Whizz'd round in a waltz, with a neck red as copper,
And whisper'd, "I hope that it is not improper."
Yet still, as old Time kept expanding his wing,
He never brought forward the Man with the Ring.

Past thirty-turned out of Terpsichore's stud,

"Lamed, spavin'd, and wind-gall'd, yet still with some blood,"
Now and then overhearing the men cry-" Poor Sabby,"
And the girls-"Eight and thirty-I know it-Old Tabby,"
Condemn'd, while the whirl of La Poulle made me giddy,
To pin up the train of the tittering Lyddy,
And set her a-going on that very floor

That often had echo'd my footsteps before,

I gave o'er the chase; let the fount of Love freeze up;
And woo'd the dumb heroes of Pilpay and Æsop
Kept a pug in a collar, a dormouse, a kitten,

A squirrel, a Poodle more biting than bitten,
A parrot who swung in eternal see-saw,

Two murmuring doves, and a screaming Macaw :-
In blue book-societies loitered to chat

With the Reverend this, and the Reverend that:
Join'd the tribe who, forbidden by hard-hearted men
To dandle an innocent-dandle a pen,

Pert Poets with mouths by the Quarterly curb hurt,
Lank wives who have never called in Dr. Herbert:
Prim maids, like myself, with an eye that detects
All the thin subdivisions in Evans's Sects,
And knows to a hair every cross in the breed,
From the Jumpers in Wales to the lunatic Swede.
Then came the thick shoes, on two feet void of graces :
Decided objection to all public places:

Yet running, by hundreds, to Belzoni's cavern,

The Mansion-house Hall, and the New London Tavern:

The Bible in Sanscrit, for Copts and Lascars:

Arks floating off Wapping for soul-founder'd tars:
With all the devices that keep in subjection
Our sex's two enemies-Time and Reflection.
Yet still even these were unable to bring
Id desideratum-the Man with the Ring.

Thus she whom the poet of Twickenham paints,
Bade Paraclete's echoes repeat her complaints,
Lay wrapt, in her cell, in ecstatical heavings,
And gave to Saint Peter Saint Abelard's leavings.

Thus tied to the stake in Sir Balaam's dull domus,
As cold and austere as my namesake in Comus,
Condemn'd, when my sister should wed, to rehearse,
Hereafter, for Lydia, the part of the nurse,
Performing what many a sister has done,
The work of three maids for the wages of one,
Sore sick of the world, from the Old I withdrew,
And gladly set sail with Papa for the New;

Of which more hereafter.-Dear Fanny, adieu!

S. B.

HINTS TO YOUNG AUTHORS.

"Ir may do," said a publisher at the west end to a young Scriblerus, who had submitted to him his MS. for perusal, “provided the beginning were a little more sparkling: but many ladies calling at my shop, take up a publication, and if, after turning over a page or two, they do not meet any striking passage, throw it down, and the work is forgotten."-After hearing this monition from Mr. I have been always careful to give a sparkling commencement to my productions, generally introducing them with a flourish of trumpets. In these emulous times, when the press is teeming with novelties almost every hour, a writer's greatest difficulty is in finding persons with leisure to read his productions: when this point is gained, like an audience from men in office, the chief obstacle in literature is surmounted; and it is with a view of assisting beginners in this important branch of the profession that I propose submitting to them a few hints on the most successful mode of commencing their works, so as to attract public attention. I am well aware what an ungrateful task I undertake, for no class is more averse from receiving instruction; but when I inform them that I have become rich and prosperous, chiefly from a dexterous management of the first six or seven lines of my performances, they will, I suspect, listen with more lively interest to the results of my experience.

Between men and books there is this in common, that an affection for them may grow out of mere length of intercourse: thus one often feels a reluctance in parting with a voluminous author, and probably from no other cause than the length of his work, and the time we had been yoked together. On this principle I apprehend is partly founded our admiration of the old writers; whom we love not so much for the beauties of their style, the scenes of tenderness and passion and nature they exhibit, as their prolixity. This may appear a little paradoxical, but it is certain that many of our attachments, both personal and literary, have no better foundation, and derive all their interest from the circumstances under which they are formed. A man shut in a dungeon, with no other resource than the reveries of Jacob Behmen, or Baker's Chronicle, for example, might be brought to entertain very extravagant opinions of their merits, and ascribe to them excellencies which were solely due to the peculiarities of his situation. He would naturally value them in proportion as they had relieved the tædium of confinement: the numberless associations with which the repeated perusal of them had been accompanied, would convert every page into a volume, to which he could never revert without reviving all the recollections of his solitude. To him they would be a library of thought and feeling, with which his intellectual existence would be associated; but it is obvious that the charm would not be in the works, but in his mind. He might, however, easily mistake the cause of his admiration, and ascribe the interest he felt to fancied beauties in the style and thought of the writers, while the real source of the enchantment would be in

his situation, and the feelings and ideas with which they had accidentally become connected.

A good deal of philosophical criticism depends on this principle, but I only advert to it to show how even dull books may become interesting merely from reading;-and hence arises the importance of our subject, and the deep interest authors have in commencing their works, so as to procure them a perusal. To this end nothing will more effectually contribute than a dashing, spirited, or what Mr. calls a sparkling commencement. If you begin with a preamble, patience is exhausted, suspicion excited-it does not answer the question,-who or what are you? But if you start with an anecdote, or exclamation, or quotation, the ice is broken, attention arrested, the peculiarities of your style and character manifested, and you are at once bodied forth to the imagination as an individual with whom we are sufficiently familiar to begin conversation. Though you cannot in writing, as in speaking, hold the reader by the button-hole, you may assault his understanding by a literary coup de main. That your enterprise may succeed, be careful that the first sentences are of such a rare and uncommon kind that they cannot by any possibility have entered any one's mind but your own. If you are anticipated, you will be assuredly thrown aside at the first glance as common-place; but if you astonish with some novelty, though foreign to the subject, you will be considered a man of genius, and your performance perused though it be ever so dull. To illustrate this precept more particularly, suppose you wish to put forth a sermon or ethical discourse. It is evident that many persons will venture on such topics with the same feelings of chill and horror with which they would traverse a Gothic ruin at midnight; but suppose you lead them on with a line from Butler, or observation from Montaigne, or an humorous sally from Falstaff, they will follow you to the end, were it from mere curiosity, to see how subjects, so oddly begun, will terminate. If you wish to introduce a metaphysical or astronomical disquisition, let your beginning be, “As the clown said to the philosopher viewing the heavens through a telescope." If an essay on the belles lettres: "Pope beautifully expresses it," or " There is an observation in that voluminous writer Lope de Vega," is very appropriate. Should your theme be a piece of humour: "Newton when walking in his garden," or Bacon profoundly remarks," or "The sagacious Hume observes," or "There is an eloquent passage in Jeremy Taylor" or "an ingenious remark in Barrow"-are all excellent, and sanctioned by high authority. I have already remarked on the beauty of an exclamation; there is no better facing to an article, especially a review of twenty volumes of divinity: thus, "Twenty volumes! says the reader."-Such a fillip I have known carry one briskly through fifty or sixty pages of very elaborate criticism. Indeed the whole secret consists in exciting surprise, so as to arrest the attention: conceal, therefore, your beginning as carefully as a dramatist conceals the denouement of his plot. Mind, however, it is not surprise alone, but an agreeable surprise, which is essential; if you drop on your reader with something extremely mal à propos, of course the

effect will be the reverse. In all respects, consider the commencement in the nature of a first impression, and consequently prepare it with the same care and circumspection that you prepare to meet your mistress for the first time. In this case the public is the object of your suit; and, in the opinion of an old admirer, she is far more capricious in her attachments than any idol to whom you can pay your addresses.

As this branch of authorship is the most perilous, so it is the most difficult. When a writer sits down to his task, after revolving his ideas, he generally discovers several ways by which he may enter on his subject. He is like a person at the crossing of different roads leading to the same place, each route possessing peculiar advantages for the development of his thoughts. The more he meditates, the greater is the number of outlets he discovers, till at length he is bewildered by the diversity. Thus he is exposed to two evils, one of meditating too much, and the other of meditating too little; and it is not easy to determine the greater. In the former case, his ideas multiply to such an extent, he sees his undertaking in so many different lights, that he is perplexed in which point of view it will appear to most advantage; in the latter he is in danger of commencing at the wrong end, of pursuing his subject a considerable way, and then discovering that the path he has taken excludes many beauties which another route will embrace. No useful advice can be given to him on this part of his functions. He must be left to his own judgment and discretion, qualities as easily attained by faith and prayer as written instructions. Lest, however, I be deemed quite impotent on this part of the subject, I shall say, as a general rule, that he ought not to think too much, nor too little, but just enough! .

Readers are not aware of the toil we undergo in their service; of the masses of thought and feeling wasted in providing a few pages for their amusement: how many bright ideas, touching sentiments, and brilliant images, are rejected by the fastidiousness of the author! When I see a neat essay, the quintessence probably of volumes of thought, I cannot help comparing the writer to the sculptor, who cuts a small statue from an huge block of marble: or his labours may be likened to those of the assayist, when the pure metal bears only a small proportion to the ore from which it is extracted. He is the intellectual machine, the mental laboratory of society, whose office saves the mass of mankind the trouble of thinking. He takes up the different questions which agitate the world in the gross state, clears them of impurities, disperses the shadows by which they are obscured, and conducts the reader in a clear and direct path to the few ultimate truths into which all disputes are resolvable.

There are those, no doubt, who act differently,-writers who darken instead of enlightening the path of knowledge,—who, instead of clearing the avenues of truth, choke them up with the rubbish of their own thoughts; but these are bunglers in the profession, made by "Nature's journeymen." There are others too, a species of literary gossips, full of conceit and affectation, who use their pens with as little ceremony as their tongues,-scribes, who no sooner

sit down than they begin to blot their paper-the first thought occurring is recorded-no previous reconnoissance of their subjectthey are never a step in advance, and the unfortunate reader, after being dragged a long and weary way through every turning and winding of their thoughts, finds at length he is pursuing an ignis fatuus, or perhaps in the end obtains some faint glimpse of what he ought to have seen clearly at the beginning. Such talking-writers serve up the froth with the liquor; when we want only the prime meat, they give us the whole carcase. Were I their employer, I

should deduct them for waste and offal.

The process by which the mind arrives at truth, in morals and criticism, is the same as in the exact sciences. In both, the investigation proceeds from truths that are obvious and admitted, to others more remote, till, by a kind of mental ladder, we reach the ultimate proposition to be demonstrated. Neither is there any difference in the certainty of the results; a question of taste or feeling being as susceptible of demonstration as a mathematical theorem. The former, indeed, appears less certain, because the elements on which it depends are less palpable to the understanding. In the demonstration of a problem in geometry, for example, our footing is sure, and we see the ground on which we rest; the language employed is precise, and has always some real prototype. But in questions in the abstract sciences, so many quantities enter into the solution, some evanescent, others which language only vaguely expresses, that the writer is not always sure he understands himself, much less is he capable of communicating his ideas to others; the subtlety of his subject escapes through the imperfection of his instruments. But though they thus differ, it is not in their certainty, but our means of investigation. There can be no doubt that the foundation of moral distinctions and of our judgment in matters of taste, depends as much on the immutable relations of nature as the properties of a triangle; and the only reason why mankind are not so unanimous in one case as the other, arises from the imperfection of language, and our consequent inability to communicate our ideas with equal precision.

But these are too grave matters for us, and, besides, it is time to conclude. Some, indeed, may think we are here giving a practical illustration of our own precepts, and showing how, by commencing with a sparkling anecdote, the reader may be drawn into a dull metaphysical disquisition. Others may think, under the pretext of giving hints to young authors, we have really been exposing the tricks of old ones. The latter opinion, however, we disclaim; for though we know that every calling has its artifices for catching the unwary, we have too much of the esprit de corps to expose those of

our own.

W.