it

* G. T. whom Lockhart speaks of as "old George Thompson, the friend of Burns," long held a lucrative appointment under the Crown at Edinburgh, and died there some two years ago. He possessed much musical taste, and published an excellent and well-known collection of Scottish Songs, to which, from 1792 to 1796 (when death removed the poet), Burns contributed a very considerable portion of the words. Thompson has been greatly blamed for his niggardly conduct towards Burns. The only voluntary payments he made, for the finest songs in the language, consisted of £5 sent to Burns in July, 1793, which the poet hesitated accepting, wishing that his contributions to Scottish Song should indeed be "a labor of love," and another £5 which Burns, driven, as he said, by curst necessity," earnestly entreated as a loan, on July 12, 1796 - nine days before his death. Thompson sent the money, stating was the very sum I proposed sending." This £10, with a present of a worsted shawl to the poet's wife, was Thompson's only payment for sixty-two original songs expressly written for his collection by Burns, besides alterations of and additions to other songs, and suggestions, during five years, touching the music and other points. Burns would not have asked Thompson for money if, at the time, Poverty had not been sitting with her knees upon his hearth. It should be known, too, by all who have been induced to consider him a reckless, extravagant man, that, when he died, Robert Burns, "the glory and reproach of Scotland," owed no man a shilling. Thompson, who outlived him more than half a century, was 66 a prosperous gentleman" all his days. M. † Robert Pearce Gillies (whose "Memoirs of a Literary Veteran," were published in 1851), was a contributor to Blackwood from its commencement. His poem, "Childe Alarique," in 1813, attracted some attention. He had a knack at sonnet-writing, and was himself the subject of the sonnet by Wordsworth, in 1814, which concludes with the now-familiar lines

"A cheerful life is what the muses love,

A soaring spirit is their prime delight."

In 1835-6, Gillies contributed some very interesting "Recollections of Sir Walter Scott" to Frazer's Magazine, but his reputation will mainly rest on his Blackwood papers, called "Hore Germanicæ," and "Horæ Danicæ," in which he may be said to have first introduced the best dramatic writings of Germany and Denmark to English and American readers. His knowledge of foreign literature, thus exhibited, obtained him the Editorship of the Foreign Quarterly Review, when first started in 1827.— M.

Called at the Knox's shop with Miss Balloon,

And heard her ipsa dixit on a bonnet;

Then washed my mouth with ices, tarts, and flummeries,
And ginger-beer and soda, at Montgomery's.*

Down Prince's Street I once or twice paraded,

And gazed upon these same eternal faces;

Those beardless beaux and bearded belles, those faded
And flashy silks, surtouts, pelisses, laces,
Those crowds of clerks, astride on hackneys jaded,
Prancing and capering with notorial grace;
Dreaming enthusiasts who indulge vain whimsies,
That they might pass in Bond Street or St. James's.t
I saw equestrian and pedestrian vanish

One to a herring in his lonely shop.

And some of kind gregarious, and more clanish,
To club at Waters' for a mutton-chop;
Myself resolved for once my cares to banish,
And give the Cerberus of thought a sop,

Got Jack's, and Sam's, and Dick's, and Tom's consent,
And o'er the Mound to Billy Young's we went.‡

I am not nice, I care not what I dine on,

A sheep's head or beef-steak is all I wish;
Old Homer! how he loved the cov@pov oivov
It is the glass that glorifies the dish.
The thing that I have always set my mind on
(A small foundation laid of fowl, flesh, fish)
Is out of bottle, pitcher, or punch-bowl,
To suck reviving solace to my soul.

* In 1818, Knox's mercery shop was in Prince's street, the Stewart's of Edinburgh. Montgomery's was in the same street-which, for its importance, and bustle of business, and being much frequented as a fashionable lounge, was something like Broadway in New York. - M.

† Bond-street and St. James's, where once beauty and rank, wealth and fashion used to congregate, have "fallen from their high estate," from the successful rivalry of Regent-street, now one of the richest and most popular thoroughfares of London. - M.

The city of Edinburgh consists of the "Old town" and the "New town," separated by a valley. There is a passage from Prince's street, nearly opposite the Castle, into the ancient part of the city, over what is called "The Mound," on which now stands a splendid building, in which the Exhibitions of Painting and Sculpture take place. A little higher up, between the Mound and the North Bridge, is placed on that side of Prince's street, which is not built upon (to allow a view of the ancient city) a very magnificent monument of Scott, consisting of an ornamented cross, with a statue in the interior.-M.

Life's a dull dusty desert, waste and drear,

With now and then an oasis between,
Where palm-trees rise, and fountains gushing clear
Burst neath the shelter of that leafy screen;
Haste not your parting steps, when such appear,
Repose, ye weary travellers, on the green.
Horace and Milton, Dante, Burns, and Schiller,
Dined at a tavern when they had "the siller."
And ne'er did poet, epical or tragical,

At Florence, London, Weimar, Rome, Maybole,
See time's dark lanthern glow with hues more magical
Than I have witnessed in the Coffin-hole.

Praise of antiquity a bam and fudge I call,

Ne'er past the present let my wishes roll;
A fig for all comparing, croaking grumblers,
Hear me, dear dimpling Billy, bring the tumblers.*
Let blank verse hero, or Spenserian rhymer,

Treat Donna Musa with chateau-margout,
Chateau-la-fitte, Johannisberg, Hocheimer,
In tall outlandish glasses green and blue,
Thanks to my stars, myself, a doggrel-chimer,
Have nothing with such costly tastes to do;
My muse is always kindest when I court her
O'er whiskey-punch, gin-twist, strong beer, and porter.
And O, my pipe, though in these Dandy days

Few love thee, fewer still their love confess,
Ne'er let me blush to celebrate thy praise,
Divine invention of the age of Bess!
I for a moment interrupt my lays

The tiny tube with loving lip to press,
I'll then come back with a reviving zest,
And give thee three more stanzas of my best.

(I smoke.)

Pipe! whether plain in fashion of Frey-herr,
Or gaudy glittering in the taste of Boor,
Deep-darkened Meer-shaum or Ecume-de-mer,
Or snowy clay of Gowda, light and pure.

Let different people different pipes prefer,

Delft, horn, or catgut, long, short, older, newer,

Puff, every brother, as it likes him best,

De gustibus non disputandum est.

* The hostelrie kept by "Billy Young," in High-street, the old town of Edinburgh, was honored with the sobriquet of The Coffin-hole. The select and classic gentlemen of the Dilettanti Society much affected the place, as has been already mentioned. — M.

Pipe! when I stuff into thee my canaster,

With flower of camomile and leaf of rose,
And the calm rising fume comes fast and faster,
Curling with balmy circles near my nose,
And all the while my dexter hand is master

Of the full cup from Meux's vat that flows,
Heavens! all my brain a soft oblivion wraps
Of wafered letters and of single taps.

I've no objections to a good segar,

A true Havana, smooth, and moist, and brown ;*

* The reader may thank me for reminding him of some lines, by Lord Byron, on the same subject. They appeared in "The Island," written and published in 1823, exactly five years after the appearance of Odoherty's stanzas, (in April, 1818,) and, as Byron was a constant reader of Blackwood's Magazine, and much addicted to "cribbing" the ideas of others (as he confessed to Moore, which is done, more or less, by all clever writers- if they would only confess it!) it is very probable that he made free. with Odoherty on this occasion. Byron's lines are,

"But here the herald of the self-same mouth

Come breathing o'er the aromatic South,

Not like a bed of violets on the gale,

But such as wafts its cloud o'er grog or ale,

Borne from a short frail pipe, which yet had blown

Its gentle odors over either zone,

And, puffed where'er winds rise or waters roll,
Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,
Opposed its vapor as the lightning flashed,
And reeked, mid mountain bellows, unabashed,
To Æolus a constant sacrifice,

Through every change of all the varying skies.
And what was he who bore it ?-I may err,
But deem him sailor or philosopher.
Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
Cheers the tar's labor or the Turkman's rest;
Which on the Moslem's ottoman divides
His hours, and rivals opium and his brides;
Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,

Though not less loved, in Wapping or the Strand;
Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,

When tipped with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe ;
Like other charmers, wooing the caress
More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
Yet thy true lovers more admire by far

Thy naked beauties - Give me a cigar!

But then the smoke's too near the eye by far,
And out of doors 'tis in a twinkling flown;

And somehow it sets all my teeth ajar,

When to an inch or so we've smoked him down ;
And if your leaf have got a straw within it,

You know 'tis like a cinder in a minute.

In priority of composition, Odoherty certainly takes precedence, and his stanzas anticipate the ideas expressed by Byron, on the subject of tobacco, which James I. and Charles Lamb have universally made illustrious. It is impossible, of course, to mention the Nicotian literature without thinking of Charles Lamb's lines, entitled "A Farewell to Tobacco," commencing,

May the Babylonish curse

Strait confound my stammering verse,

If I can a passage see

In this word perplexity,

Or a fit expression find,

Or a language to my mind,

(Still the phrase is wide or scant)

To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!"

and, after subjecting the weed to an exquisite alternation of praise and abuse,

concluding thus,

For thy sake, TOBACCO, I,

Would do anything but die,
And but seek to extend my days
Long enough to sing thy praise,
But as she who once hath been
A king's consort, is a queen
Ever after, nor will bate
Any title of her state,
Though a widow, or divorced
So I, from thy converse forced,
The old name and style retain,
A right Katherine of Spain;
And a seat, too, 'mongst the joys
Of the blest Tobacco Boys;
Where, though I, by sour physician
Am debarred the full fruition

Of thy favors, I may catch

Some collateral sweets, and match
Sidelong odors, that give life

Like glances from a neighbor's wife;
And still live in the by-places

And the suburbs of thy graces;

And in thy borders take delight,

An unconquered Canaanite."- M.