That deadliest curse that on the conquered waits- To dash them down again more shatteringly! * All is not in this high-wrought strain, which we like as well as the War Eclogues of Tyrtæus, or the Birth-day Odes (which seem also to have broke off in the middle) of Mr. Southey. Mr. Thomas Brown the Younger, is a man of humanity, as Mr. Southey formerly was he is also a man of wit, which Mr. Southey is not. For instance, Miss Biddy Fudge, in her first letter, writes as follows: By the bye though at Calais, Papa had a touch He exclaim'd, "Oh mon Roi!" and, with tear-dropping eye, * Somebody (Fontenelle, I believe) has said, that if he had his hand full of truths, he would open but one finger at a time; and I find it necessary to use the same sort of reserve with respect to Mr. Phelim Connor's very plainspoken letters. The remainder of this Epistle is so full of unsafe matter of fact, that it must, for the present at least, be withheld from the public. + To commemorate the landing of Louis le Desiré from England, the impression of his foot is marked out upon the pier at Calais, and a pillar with an inscription raised opposite to the spot." A a And dat gros pied de cochon-begar, me vil say Dat de foot look mosh better, if turn'd toder way." Mr. Phil. Fudge, in his dreams, thinks of a plan for changing heads. Good Viscount S-dm-th, too, instead Old Lady Wilhelmina Frump's So while the hand sign'd Circulars, The head might lisp out, "What is trumps?" The shop, the shears, the lace, and ribbon, To give the P-ce the shopman's brains, Or here is another proposal for weighing the head of the State; Suppose, my Lord,-and far from me To treat such things with levity- And, ev'ry sessions, at the close, 'Stead of a speech, which, all can see, is Heavy and dull enough, God knows We were to try how heavy he is. The P- —e, God bless him! gains a few. With bales of muslin, chintzes, spices, I see the Easterns weigh their Kings;— But, for the R-g-t, my advice is, We should throw in much heavier things: For instance, — 's quarto volumes, Which, though not spices, serve to wrap them; "Prodigious!"-in, of course we'd clap them- In which, with logical confusion, And never comes to a conclusion: Who loves so, in the House of Lords, To whisper Bishops-and so nigh Unto their wigs in whisp'ring goes, A patch of powder on his nose!- Entitled, "Reasons for my Ratting:" But we stop here, or we shall quote the whole work. We like the political part of this jeu d'esprit better, on the whole, than the merely comic and familiar. Bob Fudge is almost too suffocating a coxcomb, even in description, with his stays and patés; and Miss Biddy Fudge, with her poke bonnet and her princely lover, who turned out to be no better than a manmilliner, is not half so interesting as a certain Marchioness in the Twopenny Post Bag, with curls" in the manner of Ackermann's dresses for May, and her yellow charioteer." Besides, Miss Biddy's amour ends in nothing. In short, the Fudges abroad are not such fat subjects for ridicule as the Fudges at home. "They do not cut up so well in the cawl; they do not tallow so in the kidneys:" but as far as they go, Mr. Brown, Junior, uses the dissecting knife with equal dexterity, and equally to the delight and edification of the byestanders. CHARACTER OF LORD CHATHAM. 1807. LORD CHATHAM's genius burnt brightest at the last. The spark of liberty, which had lain concealed and dormant, buried under the dirt and rubbish of state intrigue and vulgar faction, now met with congenial matter, and kindled up " a flame of sacred vehemence" in his breast. It burst forth with a fury and a splendour that might have awed the world, and made kings tremble. He spoke as a man should speak, because he felt as a man should feel, in such circumstances. He came forward as the advocate of liberty, as the defender of the rights of his fellow-citizens, as the enemy of tyranny, as the friend of his country, and of mankind. He did not stand up to make a vain display of his talents, but to discharge a duty, to maintain that cause which lay nearest to his heart, to preserve the ark of the British constitution from every sacrilegious touch, as the highpriest of his calling, with a pious zeal. The feelings and the rights of Englishmen were enshrined in his heart; and with their united force braced every nerve, possessed every faculty, and communicated warmth and vital energy to every part of his being. The whole man moved under this impulse. He felt the cause of liberty as his own. He resented every injury done to her as an injury to himself, and every attempt to defend it as an insult upon his understanding. He did not stay to dispute about words, about nice distinctions, about trifling forms. He laughed at the little attempts of little retailers of logic to entangle him in senseless argument. He did not come there as to a debating club, or law court, to start questions and bunt them down; to wind and unwind the web of sophistry; to pick out the threads, and untie every knot with scrupulous exactness; to bandy logic with every pretender to a paradox; to examine, to sift evidence; to dissect a doubt and halve a scruple; to weigh folly and knavery in scales together, and see on which side the balance preponderated; to prove that liberty, truth, virtue, and justice were good things, or that slavery and corruption were bad things. He did not try to prove those truths which did not require any proof, but to make others feel them with the same force that he did; and to tear off the flimsy disguises with which the sycophants of power attempted to cover them.-The business of an orator is not to convince, but persuade; not to inform, but to rouse the mind; to build upon the habitual prejudices of mankind, (for reason of itself will do nothing,) and to add feeling to prejudice, and action to feeling. There is nothing new or curious or profound in Lord Chatham's speeches. All is obvious and common; there is nothing but what we already knew, or might have found out for ourselves. We see nothing but the familiar every-day face of nature. We are always in broad day-light. But then there is the same difference between our own conceptions of things and his representation of them, as there is between the same objects seen on a dull cloudy day, or in the blaze of sunshine. His common sense has the effect of inspiration. He electrifies his hearers, not by the novelty of his ideas, but by their force and intensity. He has the same ideas as other men, but he has them in a thousand times greater clearness and strength and vividness. Perhaps there is no man so poorly furnished with thoughts and feelings but that if he could recollect all that he knew, and had. ་ |