But now my very dreams forget When last that gentle cheek I prest, Even loftier hopes than ours; Spring bids full many buds to swell, That ne'er can grow to flowers. Dawnings of Genius. In those low paths which poverty surrounds, For which his language can no utterance find; Dim burns the soul, and throbs the fluttering heart, [Scenes and Musings of the Peasant Poet.] Each opening season, and each opening scene, And tales of fairyland he loved to hear, And how the restless slut was pinched black and blue. How ancient damnes a fairy's anger feared, To make the charm succeed, had cautious placed there. And thousands such the village keeps alive; As long as wild rusticity has birth To spread their wonders round the cottage-hearth. On Lubin's mind these deeply were impressed; Oft fear forbade to share his neighbour's mirth: And long each tale, by fancy newly dressed, Brought fairies in his dreams, and broke his infant rest. He had his dreads and fears, and scarce could pass A churchyard's dreary mounds at silent night, But footsteps trampled through the rustling grass, And ghosts 'hind grave-stones stood in sheets of white; Dread monsters fancy moulded on his sight; Soft would he step lest they his tread should hear, And creep and creep till past his wild affright; Then on wind's wings would rally, as it were, So swift the wild retreat of childhood's fancied fear. And when fear left him, on his corner-seat Much would he chatter o'er each dreadful tale; Tell how he heard the sound of 'proaching feet, And warriors jingling in their coats of mail; And lumping knocks as one would thump a flail; Of spirits conjured in the charnel floor; And many a mournful shriek and hapless wail, Where maids, self-murdered, their false loves deplore ; And from that time would vow to tramp on nights no more. O! who can speak his joys when spring's young morn, From wood and pasture, opened on his view! When tender green buds blush upon the thorn, And the first primrose dips its leaves in dew: Each varied charm how joyed would he pursue, Tempted to trace their beauties through the day; Gray-girdled eve and morn of rosy hue Have both beheld him on his lonely way, Far, far remote from boys, and their unpleasing play. Sequestered nature was his heart's delight; Him would she lead through wood and lonely plain, Searching the pooty from the rushy dike; And while the thrush sang her long-silenced strain, He thought it sweet, and mocked it o'er again; And while he plucked the primrose in its pride, He pondered o'er its bloom 'tween joy and pain; And a rude sonnet in its praise he tried, Where nature's simple way the aid of art supplied. The freshened landscapes round his routes unfurled, The fine-tinged clouds above, the woods below, Each met his eye a new-revealing world, Delighting more as more he learned to know; Each journey sweeter, musing to and fro. Surrounded thus, not Paradise more sweet; Enthusiasm made his soul to glow; His heart with wild sensations used to beat; As nature seemly sang, his mutterings would repeat. Upon a molehill oft he dropt him down, To take a prospect of the circling scene, Marking how much the cottage roof's thatch brown Did add its beauty to the budding green Of sheltering trees it humbly peeped between ; The stone-rocked wagon with its rumbling sound; The windmill's sweeping sails at distance seen; And every form that crowds the circling round, Where the sky, stooping, seems to kiss the meeting ground. And dear to him the rural sports of May, O'er brook-banks stretching, on the pasture-sward That like low genius sprang, to bloom their day and die. O! who can tell the sweets of May-day's morn, When the gilt east unveils her dappled dawn, While all the prospect round beams fair to view, Like a sweet opening flower with its unsullied dew. Ah! often brushing through the dripping grass, As o'er the mountain top the red sun 'gins to peep. Nor could the day's decline escape his gaze; The bright unwearied sun seemed loath to drop, With contemplation's stores his mind to fill, O doubly happy would he roam as then, When the blue eve crept deeper round the hill, While the coy rabbit ventured from his den, And weary labour sought his rest again; Lone wanderings led him haply by the stream, Where unperceived he 'joyed his hours at will, Musing the cricket twittering o'er its dream, Or watching o'er the brook the moonlight's dancing beam. And here the rural muse might aptly say, As sober evening sweetly siles along, How she has chased black ignorance away, And warmed his artless soul with feelings strong, To teach his reed to warble forth a song; And how it echoed on the even-gale, All by the brook the pasture-flowers among: But ah! such trifles are of no availThere's few to notice him, or hear his simple tale. latter years were gratified by the talents and reputation of his two sons, James and Horace. James, the eldest, was educated at a school at Chigwell, in Essex, and was usually at the head of his class. For this retired schoolboy spot' he ever retained a strong affection, rarely suffering, as his brother relates, a long interval to elapse without paying it a visit, and wandering over the scenes that recalled the truant excursions of himself and chosen playmates, or the solitary rambles and musings of his youth. Two of his latest poems are devoted to his reminiscences of Chigwell. After the completion of his education, James Smith was articled to his father, was taken into partnership in due time, and eventually succeeded to the business, as well as to the appointment of solicitor to the Ordnance. With a quick sense of the ridiculous, a strong passion for the stage and the drama, and a love of London society and manners, Smith became a town wit and humorist-delighting in parodies, theatrical colloquies, and fashionable criticism. His first pieces appear to have been contributed to the Pic-Nic newspaper established by Colonel Henry Greville, which afterwards merged into The Cabinet, both being solely calculated for the topics and feelings of the day. A selection from the Pic-Nic papers, in two small volumes, was published in 1803. He next joined the writers for the London Review-a journal established by Cumberland the dramatist, on the novel principle of affixing the writer's name to his critique. The Review proved a complete failure. The system right, which had been originally offered to Mr Murof publishing names was an unwise innovation, de-ray for L.20, was purchased by that gentleman, in stroying equally the harmless curiosity of the reader, 1819, after the sixteenth edition, for L.131. The and the critical independence of the author; and articles written by James Smith consisted of imitaCumberland, besides, was too vain, too irritable and tions of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, Coleridge, poor, to secure a good list of contributors. Smith Crabbe, and a few travesties. Some of them are then became a constant writer in the Monthly inimitable, particularly the parodies on Cobbett and Mirror (wherein Henry Kirke White first attracted Crabbe, which were also among the most popular. the notice of what may be termed the literary world), Horace Smith contributed imitations of Walter and in this work appeared a series of poetical imita- Scott, Moore, Monk Lewis, Lord Byron, W. T. tions, entitled Horace in London, the joint production Fitzgerald (whose 'Loyal Effusion' is irresistibly of James and Horace Smith. These parodies were ludicrous for its extravagant adulation and fustian), subsequently collected and published in one volume Dr Johnson, &c. The amount of talent displayed in 1813, after the success of the Rejected Addresses by the two brothers was pretty equal; for none of had rendered the authors famous. Some of the James Smith's parodies are more felicitous than that pieces display a lively vein of town levity and of Scott by Horace. The popularity of the 'Rejected humour, but many of them also are very trifling Addresses' seems to have satisfied the ambition of and tedious. In one stanza, James Smith has given the elder poet. He afterwards confined himself to a true sketch of his own tastes and character:short anonymous pieces in the New Monthly Magazine and other periodicals, and to the contribution of some humorous sketches and anecdotes towards Mr Mathews's theatrical entertainments, the authorship of which was known only to a few. The Country Cousins, Trip to France, and Trip to America, mostly written by Smith, and brought out by Mathews at the English Opera House, not only Me toil and ease alternate share, With these, and London for my home, The Circus or the Forum! To London he seems to have been as strongly at tached as Dr Johnson himself. A confirmed metropolitan in all his tastes and habits, he would often quaintly observe, that London was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter; or quote Dr Johnson's dogma-"Sir, the man that is tired of London is tired of existence." At other times he would express his perfect concurrence with Dr Mosley's assertion, that in the country one is always maddened with the noise of nothing: or laughingly quote the Duke of Queensberry's rejoinder on being told one sultry day in September that London was exceedingly empty-"Yes, but it's fuller than the country." He would not, perhaps, have gone quite so far as his old friend Jekyll, who used to say, that "if compelled to live in the country, he would have the approach to his house paved like the streets of London, and hire a hackney-coach to drive up and down the street all day long;" but he would relate, with great glee, a story showing the general conviction of his dislike to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at a country house, when a gentleman, informing him that the family were all out, proposed a quiet stroll into the pleasure-grounds. "Stroll! why, don't you see my gouty shoe?" "Yes, but what then? you don't really mean to say that you have got the gout? I thought you had only put on that shoe to avoid being shown over the improvements." There is some good-humoured banter and exaggeration in this dislike of ruralities; and accord ingly we find that, as Johnson found his way to the remote Hebrides, Smith occasionally transported himself to Yorkshire and other places, the country seats of friends and noblemen. The 'Rejected Addresses' appeared in 1812, having engaged James and Horace Smith six weeks, and proving one of the luckiest hits in literature.' The directors of Drury Lane theatre had offered a premium for the best poetical address to be spoken on opening the new edifice; and a casual hint from Mr Ward, secre filled the theatre, and replenished the treasury, but Your lower limbs seemed far from stout The power that props the body's length, In you mounts upwards, and the strength Mr Strahan was so much gratified by the compli- We every-day bards may ‘anonymous' sign— The easy social bachelor-life of James Smith was tary to the theatre, suggested to the witty brothers perately, and at his club-dinner restricted himself to much impaired by hereditary gout. He lived temthe composition of a series of humorous addresses, his half-pint of sherry; but as a professed joker and professedly composed by the principal authors of the diner out,' he must often have been tempted to day. The work was ready by the opening of the Attacks of theatre, and its success was almost unexampled. gout began to assail him in middle life, and he graover-indulgence and irregular hours. Eighteen editions have been sold; and the copy-dually lost the use and the very form of his limbs, bearing all his sufferings, as his brother states, with 'an undeviating and unexampled patience.' One of * Memoir prefixed to Smith's Comic Miscellanies, 2 vols. 1841. the stanzas in his poem on Chigwell displays his philosophic composure at this period of his life: World, in thy ever busy mart Would I resume it? oh no! Four acts are done, the jest grows stale; He held it a humiliation to be ill, and never complained or alluded to his own sufferings. He died on the 24th December 1839, aged 65. Lady Blessington said, If James Smith had not been a witty man, he must have been a great man.' His extensive information and refined manners, joined to an inexhaustible fund of liveliness and humour, and a happy uniform temper, rendered him a fascinating companion. The writings of such a man give but a faint idea of the original; yet in his own walk of literature James Smith has few superiors. Anstey comes most directly into competition with him; yet it may be safely said that the Rejected Addresses' will live as long as the 'New Bath Guide.' The surviving partner of this literary duumvirate -the most constant and interesting, perhaps, since that of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more affectionate from the relationship of the parties-has distinguished himself by his novels and historical romances, and by his generosity to various literary men. Mr Horace Smith has also written some copies of verses, one of which, the Address to the Mummy, is a felicitous compound of fact, humour, and sentiment, forcibly and originally expressed. The Theatre. By the Rev. G. C. [Crabbe.] With pence twice five, they want but twopence more, Yet here, as elsewhere, chance can joy bestow, In Holywell Street, St Pancras, he was bred Pat Jennings in the upper gallery sat; The Baby's Debut.-By W. W. [Wordsworth.] [Spoken in the character of Nancy Lake, a girl eight years of age, who is drawn upon the stage in a child's chaise by Samuel Hughes, her uncle's porter.] My brother Jack was nine in May, Jack's in the pouts, and this it is, And bang, with might and main, This made him cry with rage and spite; If he's to melt, all scalding hot, I saw them go: one horse was blind; The chaise in which poor brother Bill Used to be drawn to Pentonville, Stood in the lumber room: I wiped the dust from off the top, My uncle's porter, Samuel Hughes, So what does he, but takes and drags And leaves me where I am. My father's walls are made of brick, As these; and, goodness me! As these that now I see. What a large floor! 'tis like a town! The carpet, when they lay it down, Won't hide it, I'll be bound: And there's a row of lamps; my eye! How they do blaze! I wonder why They keep them on the ground. At first I caught hold of the wing, And kept away; but Mr Thing Umbob, the prompter man, Gave with his hand my chaise a shove, And said, 'Go on, my pretty love; Speak to 'em, little Ñan. You've only got to curtsey, whisper, hold your chin up, laugh and lisp, And then you're sure to take: But while I'm speaking, where's papa? And now, good gentlefolks, I go I curtsey, like a pretty miss, And if you'll blow to me a kiss, I'll blow a kiss to you. [Blows kiss, and exit. A Tale of Drury Lane.-By W. S. [Scott.] As chaos which, by heavenly doom, When light first flashed upon her eyes: For shouts were heard mid fire and smoke, 'The playhouse is in flames.' And lo! where Catherine Street extends, A fiery tail its lustre lends To every window-pane : Blushes each spout in Martlet Court, Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, The Tennis Court, so fair and tall, Nor these alone, but far and wide To those who on the hills around Beheld the flames from Drury's mound, As from a lofty altar rise; It seemed that nations did conspire, To offer to the god of fire Some vast stupendous sacrifice! The summoned firemen woke at call, And hied them to their stations all. Starting from short and broken snoose, Each sought his ponderous hobnailed shoes; But first his worsted hosen plied, Plush breeches next in crimson dyed, His nether bulk embraced; Then jacket thick of red or blue, Whose massy shoulder gave to view The badge of each respective crew, In tin or copper traced. The engines thundered through the street, E'en Higginbottom now was posed, For fear the roof should fall. An awful pause succeeds the stroke, Concealed them from the astonished crowd. 'Twas Joseph Muggins, name revered, And poured the hissing tide: He tottered, sunk, and died! Served but to share his grave! |