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but added, that he would send his headwaiter to enquire as to my merits. So far so well, said I to myself, as I left him; but by my soul they'll be at crosspurposes, when the waiter will be talking of the flavour of wine, and my ould master of the staple of wool.

Off, as I heard next day, went the waiter on the word, and over to the Borough he goes, and finds out my master's premises, and beautiful large premises they were; well, says he, this looks respectable any how. Now, my master had a son, who was just next thing to a natural, but poor creature he was harmless, and used to go about the premises with his hair finely dressed, and a gold-laced hat, and plenty of gold-lace on his clothes, and every thing very grand, for dress was his great passion, as it is of most fools, whether they be called idiots or not. The waiter saw this grand looking man who was, as usual, giving his orders to the workmen and people with great pomp, though they never minded a word he said. They always indeed took off their hats to him, for his father allowed him plenty of money, and if they treated him with sufficient respect, he would not stand on giving them cnough to drink. The waiter, as he often afterwards told me, was almost afraid to speak to so great a man; but summoning courage, he went up to him and asked him, with great respect, if he was the managing partner of this concern? "To be sure I am," said Master Billy," who else should manage it?""No offence, your honour," said the waiter, "but a man who has been for some years in your employ wants a situation in our house, and. I came to ask your honour as to his character." -"What," rejoined Billy, "my friend

James, the very cleverest and best fellow I ever had in my employ; fell your master, sir, that he is in great luck to get such a man; and, as for his honesty, I' be sceurity for that to the amount of half my fortune;" so saying, he turned on his heel, and began to give his orders in an authoritative tone; and the waiter seeing he was too great a man to stand further questioning, and satisfied with the information he had already got, set off to tell his master what a pearl of a servant he had fallen in with.

I called next day, looking sneaking enough, no doubt, being on a forlornhope; but, to my great surprize, was told that, in consequence of the highly flattering character given me by my former master, I was immediately engaged, and I put myself under the tuition of my friend the cooper, who taught me all the mysteries of bottling and taking charge of wine. When my two probationary months had expired, I was able to pass muster before my new master; and before six months were over my head, I got the credit of being one of the best judges of wine in the house. I am sure I deserved it just as well as many gentlemen whose opinions were held as law on that subject; from this, I was often employed by the gentlemen who frequented the house, to buy wine for them, and always to bottle it off. This paid well, and in about three years time I was in possession of more than 300., with which, and a little money I borrowed, 1 set up a house of my own, and ever since I have done well, I came to London as I told you without a shilling; I shall leave it with 20,000l., and I owe my success to being pillaged by a rogue, and recommended by a fool.

VOL I.

A MICHAELMAS-DAY SONNET.

Do not despise a thing from outward show-
The sober-suited violet doth exhale
A sweeter perfume, in the untrodden vale,
Than the proud tulip in its fullest blow.
And for mine own part, I had rather know

Sam Rothschild, spite of his so plain attire,
Than the most gaudy beau, whom folks admire
While his slim shanks down Bond-street lounging go..
Therefore, my goose, albeit unthinking souls

Have coupled nought but folly with thy name; Yet when oblivion's tide above them rolls,

Thou shalt shine 'lustrious in the lists of fame, For saving Rome from Gallia's barbarous hordes, And smoking on Saint Michael's festive boards.

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He was not quite so noble in his style,

And on his limbs no mailed harness hung; Instead of casque he wore a Joliffe tile;

For greaves, about his legs, loose fustians hung;
For gauntlets, dogskin gloves were on the file,

Whilst o'er his shoulder, like a robe, there hung
An empty pouch, which flapp'd at every breeze,
As bagpipes do before the piper's squeeze.

Nor did his " beard" like" sable silver" show,
But rather "grizzled," as young Hamlet said;

As for his visage, zooks, I hardly know,—

I was so startled-if 'twas " pale or red;" Its "march" was not o'er" stately," yet 'twas "slow," And like old "truepenny" at " cock crow" fled, I thought that hope and fear, and ease and trouble, Were in its face-I might have seen, p'rhaps, double.

I patter'd homewards, and to bed I hied,

In marvel vast what could this sign pertain,

I rubb'd my eyes, a little stupified,

As though the man had dimm'd my fluster'd brain ;But still it came-the half-bred it did ride

Quixote himself-his yelping doggrel train

All came in frightful, villanous array

Shouting "that every dog should have his day!"

Anon I slept, most people do, I think,
After a night's carouse, or jolly bout,
And 'pon my life I had enough to drink
Before from Richardson's I sallied out:-
Anon I slept-till those old Fogies' clink
Upon St. Dunstan's kick'd up such a rout,
That I did count twelve strokes upon its bell;
I pull❜d my own, and that did breakfast spell.

The newspapers are pretty useful things

For idle folks who do not weave or dig,
Nor invoice bales, nor deal in curtain rings,
Nor sell a calf, nor buy a ten score pig;
The newspapers, upon whose "de'it" press'd wings
Ride morning's hoax, and evening's brighter rig,
They served my turn an idle hour or so,
And so did billiards-Bond-Street-Rotten-Row.-

And thus, with killing time now here, then there,
The glorious dinner-hour again came o'er,
My toggery set, and burnish'd to a hair,

I traced the ancient banquet-path once more;
But scarce had yet attain'd the smell of fare

When came the vision, horrid as before-
Poor Mr. Gattie ne'er felt half my pain
When thus my Monsieur Tonson came again.

But yet a change was o'er the Phantom's hue,

And the pale horse was mottled quite with dirt,
And limp'd as though he'd lost his dexter shoe,
And there were gore marks on the rider's shirt;
His "shining morning face" look'd rather blue,
And all his form seem'd much with toil begirt;
As for the imps, they toddled on behind,
Worse than a boxer when he's lost first wind.

All was for wear the worst-the buckskins-coat-
Save the strange bag--and that (which I did mark
Like bag-pipes ere the wind had fill'd their note)
Was now like bagpipes puff'd by Scottish spark;
And though the parable of beam and mote

May stop me from proclaiming of the lark,

I swear, for they popp'd o'er the said bag's noose,
I twig'd a turkey's tail, and head of goose.

Ah! ah! thought I, the murder's out my lad!
Ive laid the spirit which morn laid me,
For in my senses how could I be had
With such a palpable reality?

A Ghost, indeed! why heav'ns, may I be mad
And pickled, dinnerless, in Albion s sea,

If he is not of sport a would-be member,
And this the very first day of September.

And partridges were scarce--and so he thought,
Having an eye upon the pot at home,
That all is fish that to the net is brought,
And therefore

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September 1, 1824.

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J. S. F.

THE HUMBUGS OF THE AGE.

No. IV.-Bishop, the Composer.

If any person, gentle or simple, passing along the shop of that excellent fellow, Power, the music-seller, in the Strand, should cast his eyes apon the centre pane of the window, towards Northumberland House, he will see an engraving of a man's head, judiciously erected over a black daub. If by any chance the name of this person be hidden from view, by the intervention of another piece of paper, or otherwise, it will occasion many conjectures among the spectators, to know what manner of man it may possibly be intended to represent. By the countenance it will be decided, that he is a Jew old-clothesman, and the black daub, reaching from bis throat to the bottom border of the picture, which a more minute investigation will discover to be intended for an upper garment, will then naturally strike the perspicatious to be a horse-rug, picked up at some pawnbroker's auction, and ambitiously decorated with a clasp and collar, so as to be a rather masterly attempt at a cloak, in the manner of the Landaburians. But then the doubt will naturally arise; why should Power, a music-publisher and an Irishman, stick up, as a decoration of his shop-window, an Israelite from Monmouth-Street or Houndsditch? Your mind then will, by a natural association of ideas, be drawn to think it may be a pig-eyed and lank-snouted Savoyard, who grinds music from a hurdy-gurdy, for the amusement of the miscellaneous population of St. Giles's; and you will wonder why Power should deposit such a starecrow among his minims and demi-semiquavers. If, however, after having wearied yourself with conjectures, the object which hindered you from seeing the inscription, declaring the name and description of the individual were to slip off, it would be revealed to your optics, that there stood before you no rag-vending descendant of Abraham,

no barrel-organ-twisting itinerant, but BISHOP THE COMPOSER-a humbug of the age.

Who painted the original picture, from which this admirable engraving is. takeu, we know not, and we thank our stars that there is no likelihood whatever of our ever laying eyes upon it; but knowing what we do about the man, we most sincerely pity the artist who

had the manufacturing of such a mass of affectation. Just conceive such a fellow as Bishop-a fiddler's boy, or some such thing, rigging himself out in a costume fit for the Marquis of Anglesea, and endeavouring, as far as the tailor could go, to give a warlike appearance to his footboy countenance. If you look more narrowly at the picture, you will perceive that his clumsy paws are loaded with rings, and that some document, declaratory of his advancement to honours-corporate, we have reason to know, is ostentatiously displayed upon the foreground. Quelle gloire! Were we so minded, we should be able, most satisfactorily to all concerned, to explain the whole history of that freedom-why -wherefore-and how it was obtained

but that disquisition is at present irrelevant, and would draw us off too much from the game immediately before us.

The sin of affectation is not a heavy one, and we therefore should have suffered Bishop to make a knight of himself if he pleased, without its calling forth any animadversions from us or to have worn his rings in his pig-snoutnose, instead of upon his fingers-or to have sported on canvas the freedom of all the cities in the empire, from Bristol to Ballyhooly; but we cannot rest quite so well satisfied under his assumption of the title he tacks to his name. Bishop, the-composer!-If Lord Carlisle were to give himself the name of Lord Carlisle the poet-if Lord Blayney were to designate himself as Lord Blayney tho general-(he is a general of one kind or another in the army; but there is a difference between generals and generals) -if Billy Hazlit, or any other such brisk young fellow were to dub himself a painter-if Horace Twiss were to get himself exhibited as a sign-board to a chop-house, and call it "The Wits' Head"-in short, if any kind of absurdity could be tolerated, we could tolerate the impudence of Bishop, in calling himself a composer. We have it frequently flung in our faces by our brethren in Ireland, Wales, or Scotland, that we have no national music which is perhaps not quite true, to the extent to which those accusers wish to push the charge; but if Bishop and such folks be taken as the fair standard of our composers, Italy and Germany may

indeed most safely laugh at us, as being destitute of scientific musicians.

What the requisites to constitute a brilliant or a great composer are, need hardly be recapitulated here. Indeed, they are more to be felt than defined. What Horace so long ago said of a great poet, may be applied to a great musi

cian.

The first requisite, without which all the others are totally unavailing, is genius. Without this gift of Heaven, art, though it may certainly do much in detail, never can effect any thing magnificent as a whole. It would, we should think, be throwing words away, were we to deny that Bishop is possessed of this qualification. Look in his face, and you'll acquit him of such a suspicion without another word. If that wise body of people the phrenologists, or, as the Edinburgh-men, with more justice call them, the turnipologers, can find an organ of genius, or music, on Bishop's jobbernowl, their science is demolished as completely as it was when George Combe discovered piety, valour, and philoprogenitiveness in a turnip. What then does he substitute in its place? Why verily the practice of that art which placed Mercury among the gods in the days of the ancients, and would place a mere mortal at the bar of the Old Bailey in the days of the moderns, if practised upon the grosser elements of earthly, affairs videlicet,

STEALING.

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Of course Bishop is in no danger of being compelled to hold up his hand for pilfering, there being no court of assize for the punishing of musical misdemeanours. He may make free with Haydn's notes with much less danger than with the notes of the dread old lady of Threadneedle-street, and run up a score, at Mozart's expence, without being liable to a charge of swindling. But IF such a court did exist, what a culprit would he not be in its eyes! We called him a humbug on this especial ground; Mr. Bishop, the composer!! What has he ever composed? The answer is ready, short, and tangible-noTHING. He has not even given a song of his own. As for an opera, he could no more compose one than he could leap over St. Paul's-and he is equally incapable of a mere overture. During the war, while the continent was sealed against us, he did very well. We were most miserably ignorant of the compo sitions of the continental musicians, and Bishop, and fellows like him, revelled

at their ease. They had nothing to do but to copy by handfuls, and John Bull was gulled most satisfactorily with rehashed music. Things went to such a length, that Tom Cook actually brought forward an opera under the title of" Mu-: sic Mad," which was note for note "Ilfanatico per la Musica," and it was rapturously applauded, and obtained for the pilferer a high name in the musical world. In the same way Bishop plundered, at his right hand and his left. Whole overtures, which pass on the frequenters of Covent Garden as very fine and original pieces of music, are either taken by wholesale from foreign: composers, or else snapped up a bar here and a bar there, dove-tailed together in a most bungling manner-such a manner, indeed, as would raise the hair on the head of the original composers, could they be present at the barbarous murdering inflicted on their ideas by the botching joiner. As for songshe has taken the airs of different coun-* tries (chiefly from published sources,) acknowledging them where the thing was too palpable to be concealed; but when there was any chance of the concealment being feasible, boldly clapping on the title-page “ Composed by Henry Bishop, Esquire."-Esquire we say, fort the gentleman is an armiger-a 'Squire` of high degree-being well-intitled to such distinction, from the honour of his birth, the excellence of his education, the glory of his rank, and the elegance, of his manners.

We labour under a great disadvantage in not being able to print specimens of his music, contrasted with the passages of the composers from whom he has stolen them-and we know that a mere verbal indication of such things is quite useless; but we propose a fair test. Let Bishop, or any of his friends, appeal to ten consecutive bars in any composition bearing his name, which he can claim as his own; and we undertake to point out the very quarter from which the better part of them was stolen, in less than an hour. This is fair. Or, against next month we shall draw up, if it be thought worth while, a list of his productions, and opposite to each put down the place from whence they were conveyed, as the wise call it. We know that his library of musical books is large, and that he is a pretty diligent student; in other words, that he has a keen hawk's eye for his prey; but still we should be able, from our general knowledge of music, and our particular knowledge of his peculiar

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