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Dangle. If it succeeds.

Sir Fret. Ay; but, with regard to this piece, I think I can hit that gentleman, for I can safely swear he never read it. Sneer. I'll tell you how you may hurt him more.

Sir Fret. How?

Sneer. Swear he wrote it.

Sir Fret. Plague on't now, Sneer, I shall take it ill. I believe you want to take away my character as an author.

Sneer. Then I am sure you ought to be very much obliged

to me.

Sir Fret. Hey, sir!

Dangle. Oh, you know he never means what he says.

Sir Fret. Sincerely, then, do you like the piece?

Sneer. Wonderfully!

Sir Fret. But, come now, there must be something that you think might be amended, hey? Mr. Dangle, has nothing struck you?

Dangle. Why, faith, it is but an ungracious thing, for the most part, to

Sir Fret. With most authors, it is just so, indeed; they are in general strangely tenacious! But, for my part, I am never so well pleased as when a judicious critic points out any defect to me; for what is the purpose of showing a work to a friend, if you don't mean to profit by his opinion?

Sneer. Very true. Why, then, though I seriously admire the piece upon the whole, yet there is one small objection, which, if you'll give me leave, I'll mention.

Sir Fret. Sir, you can't oblige me more.
Sneer. I think it wants incident.

Sir Fret. You surprise me!—wants incident!

Sneer. Yes; I own I think the incidents are too few.

Sir Fret. Believe me, Mr. Sneer, there is no person for whose judgment I have a more implicit deference. But I protest to you, Mr. Sneer, I am only apprehensive that the incidents are too crowded. My dear Dangle, how does it strike you?

Dangle. Really, I can't agree with my friend Sneer. I think the plot quite sufficient; and the first four acts by many degrees the best I ever read or saw in my life. If I might venture to suggest anything, it is that the interest rather falls off in the fifth.

Sir Fret. Rises, I believe you mean, sir.

Dangle. No, I don't, upon my word.

Sir Fret. Yes, yes, you do-it certainly don't fall off, I assure you. No, no; it don't fall off.

Dangle. Now, Mrs. Dangle, didn't you say it struck you in >he same light?

Mrs. Dangle. No, indeed, I did not; I did not see a fault in any part of the play from the beginning to the end.

Sir Fret. Upon my soul, the women are the best judges, after all.

Mrs. Dangle. Or, if I make any objection, I am sure it was nothing in the piece; but that I was afraid it was, on the whole, a little too long.

Sir Fret. Pray, madam, do you speak as to the duration of time, or do you mean that the story is tediously spun out? Mrs. Dangle. Oh, no, indeed. I speak only with reference. to the usual length of acting plays.

Sir Fret. Then I am very happy-very happy indeedbecause the play is a short play-a remarkably short play. I should not venture to differ with a lady on a point of taste; but, on these occasions, the watch, you know, is the critic.

Mrs. Dangle. Then, I suppose, it must have been Mr. Dangle's drawling manner of reading it to me.

Sir Fret. Oh, if Mr. Dangle read it, that's quite another affair! But, I assure you, Mrs. Dangle, the first evening you can spare me three hours and a half, I'll undertake to read you the whole from beginning to end, with the prologue and epilogue, and allow time for the music between the acts.

Mrs. Dangle. I hope to see it on the stage next.

Dangle. Well, Sir Fretful, I wish you may be able to get rid as easily of the newspaper criticisms as you do of ours.

Sir Fret. The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous-licentious-abominable-infernal-not that I ever read them. No. I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper. Dangle. You are quite right-for it certainly must hurt an author of delicate feelings to see the liberties they take.

Sir Fret. No! quite the contrary; their abuse is, in fact, the best panegyric-I like it of all things. An author's reputation is only in danger from their support.

Sneer. Why, that's true-and that attack, now, on you the other day

Sir Fret. What? Where?

Dangle. Ay, you mean in the paper of Thursday; it was completely ill-natured, to be sure.

Sir Fret. Oh, so much the better. Ha ha! I wouldn't have it otherwise.

Dangle. Certainly, it is only to be laughed at; for

Sir Fret. You don't happen to recollect what the fellow said, do you?

Sneer. Pray, Dangle-Sir Fretful seems a little anxious. Sir Fret. Oh, no! not anxious-not I-not in the least. I-But one may as well hear, you know.

Dangle. Sneer, do you recollect? Make out something. [Aside. Sneer. I will.-[To DANGLE.] Yes, yes, I remember perfectly.

Sir Fret. Well, and pray now-not that it signifies-what might the gentleman say?

Sneer. Why, he roundly asserts that you have not the slightest invention or original genius whatever, though you are the greatest traducer of all other authors living.

Sir Fret. Ha! ha! ha!-very good!

Sneer. That, as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own, he believes, even in your commonplace book, where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method as the ledger of the lost and stolen office.

Sir Fret. Ha! ha! ha!-very pleasant.

Sneer. Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill

even to steal with taste; but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sediments-like a bad tavern's worst wine.

Sir Fret. Ha! ha!

Sneer. In your more serious efforts, he says, your bombast would be less intolerable if the thoughts were ever suited to the expression; but the homeliness of the sentiment stares through the fantastic incumbrance of its fine language-like a clown in one of the new uniforms!

Sir Fret. Ha! ha!

Sneer. That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey; while your imitations of Shakspeare resemble the mimicry of Falstaff's page, and are about as near the standard of the original.

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Sneer. In short, that even the finest passages you steal are of no service to you; for the poverty of your own language prevents their assimilating, so that they lie on the surface like lumps of marl on a barren moor, encumbering what is not in their power to fertilize!

Sir Fret. [After great agitation.] Now another person would be vexed at this.

Sneer. Oh! but I wouldn't have told you, only to divert you. Sir Fret. I know it-I am diverted. Ha! ha! ha! not the least invention! Ha! ha! ha!-very good! very good!

Sneer. Yes-no genius! Ha! ha! ha!

Dangle. A severe rogue! Ha! ha! ha! but you are quite right, Sir Fretful, never to read such nonsense.

Sir Fret. To be sure-for, if there is anything to one's praise, it is a foolish vanity to be gratified at it; and, if it is abuse, why one is always sure to hear of it from one goodnatured friend or other.

Mel pom' e ne, (myth.) the Muse who presides over tragedy.

Pla'gia rist, one who offers as his own the writings of another.

LESSON XLI.

THE NIGHT BEFORE WATERLO0.

BY LORD BYRON.

George Gordon (Lord Byron), one of the greatest of English poets, was born in London, in 1788. He came of a noble family, his ancestors having come over with William the Conqueror, of which fact the poet was sufficiently proud, and which he seemed never to forget. In 1807 he published his Hours of Idleness, a collection of youthful effusions, which were severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review. Two years later appeared his reply, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, a stinging satire, which obtained immediate celebrity. He then went to the Continent, and, in 1812, gave the world the fruits of his travels in the first two cantos of Childe Harold. The effect of this poem was electric, and lifted him suddenly to the highest pinnacle of poetic fame. In April, 1816, BYRON left England with the avowed intention of never seeing it again; and, after extensive travel on the Continent, took up his abode in Venice, then at Pisa, and afterward at Genoa. During this period he wrote The Corsair, The Giaour, The Siege of Corinth, The Bride of Abydos, Parisinæ, Beppo, Mazeppa, Manfred, Cain-a Mystery, The Lament of Tasso, and Cantos three and four of Childe Harold. At the end of December, 1823, he sailed for Cephalonia, to take part with the Greeks in their war for independence, but died, through exposure on the voyage, at Missoloughi, April 19, 1824. The following well-known extract is from his most perfect poem, Childe Harold:

HERE was a sound of revelry by night,

And Belgium's capital had gathered then

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose, with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

And all went merry as a marriage bell;

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

2. Did ye not hear it?-No; 'twas but the wind,

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined!

No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet—

But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!

Arm! arm! it is-it is the cannon's opening roar !

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