ready, and overheard your husband, at the last message, answer, 'Very well-another bottle of wine.' By the time that the tea and coffee are quite cold, they arrive, continuing as they enter, and for an hour afterwards, their political disputes, occasionally suspended, on the part of the master of the house, by a reasonable complaint, to his lady, at the coldness of the coffce;—soon after, the carriages are announced, and the visitors disperse."

"16. At a ball-when you have set your heart on dancing with a particular favourite,--at the moment when you delightedly see him advancing towards you, being briskly accosted by a conceited simpleton at your elbow, whom you cannot endure, but who obtains (because you know not in what manner to refuse) 'the honour of your hand' for the evening."

We here finish our analysis of the work. The author seems to entertain an idea, that written dialogue is entitled to the liberties used in real conversation. We meet, accordingly, with some incorrect grammar, and much crudeness of style, encumbered with many unwieldy parentheses. Above all, he seems to have adopted, from colloquy, the use of several words, newly and extraordinarily applied, which, in company, are easily explained, and enforced by some gesture or emphasis of the speaker; but, when written down, convey no immediate idea to the reader, or, at least, a very feeble one. We meet with a "washy remark,' " a man of iron," "a sepulchral party," &c. all perhaps good colloquialisms, but which, in writing, lose all their force, from the explanations necessarily affixed; or, in default of them, the thought which the reader must bestow to discover their humour, or even meaning. Printing in italics is a disgraceful method of marking the point of a witticism. But the chief faults of the work are, great sameness and length, which mutually and severely aggravate each other; and we could readily have dispensed with much of the conversations introductory to the groans, and, still more willingly, with the dull homilies preached at the end by Mr. Sensitive, senior. This is a remarkable instance either of an author's distrust in his readers, whom he would not leave to pick out his moral, or of diffidence in his own powers of rendering it plain and easy. The reader, at the end of the groans, thinks he has finished the book, and is leaving it merry and pleased, when Mr. Sensitive, senior, steps in, and, like the butler in the drama of Lovers' Vows, detains him, insults his understanding, and deadens his spirits, by the heavy recitation of his musty moral.

On the whole, we strenuously recommend this work to all who love to laugh; and, at the same time, feel no pleasure in disappointing an author, who aims at humour, by captious objections or dignified sullenness: for (as Tom Testy would put in)

"By two-headed Janus!

Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time,
Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,
And laugh like parrots at a bag-piper;

And others of such vinegar aspect,

That they'll not show their teeth by way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable."-SHAK.

To the first class described here, we promise much merriment from the perusal of this work; and to support our opinion, we will select a few of the best groans; or at least those which most affected our risible faculties. A selection, we avow, much easier made, than that of the faults that have been mentioned in this review.

OF TRAVELling.

“4. (S.) Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last,— seeing the door suddenly opened, and the guard, coachman, hostler, &c. &c. craning, shoving, and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy, human hog, of the butcher or grazier breed-the whole machine straining and groaning under its cargo, from the box to the basket.-By dint of incredible efforts and contrivances, the carcase is, at length, weighed up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various and heavy obstructions in the passage. When, at length, the entire beast is fairly slung in, and (after about a quarter of an hour consumed in the operation) plunged down and bedded, with the squelch of a falling ox, and the grunt of a rhinoceros,-you find yourself suddenly viced in, from the shoulder to the hip; upon which the monster-when, in another quarter of an hour, he has finally pumped and panted, and snortled himself into tranquillity,-begins to make himself merry with your misery, and keeps braying away,- totally callous to the dumb frowns, or muttered execrations ('curses not loud but deep') of the whole coach."

"25. (S.) At a formal dinner-the awful resting-time which occasionally intervenes between the courses:

"Ned Tes. 'Inde alios ineunt cursus, aliosque recursus, Adversis spatiis.'

"10. (T.) After having left a company in which you have been galled by the raillery of some wag by profession-thinking, at your leisure, of a repartee which, if discharged at the proper moment, would have blown him to atoms."

"29. (S) Rashly confessing that you have a slight cold, in the hearing of certain elderly ladies 'of the faculty,' who instantly

form themselves into a consultation upon your case, and assail you with a volley of nostrums, all of which, if you would have a moment's peace, you must solemnly promise to take off before night-though well satisfied that they would retaliate, by 'taking you off before morning!

"Ned Tes. Ægrescitque medendo.' VIRG."

FROM MRS. TESTY'S SIGHS.

"11. At a long table, after dinner, having the eyes of the whole company drawn upou you by a loud observation, that you are strikingly like Mrs. or Miss particularly when you

smile."

We are sorry the author inserted such an affected and nonsensical groan as the following.

"21. (T.) Hearing the threats of invasion which have long been bawled out by the little bloated fiend on the other side of the channel, honoured with serious attention by men actually born and bred in England. There are not, indeed, above half a dozen of our countrymen of this white-livered description; 'but who can think, with common patience, even of that handful?"

In powerful contradiction, too, to the sense and truth of the following.

"11. (S.) At the play-the sickening scraps of naval loyalty which are crammed down your throat faster than you can gulp them, in such after-pieces as are called 'England's Glory,'-'The British Tars,' &c.-with the additional nausea of hearing them boisterously applauded."

In the second edition, the author has informed us of a new calamity, which he entitles My own Groan. It contains his complaint of the work being attributed to other noblemen and gentlemen, whose initials only, and those perhaps fictitious, he publishes. We suppose, from this caution, that they are gentlemen who have never yet dared the public eye in a printed shape; but, since the world has attributed to them a work which has met so favourable a reception, we suppose they are held in estimation as some of the prime wits and "merriest men" of the age. This favourable opinion thus expressed, should not be disregarded by them; they are called upon to enter boldly upon the fields of literature, and exhibit to the world proof of those talents for which it has thus universally given them credit.

We now unwillingly leave this work; and, as a farewell to the author, we intreat him (without meaning to measure weapons with so formidable a rival) to cast an eye of compassion and sympathy upon a few

REVIEWER'S GROANS.*

1. A complacent author's inquiries, whether his book is about to be reviewed, and what is the character to be given of it;-said book having only been thought worthy to be dismissed with a general censure for stupidity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency.

2. A plaintive author's reproachful question how he ever injured you, so that you chose to be his executioner; and the candour with which he argues upon your opinion of his work; only denying that it wants genius, wit, or taste; while he ingenuously confesses there are some few grammatical inaccuracies and carelessnesses in the style.

3. Finding yourself seated at dinner next a gentleman whom you have before pilloried in a review of extreme severity; then being somewhat relieved by finding that your are unknown to him; till a blundering pretender to literature, on his other side, calls you by your name; and asks across him, Who is to be cut up in the next Number?

4. The harsh and opprobrious review done by your brethren upon a book that you have generously published anonymously; then, upon your owning it, in hopes of softening them, and perhaps procuring a revisal of the second edition of the review; their comments upon your unkindness and folly in not telling them before; and, above all, the subsequent grins and rejoiced faces of the whole literary world, to whom your friends immediately publish your avowal.

5. The copy just set up, and more wanted-the printer's imp, or the great Beelzebub himself in waiting, and grinding his fangs with impatience-the postman delivers a treble letter, which you eagerly open, expecting a communication from a first rate correspondent, and which proves to contain a long expostulatory and indignant refutation of your last quarter's critique on an incensed author-postage unpaid.

6. The doleful alternative of perusing a huge quarto, at the risk of dislocating your jaws, in order to review it-or of reviewing the said quarto, without so perusing it, at the risk of making blunders, and furnishing pegs on which charges of misrepresentation will not fail to be suspended.

7.

Last scene of all,

To close this sad eventful history

Long labour bestowed in endeavouring to extract subject for an article from a book too dull to be commended, and too accurate to be condemned, where ordinary subjects are treated in an ordinary style, and with ordinary ability; so that, at last, you relinquish the hope of drawing forth, from the mass of mediocrity, food either for reason or for ridicule, and shut the book, with the fruitless apostrophe,

"Too bad for a blessing, too good for a curse,

I wish from my soul thou wert better or worse."

[Lord Jeffrey is inclined to think that he himself added some of these "Reviewer's Groans," but his recollection is not precise.]

CARR'S CALEDONIAN SKETCHES.*

[Quarterly Review, February, 1809.]

THE advice of the Giant Moulineau to a reciter, Je vous prie, Belier mon ami, commencez par le commencement, is too often neglected. We, however, admonished by a recent event, new in our high office, and anxious to discharge its duties with unexampled fidelity, actually read the explanatory address prefixed to this volume, before we proceeded on the Caledonian Sketches. It is, in sooth, a piece of very tragical mirth, in which we hardly knew whether to sympathize with the wounded feelings of a good-natured, well-meaning man, or to laugh at the ambiguous expressions in which he couches his sorrow and indignation upon a very foolish subject. The trial, in which Sir John Carr sued the editor of a satirical work, called My Pocket Book, for damages, as a libel on his literary fame, must be fresh in the memory of every reader. The Address displays great anxiety to ascertain the precise grounds upon which the action was commenced; but there is no little embarrassment

* Caledonian Sketches, or a Tour through Scotland, in 1807. To which is prefixed an Explanatory Address to the Public upon a recent Trial. By Sir JOHN CARR. London, Matthews and Leigh, 1809."-The work entitled "My Pocket Book, or Hints for a Righte Merrie and Conceited Tour, to be called the Stranger in Ireland," in ridicule of Sir John Carr's quarto volume of that title, was written by Edward Dubois, Esq., author of various translations, &c. The trial to which it gave rise occured before the Court of King's Bench, on the 25th July, 1808. The jury found for the defendants, Messrs Vernor and Hood. The other works of the Knight were, The Stranger in France, or a Tour from Devonshire to Paris. 4to. 1803. A Northern Summer, or Travels round the Baltic, through Denmark. Sweden, Russia, Prussia, &c. 4to. 1805. A Tour through Holland. 4to. 1806; and Descriptive Travels in Spain and the Balearic Isles. 4to. 1811.