Benjamin H. Brewster, Esq., an eminent young lawyer of Philadelphia, the author of the very excellent paper on Milton, in this number, will be the subject of our first sketch, in the next issue; and we shall take the privilege of an intimate acquaintanceship, and a friendship endured by a thousand ties, to use a free pencil upon him, and if Mr. Brewster does not like it, he has his action for such damages as the liberal jury who read “Graham” may think he deserves.
Cost of Glory.—We have received from a Naval Officer a tart assault upon Upham’s figures in relation to the expenses of the Army and Navy of the United States, which we shall publish and reply to. He makes the cost “about twenty-five per cent. of the whole revenue.” We shall see! The article is by some very young Middy, who thinks that “navy blue” means getting tipsy on shore, and that figures are symbolical only of important gentlemen, buttoned up to the throat, who walk the Quarter-Deck of Uncle Sam’s 74’s.
Reader—“Graham” makes his best bow to you in this number, and stands, cap in hand, waiting a friendly return to his salutation. He has prepared himself with some care for this call, and if you do not like his rig, don’t turn up your nose disdainfully, but suggest any proper alteration in his costume, and when he comes again you may like him better. The critics! Well! who cares for the critics? Not Graham! He is a critic himself, and can carve you a poet to a nicety—slicing off his wings with one sweep of his steel. But Graham is tender to poets—for they are a good-hearted race, albeit a little irritable—apt to be dealt unjustly with, too, considering that each one is imbued with more than a Shaksperian genius, and people wont believe it. It is enough to make anybody mad—and a mad poet is of all enraged animals the most vehemently disposed to slaughter somebody. So, having disposed in brief of critics and poets, and of lawyers and briefs in the body of the work, we feel heavenly-minded toward the rest of creation—and in this mood we turn to “the gentlemen of the press.”
If our exchanges believe all that is told them by some of the Magazine publishers, they will soon begin to fancy that “the moon is a green cheese,” and will wake up some fine night finding themselves cutting slices for an imaginary breakfast.
One chap has the audacity to set himself up as the sole patron of American arts and letters, and has spent unheard of amounts on artists and writers. We fear to inquire into this business too closely, lest it should turn out like the charity of the lady who was “collecting for a poor woman.” It was charity—for it “began at home,” and ended there!
Now “Graham” you may rely upon—there is a certain don’t care for anybody air about him that you can understand. If any fellow wishes to blow up his Magazine, Graham asks him—nay, commands him to “blaze away”—if he don’t like the painted fashions, which cost $945, lo! Graham goes to the enormous expense of $2 and gives him his “own peculiar” in wood—Bloomer and all, fresh from the newspapers, and not credited to Paris either—if the small-talk don’t suit—Graham suggests something else, and invites him to read some of the other Magazines, where the editor “talks big,” and swells in imaginary dignity until a turkey is rather cast into the shade by overblown dignity—if he don’t like the stories he may read the essays—if neither, the poetry is before him—and if literature has no charms for him, he may admire Art in the engravings: “if none of these things move him,” let him admire Nature by looking at himself in a mirror, and imagine his ears wonderfully grown, and his voice a lion’s. Graham is as easily pleased as a young girl at her first ball, and thinks the world is moving round to the timing of music—and though he is as poor as Job’s—ah! that reminds us of the turkeys we sent to editors.