We are no friend to Albums. We early set our face against them in a short copy of verses, which we publish only for our own justification. To the question:—
WHAT IS AN ALBUM?
'Tis a Book kept by modern young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain Grandmothers nothing did know;
A Medley of Scraps, half verse, and half prose,
And some things not very like either, God knows;
Where wise folk and simple alike do combine,
And you write your nonsense, that I may write mine.
Throw in a fine Landscape, to make it complete—
A Flower-piece—a Foreground—all tinted so neat,
As Nature herself, could she see it, would strike
With envy to think that she ne'er did the like.
Next forget not to stuff it with Autographs plenty,
All writ in a style so genteel, and so dainty,
They no more resemble folk's ord'nary writing,
Than lines, penn'd with pains, do extemp'ral enditing;
Or our every day countenance (pardon the stricture)
The faces we make when we sit for our picture.
Thus you have, dearest—, an Album complete—
We forget the rest—but seriously we deprecate with all our powers the unfeminine practice of this novel species of importunity. We have known Young Ladies—ay, and of those who have been modest and retiring enough upon other occasions—in quest of these delicacies, to besiege, and storm by violence, the closets and privatest retirements of a literary man, to whom they have had an imperfect, or, perhaps, no introduction at all. But the disease has gone forth. Like the daughters of the horseleech in the Proverbs, the requisition of every female now is, Contribute, Contribute. "From the Land's End to the Farthest Thule the cry has gone out, and who shall resist it? Assuming then, that Album Verses will be written, where was the harm, if Mr. L. first taught us how they might be best, and most characteristically written?"
Amid the vague, dreamy, wordy, matterless Poetry of this empty age, the verses of such a writer as Bourne (who was a Latin Prior) are invaluable. They fix upon something; they ally themselves to common life and objects; their good nature is a Catholicon, sanative of coxcombry, of heartlessness, and of fastidiousness. Vale, Lepidissimum Caput. [63]
[63] Of this writer we only know, that he was an usher some seventy years since at Westminster School; and that Dr. Johnson (who knew him) speaks of him always affectionately as "poor Vinny Bourne."
[THE DEATH OF MUNDEN]
(1832)