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"He saw, it seems, from grot below,
His altar in a danger great,

And few that pleaded well for it :

Takes up his pen, and falls to plead

For's altar, though a twelvemonth dead."

Innumerable were the books, and wonderful their titles, which followed upon this subject:

"Scarce was a pen but what was tried,

And books flew out on every side."

At length the coal was completely extinguished, and the controversy concluded by a book from the Presbyterian party. The book is indebted for its efficacy to the judicious choice of a Greek title. It would be superfluous to attempt to describe the character of the title-pages adopted in succeeding times, when the abuse of religion was carried to such a tremendous extent. The writers of Cromwell's time invented various styles of title-pages --the allegorical, the elegiac, the heroic, the epigrammatic, &c. but the metaphorical was most generally preferred; such for instance as A Pair of old Stockings newly vamped-A Reapinghook well tempered for the stubborn Ears of the coming Crops-or Biscuits baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation. The re-establishment of order and the monarchy banished, I am sorry to say, the taste for curious titlepages. The decline and fall of the art may be distributed amongst the succeeding reigns. What indeed could be expected from the era, in which volumes containing specimens of titlepages of the most elaborate workmanship, were treated as fit only to erect altars to Dulness.

"But, high above, more solid learning shone,
The classics of an age that heard of none;
There Caxton slept, with Wynkyn at his side,
One clasp'd in wood, and one in strong cow-hide;

*

Of these, twelve volumes, twelve of amplest size,
Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies,
Inspired he seizes:"-

Dunciad, B. 1. But a more liberal spirit appears to be reviving. The laurels of the venerable Wynkyn are about to be refreshed. If the posthumous admiration of the 19th century is unavailing for the great promoters of the art of decorative printing in former days, may be the means of communicating some benefit to our posterity and extensive will be our claim upon the gratitude of that posterity, if by our spirit and industry we succeed in restoring to the ancient honours of its lineage---this relic veteris prosapiæ ac multarum imaginum---the title-page.

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W.

SONNETTOMANIA.

THROUGHOUT the region of specifics I have long sought for a cure or antidote against one prevalent disorder. In "Every man his own doctor,"-in the puff-stuck windows of patent medicines on the gay magazine-cover, and in the sly corner of a newspaper, not forgetting the bills so importunately presented gratis to the step-picking passenger, I have searched; but all Genuine pills and universal panaceas bid defiance (if duly attested and signed) to all diseases save the present: the rake may purchase a fresh constitution, and the old obtain a precious infusion of youth from a half-guinea phial; but this touches not our case. It is true, that the bite of a rabid animal, the species of disorder to which I allude, has baffled more than any other the efforts of the faculty, yet we have the searing-iron, vinegar, and, if all fails, suffocating bolsters, against the hydrophobia, but nothing, nothing alas! is on record as a specific for the sonnettomania.

Natural philosophers have been much perplexed to define the animal, the bite of which is so disastrous, or to assign it to any class; as though the breed is very common, not only in its native woods, but even in populous cities, the professors of comparative anatomy have been totally unable to discover its genus, and declare that the body always evaporates under dissection. It is uncertain whether we are indebted for this pest to the devastating Arabs, or whether it was indigenous to the Swiss and Provençal mountains; but its spreading and fickle nature inclines me to the former opinion. Wherever bred or born, we learn that the ravenous creature, in the early period of modern times, descended into the fertile plains of Italy, and, with a very fastidious taste, that has not been its subsequent characteristic, bit the choicest spirits of that enthusiastic land. One, in particular, it seized venomous hold of, who mistook the cause of his frenzy for love, and made very illiberal complaints against that innocent deity. The general symptoms of the infection, in this its first stage, very much resembled those it displays in its present, and to be hoped its last stage, amongst us,-extreme melancholy, black bile, and slavering at the mouth with inanity and froth. It must have been a curious spectacle to see the great geniuses of those days, dying of dejection and playing with petty conceits, like the ponderous Falstaff fiddling with the sheets as he expired. At a later period in the country referred to, it assumed a more terrific aspect: the animal increased to double and treble its original size, and bit the whole body of the Cruscan academicians; and doubtless it was partly owing to this mania, that they metamorphosed themselves into millers, and converted, with a truly typical metaphor, all poetry into bran. This is its most dangerous

epoch; and I heartily hope the infection may never again be communicated to the critical tribe. Besides, with them it would be supererogation; and adding it to their natural "pus atque venenum," would be, as Pliny says, "Coalos portans ad Newcastellum." From this time its virulence abated, and leaving the iracund veins of church and schoolmen, for the gentler blood of dames and cecisbeos, it by degrees assumed a character, certainly as tormenting a one, but not so terrific as of old; and though the mania still rages as extensively as ever in "the pleasant land of Italy," it has subsided into a milder disorder, and is become rather an annoyance than a disease.

With a patriotic propensity the animal revisited its native country, France, and, by infecting Benserade and Voiture, excited a civil war. The kingdom was divided, not into Cavalier and Roundhead, Jesuit and Jansenist, but into Jobelins and Uranists, so denominated from the titles of their respective effusions, the former headed by the Prince of Conti, the latter by the Duchess de Longueville. "O le bon tems," exclaims La Harpe with much naïveté, "que celui où le cour et la ville, toutes les puissances se divisaient pour deux sonnets, dont l'un est fort mauvais et l'autre assez médiocre."

It afterwards visited us. Lord Surrey, who was mad enough before, being bitten most likely when at Turin, jousting in honour of his Geraldine, infected his friend Wyatt; and doubtless the disease would have spread much farther, had it not been burnt up with the caustic of polemical discussion. It afterwards burst out in the maiden reign; but seems never to have acquired a complete mastery over the robust constitutions of our ancestors: they even tamed the breed of the animal itself to a certain degree, and made it the companion of their leisure hours.

For upwards of two centuries the infection seemed to be almost lost, though at times it broke forth in various foreign and insignificant shapes, disguised so as to deceive the eyes of the sane, who dreaded a fresh breaking out of the malady. If not altogether the same, this mania was very much akin to that recorded in the pages of the Spectator, when the poetical pus made its appearance inclosed in eggs, acrostics, hatchets, and butterflies. I marvel how this second disorder was ever extinguished; all remedies must have been vain against its insidious attacks. Unless, then, we may consider this as a resuscitation of the disorder, which is very doubtful, it did not rage for a long period with us, so as to cause rational fear from the effects of its ravages, till of late, when it has appeared with redoubled violence, and now threatens to overrun the world once more with its symptoms of venom, megrim, and inanity.

A friend of mine was bitten a few years since, and in the

midst of his foam and convulsions, he has ejected, during the interval, two thousand and odd sonnets,-five hundred to the moon, which sphere, by its universal influence on sonnettomania, completely proves the title of the disordered to be ranked with the unfortunate beings denominated lunatics. Thou mayest have the whole two thousand, "gentle reader, but still gentler purchaser," at No. 20, in the Scotch barrack.* But I forget, this fabric has been demolished, and I am glad of it; for its close quarters were a terrible nest of the infected. Nevertheless, thou shalt not altogether perish, kind-hearted Ned; the most intelligible of thy moon-ditties shall be preserved, like a grub in mine amber:

new.

There's but a border of the fair moon up,
A shallow crescent, in whose silver breast
May be descried, all shadowy, the rest
Close-cradled, as an acorn in its cup:

It is our Earth, I've read, that thus doth light
Thy face, fair Moon; and from thy sphere perchance
Eyes even now on this world fix their glance

In wonder at the planet of their night;
For such are we to thee, as thou to us,-
Bright partners of the sky, each other's gloom,
Cheering with smile of mutual fondliness:-
Ye, lifeless masses, rays of love illume,
While me, a living soul, th' entombing cloud
Of loneliness hath wrapt in desolate shroud.

Poor Ned was a harmless and innocent youth; for three years he lived happy over ledger and journal, till unluckily, one "Saturday at e'en," the devil tempted him to make provision for the following day, a wet Sunday, with two pennyworth of a magazine. In its fair pages glittered seven sonnets, spick and span How he envied the initials! Put E. S. in their situation, and, thought he, the fame of Ned Scroggins is complete,—the world would know and admire him,-for talents, like murder, will out. Should fourteen lines deter him, whose pen achieved thousands in the week? "'Tis but setting down the rhymes first," said he, "and the rest is easy." " and the rest is easy." He took heart, and his pen marked down the "numbers for the numbers came." happier man than my friend, for the whole next week, never stuck pen behind his ear, in the whole realm of Cockaigne; but the poison was at work--" vulnus alit venis." A fig for the desk!" quoth Ned, and forth he walked from a murky countinghouse in a Cheapside alley, towards Fleet-street and the Strand,

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Great Suffolk-street, Charing-Cross, which used to be so denominated by the wags of the day.

in search of a green mead. I spied him as he strode through the Horse Guards; and from his elastic step, unusually cocked hat, and unconscious chuckle, knew that he was infected. At a cautious distance I observed him: the bomb felt the first effects of his fury; he flung a sonnet at it, nor could the innocent Chinese bridge escape him. I regretted not being able to keep up with his speed, and learn the extent of his devastations through Pimlico. "Put a beggar on horseback, and he'll ride to the devil:"-set him on a winged horse, and he cannot expect a better fate-such was the end of Ned Scroggins! Yet if in the nether world he retain his original mania, (and much I fear his satanic majesty could not dispense with so efficient a torment,) he will be gratified by hearing, that the three months since his Hegira, have produced as many tributary sonnets from pilgrims to his grave. In the copious memoirs prefixed to his remains (yet unpublished), he was reported to have taken the distemper from Mr. Abel Shufflebottom; but it is difficult to give credit to aught reflecting on that harmless and amiable youth, who has not yet openly shewn symptoms of the disorder, though there is no saying but it may be secretly preying upon him by slow advances.

I am really quite at a loss what remedy or preventive to suggest against this dreadful and growing complaint: purgatives do but provoke it, as we learn from Dryden; and low diet, that cools all other fevers, serves but to heighten this. Horace recommends hellebore against a disease of similar symptoms; but his nostrums for this, as well as for money-getting and sore eyes, shew him to have been an arrant quack. Smoking has been recommended as a safeguard against all epidemics; but here it is of no effect-the infection delights in a cigar, and flourishes even in the fumy climate of the cider-cellar. After all, the best antidote perhaps is,-hear, O John Bull! and preserve thyself,-a full stomach and fat ale, a recipe, of the benefit of which I am so convinced, as not to fail a single day in swallowing my sovereign medicine.

But all is of no avail, as long as folks believe in the doctrine of fatalism with the Turks, who, it is said, will purchase and wear the vestments of those who die of the plague, and will bargain with and embrace the infected, impressed with the strong conviction of "what must be, must," and thinking it a vain endeavour to escape that to which they were predestined. Similar are the opinions of the unfortunate patients for whom I prescribe born with the latent heat of inspiration, the os magna sonaturum, they must (il faut) scratch head, bite nail, and sonnettize,-"sic volvere Parcas." O most impotent and lame conclusion

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