Imatges de pàgina
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DUET.*

Pluto. Come, Ma'am, let's have none of your wipes,
How Pluto is bother'd with Proserpine!
We live like tobacco in pipes!—

All fuming and burning, and gossiping.
Hot meals are my only delight,

And my taste is what nobody hinders;
I roast coals by day, and at night

Make a relishing hash of the cinders!
Tol de rol, &c.

Proserpine. Oh! Sir, I was gathering of plants,

Some purple, some green, and some blue too,
In a little back field of my aunt's,

When who should come by me but Pluto.

I wish he had left me alone,

And that fortune had ne'er such a sinner sent;
But me he thought proper to bone,

While picking of daisies, and innocent!

ALL SING.

But here we are merry and wise,

Singing tol de rol lol, &c.

All royally pigging together,-
A fig for your north poles and ice,—
We snap our burnt fingers at weather!
All here are a set of mad elves,

None his broiling and joking can smother,
And when we've done roasting ourselves,
Why, we turn-to, and roast one another.
Tol de rol, &c.

RECITATIVE.+

Pluto. Come, mother Proserpine-you'll shove us off

The throne!-you're greedy, Ma'am! (coughs). Now drat that cough!
Hold, or your tongue will purchase you a basting,
You're quite tormenting with your flabbergasting.

Proserpine. Hard-hearted king of brimstone-Oh! By goles,
You fire me with disdain as well as coals.

Let me from my sweet fields bid you defiance,

And live again among the Dandelions!

Waiting Person. But, please your Majesty-the boat approaches.
Pluto. Silence. You make more row than fifty coaches.

Air, "Over the Water to Charlie."

Over the water, and over the fire,—

This is the shore, lads! to pull for!

Now they draw nigher-and now they draw nigher,

Row, lads-aye-row through the sulphur.

Well done, old Charon-now pull altogether,
Now pull altogether for Pluto;

Tell that gay man in the white hat and feather,
Him, the king strikes a tattoo to!

Tol de rol (chorus, with a roll of a drum.) During the end of this chorus of Tol de rol, the boat appears with Charon, and one or two ladies. Giovanni standing up. Donna Anna, and Zerlina.

* Perhaps a few lines of conversation to separate the chorus from this song would not have been amiss ;-though in modern Operas it is impossible to give too much of singing. This little familiar duet between the God and Goddess is the perfection of devilish satisfaction, and rural tenderness!

+ A little rhyme, instead of reason, "sometimes does well." Mr. M. has a very proper notion of Pluto's dignity, and keeps him, as well as he can, from putting his infernal foot in prose.

It is quite a rule, that the Gods and Goddesses now-a-days should be familiar with all carthly things. Neptune may hail a boat at Hungerford, and Jove go home in a

Jarvis.

Don Giovanni. What's the fare?

Charon. The women?*

Don Giovanni. No, fool, the ferry-money.

Charon. The Act only allows me a penny; but gentlemen gives me what they like.

Don Giovanni. A penny, you vulgar sculler of dead sculls! I despise the coin. I shall cross your immortal fist with a tizzy.

Charon. It looks but rummish.-There's a crack in it.-It's as bad a tester as the tester of my bedstead.

Don Giovanni. You 're right, it is a cracked one, for none but a cracked sixpence would be so mad as to come here to pay the ferryman of the infernals. You take that or none.

Charon. Say no more. Get out. You are almost as bad as the learned professors. I gets † coppers from none but the parsons and the lawyers— and only from them with great difficulty.

Don Giovanni. You're right again. It's as hard to unset a copper from a lawyer's pocket as from his wash-house.

Pluto. Go back, Charon. Let's have no

nonsense.-Set down your

cargo, and bolt.—I wish he'd take away the peticoaters! (Aside.)

Trio-PLUTO, CHARON, DON GIOVANNI.
Tune," Mr. Lobski."

Charon. Mr. Pluto, you'll please to understand,
You've got a rum devil in your devil's land;
He'd kiss mother Proserpine, were she his aunt,
He's a brute at going to gallivant!

To gallivant, to gallivant, &c.

Pluto. If he kisses my chuck I shall soon chuck him out,
Or kick him (provided I hav'nt the gout),

The gout I sometimes have, as which of us ha'n't,
For, by goles, the gout is the devil's complaint,
Devil's complaint, his own complaint, &c.

Don Giovanni. Mr. Boatman, begone-my noble Pluto,
Keep in repose your royal old toe,

My name's Giovanni, I ne'er should incline

To your duck of the daisies, Miss Proserpine!
Miss Proserpine-dame Proserpine, &c.

Charon (pushing off). Aye, aye, it's all fine talking. He's made a pretty bustle on earth; and if there's a bit of dust § in your majesty's dominions, Don Giovanni's the chap that will kick it up. (Exeunt Charon and Boat.) And there's a brace of teazers with him! (Pointing to Donna Anna and Zerlina.) Pluto. Before I let him in, with all his pack Of petticoated mischief, I shall sack Truth's citadel.-Woman, stand forth.

Proserpine.

The creature (looking at Don Giovanni) Hath, by my brimstone taste, a pretty feature. (Aside.)

• The infernals love a bad pun. We can now pretty well guess where all the d

puns go.

+ Charon talks no better grammar than our own watermen; but bad grammar is extremely humorous, if freely and judiciously used. But query, Is Charon a waterman or a fireman ?—I fear this mixture of elements would produce the same hiss in a theatre that it does in nature. It would puzzle an audience, however, to damn Charon; for, as Corporal Trim says, "He is damn'd already.”

Pluto forgets his English a little.-But there is something so resolute and impressive in the phrase of "no nonsense," that we should be hurt to have it altered or refined.

§ There is little doubt but that the Giovannis are a race more likely to kick up a dust, than to come down with it. This little touch of character is well detected by old Charon.-But in his calling he, of course, became experienced in character.

The passion for Giovanni is the ruling one. No one can resist him. Lucretia would have tipped him the wink in her whitest days.

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The lawful wife of this intemperate bed jester.
Oh, that I now could search St. Martin's register!
Pluto. He'll quite corrupt my court.-He sha'n't come here.
What do you say, young man ?-Silence, my dear!
DON GIOVANNI-Song.

Air, "Please Goody."

Pray, Pluto, please to double up that lady's rancorous tongue,
And take away that Fury from my eyes;
Remember, where a woman is, the prejudice is strong;
She's no wife! and her I do despise.

I scorn ill!

Born ill,

She keeps a shop on Cornhill;

Once I ask'd her

For canastre;

Don't believe her lies!

Pray, Pluto, &c.

Donna Anna. My character abused!-i' fegs!-a black one'is't?
On Cornhill, too!-I a tobacconist!

Let me come at him!

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Don Giovanni. Pray hold her fast, she's tolerably stout,

Pluto.

Zerlina.

Keep down her claws, she'll scratch my optics out!
I am not guilty of one crime-That hussey
Wo'n't let me roast in quiet!

What says Zerlina?

Perhaps she's muzzy!) met

He's a sad deceiver!
He's as unruly as a half-starved weaver!

No woman meets his eye, but he would che-at her.

Donna Anna. The common creature's known at every theatre.

END OF THE SCENE.§

A question put merely for the sake of the rhyme. Mr. M authorities for this sort of writing.

"One line for rhyme, and one for reason,

Is quite sufficient at a season."

-ff has the oldest

+ This song from between two supporters is vehemence itself. It quite shows off th power of song.

Cheat is here made a dissyllable for the sake of rhyme :

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"At times,

Kings are not more imperative than rhymes."

§ The piece is supported by the intrigues of Giovanni and Proserpine, and Pluto and Zerlina, and Charon and Donna Anna. But as they are mere copies, in vulgar, of the Italian vices, I shall not give them here. The mixture of song and dialogue, and slang and sensibility, is the perfection of Mr. M. -ff's style, and the present selection will afford the reader a pretty tolerable notion of it. There are 362 songs yet to come; but," enough is as good as a feast."

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ON THE ELGIN MARBLES.

Ar the conclusion of a former article on this subject,* we ventured to lay down some general principles, which we shall here proceed to elucidate in such manner as we are able, 1. The first, was, that art is (first and last) the imitation of nature.

By nature, we mean actually existing nature, or some one object to be found in rerum naturâ, not an idea of nature existing solely in the mind, got from an infinite number of different objects, but which was never yet embodied in an individual instance. Sir Joshua Reynolds may be ranked at the head of those who have maintained the supposition that nature (or the universe of things) was indeed the ground-work or foundation on which art rested; but that the superstructure rose above it, that it towered by degrees above the world of realities, and was suspended in the regions of thought alonethat a middle form, a more refined idea, borrowed from the observation of a number of particulars, but unlike any of them, was the standard of truth and beauty, and the glittering phantom that hovered round the head of the genuine artist:

-So from the ground Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence

the leaves

More airy, last the bright consummate

flower!

We have no notion of this vague, equivocal theory of art, and contend, on the other hand, that each image in art should have a tally or corresponding prototype in some object in nature. Otherwise, we do not see the use of art at all: it is a mere superfluity, an incumbrance to the mind, a piece of "laborious foolery," -for the word, the mere name of any object or class of objects will convey the general idea, more free from particular details or defects than any the most neutral and indefinite representation that can be produced by forms and colours. The word Man, for instance, conveys a more filmy, impalpable, abstracted,

and (according to this hypothesis) sublime idea of the species, than Michael Angelo's Adam, or any real image can possibly do. If this then is the true object of art, the language of painting, sculpture, &c. becomes quite supererogatory. Sir Joshua and the rest contend, that nature (properly speaking) does not express any single individual, nor the whole mass of things as they exist, but a general principle, a something common to all these, retaining the perfections, that is, all in which they are alike, and abstracting the defects, namely, all in which they differ: so that, out of actual nature, we compound an artificial nature, never answering to the former in any one part of its mock-existence, and which last is the true object of imitation to the aspiring artist. Let us adopt this principle of abstraction as the rule of perfection, and see what havoc it will make in all our notions and feelings in such matters. If the perfect is the intermediate, why not confound all objects, all forms, all colours at once? Instead of painting a landscape with blue sky, or white clouds, or the green earth, or grey rocks and towers; what should we say, if the artist (so named) were to

treat all these "fair varieties " as so many imperfections and mistakes in the creation, and mass them all together, by mixing up the colours on his palette in the same dull leaden tone, and call this the true principle of epic landscape-painting? Would not the thing be abominable, an abortion, and worse than the worst Dutch picture? Variety then is one principle, one beauty in external nature, and not an everlasting source of pettiness and deformity, which must be got rid of at all events, before taste can set its seal upon the work, or fancy own it. But it may be said, it is different in things of the same species, and particularly in man, who is cast in a regular mould, which mould is one. What then, are we, on this pretext, to confound the difference of sex in a sort of hermaphro

* See No. XXVL p 153.

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