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Chr. (Reddening.) Not bad? Well, some folks sure don't own a palate. Tickler. True, Kit, and yet this ale rolls down my gullet

Right trippingly, and seems to be, by jingo,

True home-brew'd tipple, genuine humming stingo.

But own, now, Kit, is there no paroxysm,

In that right toe of thine, of rheumatism?

Chr. (Sulkily.) There is-but whereto tends that base suggestion? My aching toe is nothing to the question.

(Looking askance) Odoherty may swill in sheer despite,

But I aver 'tis bad, and I am right.

Odoh. Christie, my jewel, let me merely hint it, With the ale you're rather too much discontinted. Take a good swig or two, my precious boy,

The muligrubs which rack your toe will fly;

I'm sure I find relief immediately. (Drinks.)

Chr. (Doggedly.) The matter is to cure my thirst, not toe,

And that, this vile potation will not do.

Wastle. Ay, but my gentle squire, there's cause to think,

Were but the toe quite tranquilized, the drink

Would soon regain its favour in your eyes.

Chr. (Getting warm.) Laird, I'm surprised to find this vain surmise Bolstered by you-this silly, stupid stigma,—

As if I'd no more spirit than a pigmy.

Enter DEVIL.

Devil. More copy's wanted-they're a' at a dead stopAnd Maister Blackwood rants about his shop;

He says the twentieth's coming, and the Number

Han't half its monthly quantity of lumber.

Chr. Tormenting imp! bane of all satisfaction, Who eggs thee on to drive me to distraction?

(Turning round furiously.) You've managed this,-you're all in one base gang!

Blackwood, Contributors, and all, go hang!

(Breaks the Devil's head, who runs out yelping ; the Contributors rise, and form a groupe; some commiserating, some expostulating, some quite at a loss what to think, while Christopher falls back in his chair, exhausted with rage, and overcome with the pain of his toe, which in passion he has hit against the table.)

Oversalted herrings, and bad ale! If we got nothing better for supper at Ambrose's, our suppers, we fancy, would not be so eagerly frequented. As we admit none to them but persons of gentlemanly manners and feelings, it is quite impossible that the rebel V. D. B. should ever be undeluded, if he believes that he has given any thing like a guess at our fare, or a distorted likeness of ourself in our presidential capacity. He must go on in his error-but it will be seen that we have no fear of exposure from such paltry jobbernowls as those of the Round-Robin faction. We think these specimens will suffice tor ouse popular

indignation at these viperous traitors, who, however, are only gnawing a file. If more like evidence be called for, more shall be forthcoming, but we think it needless; we should prefer indeed to find the less guilty, taking warning by those who are gibbeted. We are aware that misprision of treason is the only charge against a few of them. This we shall overlook, if they renew their homage within a reasonable time of grace. Having thus disclosed our danger and escape, we bid all such of our loving subjects as have never swerved from us, Hail, and Farewell.

LEARNING AND LIBERALITY OF THE BLUE AND YELLOW.

MR EDITOR,

As your patriotic attachments cannot suffer you to remain indifferent to the blushing honours of your great critical compatriots, I am sure you will feel both happy and proud to assist the triumph, and partake the gale of their glorious course-by giving wider circulation to one of the most brilliant displays both of literary and moral excellence which has yet shone forth in your northern Athens. You will already, in all probability, have anticipated my allusion to the third article of the last Edinburgh Review.

The literary excellencies which peculiarly characterize this inimitable composition, are purity of style, and a happy ease, and graceful flow of wit— the moral distinction is candour. In deed, it seems entirely written with a view to illustrate this one lovely quality of mind, just as Miss Baillie devotes entire tragedies to the developement of a single passion.

First, then, for style and wit, the very first sentence will afford a specimen sufficiently admirable; and I can assure the reader (I acknowledge, however, that he must find great difficulty in believing me,) that the qualis ab incapto processerit is religiously observed throughout.

"There is not a wider difference in all nature, than between those who read to learn, and those who consume their whole lives and opportunities in learning to read. Yet there are no two classes of beings more constantly confounded with each other. The world often makes the mistake, and the parties in question always. The merest hacks and drudges in the cause,—those who tussle for the goat's-wool,-the Stocks and Bardi of alternate annotation,-the lords of Antispast and friends to Double-dochmee, the running footmen who are meant to clear the path, but oftener stumble and incumber it,--are always, like Pussy's master in the fairy-tale, endeavouring to play the Marquis; and, by dint of large words and local knowledge, too frequently succeed."

Of candour, take the following example.

"If the scope of Mr Brougham's truly patriotic exertions were to be extended, as we cordially wish to see it, so as to embrace the English Universities, we should hardly so much desire to have his keen and caustic scrutinies directed towards the Colleges in which the elections are close, as towards those which profess to offer their Fellowships to the indiscriminate competition of all learning and ability;-except, indeed, it happen to be Irish. But to the wisdom VOL. X.

and humanity of this exception, it is clearly impossible to oppose a single argument. The Brogue is such a black, premeditated crime, that the misjudging infant who lisps those wilful accents, is fairly doomed to a youth of beggary-no ill-imagined training for a life of proscriptions.

"It is in these half-open institutions, that inquiry would detect the true spirit of the Monkish system in full and flagrant operation. Place power in the hands of a conceited, ignorant, illiberal recluse, and it asks no gift of prophecy to foresee the ine vitable consequence. With feline attachment to localities, such a being soon contracts the prudish air and treacherous pro pensities of the retromingent animal from which that narrow sentiment is imitated. No antiquated virgin more resembles her own tabby in duplicity, malice, and demureness. The sleek disguise of imbecility, the abuse of his miserable rights, the instinctive preservation of his apprehensive egotism from the contact of superior brilliancy, which he knows to be as little catching as gallantry itself, become the first objects in existence with this hater of a joke. The creature must be followed, sought, and talent tremble at its frown. Let a young and sued:' taste must listen to its paradoxes, man only abdicate the privilege of thinking -to some no painful sacrifice and devote his whole body and soul to the sordid ambition of success, and the way to win' with such electors is no formidable problem. As an undergraduate, he must comb his hair smooth, avoid cleanliness and essences, be regular at Latin prayers, and sedulous in capping. After a dull examination in the schools-if a failure so much the betterhe may begin to be the butt of Commonrooms, circulate tutors' wit, and prose against the Edinburgh Review. With a hopeless virginity of face, sacred from the violence of meanings with a manner so nicely ba lanced between the weight of manhood and the decent levity of youth, that it happily escapes the gracefulness of either-guiltless of fame, originality, or humour-our tyro may then approach the scene of action, secure that the judges will take good care that

the race shall not be to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Hardy professions of impartiality are indeed held forth, to attract unwary merit; and selfish mediocrity finds the most exquisite of all its gratifications in the momentary chance of harassing the talent it would tremble to confront. The candidates are locked up to write themes-solve a Sorites-discover the Latin for an earthquake and perform other equally edifying tasks:-and the close of this solemn farce is the annunciation of a choice that had been long before determined, in proportion to the scrapings, grins, and genuflections of the several competitors. Who can be surprised if, under a system like this, genius and

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knowledge should so seldom strike a lasting root? or that the maturity which succeeds to a youth so prostituted, should produce, by its most vigorous efforts, nothing better than learned drivelling, or marrowless inflation? In many, and in very important respects, Oxford has undoubtedly improved upon its former self; but, in all points of right sentiment or liberal feeling, it is still the same University that stripped Locke of a studentship, and refused Johnson a degree."

to point out the secret and personal springs both of his praise and censure, laying open in the one the ebullitions of gratified vanity, and in the other the malignity of disappointed interest. The sketch might be completed by suggesting the true drift of the entire article, in its relation to present hopes and prospects.

66

Were it necessary for a moment to treat these drivellings of impotent malice with seriousness, it would be amply sufficient to remark that the body against which they are directed has long been distinguished by obtaining a share greatly beyond the proportion of its numbers, of those same academic honours on which such large encomiums are so consistently bestowed in this very article. Although the reproach of a retromingent animal," would be far less in my estimation than that which proverbially attaches to an "ill bird," still I do not appear on this occasion ενδομαχας ατ' αλέκτως Συγγόνω παρ' 5-nor have I any local connection with the body attacked. I entertain for it indeed, and for every thing connected with it, (always excepting its metaphysics,) those sentiments of respect which I believe to be common to the whole university-but it is thus only that it can interest me as

As the good-natured artists of an earlier day, unwilling to weary the ingenuity of spectators, by imposing on them the difficult task of tracing any resemblance between the characters and actions depicted and those intended, kindly wrote over their principal figures, Æneas, Ascanius, Dido, &c. so the allusion to "Discourses on Predestination" appears to have been introduced with a similar charitable purpose; and I must acknowledge it is an elegant contrivance to answer an absolutely necessary end; for with out such an useful clue, the aim of all these sounding shifts, the phonoidogoo ghwoons Bereμva anapa, might have been absolutely unintelligible; to me at least it would certainly have been so and yet I am willing to flatter myself that I am not entirely ignorant of Alma Mater, or unacquainted with her sons; and perhaps, indeed, that I know enough to be able, were I so inclined, to unmask an anonymous libeller, and 12th Oct. 1821.

A MEMBER OF CHRIST CHURCH,
ΟΧΟΝ.

THE TRUE PEDANT-A SKETCH.

GEORGE BUCHANAN has been reproached with making our sixth James a pedant. He might have been a worse thing. It is better to "turn the council to a grammar school," than to an academy for young Machiavels. He who is solicitous not to break Priscian's head, is not likely to have the passion for breaking heads, in the abstract. The preceptor seems to have known well the propensities of his royal pupil, and did all for the best. James maintained

the doctrine of divine right in good set terms, and so did all his bishops, and they kept their heads upon their shoulders, and barring natural causes, might have gone on stringing their syllogisms to all eternity. His son Charles, and his favourite Laud, who were less of pedants, began to turn the other's theory into practice, and were cut short before they had proceeded three steps in

their practical sorites. Pedants are of all men the most harmless against the itch for a paper war, even a quaker would not protest. If they breed little else than moths, they take special care not to diminish the offspring of more prolific people. They are, to be sure, persecuting and intolerant enough, but then it is all in the bloodless wayThey only pelt each other with arguments, or nail one another upon the crux metaphysicorum, or some one of the many cruces which are to be found in the copious inventory of the " Approbria Philosophiæ."

Pedants have been ridiculed, abused, and written against more than any set of men that ever existed, but, after all, they are still a tolerably thriving generation. The Alchymists and the Astrologers, and the Demonologists, and the Jesuits, and the sticklers for phlo

giston, and the Brunonians, and the Antivaccinists, and the Della Cruscans, have been written down, but the pedants have not been written down; not even by themselves, which is the most surprising thing of all. From Holofernes down to Lingo, wicked wits have ridiculed them, yet they have never been able to do away the reverence with which they are regarded by the bulk of mankind.. "There's a divinity that doth hedge a pedant." What can be more absurd and ridiculous than the caps and gowns of an English University? if any other set of beings were to persist in going into public so dressed, what would be the consequence? The poor persecuted Quakers in their plainest days were not so absurdly attired as one of these, yet, from Provost to Proctor, what lip ever deviates from the angle of gravity at the sight of them? These, too, are the most marked species of the whole genus. There is your virtuoso pedant, your scientific pedant, your poetical pedant, and your pedantic triflerthey are less distinct. It is your thorough-bred Greek and Latin pedant, the lineal descendant of the old musty, vellum bound, yellow-looking, illus trissimi, who gives the generic name to the tribe. He has been the most unmercifully roasted of the whole but in a village he is, to this day, the eight wonder of the world. Even in a country town his opinion." bears an emphasis" beyond the vulgar votes of a brace of tradesmen, or the vociferous suffrages of a dozen farmers. In cities he is not quite what he was, but there observe the deference and respect he shall sometimes inspire-'tis much." Who but some of the reckless wags of Blackwood's Magazine would have ventured to make a jest of Dr Parr's wig? Who but their Editor-(well may he be called invisible, for nobody ever saw such a man)-would have ventured upon such a term as "Goody Barker?" Who but the profane author of the "Hymn to Christopher" would have dared to designate the venerable personage, whose square physiognomy gives dignity to the volume of which it is the impressure, by the name of "Georgy Buchanan?" "Head of Confucius! dumplin Dick!!" exclaimed Goldsmith's Chinese, on a similar profanation-but this is ten times worse.

I am wandering, however, from the

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subject. The real, thriving, well-fea thered pedant may be easily known, like other objects of natural history, from certain external signs; and these be they: Whether clergyman or layman, he is fond of dressing in black, and if of an English university, wears his MA. gown in his study of a morning. There he is constantly to be found by twelve o'clock callers, with his black cotton stockings, so fine, that they look like silk, and his shoes shining in all the fulgor of Day and Martin's blacking. It is a mistake to ima gine that your true pedant is slovenly. This has only been imagined by those who have confounded the scholastic pedant with the scholar of genius. He delights in having his study kept neat. The litter of books upon his table is evidently the artful negligence of design, and not the heavy agglomeration of literature. He piles his table with flea-bitten editions, as a young attorney does with musty parchments. His study has divers nick-nacks; and they are in good condition. His reading-stand is unbroken,-and the patent springs which secure the guardian wired doors of the most precious apartments of his library are undamaged. He has the door of his study painted and panneled, to correspond with the divisions of his book-case, in order that, as he expresses it, he may seem to live enveloped in literature, as a toad does in free-stone. He is delighted when you startle at not finding an exit when you turn to leave the room.

He is found reading a thick.octavo of dirty corbeau colour, and to the first apologetic visitant he says, that he

was just amusing himself for half an hour with his friend Horace." He says all the translators (there are some thirty of them) have mistaken the "simplex munditiis.' He expatiates upon Homer and Virgil, and thinks the first has more majesty, the second more sweetness. He inclines to prefer Virgil. Those passages in which the sound is supposed to echo to the sense, stay longest in his memory, and apparently give him most pleasure. He quotes with the greatest glee, especially if a young person be present, « Αντις έπειτα Tedovde UIUSETO Xaas avaidne," making the first leap with his hand upon the table, thence to his knee, and thence to the carpet. He imitates with his fingers the gallopping of a horse, as children do, and repeats" Quadrupe

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he thinks a tolerable imitation of the exquisite effect of the Greek.

He is no enemy to puns in general, but to Greek and Latin puns he is distractedly attached. There are none so bad as to be to him destitute of humour. He asks all schoolboys below the fourth form to construe "Bos currit plenum sed," and explains to them the etymology of driving " tandem." He repeats the best joke his old friend Dr Drybones ever made, which was saying of a young empty-headed coxcomb of an acquaintance, who was reported to be taking lessons at Paris in that accomplishment for which the French are celebrated beyond the rest of mankind, that he was studying "TO Kacy;" and his second best, which was nicknaming old Dr Dusky, who was perpetual president of a smoking club at Oxford, 66 Νεφεληγερέτα Ξευς. To all his legal friends he never misses the opportunity of translating "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus,” "You must keep all your terms to become a lawyer." But what he values himself most upon is, having in his youth at tracted the notice of the celebrated by rendering Horace's line, "Nullus argento color est avaris," (when some one quoted it at a dinner party,) "One never knows the colour of a miser's money;" and upon his having christened a conceited, travelled chum of his, who had been bit with the fashion (so prevalent, of late, in other quarters) of being in raptures with Italy, Silius Italicus! a title which stuck to him for the remainder of his life.

Professor

As in duty bound, he has a contempt, of greater or less intensity, for all learning, science, or information, which is not classical. To the "Idiotæ," or unlearned, which, he sometimes whispers, even as great a man as Horseley translated "idiots," especially if they be engaged in trade,

his sense of superiority is immeasureable, and peeps out of every intonation of his stifly-condescending civility. The professions he respects in the following order :-Divinity first; next, Law; and lastly, Physic. He also condescends to like such officers of the army or navy as will listen to him, and pay him reciprocal respect, of whom, however, he meets but few. To such he is as full of "ancient disciplines” as Fluellen himself. He prefers Hannibal and Scipio to Wellington and Napoleon. He quotes Xenophon, Cesar, and Polybius, and sets them above all modern writers on Strategy. He is convinced that Cæsar's bridge, as described in his Commentaries, must have been infinitely beyond all the efforts of modern engineering. He is not the less convinced of this, because he has no remarkably clear ideas of the construction of the said bridge, notwithstanding the lucid simplicity of style which he is in the habit of attributing to the conqueror of Britain.

There is one occasion, and one only, upon which he relaxes to every body; and that is, when he has been invited to a good dinner. Here he sits" neat

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trimly drest"-courteous and smi ling; saying little; listening much ;eating more. He attends to the merchant who talks of the Royal Wine Company at Lisbon, and the method of preparing claret for the English market. He hearkens to the Colonel who vapours about the vintage of Spain and of Greece, and of, "the Lord knows where." He listens to the chemist who lectures upon their fermentation and comparative strengths; and gives ear to the physician who dogmatizes upon their wholesomeness. He tries to be droll, and condescends to be jocose. He quotes the Lapland Priest, whose stock of Latin was included in the four emphatic words, "Bonum vinum pone circum ;" and, to the old gentleman who is wedded to Hock, he puns upon Ausonius' wellknown conceit, "Hoc pereunté fugis; hoc fugiente peris."

He is inclined to think Porson the greatest man that England ever produced. He excuses his heretical politics when mentioned-when not mentioned, he says nothing about them. After the Professor, he is content to rank Newton, Milton, and Shakespeare; though he dislikes the republi canism of the second, and the irregu

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