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PRINTED FOR JOSEPH APPLEYARD, CATHERINE-STREET, STRAND,

AND SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS.

1822,

CB

633696

AP4

139

DIYMY OMIA

vil-2

Thiselton, Printer, Goodge Street, London.

2-1-54

THE INDICATOR.

There is a bird in the interior of Africa, whose habits would rather seem to belong to the interior of Fairy-land: but they have been well authenticated. It indicates to honey hunters where the nests of wild bees are to be found It calls them with a cheerful cry, which they answer; and on finding itself recognised, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to a little distance, where he observes all that passes; and the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care to leave him his portion of the food. This is the CUCULUS INDICATOR of Linnæus, otherwise called the Moroc, Bee Cuckoo, or Honey Bird.

There he arriving round about doth flie,

And takes survey with busie, curious eye:
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.-SPENCER.

No. I-WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13th, 1819.

DIFFICULTY OF FINDING A NAME FOR A WORK OF THIS KIND.

NEVER did gossips, when assembled to determine the name of a new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, experience half the difficulty which an author finds in settling the title for a periodical work. There is generally some paramount uncle, or prodigious third cousin, who is silently understood to have the chief claims, and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the brain have no godfather ready at hand: and then their single appellation is bound to comprise as many public interests as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest: it is to be expressive: it is to be new; it is to be striking it is to have something in it equally intelligible to a man of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagination :-in one word, it is to be impossible. How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy nonentity, we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realize ;· -a good deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do any thing for a book but give it a title; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chair-shaking merriment which he might have joined in himself, fell to turning a hopeless thing into a jest. It was like that exquisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare:

"

One rubbed his elbow, thus; and fleered, and swore
A better speech was never spoke before:

Another, with his finger and his thumb,

Cried "Via! We will do't, come what will come!"
The third he capered, and cried "All goes well!"
The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell.
With that they all did tumble on the ground,
With such a zealous laughter, so profound,
That in this spleen ridiculous, appears,
To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears.

4th Edition.

Õ་་

LOVE'S LABOUR LOST.

Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as the Adviser, or Helps for Composing;-the Cheap Reflector, or Every Man His Own Looking-Glass ;-the Retailer, or Every Man His Own Other Man's Wit;-Nonsense, To be Continued. Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion;-Chaos, or the Agreeable Miscellany;-the Fugitive Guide; the Foot Soldier, or Flowers of Wit ;-Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor; the Polite Repository of Abuse ;-Blood, being a Collection of Light Essays. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the Pleasing Ancestor; the Silent Remarker; the Tart; the Leg of Beef by a Layman; the Ingenious Hatband; the Boots of Bliss; the Occasional Diner; the Tooth-ache; Recollections of a Very Unpleasant Nature; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of Snuffers; Thoughts on a Barouche-Box; Thoughts on a Hill of Considerable Eminence; Meditations on a Pleasing Idea; Materials for Drinking; the Knocker, No. 1;-the Hippopotamus entered at Stationers' Hall; the Piano-forte of Paulus Æmilius; the Seven Sleepers at Cards; the Arabian Nights on Horseback:—with an infinite number of other mortal murders of common sense, which rose to" push us from our stools," and which none but the wise or goodnatured would ever think of laughing at.

A MISTAKE OF MR. THOMAS PAINE'S UPON LEARNING; AND A WORD OR TWO ON TRANSLATION.

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We speak of Mr. Paine as a deceased author, whom it is a vulgar error to under-rate. His great natural powers have forced themselves into eminence through every species of obstacle. Well aware of them himself, seeing in what manner they were often denied, and what a convention there was among worldly and common-place men, possessed of a little scholarship, to cry down every thing but themselves, he ran to an extreme natural enough to such a mind, and proclaimed at once that all which is commonly understood by the word Learning was useless. He saw that others mistook the letter' for the spirit; and yet in objecting to this mistake, he fell into' one of the very same nature, and asserted that learning was no longer wanted, because all the "useful books" in the ancient languages had been translated. By useful books, he means such works as Euclid's Elements and here again he fell into an error, from which the true spirit of learning might have saved him he confounded utility with mere science. He forgot that for one instance in which mere science is necessary to our happiness, there are a hundred in which we have more to do with our passions and tempers, with our affections, our perceptions, with our ability or inability to extract pleasure from the innumerable things in the intellectual and external world. Utility is only utility in as much as it conduces somehow or other to advantage and pleasure. Every thing that is truly pleasurable or beautiful is as useful as the most scientific thing upon earth. Jane, when she

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