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EXTRACTS FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN OXONIAN.

A REMARKABLE MISQUOTATION.

WHAT a prodigious difference in the sense may oftentimes be made by the transposition of even a single word in a sentence. A remarkable instance of this may be found in a quotation made by Paine, in his Rights of Man, when combating the doctrines put forth by Mr. Burke, in his celebrated letter on the French Revolution. "Mr. Burke," says Mr. Paine, “ appears to have no idea of principles, when he is contemplating governments. Ten years ago (says he) I could have felicitated France on her government without inquiring what that government was, or how it was administered?' Is this the language of a rational man? Is it the language of a heart, feeling, as it ough: to feel, for the rights and happiness of the human race? On this ground Mr. Burke must compliment every government in the world; while the victims who suffer under them, whether sold into slavery or tortured out of existence, are wholly forgotten. It is power, and not principles, that Mr. Burke venerates, and under this abominable depravity he is disqualified to judge between them."

Had Mr. Burke uttered the foolish and absurd sentiment here imputed to him, he would, no doubt, have fairly laid himself open to the angry attack which it excites. But the sentiment conveyed by him is diametrically the reverse of that which he is here made to express. His words are-" Could I, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her having a government without inquiring what that goverment was, or how it was administered?" Whereas, Paine, by a slight transposition, quotes it affirmatively, I could, and on this flagrant misrepresentation he proceeds to charge upon Mr. Burke that utter disregard for consistency and common sense which the assertion implies.

That Paine deliberately and intentionally misquoted Mr. Burke I can hardly believe. There was an integrity of mind about him quite incompatible with an act so mean and disingenuous. It was, besides, so manifest, and so easily exposed, that his own character for ingenuousness and fair dealing must suffer in far greater proportion than the political reputation of Mr. Burke. He proba

bly transcribed the sentence erroneously in the first instance, and proceeded afterwards to comment upon it without ever again referring to the original. There appears to me no other probable mode of accounting for it. But what is very extraordinary, neither the adversaries of Paine, nor the friends of Burke, ever remarked the false citation of this paragraph. It might have been made to form a strong ground of accusation against the great champion of republicanism that he was capable of resorting to such mean and shameless misrepresentation. And to the multitude it was worth a thousand arguments to have urged the barefaced mistatements of which he was guilty, and to have produced this instance triumphantly in evidence. But by an oversight, more singular still than that from which it arose, the error, glaring as it is, escaped notice; and this too, although it re-appeared in every edition of the Rights of Man. Even in the complete edition of his works, published by Carlile, in 1819, it has passed unobserved. There is perhaps no instance in the history of literature, of a work so extensively circulated, read with so much intenseness of party feeling, and running the gauntlet of so great a host of answerers and commentators, in which a misquotation so flagrant as this ever passed without detection.

NEWSPAPERS.

Ir may gratify our national pride, as Chalmers justly remarks in his Life of Ruddiman, to be told that mankind are indebted to England for the first newspaper. In the British Museum may be found the several newspapers which had been printed while the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel, in 1588. The strong excitement of the public fears at this portentous crisis, and the fatal consequences that might arise from false reports getting abroad, naturally suggested to the prudence of Elizabeth, and the wise policy of her secretary, Burleigh, to adopt some medium of circulating authentic intelligence; and the earliest newspaper is entitled The English Mercurie, which, by authority, was "imprinted at London by Christopher Barker, her Highnesses printer, 1588." At this period no other nation

in Europe could boast the existence of a printed Newspaper.

BEAUTY.

"VIRTUE," says Lord Bacon, "is like a rich stone, best plain set.' But why so? The authority of a Lord High Chancellor is no doubt great in matters of law, but when he comes to lay down the law with respect to female beauty, his judgment, as far as authority goes, is not worth a rush. There is no alliance between the toilet and the woolsack. Besides, there is nothing so likely to mislead us on any subject, be it what it may, as a maxim laid down in a metaphor. Virtue, in the way of comparison, is no more like "a rich stone" than it is like a rich jelly, or a rich Genoa velvet. As well might we compare mock-modesty with mock-turtle. Neither has beauty any thing more to do with the setting of this said rich stone than it has to do with the frame of a miniature picture, or the fringe of an under petticoat. Ask any man, in the united kingdom, whether he ever loved a virtuous girl a whit the less because her face was beautiful, and her person wellshaped? Who, since the world began, when he saw virtue encompassed in an "angel's frame," ever cried out for the plain setting?

LOVE.

In the following beautiful lines are two questions which an exquisite poet may ask, but which the most enlightened philosopher cannot answer :

Oh! Love, what is it in this world of ours Which makes it fatal to be loved?-Ah why With cypress branches hast thou wreath'd thy flowers,

And made thy best interpreter a sigh? LORD BYRON.

HORACE AND MR. CANNING.

HORACE, whose poetical reputation stands so high, and whose ear was no doubt well attuned to harmony, took many liberties with which the refined taste of our times would be sorely displeased, and for which, had he been summoned before the bar of modern criticism, he would have been dismissed with a severe rebuke. The classical reader will recall many instances in

which, when a word is too long to suit his poetical purpose, he splits it to fit his measure, and puts one half at the end of one verse, and the other at the commencement of the line which follows it,

as

Redditum Ciri solio Phraaten
Dissidens plebi numero beoto-

-rum eximit virtus, &c.-L. ii. ode 2. A pathetic passage thus cut in twain would be absolutely murdered; no tenderness of sentiment nor beauty of thought could bear up against it. VOLTAIRE, who had an exquisitely musical ear, justly censures it, adding, that it is as if in a French ode one should write Defions-nous de la fortu

-ne, et n'en croyons que la vertu. CANNING, by whom some admirable parodies on several of the odes of Horace are to be found in the Anti-Jacobin, has turned this defect of the Roman bard to admirable account. In the well-known sapphic address to "The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-grinder," he imitates it with a most humorous and

successful effect:

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Jove non probante u

-xorius amnis.-L. i. od. 2. With what excellent effect the playful fancy of a man of genius can press the most unpromising materials into his service is manifested in the laughablyburlesque effect with which this solitary vowel is introduced by Canning in the following stanzas of the song of Rogero, in the publication above alluded to:

There first for thee my passion grew, Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen, Thou wast the daughter of my tu-tor, law professor at the U-niversity of Gottingen. -niversity of Gottingen.

Lord Bacon's Essays.

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THE POLITICAL BUSY-BODY is a man born with an innate perception of the moving principle of all his actions; viz., that whatever is is wrong. It matters not whether the sphere of those actions be the parish or the parliament, the club or the cabinet, the body politic or a body corporate. To intermeddle is his vocation; to make the world better than it is, the condition of his existence; to overturn, to destroy, and to change, an "absolute necessity of his nature;" as much so as consistency is of the present Lord Chancellor's, whose words, in alluding to that virtue as inherent in himself, we have presumed to borrow.

The POLITICAL BUSY-BODY knows but one language, the language of craft ; speaking to the passions, not the reason, of men. He knows, too, but one rule of right; his own inordinate self-conceit, which impels him, on all occasions, and upon all subjects, to substitute his own notions of what should be, for what is. Former ages may have produced great men-that is, men good enough for the times in which they lived-and our forefathers may have counselled wisely, or acted ncbly, according to their benighted conceptions of true wisdom, and exalted glory; but what are the mighty thinkers and sagacious actors of antiquity, compared with the POLITICAL BUSY-BODY of the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one? Even as they themselves are, mere dust in the balance!

Is there discontent? The POLITICAL BUSY-BODY inflames it into rebellion. Is there a part of the whole, which all men agree demands to be reformed?

BUSY BODY.

The POLITICAL BUSY-BODY takes the part for the whole, and would sweep away the good with the bad. Does he live in a town, or village, or neighbourhood, where tranquillity and content have hitherto been the presiding guardians of the place? No sooner does the POLITICAL BUSY-BODY fix his abode there, than families are divided; friends arrayed against each other; the poor taught to complain; the rich to interfere; the very women to prate of rights and privileges; while the schoolmaster dare hardly flog a turbulent urchin unless he is prepared to show that the law of birch is consonant to the law of nature. Tithes become robbery, extorted from the hard earnings of industry to pamper luxurious churchmen: taxes are tyranny, levied to supply the profligate expenditure of corrupt rulers; and submission to authority is no longer the positive duty of a good citizen, but the policy, merely, of men who are seeking redress, and are too craftily instructed to give their enemies an advantage by premature resistance.

Of all God's creatures the POLITICAL BUSY-BODY is upon the best terms with himself: and by the aid of that intuitive faculty which he possesses, he is enabled to understand every one's business better than the individuals themselves. But he never swerves from his fundamental maxim, "Whatever is, must be wrong." That is a point which admits of no dispute; and when he has succeeded in convincing others of its truth, he leaves them to find out what is right. In this respect he resembles the atheist, who unsettles the principles

of his disciples, robs them of their happiness, takes from them the comfort "more precious than rubies," and having rifled the casket of their faith, gives them nothing, or worse than nothing, in lieu of what he has stolen. The POLITICAL BUSY-BODY and the atheist have this in common, that they both impugn what they do not comprehend; both sport with the dearest interests of their fellowcreatures; and both abandon their dupes to the bitter consequences of confidence betrayed.

It is held, however, by moralists, philosophers, and divines, that the Creator permits nothing to exist which has not its use, though our purblind faculties cannot always discern the proof. The POLITICAL BUSY-BODY has his use. Were there no poisons, human science would never have discovered antidotes. Were there no vice in the world, we should be without the example of illustrious virtues by which it is controlled and counteracted. It is not for us to inquire why good and evil are thus placed, as it were, in necessary collision with each other. The fact is coeval with the world itself. Ifthen, the race of POLITICALBUSYBODIES were extinguished, what would become of society? We should rust in sloth. We should rot in inglorious case. We should die of a plethora of felicity. We should not know the value

of the things we possess, nor feel the necessity of preserving them, but for your industrious Political Busy-bodies who seek their destruction. Above all, we should be crushed beneath the weight of an overgrown population; for it is the POLITICAL BUSY-BODIES of every age, who get up wars, foreign and domestic; who embroil states; fan the flame of civil strife; nurse treasons; instigate seditions; and provoke rebellions; thus drenching whole countries with the blood of nighty hosts, and gorging the green ocean with the slain in naval conflicts, besides feeding the gallows with miserable wretches who reduce their theories to practice; and thus, by a compendious process, accomplishing more than ever Malthus, and the whole tribe of political economists will accomplish by their writings, the lowering of population down to the level of the means of subsistence.

One word in conclusion. Shakspeare, who knew human nature in all its phases, has given us two lines which should be the motto of every POLITICAL BUSYBODY, whether he labours vainly to improve the world, or finds, like all great benefactors to it, its base ingratitude. They are these:

The times are out of joint. Oh, cursed spite !

That ever I was born to set them right.

VOL. I.

DIRGE.

Green be the turf o'er thy head,
Light lie the earth on thy breast,
Peaceful and calm be thy sleep,

Till thou'rt call'd to rejoice with the blest.
Though we weep, yet we joy at thy lot,
Though we mourn thec, we yet can resign,
Though we sorrow, 'tis not without hope,
Though we lose thee, forbear to repine.

From the cares and the pains of this world
Thy beatified spirit is free,

"Twould be selfish in us to deplore,
For we know that thy God is with thee.

M. H. J.

KENILWORTH.

It was after we had determined to embellish the present number of the Royal Lady's Magazine with the plates illustative of the magnificent ruins of Kenilworth that we found, in our "Room," a volume by the Rev. E. Whitfield, intitled "The Bereaved, Kenilworth, and other Poems." Casting our eyes over the poem with the second of these titles, we at once perceived that Mr. Whitfield had treated his subject with a poetical feeling, kindred to that which animated the artist of whose pencil we have availed ourselves. We shall, therefore, without further preface, proceed to lay before our readers such portions of the poem as best illustrate the accompanying plates.

-Yon stately hall

Shone with the lustre, the magnificence,
Which western skies reflect; the lofty arch,
And the few fragments of its tracery,

By Time's rude hand respected, seemed on fire;
The ivy glittered with the streaming gold,
Then quick the sun departed-oh! it seemed
As if he mocked the tottering, crumbling pile,
With a bright vision of its by-gone splendour;
As if he told, by his swift vanishing,
The darkness of its fate.-The fading light
Hangs even yet upon the battlement,

Even yet the narrow loophole gives it way-
No more no more-the last pale, dying streak
Sinks from the wide horizon, and 'tis night!

Yes, and these lofty, massive ruins stand
In grandeur all their own; halls, chambers, towers,
The ponderous buttress and the frowning keep,
The matted clusters of the treacherous ivy,

Lose their own form; the murky shades of night
Begirt them round, and blend them into one;
They swell-they rise-in wild sublimity
They seem to fill a more extended base,

With more gigantic height to touch the skies.

The following, though less striking as an illustration, is worthy of transcription, both from its connexion with the subject and its own merits.

A change comes-the deeper, blacker shades,
Coil themselves up and gradual fall away;
The crescent moon, her silent walk begun,
Ascends the East, and through careering clouds,
That envious now conceal her lovely face,
And now are seen the chariot of her beauty,
Her fitful light dispenses; higher still
She climbs the wide expanse, more frequently
Her pearly smile adorns a sleeping world.
How beautiful! how softly beautiful!
The silver radiance pours in gentle streams,
And bathes the hoary pile;-no more enwrapt
In horrid gloom, nor yet distinctly shewn,
As by the glitter of meridian day,

Its ruined splendour strikes; high on the walls
The moon-beam lies, or through the stately arch,
Or shattered portal slanting takes its way;
The fragment jutting from the lofty height

* Whitaker, 1830.

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