NORTH. More's the pity. Yet we have our Demi-gods too. In manners and in dignity we are behind the last age-but in genius, properly so called, we are a thousand miles above it. They had little or no poetry then. Such a play even as Douglas would, if published now-a-days, appear rather feeble. It would be better as a play certainly-but the poetry of Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth, would be in men's minds, and they would not take that for poetry, fine though it be. BULLER. What would people say to one of Shakespeare's plays, were it to be written now? NORTH. The Edinburgh Reviewers would say it was a Lakish Rant. The Quarterly would tear it to bits, growling like a mastiff. The fact is, that our theatre is at an end, I fear. A new play, to be received triumphantly, would require to have all the fire and passion of the old drama, and all the chasteness and order of the new. I doubt to reconcile these two will pass the power of any body now living. Try yourself, man. BULLER. NORTH. I never will-but if I did, I should make something altogether unlike any thing that has ever been done in our language. Unless I could hit upon some new-really new-key, I should not think the attempt worth making. Even our dramatic verse is quite worn out. It would pall on one's ear were it written never so well. BULLER. Why? Sophocles wrote the same metre with Æschylus. NORTH. No more than Shakespeare wrote the same blank verse with Milton-or Byron, in the Corsair, the same measure with the Rape of the Lock. Counting the longs and shorts is not enough, Mr Batchelor of Arts. BULLER. You despise our English study of the classics. You think it carried too far. I understand your meaning, Mr North. NORTH. I doubt that. I suspect that I myself have read as much Greek in my day as most of your crack-men. In my younger days, sir, the glory of our Buchanans and Barclays was not forgotten in Scotland. In this matter again, we have to thank the blue and yellow gentry for a good deal of our national deterioration. They are not scholars. BULLER. NORTH. They scholars! witlings can't be scholars, Buller. Knowledge is a great calmer of people's minds. Milton would have been a compassionate critic. Are you a compassionate one? BULLER. NORTH. Sir, I am ever compassionate when I see anything like nature and originality. I do not demand the strength of a Hercules from every man. Let me have an humble love of, and a sincere aspiration after what is great, and I am satisfied. I am intolerant to nobody but Quacks and Cockneys. No, sir, I only hang them up to air, like so many pieces of old theatrical finery on the poles of Monmouth-Street. BULLER. But to return to John Home and Henry Mackenzie-I confess, I think the History of the Rebellion in 1745 is a far better work than it is generally held to be. NORTH. Why, any account of that brilliant episode in our history must needs be full of interest, and Home being concerned so far himself, has preserved a number of picturesque enough anecdotes; but on the whole, the book wants vigour, and it is full of quizzibles; what can be more absurd than his giving us more pages about the escape of two or three Whig students of Divinity from the Castle of Doune than he spends upon all the wild wandering of the unfortunate Chevalier ? The young Pretender. BULLER. NORTH. The Chevalier-the Prince, sir. My father would have knocked any man down that said the Pretender in his presence. BULLER. Ask your pardon, Christopher. I did not know you were a Jacobite. NORTH. Had I lived in those days I should certainly have been one. Look at Horace Walpole's Memoirs, if you wish to see what a set of paltry fellows steered the vessel of the State in the early Hanover reigns. It is refreshing to turn from your Bedfords, and Newcastles, and Cavendishes, to the Statesmen of our own times. BULLER. Wait for fifty years till some such legacy of spleen be opened by the heirs of some disappointed statesman now living. NORTH. There is something in that, sir; but yet not much. Sir, nobody will ever be able to bring any disgraceful accusations against the personal honour and probity of the leading Tory statesmen who now rule England. They are all men of worth and principle. They have their faults, I believe, but no shameful ones. Lord Londonderry without question. He wants some of the lesser ornaments which set off a public ma - I mean in his style of speaking-but sense, sir, and knowledge, and thorough skill in affairs, are worth all the rest a million times over; and he has something besides all these, that distinguishes him from everybody with whom he can at present be compared a true active dignity and pith of mind-the chief element of a ruling character, and worth all the eloquence even of a Burke. BULLER. His fine person is an advantage to him. NORTH. The grace of the Seymours would be an advantage to any man. But just look at the two sets of people the next time you are in the House of Commons, and observe what a raffish-looking crew the modern Whigs are. I'm sure their benches must have a great loss in the absence of George Tierney's bluff face and buff waistcoat. BULLER. What manner of man is Joseph Hume? NORTH. Did you never see him? He is a shrewd-looking fellow enough: but most decidedly vulgar. Nobody that secs him could ever for a moment suspect him of being a gentleman born. He has the air of a Montrose dandy, at this moment, and there is an intolerable affectation about the creature. I suppose he must have sunk quite into the dirt since Croker curried him. BULLER. I don't believe anything can make an impression on him. A gentleman's whip would not be felt through the beaver of a coal-heaver. Depend on't, Joseph will go on just as he has been doing. NORTH. Why, a small matter will make a man who has once ratted, rat again. We all remember what Joe Hume was a few years ago. A Torý? BULLER. NORTH. I would not prostitute the name so far: but he always voted with them. As a clever poet of last year said "I grant you he never behaved, anno 12, ill He always used then to chime in with Lord Melville. There were words, I remember, he used to pronounce ill; But he always supported the orders in council. BULLER. What a memory you have! Joseph has not so good a one, I'll swear, or he would not look the Tories in the face after such a ratting! NORTH. Why, no wonder than he hates the Tories. They never thought of him while he was with them-and now the Whigs do talk of Joe as if he were somebody. But as John Bull says "A very small man with the Tories Is a very great man 'mong the Whigs!" BULLER. If you were to rat, North, what a rumpus they would make about you! Why, they would lift you on their shoulders, and huzza till you were tired. NORTH. That would not be long. Away with stinking breath, say I. BULLER. At first they pretended to say you were dull. But that was soon over. Jef frey persuaded them that would never pass, I am told. NORTH. I can believe it. Jeffrey is a king among the blind. BULLER. I suppose he hates you cordially, however. NORTH. No doubt, in a small toothy way: just as a rat hates a terrier. But what makes you always speak about him? I'm sure you don't mind such folks. BULLER. Not much; but, next to abusing one's friends, what, after all, is so pleasant as abusing one's enemies? NORTH. Try praising them, my friend: You will find that embitters them far more fiercely. There's an air of superiority about commendation which makes a man wince to his backbone. The Whigs can't endure to be lauded. BULLER. That's the reason you always lash them, I presume. NORTH. Me lash them! I would as soon get on horseback to spear a tailor. I just tickle their noses with the tip of my thong. Put me into a passion, and I'll shew you what lashing is. BULLER. I have no curiosity, Christopher. I'll take it all upon trust. When you cock your wig awry, you look as if you could eat a Turk. NORTH.. I would rather eat any thing than a Whig. When you cut them up, 'tis * See Letter to a Friend in the Country. London, Triphook. 1821. NORTH. Why, I believe there is but one animal who may, in a certain sense, commit all crimes with impunity, and its name is WHIG. To have been detected in the basest embezzlement of money would not hinder one of them from being talked of as the light of the age. I suppose the next thing will be to have some habit and repute thief or house-breaker proposing a reformation of the criminal code. A Whig is never cut by the Whigs. Fox and Tom Erskine stuck by Arthur O'Connor to the last, and swore that they believed him to have the same political principles as themselves. I suppose, in spite of his behaviour to Mackerrel, Brougham could get a certificate! Even Bennet is something with them still! BULLER. Not much. 'Tis a fine thing to be Whig, however. How the Chaldee would have been praised had it been written against the Tories! NORTH. Why, the English Tories would have laughed at it, and the Scotch Tories would have joined trembling with their mirth-and Jamie Hogg would have been dinnered to his death, poor fellow. BULLER. I have a sort of lurking hereditary respect for the name of Whig. I can't bear its having come to designate such people. NORTH. What stuff is this? You might as well wax wroth because a cicerone is not the same thing with a Cicero, nor a bravo the same thing with a brave man. BULLER. Why is it that the Whigs attack you so much more bitterly than they do Gifford? NORTH. Why, Mr Buller, the crow always darts first at THE EYE. BULLER. Their attacks on you are as zealous as their laudations of themselves. And as ineffectual. NORTH. "Talk and spare not for speech, end at last you will reach, And the proverb hold good, I opine, sirs, In spite of ablution, scent and perfume, pollution Show'd still that the sow was a swine, sirs." BULLER. What is that you are quoting now ? NORTH. Aristophanes-Mitchell, I mean. I think the verses are in his version of The Wasps. BULLER. I have not seen his new volume yet. Is it as good as the first? NORTH. I don't know. The dissertations in the first volume were the most popular things in it, and there are no dissertations in this; but 'tis full of capital notes, and the translation is quite in the same spirited style. Nothing can be more true, I imagine. I am quite sure nothing can be more spirited or more graceful. BULLER. That's high praise from a Cynic like you, Mr Christopher. I suppose tis the first thing of the sort in our language, however. NORTH. Oh! most certainly it is so. None of the ancient dramatists have ever had any thing like justice done them before. There is so much poetry in some of the passages in this last volume, that I can't but wish Mitchell would take some of the tragedians in hand next. What a name might he not make, if he could master Æschylus as well as he has done Aristophanes? or perhaps some of Euripides' plays would fall more easily into his management. I wish he would try the Bacchæ or the Cyclops. BULLER. Spout a little piece more of him, if you can. NORTH. I will give you part of a passage that I consider nobody has so good a right to quote as myself'; for I am the true representative of the Vetus Comedia"When the swell of private rage foam'd indignant, that The Stage Dared upbraid lawless love and affection, And will'd our poet's speech, (guilty pleasures not to reach) Should assume a more lowly direction : Did he heed the loud reproof? No-he wisely kept aloof, And spurn'd at corruption's base duress; For never could he chuse, to behold his dearest Muse, In the dress of a wanton procuress." BULLER. Why, this certainly looks as if it had been written since Rimini and Juan. Listen, man NORTH. "When first the scenic trade of instruction he essay'd, Monsters, not men, were his game, sirs; Strange Leviathans, that ask'd strength and mettle, and had task'd Alcides, their fury to tame, sirs!" BULLER. The Shepherd of Chaldea may hold up his head now, I think. Hush NORTH. " In peril and alarms was his prenticeship of arms, From whose eyes stream'd baleful Which in CYNNA'S (query, Jeffrey's?) fierce face are seen playing. Swathed and banded round his head, five-score sycophants were fedEver slav'ring, and licking, and glueing-(young Whigs to be sure,)While his voice scream'd loud and hoarse, like the torrent's angry course, When death and destruction are brewing. Rude the portent, fierce and fell, did its sight the poet quell, Was he seen to a truce basely stooping? No; his blows still fell unsparing that and next year, when came warring With foes of a different trooping." BULLER. No! Nobody can say that of you, Christopher. NORTH. There's another passage-a semi-chorus of Wasps, which I must give you. It seems as if I heard a certain "CLEVER OLD BODY" singing in the midst of all his disjecta membra. "O the days that are gone by, O the days so blithe and bland, Mr Tickler! O the days that are gone by, &c. MR AMBROSE (enters). TICKLER. Enter MR TICKLER. Ha! Buller, my dear boy-may you live a thousand years. BULLER. Allow me to congratulate you on your marriage. I trust Mrs Tickler is tolerably well-not complaining very much? TICKLER. No bantering, you dog-I might marry without losing any good fellowship, which is more than you can say, Mr Brazennose. Why the devil don't you all marry at Oxford? What could be more interesting than to see Christchurch Walk swarming with the wives, children, and nurses of senior fellows? BULLER. Spare us, Tickler, spare us. What are you about? Not a single article of yours has gladdened England for a twelvemonth. TICKLER. I am engaged on the Pope Controversy. My work will embrace three |