Edinburgh Review ; -your little, round, fat, oily man," has infallibly thriven upon Blackwood's hams. - gard to the honour and comforts of Christopher North. We relieve that worthy person's anxiety by assuring him, that his last packet, in which we particularly admired the neatness of the packing and cordage, came safe to hand, and that our health, (thanks to his inquiries,) is much improved since we last wrote to him. But to be more particular on the aforesaid congratulatory letters.—“ Saving the honour due to our most rheumatic foot," writes Indiculus slily, "we think, that Mr North never evinced so firm and steady a step as in his last Number." The rogue knows that his By the way, what is Kidderminster compliment touches us on a tender about? Are we to look to Brussels for point, and we smile, as he expects us a warm and suitable covering to our to do. But, seriously, if there be any drawing-room, or must we go further one thing on which we value ourselves to the Grand Turk? We beg it to more than another, it is the infirmity be understood, that we are no friend of our right foot, and more particular to that person. We look upon him as ly on that larger toe, in which the vi- a man wholly without original opirus of the disease has principally set- nions; and we had rather our afflic tled. Indiculus will easily account for tion should be soothed by the gratuithis feeling, when we detail the ho- tous present of any small provincial nours, comforts, and condolencies, town among ourselves, (we speak in which this very individual foot has pity, and not in anger, Kidderminster) brought upon us. As to recipes and than by the proudest donative of any specifics, we could absolutely fill a fo- vizier or sultaun whatever. lio with a part only of such as have been sent to us, and all from women who have passed their grand climacteric. We did not think there had been so many nostrums in art, or so many sanatives in nature. We are perfectly astonished that any such disorders as gout or rheumatism can be suffered to exist. For ourselves, we speak positively, nothing can induce us to continue our own affliction beyond three more Numbers; and if, after the first week in spring, a word escape us on the subject of crutches or flannels, the reader will consider it as unsaid, or, at least, as a mere slip of the pen. Meantime, our friends are assured, that no solace which the most tender sympathy can bestow will be wanting to us. Twenty young ladies, of the first families in Perthshire, have offered to attend us as nurses in weekly succession, and, in Peebles, the office is actually ballotted for, under the title of "Ladies to the Foot." Manufacturers vie in supplying such little accessories as these gentle offices may require. Ten additional looms have been started at Manchester, for the purpose of investing us in all the consolations of cotton. A caravan from Salisbury, loaded with flannel, stands at this moment before our door, flanked by a choice assortment of blankets from Whitney; while Mr Nott of Newgate Street, (emulous of Campbell's compliment to Herschel,) has added an additional dye to his fleecy hosiery, from a patriotic spirit of re When Art has been thus liberal, shall Science lag behind? We are the only person, not diplomatic, who has been made an honorary member of the Traveller's Club, without having our qualifications tried by the circle of their mystic map. This honourable testimony, announced to us on a roll of parchment, with the characters handsomely engrossed, stands in a conspicuous part of our study. We beg of that illustrious body to accept, in return, a copperplate engraving of our foot, in its due and proper investments of flannel; and we desire, that any junior member among them, who has felt disappointment in not kissing the Pope's toe, may be allowed to transfer his salutation to that of Christopher North. This engraving is itself a proof of the estimation in which we are held. It was executed at the desire of the Royal Society, by an able artist sent down expressly from London for that purpose; and a copy of it is to be hung up in the great room where the meetings of that scientific body take place. We are aware of the extreme regret expressed by many members of the Society, that it did not arrive in time for Sir Humphrey's opening speech, where it was to have formed the subject of an affecting apostrophe; but all the artist's exertions were unequal to that desired event. The enthusiasm of Cambridge has surpassed all our expectations. A grace, proposed on the caput, has been carried unanimously through both houses; regents and nonregents vieing with each other in decreeing to us A VOTIVE FOOT, similar to that in Mr T. Hope's anti-room. It is to be made of the finest Carrara marble, and, when completed, is to be laid near the bust of Ceres, in the entrance to the Public Library. Dr Barnes of Peterhouse almost slipped out an oath of honest exultation, when he under took to be responsible for the materials and the workmanship of this precious memorial. We hesitate to say more. The public have long done justice to that plain, straight forward, matter-of-fact way of writing in which we delight, and we carry about us, as our private friends know, a sort of innate, invincible abhorrence to the vile practice of punning. But the following fact, if true, (and the multiplicity of letters we have received on the subject forbid us to set it down as wholly false,) is too singular a phenomenon in natural history to be suppressed, and as such we relate it. Know, then, gentle reader, that children of the most tender age, and even the dumb creation, have been found to sympathize with the sufferings of that afflicted toe, on whose merits we have so long dilated. Schoolmasters write, that their smallest urchins pause and whimper, before they can be made to pass from the nominative to the genitive case of the Greek definite article; and threescore letters, (all indifferently spelt,) from experienced sportsmen, assert the extraordinary fact, that the loudest "To-ho!" instead of rousing puss as usual, seems to keep her on her form in a most unwonted torpor. It is doubted whether the stoutest March hare will have suf. ficient vivacity to carry him to his muese. The Nimrods affect to write complacently, but we know they curse us in their hearts;-what, however, will we not brave for the good of our country? Imitators meantime are abroad. We have thrown the whole catalogue of human diseases into the Magazine writers, as a writer of French dialogues conveys all the ills that human flesh is heir to into a single family, merely that his pupil may have the benefit of a medical vocabulary. One writer stands upon tooth-ache, two hesitate between dropsy and sciatica, and a fourth thinks to win his way to favour by an occasional epilepsy. All the let ter-press of the last Monthly, we are assured, was composed by its editor"stans pede in uno"-from the grossest spirit of imitation. Vain thought! as if, by mimicking the disorders of our feet, they could hope to catch the inspiration of our heads! Not that we disapprove of the practice;-far from it; as we mean to leave neither the Monthly nor the London a single foot to stand upon, we think their editors will do well to accustom themselves to such a situation,-paulatim et gradatim. It will easily be conceived, that our sale has been proportionate with this increased admiration on the part of the public. We modestly stated, some two months ago, that our circulation was somewhere under 17,000. Whatever that number was, it is now doubled. We have actually created a writing and a printing public. Pressmen traverse the streets in bands. Printers' devils are at a premium. Paper mills flourish beyond all precedent. Large parties repair daily to the moors; and, from the myriads of wild fowl which are shot, nothing is taken but the quills for pens, the body is thrown away as refuse. Ink is floated down to us in a canal cut for the purpose. We offer to burn our next Number against any four Magazines that are going, and with the smoke that is left, we engage to smother a whole week's sale of the Morning Chronicle.-Smoke, indeed! Perish the ill-fated word!-Smoke !— We exhibit nothing but light and blaze -Fervet opus-the whole work is one consuming fire. Our greatness of mind ( μɛyaλo↓uxia,) keeps pace with this encouragement. Some of our readers may be aware of a literary establishment on the Continent, which, under one and the same roof, shelters the whole body of craftsmen occupied in the manufacture of a book, from the author, in whose brain it originates, down to the binder, who puts the finishing hand to it—publisher, paper-maker, printer, corrector, devil, &c. of course inclusive. The young ideas, thus hatched in retirement, grow up in that seclusion, so provocative of desire on the part of the public. No breeze of heaven blows upon their face, till the stalls, which abut the lower compartments of the edifice, exhibit them with the bloom of virginity as it were upon them, yet mature in age-fit for the gaze of eyes and the grasp of hands. Thanks to the unprecedented generosity of the public-we have been enabled to project a similar establishment on the most extensive scale. Already has the whole of Prince's Street, on both sides of No. 17, to St Andrew's Street, been engaged, with some few exceptions, for the purpose; the inhabitants of the east corner are to quit at first term, and though some opposition has been manifested from St Andrew's Square, we know that we have only to double our offers to make the most reluctant give in. Before midsummer, we hope to have fifty presses at work. In our present rough state, we can lodge none but the underlings. But we offer gratuitously a damp cellar to the Scotsman, and a stone-floor to the Editor of the Traveller, Cold as that bridal bed, Which scarce the nuptial night, 'tis said, could warm. OLD PLAY, in possession of the Author of Waverley. The higher powers will be attended to as soon as possible. Elegant apartments are preparing for such gentlemen as have already engaged, or may hereafter contract to serve in our poetical department. That irritable tribe, (whom we know too well to meddle with,) will be left to chuse their own localities, as best may please them. Our world is all before them; but-secretly-we shall to the writers of the "lofty have an eye epic" in the upper flats; the epigrammatists and parodists will no doubt take to the lower floors. As female contributors will not be excluded from this happy abode, the public may look forward with confidence to a series of literary unions, and by a happy crossing of the breed, to such a progeny of authors, as poetry and criticism have never yet witnessed. But we are running on in the brightness of our own prospects, and a hundred correspondents are waiting to be made happy, like Indiculus, by seeing their congratulations duly noticed. We shall take them as they reach us. "Brize Norton, Nov. 3. "Euge! Macte! well done, old boy. I did'nt think it had been in your time of life. I make a long arm from this side the Humber, and hope one as long from the Forth will be stretched out to meet it. May some future geographer mark out the place of junction, and a Temple to Friendship be erected on the spot, with a little hospitium, called the Hand-in-Hand, at the back of it. You have placed your foot like a giant on the neck of the old serpent at home; keep it there, and leave us southern men to deal with his filthy brood below the Border. I have a tickler myself in hand for them. And such a tickler! but you shall have it in a few days. The Medusa is no more; the Dwarfs, black, brown, and grey, are extinct. Why should the Attorney-General_meddle with Hone, or any such scrubs? He grasps at what is neither palpable nor tangible. The mere truth of an intention, I feel, has laid them upon their faces. They are simoom'd-blasted— annihilated." [Our Humber friend, we suspect, writes with more zeal than knowledge. We are not sure that he knows whe ther Hone writes prose or verse; and as to the Medusa and the Dwarfs, he seems quite unconscious that he protions expired (at least we presume so) poses to slay the slain. Those fabricawith the other two-penny trash, which one of the late bills in Parliament was intended to reach.] "Plaistow, Nov. 4. for compensation-the case stands thus. "You're a wag, Mr North-but I look When I read any thing that pleases me, (and as I read always at night with candle between the book and my face,) a large blazing fire before me, and the down to my finger-ends. In these paI invariably find my sensations run stir, looking intently at the fire, and roxysms, I grasp the poker, and stir, exclaiming, "Admirable! well-put! a facete, by Jove!" as the case may happen to be. The storm over, I return quietly again to my lection. Now I say nothing of an extraordinary tiff of punch, which I took with a neighbour to talk over your October number, but I look for some compensation for unusual consumption of coal, and for wear and tear of grate, and fire utensils. Suppose we say that the next three num bers come gratis." * We have desired Messrs Cadell and Davies to forward all our future Numbers gratis to this worthy gentleman; the claim to run on, like Bergami's title, till the end of the world, that being the earliest period at which this Magazine proposes to stop. Copied by a friend to Blackwood's Ma gazine. Nov. 6, 1820. SINGULAR FACT.-Four gouty men, (all natives of this place except a Mr G. who comes from Bomton-underWater,) performed yesterday a sara band, in honour of one Mr Christopher North. They danced themselves into a profuse perspiration; and strange to say, the exercise has been attended with the most salutary effects. It has been agreed to repeat this performance annually on the 20th of October.-Maidstone Gazette. "Plaistow, Nov. 15. "The publication of your October Number has relieved the inhabitants of this town from the most melancholy apprehensions. About the middle of last month, a tremulous motion of the ground took place here, which the forebodings of the householders pronounced to be the precursor of an earthquake. We are now, however, agreed (much to our comfort and satisfaction,) that the shock alluded to, was nothing more than an effect of that sofa-thud, which you have described with so much effect. Pray let us know in your next what the exact calibre of the person may be, who seats himself at such a price of momentum, and also when this alarming thud took place. We have been a little puzzled by the word itself, but suppose it to be a Scotch term equivalent to the English word plump.” "Castle Rising, Nov. 15. "The hearts of the Tories here have expanded, like their faces, at the news of your success. Those of the Whigs, which heretofore wore a yellowish complexion, like the apothecaries' devils in Quevedo, have shifted into mahogany and pea-green. Touch them up again, Mr North; expose their utter want of fun and good humour; and look a lit tle into Parliament. Take a view of those benches which were once filled by those fellows of infinite mirth, the Lawrences, the Townsends, the Sheridans, and Fitzpatricks. How are they now occupied? By a screeching, suspicious, lachrymose crew, whom one of the Morning Post's worst jokes, beaten out as thin as gold leaf, would enliven. Young men, whose blood should be dancing in their veins, sit there with a week's bile of The Examiner in their faces, and if that were possible among gentlemen, with a month's rancoúr of the Chronicle in their hearts. VOL. VIII. There they sit with visages as if they had belonged to the Long Parliament-gasping for a grievance, optative of an official omission-prying, peering, and beating about the bushes of ministerial speech, in hopes some little error may slip out, upon which they open and follow like a pack of hounds in full cry. And then their sharp, short, shrill, "hear! hear!" "Tis sad by fits, by starts 'tis wild! How unlike the full broad volume of a Tory cheer, rolling along in a proud magnificence, and even in its lowest cadence, sinking (as Whigs at least think) into some little soliloquy of self-congratulation and complacency. Well certainly- we carry things triumphantly." "Nothing like a commanding majority, to give full play to the lungs, and complete tone to the voice." By the way, I should think my brother must have touched his first quarter in India before this." "Odso-I had almost førgotten to return thanks for that little thing in the customs." Touch them up, I say, Mr North; and if they have no wit in themselves, let them be at least the cause of wit in others." ' We do not quite approve of the following letter from Lyme-Regis. It touches, we think, upon an unfair topic of ridicule; and our good triends in that quarter are not aware, apparently, that the name itself, which they deride, has been made respectable by a man of real science. After some compliments which we suppress, (the reader knows our invariable delicacy on this point,) our correspondent continues." Last Friday was a memorable evening with us. It is our hebdomadal oyster club meeting. Just as we were in the heart of a barrel, the new Number of Blackwood was announced. Mr Stingo the brewer, who values himself upon a clear voice, and a particular mode of blowing his nose, undertook to read us a portion of it, and by good luck he dipped upon the last article. There was a pin-drop silence, as the Cockneys write, in the room, till he came to that happy passage, which describes the different mode of entering a room by Mr Jeffrey and the Scotsman. Silence was no longer maintainable-a hundred commendations and pleasantries broke out; and these latter were increased when young Parchment our lawyer, let us into the secret of the real name. Heaven preserve us, what a 3 X name!' cried one. "He must be a but cher,' said another. Has he a wife?' asked a third. 'He cannot possibly have daughters?' responded a fourth. Gentlemen,' said the waiter, placing a replenished silver mug before Mr Drysalter with one hand, and with the other wiping up a small overflowing of his former potation- Gentlemen,' said the waiter, this must be some unpos sible person-there can be no living soul with such a name.' But the greatest effect produced was on our curate. Surplice has a favourite theory on the subject of names, on what opinions founded I shall not at present stop to say, but of which the practical conclusion is, that upon certain data, such as the sirname or general knowledge of the bearer's character, his christian name may be told almost infallibly. Upon such an investigator of names, that of M'Culloch operated like a thunderbolt. 'M'Culloch!' he inwardly ejaculated, as if trying by what process the larynx could be delivered of such a name. 'M'Culloch,' he again repeated, as if wishing to know what part of the burden was borne by lips, teeth, throat, or palate. It was clear, he could make nothing of it. He monosyllabalized, dis-syllabalized, tri-syllabalized it. Cull, Maccul, Culloch, Macculloch. It was all in vain-there was no standard weight or measure for it it was an anomaly in nomenclature. He tried his system upon it. Shadrach -Meshach-O'Shaughnessy-Abednego-All disappointment-nothing would square with such a name. A cloud came over his brow, and he conversed for some time in an under tone with Parchment. The cloud, to our surprise, was then replaced by a smile, and the smile by a loud laugh. He then desired Stingo to proceed; and from the divided tone of his mirth through the evening, it was evident that some conceit was waking in his brain; but what we could not well devise. Suffice it to say the Article was read through-a bowl extraordinary was voted in honour of your success, and we kept it up till a late hour. "P. S. Parchment and I have had some talk this morning on the movements of Surplice's face. He traces them all to association of ideas, and to some information conveyed through himself to the Curate, of a connection between M'Culloch and the Edin burgh Review. Try,' concluded the lawyer, the effect of your own muscles associate the name of Macculloch with an heroic idea, or a chivalrous idea, or a tender idea; couple it with a dissertation on poetry, on the fine arts, or on criticism; and I defy you to retain your gravity." The conceit tickled me, and the name of M'Culloch, I find, will be mirth with me to my dying day, i. e. if the Edinburgh Review should last as long." Stiil less do we approve of the following. We have neither dined nor hunted with Sir Francis Burdett, nor are we aware that private virtues have any thing to do with public delinquencies. But a country-squire who relieves the interests of fox-hunting, by reading Greek and Blackwood's Magazine, is a sort of phænomenon, and as such we cannot forbear to insert his Epistle. It came to us, folded up with great formality, and with the coat of arms absolutely imbedded in wax. "No one cares less than myself to meddle with what does not concern him; and no fox-chace, that carried me into five counties besides my own, ever gave me so much delight, as the honest verdicts which have been lately given by the London juries. But the law has at last fallen upon a victim, that I suspect she herself will have some compunction in smiting. I allude, of course, to Sir Francis Burdett. He is an old offender, Mr Editor, and I own deserves correction; but his tenants tell many kind stories of him, and, God forgive me, but I believe I have not been quite proof against his countenance. There is a something in that frank and ingenuous aspect, about which the sweet breezes of heaven seem intended to blow, and not the damp vapours of a damp dungeon. Besides, I have hunted and dined with him, Mr Editor, and not a word of politics at either. He has a strong seat, and rides boldly; but he sits too much on the perpendicular, and, being long in the fork, he has somewhat of a Quixotic appearance. His dinners are not to my taste; but this comes of his poring over the bad Latin of Magna Charta, instead of reading Greek, as every English gentleman ought to do. Had his studies lain |