THE ECLECTIC MUSEUM OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART. MAY, 18 4 3. TOO HOT. BY MR. HOOD.-FROM THE AMULET. Illustrated by an Engraving by Mr. Sartain, from Landseer's Picture. Or were I like great Little, who doth ring So sweetly love's alarum, How I would sing, And make the world rejoice! Oh! would I had that heavenly voice,- Or were I Doctor Southey, whose invention Have been so much admired by men! I'd rather have his pension. Perhaps the most appropriate poet, living Effect to your "Too Hot" were BURNS. Such a dog fancier as you. What Rubens was to lions, Cuyp to cows, And hogs, You are to dogs. There's an attractiveness about your harriers, Pugs.poodles,mastiffs, greyhounds, turnspits, tarriers Goes far to settle the great philosophic schism About animal magnetism. There's not a dog but owes you more, I vow, And not a cur that meets You in the streets, But ought to make you a profound bow Wow. THE ADVERTISING SYSTEM. From the Edinburgh Review. 1. César Birotteau. Par M. de Balzac. Nou velle Edition. 8vo. Paris: 1841. 2. Histoire de M. Jobard. 8vo. Par Cham. Paris: 1842. M. BIROTTEAU is a worthy citizen, who, impatient at the slow results of industry, resolves to make his fortune at a bound. M. Jobard is a simple-minded believer in Advertisements. Which of us does not, in some respect, resemble a Birotteau or a Jo. bard?-was the question we asked ourselves as we laid down the works in which their adventures are recorded, and took up the extra-sheet of the Times. Here, within the compass of a single Newspaper, are above five hundred announcements of wants or su perfluities-remedies for all sorts of ailments-candidates for all sorts of situations -conveyances for those who wish to travel, establishments for those who wish to stay at home-investments for him who has made his fortune, and modes of growing rich for him who has that pleasure yet to come elixirs to make us beautiful, and balsams to preserve us from decay-new theatres for the idle, new chapels for the serious, new cemeteries in pleasant situations for the dead-carriages, horses, dogs, men-servants, maid-servants, East India Directors, and Governesses,-how is all this to be disregarded or disbelieved, without wilfully shutting our eyes to the progress of society; or living in an habitual state of apprehension, resembling that of the late Mr. Accum of "Death in the Pot" celebrity, who believed that every thing he ate was poisoned more or less, and regarded every butcher as a Cæsar Borgia, and every cookmaid who boiled a potato for him as a Marquise de Brinvilliers in disguise? cannot be worth knowing; and any attempt to couple merit with modesty, is invariably Reverend Sydney Smith, that the only conmet with the well-known aphorism of the with an m. In this state of things it is usenexion between them is their both beginning less to swim against the stream, and folly to differ from our contemporaries: a prudent youth will purchase the last edition of "The Art of Rising in the World, or Every Man his own Fortune-maker," and sedulously practise the main precept it enjoins-never to omit an opportunity of placing your name in printed characters before the world. It may be argued, that, when every body takes to puffing, it comes to nearly the same thing as if nobody puffed at all; but the well-known aphorism holds good:"Be not the first to lay the old aside, Be not the first by whom the new are tried." Besides, in the lottery of life as at present managed, though the blanks may be more numerous, the prizes are proportionably rich. When means of communication were restricted, and skill, taste, or talent was made known with difficulty beyond a narrow circle-a street, a village, or a town-it was comparatively easy to gain a livelihood, and almost impossible to become a millionaire: fame and profit were distributed among the community much in the same manner as Greek among the inhabitants of our northern part of this island, where (according to Dr. Johnson) all have a mouthful, few a bellyful; and for this reason we have always entertained some doubts of the authenticity of the anecdote regarding "the great Twalmly, the inventor of the New Floodgate Iron." Either Dr. Johnson invented the story to tease Boswell, or Mr. Twalmly had formed an undue estimate of the extent of his own celebrity; though, to be sure, the daily press was even then beginning to exercise an unIn short, there is no disguising it, the due influence; since the Lexicographer says, grand principle of modern existence is no- in 1776, that he should have visited Mrs. toriety; we live and move and have our be- Rudd, "were it not that they have now a ing in print. Hardly a second-rate Dandy trick of putting every thing into the newscan start for the moors, or a retired Slop- papers." At the present time, assuming seller leave London for Margate, without greatness to consist in notoriety, the invenannouncing the "fashionable movement" in tor of a new fire-iron for smoothing linen the Morning Post; and what Curran said of (for such, neither more nor less, was Mr. Byron, that "he wept for the press, and Twalmly's discovery) might fairly earn a wiped his eyes with the public," may now be predicated of every one who is striving for any sort of distinction. He must not only weep, but eat, drink, walk, talk, hunt, shoot, give parties, and travel, in the news. papers. People now-a-days contemptuously reject the old argument, "whom not to know argues yourself unknown." The universal inference is, that, if a man be not known, he title to name himself "the great ;" not simply for the reason suggested by the Bishop of Killaloe (Dr. Barnard)-because he would rank amongst "Inventas aut qui vitam excoleure per artes," but because within a few hours the whole United Kingdom might be talking of him. We pardon the tailor who tells us to reform our bills, and the pastrycook who writes us a private (printed) let ter to commend his rout-cakes, when we re-bered, has been proved by Mr. Wordsworth collect that a lucky hit might enable the one to be the essential, elemental, fundamental, (like Gunter) to return thirty thousand a characteristic quality of poetry. If we year to the income-tax, and the other (like adopt Locke's definition, the writers are Stulz) to purchase a feudal castle and a equally distinguished by wit; for they disbarony. With so much to stimulate energy and reward eloquence, no wonder that invention has been racked for topics, and language for terms, to arrest the attention of a busy and bustling, but observing and intelligent public; and here, again, it is remarkable how ingeniously the style of address has been adapted to the taste or fashion of the hour. When Scott, Byron, Moore, Rogers, Wordsworth, Southey, &c., were in their zenith, or whilst the horizon was still in a blaze with their descending glory, the most attractive vehicle was verse, and the praises of blacking were sung in strains which would have done no discredit to "Childe Harold" himself, even in his own opinion-for when accused of receiving six hundred a-year for his services as Poet-Laureat to Mrs. Warren, -of being, in short, the actual personage alluded to in her famous boast, "We keeps a poet"-he showed no anxiety to repudiate the charge. The present, however, is an unpoetic age-though, by the way, we should be exceedingly obliged to any one who would mention an age that was not described as both unpoetic and wicked at the time : "Nos nequiores, mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem." To change the expression, then, the present age decidedly prefers prose to poetry; nay, unaccountable as it may appear to the person principally interested, and after all the good advice both he and we have wasted on the point, there can be no doubt whatever that "The Excursion" is more than ever caviare to the vulgar; and, notwithstanding the gallant stand made by Mr. Henry Taylor and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd in its defence, has no chance at all against the "Pickwick Papers" or "Oliver Twist." Mrs. Warren, consequently, has been obliged to pension off her poets; and the ingenuity of inventions, the excellence of elixirs, the wonderworking powers of pills, the beauties of estates on sale, the rain-repelling powers of York cloth, the advantages of railroads, the comforts of steam-vessels, the hopes of the living, the virtues of the dead, are now al. most invariably set forth in that humble and ordinary form of language which M. Jour. dain had been employing all his life without knowing it. Far be it from us to say that there is the less scope for imagination on that account; and imagination, be it remem cover hidden similitudes, and associate things apparently unconnected with the most startling and enviable facility. Let any one who is skeptical as to the degree of talent employed and required for the purpose, try to find out the point of analogy between Dante's Inferno and Holloway's Ointment, or the likeness between Archimedes and Mr. Wray, the vender of gout pills. Mark, too, the skill with which the mode of attack is varied; one dashes at once in medias res, or puts on an imposing air of frankness; another trusts the result to inference, reserves the point for the postscript, like a young lady's letter, or lures you on imperceptibly, like Bishop Berkeley's "Essay on Tar Water," which concludes with reflections on the Trinity. On the whole, there is no denying that Advertisements constitute a class of com. position intimately connected with the arts and sciences, and peculiarly calculated to illustrate the domestic habits of a people. Porson used to say, that a single Athenian newspaper would be worth all the commentaries on Aristophanes put together. Surely, then, a brief analysis of modern puffery would be no unacceptable bequest to posterity. We shall show, before we have done, that no trade, profession, walk, or condition in life is entirely free from it; and it will be an instructive exercise for moral philosophers or metaphysicians to fix the degrees and ascertain the causes of the varieties. It would seem that pain, or the fear of pain, is the most active stimulant, and vanity the next; for the boldest appeals to credulity are made by those who profess to cure diseases or improve personal appearance. Our first specimens shall be borrowed from a class usually, though we hope unjustly, denominated quacks: SURPRISING PROPHECY OF DANTE.-How little was it imagined that those celebrated lines of Dante, And Time shall see thee cured of every ill would be literally fulfilled in England, and in the nineteenth century! Yet so it is. The disorders of man, however complicated they may be, are now subdued with surprising rapidity by that incomparable preparation, Holloway's Ointment,' in combination with its powerful auxliary, Holloway's External Disease Pill.' It is truly surprising to witness the innumerable cures performed by the special qualities of the Ointment, and the alterative and tonic properties of the Pills. Nor can we too earnestly recom |