I turn with pleasure from these wretched performances to Mr. Cary's translation. It is a work which well deserves a separate discussion, and on which, if this article were not already too long, I could dwell with great pleasure. At present I will only say, that there is no other version in the world, as far as I know, so faithful, yet that there is no other version which so fully proves that the translator is himself a man of poetical genius. Those who are ignorant of the Italian language should read it to become acquainted with the Divine Comedy. Those who are most intimate with Italian literature should read it for its original merits; and I believe that they will find it difficult to determine whether the author deserves most praise for his intimacy with the language of Dante, or for his extraordinary mastery over his own. T. M. RECOLLECTIONS OF ABRAHAM GENTIAN, Esq. Trivial fond records "That youth and observation copied." SHAKESPEAR. AND SO poor Gentian is gone at last! I pity the sides of the people in the next world if he has preserved his identity. But he ought to have staid here. We can do without Homer as long as we have the Iliad; we can spare even the divine Shakespear while we have his immortal plays, though we would have given the world to make one of the Boar's Head parties; but of Gentian Posterity cannot have the remotest idea it is impossible to reduce him to print. People thought this a defect in him. Nonsense! it was a defect in language, which can only give the mere skeleton of his jests. Is it a defect in a beautiful landscape that you yawn over the best description of it? A love scene and a good dinner are capital things in real life, but sad mawkish reading. I am afraid that whenever you can gain adequate notions of objects by words, they are by nature dry and uninteresting; for instance, a bill of lading gives one a very perfect idea of sugars, cottons, logwoods, and tobaccos; and yet, of the two, you would rather read the Classical Journal than an abstract bill of lading; to be sure, if you mix up any associations of profit or loss with the cargo, it is another matter, and does not fall within the limits of my philosophy. Indeed I am sorry for poor poor Pos terity when I think how many good things it must inevitably lose; the endless catalogue of Munden's faces, the nightingale echo of Catalani, the Listoniety of Liston, and the sublimity of Grimaldi. But, after all, Gentian is the great loss: if I could; make a bargain for posterity, I would preserve him, and give up in his stead a hundred bales of German metaphysics, modern poetry ad libitum, Bishop Marsh and his questions, and, Mr. Irving's four orations; if, indeed, posterity has any title in these things to dispose of. Gentian was the modern Yorick, and if Shakespear thought it wise to keep Yorick behind the scenes, who shall dare to produce Gentian.. There are parts in the very frame work of society which require mending. For many kinds of talent there is no market; they must be given away. Gentian ought to have been a rich man; and so he would, if he could have exercised his abilities. in an established profession. We have rat-catchers, pigkillers, and men-slayers; nay, the latter genus is so numerous that it has been divided into species, as soldiers, banditti, physicians, and Jack Ketches; why not, then, a blue-devilkiller. Gentian would have been a dead shot. It was no matter where he found you, or in what temper. I would give you leave to be in a sick bed or a spunging-house; it might be the night your first play was damned; you might be going to have a tooth drawn, or have been reading your tailor's bill, or Pen Owen or the dying number of the Liberal, or enduring a speech from Mr. Bankes or a debate at the court of aldermen, or listening to a curtain lecture, or attending a friend while his leg was cut off; you might be dining with Duke Humphry or coming out of the cave of Trophonius; it was all the same to Gentian. He began, and unless you were both deaf and blind, it was Waterloo Bridge to a steppingstone, York Minster to St. Pancras New Church, or Inigo Jones to Mr. Soane, but in five minutes your "lungs did crow like Chanticleer." He was irresistible; he attacked all, and conquered all. I have seen a lord, a poet, a hostler, a justice of the peace, a chambermaid, three political economists, a scholar, and a fine lady, all thrown into convulsions at one and the same time by one and the same joke. I knew a man of extraordinary talent and learning, and himself a wit, who had by dint of theorizing got an idea that Gentian's talk was all absurdity, and who was irritated at its effect. I have seen him labouring to keep his mind and his museles in the true attitude of lofty contempt; by and by, he would find it necessary to help his resolution with his hands, and he would try to resist the attack, by mechanically preventing his mouth from giving way. it was all in vain; it always ended by his throwing himself back in his chair, and conscientiously paying up his arrears of laughter. But It is said that Raphael never went from home without a train of pupils, who followed him to listen to his instructions, so Gentian had always a tail as long as a Highland chief's. G. was very catholic in his society, and you might see him with an M. P. on one arm, and a banker's clerk on the other, each elbowing along determined to lose not a word of their oracle: these were favoured ones; the next in degree walked in the rear, and received the bon mots at second hand from their envied rivals-so that he could no more stir without laughter than a carriage without noise. And then he had still time to throw chance jokes at the hackney coachmen, apple-women, house-maids, &c. All of which told with the accuracy of a rifle. I have often amused myself in marking his progress down a long street by a perspective of grins, just as by the flutter of white handkerchiefs you can trace the passing of a popular man in a procession, long after his individul figure has ceased to be distinguishable. Gentian in his capacity for adopting the dose of humour to the time he could command for administering it, rivalled Sterne's flatterer. I remember a glorious dinner with him at the Clarendon, and our going afterwards to the Cobourg. He had been successful even beyond himself. The conversation had been one long speech with a chorus of laughing. He was the only man I ever knew who could laugh with impunity at his own jests in him it was an additional recommendation. He had used to wait till the first peal had almost died away, and then he went off himself with such a burst of sincere enjoyment, that his audience inevitably followed the signal. When we arrived at the Cobourg, Gentian offered a wager that he would walk straight into the theatre without a cheque, -the bet was accepted, and having paid our money, one of us took the cheques, and G. putting himself at our head we marched up stairs. The performance had begun some time, and the cheque-taker seeing G. about to pass him with a degagé air, humming a waltz, stopped him, and asked, in a businesslike tone," if he had been in before?” “ Why," says Gentian, chucking him under the rib, "You deep one, you know I have!" whereupon the fellow was so tickled with the humour of his antagonist, and with his own unsuspected profundity, that he quietly gave up the contest, and Gentian walked in victorious. This will convey to the reader no idea of G.'s drollery; I never supposed it would, as I have said, I might as well attempt to write down the flavour of a glass of Champagne; but it is one of the daily and hourly instances of his power. His face and manner were an 66 open sesame." G. was arbiter elegantiarum to all his friends-furnished them with tailors and hair-dressers-many an ouran-outang VOL. II. PART I. Q has he humanized to my knowledge-it was his pride to take a student from the Temple who had pored over Coke upon Littleton until the hair of his head was as long as my Lord Petersham's whiskers, and the tie of his cravet a dozen sets of fashions behind the world. These poor fellows whom he designated by the title of his elegant Hottentots, he followed up with such unceasing, yet good humoured banter, that it was in vain to resist it. The nearest conception I can give the reader of my departed friend, is to compare him with Baron G. My friend was in society what G was at the bar. You felt that the powers of each were inimitable, because they had not been attained by study, and had themselves no prototype. You could not take their efforts to pieces, and see how they were composed. Sir Humphrey Davy has resolved the Alkalies, but no philosopher will ever shew us how to compound such speeches as G's, or such talk as Gentian's. Reader, did you ever see G-cross-examine a witness? He would march up to him, and say almost in so many words, Sir, you are a rogue, and take notice I am going to make you eat your evidence. Other advocates wait like cats for an opportunity to spring unawares on their prey; he was the rattle-snake, his eye charmed the unhappy victim who involuntarily walked into his jaws: so Gentian never lay perdue in the corner of a room, waiting for a happy moment to say a good thing. He seized on the conversation, and carried all in triumph before him. His eye, his rotund figure, his compressed lips, his hands, his feet, the whole man, gave the fullest information that laughing was to be the order of the day, and laugh all the world did; until, spent with fatigue, they feared a jest more than a whipping, and prayed in sincerity of heart for dullness and relief; then came my turn to speak. MARTIN DANVERS HEAVISIDE. 227 WHAT YOU WILL. No. II. EDITED BY PATERSON AYMER, SUB-EDITOR. 6 NUMBER III. of the Quarterly Magazine is almost drawing to a close, as the year 1823 is making his exit. It has been an eventful year to me ;-it introduced me to public life upon a most conspicuous stage. It sent me into the haunts of wits, and poets, and scholars, and philosophers, as a sheep amongst the wolves. From these gentlemen I have received a great deal of kindness, a few quips and cranks, some paper bullets of the brain,' and some heedless contempt of my comforts and convenience. They spoil my Christmas, and keep me out of bed. I have them in my power, for the editor has left me in the lurch; and I will have some revenge. Of the sonnets, and love songs, and other small deer' before me, I am expected to say something piquant and civil. I shall do no such thing. I shall discharge my duty in the most inventory-taking manner in the world. Thus, then : A piece of passion, by Davenant Cecil : TO ANNA. There is a blush upon thy cheek; This trembling hand,—that starting tear,- Or can it, Anna, can it be~ And have I grieved or anger'd thee? I know I have been over bold And all too quickly have confess'd That passion'd in my breast. I should not, Anne, have sought to know |