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And meet their speedier fate; whilst he on couch
Of lingering sickness lay, unheeded, weak,
With grief and conscious uselessness oppress'd.
Here sleeps he now; his couch as softly green,
As his whom fate has graced with nobler death,
And given to fall, amid the eager shouts
Of gloom-dispelling fight:-the glory less
That decks his humble name; but softer far
The tear that pity sheds beside his tomb.

Here, too, her wanderings o'er, the soldier's wife
Has found at last a home: her anxious ear
No more shall list to catch the dreadful sounds
Of distant fight; where each returning roll
Brought thrilling fear that there perchance in death
Had fallen her husband: Ne'er again shall she
(Her tones of love, by weary faintness, changed
To wild impatience,) call her lagging child
To haste its steps, or shun the trampling crowd,
Amid the oppressive speed of soldiers' march.-
Her toils are o'er: a refuge here is given

From grief and fear, from wants and shame, secure.

Sad scene, farewell! thus numbering all thy tombs,
How oft have I the mournful evening passed,
Till all thy lonely paths were lost in shade.

A LETTER FROM THE MAN IN THE MOON.

A Calendar, a Calendar! Look in the Almanack; find out Moonshine---find out Moonshine!

THOU hast often seen me, Christopher, I will not say upon earth, though that is possible enough, but in heaven -I am the Man in the Moon. I have often had an eye upon thee, when thou hast been giving no heed to me. But what is come to thee, and to many others of thy kidney? for if one were to judge by your supercilious glance, when you look moonwards, you seem to doubt my very existence. Precious sagacity! On the contrary, when you were children, (and wiser, because less philosophic,) you delighted in making out my person, and were able to recognize every one of the insignia, with which, in popular belief, I was said to be decorated. Whether common report was right or wrong, I shall not stop to explain. This is an epistle of complaint; and, in order to shew that I am better fitted to find fault with folks upon earth, than many would suppose, I let you into this piece of my secret history. It is, that the Moon requires my services only during the middle fortnight of her revolution, and, of course, I am thus at liberty for an equal period; so that I

Midsummer Night's Dream.

keep up enough intercourse with your base terrestrial sphere, to know your doings and misdoings.

You have lately had some report of a Dr Heidelberg's upward voyage. Of this visit, in our parts, I know nothing. I cannot think that he came to our Moon-certain it is that I am not Zuloc. I greatly suspect that the Doctor went to some astronomical, mathematical, prosaic Moon of the natural philosophers. Now, mine is the Moon of the common people-the one which sets the children singing,

Both old and young, come out to play, For the moon it shines as bright as day. Mine is that, during whose increase country folks kill their hogs, "that the bacon may prove the better in boiling;" and also cut their children's hair, that it may grow again kindly. Nay, more, such persons not being ambitious of believing in the philosophical doctrine of cause and effect, turn their money in their pockets at the first sight they can catch of her when she is new, and is, according to a base comparison, like the paring of a

finger-nail; or, to use a nobler illus tration (which we owe to Schiller and Mr Coleridge) at the time, when

"The sickle of the moon

Struggling darts snatches of uncertain light."

Then is it that these wise ones turn their money, in undoubting confidence that the said coin, which has been so magically fumbled about in their pouches, shall be doubled ere the new moon is at the full; that is, ere the said "sickle" shall bear more resemblance to a bright pot-lid. Mine is the genuine Moon, the old original Moon, at which dogs and wolves have an imprescriptible right to bay, and witches to draw her from her sphere by their spells, if they can and lovers to swear by her-and fairy-elves to trip their deft measures in her light; but though she has been still continuing overhead to "wheel her pale course," I do not learn that any "belated peasant" has latterly reported that he has been a spectator of these midnight revels of the tiny crew.— Mine is the Moon, to which poets in days of yore thrummed their lyres, in chaunting her praise; and as lyres have long since gone out of fashion, they now count ten syllables upon their fingers fourteen times over, when they feel themselves moved by her influence. Some do it in laudatory strains, some in objurgatory; some are mirthful, some dolorous (the late ter being the more favourite mood of the two); some tuneful, some discordant; some extravagantly incomprehensible, and some intelligibly dull and soporific. This, then, is the Moon to which I belong. She is my mistress, she finds me, nay, is herself my ha bitation, my lodgings, my watch-tower, my pedestal, my sentry-box, my coach, my cutter, for a whole fortnight at a time and then my lady and I kiss and part for a brief season. I am off I leave my lodgings (but N.B. I am not the gentleman who published Essays and Sketches of Life and Character, a little while ago)-I forsake my towers, and relax awhile from this high commercing with the skies." I, like Pope's walking statue, step from my pedestal to take the air,I get relieved from guard-I resign the reins and jump off the dicky I step ashore and am among you terrestrials in a trice. This is the

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reason why I can speak with such boldness of your delinquencies, but I keep my person unknown; therefore, who but myself can tell whether thou thyself, Christopher, hast not all unwittingly entered into personal confab with the Man-out-o'the-Moon.

To come, then, to the burden of my complaint it is, that this mistress of mine, my well-beloved lady the Moon, is scurvily used by the writers of fiction among you, chiefly by the poets. Bards and bardlings, good, bad, and indifferent, all take liberties with her. They say soft nothings to her, and rough nothings too, whether they have any thing to say or not. I cannot tell why this is, but the practice is inveterate, and I am almost ready to fancy it is compulsory upon them; and that in their indentures of apprenticeship to Apollo, there must be some clause to this effect-" That the said M. N. shall, within twelve months from the date hereof, excogitate, concoct, write, indite, and clerkly deliver to be printed and promulgated, a true and lawful Sonnet of fourteen lines to, of, or concerning the Moon, &c." This is a mere guess of mine, and if, indeed, it be an old regulation of Apollo's, it must have been for the honour of the family, that he insisted on this abundance of metrical homage to his sister Phoebe; and heartily sick of it he ought to be by this time. In whatever way we account for it, and I give you earthly people leave to differ from my conjecture, yet the fact is certain, that scarce a poet now-a-days leaves the nest, without chirping at the Moon; when he is sufficiently fledged to take ever so short a flight into the regions of imagination, the Moon, the Moon is a perch he would fain roost upon. Hence it is rather difficult to address her by any appellation, direct or circumlocutory, which has not been already employed even to surfeiting. One may rack one's wits in vain for a fresh title to approach her with-Midnight Empress-Queen of the Night-Mistress of the silent hours-Fair Lady of the Sky-Huntress of the Silver Bow Lone Wanderer in Heaven's expanse. These, and others, are thread-bare in their lays. Then, as for epithets, she has them of all sorts of dimensions, and they have been so often put off and on, that they fit as easy as old shoes. The materials of which she is composed are sometimes precious, she

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is silver, pearly, crystalline-but, alas! she is fickle, inconstant, cold, icy, frosty, and dewy-but then to make up for it, they often make her figure away as beauteous, bright, glorious, lustrous, &c. &c. &c. ad infinitumor, if you like doublets better, a sort of hook-and-eye appellatives, why you may find precedents for calling her fullorbed, high-sphered, heaven-hung, clear-shining, star-encircled, &c. &c.; and then, too, her motions and actions are much celebrated, for she travels, climbs and rides, swims and floats, fades, beams, gleams, and streams, peeps, creeps, and weeps, hides and winks, and does many more tricks in poets' numbers, than I have space to

recount.

Now, with all this I do not find much fault, and many of the celebrations of my mistress I cannot too highly praise. Those who have an eye for her beauties, and who really do scrape acquaintance with her in good earnest, before they presume to write about her, such have my good will, and, in many instances, their performances win my hearty commendation also. But then these do not compose one-twentieth. part of the crew who point verses at her; the other nineteen-twentieths rhyme and rave about her loveliness, or whine and sob, and yell out syllables of dolor at the iciness of her bosom, and do it without going out to pay their obeisance, when she is pleased to be visible-no! many of them sit muffled up within doors, and note down their raptures upon paper under no alarming symptoms of ecstacy, or pen their lamentations in very tolerable spirits, and would seem to be addressing the moon as if they were beholding her, while, at the same time, they must have eyes that can penetrate a brick wall, to see her from the station where they composedly remain. From this it comes, that their descriptions are all made up at second-hand, or else it is sheer guess-work, and therefore frequently erroneous. Now this, I must own, moves my spleen. When we see such cart-loads of verse licked into the shapes of

Ode, and Elegy, and Sonnet, Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet,and all taking "the bright regent of the night" for their theme,-wouldst thou not suppose, Christopher, that from " my watch-tower in the skies," VOL. VIII.

(for my sight is preternaturally good,) I should see whole hosts of poetasters gazing and gloating, if not upon me, yet upon my brilliant vehicle, every night that we shew off to advantage? Far from it; scarce one in fifty ever composes a couplet in our presence, but hurry home, and find a good fire a more congenial source of inspiration. Unless thou imaginest that the following classes are of a poetical cast, we have little observance paid us by the votaries of the muses. Those whom I discern as closest in their attendance upon us, are watchmen, mail-coachmen, soldiers on guard, and sailors on watch, deer-stealers, poachers, and smugglers, shooters of wild-fowl on the sea-coast, and other well-occupied men. I fancy there are not many sonnetteers among these; yet these alone keep abroad, and rejoice in the moon-shine. As for the professed "builders of the lofty rhyme," some half a dozen or so may have written what the actual view of my mistress's charms suggested, and have really delivered themselves to the fancies which thickly thronged at the sight of her, pursuing her silent journey, and tenderly gleaming upon flood and fell; but as for the rest of the versifying tribe, how should they be right in delineating the witchery of moonlight views which they never see? If they be right, it is by plagiarism, and there hangs about their work the dulness of a twice-told tale; and if they attempt to be smart and original upon the subject, we have a fancy-piece with a vengeance. Hence it is that my lady's complexion is described as if in autumn she became a perfect Blouzelinda-" the ruddy harvest-moon!"Would not any one suppose, that she turned as red as a strapping lass, who, in a farmer's service, has worked herself into invincible health, cherry cheeks, and elbows where crimson and purple have a struggle for mastery? I do allow, that my gentle lady is at that time of year less saintly pale than usual, and that, at rising, she has a more heightened glow than at other seasons; but I deny that she can be called ruddy when she has mounted a few steps of the firmament; and when she has ascended to mid-height in heaven, and is "towering in her pride of place," she is as snowy-pure as ever; so that this description of her is overdone through inattention.

Again, the Moon is often represent4 P

her

ed as showering down a yellow light; and though I own, that, on some occasions, there is reason to attribute a very faint proportion of this colour to the tint of her beams, nevertheless I affirm, that it is not the prevailing hue which she diffuses over the objects which she illuminates. Her beams have quite as much of the blue ray in them, and, of course, the mixture will sometimes afford what may be called a green light. Delicate, and almost imperceptible as the colour is amid the brightness, yet distant objects on which the light of the moon falls more broadly than on nearer objects, where it is frittered into parts, have surely more of a greenish-grey appearance than of a yellow look. Yet some writers of authority have gone as far as truth will warrant them, and sometimes perhaps beyond it, in celebrating the yellow lustre of the queen of the sky; and the tribe of parlour moon-admirers have deepened her colour, till, in their metre-mongering, she has become as yellow as a guinea, and then they have made her give the jaundice to whatever rays have fallen upon. Even Pope, excellent poet as he is in some departments, has treated my divinity rather strangely in a famous passage of his Homer, book 8th; and although it was formerly quite fashionable to cocker him up with praise even for this very piece of mistranslation, yet of late he has deservedly gotten more raps on the knuckles than pats on the back for it. The original is allowed by all to be a true and natural description of a delightful, clear, serene moon-lightnight, aptly introduced, and the sentiment it elicits unforced and pleasing. The reason of old Homer's success in the passage was, that in his simpler times, and in the benignant climate of Greece, folks lived almost wholly in the open air, so that they had all the benefit of being in the constant presence of nature; and, having lively watchful minds, they drew accurately what they perpetually witnessed. Before the old poet of the Tale of Troy had lost his eye-sight, I have often seen him watching us, (that is, the Moon, and myself in it, not, indeed, that he ever had the kindness to mention me); and, therefore, after ruminating upon what he had so often rejoiced in beholding, he produced this little cabinet-picture, in which he neither wrested the ex

pression, nor "overstepped the modesty of nature." And the reason of Pope's failure was, that his puny constitution did not permit him to be out at night, and his artificial inclinations and habits estranged him from any deep and lover-like attachment to the scenery of the country, and from any susceptibility of emotion from rural sights, and scents, and sounds, so that, by this defect, he was disqualified for picturesque poetry. To complete the discomfiture of poor Nature in this passage, poetic diction" was then firmly believed in as an indispensible auxiliary, in a translator especially. Deserting, therefore, poor Homer, and embellishing without any regard to truth, we have, in these much talked-of lines, a gilt and glowing pole,"-" yellower verdure" than common upon "dark trees,"

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shining vales below, and "floods of glory bursting from all the skies." Now these mistakes would not have happened, had he but kept close to his original; or, if he must amplify, had he but put on his great-coat, and gone out upon his terrace, he might have added without disfiguring; nay, ifhe had looked out of the window attentively, he might have been prevented from committing himself. But, no! he wrote this, while snug and cozy in his villa at Twit'nam, with the shutters closed, curtains down, a couple of burnished candlesticks bearing their tapers aloft, and that very silver standish which Lady Frances Shirley gave him, lying on his right hand, and most invitingly supplying him with pen and ink, to overlay, and dizen out, and misrepresent Homer, and his modest moon and mine. No, no! it would not have been a very easy job to have made him stir forth.". Even if his man John had rushed in with news like that of Hubert to King John, "My lord, they say five moons are seen to-night;"he would not improbably have replied to him, as he addressed the same worthy in his Epistle addressed to Dr Arbuthnot, "Shut, shut the door, good John," especially if, in John's eagerness to tell the wonder, he had left it open;-how much less, then, could we expect the valetudinary poet to have looked forth at the solitary moon which he might see every month, and the solitary Man in the Moon, moreover, high mounted with her.

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I shall take another opportunity of complaining of the maltreatment we get from the novelists. I have also some remarks to make upon the voyagers to our lunar quarters of the solar system, as it is called; till when,

fare thee well, Christopher. These are from,

Thine,

THE MAN IN THE MOON.

From the Crescent,
Monday, (more properly Moon-day.)

MY DEAR EGAN,

LETTER TO PIERCE EGAN, ESQ.

(Confidential.)

You are well aware that there is no man in the empire, who has taken so deep an interest in your writings as I have. I flatter myself that I have been the means of introducing you much more generally to the notice of the literary population, than your unpatronized merits, great as they unquestionably are, would have done. In fact, I have made

The name of Egan, like an evergreen,

To blow and blossom in the northern sky and a pretty sort of a plant, I think, it is. And now my esteem for you leads me to give you some good and wholesome advice in this confidential letter, dropping, as you perceive, the princely pronoun we, and taking up the plebeian, but more familiar singular, much after the manner of my good friend Frank Jeffrey, when he wrote his veracious apology to Coleridge, for having caricatured his Christabel, in one of those articles which have so completely done up the character of the Edinburgh Review: but, I think, that my motive is somewhat better than that of Francis the Little.

You are acquainted with the nature of my malady, and may well wonder how I can possibly survive it in this metropolis of pharmacy. It is indeed a difficult thing for a sick man to keep alive in a city, where, besides a regular vomitory for doctors of medicine, there are at least 417 graduates of physic, resident and stationary, not to mention the subordinate rank and file of the faculty-apothecaries, druggists, oculists, aurists, bonesetters, bleeders, dentists, and other guides to health, (Destroyers rightlier call'd, and plagues of

men.)

in multitudinous aggregations, sufficient to depopulate the dominions of the celestial Emperor Kang-hi, whom God preserve. But practice is every thing, and our's is never to let them

practise on us. Were an M. D., (always excepting my honest old compotator Jamie Scott, who visits me poetically, not medically, and a few others of his kidney), to come within a yard of me, I should instantly summon the whole posse of my household,

Shoulder my crutch, and shew how heads are broke,

and send him out of the nearest window. I am bad enough; but were I been long ago in the bills of mortality, to mind the physicians, I should have which, you know, would be an irreparable loss to the empire. Out of mere patriotism, therefore, I resist the doctors. Eating and drinking are the grand panacea, the elixir vitæ, and I never knew one of these whey-faced rations by cutting down one or the tadpoles, who did not commence opeother. After so glaring an absurdity, is it any wonder that the breath of their lips is destruction-that they slay their thousands, after the manner of Sampson, by the wagging of the jaw

bone of an ass?

Instead of looking over their pothooks and hangers, therefore, I spend my time in writing articles which delight the world, or in reading books which delight myself. That I have perused with satisfaction your striking volumes, you know-the universe indeed knows it. By some accident, not worth explaining, your neat little collection of Sporting Anecdotes, (which I had the honour of receiving from you, with your other admirable works,) had fallen aside until the day before yesterday; but I got hold of it in good time. I was just seized with a twinge of the rheumatism, which was intole rable. I lay upon my sofa, making wry faces, and thinking Cicero and the other ancient philosophers, who maintained that pain was no evil, a set of insufferable coxcombs ;-when your book, with a lot of others, for my amuse

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