and a shop-boy must have a decent coat on his back. By the by, nobody can sell half the goods that an Irishman can; he has such ready eloquence, and such a taking way with the "leedies." But your literary genius carries his capital in his head, which is a capital advantage. He needs but a stump of a pen and a quire of foolscap; or, as a pis aller, he may scrawl

"With desperate charcoal round his darken'd wall.” When, therefore, a young Irishman happens to be of the wrong religion, cannot get into the church, or has not interest enough to make him a gauger, or a serjeant of police; when he is without assets to set up in business, and has not wherewithal to starve till he is called to the Bar, off he sets to London to break a spear with the English wits, and report for the newspapers. During war there was an immense draught to the army of these chaps; and, every Gazette, a decent crop of importunate rivals was killed off; so that an Englishman could enjoy his ease in his arm-chair, and write with some hope of remuneration. But now, "in these piping times of peace," there is no vent for this vast and teeming population (teeming in more senses than one) but through the press; and so,

"Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,

They rave, recite, and madden through the land."

66

None can know this better than the editors of the newspapers. Methinks I see their antechambers (especially towards harvest) crowded with embryo Burkes and half-fledged Goldsmiths, red-headed and blue-eyed youths, fresh from their Connaught and Munster academies! Methinks I hear their sweet brogues, most musical, most melancholy," professing an instinctive passion for writing, and a readiness, poor fellows! to work at the most reduced prices. Nor can it be said that the rogues want talent; for Croker finds the Trinity-men in places under Government, and thus draws off the scholars of whom Ireland makes small boast. Not that we should speak unkindly of the hard readers of the "silent sister." They cannot help the exhausting course of study upon which they are put; and they would be glad to turn their hands to something better than polemics, if they were properly encouraged. Besides, a well-endowed fellow cannot in reason be expected to give up his commons and dine at the potato-warehouse, for the sake of forming a good style. Since Shiel and Maturin succeeded in writing for the theatres, every post brings Kemble a papistical tragedy, or a comedy, of which all the characters are Irishmen ; which is much the same thing as an apple-pie all quinces. The Sketches of the Irish Bar have, in like manner, opened an agreeable prospect in the Magazines for such of the Hibernian Templars as eat at the Barley-mow; or, when cash runs taper, take their buttock and flank in Chancery-lane. Then as for Irish novels, Banim has ruined the trade. I believe, on my conscience, that, at this present writing, there is not a county in the four provinces without its novel on the stocks. What, indeed, between Irish novelists and the Tory imitators of Walter Scott, the regular traders can scarcely find a publisher to take their manuscripts as a gift. Your Irishmen, also, are desperate reviewers. Conscience has nothing to do with the matter; and a review is so like a riot or a duel, that your Munsterman is perfectly at home in the

business. It has been most calumniously asserted, that if an Irishman were about to be roasted, there would be no lack of Irishmen to turn the spit. This is only the case as between Protestant and Catholic; who would not only roast, but eat each other also, if they could, for the greater glory of Heaven. It is nevertheless true, that, reviewing being only a metaphorical roasting, the Edinburgh folks, when they want to cut up Irish literature, generally make use of an Irish pen, that the deed may be done handsomely. Poetry, moreover, comes to an Irishman by nature. We have Irish poets, of all sorts and sizes, eating the trade out of house and home; all sparkling and glitter; very gorgeous and very warm. It is not long ago that a worthy Patlander, a dealer in printed calicoes, put a splendid Epic into my hands, beseeching my "int'rest, Sir, with Lintot;" and I am rather surprised that "Lintot, dull rogue!" did not bite; for, as I am a gentleman and a critic, it was one of the best-furnished poems I have read this season; the descriptions being bran new out of the author's shop, of hangings, green and gold, pink and silver, the handsomest " my conversation ever coped withal." An Irish poet of renown, who likes popularity, keeps a clerk on purpose to answer the Irish aspirants to the laurel, who make him the channel of their communication with the booksellers; and the poor young man has more correspondence upon his hands than he can possibly get through. The Irish are also great on the Catholic question; and in a pamphlet on the state of the Nation, the Secretary of the- has alone written enough political matter to supply any reasonable town for a century; so that, if an Englishman wishes to get in a word edgeways, as the saying is, he must needs pay for printing, paper, and advertisements; and buy and sell, and live by the loss. Is it not virtually a perfect overthrow of the liberty of the press? It is only indeed now that the Tories have got again into power, and can afford once more to pay high for abuse and ribaldry, and that some of the most acharnés writers (that is, of the most afflicted with the "pochette vuidée de l'impostume pécuniaire,") will be drawn off, that I venture on the present paper with some faint hope that it may find elbowroom in the crowd.

To make matters worse (for it never rains but it pours), the immigration of Irish authors has been rendered more galling by the new passion for writing which has sprung up among peers and ladies of haut ton. There is scarcely a person in the Red Book who has not published his novel, his volume of travels, or at least his pamphlet on the Corn Laws or the Currency. This is so much the more unjust, because such persons are in no want of bread, and write in pure wantonness;-nay, being amply provided with handles to their names, they have not even the excuse of writing to make for themselves a grade in society. If indeed they should be out of cash, can't they apply to the Treasury instead of to Longman? Can't they be contented with a regiment or a colony, instead of a quarto? Or, if they want distinction, cannot they walk the streets without whiskers, flirt with their own wives, pay their debts, or some other extravagance of the kind, to mark them out from the oi pollui of the beau monde? If they will persist in writing, without rhyme or reason, let them at least give up their estates to the regular traders, or found hospitals for decayed authors. There's Lord B.

and the metaphysical Lord D. offend in the double capacity of Lords and of Irishmen. Why the devil don't they write in Irish? they would be just as intelligible; or some professional writer might live by their translation. Is it not enough to put commoner authors down in person, but we must have vicarious authors into the bargain in high life? Besides, is not this fraudulent putting forward of a great name a getting of money under false pretences a cheat on the public, who pay so generously for aristocratic books, which would be left for ever on the shelf if not written by a Right Honourable? Does his Lordship hope that any plebeian can so far imitate the style of a peer as to deceive the people of fashion? Oh! my dear dear, Lord, this is indeed "too bad." It is pleasant, but wrong-" reform it altogether."

But, to come back to the lost sheep of Parnassus,--this overstocking of the literary population is the more grievous, inasmuch as there is so little prospect of a remedy, natural or parliamentary, short of an ad internecionem starvation. Writers are shut out of almost every European state. Austria, which has provided so liberally for fighting Irishmen,-making one a Field-marshal and another a Count of the Holy Roman Empire,-would look very queer at a publishing recruit. The Pope, maugre his Catholicity, would put him on the Index as one of the radicali del secolo; and the Spaniard would clap him into the Inquisition for treating Emancipation as a revolutionary and unjesuitical question. In France they have also pretty well overstocked their own market, and the booksellers give no prices. Then again, literature, unlike agriculture, has no spade cultivation to provide for superfluous hands; and if an Irish author should strive to earn a livelihood by dropping back into the rear ranks of society, and should turn his ambitious tendencies at climbing up a bricklayer's ladder, he will but escape out of the frying-pan into the fire. In America, a market is scarcely yet open sufficient to meet the views of the literary emigrant. Yet this is all that remains for us; and I would press it upon Mr. Wilmot Horton, since he will take the bull by the horns, to begin with this the least unmanageable branch of the subject. If he can reduce the literary population of Ireland, it will encourage him to proceed with the rest of the peasantry. It would only require to engage Murray or Colburn to settle in America, and the authors would follow instinctively, like flies after the honey. But then, it will be said, how are we to do this, and keep the home-market in a supply of bibliopoles? "Ay, that's the rub!" Suppose, then, we have a joint-stock company for the encouragement of literature in the back-settlements. Jointstock companies, to be sure, are out of fashion, but the case is desperate. Over-population is the master-vice of the nineteenth century; and Hippocrates writes that extreme diseases require extreme remedies. M.

August.-VOL. XXIII. NO. XCII.

L

LONDON LYRICS.
Table Talk.

To weave a culinary clue,
Whom to eschew, and what to chew,
Where shun, and where take rations,
I sing. Attend, ye diners-out,
And, if my numbers please you, shout
"Hear, hear!" in acclamations.
There are who treat you, once a year,
To the same stupid set: good cheer
Such hardship cannot soften.
To listen to the self-same dunce,
At the same leaden table, once
Per Annum's once too often.
Rather than that, mix on my plate
With men I like the meat I hate-
Colman with pig and treacle;
Luttrell with ven'son-pasty join,
Lord Normanby with orange wine,
And rabbit-pie with Jekyll.
Add to George Lambe a sable snipe,
Conjoin with Captain Morris tripe,
By parsley-roots made denser:
Mix Macintosh with mack'rel, with
Calves-head and bacon Sydney Smith,
And mutton-broth with Spencer.
Shun sitting next the wight whose drone
Bores, sotto voce, you alone

With flat colloquial pressure:
Debarr'd from general talk, you droop
Beneath his buzz, from orient Soup

To occidental Cheshire.

He who can only talk with one,

Should stay at home and talk with none

At all events, to strangers,
Like village epitaphs of yore,

He ought to cry, "Long time I bore,"
To warn them of their dangers.
There are whose kind inquiries scan
Your total kindred, man by man,
Son, brother, cousin, joining.

They ask about your wife, who's dead,
And eulogize your uncle Ned,

Who died last week for coining.
When join'd to such a son of prate,
His queries I anticipate,

And thus my lee-way fetch up-
"Sir, all my relatives, I vow,
Are perfectly in health-and now
I'd thank you for the ketchup!”

Others there are who but retail
Their breakfast journal, now grown stale,
In print ere day was dawning:

When folks like these sit next to me,

They send me dinnerless to tea;

One cannot chew while yawning.

Seat not good talkers one next one,
As Jacquier beards the Clarendon ;
Thus shrouded you undo 'em:
Rather confront them, face to face,
Like Holles Street and Harewood Place,
And let the town run through 'em.

Poets are dangerous to sit nigh;
You waft their praises to the sky,
And when you think you're stirring
Their gratitude, they bite you.-(That's
The reason I object to cats;

They scratch amid their purring.)
For those who ask you if you "malt,"
Who "beg your pardon" for the salt,
And ape our upper grandees,

By wondering folks can touch port wine:
That, reader, 's your affair, not mine;
I never mess with dandies.
Relations mix not kindly; shun
Inviting brothers; sire and son
Is not a wise selection:
Too intimate, they either jar
In converse, or the evening mar
By mutual circumspection.
Lawyers are apt to think the view
That interests them must interest you;
Hence they appear at table

Or supereloquent, or dumb,
Fluent as nightingales, or mum

As horses in a stable.

When men amuse their fellow guests
With Crank and Jones, or Justice Best's
Harangue in Dobbs and Ryal;
The host, beneath whose roof they sit,
Must be a puny judge of wit,

Who grants them a new trial.
Shun technicals in each extreme:
Exclusive talk, whate'er the theme,
The proper boundary passes:
Nobles as much offend, whose clack's
For ever running on Almack's,
As brokers on molasses.

I knew a man, from glass to delf,
Who talk'd of nothing but himself,
'Till check'd by a vertigo:

The party who beheld him "floor'd,"
Bent o'er the liberated board,

And cried, "Hic jacet ego."

Some aim to tell a thing that hit
Where last they dined; what there was wit
Here meets rebuffs and crosses.

Jokes are like trees; their place of birth
Best suits them; stuck in foreign earth,
They perish in the process.

Think, reader, of the few who groan
For any ailments save their own: