The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

So little, in fact, that a wig he must wear,
Ri tu den u-den a!’

The parody had the jogging, jolting air of the original, and was replete, we recollect, with whimsical associations. ••• We shall venture to present here the comments of two most valued friends and contributors, upon the performances of two other esteemed friends and favorite correspondents. Of ‘The Venus of Ille,’ the one writes as follows: ‘I fully sympathise with you in your admiration of this tale, as well as of ‘The Innocence of a Galley-Slave.’ I could not in the perusal of them both but feel the vast superiority of the Grecian over the Gothic style. For in spite of all the humor and wit and nature and pathos of the Dickens and Lever school, there is something more of the Gothic and grotesque in their paintings than in these pure and unforced limnings of the able Frenchman. Where the ground-work of the tale is of sufficiently bold conception, and the incidents offer hooks enough to hang interest upon, there can be no doubt that this cool style is by far the most effectual in the end. The more strained and heated style of some other modern authors will be very effectual for awhile, but the excitement of the reader will flag sooner. The reason is, that too much descriptive and passionate power is expended on minor portions of the tale; and the enthusiasm of the reader is partially exhausted before he comes to the grand catastrophe, where it should be most of all elicited. But writers like Walter Scott, or this Frenchman, are self-possessed and meditative in a great portion of their writings; by skilful touches giving the reader every thing necessary for him to know in reference to characters and scenes; and on any great emergency their sudden heat carries the reader away captive.’ The admiration expressed by our other accomplished friend for the chaste and graceful essays of a still more accomplished correspondent (there is nothing like disparagement in this comparison) is widely shared, as we have the best reason to know, by our readers on both sides of the Atlantic: ‘John Waters! There is a drab-coated plainness about the name, which is at the same time liquid and musical; not more liquid and musical, howbeit, than those charming commentaries of his on every variety of quaint topic; full of an amiable grace, tinged with the most delicate hue of a fine humor; a refined ore drawn from no ordinary mine without alloy; like the compositions of Sappho, to which an unerring critic has applied the expression, χρυσειοτερα χρυσου; the very best of gold. Doves never bore choicer billet-doux beneath their wings. A beautiful sentiment always touches the heart, though couched in homely phrase; but when one knows how to cull from our mother-tongue the most expressive words, and has gained that enviable mastery, making them fall into their own places, and thus become inseparable from the idea, the perfection of art is gained. Serve us up these choice morceaux each month, dear Editor; let them not be missed from the generous board, lest the banquet be incomplete. Let me tell you, in passing, that your correspondent Harry Franco’s tale is a caution to dowagers. Never have I encountered such a startling incident on the high seas, out of ‘Don Juan.’ ••• Did it occur to ‘N.’ that the change suggested in the mere inscription of his epigram, ‘Religious Disputation,’ would be entirely out of keeping? ‘Uniting the circumstances,’ as Commissioner Lin would say, would produce such discrepancy as was occasioned lately at a democratic meeting in one of the western States, where a certain resolution in favor of our old friend and correspondent, Gen. Cass, was made to undergo a slight metamorphosis by the substitution of the name of Mr. Van Buren; causing it to read something like this: ‘Whereas Gen. Martin Van Buren emigrated to the west from New-Hampshire in early life with his knapsack on his back, and unsheathed his sword in repelling the Indians and fighting against the British!’ etc. This historical fiction, in the antagonistic excitement of the moment, was carried by an almost unanimous vote! ••• Inversion of mere words, or involution of phrase and syntax, let us whisper in the ear of our Troy correspondent, is not a very great beauty in poetry. His own good thoughts are spoiled by this affectation. It requires an artist to employ frequent inversion successfully. The opening of the ‘Lines on a Bust of Dante’, by Mr. T. W. Parsons, affords a pleasing example in this kind. It is clear and musical:

‘See from this counterfeit of him
Whom Arno shall remember long,
How stern of lineament, how grim
The father was of Tuscan song.’

Inversion should be naturally suggested, not forced. ••• It is to be inferred, we fear, that the late ‘principal editor’ of the ‘Brother Jonathan’ does not take it in good part that the new proprietors of that now popular journal saw fit to arrest its rapid decadence, by a removal of the inevitable cause of such a consummation. Lo! how from his distant down-east ambush, with characteristic phrase, he denounces them as ‘cowards’ and ‘puppies!’ Whereupon, in a response appropriately brief, the ‘brave few’ of the ‘principal editor’s’ old readers who have ‘endured unto the end,’ are informed by the new incumbent, that the tabooed ci-devant functionary ‘seems disturbed because he was not suffered to kill the ‘Brother Jonathan’ as he had killed every journal in which he was permitted to pour out his vapid balderdash. He is a perfect Bluebeard among newspapers. He no sooner slaughters one, than he manages to get hold of another, and butcher that with the same remorseless indifference.’ The editor adds: ‘He once enjoyed the honor of some connection with the ‘New World,’ and would have consigned that well-known sheet to the tomb of the Capulets, had not the publishers foreseen the danger, and escaped in season.’ We merely note these facts, as corroborative of a remark or two of our own, in our last issue. ••• ‘An Incident in Normandy’, we shrewdly suspect, is not ‘from the French;’ if it be, all that we have to say is, that such pseudo-rhapsodists as the writer could never by any possibility love nature. The thing is altogether over-done. A Frenchman’s opinion, however, Cowell tells us, should never be taken where the beauties of nature are concerned, unless they can be cooked. There is another grave objection to the article; which consists in the undue frequency of Italian and French words and phrases, foisted into the narrative. We have a strong attachment to plain, perspicuous English. Ours is a noble language, a beautiful language; and we hold fully with Southey, who somewhere remarks that he can tolerate a Germanism, for family sake; but he adds: ‘He who uses a Latin or a French phrase where a pure old English word does as well, ought to be hung, drawn and quartered, for high treason against his mother-tongue.’ ••• ‘The Song of the New Year, by Mrs. Nichols, in a late number,’ writes a Boston correspondent, ‘is an excellent production, and a fair specimen of the improved style of our occasional American verse. Suppose a book-worm should light on poetry of equal merit among Flatman’s, Falconer’s, Prior’s, or Parsell’s collections? Would it not shine forth, think you? Indeed our lady-writers are wresting the plume from our male pen mongers unco fast.’ ‘That’s a fact.’ Mrs. Nichols has a sister-poet at Louisville, Kentucky, who has a very charming style and a delicious fancy. A late verse of hers in some ‘Lines to a Rainbow,’ signed ‘Amelia,’ which we encountered at a reading-room the other day, have haunted our memory ever since:

‘There are moments, I think, when the spirit receives
Whole volumes of thought on its unwritten leaves;
When the folds of the heart in a moment unclose,
Like the innermost leaves from the heart of a rose.’

Moore never conceived a more beautiful simile than this. ••• Number Two of the ‘Reminiscences of a Dartmoor Prisoner’ will appear in our next issue. We have received from the writer a very interesting and amusing manuscript-volume, filled with patriotic poetry, containing vivid pictures of scenes and events in the daily routine of the prison, as well as sketches of Melville Island Prison, and reminiscences of striking events in the lives of sundry of the prisoners, in the progress of the American war. We shall refer more particularly to this entertaining collection in an ensuing number. ••• The Lines on ‘Niagara Falls at Night’ are entirely too terrific for our pages. They are almost as ‘love-lily dreadful’ as the great scene itself. ‘M.’ must ‘try again,’ that is quite certain; and we are afraid, more than once. ••• Tu Doces! Doubtless many of our young readers, especially in the country, have often pondered over the zig-zag hieroglyphics which covered the tea-chests at the village-store, and marvelled what ‘Howqua,’ which was inseparable from these inscriptions, could mean. It was the name of the great Hong merchant, ‘the friend of Americans,’ who died recently at Canton, at an advanced age, leaving his vast wealth to two sons. Here is an elegy written upon his death by his brother-merchant Tingqua, which is now being sung about Canton to a dolorous air, accompanied by the yeih-pa and the tchung, a curious sort of guitar and harp in common use. The elegy comprises a little outline, together with hints and allusions, prettily conveyed, of the principal biographical events of Howqua’s career, and is entitled

TINGQUA’S TEARS

I weep for Howqua. He was the friend of my youth. We often rose before day-break, and gazed together at the soft blue clouds round the retiring moon.

At that time I smiled on Howqua. We both grew old together. We often went to the tombs of our fathers, side by side, and thought tenderly of the loving dead.

Weep friends of the Hong. All friends at home (literally Celestial friends,) and all natives of outside countries weep; weep excessively. For Howqua is no more.

Howqua was a fixed man. He had reason. Loving old laws, old customs, and all things long since established as wise, he therefore hated change.

Howqua was very rich. He had no half-thinkers and third-smokers (meaning no partners,) and no branch-breakers to his universal tea-dealings.

Also he had lands for rice and pasture, and to play at ball, and villas, and ponds of fish, and fifteen field-bridges of carved wood gilt, and seven domestic bridges inlaid with ivory birds and dragons.

Also he had money in the foreign mysteries (probably meaning the funds.)

Also he had doings with several things of great value, and shares of large ship-loads. But never would he touch the hateful opium-trade, after the recent mad insolences.

Also he had some wives.

Also the Great Emperor loved him, though Howqua was only as the poorest man before that Yellow Illumination of our day and night.

The body of my friend was slight, and easily injured; like the outside of people’s pocket-watch when she walk against the sun (that is, an injured watch that goes wrong.) But my dear friend for whom I shed these tears had a head with many eyes.

Howqua knew what to do with his unnecessary gold. He built a temple to Buddha, and thus made the god a present of 2,000,000 dollars, to the excessive delight of his Essence and Image.

Also, Howqua gave 800,000 dollars to assist the ransom of his beloved Canton from the fangs of the late war; to the excessive delight of the Fighting-minded Barbarians.

Weep, then, for Howqua, even as I weep. He was the friend of my youth. Together we grew old, walking toward our fathers’ tombs. We might have died together; but it is well that one old friend should be left a little while to weep.’

The paper upon ‘American Interior and Exterior Architecture’ we are quite certain would not have the tendency which the writer contemplates. It would discourage rather than foster that better taste which is gaining ground among us. In this city, how great have been the improvements in the exterior and interior decorations of our dwellings, within the last eight years! We remember the time as it were but yesterday, when the beautiful muslin window-shades, first introduced among us by Mr. George Platt, were considered a luxury of interior decoration—as indeed many of them were. But from these small yet promising beginnings, our accomplished artist has gone on, until his extensive establishment is filled with specimens of rich and elaborate architectural decorations, for the various styles of which the reigns of French and English sovereigns have been put under the most liberal contribution. Our wealthy and tasteful citizens have vied with each other in the enriching and beautifying of their mansions; while, also emulous, a kindred class in our sister-cities have laid requisitions upon Mr. Platt’s architectural and decorative genius, (for in him it is genius, and of no intermediate order,) which have convinced him at least, that the ‘laggard taste’ which our correspondent arraigns, is ‘not so slow’ as he seems to imagine. ••• Who was ‘Dandy Jim from Caroline,’ of whom every boy in the street is either whistling or singing, and whom we ‘have heard spoken of’ by musical instruments and that of all sorts, at every party or ball which we have found leisure to attend during the gay season? We are the more anxious to glean some particulars touching the origin and history of this personage, because his fame is rife among our legislators, and the ‘lobby-interest’ at Albany; if we may judge from a quatrain before us, which hints at a verbal peculiarity of our excellent representative, Alderman Varian, whose v always takes the form of a w, especially in his rendering of a foreign tongue; as witness his being ‘just on the qwi-wi-we for the capitol,’ on one occasion, and the subjoined versification of another of his Latin sentences, with cockney ‘wariations:’

‘Then here’s a health to Wari-an,
That ‘Weni, widi, wici’ man!
He talk de grammar werry fine,
Like Dandy Jim o’ Caroline:
For my ole massa tol’ me so,’ etc.

There is in these humane and benevolent days an increasing sympathy in the public mind for a man condemned to ‘march sorrowfully up to the gallows, there to be noosed up, vibrate his hour, and await the dissecting-knife of the surgeon,’ who fits his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. ‘There never was a public hanging,’ says a late advocate of the abolition of capital punishment, ‘that was productive of any thing but evil.’ There is an anecdote recorded of Whitfield, however, which seems to refute this position, in at least one instance. This eloquent divine, while at Edinburgh, attended a public execution. His appearance upon the ground drew the eyes of all around him, and raised a variety of opinions as to the motives which led him to join in the crowd. The next day, being Sunday, he preached to a large body of men, women and children, in a field near the city. In the course of his sermon, he adverted to the execution which had taken place the preceding day. ‘I know,’ said he, ‘that many of you will find it difficult to reconcile my appearance yesterday with my character. Many of you will say, that my moments would have been better employed in praying with the unhappy man, than in attending him to the fatal tree, and that perhaps curiosity was the only cause that converted me into a spectator on that occasion: but those who ascribe that uncharitable motive to me are under a mistake. I witnessed the conduct of almost every one present on that occasion, and I was highly pleased with it. It has given me a very favorable impression of the Scottish nation. Your sympathy was visible on your countenances, and reflected the greatest honor on your hearts: particularly when the moment arrived in which your unhappy fellow creature was to close his eyes on this world forever, you all, as if moved by one impulse, turned your heads aside and wept. Those tears were precious, and will be held in remembrance. How different was it when the Saviour of mankind was extended on the cross! The Jews, instead of sympathizing in his sorrows, triumphed in them. They reviled him with bitter expressions, with words even more bitter than the gall and vinegar which they gave him to drink. Not one of them all that witnessed his pains, turned the head aside even in the last pang. Yes, there was one; that glorious luminary, (pointing to the sun,) veiled his bright face and sailed on in tenfold night!’ This is eloquence! Would that we could have seen the beaming features, the ‘melting eye, turned toward heaven,’ which indelibly impressed these words upon the heart of every hearer! ••• Many of our readers will doubtless remember the time when Professor J–, the celebrated ‘artist in hair,’ was flourishing in his glory, and when his fame was perhaps as rife in New-York and Boston as that of any man living, in his line of art. His advertisements too, so unique in their grandiloquent phraseology, will not soon be forgotten by those who relish such things. The Professor is not now, as regards worldly prosperity, the man he used to be; but his gentlemanly feeling still clings to him, and his pride in his profession is as enthusiastic as ever. We observe by a Boston journal that he is once more trying his luck in our eastern metropolis; and this reminds us of an anecdote concerning him. A friend tells us that some months since he encountered the professor at a coffee-house, where he was rehearsing to a rather verdant customer the former glories of his professional life. Among other things, ‘At one time,’ said he, ‘I was sent for by express, to go to Philadelphia on professional business.’ ‘To do what?’ asked his listener. ‘To make wigs for the Signers of the Declaration of Independence!’ replied J–, with a pompous air. Now the professor’s comrade was not very quick-witted, as we have already hinted, and it did not occur to him at the moment whether the signers were men only of yesterday, or of the last century; and he rejoined, in a tone of wonder: ‘What! do they all wear wigs?’ ‘All?’ replied the professor, with a look of mingled piety and triumph; ‘why, Sir, did you ever know a wax-figure to wear its own hair? Men of flesh and blood, now-a-days, don’t know any better; but the man of wax, Sir, possesses a truer taste, and always consults the Perruquier!’ The relator says it would be impossible to convey an adequate idea of the superb manner in which the last word was uttered; the full round tone, and the tonsorial flourish of the right hand, as if it still grasped the magic brush and scissors. ••• The reader will have gathered from an incidental allusion in an article by Mr. George Harvey, in our last number, some idea of the fervent enthusiasm with which he has studied and copied Nature, in her every variety of season and changes of the hour, in executing his beautiful Landscape Drawings. We have neither the leisure nor space for an adequate notice of these pictures; but being solicitous that our town readers should participate in the great enjoyment which they have afforded us, we would direct them to Mr. Harvey’s exhibition-room at the old Apollo Gallery, nearly opposite the Hospital, in Broadway. ••• Here is a pleasant specimen of an ‘Unnecessary Disclaimer,’ for which we are indebted to a metropolitan friend: ‘A few evenings since, as a gentleman was walking up Broadway, and just as he was crossing the side-walk at the junction of White-street, his feet suddenly slipped from under him, his hat flew forward with the involuntary jerk, and he measured his length on the side-walk, striking his bare head on the hard ice, till all rang again. At the instant it chanced that a lady and gentleman were just emerging from White-street into Broadway, and the prostrate sufferer, lying directly across their path, interrupted for a moment their farther progress. He soon recovered his feet, however, and with one hand on his newly-developed bump, and the other on his breast, he turned to the couple whose passage he had impeded, and exclaimed with cool gravity: ‘Excuse me; I didn’t intend to do it!’ Probably he didn’t; at all events, his word was not disputed. ••• Most likely our readers have not forgotten an admirable satire upon the ‘Songs of the Troubadours,’ from which we extracted some months since the affecting story of ‘The Taylzour’s Daughter.’ Something in the same style is ‘The Doleful Lay of the Honorable I. O. Uwins,’ a gentleman who threw himself away upon a bailiff’s daughter, to escape from the restraints and pungent odors of a sponging-house. The ‘whole course of wooing’ and the result are hinted at in the ensuing lines:

‘There he sate in grief and sorrow,
Rather drunk than otherwise,
Till the golden gush of morrow
Dawned once more upon his eyes;
Till the spunging bailiff’s daughter,
Lightly tapping at the door,
Brought his draught of soda-water,
Brandy-bottomed as before.

‘Sweet Rebecca! has your father,
Think you, made a deal of brass?’
And she answered: ‘Sir, I rather
Should imagine that he has.’
Uwins, then, his whiskers scratching,
Leer’d upon the maiden’s face;
And her hands with ardor catching,
Folded her in his embrace.

‘La, Sir! let alone—you fright me!’
Said the daughter of the Jew:
‘Dearest! how these eyes delight me!
Let me love thee, darling, do!’
‘Vat is dish?’ the bailiff mutter’d,
Rushing in with fury wild;
‘Ish your muffins so vell butter’d
Dat you darsh insult ma shild?’

‘Honorable my intentions,
Good Abednego, I swear!
And I have some small pretensions,
For I am a Baron’s heir.
If you’ll only clear my credit,
And a thousand give or so,
She’s a peeress; I have said it!
Don’t you twig, Abednego?’

‘Datsh a very different matter!’
Said the bailiff, with a leer;
‘But you musht not cut it fatter
Than ta slish will shtand, ma tear!
If you seeksh ma approbation,