"There was an universal exclamation from all parts of the country to the effect, that without me there was neither security for the King, nor safety for France, and that all parties had come to an understanding on the necessity of continuing me in office." One who had corresponded so largely and so indiscriminately was quite certain to strike into some old track. Whatever occurred he pursued, and therefore we were prepared for the denouement, that “ deplorable a conjuncture, I did not withhold from my country the benefit of my labour and exertion." in so It is at this point that the Memoirs before us terminate. We are promised a continuation; and unless the prosecution to which we have already alluded prevents the fulfilment of this promise, we shall probably learn the particulars of the last five years of Fouché's eventful life, and we may then be able to pronounce with entire certainty upon the authenticity of any part or the whole of this publication. ART. X. Odes and Addresses to Great People Ir we were inclined to string a rosary of common-places, and to apothegmatize in good set terms of morality, what food does the title of this little volume present to our craving! Alexander and Jonathan Wild, the Czar Peter and Thomas Thumb, Herod and the Irish Giant have all in their turns been enlarged by the same appendage of honor, and like a comet or a Highland laird have carried their brightest glories in their tails,—But alas, "how little are the great!" in days of yore no one was deemed to possess the necessary passport to this distinguished title, unless he had despatched some thousands of his fellow creatures on the battle-field or some hundreds at the new drop; unless he had worked his way out of a ship-yard or a cow's belly; unless he had really massacred babes, or at least looked big enough to eat thembut now-out on such degenerate times! We meet here with no less than thirteen greatnesses in a bunch-aye and two of them corporate bodies-and they have a poet to boot, who magnifies them all in due proportion to their respective bulks, and adjusts his measures to the comparative size of his subject. That future ages may have no doubts as to the worthies of the present, and that our illustrious contemporaries may have the double chance of living to endless fame both in our pages and in those of their Laureate, we shall subjoin a catalogue of the mighty whom the Muse has here celebrated :They are, Graham the Man of Gas, and M'Adam the Man of Granite; Mrs. Fry the Newgate Lady, and Mr. Martin the Smithfield Gentleman; the Great Unknown; Mr. Champion Dymoke, and Mr. Clown Grimaldi; Miss Foote, and the Steam Washing Company; the Secretary to the Begging Society, and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster; Captain Parry, and the Author of Peptic Precepts; Mr. Manager Elliston and the Editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. Of this motley groupe it is hard to speak collectively; especially since each holds a widely different place in our esteem. Mr. Graham is far above our contemplations-Tendit -quoties in altos Nubium tractus-In spite of our respect for Mr. M'Adam, we cannot but wish that we may always continue to trample his ways under foot. Mrs. Fry we think is all my eye. Mr. Martin's blunt and honest humanity has our heartiest approbation, and we wish the animali parlanti of St. Stephen's would receive his propositions in behalf of the dumb beasts with greater courtesy. We have peeped neither under the vizor of the Great Unknown, nor that of Mr. Dymoke. To see Grimaldi once again we would trust all our eighteen shirts to the Steam Washing Company; Dr. Apicius Kitchener and Mr. Mendicity Bodkin are associated in our minds like Falstaff and Slender, or Pharaoh's fat and lean kine; and as for the remainder they are like Gyas and Cloanthus, only the rout and rabble of greatness, who serve to fill up the close of an hexameter or the back ground of a picture. If the standard by which the writer of these Odes weighs those to whom he addresses them is to be determined by the rate of merit in his execution, it is quite as various as our We pass at once to that in which he invokes the Scottish novelist. own. 1. "Thou Great Unknown! I do not mean Eternity nor Death, That vast incog! For I suppose thou hast a living breath, Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown, Parent of many children-child of none! Nobody's daughter-but a parent still! A vox and nothing more, yet not Vauxhall; No hand--but a hand-writing on a wall- Still call'd the same, without identity! A nothing shin'd upon,-invisibly bright, Constable's literary John-a-nokes- Maybe Sir Walter Scott- Why dost thou so conceal and puzzle curious folks? 2. "Thou, whom the second-sighted never saw, No mister in the world and yet all mystery! A man of clair obscure-not him o' the moon! A non-descriptus in a caravan, A private of no corps a northern light A vizor and no knight; The real abstract hero of the age; The staple Stranger of the stage; A Some One made in every man's presumption, Frankenstein's monster-but instinct with gumption; Another strange state captive in the north, Constable-guarded in an iron mask; Still let me ask, Hast thou no silver platter, No door-plate, or no card-or some such matter, 3. "Thou Scottish Barmecide, feeding the hunger Of Curiosity with airy gammon ! Thou mystery-monger, Dealing it out like middle cut of salmon, That people buy and can't make head or tail of it: (Howbeit that puzzle never hurts the sale of it ;) Thou chief of authors mystic and abstractical, Thou Zimmerman made practical! Thou secret fountain of a Scottish style, Hideth its source wherever it is bred, Thro' such broad sandy mouths without a head! Ah! wherefore hast thou fled, Thou learned Nemo-wise to a degree, Anonymous L. L. D.!"-P. 39. This in our minds is among the best of his strains; and it requires no very deep imbution with the Philosophy of Crotona to discover whose the spirit is which animates the writer. There can be no doubt that the soul of Tom Punsibi has shot up through the Pythagorean rail-road of a bean stalk into some modern corticle wherein novis domibus habitat, vivitque recepta. may grin The rest is of the same cast; some of the puns, it must be confessed are bad enough, but perhaps they are the better on that account. We are not adepts in this figure; nevertheless we confess its power, for when we most affect to despise and resist it, it wrings our features into an involuntary grín. Yet even of puns there be too much, and this become a yawn long before the close of the 136th page. We will not try our readers patience to this fearful extent; but they may perhaps bear with one more extract. We select it not so much for its humour as for its truth; for we think that it places in a just light the services of an Association which extinguishes charity rather than suppresses mendicity, and which scours the haunts and coverts of misery not to relieve but to run it down. ODE TO H. BODKIN, ESQ. SECRETARY TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF MENDICITY. |