REMARKS ON TOM CRIB'S MEMORIAL It is our wish, in this Journal, to avoid all kind of party politics. There is quite scope enough for our lucubrations in the various departments of nature and of art, without coming upon that debateable ground in which bad passions are sure to be engendered. For our parts, we confess fairly, that we can never at all see our way through the mist of such controversies, and we seldom feel any inclination to examine into the character of one half of the men, or one half of the measures, about which "all Europe rings from side to side." When any plan of unquestioned public utility is proposed, or when any great and patriotic character arises either among the ranks of ministry or of opposition, at home or abroad, we trust we shall not be backward in expressing our gratitude and admiration; but, for the common aspect of the political world, and of the actors whom it exhibits to us, it is rather in such ludicrous pages as those of the little volume before us, than in the tedious details of newspapers or of history, that we have any satisfaction in contemplating them. We know there are many good and sensible people who look upon publications of this light satirical kind, as having a very bad tendency. We do not see this. No man's loyalty was ever shaken by a satire; and although certainly the bounds of proper respect and decency are ever apt to be transgressed when a witty writer gives full reins to his imagination, yet it is really a very small tax for great people to pay for the station and offices which they enjoy, to be turned now and then into a kind of Merry-Andrews, for the diversion of their inferiors. It is impossible, at least in a free country, taken; and, although they may freto prevent these liberties from being quently be very impudent and licentious, they never did a serious injury to any fair and honourable character. When were our people more cordially attached to their venerable Sovereign than at the very moment when Peter Pindar was holding up his peculiarities to ridicule, and when all the world joined irresistibly in the laugh? We believe that kindhearted and simple-minded man did not at all take amiss the mirth which was excited at his expence, and his subjects rather liked him the better that the trappings of royalty were in this manner stripped from him, and that they could come nearer him in the familiarity of raillery and good fellowship. The effect of caricature prints is of the same kind. The shop windows are beset by vulgar crowds, who delight to see those who fill the highest stations of society subjected to their coarse and rude laughter; but we imagine the result is a greater love for their superiors, a more humane and kindly affection for them, than if they were always to admire them in their distant grandeur. of Tom Crib is a very diverting dog, as most Toms indeed are. The champion, no doubt, among the wags England is one Joe, as a George is our traditionary jester in Scotland. But, for the plain-sailing merriment which carries on the good-humour of the world, your Tom is your man. First of all, there was Tom Killigrew, then Tom Brown of facetious me mory; next Tom Ashe, whose dying speech, stuck full of puns, we have of ten pored upon with infinite delight in the pages of Dean Swift. There is Tom Neverout, an exceeding smart fellow, celebrated by the same author; and, to come nearer our own time, we have Tom Little, rather an exceptionable tome ;-Tom Brown junior, author of the Twopenny Post-Bag; and, though last, not least, Tom Moore, who is generally supposed to be a constellation of Toms in himself, and who may be called, by way of distinction, the Mighty Tom,-but whether or no he is connected with any of the others, and Mr Crib among the rest, is a point which we leave to be settled be tween himself and his conscience. The humour of Tom Crib's book is, that the vulgar slang of pugilists, or of the Fancy, as they please to denominate themselves, is applied to the grand concerns and great personages of the world. This humour is pursued so far, that it becomes fatiguing, -and the preface, which is a strange medley of absurdity and learning, reads somewhat like one of the strained and tedious digressions in the Tale of a Tub. There is, however, something very ludicrous in some parts of the poetry. Nothing is better than the Memorial, which is the first piece, and which Tom Crib, the champion of England, is supposed to have presented to the late Congress for the advancement of the pugilistic art,-quite as reasonable a proposal, we believe, as some other schemes of improve ment which were actually laid before them by some noted projectors from this country. It begins thus:Most Holy, and High, and Legitimate squad, First Swells of the world, since Boncy's in quod, + Swell, a great man. Who have ev'ry thing now, as Bill Gibbons would say, "Like the bull in the china shop, all your own way Whatsoever nobs, employs your magnificent Whether diddling your subjects, and gutting their fobs,-+ (While you hum the poor spoonies with speeches, so pretty, 'Bout Freedom, and Order, and-all my eye, Betty) Whether praying, or dressing, or dancing the hays, Or lapping your congo § at Lord C-sTL-RGH's,— || (While his Lordship, as usual, that very great dab¶ At the flowers of rhet'ric, is flashing his gab) Or holding State Dinners, to talk of the weather, And cut up your mutton and Europe together! Whatever your gammon, whatever your talk, Oh deign, ye illustrious Cocks of the Walk, To attend for a moment,-and if the Fine Arts of fibbing++ and boring++ be dear to your hearts; If to level,++ to punish,†† to ruffian man, kind, And to darken their daylights, ‡‡ be plea sures refined Thus gut + Taking out the contents. of it,) i. e. drinking it off. ting a quart pot, (or taking out the lining Simpletons, alias Innocents. § Drinking your tea. See the Appendix, No. 3. Showing off his talk.-Better expressed, perhaps, by a late wit, who, upon being asked what was going on in the House of Commons, answered, "only Lord C. airing his vocabulary." ++ All terms of the Fancy, and fami liar to those who read the Transactions of the Pugilistic Society. To close up their eyes-alias, to sow up their sees. §§ TOм received his first education in a Coal Pit; from whence he has been hon + In prison. The dab's in quod; the oured with the name of the Black Dia rogue is in prison. mond." Gumption or Rumgumption, comprehension, capacity. + Nonsense or humbug. Soldiers, from the colour of their clothes. "To boil one's lobster means for a churchman to turn soldier; lobsters, which are of a bluish black, being made red by boiling."-Grose. Butler's ingenious simile will occur to the reader: When, like a lobster boiled, the Morn Some quarrel, reserv'd for your own private picking Some grudge, even now in your great giz zards sticking (God knows about what about money, mayhap, Or the Papists, or Dutch, or that Kid Master Nap.) And, setting in case there should come such a rumpus, As some mode of scttling the chat we must compass, With which the tag-ragt will have nothing to do What think you, great Swells, of a ROYAL SET-TO? + A Ring and fair fist-work at Aix-la-Chapelle, Or at old Moulsey-Hurst, if you likes it as well And that all may be fair as to wind, weight, and science, I'll answer to train the whole HOLY ALLIANCE! Just think, please your Majesties, how you'd prefer it To mills such as Waterloo, where all the merit How much more select your own quiet Set-tos! And how vastly genteeler 'twill sound in the news, (Kent's Weekly Dispatch, that beats all others hollow For Fancy transactions) in terms such as follow: The set-to which follows is a little too much, even for us, to digest; and we are happy to find, from the preface, that this is to be the last time in which this humorous rhymer means to exhibit on a public arena that one of the illustrious combatants in whom we are most interested. We do not believe him to mean any harm, yet there is so much hazard in this kind of writing, that, not satisfied with every sort of ridicule upon the living, we find him likewise betrayed into an unfeeling and unjust sarcasm upon Child. Hence our useful word, kidnapper-to nab a kid being to steal a child. Indeed, we need but recollect the many excellent and necessary words to which Johnson has affixed the stigma of “ cant term," to be aware how considerably the English language has been enriched by the contributions of the Flash fraternity. The common people, the mobility. A boxing match. the dead. The account, too, of this grand set-to between Sandy and Georgy, if it had no other fault, has that of being a great deal too long. We prefer the song of the Annual Pill, sung by Old Prosy, the Jew, in the character of Major C-rtw―ght. Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, Dat's to purify every ting nashty avay? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let ma say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say! 'Tis so pretty a bolus !-just down let it go, And, at vonce, such a radical shange you vill see, Dat I'd not be surprish'd, like de horse in de show, If our heads all vere found, vere our tailsh ought to be! Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, &c. Meaning, I presume, Coalition Administrations. Whether sedentary habits have any thing to do with this peculiar shape, I cannot determine, but that some have suppos ed a sort of connection between them, appears from the following remark, quoted in Kornmann's curious book, De Virginitatis Jure." Ratio perquam lepida est apud Kirchner, in Legato, cum natura illas partes, quæ ad sessionem sunt destinatæ, latiores in fæminis fecerit quam in viris, innuens domi eas manere debere." Cap. 40. by degrees! Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, Dat's to purify every ting nashty away? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let ma say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say! We have been endeavouring all we can, but we fear with little success, to make our readers take an interest in Old Gawin Douglas's translation of the Eneid. Perhaps they will prefer the Fancy translation of a boxing match, in the fifth book, by our ingeno longer do to say with Horace, of nious pugilistic poet, for it will now the favourite of the Muse, Illum non labor Isthmius Clarabit pugilem. The whole translation is good, though to us still more illegible than the worthy Bishop's; but we can only afford room for the conclusion. When Entellus fell, Instant the Ring was broke, and shouts From Trojan Flashmen and Sicilian Swells and yells Fill'd the wide heav'n-while, touched with grief to see His pal well-known through many a lark and spree, t Thus rumly floor'd, the kind ACESTES ran, And pitying rais'd from earth the game old man. Uncow'd, undamag'd to the sport he came, His limbs all muscle, and his soul all flame, The memory of his milling glories past, The shame, that aught but death should see him grass'd, All fir'd the veteran's pluck-with fury flush'd Full on his light-limb'd customer he rush'd, • Friend. Party of pleasure and frolic. This phrase is but too applicable to the round hitting of the ancients, who, it appears by the engravings in Mercurialis de Art. Gymnast. knew as little of our straight-forward mode as the unitiated Irish of the present day. I have, by the Nor rest, nor pause, nor breathing-time PARTICULARS OF A LATE VISIT TO But, rapid as the rattling hail from heav'n Beats on the house-top, showers of RANDAL's shot* Around the Trojan's lugs flew, peppering hot! 'Till now ENEAS, fill'd with anxious dread, Rush'd in between them, and, with words well-bred, Preserv'd alike the peace and DARES' head, Both which the veteran much inclin'd to break Then kindly thus the punish'd youth bespake: "Poor Johnny Raw! what madness could impel So rum a Flat to face so prime a Swell? See'st thou not, boy, THE FANCY, heavenly Maid, Herself descends to this great Hammerer's aid, And, singling him from all her flash adorers, Shines in his hits, and thunders in his floorers? Then, yield thee, youth,-nor such a spooney be, To think mere man can mill a Deity!" Thus spoke the Chief-and now the scrim mage o'er, His faithful pals the done-up DARES bore Back to his home, with tottering gams, sunk heart, And muns and noddle pink'd in every part. + While from his gob the guggling claret gush'd, And lots of grinders, from their sockets crush'd, Forth with the crimson tide in rattling fragments rush'd! by, discovered some errors in Mercurialis, as well as in two other modern authors upon Pugilism, (viz. Petrus Faber, in his Agonisticon, and that indefatigable classic antiquary, M. Burette, in his "Memoire pour servir à l'Histoire du Pugilat des Anciens,") which I shall have the pleasure of pointing out in my forthcoming "Parallel." A favourite blow of THE NONPAREIL's, so called. + There are two or three Epigrams in the Greek Anthology, ridiculing the state of mutilation and disfigurement to which the pugilists were reduced by their combats. The following four lines are from an Epigram by Lucillius, Lib. 2. Κοσκινον ἡ κεφαλη συ, Απολλοφάνες, γεγένη ται, Η των σητοκοπων βυβλαξίων τα κατω, IN the Number for May 1818, we inserted the account by Captain Berry of a dreadful catastrophe which took place in New Zealand, and of the part he had in rescuing the survivors. This was given merely in a private letter to Mr Brown of London, the proprietor of the ship Boyd; but, having had since an opportunity of communicating personally with Captain Berry, we prevailed upon him to draw up a detailed narrative of his visit to this extraordinary island, and of all the dealings he had with the natives on this melancholy occasion. Being convinced that it will be interesting to our readers, we gladly avail ourselves of Captain Berry's permission to insert it in this Miscellany. Wangerooa lies a little to the westward of the Cavallo Islands, but the entrance is so narrow, that although Captain Cook was nearly a month in that neighbourhood, was frequently close in with the land, and had daily intercourse with the natives, he did not observe it. The name and some notices of the district were first obtained by Governor King of New South Wales, at that time commandant of Norfolk Island, from two natives who were carried off by his direction from the North Cape. The Όπως μυρμήκων τρυπηματα λοξα και одба, Γράμμαία των λυρικών Λυδία και Φρυγία. Literally as follows: "Thy head, O Apol- Is so figur'd and dotted, and scratch'd, By your customers' fists, one would almost believe It ought to be mentioned, that the word "punching" is used both in boxing and music engraving. |