Imatges de pàgina
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TALKERS.

THERE are as many varieties of Talkers as there are of tulips: to classify them would require the nice discernment and patient perseverance of an ethical Linnæus; and when done, it would be an useless classification, unless, indeed,Taste could be brought to have a love for the cultivation of them, with an ulterior view to the improvement of the several classes, by marrying a common female scold of the last class with a refined male babbler of the first and thus effect by artificial means what Wisdom, with all her old endeavours, could never work by any means,-an improvement of Talkers generally.

There is, however, a pleasure in holding up a few of the first classes of Talkers to notice, similar to that, perhaps, which a tulip-fancier feels, when he displays to the wondering eyes of one not in the fancy, (who had perceived, on being shewn a bed of them, that they were all tulips, VOL. I. F

but did not discern the nicer streaks of difference between them,)

Some faultless tulip which the Dutch ne'er saw.

The most common class of talkers is composed of Babblers. There are several varieties of these; but the most disagreeable is the Long-tongued Babbler. One of them is sufficient to set a whole village at war, or disturb the peace and sacredness of virtuous privacy. Rather than be silent, he will wound his dearest friend, with a tongue, which, like Laertes' foil, poisons where it touches-and even him who uses it. From this sort of talker you learn the origin of Miss A's finery, and Miss B's faux pas; the rise of Mr. C's wealth, and the state of Mr. D's embarrassment, &c.

If you have doubts of the character of Browne, he hesitates at a fault-hemshints at a second-hems again, and out comes a third. If you think well of White, he damns him with faint praise,'

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recollects to have heard something whispered not entirely redounding to his honour;-not that he believes it--idle rumours are not gospel truths: and then he

5-SATURDAY, FEB. 9, 1828.

tells you what Thompson thought, but never said, and what Dixon said, but never thought, of poor W. He publishes a mischievous piece of truth or scandal (either answers the purpose of the day) in the morning, and follows the sound of his own rumour as a weather-mutton follows his own bell. Gifted with the interfering spirit of Marplot, he gets the wages of Marall for his labours,-cuffs and contempt. The Babbler is commonly an unhappy person, for he has meddled too much with t he happiness of others to be happy himself; and having made it the sole business of his life to betray some hurtful truth, or harmless ill of all, no one thinks it absolutely necessary to speak well of him, either in epitaph or elegy.

Another variety is the Dull or Harmless Babbler. This is a talker in his turn and out of his turn-in season and out of season; and yet has nothing to communicate. Yes-you may learn from him that it rained yesterday; and that it is not impossible that it may rain to-day. He is Francis Moore's counter-prophet: the one foretells when showers will fall-the other registers their descent.

The next in succession are the Smalltalkers. These are tea-table appendages who sometimes hang by the sinister bend of ladies' elbows; and are usually 'prim, puss-gentlemen,' all prettiness and pettiness. Ceaseless tonguers of 'words of no tone,' they lisp, or cultivate some delicate mispronunciation of one of the four-and-twenty letters, or of a few wellselected syllables. They have a chicken's perseverance in picking up the smallest grain or chaff of tea-table intelligence, and are not greedy in keeping it to themselves: -no,-you may have their second-hand nothings at less than they cost. Their intelligence is a stewed frog in an Ontario of broth--as one dew-drop in the desert of Arabia,-or as an inaccessible island in a sea of three months' sail; you may steer round it, and by it, and never touch the land: it is a Thule beyond the Ultima Thule of mental navigation, and lies beyond the reach of any intellectual Cook or Vancouver: you think you des cry it in the offing, and tacking, hope to drift on its shore; but when you really see it under your bow, you may coast round it, and cast out your grapple-an

chor to hold-to, but you should as soon tie up your horse with a sun-beam, or get a will-o'-the-wisp to light you like a wellbred link-boy to your lodgings, as make ground there. The light of their minds need not be hidden under a bushel; a pill-box would be a dome of' ample space and verge enough' for it: like one good deed in a naughty world,' it might shine therein, and then not gild its confines. Their most delicate, prim mouths are like perfumers' shops, and breathe nothing but sweets.' Their talk is redolent of essence of Tyre, bloom of Ninon, violet washes, pomade divine, and a hundred other essences. They'die of a rose in aromatic' anguish, and are recovered by lavender-water and other soft appliances' fifty times in an evening in their overexquisite moods.

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The third are Talkers of the objective class. Be your opinions what they may, however undeniable, correct, settled, or well-digested, they can object to them. They can find flaws in diamond-wit of the first water; motes in the brightest rays of the mind; and beams in the eyes of Truth. I know such an one. If you would take out of his mouth an advantage which he is gaining in argument, throw down a bad pun as burglars toss a bribe of meat to a house-dog who is getting the vantageground of them, and he will instantly drop the argument (as that fabulous dog dropped his substantial meat in the river for its duplicate shadow) to tear the poor pun to pieces, analyzing nothing till he proves it is something; and when he has satisfied himself that a bad joke is not a good one, he is, from mere politeness, obliged to laugh, however reluctantly.

The fourth is the contradictory class. Let your opinions to-day be to the letter what their's were yesterday, and they instantly run an opposition coach against you, upset you on the mudbank of their own opinions, and leave you sprawling and bespattered, to get up as you can. When you have run them to a stand on one point, and they find you are agreeing with them, and they cannot object to the matter of your opinions, they have still a resource left in objecting to the manner. You speak unaffectedly, and they censure you for mediocrity, plainness, and want of spirit: you talk on stilts, to be on a level with them, and then you presume too much for so young a man, of so few opinions. You speak with slowness and distinctness, and they dislike a drawling speaker: they would as lief be tied to a 'lover's lute,' or a Lincolnshire drone :' you speak high and quick, and your voice is shrill as a cricket's, and there is no following it, like a grasshopper's. You mo

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destly betray that you are well read in the classics, and they accuse you of pedantry: you conceal your reading, and they suspect you know very little either of books or men. You bring them old opinions, and they doubt whether you have any of your own: you deal in new ones, and they object to them as untrue, yet adopt them as sound, and put them forth, where they are safe from detection, as their own. In short, you strive in vain to agree with men who will not, or cannot, agree with themselves; and you have a good-natured talker's reward for your pains-words.

A specimen of the fifth class is the Talker in admirations. His conversation (if such it may be called) is all exclamation, like a German drama and is made up of such jargonisms as Good-God! God bless me! Is it possible! Who would have thought it! You astonish me! Very shocking! Very pleasant, &c. &c.

The sixth are the interrogative class. Their talk is all question: one might think that their tongues were shaped like an interrogation. You feel in conversing with one of these like a catechized charity boy, when he is asked what his godfather promised not to do for him. Talk for an hour with one of these, and you will only hear from him such interrogatory affirmations as these:- And so Jones is well?

and Johnson's married ?—and you really prefer Pope to Pomfret ?-and you seriously deny that Cobbett is the author of Junius?'-and affirm that Dr.Watts did not write Fly not Yet?'

The seventh and most insufferable class are the exclusive Talkers. One of these will undertake to talk for all the persons present. If you impatiently throw in a word, it is like flinging a stone into a current; it disturbs and cannot impede it, but rather impels it still faster onwards: or it is like striking a spark into a barrel of gunpowder-a fresh explosion of words spreads a hubbub and confusion all around. Though he tells you every thing you already know, you cannot tell him any thing that he does not know. He can tell you what a new book contains that is to come out next Tuesday, as well as if he was himself Wednesday: or anticipate the merits of a great picture on the easel. If you mean to see a new tragedy, he has seen it, and he destroys all the delight you anticipated in its newness, by repeating its best points, and unravelling its plot. If you set out with an anecdote he snatches it out of your mouth, as a covetous dog would a desired bone from his best companion and dearest puppy-friend, and tells it for you; you object that your's was a different version of the same

story, and gently persist in telling it your own way; he knows the other version as well as you do, and re-relates it for you, but thinks his own way preferable: if you persist, after all, in telling it for yourself, he will insinuate to-morrow that you are in your anecdotage; and declare that you are the worst teller of a good thing since Goldsmith. Indeed, you cannot do a more impolitic thing than start an anecdote in his hearing, for that one is too certain of reminding him of a hundred others; and the last one of that first century of good things is so nearly related to the first of the second century, that he cannot choose but relate it, and you dare not choose but hear it. If you commence a favourite quotation, he takes up the second line, goes on with it, and ends by quoting twice as much as you intended: this invariably leads him to recollect another poem by the same author, which no doubt you have heard, but which some body else, who is present, would perhaps like to hear; and then he begins without further prelude, and you may if you please go to sleep ad interim, if you have no fear of his reproach for want of taste before your eyes to keep them open. You have been to Paris, and he informs you of your expenses on the road; or you are going to Scotland, and he narrates most pathetically the miseries of a German inn. Of all talkers these are the most insufferable.

The seventh class are the Exaggerators, --not your professional, but amateur fibbers. These are a pleasant set of talk ers enough, only you must not take them too literally. It is a humour that even witty persons cannot always appreciate to your thoroughly sensible and one-andone-make-two sort of minds' it is a stumbling-block and a reproach.' It is, perhaps, as to its conversational value, mere nonsense: it is what an ingenious punster (fracturing a French word in pieces) considers bad-in-age, and not tolerable in youth. But, most sensible reader, shut not thine ears wholly against it if thou wouldst enjoy Sense at any time listen sometimes to his less capable brother, Nonsense. After the mind has been wearied by abstruse studies, worldly cares, imaginary ills, or positive griefs, is not nonsense like letting a long-strained bow relax, or giving slackness to a lutestring? Nonsense is to sense like shade unto light, making by contrast what is beautiful still more beautiful :-it is like an intended discord in a delicious melody making the next concord the sweeter: like silent sleep after sorrowful wakefulness; the calm which succeeds a storm : like cheerfulness after care; condescen

sion after hauteur: like the freedom of night-gown and slippers after tight boots and bursting buttons; or a night of dancing after a month of gout: like that delicious giggle some schoolboy gives way to when some hush-compelling Busby turns his back; or the laugh politeness has suppressed till one has shut the door on a puppy or pedant: and it is like an olive to the palate of a wine-bibber, sickly in itself, but giving a gusto to the old port of the mind, or to the brisk, bubbling champagne-wine of wit.-One of the most delightful of exaggerators is ***** **** : it is, perhaps, the pleasantest ingredient in his lighter writings; and in his more serious ones, it is only a more serious twanging of the same string. This is sometimes mistaken for mere affectation, but it is merely a vivid magnifying of minor objects into an exaggerated importance, by exhibiting them through a kind of mental microscope. This humour too, is the peculiar charm of his tabletalk, and makes it very sprightly and sparkling give him an idea which is stretchable into exaggeration, and he will extenuate it into the most ludicrous elongations and monstrous distortions, resembling those long faces we have seen thrown out by magic lanthorns. Dean Swift was, perhaps, the greatest master in this kind of talking and writing.

There are several other classes, which I shall notice in brief. The slow Talkers, as tedious as the Te Deum; the quick Talkers, sudden as a postman's knock, and not always as full of information; the loud Talkers, to a nervous man, as agreeable as the din of a dustman's bell, or a death-knell in November; and the Talkers about taste, whose language is of no country, but is a jargon of all countries, and consists of parrot-like repetitions of virtu, gusto, tout-ensemble, contour, chiaroscura, Titianesque bits of colour, Turnerian crispness and clearness, Claudian mellowness, Tintoretto touches, &c. &c. affected term on term, to the degrading of Taste into a chaotic cant of words.-Posthumous Papers.

SUBJECT OF THE ILLUSTRATION.

IT may be necessary to inform such of our readers who are not conversant with the subject of Tasso's Heroic Poem, Jerusalem Delivered, that it is founded on the attempt made by the Christian Powers of Europe to deliver the Holy City from the Saracens. The chief instigator of these Holy Wars, was Peter the Hermit, and the portion of the poem which forms

our first illustration, is the choosing Godfrey of Bulloigne, commander of the Christian Forces, assembled to carry their intentions into execution.

When from bis seat the hermit Peter stood;
Who sate with princes their debates to share.
The holy author of this pious war.

What Godfrey speaks with ardour I approve,
Such obvious truths must ev'ry bosom move;
'Tis yours, O chiefs! to own its genuine pow'r,
But let me add to his one counsel more.
When now, revolving in my careful mind,
I view our actions past, by strife disjoin'd;
Our jarring wills; our disunited force;
And many plans obstructed in their course;
Methinks my judgment to their spring can trace
The troubled motions that our cause disgrace.
'Tis in that power, in many leaders join'd,
Of various tempers and discordant mind.
If o'er the rest no sovereign chief preside
T'allot the several posts, the tasks divide;
To scourge th' offender, or rewards bestow;
What riot and misrule the state o'erflow!
Then in one body join our social band,
And trust the rule to one important hand;
To him resign the sceptre and the sway,
And him their king th' united host obey.

Here ceas'd the reverend sage. O zeal divine! What bosoms can withstand a pow'r like thine? Thy sacred breath the herinit's words inspir'd, And with his words the listening heroes fir'd; Dispell'd their doubts, their passions lull'd to rest, And vain ambition chas'd from every breast.

Then Guelpho first and William (chiefs of fame)
Saluted Godfrey with a general's name,
Their chief elect: the rest approv'd the choice,
And gave the rule to him with public voice.
His equals once to his dominion yield
Supreme in council, and supreme in field?*

AGATHA GHERANZI:

By John Bird, Esq.

Book I.

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THE joy of Mantua was great and undissembled at the approaching nuptials of the bravest of her sons with the fairest and most amiable of her daughters. Vincentio, the only child of the widowed marquis Petroni, had served under the viceroy Beauharnois, with honour to him self and credit to his native city, and had even attracted the particular observation of the penetrating and sagacious Napoleon, by his coolness and intrepidity on several occasions of great difficulty and peril. The youth, in common with most of his compatriots, had regarded the Emperor as the destined emancipator of his country from her long slumber of thral

dom and abasement, but a clearer know

ledge of the character and views of that ambitious and selfish commander had long taught him the fallacy of his hopes; when the reverses consequent on the battle of Leipsic dissolved the proud but

baseless fabric of despotism, and restored the young warrior to the arms of a fond and doating father. The admiration that greeted his return to Mantua was loud and deserved. Toil and travel had but perfected the graces of his noble form: the ever-changing life and duties of a soldier had contributed only to foster the enthusiasm of his soul, the ardent and generous impulses of his nature. He had trod the red fields of war witli unsullied step, and for him its laurel had no poison.

First among those who welcomed his return to his native city were the long attached friends of his father, the count and countess Gheranzi, whose only daughter, with somewhat of a prophetic spirit, had been playfully betrothed to him in their years of childhood. Vincentio had left Agatha a blooming girl, lively as a fawn, and not less gentle; he found her a lovely woman, whose beauty was her least perfection. Amazed, delighted, enamour ed, with the natural ardour of his temperament he sought and won her affections; and by families long united in friendship, and rich in ancestry and wealth what more could be desired than that ce

menting tie which the union of children, mutually loving and beloved, was about to produce! The count Gheranzi, it is true, was once heard to say, that, had not Agatha rejected the prince of Castel Monti, his house might have looked down on that of Petroni; but a gentle remonstrance from the more generous countess silenced the latent discontent which this observation seemed to imply. On the other hand, the marquis Petroni, who lived but in his with an anxiety which seemed to border son, hastened the nuptial preparations and health, and it could not reasonably on folly; but he was declining in years therefore be matter of surprise that he should be desirous, by the marriage of that son, to secure him from further wan

derings. Two days only were to elapse before the celebration of the holy rite, to which all Mantua looked forward with impatient joy, when the marquis was suddenly taken ill, and in a few hours breathed his last in the arms of his distracted child. The violence of the seizure had deprived him almost instantly of the power of speech; and, as it seemed, at a time when some fatal secret was labouring in his breast. The expiring struggles of humanity are at all times awful; but when

to the throes of nature are added the pangs of conscience, how dreadful are the last moments of man! In vain did Vincentio attempt to tranquillize his wretched parent; even as his eyes glazed * See the Embellishment, illustrative of the in death his looks were of sorrow and above, page 65,

despair.

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