CONVERSATION.

To hold discourse with freedom and with ease,
To charm with elegance, with wit to please,
How rare the skill! Ye tribe of flutterers, say-
Whose aim it is to trifle life away,

Whose senseless converse in its silly vein
Bears the true impress of the shallow brain,—
O say, how brilliant the remarks that fill
The weary pauses of yon throng'd quadrille !
Or where the warmer theme their chat exalts,
Who tread thy slippery rounds, too dang'rous waltz !
The sentimental miss, just loose from school,
The monkey stripling, or the travell❜d fool.

Yet if they must perforce be asses still,
As Nature made them, let them if they will :
'Gainst such as these no angry feelings rise,
We only gaze, and pity, and despise.

But deep the scorn with which we turn to you
Who live and thrive on slander and on loo.

Such ancient maids as breathe soft Chelt'nham's gale,
Or quaff thy fount, fair city* of the vale!

Pure spotless souls! from frailty's stain exempt,-
Because, blest lot! they ne'er had charms to tempt..
With withering breath each fairer name they blight,
While disappointment rankles into spite,
And flows the tide of scandal full and free,

Fed by the Chinese nymph† of lies, Green Tea.
But hark! from yon boudoir a gentler sound,
Where essenced 'kerchiefs breathe soft odours round,
And pretty triflers lispingly rehearse

The laws of fashion and the laws of verse:

Moved by the Chinese nymph of tears, Green Tea!"

DON JUAN, canto iv. 52.

While, dangling there, its little maxims tells
In honied accents to assenting belles,

Well skill'd to spread the shawl or flirt the fan,
Yon perfumed thing that calls itself a man;
Tells how the world admires the new romance,
Or the new cap,-imported fresh from France;
How Caradori's notes the senses stole,
Or lovely Grisi charmed the captive soul,
Or those, by famed homœopathic plan
Aided in vain, ill-fated Malibran !

How sweetly tender, or how nobly fine,

That' pow'rful' paragraph or that melting line!
How deck'd in all the charms that taste can give
The latest poem,-and the latest sleeve!

Nor vainly hope, alas! where men have met
That poor Discourse can find a refuge yet,
Nor dream that Wisdom glows or flashes wit
Where round yon board Creation's masters sit;
The vacant fool, whose listless yawns declare
Some aching void, some craving vacuum there,
The brute who, wearied with the dull repast,
Thanks heav'n those women have retired at last.
Seek ye the manlier thought, the nobler mind
With science stored, by elegance refined?
Deem ye of these? Not here such feeling dwells,
Not such the tale their empty converse tells;
Whether they prose in seesaw strain, and mix
Dull county news with duller politics,
Or-pleasing change!-their lofty souls review
The turf, the ring, the kennel, and the stew.

Hail, mightiest theme! like streams that seek the sea,
The rest still meet, and centre all in thee.

Hail, mightiest theme! which ev'ry taste canst hit,
Make blockheads talk, and lend to dullness wit!
Silence no longer holds her leaden sway—

On such a subject ev'ry ass can bray;

Uncheck'd the stream of profligacy flows,
And list'ning boobies e'en forget to doze.

Lo! while some grey-hair'd man, with humour sly,
Cuts the coarse joke and rolls the meaning eye,
Fights o'er the battles of his youth once more,
And wallows in the filth he lov'd of yore,
Baring his inward foulness to the view,

His soul more loathsome as his days more few,-
Warm'd by the theme, yon stripling quaffs his wine,
Deems it true manliness in vice to shine,

Tells his crude exploits unrestrain'd by shame,
And boasts of deeds a Satyr might disclaim.
Turn now, and see a different train appear,
Conceit in front and Ignorance in the rear ;
Active to wag the tongue or wield the pen,
Behold yon group of "talented young men ;"
Hear their high converse on all things in turn,
Which once were thought to take some time to learn,
And wonder, while of matters deep they tell,
How they who know so little talk so well.

Aye, wond'ring, hear them hold the grave debate
On England's prospects for her Church and State;
Enounce sage dogmas, with profoundest mien,
Pilfer'd, just fresh, from last month's magazine;
Explain how Ireland's woes may surely cease,
And all be chang'd to plenty and to peace;
How best may Freedom's sun illume again
The sister lands of Lusia and of Spain,
Where patriots claim their ancient right, to rob,—
And liberal queens are bullied by the mob;
Hint how much danger to the Church they dread,
From learned lectures,-which they never read;
Fix the due rate of tithes, the rent of land,
And mete the surplus, ne'er to come to hand.
Such are we still ;-ye modern sages, say
How shall we clear these dark'ning mists away?

G

Ye, who diffusing wide the liberal page
With Useful Knowledge, cram our thinking age.
Or must experience own, perforce with pain,
Your boasted March of Intellect is vain!

One remedy there is :-let Women be

All that in us themselves would wish to see.
Oh! let them burst that bondage of the mind
Insulting Custom would around them bind,
And, scorning mere accomplishments, attend
At length to Education's real end :

This let them do, and we must own their sway,
And man must follow in Improvement's way.
Ye fair ones, make this blest reform your own,-
From you Society must take its tone:
Thus Nature's self ordains; assert your right,
Form'd to adorn and fitted to delight;
Dare to be truly wise and truly free;
If you are frivolous, frivolous men will be.
Oh! made for nobler ends, no longer deign
To smile on Vice, or sport in folly's train!
Crush with a frown the coxcomb's vain pretence,
And shame, oh! shame each blockhead into sense.

ON ATOPOLOGY*, OR JIM-CROWISM.

NATURALLY I am neither witty myself, nor the cause of wit in others. I say naturally-because the good fortune of my life has prevailed over the dull star of my cradle. I was not born under Mercury; and my horoscope being cast in Aquarius, it was deemed,—alas, for

*From the Greek "atopon," very feebly rendered by the English word "absurd.”

the short-sighted ken of mortals!-that my wit would exhibit neither the nice discrimination of Libra, the keen points of Sagittarius, nor the biting sting of Scorpio. No bees clustered around my infant lips, but a nursery tradition preserves the history that I was nearly choked, in consequence of the attractions which some demi-dry water-gruel on the corner of my mouth, offered to a circumlambent blue-bottle. It is also recorded that I was most intemperately addicted to milk-and-water.

The prognostications of the Phrenologists were not a whit more encouraging to my budding talents than were those of the Astrologers. Deville searched my "head and front" in vain. My occipital regions were pronounced predominating, nor was the breadth of my mouth considered in any way to make up for the deficiency of that quality on my brow.

But in spite of all their evil prophecies, I soon rose to the character of a wit, which I have since most creditably and obstinately maintained. The fact is, I was a man-I had almost said the man-of my age; but I do not wish to exaggerate. If I had lived in the time of war, no doubt I should have been the Duke of Wellington; but my lot being cast in peaceable times-for I was but five years old at the battle of Waterloo-I adapted myself to their form and pressure, and became the very intellectual mirror of the age in which I lived. Observing a decidedly humorous tendency in the public, and having heard it remarked that we were deficient as a nation in the true perception of humour, I resolved at once to relieve my country from the national reproach, and float myself on triumphant billows along the springtide of popular favour. A little study convinced me that all former definitions of wit were wrong, and without at the first caring to establish any theory of my own in