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John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), another great Irish orator, was born at Newmarket in County Cork, and was far from studious at Trinity College, Dublin. From the Middle Temple in London he was called to the Irish Bar in 1775; and his wit and vehement eloquence soon brought him eminence and a large practice. K.C. and a member of the Irish Parliament, he was a strong supporter of Grattan, but was less successful in the House than with the juries, and his sarcastic speeches brought on him no less than five duels. A Protestant himself, he worked hard for the Catholic cause. Both before and after the Irish rebellion of 1798 he was powerful in his defence of those tried for sedition or treason, and his speeches were many of them masterly. He steadily opposed the Union. After Pitt's death and after the accession of the Whigs, Curran was Master of the Rolls in Ireland (1806-14). Thurlow's one famous speech was not more popular or effective than one sentence of Curran's in his speech in defence of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, prosecuted by the Government for a seditious libel in 1792. The libel contained this declaration: 'In four words lies all our poweruniversal emancipation and representative legislature.' 'I speak,' said Curran, 'in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation.' This memorable utterance may have been suggested by the passage on slavery in Cowper's Task (quoted above at page 607), in which occur the lines:

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall. But oddly enough British writers seem never to remember that this virtue is not peculiar to British soil. Thus the eminent Scottish jurist, Lord Fountainhall, who was in 1665-66 studying law in Paris, records in his Diary the impression made on him by the fact that this maxim as to a slave was true of France: 'Be the lawes of France, let him be a Turk, slave to a Venitien or

Spaniard, no sooner sets he his foote on French ground but ipso facto he is frie.'

William Cobbett (1762-1835), one of the most skilful and effective writers of strong, racy English, was born at Farnham in Surrey, and brought up as a ploughman. In 1783 he came to London and enlisted; for six years (1785-91) he served as sergeant-major in New Brunswick. He entered on his literary career in Philadelphia as a political pamphleteer under the name of Peter Porcupine, and returning to England in 1800, continued to write as a decided loyalist and HighChurchman. But having, as is supposed, received some slight from Pitt, he attacked the Ministry with extraordinary bitterness in his Weekly Political

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Register. Tory first, it altered its politics in 1804, till at last it became the most fierce and determined opponent of the Government, and the most uncompromising champion of Radicalism.' A great lover of the country, Cobbett settled at Botley in Hampshire, where he planted, farmed, and went in for manly sports; a true soldiers' friend, he got two years in Newgate (1810-12), with a fine of 1000, for his strictures on the flogging of militiamen by German mercenaries. In 1817 money muddles and dread of a second imprisonment drove him once more across the Atlantic. He farmed in Long Island, writing all the while for the Register, till in 1819 he ventured back again, and came bringing Tom Paine's bones. Botley had to be sold, but he started a seed-farm at Kensington; and bent now on entering Parliament, stood for Coventry (1821) and Preston (1826). Both times he failed; but his ill-advised trial for sedition (1831) was followed next year by

his return for Oldham to the first Reformed Parliament. His career there was signalised chiefly by a crack-brained attack on Peel; the late hours were too much for him, and three years later he died at Normanby farm near Guildford, his last home.

Cobbett's inconsistency as a political writer was so broad and undisguised as to become proverbial. He had made the whole round of politics, from ultra-Toryism to ultra-Radicalism, and had praised and abused nearly every public man and measure for thirty years. He loathed Whigs and 'mock gentlefolks,' 'loan-jobbers, stock-jobbers, Jews, and taxeaters of all kinds;' nor did he speak gently of 'great captains,' admirals, or parsons-'deans, I believe, or prebends (sic), or something of that sort.' He was always confident and boastful, often coarse and virulent; and one becomes tired of having his pet prejudices cited as maxims of universal acceptance, of hearing London always referred to as 'the Wen,' and of seeing the poverty of the labourers attributed simply to the existence of paper money. Colonies such as New Brunswick are a mere source of aimless expense, wildernesses useless save as places to which to send barrack-masters, chaplains, and commissioners at the public expense. So far from the population of England having increased during the last twenty years, as the census made out, it was evident, he said, to any rational mind, from deserted villages and empty country churches, 'that in the time of the Plantagenets England was out of all comparison more populous than it is now.' He truly sympathised with the poor, and denounced the Reformation for having made over the monastic provision for them to greedy nobles. He had a keen eye, a powerful intellect, and a sharp and frank tongue.

And he loved to write of the

But

meadows and green lanes of England, rejoiced in noble trees (not nasty firs') and beautiful landscapes, pined in America for the English singing birds, and keenly felt the poetry of nature. The idiomatic strength, copiousness, and purity of his English style are patent, and he is often extraordinarily happy in his natural descriptions. his perversity in literary matters proceeded at least as much from obtuseness as from love of paradox. 'It has become of late years the fashion to extol the virtues of potatoes as it has been to admire the writings of Milton and Shakespeare.' He wonders how Paradise Lost could have been tolerated by a people conversant with astronomy, navigation, and chemistry. And when in his old age he did set himself to try and read Shakespeare, he found some things to please him, but much more he did not like at all; and concludes, 'in short, I despised the book, and wondered how any one could like it.' Jeremy Bentham said of him: 'He is a man filled with odium humani generis; his malevolence and lying are beyond anything.' The philosopher (also a Radical) did not make sufficient allowance for Cobbett, who acted on

momentary impulse, and never calculated consequences to himself or others. No man in England was better known than Cobbett, down to the minutest circumstance in his character, habits, and opinions. He wrote freely of himself as he did of his fellows; and in all his writings there was overflowing natural freshness, liveliness, and vigour. He had the truly great writer's power of making every one who read him feel and understand completely what he himself felt and described.

Cobbett's unsurpassed Rural Rides (new edition, with notes by Pitt Cobbett, 1885) were a reprint (1830) from the Register, and followed or were followed by the excellent and entertaining English Grammar (1818), the savage History of the Refor mation in England and Ireland (1824-27), the Woodlands (1825), the shrewd, homely Advice to Young Men (1830), A Legacy to Parsons, Cobbett's Tour in Scotland, A History of George IV., and some thirty other works; and he was the originator of the publications ultimately known as Hansard's Debates (1803; passed to Hansard in 1812) and Howell's State Trials (1809).

The first extract is from the introduction to the Reformation, the following from the Rural Rides and other reminiscences.

A Valediction.

Here I had signed my name, and was about to put the date. It was on its way from my mind to my hand, when I stopped my hand all at once and exclaimed: 'Good God! the ninth of July! the anniversary of my sentence of two years' imprisonment in a felon's gaol, with a fine of a thousand pounds to the King, and, at the end of the two years, with seven years' bail, myself in three thousand pounds and two sureties in a thousand pounds each; and all this monstrous punishment for having expressed my indignation at Englishmen having been flogged, in the heart of England, under a guard of German troops! Good God!' exclaimed I again. What am I, on the anniversary of that day, which called forth the exultation of the Hampshire parsons, who (though I had never committed any offence, in private life, against any one of them) crowed out aloud, in the fulness of their joy, "Ha! he's gone for ever! He will never trouble us any more!" and who, in a spirit truly characteristic of their corps, actually had, as a standing toast, “Disgrace to the Memory of Cobbett."-What!' exclaimed I again, and am I, on the anniversary of that very day, putting the finishing hand; yea, sending from under my fingers to the press, the last, the very last words, the completing words, the closing point, of a work which does the Job for them and for all their tribe; of the former part of which work I, myself, have sold forty thousand copies, containing six hundred and forty thousand Numbers; and which work is now sold in English, in two Stereotyped Editions in the United States of America; which work has been published at Madrid and at New York in Spanish, at Paris, Geneva, and Alost in French, at Cologne in German, and at Rome in Italian; and all this took place just about sixteen years after these Hamp shire parsons had taken for a standing toast: "Disgrace to the Memory of Cobbett "!' And, then, feeling health and vigour in every vein and in every nerve; seeing,

lying before me, manuscript (equal to twenty pages of print) written by me this very day; knowing the effects which, in the end, that manuscript must have on these parsons, and the great good that it must do to the nation; reflecting, feeling, seeing, knowing, thus it is that I, in justice to our pious, sincere, brave, and wise forefathers, and in compassion to my suffering country. men, and to the children of us all, send this little volume forth to the world.

A Hampshire Hanger.

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At Bower I got instructions to go to Hawkley, but accompanied with most earnest advice not to go that way, for that it was impossible to get along. The roads were represented as so bad, the floods so much out, the hills and bogs so dangerous, that really I began to doubt; and if I had not been brought up amongst the clays of the Holt Forest and the bogs of the neighbouring heaths, I should certainly have turned off to my right, to go over Hindhead, great as was my objection to going that way. Well, then,' said my friend at Bower, if you will go that way, by G-, you must go down "Hawkley Hanger;" of which he then gave me such a description ! But even this I found to fall short of the reality. I inquired simply whether people were in the habit of going down it; and the answer being in the affirmative, on I went through green lanes and bridle-ways till I came to the turnpike road from Petersfield to Winchester, which I crossed, going into a narrow and almost untrodden green lane, on the side of which I found a cottage. Upon my asking the way to Hawkley, the woman at the cottage said, 'Right up the lane, sir: you'll come to a hanger presently: you must take care, sir: you can't ride down: will your horses go alone?'

On we trotted up this pretty green lane; and, indeed, we had been coming gently and generally uphill for a good while. The lane was between highish banks and pretty high stuff growing on the banks, so that we could see no distance from us, and could receive not the smallest hint of what was so near at hand. The lane had a little turn towards the end; so that out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger! And never in all my life was I so surprised and so delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land and not water. I looked at my servant, to see what effect this unexpected sight had upon him. His surprise was as great as mine, though he had been bred amongst the North Hampshire hills. Those who had so strenuously dwelt on the dirt and dangers of this route had said not a word about beauties, the matchless beauties of the scenery. These hangers are woods on the sides of very steep hills. The trees and underwood hang, in some sort, to the ground, instead of standing on it. Hence these places are called Hangers. From the summit of that which I had now to descend, I looked down upon the villages of Hawkley, Greatham, Selborne and some others.

From the south-east, round, southward, to the northwest, the main valley has cross-valleys running out of it, the hills on the sides of which are very steep, and, in many parts, covered with wood. The hills that form these cross-valleys run out into the main valley, like piers into the sea. Two of these promontories, of great height,

are on the west side of the main valley, and were the first objects that struck my sight when I came to the edge of the hanger, which was on the south. The ends of these promontories are nearly perpendicular, and their tops so high in the air that you cannot look at the village below without something like a feeling of apprehension. The leaves are all off, the hop-poles are in stack, the fields have little verdure; but, while the spot is beautiful beyond description even now, I must leave to imagination to suppose what it is when the trees and hangers and hedges are in leaf, the corn waving, the meadows bright, and the hops upon the poles !

From the south-west, round, eastward, to the north, lie the heaths, of which Woolmer Forest makes a part, and these go gradually rising up to Hindhead, the crown of which is to the north-west, leaving the rest of the circle (the part from north to north-west) to be occupied by a continuation of the valley towards Headley, Binstead, Frensham and the Holt Forest. So that even the contrast in the view from the top of the hanger is as great as can possibly be imagined. Men, however, are not to have such beautiful views as this without some trouble. We had had the view; but we had to go down the hanger. We had, indeed, some roads to get along as well as we could afterwards; but we had to get down the hanger first. The horses took the lead, and crept partly down upon their feet and partly upon their hocks. It was extremely slippery too; for the soil is a sort of marl, or, as they call it here, maume, or mame, which is when wet very much like grey soap. In such a case it was likely that I should keep in the rear, which I did, and I descended by taking hold of the branches of the underwood, and so letting myself down. When we got to the bottom I bade my man, when he should go back to Uphusband, tell the people there that Ashmansworth Lane is not the worst piece of road in the world. Our worst, however, was not come yet, nor had we by any means seen the most novel sights.

After crossing a little field and going through a farmyard, we came into a lane, which was at once road and river. We found a hard bottom, however; and when we got out of the water, we got into a lane with high banks. The banks were quarries of white stone, like Portland-stone, and the bed of the road was of the same stone; and the rains having been heavy for a day or two before, the whole was as clean and as white as the steps of a fund-holder or dead-weight doorway in one of the Squares of the Wen. Here were we, then, going along a stone road with stone banks, and yet the underwood and trees grew well upon the tops of the banks. In the solid stone beneath us there were a horse-track and wheel-tracks, the former about three and the latter about six inches deep. How many many ages it must have taken the horses' feet, the wheels, and the water to wear down this stone so as to form a hollow way! The horses seemed alarmed at their situation; they trod with fear; but they took us along very nicely, and at last got us safe into the indescribable dirt and mire of the road from Hawkley Green to Greatham. Here the bottom of all the land is this solid white stone, and the top is that mame which I have before described. The hop-roots penetrate down into this stone. How deep the stone may be I know not; but when I came to look up at the end of one of the piers, or promontories, mentioned above, I found that it was all of this same stone.

A Tavern Dinner.

Having laid my plan to sleep at Andover last night, I went with two Farnham friends, Messrs Knowles and West, to dine at the ordinary at the George Inn, which is kept by one Sutton, a rich old fellow, who wore a round-skirted sleeved fustian waistcoat, with a dirty white apron tied round his middle, and with no coat on; having a look the eagerest and the sharpest that I ever saw in any set of features in my whole life-time; having an air of authority and of mastership which, to a stranger, as I was, seemed quite incompatible with the meanness of his dress and the vulgarity of his manners: and there being, visible to every beholder, constantly going on in him a pretty even contest between the servility of avarice and the insolence of wealth. A great part of the farmers and other fair-people having gone off home, we found preparations made for dining only about ten people. But after we sat down, and it was seen that we designed to dine, guests came in apace, the preparations were augmented, and as many as could dine came and dined with us.

After the dinner was over, the room became fuller and fuller; guests came in from the other inns, where they had been dining, till at last the room became as full as possible in every part, the door being opened, the doorway blocked up, and the stairs leading to the room crammed from bottom to top. In this state of things, Mr Knowles, who was our chairman, gave my health, which, of course, was followed by a speech; and, as the reader will readily suppose, to have an opportunity of making a speech was the main motive for my going to dine at an inn, at any hour, and especially at seven o'clock at night. In this speech I, after descanting on the present devastating ruin, and on those successive acts of the Ministers and the parliament by which such ruin had been produced; after remarking on the shuffling, the tricks, the contrivances from 1797 up to last March, I proceeded to offer to the company my reasons for believing that no attempt would be made to relieve the farmers and others, by putting out the paper-money again, as in 1822, or by a bank-restriction. Just as I was stating these my reasons, on a prospective matter of such deep interest to my hearers, amongst whom were land-owners, land-renters, cattle and sheep dealers, hop and cheese producers and merchants, and even one, two, or more country bankers; just as I was engaged in stating my reasons for my opinion on a matter of such vital importance to the parties present, who were all listening to me with the greatest attention; just at this time a noise was heard, and a sort of row was taking place in the passage, the cause of which was, upon inquiry, found to be no less a personage than our landlord, our host Sutton, who, it appeared, finding that my speech-making had cut off, or at least suspended, all intercourse between the dining, now become a drinking, room and the bar; who, finding that I had been the cause of a great restriction in the exchange' of our money for his 'neat' 'genuine' commodities downstairs, and being, apparently, an ardent admirer of the 'liberal' system of 'free trade;' who, finding, in short, or rather supposing, that if my tongue were not stopped from running, his taps would be, had, though an old man, fought, or, at least, forced his way up the thronged stairs and through the passage and doorway, into the room, and was (with what breath the struggle had left him) beginning to bawl out to me, when some one called to him, and told him that

he was causing an interruption, to which he answered, that that was what he had come to do! And then he went on to say, in so many words, that my speech injured his sale of liquor!

The disgust and abhorrence which such conduct could not fail to excite produced, at first, a desire to quit the room and the house, and even a proposition to that effect. But, after a minute or so to reflect, the company resolved not to quit the room, but to turn him out of it, who hadd caused the interruption; and the old fellow, finding himself tackled, saved the labour of shoving, or kicking, him out of the room, by retreating out of the doorway with all the activity of which he was master. After this I proceeded with my speech-making; and, this being ended, the great business of the evening, namely, drinking, smoking, and singing, was about to be proceeded in, by a company who had just closed an arduous and anxious week, who had before them a Sunday morning to sleep in, and whose wives were, for the far greater part, at a convenient distance. An assemblage of circumstances more auspicious to 'free trade' in the neat' and 'genuine' has seldom occurred! But, now behold, the old fustian-jacketed fellow, whose head was, I think, powdered, took it into that head not only to lay restrictions' upon trade, but to impose an absolute embargo; cut off entirely all supplies whatever from his bar to the room, as long as I remained in that room. A message to this effect from the old fustian man having been, through the waiter, communicated to Mr Knowles, and he having communicated it to the company, I addressed the company in nearly these words: Gentlemen, born and bred, as you know I was, on the borders of this county, and fond, as I am, of bacon, Hampshire hogs have, with me, always been objects of admiration rather than of contempt; but that which has just happened here induces me to observe that this feeling of mine has been confined to hogs of four legs. For my part, I like your company too well to quit it. I have paid this fellow six shillings for the wing of a fowl, a bit of bread, and a pint of small beer. I have a right to sit here; I want no drink, and those who do, being refused it here, have a right to send to other houses for it, and to drink it here.'

However, Mammon soon got the upper hand downstairs, all the fondness for 'free trade' returned, and up came the old fustian-jacketed fellow, bringing pipes, tobacco, wine, grog, sling, and seeming to be as pleased as if he had just sprung a mine of gold! Nay, he soon after this came into the room with two gentlemen, who had come to him to ask where I was. He actually came up to me, making me a bow, and, telling me that those gentlemen wished to be introduced to me, he, with a fawning look, laid his hand upon my knee! 'Take away your paw,' said I, and, shaking the gentlemen by the hand, I said, 'I am happy to see you, gentlemen, even though introduced by this fellow.' Things now proceeded without interruption; songs, toasts, and speeches filled up the time, until half-past two o'clock this morning, though in the house of a landlord who receives the sacrament, but who, from his manifestly ardent attachment to the liberal principles' of 'free trade,' would, I have no doubt, have suffered us, if we could have found money and throats and stomachs, to sit and sing and talk and drink until two o'clock of a Sunday afternoon instead of two o'clock of a Sunday morning. It was not politics; it was not personal dislike

to me; for the fellow knew nothing of me. It was, as I told the company, just this: he looked upon their bodies as so many gutters to drain off the contents of his taps, and upon their purses as so many small heaps from which to take the means of augmenting his great one; and, finding that I had been, no matter how, the cause of suspending this work of 'reciprocity,' he wanted, and no matter how, to restore the reciprocal system to motion. All that I have to add is this: that the next time this old sharp-looking fellow gets six shillings from me for a dinner, he shall, if he choose, cook me, in any manner that he likes, and season me with hand so unsparing as to produce in the feeders thirst unquenchable.

Then and Now.

After living within a few hundred yards of Westminster Hall, and the Abbey Church, and the Bridge, and looking from my own windows into St James's Park, all other buildings and spots appear mean and insignificant. I went to-day to see the house I formerly occupied. How small! It is always thus: the words large and small are carried about with us in our minds, and we forget real dimensions. The idea, such as it was received, remains during our absence from the object. When I returned to England in 1880, after an absence, from the country parts of it, of sixteen years, the trees, the hedges, even the parks and woods, seemed so small! It made me laugh to hear little gutters that I could jump over called rivers ! The Thames was but a 'creek' ! But when, in about a month after my arrival in London, I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was my surprise! Everything was become so pitifully small! I had to cross, in my post-chaise, the long and dreary heath of Bagshot; then, at the end of it, to mount a hill called Hungry Hill; and from that hill I knew that I should look down into the beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my childhood; for I had learned before the death of my father and mother. There is a hill not far from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is planted wtih Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative degree of height. 'As high as Crooksbury Hill' meant, with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not believe my eyes! Literally speaking, I for a moment thought the famous hill removed, and a little heap put in its stead; for I had seen in New Brunswick a single rock, or hill of solid rock, ten times as big, and four or five times as high! The post-boy going down-hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the prodigious sandhill where I had begun my gardening works. What a nothing! But now came rushing into my mind all at once my pretty little garden, my little blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty pigeons that I used to feed out of my hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and affectionate mother! I hastened back into the room. If I had looked a moment longer I should have dropped. When I came to reflect, what a change! I looked down at my dress. What a change! What scenes I had gone through! How altered my state! I had dined the day before

at a secretary of state's in company with Mr Pitt, and had been waited upon by men in gaudy liveries! I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the consequence of bad, and no one to counsel me to good behaviour. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank, birth, and wealth all became nothing in my eyes; and from that moment— less than a month after my arrival in England—I resolved never to bend before them.

On Field-sports.

Taking it for granted, then, that sportsmen are as good as other folks on the score of humanity, the sports of the field, like everything else done in the fields, tend to produce or preserve health. I prefer them to all other pastime, because they produce early rising; because they have a tendency to lead young men into virtuous habits. It is where men congregate that the vices haunt. A hunter or a shooter may also be a gambler and a drinker; but he is less likely to be fond of the two latter if he be fond of the former. Boys will take to something in the way of pastime; and it is better that they take to that which is innocent, healthy, and manly, than that which is vicious, unhealthy, and effeminate.

A new edition of Selections from Cobbett's Political Works, in 6 vols., was issued by his son (2 vols. 1848); and there is a good Life of him by Edward Smith (2 vols. 1878). See also Lord Dalling's Historical Characters (5th ed. 1876).

Henry James Pye (1745-1813), poetaster and police magistrate, has for more than a hundred years been a standing joke-an unhappy fate he would doubtless have escaped had he not had the fortune to be made poet-laureate ; for the 'poetical Pye,' as Sir Walter called him, was, to quote an editorial note to the Vision of Judgment, ‘eminently respectable in everything but his poetry.' 'That bad eminence' was not, like Satan's, due to merit, nor was it so much owing to his unequalled eminence in badness as to his being raised to official literary eminence in spite of the admitted badness of his poetry. Born in London, he studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and inherited from his father great estates in Berkshire, and even greater debts. He sat in Parliament for the county from 1784 to 1790, had meanwhile to sell his property, and was glad in 1792 to obtain the post of police magistrate for Westminster, as forty-four years earlier Fielding had been. From his youth he had been ambitious to shine as a poet, and while at Oxford printed a birthday ode to the Prince of Wales. When in 1790 Pitt appointed him laureate, he had published several 'poetical essays' (on Beauty, Amusement, &c.), and poems on Farringdon Hill, The Progress of Refinement, on shooting, and even on ballooning! (Aërophonion) -banal subjects mostly, and all in a hopelessly banal style, though his Six Odes from Pindar were respectable, like his translation of Aristotle's Poetics. Hence the appointment to the laureateship was the signal for an outburst of mirth, scorn, and witticism at the laureate's expense, renewed from time to time on the regular appearance of royal birthday odes and laureate's verses

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