“’Servant, Sir” (by a tailor bowing you to the door).
“Sir, you are a gentleman!”
“Sir, you are a scoundrel!”
We need not go on with examples ad infinitum. If after what we have said anybody does not understand the nature of Tone, all we shall say of him is, that he is a Tony Lumpkin.
CHAPTER II.
OF VERSIFICATION.
Hurrah!
It is with peculiar pleasure that we approach this part of Prosody; and we have therefore prefaced it with an exclamation indicative of delight. We belong to a class of persons to whom a celebrated phrenological manipulator ascribes “some poetical feeling, if studied or called forth;” and, to borrow another expression from the same quarter, we sometimes “versify a little;” that is to say, we diversify our literary occupations by an occasional flirtation with the muses. Now it gives us great concern to observe that popular literature is becoming very prosaic. Poetry and Boxing have gone out of favour together, and most probably,—though we have not quite time enough just at present to show how,—from the same cause; namely, bad taste. We mention Boxing along with Poetry, because it is remarkable that their decline should have been contemporaneous; and because we are of those who believe that there exists an essential similarity between all the branches of the Fine Arts; and moreover, because—and we mention it as a fact no less singular in itself than creditable to the paper in question—that a celebrated weekly periodical bestows especial patronage on both. With regard to Boxing, we are glad to see that a few patriotic individuals have of late been endeavouring to revive the taste for it; and we have some hope that their exertions, backed by certain cases of stabbing which every now and then occur, will eventually prove successful. But no one can be found to labour in an equal degree for the advancement of poetry. Our innate modesty is prompting us to say, that we fear we can do but little in the cause; but early impressions are known to be very strong and lasting: and we have a notion that, in teaching youth to make verses, we shall in a great degree contribute to the breeding up of a race of poets, and thereby secure, not only laurels, at least, for them, but also gratitude, veneration, and all that kind of thing, for ourselves.