from the ground, so that in case of any disaster, you can drop off like a ripe pease-cod-mount, I say, Doctor, mount."

The Doctor did so; and the Standard-bearer, giving a blast on Wastle's bugle, and cutting the thin air with his thong several yards beyond Scrub's nose, away went the shandrydan, while the mountains of the Dee echoed again to the rattling of its wheels.

NOTE FROM MR. ODOHERTY.

MY DEAR EDITOR,

The report of my death-a report originally created by the malevolence of a fiend—has, I am sorry to observe, gained considerable currency through the inadvertence of you -a friend. Had my body been really consigned to the dust, you should have received intelligence of that event, not from the casual whispers of a stranger, but from the affectionate bequest of a sincere admirer; for, sir, I may as well mention the fact, that by a holograph codicil to my last will and testament, I have constituted you sole tutor and curator of all my MSS.; thus providing, in case of accidents, for these my intellectual offspring, the care of a guardian, who, I am well aware, would superintend, with a father's eye, the mode of their introduction into public life.

I flatter myself, however, that you will not hear with indifference, of my being still in a condition to fulfil this office in propriâ personâ. On some future occasion I shall describe to your readers, in, I hope, no uninteresting strains, the strange vicissitudes of my fate during the last two years: among these not the least amusing will be the narrative of those very peculiar circumstances which have induced me to lie perdue, a listener to no less than two succeeding historians of my life, supposed to be terminated-and eulogists of my genius, no less falsely sup posed to have been swallowed up in the great vortex of animation. But of all this anon.

I inclose, in the mean time, as the first offerings of my re-acknowledged existence, three several productions of my muse. The first (the Garland) was composed by me a few weeks ago on the following occasion.

I happened to be in Hawick at the moment when the celebrated Giantess, Mrs. Cook, passed through that town on her way from the South. Animated with that rightful spirit of curiosity which has been pronounced to be the mother of all knowledge, I immediately hastened to wait upon her. The vast stature of this remarkable woman-her strength (for, with a single squeeze, she had well nigh crushed my fingers to dust), the symmetry of her figure-but above all, the soft elegance of her features-these united attractions were more than sufficient to make a deep impression on the mind of one who has never professed himself to be "a stoic of the woods." After spending a comfortable evening at Mrs. Brown's, I set out for Eltrive, the seat of my friend Mr. Hogg, and, in the course of the walk, composed the following lines, which I soon afterward sent to Mrs. Cook. It is proper to mention, that the fair daughter of Anak enclosed to me, in return, a ticket of free admission for the season-of which I shall certainly very frequently avail myself after my arrival in Edinburgh.

The other two poems, the Eve of St. Jerry, and the Rime of the Auncient Waggonere, were composed by me many years ago. The reader will at once detect the resemblance which they bear to two well-known and justly celebrated pieces of Scott and Coleridge. This resemblance, in justice to myself, is the fruit of their imitation—not of mine. I remember reciting the Eve of St. Jerry about the year 1795 to Mr. Scott,* then a very young man; but as I have not had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Coleridge, although I have often wished to do so, and hold his genius in the highest estimation, I am more at a loss to account for

* There is an anachronism here.-Odoherty's biographer (vide chap. i. p. 4) fixes 1789 as the date of the Ensign's birth, whereas, as we shall presently see, it was in 1780. Consequently, he must have written and recited his poem at the age of six. This is about as strong an instance of precocious talent as we have on record. - Scott's poem, "The Eve of St. John," was written in 1799, at the age of twenty-eight. The "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" was one of Coleridge's earliest performances.-M.

the accurate idea he seems to have possessed of my production, unless, indeed, I may have casually dropt a copy of the MS. in some bookseller's shop in Bristol, where he may have found it. Meantime, I remain, Dear Editor, your affectionate servant, MORGAN ODOHERTY.

ELTRIVE LAKE, Feb. 29th, 1819.

ODOHERTY'S GARLAND.

IN HONOR OF MRS. COOK, THE GREAT.

LET the Emerald Isle make O'Brien her boast,*

And let Yorkshire be proud of her "strapping young man,"t
But London, gay London, should glory the most,

* Charles O'Brien, the person here alluded to, measured exactly eight feet two inches in his pumps. His countenance was comely, and his chest well formed, but, like the "Mulier Formosa" of Horace's Satire, or (what may be considered as a more appropriate illustration) like the idol of the Philistines, he was very awkwardly shaped in the lower extremities. He made a practice of selling successively to many gentlemen of the medical profession, the reversion of his enormous carcase. It is said that one of these bargains-viz. that contracted between him and the celebrated Liston of Edinburgh, was reduced to a strictly legal shape. It is well known that, according to the forms of Scots law, nothing but moveables can be conveyed by testament—every other species of property requires to be transferred by a deed inter vivos. The acute northern anatomist, doubting whether any court of law would have been inclined to class O'Brien's body among moveables, insisted that the giant should vest the fee of the said body in him (the surgeon), saving and retaining to himself (the giant), a right of usufruct or liferent. We have not heard by what symbol the Dr. completed his infeftment. [The skeleton of O'Brien, the Irish giant, is preserved in the Museum of Trinity College, Dublin.-M.]

+ The "strapping young man" was the late Thomas Higgins, on occasion of whose death was composed a poetical dialogue, formerly alluded to in Blackwood's Magazine.

TRAVELLER.

Why! I was told you woollen-weavers here

Were starved outright for lack of all employment;

But I perceive a very different cheer.

Your looms are rattling all in full enjoyment.

INHABITANTS.

Oh! those that told you so, sir, told you right;
We were indeed a woful famish'd crowd;
But now the case is altered clean and white,
We have got the making of the Giant's Shroud.

She has reared Mrs. Cook,* let them match her who can ;
This female Goliaht is thicker and higher

Than Italian Belzoni,‡ or Highlandman Sam.
Yet the terrible creature is pretty in feature,

And her smile is as soft as a dove or a lamb.

* Mrs. Cook, the largest of female mortals, was commonly called "The Gentle Giantess." She was married to a gentleman the crown of whose head was only on a level with her girdle. Great was the contrast between his five feet nothing and her six feet six. As a true historian, I am compelled to state that Mr. Cook was accustomed (particularly after his ninth tumbler of punch) to exercise on the person of his gigantic Dulcinea the marital rights which the law of England intrusts to a husband—of moderately correcting his better half with a stick not exceeding the thickness of a man's thumb. This was publicly enunciated, at Stafford assizes, by Sir Francis Buller, one of the Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. The indignant wives of Stafford sent him a round-robin, inquiring the dimensions of his thumb. It is particularly note-worthy that Buller himself, married early, had the reputation of being eminently henpecked! The great Mrs. Cook, magnanimous in her bulk and strength, complacently submitted to the striking proofs of her small husband's regard. Once, she resisted-but gently, as became her majestic nature and raising Mr. Cook from the ground, with one hand, carefully deposited him, on his legs, upon the chimney-piece, whence she did not allow him to be taken until he had promised better conduct in future. It is a singular thing, and might be cited as an instance of the compensating principle of nature, that small men are extremely fond of possessing exceedingly lofty wives, and that giantesses do affect small-statured men. For my own part, while I own that, after all, it may not be very unpleasant for a tall man to bend down and salute a petite lady-love, I confess that, were I a giantess, I do not think I could much like a lover so short that, in order to kiss me, he must mount on a table to get on a level with my lips. Mrs. C. did not long survive the visit of the illustrious Odoherty. Young in years, but stupendous in bulk, she returned to mother-carth before she was thirty years old.—M.

† Goliah, Cocknicé, Goliar.

“I don't defend that rhyme, 'tis very bad,

Tho' us'd by Hunt and Keats, and all that squad.”—WASTLE.

Į John Baptiste Belzoni, born at Padua, in 1780, emigrated to England in 1803, and, falling into pecuniary difficulties, obtained his living by displaying feats of strength and activity, at Astley's Amphitheatre, in London, for which his colossal stature and extraordinary muscular powers eminently qualified him. At that time he was only twenty-four years old, but was six feet seven inches high, and used to walk across the stage with two-and-twenty persons attached by straps to different parts of his body. In 1812 he exhibited in Lisbon and Malta. Thence he went to Egypt, to construct a hydraulic machine for the Pacha. In June, 1815, he undertook an expedition to Thebes to remove an

When she opens her eyelids she dazzles you quite
With the vast flood of splendor that flashes around;
Old Ajax, ambitious to perish in light,*

In one glance of her glory perdition had found.
Both in verse and in prose, to the bud of a rose,

Sweet lips have been likened by amorous beau;
But her lips may be said to be like a rose-bed

Their fragrance so full is, so broad is their glow.
The similitudes used in king Solomon's book,
In laudation of some little Jewess of old,
If we only suppose them devised for the Cook,
Would appear the reverse of improper or bold.
There is many a tree that is shorter than she,

In particular that on which Johnston was swung,
Had the rope been about her huge arm, there's no doubt,
That the friend of the Scotsman at once had been hung,†

The cedars that grew upon Lebanon hill,

And the towers of Damascus might well be applied,
With imperfect ideas the fancy to fill,

Of the monstrous perfections of Cook's pretty bride.
Oh! if one of the name be immortal in fame,

Because round the wide globe he adventured to roam,
Mr. Cook, I don't see why yourself should not be
As illustrious as he without stirring from home!

enormous bust, called "the Younger Memnon," which he succeeded in doing, and sent it to England; it is now in the British Museum, with a variety of other ancient sculptures discovered and transmitted' by him. Pursuing his travels and researches, during which he made many discoveries highly valuable to the antiquarian and historian, Belzoni crowned his exploits by discovering a vast and magnificent tomb near Thebes (a representation of which he subsequently exhibited in London), and by penetrating into the interior of the second great pyramid of Ghizeh, which had previously been believed to consist of one solid, mass. Returning to England in 1820, he published a narrative of his operations, returned to Africa in 1822, and died at Gato, on his way to Houssa and Timbuctoo, in December, 1823. He was accompanied, in all his expeditions but the last, by his wife, whom he married in England in 1803. She was, for a woman, as prodigious in size and strength as Belzoni was for a man, and much assisted him in his researches.- M.

* An allusion to the prayer of this great Greek hero in Homer

+ Blackwood's contributors let no opportunity slip of attacking their Whig opponents—hence the frequent hits at "The Scotsman," a liberal paper in Edinburgh, then edited by J. R. M'Culloch, the political economist.-- M.