistaken for one even for a moment; but he ought to be told plainly, distinctly, solemnly, and with a total negation of all humbug, that he is a writer of extraordinary talents-that Don Juan contains the outline of an extraordinary poem-and that he is voluntarily ruining both himself and his production.

I observe some of the Monthly idiots talk of "Don Juan" as if it were a byjob of Lord Byron's-a thing that he just takes up now and then, when he is (I must quote their own sweet words) "relaxing from the fatigues of more serious literary exertions." This I look

upon as trash of the first water. It is very likely-indeed I have no doubt of it that a canto of Don Juan costs Lord Byron much less trouble than a "Werner" or a "Cain." In like manner, I daresay, one of Voltaire's lumbering tragedies cost Voltaire ten times more fatigue than ten Zadigs, Taureau Blancs, or Princesses of Babylon, would have done. In like manner, I have no doubt Wordsworth's "Convention of Cintra" pamphlet cost him much more trouble than his " Ruth," or his "Song for Brougham Castle," or his "Hart-leap Well." In like manner, I have no doubt the Monthly List of Deaths, Marriages, Births, Bankruptcies, Patents, and Promotions, costs you more trouble than the "

Leading Article." But this is not the way to judge of these things. Almost any one canto of Juan-certainly any one of these three-contains more poetry and more genius than any three of Byron's recent tragic attempts have done. The worthy I have been dishing probably opines that Lord Byron dashes off a canto of the Don after a tragedy, just as he himself does an article for "My Grandmother," after he has finished his sermon for next Sunday.

I shall now beg leave to "relax from the fatigue of this serious literary exertion" over a tumbler of gintwist; and, wishing mine Editor many similar relaxations, remain his most humble servant, M. ODOHERTY.

Kilkenny, Sept. 12.

We would earnestly recommend it to our worthy friend Bohte (a most spirited and most useful bookseller he is,) to have the few good stories in this collection cut out, and published by themselves in a single volume. At present, the proportion of Balaam is at least three to one, which is more than is sufferable even in periodicals, to say nothing of a book which ought to be, and which might so easily be, made a standard one. It will cost him the less trouble to do this, that, we know not by what accident, the best of his stories are also

out of sight the best translated. The Fatal Marksman, the Collier's Family, the Bottle-Imp, and the Spectre Barber, are, comparatively speaking, done as they deserved to be; while, throughout the greater proportion of these three volumes, miserable, bald, and even grammarless English, is employed in the setting forth of what, even in the German, was bad enough in all conscience.

Nothing gives us more pain (talking of small matters) than to see a really good book ill translated; and of late the English translations from the German prose-writers have been, for the most part, wretched. "Sintram und Seine Gefährten," is, in La Motte Fouque's language, one of the finest romances in the world—a thing equal to Vathek, and praise could scarcely go farther. But, in the version published in London a year or two ago, (by Ollier, we think,) it is a perfect horror; and we believe nobody has ever read five pages of it on end. The knowledge of German is now so very common an accomplishment, that such people as Ollier or Bohte need not surely be at any loss to find out fit hands for any undertaking of this sort.

We are happy to see Messrs Oliver and Boyd announce a forthcoming version of Goëthe's Willelm Meister; this is the true plan. Don't give us any of the minors until the really great authors are exhausted.

A good translation of Goethe's "Life of Himself" would be an excellent speculation. To say nothing of the great poet himself, the lights it affords

of common German life of all kinds would render that book a most acceptable present to the English public. It would do more to gratify curiosity than ten new books of travels in Germany, written by any Englishman, however accomplished. It ought, however, to be accompanied with notes.

We have not seen the translation of Cassanova's Life. Of the extraordinary talent shewn in that work there can be but one opinion; but we confess we should think it almost impossible to make anything of it for the English public of this time-it being about five hundred times worse than Don Juan, both in the article of blasphemy and in that of indecency-Five hundred?-we should rather say five thousand. A volume of extracts, however, is perhaps all that has been done; and, if so, it may be as it should be.

The little book published last winter," German Nursery Tales, with etchings by Cruikshank," was executed in a style very superior to that of the present work. The translator, whoever he be, displayed a great deal of tact in transferring these stories with so much of their native naiveté ; he must be a very different sort of person from those who had the chief concern in these" Popular Tales and Romances”if indeed the whole fault has not been utter laziness and haste, which may very probably be the case; and, if so, why, the more shame. Altogether, it is by no means a creditable concernfor anybody but the bookseller who started the idea. We wish him more luck the next time, for he deserves it.

No.

THIS is the season of sleep to London. The Leviathan having spent his activity in the months from March to July, lapses into utter slumber from July till October; then merely opens his ears to receive the sounds of the opening theatres-finds them drowsy, according to custom, and plunges into a sleep of tenfold profundity, to be broken by nothing less exciting than politics and the Christmas pantomimes. He then springs up to life and appetite-opens his jaws, with the vigour of a giant refreshed, to a grand de

III.

glutition of poetry, personality, criticism, Doctors' Commons, Debates, Spain, and the slave trade; till, surcharged with his meal, he lapses again, and lays down his enormous head in sleep and summer.

The present dearth of topics is so total, that the few talkers who survive in town are reduced to the hopeless necessity of using a quarrel between the proprietors of a theatre and their Boxkeeper, as a subject for public interest

a succedaneum for the natural food of conversation, worthy of the ingenuity

that taught Captain Franklin to make a roti out of a pair of shoes, and has enriched the culinary world with the receipt for Tarpaulin soup and hashed pantaloons. The whole affair of the theatre, with all its newspaper correspondence and threatened law, is condensible into a dozen words. The managers had a right to dismiss their servant; and may, if it so please them, dismiss every servant within their gates: nay, dismiss every tenant of their stage nightly and yearly, and, "Thalia ridente," enact the whole corporation of players, box-keepers, and scene-shifters, in their own persons. But this might not be wise, and the question with the managers, as with other men, should less turn on the right than on the expedient. If their Boxkeeper have been careless, (for nothing more has been substantiated,) or if he have been in the insolvent prison, it might become a matter of propriety to look for his substitute. His situation is of some importance to the public. An insolvent, or even an eccentric Boxkeeper, might contrive to render a theatre as unpopular as it could be made by a bad company. The minor officials can do much in this style. The insolence and extortion of the pew-openers in some of the London churches, has driven many a convert to the hospitality of the Tabernacle on the opposite side of the way. The sour looks and craving palms of the familiars who hold the door of the Royal Chapel of St James's, thin his Majesty's congregation. The hierarchy and Doctor Ireland share in the mutterings of many an excluded sailor and soldier, who comes to have a look at the heroes in the Abbey; and the pertness of a government clerk has sent many an honest squire back to the fire-side of his fathers, with his broad hat, and rapidly radicalizing against Mr Canning and the memory of Pitt. The Covent-Garden Box-keeper might contrive to make even his humility felt by the world in the shape of partiality, or a fluent tongue; and if this be the case, the managers not only had the right, but lay under the necessity, of dismissing him. The only question worth a moment's pause, is, whether their prudence has been exactly of the same rank as their power? Whether, when they had determined to allow their servant a pension, it was not a pure provoking of quarrel, to refer him for three-fourths of it to the

late manager, who had nothing to do with their measure-who had no hostility to their man-and who could neither be compelled nor cajoled into parting with a stiver of his revenue? The managers have actually plunged themselves neck-deep into this "great Serbonian bog," for the trivial saving of L.120 a-year-a sum which they could have brought up, in their lowest economical extremity, by a reduction in the expenditure of sand or saw-dust for their stage, or in the denegation of a pair of tinsel breeches once a season to that chief of magicians, Farley. They ought to have paid his pension to Brandon at once. They ought even to have enlarged its sum. If the old man de

served anything, he deserved more. They might have reckoned on no long demand for their bounty. At seventyfive, few men draw bills on longevity. But that any unworthy motive actuates such men as Charles Kemble and his partners-that they are touched by any personal vindictiveness, or mere pecuniary purpose, is altogether out of the question. Coming to the conduct of the theatre at a period of great difficulty, their management, however it may have been perplexed by circumstances left as a legacy to their inexperience, has succeeded so far as to shew what they may do when the pressure of their situation shall have been lightened. Gentlemen by habit and education, they have succeeded in attracting an interest among men of taste and consideration, that may be of the highest importance to their establishment. Authorship, so proverbially repelled by the difficulties of managerial approach, will probably be induced to new exertions in the drama; and Covent-Garden theatre, hitherto remarkable for the brilliancy of its stage decoration, may add to the delight of the eye-the deeper delight of the mind. Where " Hunt has boxed and Maho met has danced," a succession of performances honourable to the revived genius of the age may be brought forward-pantomime may lose its supremacy--tumblers, elephants, and horses, despair of re-appearing on the stage. But the Box-keeper's outcry must be silenced without loss of time; and the only mode of tying his tongue, is, paying his pension.

A truce to London, I must set off for Dover.

ROUSED out of a dreary dose-the fruits of last night's surfeit of tough mutton and brandy port-by the waiter, with the intelligence that the Steam-boat was just going off.Started from bed, in an agony of nervous hurry-Put a posse of porters, waiters, and chambermaids, in requisition to bundle me off-Rushed down to the pier, with the whole clan at my heels, and every eye in the town turned on my flight-reached the shore time enough to see the packet under easy sail.-Faid half the passage for a boat to take me five hundred yards, and was at last trundled on board unshaved and half-dressed, "unanointed and unaneled," to cool my pores in a raw, foggy breeze.

The deck crowded with spruce Londoners and their ladies, feathered and flounced for a water-party.-Chagrined to the soul, and attempting to get rid of my discomfort by contempt of the whole set. Took out my pencil, and attempted a caricature-sketched an alderman and a half-pay officer in strong dispute on the National debt fine contrast of figure, pursy pride, and meagre pertinacity; fat, contented ignorance, and ignorance neither the one nor the other-turtle beside ration soup. The Prior and the Laybrother in the Duenna; Lambert and Romeo's seller of mandragora.Weather delightful.-Sea smooth as my lady's mirror.-Wondered that I had not been bred to the navy.-Began to think of a course of voyages for the next dozen years.-Undetermined whether to commence with the east or the west, Botany Bay or BuenosAyres, China or Chili-determined on China as the longest voyage. Reprobated the folly of looking for the north-west passage, as tending to shorten the indulgence of living on shipboard. Waited half an hour for passengers-Cursed, in the fervour of my delight, the wretched habit of lingering till the last moment-and resolved in future to rise with the sun. Do ver Castle magnificent-tints of time, silvery lights, verdurous clothing; heard a Cockney compare it to an old woman wrapped up in a rug. Cast a look at the fellow that ought to have annihilated him. The Castle certain

Completely at sea-the Castle sinking-a breeze-pearly fringe in the surge-groans from below, with frequent calls for the steward. Determined not to be sick. Saw several of the dead and wounded brought up for fresh air, and several of the living suddenly plunged into the cabin.Those detestable steam-vessels roll worse than a sailing boat-they bore the surge instead of sliding over ita heavy sea-postponed my caricature

doubted whether a peculiar native configuration of stomach, a something differing from that of a being born to live on land, as much as webbed feet are from human toes, a sort of amphibious or fishy interior, is not to be found on dissection in every "able seaman."

Surrounded by sufferers drooping over the sides of the vessel like fowls in a coop-endeavoured to hum a song of Dibdin's-confounded nonsense, a sea song under any circumstances--as well dance quadrilles in an hospital dare not look at the deck, nor at the sky, nor at the water. Determined to go to China by land-more variety of scenery, Tartary, the Great Wall, &c.

shun Euxines and Caspians—and wait till Wolgas and Dnipers were frozen over. A merciless brute ordered his lunch close at my side-ham, brandy, and biscuit-a meal for Alecto, Megæra, and Tisiphone-How the devil can anybody think of eating or enjoyment on board a packet? The ship tossing and jumping from side to side like an unbroke horse desperately sick-torture-red-hot grappling irons-cantharides-soup, &c.

Dieppe.

The port in sight-windmills sprawling like gigantic spiders-churchspires with saints impaled upon their tops-yellow roofs spreading below them, ragged and dingy, like a gipsy's encampment-all squalidness, stench, and clamour.

Flung up on the pier, roped into an enclosure like negroes at market-to prevent intercourse with the native