ENIGMA.
"A delinquent there is, and we ever shall scout him,
For roguery never would flourish without him.
We're lovers of peace; but regardless of quiet,
This knave is the first in a row or a riot;
A strange, paradoxical elf, we declare,
That shies at a couple but clings to a pair.
Though at first in the right, still he's found in the wrong;
And though harmony wakes him, yet dies in the song.
Three fifths of the error that poisons our youth,
Yet boasts of a formal acquaintance with truth.
Though not fond of boasting, yet given to brag;
And though proud of a dress, still content with a rag.
He sticks to our ribs, and he hangs by our hair,
And brings with him trouble, and torment and care;
Stands thick in our sorrows and floats in our tears,
Never leads us to Hope, but returns with our Fears;
To the worst of our passions is ever allied,
Grief, Anger, and Hatred, Rage, Terror, and Pride.
Yet still, notwithstanding, the rogue we might spare
If he kept back his old ugly phiz from the Fair."
We had by this time stopped at the end of Drury Lane to take up a passenger, who now appeared, emerging from that very dirty avenue, with an exceedingly small roll of MS. under his arm. The new-comer's eye was evidently in a fine frenzy rolling, and it was at once suspected from one end of the vehicle to the other, that he had just been writing a German Opera for Drury-lane Theatre. "Gentlemen," said he, the instant he had taken his seat, "you're all mistaken. Through that miserable cranny I have been picking a path to the theatre for the sole purpose of taking off my hat to the statue of Shakspeare, over the portico, in celebration of the event which renders its presence there no longer a libel and a mockery. You guess what I allude to. Mr. Macready has become the lessee of Drury; and the noble task which he assigned to himself in the management of Covent Garden, he purposes here to complete. The whole public will rejoice in the renewal of his experiment, which should be hailed in golden verse. I wish I could write sonnets like Milton or Wordsworth. Here are two, such as they are, addressed to the regenerator of the stage."
TO WILLIAM CHARLES MACREADY,
On his becoming the lessee of Old Drury.
I.
Macready, master of the Art supreme.
That shows to dazzled and else guideless eyes
(As doth Astronomy the starry skies)
The airy wonders of our Shakspeare's dream;
Com'st thou again to shed a wakening gleam
Of morals, taste, and learning, where the gloom
Most darkens, as around the Drama's tomb!
Oh, come, and show us yet the true Extreme;
Transcendent art, for coarse and low desire;
The generous purpose, for the sordid aim;
For noise and smoke, the music and the fire
Of time-crown'd poets; for librettos tame,
The emulous flashings of the modern lyre—
Come, and put scowling Calumny to shame!
II.
What though with thee come Lear, himself a storm
Of wilder'd passion, and the musing Dane,
The gallant Harry and his warrior-train,
Brutus, Macbeth, and truth in many a form
Towering! not therefore only that we warm
With hope and praise; but that thy glorious part
Is now to raise the Actor's trampled Art,
And drive from out its temple a loose swarm
Of things vice-nurtured—from the Porch and Shrine!
And know, Macready, midst the desert there,
That soon shall bloom a garden, swells a mine
Of wealth no less than honour—both most bare
To meaner enterprise. Let that be thine—
Who knowest how to risk, and how to share!
L. B.
Hereupon, a bard started up in the very remotest corner, and interposed in favour of the epigram, seeing that such oddities as sonnets and enigmas were allowed to pass current. Immediately, and by unanimous invitation, he produced some lines written in the album of a fair damsel, whose sire has but one leg, and complains of torture in the toes that he has not.
"The heart that has been spurn'd by you
Can never dream of love again,
Save as old soldiers do of pain
In limbs they left at Waterloo."
We expressed our acknowledgments, and then heaved a sigh to the memory of an old friend, who, having suffered from the gout before his limb was amputated, felt all the pain, just as usual, at the extremity of his wooden leg, which was regularly flannelled up and rubbed as its living predecessor used to be. But here our reflections were broken off by a stoppage, as if instinctively, at a chemist's shop, the door of which, standing open, afforded a fair view of the scene which follows. On the subject of homœopathy we profess to hold no opinion; but, considering that it prescribes next to nothing to its patients, it must be an excellent system for a man who has next to nothing the matter with him. It is comical, at all events, to think of a doctor of that school literally carrying his "shop" in his pocket, and compressing the whole science of medicine into the smallest Lilliputian nut-shell. Imagine a little customer going with