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THE CLASSICAL WORLD.

THE late conflagration of both the London theatres is familiar to every reader. Our facetious poet has availed himself of this opportunity to address a consolatory ode to Mr. Harris, one of the managers at Drury-Lane. The two first stanzas are evincive of the poet's powers in the lyric measure. In the next, the allusion will be perfectly understood by those, who witnessed last winter the representation of a favourite pantomime. The allusion in the close of the ode is to the circumstance of the prince of Wales, who is a free-mason, laying the first stone of the new theatre. The pun, in the last stanza is both pretty and

accurate.

HORACE IN LONDON. BOOK I, ODE 24.

To Mr. Harris.

What handkerchief our tears can hide!

See Vulcan scale on every side

The Muses' habitation.

Vain all our elegies of wo,

For numbers in their liquid flow,

Wont quell a conflagration.

Melpomene, thou queen of art,
Teach me thy strut and measured start,
I'll through the ruins wander—

First wail in lullabies of love,

Then bully all the gods above,
Like Nat Lee's Alexander.

My favourite theatre's destroy'd,
Its crowded pit an empty void,
Its golden egg is addled;

Its pantomimic crew let loose,
And forth to COLMAN's Mother Goose
Has, like a lame duck, waddled.

Authors and actors fume and fret,

But none the accident regret

So much as thou, my HARRIS,

To tell this truth, there needs no ghost,
He most laments, who suffers most;

Whene'er a scheme miscarries.

Though Jove had arm'd thy mighty mind,
With wit to bottle up the wind,

As once he arm'd Ulysses.

Vain all thy puffs the flame to quell;
Theatric property farewell,

When angry Vulcan hisses.

"Tis hard, but see where Brunswick's heir
Approaches-prithee banish care,

And put a better face on.

The very stones, with tell tale ring,
Prate of his whereabout, and sing
Long live the royal mason.

The Muses in their aprons white,

Sing Io Paean at the sight,

And call his highness "Mother."

With journeymen like these at work,

Laughing Thalia, with a smirke

Shall soon erect another.

BANTER.

How to court irresistibly, or the loves of Mr. Wiggins and Mrs. Waddle.

Oh, sweet Mrs. Vaddle, dont frown such a frown,

You'll ne'er get a lover more truer,

Should you search through the country, or look through the town,

Than me, Billy Viggins, the brewer.

Than the stout that I now drink to you, my dear ma'am,

'Pon my honour, my love it is stouter,

You have knowd me sometimes, and you knows vat I am,
But you cant say you knows me a spouter.

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Then pray, Mrs. Vaddle, be sweet as is malt,
Not bitter as best Kentish hops is,

If my rival you ved, you'll be greatly in fault,
For you dont know vat animals fops is.

But if you vill have me, then, O dear, how I'll strut;
Mine's a flame that vill never expire-

My rival may prove, should you ved him, all but,
But, depend on it, I'm entire.

His looks were like amber, his cheeks were not pale,

His eyes, O they sparkled like cyder;

He swore that his love was as strong as his ale,

And it was not his wish to deride her.

Though his speeches were frothy, his motives were clear,
By the brisk way he fixed on to court her,
For, says he, my dear angel, although I sells beer
You'll remember I deals too in porter.

Mrs. Waddle she found to deny were in vain,
He declar'd he'd ador'd since he knew her,

And as she, pleasant creature could never give painy
Why she wedded young Wiggins the brewer.

VARIETY.

THE prince de Ligne finely remarks that to paint Death, as we generally do, is a great injustice. We should represent Death in the shape of a venerable, mild, and serene matron, with traces of beauty in her countenance, and her arms gracefully expanded to receive us. This is the emblem of an eternal repose after a melancholy life harassed by anxieties and storms.

FONTENELLE had a brother at Paris who was an abbè. Being asked what his brother did, he answered; "In the morning he says mass; and in the evening he don't know what he says."

In the agreeable freedom and gay vivacity of the epistolary style, Dr. BEATTIE often excels. The ensuing extract will support the assertion:

I flatter myself I shall, ere long, be in the way of becoming a great man. For have I not headachs like Pope? vertigo, like Swift? gray hairs like Homer. Do not I wear large shoes like Virgil, and sometimes complain of sore eyes like Horace ? am I not at this present writing invested with a garment not less ragged than that of Socrates? Like Joseph the patriarch, I am a mighty dreamer of dreams. Like Nimrod the hunter, I am an eminent builder of castles in the air. I procrastinate like Julius Cæsar; and very lately, in imitation of Don Quixotte, I rode a horse lean, old, and lazy, like Rosinante. Sometimes, like Cicero, I write bad verses, and sometimes bad prose, like Virgil; I am of small stature, like Alexander the great, and I drink brandy and water like Mr. Boyd. I might compare myself in relation, to many other infirmities, to many other great men; but if fortune be not influenced in my favour by the particulars already enumerated, I shall despair of ever recominending myself to her good graces. I once had some thoughts of soliciting her patronage, on the score of my resembling great men in their qualities; but I had so little to say on that subject that I could not for my life furnish matter for one well rounded period: and you know a short ill turned speech is very improper to be used in an essay to a female deity.

Xenophon, Terence and Phaedrus are all characterised by their style of elegant simplicity, combining the most perfect precision and perspicuity with all the enchanting graces of fluent composition. With these immortal writers Julius Cæsar must be enrolled. With no great zeal for a military life, and without the experience of a single campaign, we have read Cæsar more than once with the raptures of a soldier, and fully subscribe to the justice of the ensuing encomium, by one of the most accomplished critics of the Scottish school:

I betook myself to the reading of Cæsar when I was at Peterhead, for I happened to have no other book. I had forgotten a great deal of him; and scarcely remembered any thing more than the opinion which I formed of his style about twenty-five years ago. But when I began I found it almost impossible to leave off. There is nothing in the historical style more perfect, and his transactions are a complete contrast to the military affairs of these times.*

The letter is dated August, 1779, and the contemptuous remark of its author, was probably an allusion to such commanders as Chinton and Howe:

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I know not which of his talents I should most admire, his indefatigable activity and perseverance; his intrepidity and presence of mind, which never fail him even for a moment; his address as a politician; his ability as a commander in which he seems to have no equal; or the beauty, brevity, elegance and modesty of his narrative. I understand all his battles as well as if I had seen them; and, in half a sentence, he explains to me the grounds and occasions of a war more fully than a modern historian could do in fifty pages of narrative, and as many more of dissertation. In a word, as the world at that time stood in need of an absolute sovereign, I am clearly of opinion that he should have been the person. Pompey was a vain coxcomb, who, because a wrong-headed faction had given him the title of magnus, foolishly thought himself the greatest of men. Cassius was a malecontent and a mere demagogue, and Brutus the dupe of a surly philosophy.

TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

THE author of a poem with the motto "Facit indignatio versus," may be exceedingly angry and deserve to be called the communis rixator of rhymsters, but he is nothing like a poet.

He never did on cleft Parnassus dream,
Nor taste the sacred Heliconian stream,
Nor can remember when his brain inspired,
Was by the Muses into madness fir'd,
His share in pale Pyrene must resign,

And claim no part in all the mighty nine.

A prolix harrangue upon one of the tritest topics that ever tried and exhausted the patience of the most tolerating reader, is ill adapted to the character of this miscellany.

This sort of declamation is of a very feeble character. The tropes and figures are ill chosen, and worse applied. Why will men write when they have nothing to the purpose to say? has been often asked, and why will men write when, as it may easily be discovered, no mortal will read what they have written?

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