Now what can they possibly allude to, in the eye of sober judgment and rational criticism, but the guard, or armed watchman, who, in those days, went in the inside, or perhaps had a place in the boot, and was employed, as in our modern conveyances, to protect the passenger in his approximation to the metropolis. We trust the above authorities will be deemed conclusive upon the subject; and indeed, to say the truth, this idea does not occur to us now for the first time, as in some hints for a few critical lucubrations intended as farther addenda to the Virgilius Restauratus of the great Scriblerus, we find this remark precisely:—“In our judgment, this horse (meaning Virgil’s) may be very properly denominated—the DARDANIAN DILLY, or the POST COACH to PERGAMUS.”
We know not whether it be worth adding as a matter of mere fact, that the great object of the noble Duke’s erections at Chatham, which have not yet cost the nation a million, is simply and exclusively this—to enfilade the turnpike road, in case of a foreign invasion.
The poet goes on—he forms a scientific and interesting presage of the noble Duke’s future greatness.
With gorges, scaffolds, breaches, ditches, mines,
With culverins, whole and demi, and gabines;
With trench, with counterscarp, with esplanade,
With curtain, moat, and rhombo, and chamade;
With polygon, epaulement, hedge and bank,
With angle salient, and with angle flank:
Oh! thou shall prove, should all thy schemes prevail,
An UNCLE TOBY on a larger scale.
While dapper, daisy, prating, puffing JIM,
May haply personate good Corporal Trim.
Every reader will anticipate us in the recollection, that the person here honoured with our author’s distinction, by the abbreviated appellative of Jim, can be no other than the Hon. James Luttrel himself, surveyor-general to the ordnance, the famous friends, defender, and commis of the Duke of Richmond. The words dapper and daisy, in the last line of the above passage, approximate perhaps more nearly to the familiarity of common life, than is usual with our author; but it is to be observed in the defence of them, that our language supplies no terms in any degree so peculiarly characteristic of the object to whom they are addressed. As for the remaining part of the line, to wit, “prating, puffing Jim,” it will require no vindication or illustration with those who have heard this honourable gentleman’s speeches in parliament, and who have read the subsequent representations of them in the diurnal prints.
Our immortal author, whose province it is to give poetical construction, and local habitation to the inspired effusions of the dying drummer (exactly as Virgil did to the predictions of Anchises), proceeds to finish the portrait exhibited in the above passage by the following lines—
As like your prototypes as pea to pea,
Save in the weakness of—humanity;
Congenial quite in every other part,
The same in head, but differing in the heart.
* * * * *
NUMBER IV.
We resume with great pleasure our critical lucubrations on that most interesting part of this divine poem, which pourtrays the character, and transmits to immortality the name of the Duke of RICHMOND.—Our author, who sometimes condescends to a casual imitation of ancient writers, employs more than usual pains in the elaborate delineation of this illustrious personage. Thus, in Virgil, we find whole pages devoted to the description of Æneas, while Glacus and Thersilochus, like the Luttrels, the Palkes, or the Macnamaras of modern times, are honoured only with the transient distinction of a simple mention. He proceeds to ridicule the superstition which exists in this country, and, as he informs us, had also prevailed in one of the most famous states of antiquity, that a navy could be any source of security to a great empire, or that shipping could in any way be considered as the natural defence of an island.