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DAN STUART oold us, that he did not remember the he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally have escorted a party of ladies across the way that were going in; but he never went in of his own head. Yet the office of the M Post neer stood then just where it does now -- we are carrying you back, Reader, some thirty years or more -- with its gilt-globe-topt front fag that emporium of our artists grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish, that we had observed the same abstih Daniel.A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us one of the fiempered of Editors. Perry, of the M icle, was equally pleasant, with a dash, no slight oher, of the courtier. S. was frank, plain, and English all over. We have worked for both these gentlemen.
It is soothing to plate the head of the Gao trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river;
With holy revereo approach the rocks,
Whence glide the Streams renowned in a song.
Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrims explorator ramblings after the cradle of the infant Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holybbr></abbr>day (a "whole days leave" we called at Christs Hospital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well-provisioher for su uaking, to trace the current the New River -- Middletonian stream ! -- to its scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows by fair Amwell. Gallantly did we ence our solitary quest -- for it was essential to the dignity, of a Discovery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our own, should beam oe. By flowery spots, and verdant lanes, skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a baffling turn; endless hopeless meanders, as it seemed; or as if the jealous waters had dodged us, relut to have the humble spot of their nativity revealed; till spent, and nigh famished, before set of the same sue down somewhere by Bowes Farm, ottenham, with a tithe of our proposed labours only yet aplished; sorely vinced in spirit, that that Bru enterprise was as yet too arduous for our young shoulders.
Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the traveller is the trag of some mighty waters up to their shallow fohan it is to a pleased and did reader to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first callow flights in authorship, of some established name in literature; from the Gnat which preluded to the Aeneid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on.
In those days every M Paper, as an essential retaio its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke -- and it was thought pretty high too -- was Dan Stuarts settled remuion in these cases. The chat of the day, sdal, but, above all, dress, furhe material. The length of nraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must he poignant.
A fashion of flesh, or rather pink-coloured hose for the ladies, luckily ing up at the juncture, when we were on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.s Paper, established our reputation in that line. We were pronounced a "capital hand." O the ceits which we varied upon red in all its prismatic differences! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea, to the flaming e of the lady that has her sitting upon "many waters." Then there was the collateral topic of ancles. What an occasion to a truly chaste writer, like ourself, of toug that nice brink, a umbling over it, of a seemingly ever approximating something "not quite proper;" while, like a skilful posture-master, balang betwixt des and their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hairs-breadth deviation is destru; h in the fines of light and darkness, or where "both seem either;" a hazy uain delicacy; Autolycus-like in the Play, still putting off his expet auditory with "Whoop, do me nood man!" But, above all, that ceit arrided us most at that time, and still tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to the flight of Astraea -- ultima Coelestum terras reliquit -- we pronounced -- in revereo the stogs still -- that MODESTY TAKING HER FINAL LEAVE OF MORTALS, HER LAST BLUSH WAS VISIBLE IN HER AST TO THE HEAVENS BY THE TRACT OF THE GLOWING Ihis might be called the ing ceit; and was esteemed tolerable writing in those days.
But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes away; as did the tra mode which had so favoured us. The ancles of our fair friends in a few weeks began to reassume their whiteness, a us scarce a leg to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none, methought, snant, so invitatory of shrewd ceits, and more than single meanings. Somebody has said, that to swallow six cross-buns daily secutively for a fht would surfeit the stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many jokes daily, and that not for a fht, but for a long twelvemonth, as we were straio do, was a little harder execution. "Mah forth to his work until the evening " -- from a reasonable hour in the m, we resume it was meant. Now as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day iy; and as our evening hours, at that time Of life, had generally to do with any thing other than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes -- our supplementary liveli<big>藏书网</big>hood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese -- was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Mans Land) may be fitly denominated No Mans Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more plainly, it is that time, of an hour, or an hour and a halfs duration, in which a man, whose occasions call him up so preposterously, has to wait for his breakfast.
Oh those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or half-past-five in summer, and not much later in the dark seasons, we were pelled to rise, having been perhaps not above four hours in bed -- for we were no go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated he lark ofttimes in her rising -- we liked a parting cup at midnight, as all young men did before these effemiimes, and to have our friends about us -- we were not stellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless -- we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor had taken rees at Mount Ague -- we were right toping Capulets, jolly panions, we and they) -- but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance -- to be ated to rouse ourselves at the destestable rap of an old hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her annouhat it was "time to rise;" and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearo amputate, and string them up at our chamber door, to be a terror to all suseasonable rest-breakers in future -- "Facil" and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the "desding" of the ht, balmy the first sinking of the heavy head upon the pillow; but to get up, as he goes on to say,
-- revradus, Superasque evadere ad auras --
and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice prepended -- there was the "labour," there the "work."
ian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned out for half the tyranny, which this y exercised upon us. Half a dozes in a day (bating Sundays too), why, it seems nothing! We make twice the number every day in our lives as a matter of course, and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they e into our head. But when the head has to go out to them -- when the mountain must e to Mahomet --
Reader, try it for once, only for one short t></a>welvemonth.
It was not every week that a fashion of pink stogs came up; but mostly, instead of it, sed, untractable subject; some topic impossible to be torted into the risible; some feature, upon whiile could play; some flint, from whio process of iy could procure a distillation. There they lay; there your appoiale of brick-making was set before you, whiust finish, with or without straw, as it happehe craving Dragon -- the Public -- like him iemple -- must be fed; it expected its daily rations; and Daniel, and ourselves, to do us justice, did the best we could on this side bursting him.
While we were wringing our coy sprightliness for the Post, and writhing uhe toil of what is called "easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service for the "Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself much about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air about them, it was suffit. He carried this nonchalance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and that no very important one, was not seldom palmed upon his employers food jest; for example sake -- " Walkierday m casually own Snow Hill, who should we meet but Deputy Humphreys! we rejoice to add, that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a good state of health. We do not remember ever to have seen him look better." This gentleman, so surprisingly met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait esture, was a stant butt for mirth to the small paragraph-mongers of the day; and our friend thought that he might have his fling at him with the rest. We met A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary renter, which he told with tears of satisfa in his eyes, and chug at the anticipated effects of its annou day in the paper. We did not quite prehend where the wit of it lay at the time; nor was it easy to be detected, whehing came out, advantaged by type aer-press. He had better have met any thing that m than a on cil Man. His services were shortly after dispensed with, on the plea that his Paragraphs of late had been defit in point. The one iion, it must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, proper to awaken curiosity; and the se, or moral, wears the aspect of humanity, and good neighbourly feeling. But somehow the clusion was not judged altogether to ao the magnifit promise of the premises. We traced our friends pen afterwards in the "True Briton," the "Star," the "Traveller," -- from all which he was successively dismissed, the Proprietors having "no further occasion for his services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. When wit failed, or topics ran low, there stantly appeared the following -- It is not generally known that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers shops are the a arms of Lombardy. The Lombards were the first money-brokers in Europe." Bob has done more to set the public right on this important point of blazonry, than the whole College of Heralds.
The appoi of a regular wit has long ceased to be a part of the ey of a M Paper. Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without them. Parsoe, and Topham, brought up the set of "witty paragraphs," first in the "World." Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and succeeded poor Allen in the Or<bdo>藏书网</bdo>acle. But, as we said, the fashion of jokes passes away; and it would be difficult to discover in the Biographer of Mrs. Siddons, any traces of that vivacity and fancy which charmed the whole town at the e of the preseury. Even the prelusive delicacies of the present writer -- the curt "Astraean allusion " -- would be thought pedantid out of date, in these days.
From the office of the M Post (for we may as well exhaust our Neer Reminisces at once) by ge of property in the paper, we were transferred, mortifying exge! to the office of the Albion Neer, late Rackstrows Museum, i-street What a transition -- from a handsome apartment, from rose-wood desks, and silver-inkstands, to an office -- no office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the occupation of dead monsters of which it seemed redolent -- from the tre of loyalty and fashion, to a focus of vulgarity aion! Here in murky closet, ie from its square tents to the receipt of the two bodies of Editor, and humble paragraph-maker, together at oime, sat in the discharge of his orial funs (the "Bigod" of Elia) the redoubted John Fenwick.
F., without a guinea in his pocket, and havi not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might and, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights and titles (such as they were worth) of the Albion, from one Lovell; of whom we know nothing, save that he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of Wales. With this hopeless -- for it had been sinking ever sis e, and could now re upon not more than a hundred subscribers resolutely determine upon pulling down the Gover in the first instance, and making both our fortunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more did this infatuated Demo about borrowing seven shilling pieces, and lesser , to meet the daily demands of the Stamp Office, which allowed no credit to publications of that side in politics. An outcast from politer bread, we attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was to write treason.
Recolles of feelings -- which were all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were misled, we erred in the pany of some, who are ated very good men now -- rather than any tendency at this time to Republi does assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper lasted, sonant in no very uoo the right ear fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than reend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, were covered with flowers of so ing a periphrasis -- as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly -- that the keen eye of an Attorney General was insuffit to detect the lurking snake among them. There were times, indeed, when we sighed for our mentleman-like occupation uuart. But with ge of masters it is ever ge of service. Already one paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked at that office, with a view of its being submitted at least to the attention of the proper Law Officers -- when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our Pen, aimed at Sir J---s M----h, who was on the eve of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apostacy, as F. pronou, (it is hardy worth particularising), happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, or, as he then delighted to be called, Citizen Stanhope, deprived F. at one of the last hopes of a guinea from the last patron that had stuck by us; and breaking up our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat mortifying, of the Lawyers. It was about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan. Stuart made that curious fession to us, that he had "never deliberately walked into an Exhibition at Somerset House in his life."
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