Now pride hath banish'd all, Unto our land's reproach, The coach allows but two; Good hospitality Was cherish'd then of many; Now poor men starve and die, And are not help'd by any : For charity waxeth cold, And love is found in few ; This was not in time of old, When this old cap was new. 5. Wherever you travell'd then, You might meet on the way Brave knights and gentlemen, Clad in their country grey, That courteous would appear, And kindly welcome you; No puritans then were, When this old cap was new. 6. Our ladies, in those days, In civil habit went; 7. At Christmas, in each hall, And meat for great and small : The poor from the gates were not chidden, 8. Black jacks to every man Were fill'd with wine and beer, In those days did appear: 8. Sly jokes against the Bible, 9. Buonaparte had delight To hear these puppets fine, He had not met with us-** When this Old Book was new. 10. When Wellington arose, Their jaw they did not slack, But magnified his foes, And said he'd ne'er come back. His victories they mourn'd, Thank God they were not few! Such manhood Whigs adorn'd,— When this Old Book was new. 11. But far o'er Faction's smoke His British heart of oak Roll'd back the tide of war. When their darling was squabash'd At glorious Waterloo, Old teeth full sore they gnash'd, 9. We took no such delight In cups of silver fine, None under the degree of a knight In plate drunk beer or wine: Now each mechanical man Hath a cupboard of plate for a shew, Which was a rare thing then, When this old cap was new. Then bribery was unborn, At that time hardly knew ; 11. No captain then carous'd, Nor spent poor soldiers' pay, When this old cap was new. Which made them forward still Their fortunes were the best: Our English then, in fight, Did foreign foes subdue; And forced them all to flight, When this old cap was new. • Fact!!-Teste THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. First Port, that potation, preferr'd by our nation 'Tis the best standing liquor, for layman or vicar, "Tis strong and substantial, believe me, no man shall Good Port from my dining-room send; In your soup after cheese-every way-it will please, But most tête-a-tête with a friend. 3. Fair Sherry, Port's sister, for years they dismiss'd her To the kitchen to flavour the jellies There long she was banish'd, and well nigh had vanish'd Till his Majesty fixt, he thought Sherry when sixty So I think it but proper, to fill a tip-topper Of Sherry to drink to the King. 13. God save our gracious King, Of that which is their due: 4. Though your delicate Claret by no means goes far, it 'Tis a nice provocation, to wise conversation, One may drink a whole ocean, nor e'er feel commotion, 5. But though Claret is pleasant, to taste for the present, So to keep it all clever, and comfort your liver, When 't has sail'd to the Indies, a cure for all wind 'tis, And cholic 'twill put to the rout; All doctors declare, a good glass of Madeira, The best of all things for the gout. 6. Then Champagne! dear Champagne! ah! how gladly I drain a To the eye of my charmer, to make my love warmer, If cool that love ever could be, I could toast her for ever-But never, oh! never, So if e'er when I'm tipsy, it slips to my lips, I LORD BYRON'S THREE NEW TRAGEDIES. UPON the whole, we imagine this will be reckoned rather a heavy volume; and certainly it could not sell the better for coming out on the same day with the Pirate. Mr Murray and Mr Constable should understand each other a little better, and each would serve his own interest, by not being too anxious to interfere with the inte rest of his rival. It is bad policy to bring out the Edinburgh-the dull, stupid, superannuated, havering Edinburgh-and the Quarterly-the cold, well-informed, heartless, witless, prosing, pedantic Quarterly-both in the same week. And although we should be very sorry to compare the two first writers of their time with such folks as the "clever old body" and the "sour little gentleman," we cannot help saying, that Lord Byron and the Author of Waverley might quite as well choose different months for favouring the public with their visits—which are rather more pleasant, to be sure, but quite as regular and as expensive as if they were two tax-gatherers. It would be highly ridiculous to enter, at this time of day, into any thing like a formal review, here, of Lord Byron's new volume. We have not happened to meet with any two individuals who expressed two different opinions about it and its contents. There is a great deal of power in Sardanapalus: [the Sardanapălus of David Lyndsay is weighed in the balance, and found wanting, when compared with it] but as a play, it is an utter failure; and, in God's name, why call a thing a tragedy, unless it be meant to be a play? What would people say to a new song of Tom Moore's, prefaced with an earnest injunction on man, woman, and child, never to think of singing it? A tragedy, not meant to be acted, seems to us to be just about as reasonable an affair as a song not meant to be sung. But even as a poem, Sardanapalus is not quite worthy of its author. Let any one just think, for a moment, of the magnificent story of Sardanapalus, and then imagine what a thing Lord By Sardanapalus, a Tragedy; The Two Foscari, a Tragedy; and Cain, a Mystery. By Lord Byron. 8vo. London, Murray, 1822. ron might have made of it, had he chosen the fiery narrative-pace of Lara, or the Giaour-instead of this lumbering, and lax, and highly undramatic blank-verse dialogue.-The Foscari is totally inferior to the Sardanapalus. It is a ridiculous caricature of some historical situations, in themselves beautiful and interesting. The true trage dy of the Foscari is to be read in the notes at the end of Lord Byron's tragedy bearing that name; and the public is much obliged to him, and so is M. Simonde de Sismondi, for these very pretty extracts. CAIN contains, perhaps, five or six passages of as fine poetry as Lord Byron ever wrote or will write; but, taken altogether, it is a wicked and blasphemous performance, destitute of any merit sufficient to overshadow essential defects of the most abominable nature. The three plays, bound up together, we repeat, constitute a dullish volume-perhaps one of the heaviest that has appeared in the poetical world since the days of "Ricciarda, Tragedia." Now, we have no right to abuse Lord Byron, or any other man, for publishing a dullish volume in octavo, price fifteen shillings boards: but we have a right to speak a little of our mind to him in regard to certain prose notes, the mean malignity and rancour of which were probably intended to set off, in some measure, the leaden volume of blank verse in which they make their incongruous and absurd appearance. What we have to say, however, shall be at least said very shortly and we shall just confine ourselves to two heads. And first in relation to LADY MORGAN. Lord Byron calls her Italy "an excellent and fearless work." This is dishonest; nobody can be taken in by it. Lady Morgan's Italy is not an English work at all-it is a piece of flimsy Irish slip-slop, altogether unworthy of occupying for half an hour the attention of any man of the smallest pretensions to understanding. WE, who now write, have, it so happens, spent about three times as many years in Italy as Lady Morgan and Lord Byron taken together have yet done; and we now solemnly declare, that if the Ettrick Shepherd, after driving a score of fat ewes to Durham, were to announce "ENGLAND, BY JAMES HOGG," he could not produce any thing more exquisitely worthy of all human contempt, than that VOL. XI. "ITALY, BY LADY MORGAN," which Lord Byron has the impudence to puff. Lord Byron knows that we are honest, and speak the truth, when we say all this; and, indeed, there is but one human creature in the world who will think differently. Lord Byron is a very excellent hand at a joke; but let him take care; he may perhaps go a little too far some day. Indeed, he has done so already. Does he wish to add much to the list of those escapades of his, which he is destined to repent in sorrow and bitterness till the day of his death? The puff direct in honour of Miladi, is followed by a little side puff, in the shape of an acknowledgment of her ladyship's having called Venice" the Ocean-Rome," without communica tion with his lordship, who also, about the same time, chose to call Venice by the same appropriate title. If Lord Byron and Lady Morgan will have the goodness to turn over a few pages of Bembo, or any other member of the great Venetian Corpus Historicum, we venture to lay a rump and dozen they will fall in with the same phrase, rather more frequently than they could wish; but they need not look so far. They will find the thing in Gibbon at least adozen times! The idea occurs also in Schiller's Ghost-seer-in Mrs Radcliffe-in Rose's Letters-in Reichardt's "Pocket Companion through Italy" and in various other works which we could mention, if it were worth while to be at all particular about a thing perfectly notorious, and at the same time perfectly unimportant. We despise the ninnies who chatter about Lord Byron and plagiarism in the same breath; but Lord Byron must be kind enough to keep his quizzing humour in a more decent measure of control. Our second remark is called forth by a very venomous attack on Mr Southey, which appears in one of the notes to the Tragedy of the Foscari. So far as we can understand the true state of the case, it is as follows. Mr Southey, in his Vision of Judgment, (which nobody has read) chose to clap my Lord Byron into the " Satanic School of Poetry." This was ridicu lous-firstly, because Mr Southey is no satyrist, and should keep his fingers from edge tools of all sorts; and secondly and chiefly, because Mr Southey is a brother poet of Lord Byron's, and should have had nothing to do with criticising his poetical performances. M |