the berry." As for little Charles he was left to find out the result of five times nine, like the American boy, by dint of his own natural sagacity. A short consultation was held between my mother and Charlotte upon the important article of dinner. A round of beef salted, in the house so far fortunate: a nice turbot and a few mutton-chops would be all that it was requisite to add. The debate was now joined by my father he agreed to the suggestion, and my mother offered to adjourn instanter to Leadenhall-market. "No, my dear, no," said my father; "remember when your brother last dined with us, you bought a hen lobster, and one of the chops was all bone." My mother owned her delinquency, and my father walked forth to order the provisions. Our dinner-hour is five, and my brother John dines with us, generally returning afterwards to Mr. Pounce's office in Bevis Marks. I met him on the stairs, and told him of the intended visit. Jack winked his left eye, and tapped a book in his coat-pocket, as much as to say, "Let me alone: I'll be up to him." At the hour of five we were all assembled in the drawing-room, with that species of nervous solicitude which usually precedes the appearance of the great man of the family. A single knock a little startled us; but it was only the boy with the porter. A double knock terrified us: Charlotte mechanically began to play, "Comfort ye my people:" my mother took the hand of little Charles, whose head had been properly combed, in anticipation of the customary pat, and advanced to meet her high and mighty relation: the door opened, and the servant delivered-a twopenny-post printed circular, denoting that muffins were only to be had good at Messrs. Stuff and Saltem's, in Abchurch-lane, and that all other edibles were counterfeits. My father ejaculated "Psha!" and threw the epistle into the fire. Little Charles watched the gradually diminishing sparks, and had just come to parson and clerk, when the sudden stop of a carriage and a treble knock announced to those whom it might concern that his High Mightiness had really assailed our portal. The scene which had just before been rehearsed for the benefit of the twopenny postman, was now performed afresh, and Sir Nicholas Sawyer was inducted into the arm-chair. I had the honour to receive his cane, my brother Jack his gloves, and little Charles his hat, which he carried off in both hands without spilling. "What have you got in your pocket, Jack?" said the Great Man to my brother. "Only the first volume of Morgan's Vade Mecum," answered the driver of quills. "Right," rejoined our revered uncle: "always keep an eye to business, Jack. May you live to be Lord Chancellor, and may I live to see it!" this he laughed," as Goldsmith has it; "and so did we: the jests of the rich are always successful." My mother, however, conceived it to be no jesting matter, and in downright earnest began to allege that John had an uncommon partiality for the law, and would doubtless do great things, if he was but properly pushed. She then averred that I, too, had a very pretty taste for printed cottons, and that when I should be taken into partnership I should, in all human probability, do the trade credit, if I was but properly pushed. But for this a small additional capital was requisite, and where I was to get it Heaven only knew. Charlotte's talent for music was then represented to be surprising, and would be absolutely astonishing if she could but afford to "At get her properly pushed by a few lessons from Bishop. As to little Charles, she was herself pushing him in his arithmetic. Never was there a mother who so pushed her offspring it is no fault of hers that we are not every one of us flat on our faces long ago. Dinner being announced, the Great Man took his seat at the right hand of my mother. He was helped to a large slice of turbot, whereupon he tapped the extremity of the fish with his knife. This denoted his want of some of the fins, and my mother accordingly dealt out to him a portion of these glutinous appendages. Common mortals send a plate round the table for whatsoever they may require; but, when the Great Man of the Family graces the table, every thing is moved up to him. The buttock of beef being a little too ponderous to perform such a visit, the Great Man hinted from afar off where he would be helped. "Just there: no, not there: a little nearer the fat: or stay: no it is a little too much boiled: I will wait a slice or two: ay: now it will do: a little of the soft fat, and two spoonfuls of gravy: put two small parsnips with it; and, Thomas, bring me the mustard." It may be well imagined that these dicta were followed by prompt obedience. There are only two viands for which I entertain an aversion-parsnips and tripe. The former always give me the notion of carrots from the catacombs, and the latter, of boiled leather breeches. My politic mamma, aware of my uncle's partiality for parsnips, had lectured me into the propriety of assuming a fondness for them; adding, that Sir Nicholas had been married five years without children, and that I should probably be his heir, and that one would not lose one's birthright for a mess of pottage. It is whispered in the family that my uncle is worth a plum. It would, therefore, be a pity to lose a hundred thousand pounds, by refusing to swallow a parsnip. I contrived to get down a couple; and was told by Sir Nicholas that I was a clever young man, and knew what was what. My mother evidently thought the whole of the above-named sum was already half way down my breeches pocket. "Has any body seen Simpson and Co." enquired the Great Man, during a short interval between his mouthfuls. I was upon the incautious point of answering yes, and that I thought it a very good thing, when my father, with the most adroit simplicity, answered, "I met Simpson this morning at Batson's his partner is at Liverpool." Hereat the Great Man chuckled so immoderately that we all thought that a segment of parsnip had gone the wrong way. "No, I don't mean them-come, that's not amiss-Simpson and Scott, of Alderman's Walk. Ha, ha, hah! No: I mean Simpson and Co. at Drury Lane." "No," answered my mother, "we none of us ever go to the play." Lord, help me! it was but a week ago that my Father, Jack, and I, had sat in the pit to see this identical drama! Now came in the mutton chops. The process' was electrical, and deserves a minute commemoration. First, the Great Man had a hot plate, upon which he placed a hot potatoe. Then our man Thomas placed the pewter dish, carefully covered, immediately under our visitor's nose. At a given signal Thomas whisked off the cover, and my uncle darted his fork into a chop as rapidly as if he were harpooning a fish. What became of the cover, unless Thomas swallowed it, I have not since been able to form a guess. I pass over a few more white lies, uttered for the purpose of ingra tiation. Such, for instance, as none of us liking wine or gravy; our utter repugnance to modern fashions in dress; our never wasting time in reading novels; our never going westward of Temple Bar, and our regularly going to afternoon church. But I cannot avoid mentioning that great men bear, at least in one point, a resemblance to great wits: I mean in the shortness of their memories. Bedford-square and a carriage have driven from my poor uncle's sensorium all geographical knowledge of City streets. He regularly asks me whether Lime-street is the second or third turning: affects to place Ironmonger's Hall in Bishopsgate-street; and tells me that, when he goes to receive his dividends at the India House, he constantly commits the error of directing his coachman to Whitechapel. Lord help me again! this from a man who, for the first ten years of his civic existence, threaded every nook and alley in the City, with a black pocket-book full of bills, as Dimsdale and Company's out-door clerk! I yesterday overheard my maiden Aunt Susan giving a hint to some body, who shall be nameless, that Lady Sawyer, notwithstanding her five years abstinence, is certainly" as women wish to be who love their lords." I mean to wait with exemplary patience to establish the fact, and to ascertain the sex of the infant. If it prove to be a male, I am of course cut out of the inheritance. In that case, I shall unquestionably throw off the mask, and venture to eat, drink, talk, and think for myself. At the very first uncle-given dinner, after that dénouement, I can assure you, Mr. Editor, that I shall hate parsnips, take two glasses of port wine, tilt the dish for gravy, see Simpson and Co. at least six times, and read every novel in Lane's Circulating List. I am, &c. ROBERT RANKIN. PETER PINDARICS. The Handkerchief. A JUDGE of the Police and Spy (For both are join'd in Eastern nations) To list to people's conversations, Like a church spout when rain is falling, Our magistrate thought fit to greet her, That she would raise a mighty clangour, He swore, point blank, that he had struck her The Judge, convinced by this averment, And the wife's angry voice was heard- That he for ever blows his nose With his own fingers!" The Jester condemned to Death. ONE of the Kings of Scanderoon, Had in his train a gross buffoon, Who used to pester The Court with tricks inopportune, It needs some sense to play the fool, Who consequently found his freaks And quite as many kicks and tweaks, Some sin at last, beyond all measure, Of his Serene and raging Highness. Or had intruded on the shyness Of the Seraglio, or let fly An epigram at royalty, None knows;-his sin was an occult one; But records tell us that the Sultan, Meaning to terrify the knave, Exclaim'd-"Tis time to stop that breath; Silence, base rebel !-no replying!— "Thy royal will be done-'tis just." 66 Since, my last moments to assuage, Your Majesty's humane decree Has deign'd to leave the choice to me, I'll die, so please you, of old age!"* H.. SHAKSPEARE'S POEMS. I OFTEN find a pleasant literary recreation in turning back to those neglected works of great men, that rank but secondary in merit to the performances from which they have derived a lasting reputation. Their earliest works, in which may be traced the unfoldings of future greatness, are to me particularly interesting, and shadow forth to imagination the intervening gradations by which they mounted to eminence. By most readers these are passed over, and in some instances forgotten, in the splendid labours of brighter and more mature genius. Yet if the study of the mind of man in its progressive advances be worthy of particular attention, and no one will affirm that it is not, nothing will better serve to develope its movements than a perusal of this part of our literature. The blaze of glory which encircles the dramatic writings of Shakspeare, has eclipsed his earlier poems, and few have ever read them through; yet they are not without great merit, and some of them are remarkable in that the traces of passages in his more celebrated works may be met with among them. It appears as if the first and last literary labours of Shakspeare had not been dramatic. Some of his sonnets prove (though he must have died in ignorance of the extent of his own great fame, and even without a guess at the lofty situation he was to occupy in the temple of immortality) that he had prophetic feelings that he should be remembered by his writings; for he plainly shews them in several places in those his last published works, written, perhaps, during his retirement at Stratford-on-Avon, when he had ceased to be concerned with the metropolitan theatre. He says in his fifty-fifth sonnet. Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme, &c. Venus and Adonis appeared in 1593; his "Rape of Lucrece,” in the following year. Romeo and Juliet can only be traced with certainty to the year 1595. These poems were therefore his first productions, and had he not written for the theatre, would have given him no inconsiderable reputation among the writers of his day, though they have been naturally thrown into shade by the dazzling lustre of his dramatic productions. Johnson says that the dawn of Paradise Lost is to be found in Comus, and it is also certain that Shakspeare's knowledge of the human mind, and his wonderful skill in delineating the workings of passion, are to be clearly discovered in his Venus and Adonis. This poem, we are told, went through six impressions in thirteen years. Its whole cast is in unison with the taste of the time, and was suggested to its author, as some think, by the third book of the Fairy Queen. He calls it himself "the first heir of his invention." The subject forbade any delineation of manners; but the spell by which this poet above all others, commanded the mysterious emotions of the heart to come before him embodied in language, was never more potent than in the description of the love of Venus for her favourite. This composition is agreeable to the coarseness of manners in the time of Elizabeth, being deficient in that delicacy which has happily been introduced by modern refinement. It is rather for the purpose of directing attention to the links which connect incipient genius with |