THE ECLECTIC MUSEUM OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. MAY, 18 4 3. TOO HOT. BY MR. HOOD.-FROM THE AMULET. Illustrated by an Engraving by Mr. Sartain, from Landseer's Picture. Or were I like great Little, who doth ring So sweetly love's alarum, How I would sing, And make the world rejoice! Oh! would I had that heavenly voice,- Or were I Doctor Southey, whose invention Have been so much admired by men! I'd rather have his pension. Perhaps the most appropriate poet, living Effect to your "Too Hot" were BURNS. Such a dog fancier as you. What Rubens was to lions, Cuyp to cows, And hogs, You are to dogs. There's an attractiveness about your harriers, Pugs.poodles,mastiffs, greyhounds, turnspits, tarriers Goes far to settle the great philosophic schism About animal magnetism. There's not a dog but owes you more, I vow, Or his dog-ma; And not a cur that meets But ought to make you a profound bow Wow. THE ADVERTISING SYSTEM. From the Edinburgh Review. cannot be worth knowing; and any attempt to couple merit with modesty, is invariably met with the well-known aphorism of the 1. César Birotteau. Par M. de Balzac. Nou- Reverend Sydney Smith, that the only con velle Edition. 8vo. Paris: 1841. 2. Histoire de M. Jobard. 8vo. Par Cham. Paris: 1842. nexion between them is their both beginning with an m. In this state of things it is use. less to swim against the stream, and folly to differ from our contemporaries: a prudent youth will purchase the last edition of "The Art of Rising in the World, or Every Man his own Fortune-maker," and sedulously practise the main precept it enjoins-never to omit an opportunity of placing your name in printed characters before the world. It may be argued, that, when every body takes to puffing, it comes to nearly the same thing as if nobody puffed at all; but the well-known aphorism holds good:"Be not the first to lay the old aside, M. BIROTTEAU is a worthy citizen, who, impatient at the slow results of industry, resolves to make his fortune at a bound. M. Jobard is a simple-minded believer in Advertisements. Which of us does not, in some respect, resemble a Birotteau or a Jo. bard?-was the question we asked ourselves as we laid down the works in which their adventures are recorded, and took up the extra-sheet of the Times. Here, within the compass of a single Newspaper, are above five hundred announcements of wants or superfluities remedies for all sorts of ailBe not the first by whom the new are tried." ments-candidates for all sorts of situations Besides, in the lottery of life as at present -conveyances for those who wish to travel, managed, though the blanks may be more establishments for those who wish to stay at numerous, the prizes are proportionably home-investments for him who has made rich. When means of communication were his fortune, and modes of growing rich for restricted, and skill, taste, or talent was him who has that pleasure yet to come-made known with difficulty beyond a narrow elixirs to make us beautiful, and balsams to circle—a street, a village, or a town-it was preserve us from decay-new theatres for comparatively easy to gain a livelihood, and the idle, new chapels for the serious, new almost impossible to become a millionaire: cemeteries in pleasant situations for the fame and profit were distributed among the dead: carriages, horses, dogs, men-ser- community much in the same manner as vants, maid-servants, East India Directors, Greek among the inhabitants of our northand Governesses,-how is all this to be dis- ern part of this island, where (according to regarded or disbelieved, without wilfully Dr. Johnson) all have a mouthful, few a belshutting our eyes to the progress of society; lyful; and for this reason we have always or living in an habitual state of apprehen- entertained some doubts of the authenticity sion, resembling that of the late Mr. Accum of "Death in the Pot" celebrity, who believed that every thing he ate was poisoned more or less, and regarded every butcher as a Cæsar Borgia, and every cookmaid who boiled a potato for him as a Marquise de Brinvilliers in disguise? of the anecdote regarding "the great Twalmly, the inventor of the New Floodgate Iron." Either Dr. Johnson invented the story to tease Boswell, or Mr. Twalmly had formed an undue estimate of the extent of his own celebrity; though, to be sure, the daily press was even then beginning to exercise an unIn short, there is no disguising it, the due influence; since the Lexicographer says, grand principle of modern existence is no- in 1776, that he should have visited Mrs. toriety; we live and move and have our be- Rudd, " were it not that they have now a ing in print. Hardly a second-rate Dandy trick of putting every thing into the newscan start for the moors, or a retired Slop- papers.' At the present time, assuming seller leave London for Margate, without greatness to consist in notoriety, the invenannouncing the "fashionable movement" in tor of a new fire-iron for smoothing linen the Morning Post; and what Curran said of (for such, neither more nor less, was Mr. Byron, that "he wept for the press, and Twalmly's discovery) might fairly earn a wiped his eyes with the public," may now title to name himself "the great;" not simbe predicated of every one who is striving ply for the reason suggested by the Bishop for any sort of distinction. He must not of Killaloe (Dr. Barnard)-because he would only weep, but eat, drink, walk, talk, hunt, rank amongst "Inventas aut qui vitam excoshoot, give parties, and travel, in the news-leure per artes," but because within a few papers. People now-a-days contemptuously hours the whole United Kingdom might be reject the old argument, "whom not to know talking of him. We pardon the tailor who argues yourself unknown." The universal tells us to reform our bills, and the pastryinference is, that, if a man be not known, he cook who writes us a private (printed) let ter to commend his rout-cakes, when we recollect that a lucky hit might enable the one (like Gunter) to return thirty thousand a year to the income-tax, and the other (like Stulz) to purchase a feudal castle and a barony. With so much to stimulate energy and reward eloquence, no wonder that invention has been racked for topics, and language for terms, to arrest the attention of a busy and bustling, but observing and intelligent public; and here, again, it is remarkable how ingeniously the style of address has been adapted to the taste or fashion of the hour. When Scott, Byron, Moore, Rogers, Wordsworth, Southey, &c., were in their zenith, or whilst the horizon was still in a blaze with their descending glory, the most attractive vehicle was verse, and the praises of blacking were sung in strains which would have done no discredit to "Childe Harold" himself, even in his own opinion-for when accused of receiving six hundred a-year for his services as Poet-Laureat to Mrs. Warren, -of being, in short, the actual personage alluded to in her famous boast, "We keeps a poet"-he showed no anxiety to repudiate the charge. The present, however, is an unpoetic age-though, by the way, we should be exceedingly obliged to any one who would mention an age that was not described as both unpoetic and wicked at the time : "Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem." To change the expression, then, the present age decidedly prefers prose to poetry; nay, unaccountable as it may appear to the person principally interested, and after all the good advice both he and we have wasted on the point, there can be no doubt whatever that "The Excursion" is more than ever caviare to the vulgar; and, notwithstanding the gallant stand made by Mr. Henry Taylor and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd in its defence, has no chance at all against the "Pickwick Papers" or Oliver Twist." Mrs. Warren, consequently, has been obliged to pension off her poets; and the ingenuity of inventions, the excellence of elixirs, the wonderworking powers of pills, the beauties of estates on sale, the rain-repelling powers of York cloth, the advantages of railroads, the comforts of steam-vessels, the hopes of the living, the virtues of the dead, are now almost invariably set forth in that humble and ordinary form of language which M. Jour. dain had been employing all his life without knowing it. Far be it from us to say that there is the less scope for imagination on that account; and imagination, be it remem bered, has been proved by Mr. Wordsworth to be the essential, elemental, fundamental, characteristic quality of poetry. If we adopt Locke's definition, the writers are equally distinguished by wit; for they discover hidden similitudes, and associate things apparently unconnected with the most startling and enviable facility. Let any one who is skeptical as to the degree of talent employed and required for the purpose, try to find out the point of analogy between Dante's Inferno and Holloway's Ointment, or the likeness between Archimedes and Mr. Wray, the vender of gout pills. Mark, too, the skill with which the mode of attack is varied; one dashes at once in medias res, or puts on an imposing air of frankness; another trusts the result to inference, reserves the point for the postscript, like a young lady's letter, or lures you on imperceptibly, like Bishop Berkeley's "Essay on Tar Water," which concludes with reflections on the Trinity. On the whole, there is no denying that Advertisements constitute a class of composition intimately connected with the arts and sciences, and peculiarly calculated to illustrate the domestic habits of a people. Porson used to say, that a single Athenian newspaper would be worth all the commentaries on Aristophanes put together. Surely, then, a brief analysis of modern puffery would be no unacceptable bequest to posterity. We shall show, before we have done, that no trade, profession, walk, or condition in life is entirely free from it; and it will be an instructive exercise for moral philosophers or metaphysicians to fix the degrees and ascertain the causes of the varieties. It would seem that pain, or the fear of pain, is the most active stimulant, and vanity the next; for the boldest appeals to credulity are made by those who profess to cure diseases or improve personal appearance. Our first specimens shall be borrowed from a class usually, though we hope unjustly, denominated quacks: SURPRISING PROPHECY OF DANTE.-How little was it imagined that those celebrated lines of Dante, And Time shall see thee cured of every ill!' would be literally fulfilled in England, and in the nineteenth century! Yet so it is. The disorders of man, however complicated they may be, are now subdued with surprising rapidity by that incomparable preparation, Holloway's Ointment,' in combination with its powerful auxliary, Holloway's External Disease Pill." It is truly surprising to witness the innumerable cures performed by the special qualities of the Ointment, and the alterative and tonic properties of the Pills. Nor can we too earnestly recom This is a good example of the art of association; but Mr. Holloway is fully equal led by Mr. Wray: mend their adoption in acute and chronic rheu-| Sergeant Talfourd, who may be regarded matism, gout, cancer, paralysis, scrofula, piles. as representing both literature and law. glandular complaints, wounds of every kind, and, This list might give rise to curious speculain brief, in all external disorders." tions as to the comparative biliousness of the higher classes. We only hope the preponderance of Bishops will not be made the groundwork of any insinuations against the Church. Fortunately, the English Archbishops have not lent their names; and we understand that the Bishop of London did not put down his until after the publication of a certain Letter from a Canon-Residentiary of St. Paul's. "Archimedes, while bathing, solved a difficult problem, which so delighted him, that he jumped out of the bath, and ran through the streets of Syracuse, exclaiming, 'I have found it, I have found it! There are many problems in medical science very difficult to explain. Mr. Wray, of Holborn-hill, has, however, by the pre-eminent virtues of his Balsamic Pills, solved a very perplexing problem in the art of healing; an article of greater excellence and utility the annals of medicine do not record." Baker's Patent Antidote for the Prevention of Sea-Sickness, has proved so efficacious that the stewards of steam-vessels, To extend the fame of his Eye-Snuff, Mr. tribute it for fear of its diminishing the call we are confidently assured, refuse to disGrimstone, rather injudiciously in our opin for brandy and water. This is very silly ion, has resorted to the old custom, and ap-on their part, since the demand for eatables pends a rhyming tribute by a customer :'Great was the power that did to man impart Creative genius and inventive art; The second praise is, doubtless, Grimstone, thine! ELIZA ROBSON. The Balm of Syriacum, "a sovereign remedy for both bodily and mental decay,' is recommended in an address to her Majesty:-"It is a peculiar satisfaction, too, for us to consider, that the Royal Household, as well as the public at large, have experienced the benefit of our Medicine, of which we have been favored with testimonies highly flattering to our reputation and future fame." This kind of loyalty may be spared. Mr. Cockle's Antibilious Pills are recommended by a long list of patrons, containing ten Dukes, five Marquises, seventeen Earls, eight Viscounts, sixteen Lords, one Archbishop (Armagh), fifteen Bishops, the Adjutant-General, the present AttorneyGeneral, the late Attorney-General, the Advocate-General, Sir Francis Burdett, Sir Andrew Agnew, Alderman Wood, and Mr.. and drinkables would increase. "Who (says Mr. Baker, in a passage reprinted from Blackwood) has not suffered from SeaSickness?--that remorseless fiend, who, sparing neither age nor sex, intelligence nor respectability, makes a point of setting at defiance all the decorums of etiquette, all the grace of attitude, all the claims of humanity. I have seen dignified statesmen, lovely women, poets of the most romantic, divines of the most spiritual cast of with confusion truly humiliating, yellow as dafcountenance, all huddled together at a ship's side fodils, and moaning as dismally as a north wind whistling through the keyhole of a back attic. Sea-sickness! The very word is an emetic; and I heave while I write it." For example, a statesman and author of no mean order is thus described by his friend: "H**muttering fearful curses, As the hatchway down he rolls, On Braganza ་ Help! A couplet ?'-' No, a cup 'What's the matter?' 'Zounds, my liver's coming up!'"* At the same time we must not be too ready to believe stewards and packetowners, who may tell a flattering tale to decoy passengers. Many persons not wanting in acuteness have been induced, in defiance of probability, to expect state in a state cabin, and privacy in a private one. Mr. Dickens entertains us in his "American Notes" with some complaints of a delusion of this kind; and Lord Byron was similarly misled : "Heyday! call you that a cabin? Why, 'tis hardly three feet square, * Verses printed in Moore's Life of Byron. |