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the joint product of both and as we have laboured equally in erecting the fabric, we cannot pretend that any one particular part is the sole workmanship of either. A hint has haps been started by one of us, improved by the other, and still farther heightened by a happy coalition of sentiment in both; as fire is struck out by a mutual collision of flint and steel. Sometimes, like Strada's lovers conversing with the sympathetic needles, we have written papers together at fifty miles distance from each other; the first rough draught or loose minutes of an essay have often travelled in the stagecoach from town to country, and from country to town; and we have frequently waited for the postman, whom we expected to bring us the remainder of a Connoisseur, with the same anxiety as we should wait for the half of a bank note, without which the other half would be of no value. These our joint labours, it may easily be imagined, would have soon broke off abruptly, if either had been too fondly attached to his own little conceits; or if we had conversed together with the jealousy of a rival, or the complaisance of a formal acquaintance, who smiles at every word that is said by his companion. Nor could this work have been carried on with so much cheerfulness and good humour on both sides, if the Two had not been as closely united as the two students whom the " Spectator" mentions, as recorded by a Terra Filius at Oxford, to have had but one mind, one purse, one chamber, and one hat3.For our own parts we cannot but be pleased with having raised this monument of our mutual friendship; and if these essays shall continue to be read, when they will no longer make their appearance as the fugitive pieces of the week, we shall be happy in considering that we are mentioned at the

3 The jest occurs in a speech published by Curll, of lasting infamy, in a collection impudently entitled, Opera Posthuma Latina Viri doctissimi et clarissimi, Roberti South. The two friends were the Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Fell, and Dr. Allestree, the Divinity Professor: Tanta est amicitia inter illum et Theologiæ Professorem, ut unum habeant animum, unum lectum, et quod maximum est amicitiæ signum, unum solummodo inter se habent galerum.

An English note says, that this" Terræ Filius's speech was made by Dr. South to be spoken by Henry Hill, of Corpus Christi College, afterwards D.D. and rector of Letcombe Basset, in Berkshire, 1673; but afterwards it was spoken in July, 1674, by W. Gerrard, M.A. of Wadham; for which he was expelled."

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same time. We have all the while gone on, as it were, hand in hand together; and while we are both employed in furnishing matter for the paper now before us, we cannot help smiling at our thus making our exit together, like the Two Kings of Brentford smelling at one nosegay."

Cowper contributed a few papers to the "Connoisseur." One of them is upon the subject of keeping secrets; and, though written in a strain of levity, it had so good an effect upon himself, that he says, "from that day he believed he had never divulged one." If he had not the same virtue of discretion before, (and so it may be inferred from such an acknowledgment,) this is a remarkable instance of the benefit that may be derived from calmly considering what our own opinions are upon any question of practical importance, before it happens directly to concern us.

He was also an occasional contributor to the "St. James's Chronicle." Thornton and Colman were two of the original proprietors of that newspaper, which at once assumed a literary character far above that of its rivals. They had both been accustomed to write in newspapers and magazines, which in those days exercised more influence than the reviews, and to which indeed men of higher character and greater ability than were engaged in the critical journals, frequently sent communications. Both had thus acquired habits of desultory industry; and this had led them to indulge a disposition for playful satire, and to regard things in a ludicrous point of view,.. satisfied if they could amuse themselves and others, without any worthier aim. No writer can pursue this course without injury to his own moral and intellectual nature. There was, however, nothing like malevolence in their satire; and they rendered themselves more obnoxious to the authors whom they eclipsed, than to those against whom their ridicule was directed.. for they levelled it sometimes against men whose merit they could not but acknowledge in their heart, as indeed they bore testimony to it in their better mind.

This humour was fostered at the Nonsense Club. At those meetings of

Jest and youthful Jollity,

Sport that wrinkled Care derides,

And laughter holding both his sides,

4 To Mr. Unwin, April 6, 1780.

there can be little doubt that the two odes to Obscurity and Oblivion originated, joint compositions of Lloyd and Colman, in ridicule of Gray and Mason. They were published in a quarto pamphlet, with a vignette, in the title-page, of an ancient poet safely seated and playing on his harp; and at the end a tail-piece representing a modern poet in huge boots, flung from a mountain by his Pegasus, into the sea, and losing his tie-wig in the fall.

Little did the two wits think how small in comparison with Gray they would appear in the eyes of posterity; and that the " Bard," which was then neglected by the public, would, in the course of the next generation, become the most popular ode in the English language. The poet took this unprovoked attack in his quiet and playful way. "I have sent you," said he, in a letter to Mason, "a bloody satire, written against no less persons than you and I by name. I concluded at first it was Mr. * * *, because he is your friend, and my humble servant; but then I thought he knew the world too well to call us the favourite minions of Taste and of Fashion, especially as to odes, for to them his ridicule is confined. So it is not he, but Mr. Colman, nephew to Lady Bath, author of the Connoisseur,' a member of one of the inns of court, and a particular acquaintance of Mr. Garrick. What have you done to him? for I never heard his name before. He makes very tolerable fun with me, when I understand him, which is not

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very often; but seems more angry with you. Lest people should not understand the humour of the thing, (which indeed to do they must have our lyricisms at their fingers' ends,) letters come out in Lloyd's Evening Post to tell them who and what it was that they meant, and that it is like to produce a combustion in the literary world. So if you have any mind to combustle about it, well and good; for me, I am neither so literary, nor so combustible." Touching upon the subject in a letter to Dr. Wharton, about the same time, he says, "I believe his Odes sell no more than mine did; for I saw a heap of them lie in a bookseller's window, who recommended them to me as a very pretty thing."

Mason published the letter in which this passage occurs for the sake of showing how Gray felt on such occasions. "Had Mr. Pope," said he, disregarded the sarcasms of the many writers that endeavoured to eclipse his poetical fame, as much

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as Mr. Gray here appears to have done, the world would not have been possessed of a Dunciad; but it would have been impressed with a more amiable idea of its author's temper." It was easy for Gray, in the consciousness of his own superiority, to smile at the cleverness with which his manner had been imitated in a mock-lyric strain: no disparagement is implied in such burlesque; and one of his temper could more easily forgive the personal ridicule, as unjust as it was unbecoming, than the authors would forgive themselves for it when they came to years of discretion. The personal attack upon Mason was equally reprehensible, and unfounded; but his stilted style and obtrusive alliteration were not unfairly satirized; and this perhaps he felt, for his later poems were not characterised by the same faults. But if it was an act of prudence on his part to follow his friend's example, and express no resentment at an unprovoked attack, it was an act of forbearance also in him, who had both the temper and the talents for satire. Lloyd and Colman would hardly have assailed him if they had known that he was the most efficient satirist of the age: for Mason it was who by an anonymous satire exploded that barbarous fashion of Chinese taste, which most of the contemporary essayists had attacked without effect.

What was personal and injurious in these mock lyrics is now so harmless, and what was always unexceptionable in them is so good.. (for they are among the very best of their kind), that whenever the works of Gray and Mason are, as they ought to be, conjointly published, it is to be hoped these pieces will find a place in the appendix, as a trophy to their fame.

Some singular displays of practical humour proceeded from the same Club. Thornton opened an exhibition of signpaintings in Bow Street, Covent Garden. The hint for this inoffensive drollery was taken from the annual exhibition of pictures made by the Society for the promoting of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce, previous to the institution of the Royal Academy; and materials for it were easily collected at a time when, upon every improvement in the city, the signposts were removed as nuisances. Thornton, who had always an eye for the humours and follies of the day, had been amused by the absurd combinations which appeared in many of these street-pictures, and had made them the subject of a paper in the Adventurer two years before. Following now

5 No. 9.

the vein upon which he had then struck, he advertised for the same day on which the Society were to open their exhibition, an Exhibition by the Society of Sign Painters of all the curious signs to be met with in town or country, together with such original designs as might be transmitted to them as specimens of the native genius of the nation."

Unpromising as an exhibition of daubings might now seem, "most of which had actually been hung in ircns, and were nearly worn out in the service," it had no inconsiderable success, though the humour must have appeared to more advantage in the catalogue than in the collection itself. Some friendly hand announced it as the project of a well-known gentleman, who had in several instances displayed a most uncommon vein of humour, and who was perhaps the only person in England, (Mr. Hogarth excepted,) who could have projected or carried tolerably into execution such a scheme. "There is a whimsical drollery in all his pieces," it was said, "and a comical originality in his manner that never fail to distinguish and recommend all his undertakings. To exercise his wit and humour in an innocent laugh, and to raise that innocent laugh in others, seems to have been his chief aim in the present spectacle. The ridicule on exhibitions, if it must be accounted so, is pleasant without malevolence; and the general strokes on the common topics of satire are given with the most apparent good humour."

Hogarth, in fact, had entered into the humour of the adventure, and gave a few touches in chalk where effect could be added by it: thus in the portraits of the King of Prussia and the Empress Maria Teresa, he changed the cast of their eyes so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Every pot-house politician could understand this. But the wit was altogether of the most popular kind. A pair of thick legs, in white stockings and black garters, were described in the catalogue as No. 9... the Irishman's Arms, by Patrick O'Blaney. N.B. Captain Terence O'Cutter stood for them.-No. 12. The Scotch Fiddle. By M'Pherson; done from himself.-No. 16. A man.. nine tailors at work.-No. 27. The Spirit of Contradiction:.. two brewers bearing a cask, the men going different ways.-No. 35. A man in his Element :.. a cook roasted on a spit at a kitchen-fire, and the devil basting him.-No.

6 Chalmers' Preface to the "Connoisseur."

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