Byron however, greatly admired the whole passage, and referred
to its epithets as illustrations of Pope's power of imagination.
H.-We may as well read it then-

Let Sporus tremble-A. What! that thing of silk?
Sporus, that mere white curd of asses milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel ?

P.-Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings.
Whose buz the witty and the fair annoys
Yet wit ne'er tastes and beauty ne'er enjoys;
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,

In puns or politics, or tales or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit, all see-saw, between that and this-
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that, acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,

Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.

Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest

A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest:

Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust

Wit that can creep-and pride that licks the dust.

A. This is the very concentrated essence of contempt. The epithets are living colors. It would have been as well if poor Lord Harvey had not put his delicate finger into Lady Mary's pie. He is said to have helped her Ladyship in the verses to the translator of Horace. His Lordship, according to Dr. Joseph Warton, to prevent attacks of epilepsy, used to drink asses' milk. It was not very generous in Pope to make such terrible

use of the necessities of a bodily infirmity. He calls him a painted child of dirt, because, to soften his ghastly appearance, the effect of sickness, he used a slight quantity of rouge. Bishop Middleton, in his dedication to the history of Tully, praises Lord Harvey in the highest terms, for his good sense, politeness, and patriotism.

No. XXII.

TALFOURD.

S.-Have you read Talfourd's Ion?

C.-Yes; and I admire it exceedingly. It is somewhat too classical, however, for the taste of the age.

J.-There was a foolish affectation in its first mode of publication in the pretence that the work was printed for private circulation, not published;" for a copy of that private edition seems to have been sent to almost every reviewer in Great Britain. I am told that the Quarterly praised it highly. The Examiner too spoke warmly of it; but there was something extravagant in its praise-the critic was evidently a personal friend. He insisted upon it, even in opposition to the opinion of the author himself, that the play would act well. I am pretty sure that it would not, and, for Talfourd's sake, I hope the experiment will never be tried.* I think the tragedy

* Since the above dialogue was written, the experiment has been tried; it was perfectly successful. Leigh Hunt in three excellent sonnets records Talfourd's triumph, though the sonnet-writer himself was prevented by sickness from being present on the occasion

Yet I was with thee-saw thine high compeers,
Wordsworth and Landor,-saw the piled array,
The many-visaged heart looking one way,
Come to drink beauteous truth at eyes and ears.

reflects credit on the taste and talent of the author, but it is not what every body is now looking for in vain, a genuine Drama. The character of Ion is a beautiful abstraction; it is not flesh and blood. There is greatly more poetry in this play than in Addison's Cato, but there is not much more dramatic power. The author in his preface acknowledges the delight with which in his youth he first saw the representation of Cato; and, though the spirit of later times has improved his taste, there is still occasionally something rather too cold and artificial in his style. I should say that he has been a respectful reader of Mason's tragedies, and an enthusiastic admirer of the old Greek plays. The author did not intend his play for the stage, for which he frankly and modestly confesses, that, not “in matter of form" only, but "in matter of substance" also, it would be found wanting.*

S.-I am glad to see the handsome tribute to Wordsworth in the preface. Talfourd observes that the works of that great writer have exerted a purifying influence on the literature of this country, such as the works of no other poet have exerted; and that they have dissipated the sickly fascinations of gaudy phraseology and cast around the lowliest conditions a new and exquisite light.

J.-It is strange that the scoffs of the Edinburgh Review should have had even a nine days' influence upon the public taste, when such a genius as Wordsworth's was the object of them. Talfourd confesses that he was himself for a long time indisposed to read Wordsworth, in consequence of the opinions formerly expressed regarding his productions, by the popular critics. A prodigious change has since come over the spirit of their dream. It once required some boldness to speak in

• Whether this drama be likely long to keep possession of the stage or be really fitted for it, are questions that I leave to others to determine, but that regarded as a work for perusal in the closet, it deserves to live and will live, I have not the shadow of a doubt. It is unquestionably an exquisite poem, if it be not a perfect drama.

his praise it now requires more boldness to censure him. The fate of Wordsworth and others is a proof that ridicule is not the test of truth. The "big reviews" have laughed at Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, and James Montgomery, and the laugh was echoed throughout Europe. The critics have since been obliged to eat their own words! The public has at last opened its molish eyes, and begins to perceive that a Reviewer is not always a true prophet. It was the author of Ion who wrote that complimentary letter published in the Calcutta papers some time ago about Leigh Hunt, to whose writings he attributed so much of the character of his own mind. You may recollect Leigh Hunt's grateful allusion to that compliment in his letter respecting the Indian Subscribers to his poems.*

As perhaps my Indian readers (many of whom have come to India since the period alluded to) might be interested in learning what Leigh Hunt said of the Indian subscriptions and of Talfourd, I here quote a passage from the letter:

January 22, 1833.

"I must leave your own heart and imagination to judge of the feelings with which I received your letter. It is a fine thing to be thought of at all at so great a distance: but to be thought of in this manner, and to be treated so kindly by so many people, is affecting indeed. I wish I could say anything to Sir Charles Metcalfe, calculated to give him a twentieth part of the pleasure which his gentlemanly impulse of liberality has given me; and indeed I wish I could make a huge long arm, and stretch it over seas and lands, and shake the hand of every one of my new and unknown friends, who have felt thus for a stranger. But it is to you, my dear Sir, I owe most. It is you who have excited all this sympathy, and I am glad to see you surprised at the amount of it. I fancy you a magician waving his wand, and astonished at the beauty of the visions which he has himself conjured up. The Indian addition to our list is a very serious good to me, more so than I will distress you by detailing why, especially as the subscription here, though it flowered admirably at first, and will be eternal flattery to my recollections for the names it included, has not proceeded according to its promise. Yet I assure you, and I am sure you will

"as

• Leigh Hunt has now a pension from Government of two hundred a year, some compensation for the pecuniary difficulties and personal sacrifices he has suffered for the advocacy of principles, the truth of which is now fully acknowedged and acted on."

J.-It is not easy to account for the utter absence of dramatic genius in this age. Men are men still, but they are not like the men of Shakspeare's time. There were giants on the earth in those days. The greatest of our modern poets are mere egotists. They cannot go out of themselves for a single moment. All

believe, that the sympathy shown me by my Eastern friends, the good will and manifestation of honest heart, evinced by their moving in the business at all, is more valuable to me than the subscription itself. I wish you would make my special acknowledgments to Messrs. Samuel Smith and Co. and to such other gentlemen of the press as it may not be inconvenient to you to convey to 'them, not excepting the Editor of the John Bull who would find me perhaps a better Christian than he seems to suspect. I must find means of sending you a little book of mine entitled Christianism; or, Belief and Unbelief Reconciled, which a friend has printed for private circulation, and which I would get you to show him. At all events, his conduct has been Christian on this occasion, and so, I assure him, is my gratitude. It gives me a peculiar species of gratification to think the native Editors of the Reformer and the Enquirer have interested themselves in my behalf. You know how I delight in associations of old books and romances; India to me is an Arabian Night country; all the modern common-places of it, which I have never seen, are accustomed to give way in my mind before its old, exclusively Oriental, aspect; and in finding that I have friends there, time and space seem to roll apart like a cloud, and I fancy myself a new kind of living yet ancient Sindbad, taken by the hand, after a shipwreck, by strangers, with dusk faces and white drapery, under a glowing sun. But, above all, do not let me forget to take particular notice of your article in the Calcutta Literary Gazette, so handsome, so well written, so more than kind to me. I have certainly in my time, endeavoured to sow pleasant thoughts in the minds of my fellow-creatures: and I have done it, I will venture to add, at times when my only pleasure consisted in the hope of giving some to others. Neither have I got much in return, but that hope. But when I see an article like yours, I reap indeed a thick harvest in a small compass. Many thanks for it, from the bottom of my heart. It is the one that has touched me more nearly than any which had been written since Mr. Talfourd's, which I was delighted to see you had got, and which must have given you great pleasure, even as a piece of good writing."

I cannot resist the temptation to add the following extract from Talfourd's This paper, now called the Englishman, is, as most people here are aware, in new hands.