cowering covey in the heather groves on the mountain-side.

TICKLER. The Highlanders are far from being extortioners. An extraordinary price must be paid for an extraordinary service. But oh! my dear North, what grouse-soup at Dalnacardoch! You smell it on the homeward hill, as if it were exhaling from the heather: deeper and deeper still, as you approach the beautiful chimney vomiting forth its intermitting columns of cloud-like peat-smoke that melts afar over the wilderness!

NORTH. Yes, Tickler-it was Burke that vindicated the claims of smells to the character of the sublime and beautiful.

TICKLER. Yes, yes! Burke it was. As you enter the inn, the divine afflatus penetrates your soul. When up-stairs, perhaps in the garret, adorning for dinner, it rises like a cloud of rich distilled perfumes through every chink on the floor, every cranny of the wall. The little mouse issues from his hole, close to the foot of the bed-post, and raising himself squirrellike on his hinder-legs, wets his tusks with his merry paws and smooths his whiskers. NORTH. Shakespearean!

TICKLER. There we are, a band of brothers round the glorious tureen! Down goes the ladle into a profundus clamavi,' and up floats from that blessed Erebus a dozen cunningly resuscitated spirits. Old cocks, bitter to the back-bone, lovingly alternating with young pouts, whose swelling bosoms might seduce an anchorite!

NORTH (rising). I must ring for supper. Ambrose-Ambrose-Ambrose !

TICKLER. No respect of persons at Dalnacardoch! I plump them into the plates around sans selection. No matter, although the soup play JAWP* from presses to croupier. There, too, sit a few choice spirits of pointers round the board-Don -Jupiter-Sancho-"and the rest' with steadfast eyes and dewy chops, patient alike of heat, cold, thirst, and hunger-dogs of the desert, indeed, and noseled by unerring instinct right up to the

*Jawp-splash.

TICKLER. Thigh good, devilled. The delight of the Highlands is in the Highland feeling. That feeling is entirely destroyed by stages and regular progression. The waterfalls do not tell upon sober parties-it is tedious in the extreme to be drenched to the skin along high-roadsthe rattle of wheels blends meanly with thunder-and lightning is contemptible, seen from the window of a glass coach. To enjoy mist, you must be in the heart of it, as a solitary hunter, shooter or angler. Lightning is nothing unless a thousand feet below you,* and the live thunder must be heard leaping, as Byron says, from mountain to mountain, otherwise you might as well listen to a mock peal from the pit of a theatre.

NORTH. Pray, Tickler, have you read Milton's Treatise on Christianity?†

TICKLER. I have, and feel disposed to agree with him in his doctrine of polygamy. For many years I lived very comfortably without a wife; and since the year 1820 I have been a monogamist. But I confess that there is a sameness in that system. I should like much to try polygamy for a few years. I wish Milton had explained the duties of a polygamist; for it is possible that they may be of a very intricate, complicated and unbounded nature, and that such an accumulation of private business might be thrown on one's hands that it could not be in the power of an elderly gentleman to overtake it; occupied, too, as he might be, as in my own case, in contributing to the periodical literature of the age.

NORTH. Sir, the system would not be found to work well in this climate. Milton was a great poet, but a bad divine, and a miserable politician.

TICKLER. How can that be?-Wordsworth says that a great poet must be great in all things.

*In his "Address to a Wild Deer," Professor Wilson says of the hunter:

Tis his, by the mouth of some cavern his seat,
The lightning of heaven to hold at his feet,
While the thunder below him that growls from the

cloud,

To him comes on echo more awfully loud."

At that time recently discovered.

NORTH. Wordsworth often writes like an idiot; and never more so than when he said of Milton, "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart!" For it dwelt in tumult, and mischief, and rebellion. Wordsworth is, in all things, the reverse of Milton- -a good man and a bad poet. TICKLER. What !-That Wordsworth whom Maga cries up as the Prince of Poets?

NORTH. Be it so; I must humor the fancies of some of my friends. But had that man been a great poet, he would have produced a deep and lasting impression on the mind of England; whereas his verses are becoming less and less known every day, and he is, in good truth, already one of the illustrious obscure.

TICKLER. I never thought him more than a very ordinary man-with some imagination, certainly, but with no grasp of understanding, and apparently little acquainted with the history of his kind. My God! to compare such a writer with Scott and Byron !

NORTH. And yet, with his creed, what might not a great poet have done? That the language of poetry is but the language of strong human passion! That in the great elementary principles of thought and feeling common to all the race, the subject-matter of poetry is to be sought and found! That enjoyment and suffering, as they wring and crush, or expand and elevate, men's hearts, are the sources of song! And what, pray, has he made out of this true and philosophical creed? A few ballads (pretty at the best), two or three moral fables, some natural description of scenery, and half-a-dozen narratives of common distress or happiness. Not one single character has he creatednot one incident-not one tragical catastrophe. He has thrown no light on man's estate here below; and Crabbe, with all his defects, stands immeasurably above his Wordsworth as the Poet of the Poor.

TICKLER. Good. And yet the youngsters, in that absurd Magazine of yours, set him up to the stars as their idol, and kiss his very feet, as if the toes were of gold.

NORTH. Well, well; let them have their own way a while. I confess that the "Excursion is the worst poem, of any character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine even in the sense as well as in the sound.

| The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual. Then, what labor the builder of that lofty rhyme must have undergone! It is, in its own way, a small Tower of Babel, and all built by a single man!

TICKLER. Wipe your forehead, North; for it is indeed a most perspiring thought. I do not know whether my gallantry. blinds me, but I prefer much of the female to the male poetry of the day.

NORTH. O thou Polygamist!

TICKLER. And what the devil would you be at with your great bawling HePoets from the Lakes, who go round and round about, strutting upon nothing, like so many turkey cocks, gobbling with a long red pendant at their noses, and frightening away the fair and lovely swans as they glide down the waters of immortality? NORTH. Scott's poetry puzzles me--it is often very bad.

TICKLER. Very.

NORTH. Except when his martial soul is up, he is but a tame and feeble writer. His versification in general flows on easily

smoothly-almost sonorously; but seldom or never with impetuosity or grandeur. There is no strength, no felicity in his diction-and the substance of his poetry is neither rich nor rare.

TICKLER. But then, when his martial soul is up-and up it is at sight of a spearpoint or a pennon-then indeed you hear the true poet of chivalry. What care I, Kit, for all his previous drivelling-if drivelling it be-and God forbid I should deny drivelling to any poet, ancient or modern-for now he makes my very soul burn within me; and, coward and civilian though I be, yes, a most intense and insuperable coward, prizing life and limb beyond all other earthly possessions, and loath to shed one single drop of blood either for my king or country, yet such is the trumpet power of the song of that son of genius, that I start from my old elbow-chair, up with the poker, tongs, or shovel, no matter which, and flourishing it round my head, cry—

"Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" and then, dropping my voice, and returning to my padded bottom, whisper,

"Were the last words of Marmion!" NORTH. Bravo-bravo-bravo!

TICKLER. I care not one single curse for all the criticism that ever was canted, or decanted, or recanted. Neither does the world. The world takes a poet as it finds him, and seats him above or below the salt. The world is as obstinate as a million mules, and will not turn its head on one side or another, for all the shouting of the critical population that ever was shouted. It is very possible that the world is a bad judge. Well, then, appeal to posterity, and be hanged to you, and posterity will affirm the judgment with costs. NORTH. How you can jabber away in such a temperature as this confounds me. You are indeed a singular old man.

TICKLER. Therefore I say that Scott is a Homer of a poet, and so let him doze when he has a mind to it; for no man I know is better entitled to an occasional half canto of slumber.

NORTH. Did you ever meet any of the Lake poets in private society?

TICKLER. Five or six times. Wordsworth has a grave, solemn, pedantic, awkward, out-of-the-worldish look about him, that rather puzzles you as to his probable profession, till he begins to speak--and then, to be sure, you set him down at once for a Methodist preacher.

NORTH. I have seen Chantrey's bust. TICKLER. The bust flatters his head, which is not intellectual. The forehead is narrow, and the skull altogether too scan

ty.

Yet the baldness, the gravity, and the composure are impressive, and, on the whole, not unpoetical. The eyes are dim and thoughtful, and a certain sweetness of smile occasionally lightens up the strong lines of his countenance with an expression of courteousness and philanthropy.

NORTH. Is he not extremely eloquent? TICKLER. Far from it. He labors like a whale spouting-his voice is wearisomely monotonous-he does not know when to have done with a subject-oracularly announces perpetual truisms-never hits the nail on the head-and leaves you amazed with all that needless pother, which the simple bard opines to be eloquence, and which passes for such with his Cockney idolaters, and his catechumens at Ambleside and Keswick.

NORTH. Not during dinner, surely?

NORTH. Shocking indeed. In conversation, the exchange should be at par. That is the grand secret. Nor should any Christian exceed the maximum of three consecutive sentences except in an anecdote.

TICKLER. O merciful heavens! my dear North. What eternal talkers most men are now-a-days-all at it in a party at once each farthing candle anxious to shine forth with its own vile wavering wick-tremulously apprehensive of snuffers and stinking away after expiration in the socket !*

NORTH. Bad enough in town, but worse, far worse, in country places.

TICKLER. The surgeon! The dominie! The old minister's assistant and successor! The president of the Speculative Society! Two landscape painters! The rejected contributor to Blackwood! The agricultural reporter of the county! The surveyor! Captain Campbell! The Laird, his son! The stranger gentleman on a tour! The lecturer on an orrery! The poet about to publish by subscription! The person from Pitkeathly! The man of the house himself-my God! his wife and daughters! and the widow, the widow! I can no more-the widow, the widow, the widow! (Sinks back in his chair.)

NORTH. I have heard Coleridge. That man is entitled to speak on till doomsday or rather the genius within him--for he is inspired. Wind him up, and away he goes, discoursing most excellent musicwithout a discord-full, ample, inexhaustible, serious and divine!

TICKLER. Add him to my list, and the band of instrumental music is complete.

NORTH. It is pleasant to know how immediately everything said or done in this world is forgotten. Murder a novel,

*Scott's conversation is thus elsewhere described: "SHEPHERD. I never in a' my born days, and I'm noo just the age o' Sir Walter, and, had he been leevin, o' Bonnypratt, met a perfeckly pleasant-that is a'thegither enchantin man in a party-and I have lang thocht there's nae sic thing in existence as poo'rs o' conversation. There's Sir Walter wi' his everlastin

anecdotes, nine out o' ten meanin naething, and the

tenth itsel as auld as the Eildon Hills. Yet I love and venerate Sir Walter aboon a' ither leevin men except

yoursel, sir, and for that reason try to thold his dis

course.

As to his ever hearin richt ae single syllable o' what ye may be sayin to him, wi' the maist freendly intent o' enlichtenin his weak mind, you maun never indulge ony howp o' that kind-for o' a' the absent men when anither's speakin, that ever glowered in a

lookin at, Sir Walter is the foremost; and gin he behaves in that gate to a man o' original genius like me, you may conceive his treatment o' the sumphe and sumphesses that compose fashionable society."

or a man, or a poem, or a child-forge powers of attorney without cessation during the prime of life, till old maids beyond all computation have been sold unsuspectingly out of the stocks in every country village in England-for a lustre furnish Balaam to a London magazine at thirty shillings per bray, in short, let any man commit any enormity, and it is forgotten before the first of the month! Who remembers anything but the bare names and these indistinctly—of Thurtell, and Hunt, and Fauntleroy, and Hazlitt, and Tims, and Soames, and Sotheran? Soap-bubbles all -blown, burst, vanished and forgotten.

TICKLER. Why, you almost venture to republish Maga herself in numbers, under the smirk of a New Series. I know a worthy and able minister of our church, who has been preaching (and long may he preach it) the self-same sermon for upwards of forty years. About the year 1802 I began to suspect him; but having then sat below him only for some dozen years or so, I could not, of course, in a matter of so much delicacy, dare trust to my very imperfect memory. During the Whig ministry of 1806, my attention was strongly riveted to the practical illustrations, and I could have sworn to the last twenty minutes of his discourse, as to the voice of a friend familiar in early youth. About the time your Magazine first dawned on the world, my belief of its identity extended to the whole discourse; and the good old man himself, in the delight of his heart, confessed to me the truth a few Sabbaths after the Chaldee.

66

NORTH. Come, now, tell me truth have you ever palmed off any part of it upon me in the shape of an article?

TICKLER. Never, 'pon honor; but you shall get the whole of it some day, as a Number One; for, now that he has got an assistant and successor, the sermon is seldom employed, and he has bequeathed it to me in a codicil to his will.

NORTH. I cannot imagine, for the life of me, what Ambrose is about. Hush! there he comes. (Enter AMBROSE.) What is the meaning of this, sir? AMBROSE. Unfold.

(Folding-doors thrown open, and supper

table is shown.)

TICKLER. What an épergne! Art

to that, North? "Tadmore thus, and Syrian Balbec rosc."--(Transeunt omnes.)

SCENE II.-The Pitt Saloon.

NORTH. Hogg, with his hair powdered, as I endure! God bless you, Jameshow are you all at Altrive?

SHEPHERD. All's well-wool upnowte* on the rise-harvest stacked without a shower-potatoes like stones in the Meggat-turnips like cabbages, and cabbages like balloons-bairns brawly, and mistress bonnier than ever. It is quite an annus mirabilis.

TICKLER. James, my heart warms to hear your voice. That suit of black becomes you extremely-you would make an excellent Moderator of the General Assembly.†

SHEPHERD. You mistake the matter entirely, Tickler; your eyesight fails you ; my coat is a dark blue-waistcoat and breeches the same-but old people discern objects indistinctly by candle-light, or I shall rather say, by gas-light. The radi ance is beautiful.

TICKLER. The radiance is beautiful. SHEPHERD. Why, you are like old Polonius in the play! I hate an echo-be orig inal or silent.

TICKLER. James!

the

Mr.

SHEPHERD. Mr. Hogg, if you please, sir. Why, you think because I am goodnatured, that you and North, and rest," are to quiz the Shepherd? Be it so-no objections-but hearken to me, Tickler, my name will be remembered when the dust of oblivion is yard-deep on the gravestone of the whole generation of Ticklers. Who are you-what are youwhence are you-whither are you going, and what have you got to say for yourself? A tall fellow, undoubtedly-but Measure for Measure is the comedy in which I choose to act to-night-so, gentlemen, be civil or I will join the party at Spinks'

and set up an opposition Magazine, that.

NORTH. This is most extraordinary behavior, Mr. Hogg; and any apology SHEPHERD. I forgive you, Mr. North -but..

SHEPHERD. So am I, sir-but is it to be endured

TICKLER. Pardon me, James; say that you pardon me at my time of life a man cannot afford to lose a friend. No, he cannot indeed.

SHEPHERD. Your hand, Mr. Tickler. But I will not be the butt of any company. NORTH. I fear some insidious enemy has been poisoning your ear, James. Never has any one of us ceased, for a moment, to respect you, or to hear you with respect, from the time that you wrote the Chaldee Manuscript

SHEPHERD. Not another word-not another word-if you love me.

NORTH. Have the Cockneys been ing you to desert us, James?

SHEPHERD. The Cockneys! Puir misbegotten deevils! (I maun to speak Scotch again now that I'm in goodhumor.) I would rather crack nuts for a haill winter's nicht wi' a monkey, than drink the best peck o' mawt that ever was brewed wi' the King himsel' o' that kintra.

NORTH. I understood you were going to visit London this winter.

SHEPHERD. I am. But I shall choose my ain society there, as I do in Embro' and Yarrow.

...

(Here follows the Supper.) TICKLER. James, you are the worst smoker of a cigar in Christendom. No occasion to blow like a hippopotamus. Look at me or North-you would not know we breathed.

SHEPHERD. It's to keep mysel' frae fallin' asleep. Hear till that auld watchman, crawing the hour like a bit bantam. What's the cretur screeching? Twa o'clock!! Mercy me!-we maun be aff. (Exeunt omnes.)

*

SHEPHERD. Thine, too, skatin', and curlin, and grewin, and a' sorts o' deevilry amang lads and lasses at rockins and kirns. Beef and greens! Beef and greens! Oh, Mr. North, beef and greens!

NORTH. Yes, James, I sympathize with your enthusiasm. Now, and now only, do carrots and turnips deserve the name. The season this of rumps and rounds. Now the whole nation sets in for serious eating-serious and substantial eating, James, half leisure, half labor-the table loaded with a lease of life, and each dish a year. In the presence of that Haggis I feel myself immortal.

SHEPHERD. Butcher-meat, though, and coals are likely, let me tell you, to sell at a perfec' ransom frae Martinmas to Michaelmas.

NORTH. Paltry thought. Let beeves and muttons look up, even to the stars, and fuel be precious as at the Pole. Another slice of the stot, James, another slice of the stot-and, Mr. Ambrose, smash that half-ton lump of black dia mond till the chimney roar and radiate

Tickler? why so glum?

TICKLER. This outrageous merriment grates my spirits. I am not in the mood. "Twill be a severe winter, and I think of the poor.

NORTH. Why the devil think of the poor at this time of day? Are not wages

* Grewin-coursing.