But here I must finish-for Boв, my dear DOLLY, "O'er the grave of such talents to utter my moans; "And, to-day-as my stomach is not in good cue For the flesh of the VERYS-I'll visit their bones!" He insists upon my going with him-how teasing! This letter, however, dear DOLLY, shall lie Unseal'd in my draw'r, that, if any thing pleasing Occurs while I'm out, I may tell you-good-by. B. F. Four o'clock. Oh, DOLLY, dear DOLLY, I'm ruin'd for ever— That Boв to a shop kindly order'd the coach, (Ah, little I thought who the shopman would prove,) To bespeak me a few of those mouchoirs de poche, Which, in happier hours, I have sigh'd for, my love, (The most beautiful things-two Napoleons the price And one's name in the corner embroider'd so nice!) Well, with heart full of pleasure, I enter'd the shop, But-ye gods, what a phantom!-I thought I should drop There he stood, my dear DOLLY-no room for a doubt There, behind the vile counter, these eyes saw him stand, With a piece of French cambric, before him roll'd out, And that horrid yard-measure upraised in his hand! Oh-Papa, all along, knew the secret, 'tis clear'Twas a shopman he meant by a " Brandenburgh,” dear! The man, whom I fondly had fancied a King, And, when that too delightful illusion was past, As a hero had worshipp'd-vile, treacherous thing— To turn out but a low linen-draper at last! My head swam around-the wretch smiled, I believe, But his smiling, alas, could no longer deceive I fell back on BOB-my whole heart seem'd to wither And, pale as a ghost, I was carried back hither! With cruel facetiousness said, " Curse the Kiddy! "A stanch Revolutionist always I've thought him, "But now I find out he's a Counter one, BIDDY!" Only think, my dear creature, if this should be known To that saucy, satirical thing, MISS MALONE! It will spread through the country—and never, oh, never Can BIDDY be seen at Kilrandy again! Farewell-I shall do something desp'rate, I fearAnd, ah! if my fate ever reaches your ear, One tear of compassion my DOLL will not grudge To her poor-broken-hearted-young friend, BIDDY FUDGE. Nota bene-I am sure you will hear, with delight, NOTES. (1) To commemorate the landing of Louis le Désiré from England, the impression of his foot is marked out on the pier at Calais, and a pillar with an inscription raised opposite to the spot. (2) Ci-gît la jambe de, &c., &c. (3) A celebrated mantua-maker in Paris. (4) This excellent imitation of the noble Lord's style shows how deeply Mr. Fudge must have studied his great original. Irish oratory, indeed, abounds with such startling peculiarities. Thus the eloquent Counsellor B-, in describing some hypocritical pretender to charity, said, "He put his hand in his breeches-pocket, like a crocodile, and," &c., &c. (5) The title of the chief magistrate of Belfast, before whom his Lordship (with the "studium immane loquendi" attributed by Ovid to that chattering and rapacious class of birds, the pies) delivered sundry long and self-gratulatory orations, on his return from the Continent. It was at one of these Irish dinners that his gallant brother, Lord S., proposed the health of "The best cavalry officer in Europe--the Regent!" (6) Verbatim from one of the noble Viscount's Speeches"And now, Sir, I must embark into the feature on which this question chiefly hinges." (7) See her Letters. (8) It would be an edifying thing to write a history of the private amusements of sovereigns, tracing them down from the fly-sticking of Domitian, the mole-catching of Artabanus, the hog-mimicking of Parmenides, the horse-currying of Aretas, to the petticoat-embroidering of Ferdinand, and the patienceplaying of the Prince Regent. (9) So described on the coffin: "très-haute et puissante Princesse, agée d'un jour.” (10) There is a fulness and breadth in this portrait of Royalty, which reminds us of what Pliny says, in speaking of Trajan's great qualities:-"nonne longè lateque Principem ostentant ?" (11) See the Quarterly Review for May, 1816, where Mr. Hobhouse is accused of having written his book "in a back street of the French capital." (12) The Bill of Fare.-Véry, a well-known restaurateur. (13) Mr. Bob alludes particularly, I presume, to the famous Jury Dégustateur, which used to assemble at the Hôtel of M. Grimod de la Reynière, and of which this modern Archestratus has given an account in his Almanach des Gourmands, cinquième année, p. 78. (14) The fairy-land of cookery and gourmandise: "Pays, où le ciel offre les viandes toutes cuites, et où, comme on parle, les alouettes tombent toutes rôties. Du Latin, coquère.”— Duchat. (15) The process by which the liver of the unfortunate goose is enlarged, in order to produce that richest of all dainties, the foie gras, of which such renowned pâtés are made at Strasbourg and Toulouse, is thus described in the Cours Gastronomique:"On déplume l'estomac des oies; on attache ensuite ces animaux aux chenets d'une cheminée, et on les nourrit devant le feu. La captivité et la chaleur donnent à ces volatiles une maladie hépatique, qui fait gonfler leur foie," &c., p. 206. (16) Is Mr. Bob aware that his contempt for tea renders him liable to a charge of atheism? Such, at least, is the opinion cited in Christian, Falster. Amanitat. Philog.-" Atheum interpretabatur hominem ad herbà The aversum." He would not, I think, have been so irreverent to this beverage of scholars, if he had read Peter Petit's Poem in praise of Tea, addressed to the learned Huet-or the Epigraphe which Pechlinus wrote for an altar he meant to dedicate to this herb-or the Anacreontics of Peter Francius, in which he calls Tea Θεαν, θεην, θεαιναν. The following passage from one of these Anacreontics will, I have no doubt, be gratifying to all true Theists. Yes, let Hebe, ever young, High in heav'n her nectar hold, The Romans called a thief "homo trium literarum." Tun' trium literarum homo Me vituperas? Fur. PLAUTUS, Aulular. Act ii. Scene 4. Dissaldeus supposes this word (Fur) to be a glossema :-that Is, he thinks "Fur" has made his escape from the margin into the text. (25) The oldest, most celebrated, and most noisy of the singers at the French Opera. (26) The Théâtre de la Porte St.-Martin, which was built when the Opera House in the Palais Royal was burnt down, in 1781. A few days after this dreadful fire, which lasted more than a week, and in which several persons perished, the Parisian élégantes displayed flame-colored dresses, "couleur de feu d'Opéra !"-Dulaure, Curiosités de Paris. (27) The Old Testament," says the theatrical Critic in the Gazette de France, "is a mine of gold for the managers of our small play-houses. A multitude crowd round the Théâtre de la Gaieté every evening to see the Passage of the Red Sea." In the play-bill of one of these sacred melo-drames at Vienna, we find The Voice of G-d, by M. Schwartz.” (28) A piece very popular last year, called "Daniel, ou La Fosse aux Lions." The following scene will give an idea of the daring sublimity of these Scriptural pantomimes. "Scène 20.-La fournaise devient un berceau de nuages azurés, au fond duquel est un groupe de nuages plus lumineux, et au milieu Jehovah' au centre d'un cercle de rayons brillans, qui annonce la présence de l'Eternel." (29) Madame Bégrand, a finely-formed woman, who acts in Susanna and the Elders,"-"L'Amour et la Folie," &c., &c. (30) The Promenades Aériennes, or French Mountains.See a description of this singular and fantastic place of amusement in a pamphlet, truly worthy of it, by "F. F. Cotterel, Medecin, Docteur de la Faculté de Paris," &c., &c. (31) According to Dr. Cotterel the cars go at the rate of fortyeight miles an hour. (32) In the Café attached to these gardens there are to be (as Doctor Cotterel informs us) "douze nègres, très-alertes, qui contrasteront par l'ébène de leur peau avec le teint de lis et de roses de nos belles. Les glaces et les sorbets, servis par une main bien noire, fera davantage ressortir l'albâtre des bras arrondis de celles-ci."-p. 22. (33) His Majesty, who was at Paris under the travelling name of Count Ruppin, is known to have gone down the Beaujon very frequently. (34) Lord C.'s tribute to the character of his friend, Mr. Reynolds, will long be remembered with equal credit to both. (35) This interpretation of the fable of Midas's ears seems the most probable of any, and is thus stated in Hoffmann:"Hac allegorià significatum, Midam, utpote tyrannum, subauscultatores dimittere solitum, per quos, quæcunque per omnem regionem vel fierent, vel dicerentur, cognosceret, nimirum illis utens aurium vice." (36) Brossette, in a note on this line of Boileau, "Midas, le Roi Midas, a des oreilles d'Ane," tells us, that "M. Perrault le Médecin voulut faire à notre auteur un crime d'état de ce vers, comme d'une maligne allusion au Roi." I trust, however, that no one will suspect the line in the text of any such indecorous allusion. (37) It was not under wigs, but tiaras, that King Midas en deavored to conceal these appendages: Tempora purpureis tentat velare tiaris.-OVID. The Noble Giver of the toast, however, had evidently, with his usual clearness, confounded King Midas, Mr. Liston, and the Prince Regent together. (38) Mr. Fudge and his friends ought to go by this nameas the man, who, some years since, saved the late Right Hon. George Rose from drowning, was ever after called Salvator Rosa. (39) This intimacy between the Rats and Informers is just as it should be-" verè dulce sodalitium." (40) His Lordship, during one of the busiest periods of his Ministerial career, took lessons three times a week, from a celebrated music-master, in glee-singing. (41) How amply these two propensities of the Noble Lord would have been gratified among that ancient people of Etruria, who, as Aristotle tells us, used to whip their slaves once a year to the sound of flutes! (42) This Right Hon. Gentleman ought to give up his present alliance with Lord C., if upon no other principle than that which is inculcated in the following arrangement between two Ladies of Fashion: Says Clarinda, "though tears it may cost, It is time we should part, my dear Sue; For your character's totally lost, And I have not sufficient for two!" (43) The rapidity of this Noble Lord's transformation, at the same instant, into a Lord of the Bedchamber and an opponent of the Catholic Claims, was truly miraculous. (44) Turn instantly-a frequent direction in music-books. (45) The Irish diminutive of Squire. (46) While the Congress was reconstructing Europe-not according to rights, natural affiances, language, habits, or laws; but by tables of finance, which divided and subdivided her population into souls, demi-souls, and even fractions, according to a scale of the direct duties or taxes which could be levied by the acquiring state," &c.-Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia. The words on the protocol are âmes, demi-âmes, &c. (47) "L'aigle volera de clocher en clocher, jusqu'aux tours de Notre-Dame."-Napoleon's Proclamation on landing from Elba. (48) Singulis annis in quodam Atticæ fonte lota virginitatem recuperâsse fingitur. (49) At the peace of Tilsit, where he abandoned his ally, Prussia, to France, and received a portion of her territory. (50) The seizure of Finland from his relative of Sweden. (51) The usual preamble of these flagitious compacts. In the same spirit, Catherine, after the dreadful massacre of Warsaw, ordered a solemn "thanksgiving to God in all the churches, for the blessings conferred upon the Poles ;" and commanded that each of them should "swear fidelity and loyalty to her, and to shed in her defence the last drop of their blood, as they should answer for it to God, and his terrible judgment, kissing the holy word and cross of their Saviour!" (52) An English tailor at Paris. (53) A ship is said to miss stays, when she does not obey the helm in tacking. (54) The dandy term for a tailor (55) "Lemonade and eau-de-groscille are measured out at every corner of every street, from fantastic vessels, jingling with bells, to thirsty tradesmen or wearied messengers."See Lady Morgan's lively description of the streets of Paris, in her very amusing work upon France, book vi. (56) These gay, portable fountains, from which the groseille water is administered, are among the most characteristic ornaments of the streets of Paris. (57) "Cette merveilleuse Marmite Perpétuelle, sur le feu depuis près d'un siècle; qui a donné le jour à plus de 300,000 chapons."-Alman. de Gourmands, Quatrième Année, p. 152. (58) Le thon mariné, one of the most favorite and indigestible hors-d'œuvres. This fish is taken chiefly in the Golfe de Lyon. "La tête et le dessous du ventre sont les parties les plus recherchées des gourmets."-Cours Gastronomique, p. 252. (59) The exact number mentioned by M. de la Reynière"On connait en France 685 manières différentes d'accommoder les œufs; sans compter celles que nos savans imaginent chaque jour." (60) Veronica, the Saint of the Holy Handkerchief, is also, under the name of Venisse or Venecia, the tutelary saint of milliners. (61) St. Denys walked three miles after his head was cut off. The mot of a woman of wit upon this legend is well known:"Je le crois bien; en pareil cas, il n'y a que le premier pas qui coûte." (62) Off the Boulevards Italiens. (63) In the Palais Royal; successor, I believe, to the Flamand, so long celebrated for the moëlleux of his Gaufres. (64) Doctor Cotterel recommends, for this purpose, the Beaujon or French Mountains, and calls them "une médecine aérienne, couleur de rose ;" but I own I prefer the authority of Mr. Bob, who seems, from the following note found in his own handwriting, to have studied all these mountains very carefully : Memoranda-The Swiss little notice deserves, While the fall at Ruggieri's is death to weak nerves; I doubt whether Mr. Bob is quite correct in accenting the second syllable of Ruggieri. (65) A dish so indigestible, that a late novelist, at the end of his book, could imagine no more summary mode of getting rid of all his heroes and heroines than by a hearty supper of stewed lampreys. (66) They killed Henry I. of England:-"a food (says Hume, gravely) which always agreed better with his palate than his constitution." Lampreys, indeed, seem to have been always a favorite dish with kings-whether from some congeniality between them and that fish, I know not; but Dio Cassius tells us that Pollio fattened his lampreys with human blood. St. Louis of France was particularly fond of them.-See the anecdote of Thomas Aquinas eating up his majesty's lamprey, in a note upon Rabcais, liv. iii., chap. 2. (67) Had Mr. Bob's Dinner Epistle been inserted, I was prepared with an abundance of learned matter to illustrate it, for which, as, indeed, for all my "scientia popinæ," (Seneca,) I am indebted to a friend in the Dublin University,-whose reading formerly lay in the magic line; but, in consequence of the Provost's enlightened alarm at such studies, he has taken to the authors "de re cibaria” instead; and has left Bodin, Remigius, Agrippa and his little dog Filiolus, for Apicius, Nonius, and that most learned and savory jesuit, Bulengerus. (68) A famous restaurateur-now Dupont. (69) An old French saying:-"Faire le saut de l'Allemand, du lit à la table et de la table au lit." (70) The celebrated letter to Prince Hardenburgh, (written, however, I believe, originally in English,) in which his Lordship, professing to see “no moral or political objection" to the dismemberment of Saxony, denounced the unfortunate King as "not only the most devoted, but the most favored of Bonaparte's vassals." (71) This extraordinary madman is, I believe, in the Bicêtre. He imagines, exactly as Mr. Fudge states it, that, when the heads of those who had been guillotined were restored, he by mistake got some other person's instead of his own. (72) Tam cari capitis.-HORAt. (73) A celebrated pickpocket. (74) The only change, if I recollect right, is the substitution of lilies for bees. This war upon the bees is, of course, universal; "exitium misère apibus," like the angry nymphs in Virgil:-but may not new swarms arise out of the victims of Legitimacy yet? (75) I am afraid that Mr. Fudge alludes here to a very awk ward accident, which is well known to have happened to poor Louis le Désiré, some years since, at one of the Regent's Fêtes. He was sitting next our gracious Queen at the time. (76) "The third day of the Feast the King causeth himself to be weighed with great care."-F. Bernier's Voyage to Surat, &c. (77) "I remember," says Bernier, "that all the Omrahs expressed great joy that the King weighed two pounds more now than the year preceding."-Another author tells us that " Fatness, as well as a very large head, is considered, throughout India, as one of the most precious gifts of heaven. An enormous skull is absolutely revered, and the happy owner is looked up to as a superior being. To a Prince a joulter head is invaluable."-Oriental Field Sports. (78) Major Cartwright. (79) The name of the first worthy who set up the trade of informer at Rome (to whom our Olivers and Castleses ought to erect a statue) was Romanus Hispo; "qui formam vitæ iniit, quam postea celebrem miseriæ temporum et audaciae hominum fecerunt."-TACIT. Annal. i. 74. (80) They certainly possessed the same art of instigating their victims, which the Report of the Secret Committee attributes to Lord Sidmouth's agents :-"socius (says Tacitus of one of them) libidinum et necessitatum, quo pluribus indiciis inligaret." (81) "Neque tamen id Sereno noxæ fuit, quem odium publicum tutiorem faciebat. Nam ut quis districtior accusator velut sacrosanctus erat."-Annal. lib. iv. 36.-Or, as it is translated by Mr. Fudge's friend, Murphy :-" This daring accuser had the curses of the people, and the protection of the Emperor. Informers, in proportion as they rose in guilt, became sacred characters." (82) Murphy even confers upon one of his speeches the epithet "constitutional." Mr. Fudge might have added to his parallel, that Tiberius was a good private character:-"egregium vità famâque quoad privatus." (83) "Ludibria seriis permiscere solitus." (84) There is one point of resemblance between Tiberius and Lord C. which Mr. Fudge might have mentioned-" suspensa semper et obscura verba." (85) Short boots, so called. (86) The open countenance, recommended by Lord Chesterfield. (87) Mr. Fudge is a little mistaken here. It was not Grimaldi, but some very inferior performer, who played this part of Lord Morley" in the pantomime,-so much to the horror of the distinguished Earl of that name. The expostulary letters of the Noble Earl to Mr. Harris, upon this vulgar profanation of his spick-and-span new title, will, I trust, some time or other, be given to the world. (88) See Mr. Ellis's account of the Embassy. (89) See Lady Morgan's "France" for the anecdote, told her by Madame de Genlis, of the young gentleman whose love was cured by finding that his mistress wore a shawl “ peau de lapin." (90) The cars, on the return, are dragged up slowly by a chain. (91) Mr. Bob need not be ashamed of his cookery jokes, when he is kept in countenance by such men as Cicero, St. Augustine, and that jovial bishop, Venantius Fortunatus. The pun of the great orator upon the "jus Verrinum," which he calls bad hog-broth, from a play upon both the words, is well known; and the Saint's puns upon the conversion of Lot's wife into salt, are equally ingenious:-"In salem conversa hominibus fidelibus quoddam præstitit condimentum, quo sapiant aliquid, unde illud caveatur exemplum."-De Civitat. Dei, lib. xvi. cap. 30.-The jokes of the pious favorite of Queen Radagunda, the convivial Bishop Venantius, may be found among his poems, in some lines against a cook who had robbed him. The following is similar to Cicero's pun : Plus juscella Coci quam mea jura valent. See his poems, Corpus Poetar. Latin. tom. ii., p. 1732.—Of the same kind was Montmaur's joke, when a dish was spilt over him-summum jus, summa injuria ;" and the same celebrated parasite, in ordering a sole to be placed before him, said, Eligi cui dicas, tu mihi sola places. The reader may likewise see, among a good deal of kitchen erudition, the learned Lipsius's jokes on cutting up a capon in his Saturnal. Sermon. lib. ii., cap. 2. (92) For this scrap of knowledge "Pa" was, I suspect, indebted to a note upon Volney's Ruins; a book which usually forms part of a Jacobin's library, and with which Mr. Fudge must have been well acquainted at the time when he wrote his "Down with Kings," &c. The note in Volney is as folbows: It is by this tuft of hair, (on the crown of the head,) worn by the majority of Mussulmans, that the Angel of the Tomb is to take the elect and carry them to Paradise." (93) The young lady, whose memory is not very correct, must allude, I think, to the following lines: Oh that fairy form is ne'er forgot, Still it ling'ring haunts the greenest spot (94) Cookery has been dignifled by the researches of a Bacon, (see his Natural History, Receipts, &c.,) and takes its station as one of the Fine Arts in the following passage of Mr. Dugald Stewart:-" Agreeably to this view of the subject, sweet may be said to be intrinsically pleasing, and bitter to be relatively pleasing; while both are, in many cases, equally essential to those effects, which, in the art of cookery, correspond to that composite beauty, which it is the object of the painter and of the poet to create."-Philosophical Essays. (95) A fashionable café glacier on the Italian Boulevards. (96) "You eat your ice at Tortoni's," says Mr. Scott, "under a Grecian group." (97) Not an unusual mistake with foreigners. (98) See Ælian, lib. v., cap. 29,-who tells us that these geese, from a consciousness of their own loquacity, always cross Mount Taurus with stones in their bills, to prevent any unlucky cackle from betraying them to the eagles. (99) Somebody (Fontenelle, I believe) has said, that if he had his hand full of truths, he would open but one finger at a time; and the same sort of reserve I find to be necessary with respect to Mr. Connor's very plain-spoken letters. The remainder of this Epistle is so full of unsafe matter-of-fact, that it must, for the present at least, be withheld from the public. (100) The column in the Place Vendôme. (101) "Employant pour cela le plus beau papier dorë, séchant l'écriture avec de la poudre d'azur et d'argent, et cousant mes cahiers avec de la nompareille bleue".-Les Confessions, part ii., liv. 9. (102) This word "exquisite," is evidently a favorite of Miss Fudge's; and I understand she was not a little angry when her brother Bob committed a pun on the last two syllables of it in the following couplet : "I'd fain praise your Poem--but tell me, how is it When I cry out 'Exquisite,' Echo cries quiz it ?'” (103) The flower which Rousseau brought into such fashion among the Parisians, by exclaiming one day, "Ah, voilà de la pervenche!" (104) "Mon ours, voilà votre asyle-et vous, mon ours, ne viendrez vous pas aussi ?"-&c., &c. (105) "Un jour, qu'il gelait très-fort, en ouvrant un paquet qu'elle m'envoyait, je trouvai un petit jupon de flanelle d'Angleterre, qu'elle me marquait avoir porté, et dont elle voulait que je me fisse faire un gilet. Ce soin, plus qu'amical, me parut si tendre, comme si elle se fût dépouillée pour me vètir, que, dans mon émotion, je baisai vingt fois en pleurant le billet el le jupon." (106) Miss Biddy's notions of French pronunciation may be perceived in the rhymes which she always selects for "Le Roi." (107) LE ROI, who was the Couturière of the Empress Maria Louisa, is at present, of course, out of fashion, and is succeeded in her station by the Royalist mantua-maker, VICTORINE. (108) It is the brother of the present excellent restaurateur who lies entombed so magnificently in the Cimetière Montmartre. The inscription on the column at the head of the tomb concludes with the following words :-"Toute sa vie fut consacrée aux arts utiles." |