YES AND NO.

66

[The following little natural effusion is one of the most celebrated from the pen of Marot, and made a great sensation among the gallants of his time. He alludes to it himself in a famous couplet, often quoted as a motto to his works:

Et tant que Ouy et Nenny se dira,

Par l'univers le monde me lira.

As long as Love says Yes and No,

The universe shall read Marot.

Marot is worth dozens of the French modern poets, even of their "Augustan age." The verses appeared in a court, and were very good and useful for that region; but for our parts, who love the practice of sincerity and kindness without alloy, we love a woman to give way to the genuine impulses of her heart, and to say "Yes" precisely as she means it.]

Un doux Nenni, avec un doux sousrire,

Est tant honneste; il le vous faut apprendre :
Quant est d'Ouy, si veniez a le dire,
D'avoir trop dit je voudrois vous reprendre.
Non que je sois ennuyé d'entreprendre
D'avoir le fruit, dont le desir me poinct;
Mais je voudrois, qu'en le me laissart prendre,
Vous me disiez, "Non, vous ne l'aurez point."

O sweet No, no,-with a sweet smile beneath,
Becomes an honest girl :-I'd have you learn it.
As for plain Yes, it may be said, i'faith,
Too plainly and too oft :-pray well discern it.
Not that I'd have my pleasure incomplete,
Or baulk the kiss for which my lips beset you ;
But that in suffering me to take it, sweet,
I'd have you say, "No, no,-I will not let you.”

BROTHER LUBIN.*

(FROM MAROT.)

To shuffle to town twenty times in a day,
Why or wherefore no one can tell,
To do any thing which nobody may,
Brother Lubin will do very well.
But in a right conversation to dwell,
Or in a life that's wholesome withal,
That's for the Christians that heed the gospel;
Brother Lubin will not do at all.

To put (in a proper, thief-like style)
Another man's property in his own cell,
And leave you without either cross or pile,
Brother Lubin will do very well.

To get and to keep he proceedeth pell-mell,
And on his creditors loudly to call;
But to restore what might fill a nut-shell,
Brother Lubin will do not at all.

To lure some young damsel, by dint of a tongue,
Out of the fair house where she doth dwell,
No need of a crone that ought to be hung;
Brother Lubin will do very well.

Sermons with him are not things to spell :
But to drink clear good water, pray call
Your dog to drink it, for I can foretell
Brother Lubin will not drink it at all.

ENVOY.

Sooner than good to do ill withal,
Brother Lubin hath a natural call;
But if there's any good work to pursue,
Brother Lubin is one that won't do.

:

* This is one of the squibs with which Marot used to annoy the friars. They who have seen a coarse, fat, sly-looking lay-brother of a convent jogging towards a city in Italy in his dirty drugget on a hot day, will recognize the sort of person aimed at.

LONDON:

Published by HUNT and CLARKE, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country.-Price 4d.

PRINTED BY C. H. REYNELL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE.

No. XV. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1828.

"Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

MISCELLANEOUS INTENTIONS OF THE COMPANION.

OWING to illness and other circumstances, the Companion has hitherto been unable to effect the main part of its design; which was to keep an eye upon what is going on in the world, and talk upon any subject whatsoever which liberal observers discuss over their tables. We observed in our Prospectus, that the two main topics of the weekly press are politics and the theatre; to which have been lately added specimens of new publications, and more lately, reviews as well as specimens: for, in the former instance, the dull rogues had a sufficient instinct of self-preservation to avoid committing themselves with much of their own. The town, therefore, have enough at present, in a regular way, of politics, and theatricals, and new books; and upon none of these was it part of our intention to expatiate more largely, than the feeling of the moment should excite us. We only reserved a right, as we still do, to say as much or as little of them, as we please. Some old readers encouraged us to say more than we intended, of the

VOL. I.

15

theatres; and this seduced us into late hours, and suppers, and other pleasing enormities, very much to the joy of our hearts, but not at all so to that of our livers; and these being a very resentful part of the human body, and our weakness (if the critics must know it) lying on that side, we have been obliged to eschew the theatres as a general thing; and to go to bed and get up again, like good, middle-aged boys; and so quiet this inconvenient mystery, the liver; which like an over-conscientious dog at one's side, bites his very master if he does not behave himself.

Adieu then, except at rare intervals, dear, delightful Pasta, with face of truth, your heart full of song! and your If we were a sovereign prince, we would have you sing to us every evening; and light up our belief in truth at your eyes; and ask you, as a particular favour, not to get fatter.

Adieu, wet nights, and hackney-coaches; and playbills, pleasing to be pestered with; and the gallant English pit, so ready to take clap-traps to themselves, and keep seats from the women; and the music between the acts at Covent garden; and Mr Kean's Othello, the finest piece of acting we ever beheld; and "Had it pleased heaven," &c. the finest speech in it, which we intended to hear again; and that very disagreeable piece of wit, the Critic, which we intended to go and see at Drury lane, because there is Mathews in it in Sir Fretful, and Liston (who if he does not bestir himself, will make himself as melancholy with his fat, as he makes others merry with his face), and Mrs Orger, a natural actress, born, if we mistake not, to be as full of truth and good-humour, with that genial smile of her's, as her Tilburina is said to be full of humour sophisticate.

And adieu, pleasing deteriorators,-things impossible not to take after the theatre, to wit, suppers, with your fire poked up, and your evening just "begun again," and the faces that shine in your lustre; sweet runners into the night, but slayers of next morning;

love you we must, but afford you we cannot. The little eyes are fast asleep, which we must resemble, or not look at. To some other belongs the happy lot of being

The gayest valetudinaire,
Most thinking rake alive.

-And our infirmities, not being mortal at present, we must not

render so without special warrant less pleasurable.

And therefore, last not least, adieu also, watchmen !

Farewell, the tranquil box! Farewell," good nights :"
Farewell, your drowsy stoop; and the big coats
That make you so much lumber.

But

To frequent the theatre is not in our bond: night-time we have not undertaken to illustrate; but all the rest of the world is before us, from six in the morning: and then we dine, and are the reader's humble servant for any topic of conversation with which books, or newspapers, or town and country, can furnish us. We do not mean to give up our old books. The spirits in them would leap out of their shelves at us, if we did: at least we hope so. new books will be welcome, if good; and plenty of extraordinary things are always occurring. There is the Roué' for instance; or Don Miguel, who means to be one before his time; or Vesuvius, which has conveniently broken out for us; or the ground which lately became inflammable, like an author's head, "after boring for salt;" or the subterraneous whispers which have lately frightened the Durham people; or the horse in flower, who has six legs, and is budding two more; or "respectable" people, going about picking and stealing, out of pure want of ideas, and inability to have but one at a time; or the Greenwich holidays; or the Hyde Park holidays; or the correspondence between Mrs Diana Beaumont and my Lord Howden, in which his Lordship seems to understand well the sympathy between those apparently remote places, and says, he "cannot bring himself to consider" the consequences as "an inexpiable offence;" only he thinks it would be insane in a man to be lively in the vicinity of Diana.*

*We extract," says the Examiner, "from the report of an action for slander (Northern Circuit) two letters curiously illustrative of the character of polite morals. The first is from Mrs Beaumont, the convicted offender, against whose husband a verdict was found for 1,700. Mrs Beaumont, by virtue of her name of Diana, takes cognizance of a certain alleged incontinency in her agent, the plaintiff, Mr Horsington; and here we have to remark on a curious point in morals, namely, that the gravamen of his sin seems to have been entirely geographical. The corpus delicti was what the lawyers would call the venue. Mrs Beaumont clearly indicates that such is the main substance of the grievance