The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 380, July 11, 1829

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

A CHAPTER ON HEATHEN MYTHOLOGY

"Ut sunt divorum, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo."

Latin Grammar.

 
Did you ever look
In Mr. Tooke,
For Homer's gods and goddesses?
The males in the air,
So big and so bare,
And the girls without their bodices.
 
 
There was Jupiter Zeus,
Who play'd the deuce,
A rampant blade and a tough one;
But Denis bold,
Stole his coat of gold,
And rigg'd him out in a stuff one,
 
 
Juno, when old,
Was a bit of a scold,
And rul'd Jove jure divino;
When he went gallivaunting,
His steps she kept haunting,⁴
And she play'd, too, the devil with Ino.
 
 
Minerva bright
Was a blue-stocking wight,
Who lodg'd among the Attics;
And, like Lady V.
From the men did flee,
To study the mathematics.
 
 
Great Mars, we're told,
Was a grenadier bold,
Who Vulcan sorely cuckold;
When to Rome he went,
He his children sent
To a she-wolf to be suckled.
 
 
Midas.
 
 
Sol, the rat-catcher,⁵
Was a great body-snatcher,
And with his bow and arrows
He Burked, through the trees,
Master Niobes,
As though they had been cock sparrows.
 
 
Diana, his sister,
When nobody kiss'd her,
Was a saint, (at least a semi one,)
Yet the vixen Scandal
Made a terrible handle
Of her friendship for Eudymion.
 
 
Full many a feat
Did Hercules neat,
The least our credit draws on;
Jesting Momus, so sly,
Said, "'Tis all my eye,"
And he call'd him Baron Munchausen.
 
 
Fair Bacchus's face
Many signs did grace,
(They were not painted by Zeuxis:)
Of his brewing trade
He a mystery made,⁶
Like our Calverts and our Meuxes.
 
 
There was Mistress Venus,
(I say it between us,)
For virtue cared not a farden:
There never was seen
Such a drabbish quean
In the parish of Covent Garden.
 
 
Hermes cunning
Poor Argus funning,
He made him drink like a buffer;
To his great surprise
Sew'd up all his eyes,
And stole away his heifer.
 
 
A bar-maid's place
Was Hebe's grace,
Till Jupiter did trick her;
He turn'd her away,
And made Ganimede stay
To pour him out his liquor.
 
 
Ceres in life
Was a farmer's wife,
But she doubtless kept a jolly house;
For Rumour speaks,
She was had by the Beaks
To swear her son Triptolemus.⁷
 
 
Miss Proserpine
She thought herself fine,
But when all her plans miscarried,
She the Devil did wed,
And took him to bed,
Sooner than not be married.
 
 
But the worst of the gods,
Beyond all odds,
It cannot be denied, oh!
Is that first of matchmakers,
That prince of housebreakers,
The urchin, Dan Cupido.
 

New Monthly Magazine.

"THE SEASON" IN TOWN

Theodore.—I don't know how you could prevent people from living half the year in town.

Tickler.—I have no objection to their living half the year in town, as you call it, if they can live in such a hell upon earth, of dust, noise, and misery. Only think of the Dolphin water in the solar microscope!

Theodore.—I know nothing of the water of London personally.

Odoherty.—Nor I; but I take it, we both have a notion of its brandy and water.

Tickler.—'Tis, in fact, their duty to be a good deal in London. But I'll tell you what I do object to, and what I rather think are evils of modern date, or at any rate, of very rapid recent growth. First, I object to their living those months of the year in which it is contra bonos mores to be in London, not in their paternal mansions, but at those little bastardly abortions, which they call watering-places—their Leamingtons, their Cheltenhams, their Brighthelmstones.

Theodore.—Brighton, my dear rustic Brighton!

Odoherty.—Synopicé.

Shepherd.—What's your wull, Sir Morgan? It does no staun' wi' me.

Theodore.—A horrid spot, certainly—but possessing large conveniences, sir, for particular purposes. For example, sir, the balcony on the drawing-room floor commonly runs on the same level all round the square—which in the Brighthelmstonic dialect, sir, means a three-sided figure. The advantage is obvious,

Shepherd.—Och, sirs! och, sirs! what wull this world come to!

Theodore.—The truth is, sir, that people comme il faut cannot well submit to the total change of society and manners implied in a removal from Whitehall or Mayfair to some absurd old antediluvian chateau, sir, boxed up among beeches and rooks. Sir, only think of the small Squires with the red faces, sir, and the grand white waistcoats down to their hips—and the dames, sir, with their wigs, and their simpers, and their visible pockets—and the damsels, blushing things in white muslin, with sky-blue sashes and ribbons, and mufflers and things—and the sons, sir, the promising young gentlemen, sir—and the doctor, and the lawyer—and the parson. So you disapprove of Brighton, Mr. Tickler?

Tickler.—Brighthelmstone, when I knew it, was a pleasant fishing village—what like it is now, I know not; but what I detest in the great folks of your time, is, that insane selfishness which makes them prefer any place, however abominable, where they can herd together in their little exquisite coteries, to the noblest mansions surrounded with the noblest domains, where they cannot exist without being more or less exposed to the company of people not exactly belonging to their own particular sect. How can society hang together long in a country where the Corinthian capital takes so much pains to unrift itself from the pillar? Now-a-day, sir, your great lord, commonly speaking, spends but a month or six weeks in his ancestral abode; and even when he is there, he surrounds himself studiously with a cursed town-crew, a pack of St. James's Street fops, and Mayfair chatterers and intriguers, who give themselves airs enough to turn the stomachs of the plain squirearchy and their womankind, and render a visit to the castle a perfect nuisance.

Theodore (aside to Mullion.)—A prejudiced old prig!

Tickler.—They seem to spare no pains to show that they consider the country as valuable merely for rent and game—the duties of the magistracy are a bore—county meetings are a bore—a farce, I believe, was the word—the assizes are a cursed bore—fox-hunting itself is a bore, unless in Leicestershire, where the noble sportsmen, from all the winds of heaven cluster together, and think with ineffable contempt of the old-fashioned chase, in which the great man mingled with gentle and simple, and all comers—sporting is a bore, unless in a regular battue, when a dozen lordlings murder pheasants by the thousand, without hearing the cock of one impatrician fowling-piece—except indeed some dandy poet, or philosopher, or punster, has been admitted to make sport to the Philistines. In short, every thing is a bore that brings the dons into personal collision of any kind with people that don't belong to the world.

Odoherty.—The world is getting pretty distinct from the nation, I admit, and I doubt if much love is lost between them.—Blackwood's Magazine.

THE HOPKINSONIAN JOKE

My friend Hertford, walking one day near his own shop in Piccadilly, happened to meet one Mr. Hopkinson, an eminent brewer, I believe—and the conversation naturally enough turned upon some late dinner at the Albion, Aldersgate Street—nobody appreciates a real city dinner better than Monsieur le Marquess—and so on, till the old brewer mentioned, par hazard, that he had just received a noble specimen of wild pig from a friend in Frankfort, adding, that he had a very particular party, God knows how many aldermen, to dinner—half the East India direction, I believe—and that he was something puzzled touching the cookery. "Pooh!" says Hertford, "send in your porker to my man, and he'll do it for you à merveille." The brewer was a grateful man—the pork came and went back again. Well, a week after my lord met his friend, and, by the way, "Hopkinson," says he, "how did the boar concern go off?"—"O, beautifully," says the brewer; "I can never sufficiently thank your lordship; nothing could do better. We should never have got on at all without your lordship's kind assistance."—"The thing gave satisfaction then, Hopkinson?"—"O, great satisfaction, my lord marquess.—To be sure we did think it rather queer at first—in fact, not being up to them there things, we considered it as deucedly stringy—to say the truth, we should never have thought of eating it cold."—"Cold!" says Hertford; "did you eat the ham cold?"—"O dear, yes, my lord, to be sure we did—we eat it just as your lordship's gentleman sent it."—"Why, my dear Mr. Alderman," says Hertford, "my cook only prepared it for the spit." Well, I shall never forget how the poor dear Duke of York laughed!—Ibid.

THE GATHERER

 
A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.
 

SHAKSPEARE.

SEALING WAX AND WAFERS

Francis Rousseau, a native of Auxerres, who travelled a long time in Persia, Pegu, and other parts of the East Indies, and who, in 1692, resided at St. Domingo, was the inventer of sealing-wax. A lady, of the name of Longueville, made this wax known at court, and caused Louis XIII. to use it; after which it was purchased and used throughout Paris. By this article Rousseau, before the expiration of a year, gained 50,000 livres. The oldest seal with a red wafer ever yet found, is on a letter written by Dr. Krapf, at Spires, in the year 1624, to the government at Bareuth.