CURIOSITIES OF ADVERTISING LITERATURE.
We are all well acquainted with the ingenious artifices by which modern advertisers thrust their wares upon the attention of newspaper readers. We may, perhaps, have been betrayed into the expression of come rude Saxon expletive, when, in the columns devoted to news and general information, we have in our innocence been tempted with a paragraph that commenced with "a clever saying of the illustrious Voltaire's," and dovetailed into a panegyric of Messrs. Aaron and Son's Reversible Paletots; or we may have applauded the clever logician who so clearly demonstrates, that as Napoleon's bilious affection frequently clouded his judgment in times of greatest need, the events of the present century, and the fate of nations, would have been reversed, had that great man only been persuaded to take two boxes of Snooks's Aperient Pill, price 1s. 1½d., with the Government stamp on a red ground (see Advt.). All these things we know very well; but, of the fugitive literature that does not find a place in the advertising columns of The Times, but flashes into Fame only in the pages of some local oracle, or in some obscurer broad-sheet, how often must it remain unappreciated, and doomed to "waste its sweetness on the desert air." That this may not be said of the following burst of advertising eloquence, I trust it may be found worthy a niche in the temple of "N. & Q." In its composition the author was probably inspired by the grand scenery of the Cheviots, in a village near to which his shop was situate. It was one of those "generally-useful" shops where the grocer and draper held equal reign, and anything could be got, from silks and satins to butter and Bath bricks. The composition was printed and distributed among the neighbouring families; but shortly after, when the author heard that it had not produced the exact effect he had wished, he, with the irritability that often accompanies genius, resolved to get back and destroy every copy of his production, and deny to the world that which it could not appreciate. Fortunately for the world's welfare, I preserved a copy of his hand-bill, of which this, in its turn, is a faithful transcript:
"To the Inhabitants of G. and its neighbourhood.
"The present age is teeming with advantages which no preceding Era in the history of mankind has afforded to the human family. New schemes are projecting to enlighten and extend civilisation, Railways have been projected and carried out by an enterprising and spirited nation, while Science in its gigantic power (simple yet sublime) affords to the humane mind so many facilities to explore its rich resources, the Seasons roll on in their usual course producing light and heat, the vivifying rays of the Sun, and the fructifying influences of nature producing food and happiness to the Sons of Toil; while to the people of G. and its neighbourhood a rich and extensive variety of Fashionable Goods is to be found in my Warehouse, which have just been selected with the greatest care. The earliest visit is requested to convey to the mind an adequate idea of the great extent of his purchases, comprising as it does all that is elegant and useful, cheap and substantial, to the light-hearted votaries of Matrimony, the Matrons of Reflection, the Man of Industry, and the disconsolate Victims of Bereavement.
J— M—."
The peroration certainly exhibits what Mrs. Malaprop calls "a nice derangement of epitaphs:" and, us for the rest, surely "the force of" bathos "could no further go."
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
ON A PASSAGE IN "KING HENRY VIII.," ACT III. SC. 2.
One of the most desperately unintelligible passages in Shakspeare occurs in this play, in the scene between the King and the Cardinal, when the latter professes his devoted attachment to his service. It stands thus in the first folio: