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 infinitum or, 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

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 her 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-light night, 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,"

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 Hu bert to King John, " My lord, they say five moons are seen to-night;"he would not improbably have repli ed 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.

Here, then, I conclude for the pre

sent. 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, 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 character of the Edinburgh Review: but, I think, that my motive is somewhat better than that of Francis the Little.

the

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 tors. Eating and drinking are the patriotism, therefore, I resist the docgrand panacea, the elixir vite, and I never knew one of these whey-faced tadpoles, who did not commence operations by cutting down one or the other. 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 jawbone of an ass?

Instead of looking over their pothooks and hangers, therefore, I spend my time in writing articles which dewhich delight myself. That I have light the world, or in reading books 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 had fallen aside until the day before you, with your other admirable works,) yesterday; but I got hold of it in good time. I was just seized with a twinge of the rheumatism, which was intolerable. 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

ment, was brought in and laid before me by my lassie. I took it up in preference to all the rest, and read it with gusto, as a certain pimpled lecturer would say, not that he knows the meaning of the word, but because it makes the ignorant, his principal readers, imagine that he understands Italian. It amused me not a little, though many of the stories are old-venerable Pierce, with the rust of ancient magazines upon them-and many more, simply cuts from those authentic registers of events the newspapers. Yet it is a pleasant little book. It revived me to read of hunting, fishing, shooting, coursing, racing, and the other varieties of sporting, which I was once able to enjoy. I never was as great a sportsman as Nimrod or Colonel Thornton, and yet I have ridden in as close after the hounds as either of them; and I still reflect with pleasure on hearing old,—no matter who, for I cannot trust myself to write his name, as my eyes are dim from merely thinking of it-on hearing a gay-hearted old squire exclaim, when I hunted in Yorkshire some thirty years ago, "By goles, that there gaffer" (meaning me) "roides rum! Raddle me, if he be'ant a'most as foin a broidel-hond as Yallow Dick, the huntsman; and mayhap, if he takes to it koindly, he may be as great a man a' together." A prophecy accomplished rather in a different manner from what the vaticinator intended. I was a fair shot, and a tolerable courser. I remember one day but I see that I am beginning to prate about myself. Garrulity concerning past events is one of the prime characteristics of old age, as you will find mentioned a dozen times in the notes of Clarke's Homer, if you are up to reading it. When I began, I did not intend to say a word about myself, being desirous to call your attention to a far different subject, to which I shall immediately advert, after remarking en passant that stories of thieves, pickpockets, blacklegs, &c. ought not to be mixed up with anecdotes of sporting and sporting men. Bill Habbersfield and Duke Hamilton, the Prince of Wales, Major Baggs, and Tom Crib, do not agree well together. Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur, as Ovid very properly remarks on the occasion, in a verse which has been thus ingeniously translated by Mr Cor

Don't take their drink together, by Apollo.

This, however, is a bagatelle scarcely worth noticing; but I confess I was seriously vexed at finding an article, p. 30, &c. in your book, written by a Cockney, on the subject of poor Cavanagh, the great Irish fives-player. Is it not enough, I exclaimed, that these Cockneys write about politics, war, law, poetry, drama, without knowing a pinsworth about them, with the most brazen and indomitable assurance? Are they not satisfied with befouling by their slaver, or intolerable conceit, every thing venerable or amiable in the country? Are we not pestered enough with them elsewhere, without having them flung in our faces, while comfortably reading a book of sporting anecdotes? You certainly are a very proper man in your line, Pierce, but you cannot have as much experience of men and books as I, or you never would have polluted your work by any of the impertinent drivellings of this fellow, no more than you would have put a handful of bay-salt into your punch-bowl, the very idea of which thrills my soul with horror. I determined to write to you at once about it, and though scarcely able to hold my pen, you see I am putting my determination into practice.

The calm assurance of this article altogether astonishes me. Here's a fellow who talks of playing fives! The force of impudence could no farther go. Why, man, he never played a game at it in his life. His ideas could never soar so high: he could as soon fly to the lunar sphere, like Daniel O'Rourke or Astolpho. He has not the spirit to engage in any game, which would require more pluck than is possessed by a well-trained shrimp, or a city haberdasher. The little blood he ever had in his veins, has been washed away by eternal dilutions of tea, by everlast ing decoctions of congo. His hands, lord love them, are too pretty for any thing, but to wield his pen for the purpose of writing venomous tirades against his King and country, or lackadaisiacal, water-gruel sonnets on the peterpastoral ruralities of the Serpen tine or Fleetditch. And yet he has the unparalleled audacity to pretend