We ask any impartial reader, whether he could possibly want a more sufficing account of the progress of this author's piece of reasoning upon Time. There is, first, the address to the hoary god, with all his emblems and consequence about him, the scythe excepted; that being an edge-tool to rhymers, which they judiciously keep inside the verse, as in a sheath. And then we are carried through all the stages of human existence, the caducity of which the writer applies to the world at large, impressing upon us the inutility of hope and exertion, and suggesting, of course, the propriety of thinking just as he does upon all subjects, political and moral, past, present, and to

come.

1822.

VICISSITUDES OF A LECTURE;

OR,

Public Elegance and Private Non-Particularity.

alive;

OOR NED POUNCHY! He is no longer otherwise we should not risk the wounding of his good-natured eyes by these. pages. Neither was he ever known enough to the many to undergo the hazard of their now digging him up again; and, finally, we have obscured the illustrious obscurity of his name by an alias. We may,

therefore, without offence, resuscitate a passage in his life for the amusement of those critical readers whom it was his highest ambition to gratify.

seized with a passion

Ned Pounchy had long been ate desire to give a lecture, his favorite mode of literary intercourse, and on Shakespeare and Milton, his favorite poets. Accordingly, after a series of blissful preparations and half-threatening obstacles, which only perfected the pleasure of the result, he found himself one evening at the upper end of a great room in a certain tavern, standing with book in hand, and in most consummate black satin small-clothes and silk stockings (the former very crinkled and scholarly), with a great screen at his back, and an expectant set of beholders in front of him, to whom he had undertaken to set forth the merits of a scene or two in the

"Tempest," and to recite Milton's charming poems, Allegro" and "Penseroso."

66

Now, our friend Pounchy, or rather our friend's friend (for we had no particular knowledge of him, except on this occasion), was a somewhat stout and short man, like many an eminent individual before and since, of some forty or five and forty years of age; and if, unlike them, he seemed to think his person qualified to compete with his intellectual attractions, and to require only "a fair stage and no favor," yet his genial disposition did (there can be no doubt of it) instinctively suggest to itself, that the favor would be granted him; and, in fact, he appeared so cosey and comfortable, and after-dinner-like, in the very midst of a certain elevation of neckcloth and powdered head, that it was impossible not to sympathize with his satisfaction, and be prepared to relish whatever taste he should be pleased to give us of his critical nicety. He had no rostrum or desk before him. All in that respect was open and above-board; undisguised as his good faith; and, as he walked to and fro, his shoes creaked a little.

Suddenly, after a brief but serious conference with some head that emerged from behind the screen, and returning towards us with a hum and haw, intermingled with applications of white handkerchief, he opened upon his audience with a brief introduction to the first scene of the "Tempest." His tones were of an importance commensurate with the fame of his author; and none of the homely seamanship in the text beguiled him, for an instant, out of a due respect for it. Not that he omitted to expatiate on the extreme natu

ralness of the scene: that was a point which Ned evidently regarded as one of the most serious objects of his duty to impress upon us. He could not have been more emphatic, or given us greater time to deliberate on what we heard, had he recited the soliloquy in "Hamlet.” Thus, instead of those excellent but too uncritical imitators of seamen, Mr. T. P. Cooke, Mr. Smith, and others, conceive the following exordium of the play set forth in its utmost solemnity of articulation by the mouth of Mr. Ward or Mr. Barrymore; accompanied furthermore by a mention, at once particular and careless, and singularly incorporating itself with the text, of the name of the party speaking; which, if you reflect upon it, was a very great nicety, and showed the lecturer's just sense of all which he could be expected to combine in his delivery, as holding the double office of reader and performer. Repeat, for instance, out loud, and very slowly, the following words; and the sound of your voice will enable you the better to appreciate our critic's delicacy: —

Enter a SHIPMASTER and a BOATSWAIN.

Master Boatswain

(which you are to read as if he was speaking of a young gentleman of the name of Boatswain, son of John Boatswain, Esq.,-"Master Boatswain.")

Boatswain Here, master; what― cheer

("What-cheer," very slow and pompous.)

Master Good

(here another young gentleman, son of Thomas Good, Esquire, young "Master Good.")

speak― to
to the mariner-fall-to it-yarely, or we run

ourselves aground - Bestir-bestir.

(Bestir, bestir, very wide apart, and all pompous.)

Exit- master. Enter Mariners.

Boatswain Heigh

(Here it seems to transpire that the boatswain's name is Heigh or Hay,-"Boatswain Hay.")

Boatswain Heigh―my heart-cheerly-cheerly-my heart;yare-yare-Take in

the topsail

(all observe, as if he were reading some mighty text in a pulpit.)

- take in the topsail-tend to the master's-whistleAnd so he went on, amidst the deep and admiring silence of the spectators, whose shoulders you might observe, here and there, gradually begin shaking, out of some irrepressible emotion. A wag, who has a lively but confused recollection of the scene, insists that there was a passage in the dialogue, which upon examination we cannot find, but which he delights to repeat as having been thus delivered, - very slow and pompous, yet with the remarkable absence of stops between the names and words of the speakers, and all in a level tone:

First Boatswain Hip-hollo-a
Second Boatswain Hollo-a-hip.

But this is manifestly a figment, superinduced upon a strongly excited fancy.

Of the rest of this scene from the "Tempest," singularly enough, we have no sort of recollection. Whether this forgetfulness be owing to some unremembered