Le Peuple Souriquois; an Historical Sketch. By a Mouse Campbell's Funeral. By Horace Smith, Esq. The Tower of the Caliph Nick Croxtead, the Law-Evader. By the Author of " Peter Priggins" People who "always keep their Word." By Laman Blanchard, Esq. The Art Exhibition in Westminster Hall Literature of the Month (for MAY): The New Spirit of the Age. Edited by R. H. Horne.-The Wilfulness of Woman. By the Authoress of The History of a Flirt," "The Manoeuvring Mother," &c.-The Fortunes of the Falconars. By Mrs. Gordon.-The Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister.-Select Pieces from the Poems of William Wordsworth.-Ninety-Eight: a truer ballad Version of the Great (for JUNE): Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis in China, from 1840 to 1843, and of the combined Naval and Military Operations in China. From Notes of Commander W. H. Hall, R.N., with Personal Observations by W. D. Bernard, Esq., A.M., Oxon. The Bridal of Melcha. By Mary L. Boyle.-Hyde Marston-A Tour in Ireland, with Meditations and Reflections. By James Johnson, M.D.-Silent Love: a Poem by the late James Wilson. The Progresses of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and H.R.H. Prince Albert, in France, Belgium, and England.-Stafford (for JULY): Excursion through the Slave States, from Washington, on the Potomac, to the frontier of Mexico; with Sketches of Popular Manners and Geological Notices. By G. W. (for AUGUST): Sydney Morcom-Impressions and Observations of a Young Person during a Residence in Paris. 557 to 560 THE LIBRARY THE UNIVERSITY THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. THE ILL-HUMORIST; OR, OUR RECANTATION. Oh, I am stabbed with laughter. [A voluntary confession of error has always a certain recommendation with it. We therefore trust that the discovery we have made, and the acknowledgment we here give of the fault we have fallen into respecting the "Humor" in which we have written, will be properly appreciated by a discerning public.-EDITOR.] WE are weary of good humor, heartily tired of mirth; we are resolved, in short, to be comical no more. The Tragic Muse shall have us all to herself. The Blue Devils take us! For all man's life me-seems a tragedy There shall be no more "cakes and ale" if we can help it. Our part in future shall be with virtue and Malvolio; we mean to give Sir Andrew Ague-cheek warning, and clasp Sir Andrew Agnew to our heart. If there shall be any more ale, it shall be "bitter ale," and our cup shall be that of Tantalus. The grievances of Englishmen are, in sad earnest, the dearest privileges] they possess. Our patriots of former days committed a grievous blunder in bringing in their Bill of Rights. A Bill of Wrongs would have been infinitely more popular, and immeasurably more in unity with the tastes and feelings of the country. The true rights of a Briton are his wrongs, for he is never so pleased as when he is afflicted, and never so discontented as when cause for grumbling he has none. Dogberry was a genuine son of Albion, albeit the great dramatist, in his caprice, claps us down that pink of constables in the streets of Messina. With what satisfaction and vain-glory does he not describe himself as "a man who has had his losses!" The losses of many a man are worth his profits told ten times over. What he gains subjects him to envy, increases his cares, augments his responsibilities and temptations; but what he loses (in addition to all the moral benefits resulting from the abstraction of so much filthy lucre,) has the enormous advantage of furnishing him with a good casus belli with the world, and a fair quarrel with the lady of the ever-spinning wheel. Spenser's "Tears of the Muses." May.-VOL. LXXI. NO. CCLXXXI. B Can there be a better proof of the prevailing fashion for grievances, than the precarious hold which reformers have had in all ages upon the affections of their fellow-citizens? The love of abuses springs from the love of having something to abuse. To be abusing somebody or something the live-long day, is an enjoyment not to be dispensed with by those who have once tasted it; and the abuse highest in favour is that which comes in our way most frequently, and affords us the greatest number of occasions for exhibiting our spleen. We have known a man keep a three-legged stool in his study, for no earthly purpose but to knock his shins against and swear at. Upon the same principle many people keep cats and dogs in their houses, that they may have something to execrate for every broken saucer, and to cuff and kick whenever they meet it on the stairs. This is the true reason that pets are often the most odious creatures of their species; the animal is maintained at considerable expense, expressly because it is mischievous and detestable, thus providing us with a perennial theme for vituperation, and the exercise of our irascible dispositions. Nay, we often see this system extended to the human race, and servants and other dependants retained in an establishment, purposely to keep the temper of the master or mistress up to the boiling point. This is the use of a Smike to a Squeers. Smike was a well-conditioned simpleton; but many a mischievous and incorrigible brat escapes expulsion from school, because he ensures some epicure of a pedagogue the daily exercise of his verberose propensities. An urchin of this description is the schoolmaster's pet-boy; not all the good scholars in the academy afford him half the satisfaction which he derives from this one incorrigible favourite. This pleasure to be found in pain, this good in evil, this source of joy discoverable in the very stream of sorrow, is precisely what is figured by the diamond in the reptile's head. Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Discontent is the jewel of adversity; tears are literally pearls; and there is no gold to be compared to the "gold of affliction," as a celebrated impost in the Lower Empire was appropriately designated. Why is Ireland, for example, called the First flower of the earth, And first gem of the sea, but because she is always in tribulation, and for ever in the dumps? Her true emerald is her distress; robbed of that she would be robbed of her reputation, and reduced to poverty indeed. A "good distress" makes the fortune of a tragic poet, and in this respect most men resemble the priests of Melpomene; they love a "good distress" prodigiously. It is evident from the wild schemes and impracticable objects that we are continually proposing, or in quest of, that we actually seek to be disappointed, knowing how sweet it is to talk of blighted hopes and rail at Fortune. How often do we not subscribe to mad speculations, and invest every shilling of our capital in the airiest bubbles, seemingly out of an abstract love of ruin. A ruined fortune would seem to be as attractive as the ruin of an abbey or a castle in a landscape. In like manner we expect impossibilities from our children, and make the most unreasonable requests of our friends, merely to qualify ourselves to deplore filial ingratitude, and protest that friendship is but a name. The place-hunter may possibly derive some slight advantage from gaining his suit and a situation; but how much happier is he who is in a condition to accuse the perfidy of a minister, and revile the government all his days? In matters of religion, it is well known, that the way to gratify the zealot is to persecute him. The enthusiast loves the country where good fires are kept to warm, and even occasionally to roast him. Toleration freezes him, and perfect religious liberty is like sending him to Siberia. We have a shrewd notion that the most miserable country imaginable is that which Sir Thomas More discovered, and called Utopia. We would not be Utopians for all the world; but as we meditate a formal attack upon that dull nation at a future opportunity, we shall say no more of them, or their sad prosperity, at present. He that will take the trouble of measuring the L'ALLEGRO with the IL PENSEROSO, will find the latter poem some score of verses longer than the former, an apt illustration of the truth that the catalogue of human troubles is longer by twenty grievances than the list of human satisfactions. We are determined, therefore, to be merry no longer. There's such a charm in melancholy, We would not, if we could be gay. What costs and trouble we have been at in the quest of gaieties, while sorrows and tribulations might have been had in bushels, as plenty and cheap as blackberries! It is to be feared that we have hitherto committed a gross mistake in catering for the supposed public appetite for mirth. We have forgotten the luxury of woe! We have overlooked the most striking fact in the philosophy of the human mind, namely, the love of grievance. From this error have arisen the Comic Almanacks, Comic Annuals, and all Comic Miscellanies of the day. Even the Latin Grammar has been made a farce of, and laughter extracted from "As in Presenti." "Punch" has even distilled smiles from law-books; which proves that sunbeams are producible from cucumbers. One would suppose that England was still the " "merry England" of the days of Robin Hood and the Round Table. One would think that we English were a giggling, grinning, joking, lighthearted people, instead of the plodding, grumbling, tax-paying nation that we are. What have we to do with fun and frolic? We who live on melancholy beef, and have our being in solid plum-pudding, what have we to do with kickshaws, entre-mets, and trifles? Our centre is the centre of gravity, and those who would have us spin on the centre of levity, mistake the mechanism of our national character altogether. The Englishman is solid as his own food, and grave as his own mustard-pot. We eat melancholy meat, drink melancholy drink, and melancholy has "marked us for her own." It is the most preposterous thing in the world for us to keep a retinue of wits, and such an immense establishment of jesters. Next year it will not be our fault if there is not a "Tragic Almanack," and our resolution is taken to establish a "Tragic Annual" likewise, and perhaps baptize the New Monthly anew by the title of the "ILL-HUMORIST." We shall publish at Charing Cross, and we expect all grave people will promote and encourage our undertaking. It will be our study to suit the ill-temper of the times, and we shall enTxU B 2 deavour to engage the services of Mr. Croker. In fact, it will be a sort of revival of 66 Fog's Journal." With a view to these projects we have already commenced forming a library. It contains, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The Mourning Bride. Zimmerman on Solitude. Thomson's Winter. The Distressed Mother. Memoirs of Grim. McWhine on the Lamentations. The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. Miserrimus. The Practice of Courts of Equity. With this lamentable library, and a corps of the sourest fellows, drinkers of vinegar and eaters of lemons, to be met with in the saddest streets, the most lugubrious lanes, and the crossest courts in London, we hope to make the "ILL-HUMORIST" a most fascinating magazine. We have already retained three elegiac bards to do the poetry, and the same number of grievance-mongers to manage the political department. Our editor will always be habited in a sorry suit; our "sub" will wear green and yellow, those being the colours which Shakspeare assigns to melancholy; our devils will be blue, if we can procure them, if not we shall advertise for sad boys; and at the door of our office will be stationed a pair of the most dismal mutes to be found in the metropolis. We shall appear in a drab cover, with a huge cross, or vinegar-cruet for our device, with the motto, It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jacques. There will be a letter-box (illuminated with weeping gas) always open to receive the sighs of lovers, the tears of schoolboys, the complaints of wives, the recriminations of husbands, the wails of the disappointed, the grunts of the disaffected, the moans of manufacturers, the groans of the farmers. It shall not be our fault if we do not deserve to be groaned, and merit the rueful countenance of the public. Moor ditch shall not be more melancholy than we, or a drone of a Lincolnshire bagpipe more doleful. The cries of London shall find a faithful echo in our pages, and we shall make engagements with the criers of all the courts of justice in England, so as to ensure returns of all the wrongs and hardships that suitors and offenders sustain at the hands of judges and juries. Instead of paying a penny a line for murders and great fires, we shall give the same handsome sum per word, including conjunctions and pronouns. All who rail at railways will do well to favour us with their contributions, for it is our fixed determination to be always rich in land-slips, collisions, and explosions. In general strikes we shall endeavour to be as striking as possible. If we fail, it will not be for lack of failures, for our columns shall be rich in insolvencies, and we are resolved to break ourselves in bankruptcies. A portion of our space will be devoted to rural and agricultural affairs. We have a project for cultivating the cypress in this country, and encouraging the growth of rue and wormwood. As to our English corn, it will be our constant care to tread upon it; we shall thrash the question of the corn-laws, and raise the animating cry of "Dear Bread;" while in Ireland we shall maintain, support, and de |