18

Decay of English Customs and Manners.

greatly for the better. This is the firit morning of the new year; and when I look around me, I think it promifes but a dull holiday. The times, Sir, are changed. In fuch a day as this, an Engiith kitchen used to be the palace of Plenty, Jollity, and Good-eating. Every thing was plain, but plenty. Here tood the large, plump, juicy buttocks of English roaft beef, and there fmiled the frothy tankards of English beer: here fmoaked the folid fweet-tafted mince-pies; and there the curling fumes of plumb-, pudding perfumed the fky with delicious fragrance. Humour and eating went hand in hand; the men caroused, and the women gave loofe to gay but innocent amufements.

Now mark the picture of the prefent time: inftead of that firm roaftbeef, that fragrant pudding, our tables groan with the luxuries of France and India. Here a lean fricaflee rifes in the room of our majestic ribs; and there a fcoundrel fyllabub occupies the place of our well-beloved home-brewed. The folid meal gives way to the flight repaft; and, forgetting that good-eating and good porter are the two great fupporters of Magna Charta and the British conftitution, we open our hearts and our mouths to new fashions in cookery, which will one day lead us into ruin.

Alas, alas, that it fhould come to

Jan

this! Our nobles abfolutely fubfift upon maccaroni and negus, and our very aldermen have almoft forgot the ufe of barons and custards. What will this world come to at laft?

Let us be no longer surprised that we are no longer what we have been. Let us no longer be aftonished that our broad thoulders, our brawny arms, our firm round legs, exist no more; that our bones are marrowlefs, and our nerves without ftrength; we live upon pap, and our drink is tea and capillaire.

the

The confequence is evident breed of Britain is diminished and dwindled into pigmies and maccaronies; creatures that are timid, taftélefs, tawdry without feeling, fentiment, or honour, they crawl upon the earth like an ermined maggot or the gaudy butterfly; fqueaking voices, paltry actions, effeminate manners, heads without fenfe, and hearts without virtue! Such are our present nobility, our gentry; and fuch foon will be our very commonalty.

Now feriously, Sir, I am of opinion, that much of this is owing to the lofs of our ancient manners. Virtue is always connected with plainness and fimplicity; effeminacy always with luxurious refinement. Our ancestors were men we are, alas! we are very defpicable.

AN OLD FELLOW.

On the Use of Monofillables in Poetry. By George Jeffreys, Efq.

WHAT I have to offer on this

fubject may be called a vindication of our language, and of our beft poets, who have authorifed the ufe of monofyllable lines by frequent examples of them, not out of choice, but because they could not avoid them, between the multitude of Eng

lif monofyllables and the restraint

of rhyme and meafure. Pope, in his Elay on Criticifm, expofes monofyllable verfes that are rough; but there, and in his other poems, he is free enough in the use of those that are fmooth; and fo are Dryden †, Waller, Prior, &c. Hammond is an harmonious

*As one inflance, among many, there cannot be a smoother, and at the fame time a fronger, line than the following, compofet wholely of monofyllables in Pope's admirable Elegy on an unfortunate Lady,

"And the laft pang shall tear thee from his heart."

An obfervation that has lately been made, together with fome other judicious remarkø on this fubject, in one of the Monthly Reviews.

How fawiftly, for infance, do the following lines of Dryden lide off the tongue, though the firft of them confifis entirely of monofyllables, and much of the fecond:

"The first to lead the way, to tempt the flood,

"To pass the bridge unknown, nor fear the trembling wood."

1773
monious writer, and yet the very
shorteft of his Love Elegies (if I re-
member right) has three monofyllable
lines.

Efay on Poetical Monofyllables:

She nurs'd my hopes, and taught me how

to fue:

She is my faint; to her my pray'rs are made:
One tear of hers is more than all my pain."
These three, in a poem of thirty-fix
fines, exceed, by accident, the ufual
proportion of fuch lines, which are
not above two or three in a hundred;
and as for lines with but one word of
imore fyllables than one, which are
likewife blamed, you will generally
meet with about five and twenty of
them in every hundred. As far,
therefore, as the conftant practice of
our most celebrated poets can be of
weight, monofyllable verfes are jufti-
fied; and, to prove that they deferve
to be fo, instead of being only excufed,
as tips and defects incident to the belt
writers, I fhall admit what a certain
author says, that "verses ought to
run like Ovid's, or walk like Virgil's,
and not to stand ftock ftill like Dr.
Donne's." If therefore monofyllable
lines, under proper management, can
both walk and run, when occafion re-
quires them fo to do, nothing better
can be expected from polyfyllables, by
thole who are fondeft of them; and
this will always be the cafe, when
well-vowelled words" (as Dryden
calls them) are chofen, and where
there is a convenient mixture of liquids
and fhort fyllables, though long ones
will, now and then, ferve the turn,
if they open upon one another more or
lefs, by beginning or ending with
yowels; for which reafon it is to be
hoped that this line,

"How they are lodg'd, and on what food
they live,"

may be allowed to walk, though com-
pofed of long monofyllables; and this
other,

"One is the love in all, and one the will,"
to run, by the help of its fhort fylla-
bles. The fame may be faid of the
first lines in Dryden's Tranflation of
the Æneid:

19 "Arms, and the man I fing, who fore'd by fate,"

where, of ten fyllables, five are fhort,
and more thort ones would be too
many: the first foot is indeed a fpon-
dee, but the fecond is a pyrrhic, and
the three laft are iambics: this verfe
therefore muft neceffarily run, whereas
the fecond line of Milton's Paradifė
Loft

“Of that forbidden tree, whofe mortal tafte,”
mult walk, though it has one diffy!-
lable, and one trifiyllable; nor can
it be otherwife, as it confifts of long
fyllables, viz. five fpondees, and the
communication between the words is
pretty much cut off by their generally
beginning aud ending with confo-
nants. The author of Cooper's Hill,
fpeaking to the Thames, fays,
"O could I flow like thee, and make thy
ftream, &c."

He has his with, and flows like the
Thames, in monofyllables; and,
without doubt, the prejudice against
them is grounded upon the practice
little help from the Latin, dealt fre
of our antiquated poets, who, having
quently in Teutonic monofyllables,
arofe the confequence ab abufu non ad
and thofe generally rough: and hence
ufum, from rough monofyllables to
monofyllables as fuch, though ever fo
fimooth, and from the many which
few that are required in the courfe of
occur in our old English, to the very
fubject whatsoever; but, were they
our modern verfification, upon any
many more, and not offenfive to the
ear, it is hard to fay why they fhould
lines, in Cooper's Hill,
be cenfured. Of the four following

"Like him in birth, thou fhould't his like
in tame,

As thine his fate, if mine had been in flame;
Bat whole'er he was, nature defign'd
Firft a brave place, & then as brave a mind,"
three are monofyllables, and more
fmooth than the other; though in-
deed each of them takes up more
room upon paper, if that be an ob-
jection. And now we are upon Cooper's
Hill, we shall find that it has more
C 2

mono

* In a tranflation, by this writer, of book thirteen of Vaniere's Prædium Rufticum (on doves) filed by a late ingenious effavift," a long and languid production," and if fo, (as Mr. Jeffreys elsewhere observes) vexat cenfura columbas mui be the doom of his poor doves, not with flanding the pathetic metamorphofis avith which the book concludes."

20
monofyllable lines, in proportion to
its length, than any other good poem
in our language; but if, notwith-
tanding its character, its authority
fhould be thought not fufficiently mo-
dern, take the following couplet from

Vindication of Monofyllabic Poetry.

the Hind and Panther:

"Good life be now my tafk; my doubts are done;

What more could fright my faith, than three in one ?"

And if thefe two monofyllable lines, fucceeding each other, give you more difguit than any one of them would have done, they fhall be turned into diffyllables, with a proper mixture of triflyllables and monofyllables, merely for the fake of variety, viz.

"Goodlife benowmy task; my doubts aredone; Whatmore could frightmyfaith than threein

one?"

Here your objection is entirely removed: you wanted polyfyllables, and you have them; fo that if the lines are not rough in all fhapes, (which would be another queftion) you are bound, upon your own principle, to be pleafed with them. And yeṭ pray, why fo? (as Dr. Trapp would have faid) the fyllables, in this new form, are the very fame they were before, and follow one another in the fame order; fo that of neceffity they must have the fame effect upon the ear, which they had when they were all monofyllables. Suppofe a foreigner, acquainted with the meafure of our poetry, but a stranger to our lan guage; fhew him the two foregoing lines, divided into their five feet, and afk him his opinion of their harmony; he will have no other way to anfwer but by confulting his ear, without enquiring how many fyllables they contain, or whether there are as

Jan.

many words as fyllables. Again; take the, fmootheft line, confitting of polyfyllables, that you can find, and it will continue fmooth, if you divide it into monofyllables; and a rough line of monofyllables will be equally rough, when you have turned them into polyfyllables. I have dwelt the longer on this argument, as, I think, it places the question in that point of light which amounts to a demontion against monofyllable lines is imaftration and proves that the objecginary, as it is grounded on a diftinction without a difference. The most galloping of all measures is an hexameter of dactyls :

«

Pulverulentà | putrem fonitu | quatit | ungula | campum,"

And you may compofe fuch another, when you please, of English monofyllables, viz.

While on a plain wě trip it. by ǎ grove,
or å frem, or a green hill.""

Something like this occurs in the mea-
fure of fome of our old ballads, when
they gallop away in monofyllables:
"When young at the bar, you first taught me

.

to icore,

And bade me be free of my lips, and no

more."

Upon the whole, it feems clear, from what has been laid down, that monofyllables, or polyfyllables, are not the question, but harmony or dif fonance; no modern verfificator can have occafion for monofyllable lines, except it be now and then; and when he has occafion, it will be no hard matter for him to fecure their harmony by the quantity, the found, and the fituation of his fyllables; after which he will be in a fair way of carrying his point, by appealing from the reader's eye to his ear.

LONDON MAGAZINE.

the poor and indigent, fo many hor tion to the diftreffes and calamities of rible fcenes of mifery and wretchednefs would not so often be presented to our view. Were they, in cheap feafons, to purchase fome of the neceffaries of life which are not perishable, and lay them up in fome unemployed part of their barns or lofts till a real fcarcity, or the avaricious views of mankind had raised their prices by monopolies, their ftewards

or

1773.

Memoirs of a Country Girl.

or fervants might then retail them, to the poor only, at their original price. Thus might they receive the capital pleafure of diffufing plenty around them, whilft remoter parts were con

21

fumed by famine. The luxuries, the pleasures, and the gaieties of life, are momentary and futile; but the pleafures we derive from acts of humanity ceafe only with life.

The HISTORY OF ROSFTTA
(Tranflated from the French of D'ARNAUD.)

Blush not at my birth. I owe it to parents, who, though poor farmers in the county of Devonshire, had yet wealth fufficient to procure for me an education fuperior to my condition. An increafe of knowledge is frequently attended with an increase of vanity; and to this proof of their affection I may, perhaps, afcribe my rain. The happiness, the very exitence, of my father, who was advanced in years before I was born, and of my mother, depended upon me. My every word and action feemed to promife that I fhould be a fupport to them in their old age, a comfort to them in the hour of death, and an honour to their memory.

How often have they held me in their arms, and faid to me with tears, Rofetta, thou dear pledge of our love, we leave to thee little wealth, but we leave to thee our example to follow, the example of a family who, from father to fon, have for two hundred years, like us, laboured thefe fields. They were proud of the plough, whofe chief inheritance is virtue; virtue which and we charge thee never to forget it is the only fource of happiness on earth. Exult in thy poverty while it is honeft. Continue to live in this village; - die in it, and be buried befide us. Go not to London : --- the inhabitants of the town are full of vice, and will corrupt thee.Do as we have done, and have thy maker perpetually in thy eye.

--

I had fome beauty-perhaps I was not ignorant that I had it—and was endued with all the charms of innocence, with a heart that, unhappily, was open to every impreffion of tendernefs, when my cruel deftiny brought into our neighbourhood, and prefented to my view, the most amiable -- the moft abandoned of men. Befides the graces of figure, he poffeffed those

appendages; which are to apt to cap. tivate the heart of woman, titles, wealth, and splendour poleiled the whole artillery of feduction, --- What a powerful enemy for an inexperienced girl to combat !--- I refifted, at times I even fuppreffed, thofe feelings which had like to have enfiaved me. Perpetually did I call to remembrance that I was only the daughter of a peafant, that I ought not to encourage a fingle thought about Lord Darnley.

This nobleman introduced himself to my parents, I forget upon what pretence, though his notive was, to accomplish my ruin, which he had planned from the moment he first beheld me. As he frequently renewed his vifits to our cottage, he foon found an opportunity to dire a few words to me; --- words, whofe fubtle poifon, like a rapid flame, dorted to my heart. He wrote to me, and I had not refolution to reject a letter which gave the fatal blow to my enfeebled virtue. Regardless of my duty, of my honour, I was fo weak as to appoint an interview with the faithless Darnley. Then, giving full scope to his villainy, did he throw himself at my feet, water them with his tears, vow that he longed to call me his, and that, if I would go with him to London, our wedding fhould there be folemnized. He painted to me the mot brilliant fcenes which pleasure, wealth, and gradeur can exhibit; and he concluded with an entreaty, that I would keep our fecret inviolate, that I would tear myself from the bofom of parental tendernefs, without mentioning either my intention or the place of my retreat.

I loved, and I had already ftifled every fentiment of virtue.. Nature, however, ftill retained her influence. The idea of abandoning my father and mother, without informing them of at leaft the cause of our feparation,

fhocked

22
hocked me. Darnley perceived that
it did perceived, that filial duty
was too ftrong for love. He drew his
fword as if he would, that inftant,
have thrust it into his heart. I trem-
bad for his life, and held him. My
foolha dernefs prevailed, and --- [
promifed an implicit compliance with
his request.

The Means and the Charms of Seduction.