that much of the original sin which we deplore, is to be ascribed to the defective constitution of the Royal Academy. T. I'm sure of it. Nor do I despair, more than you, of eventual reform. In England, Art, as well as arms, has had its heroes to form, through a course of arduous probation; and its victories to achieve through surrounding difficulties and darkness: and though our Marcellus has recently lost a battle, he has "fought a good fight" for historical painting on the whole, and has not "finished his course;" while our Fabius is still on the heights, watching his opportunities. Their timely and noble daring, if wisely seconded, may yet open the way to those higher destinies, which are "amidst the deathful field, By godlike chiefs alone beheld.— See, Virtue, see! Before thy shrine our Country's genius stands, And decks thy altar still-tho' pierced with many a wound. [To be continued.] "THE INN AT UPTON." COLLINS. I was travelling, not long ago, in Worcestershire, in a part of the country where I had never been before, when I came to a hand-post which pointed "To Upton." I had no knowledge that I was so near it, and my heart bounded at the name. Honest Fielding! thou art, indeed, a man after the said heart-and the spots filled with thy persons, and thy adventures, are to me truly classical! How much more do they deserve to be so than half the puling places which are thus reverenced by every sentimental and critical Miss Molly! What hearty, sterling, English feeling there is in all his scenes! What intimate and magical knowledge of our poor human nature! No one ever was skilled in it like him. Every inmost nook and most inaccessible corner were to him laid bare. Every gradation of hue and heat, from gloom and iciness, to the full radiance and fervency of passion, are reflected on his glass-are noted on his unerring thermometer. To use his own expression, in "the great book of human nature, page almost the last," where the writing is inscribed, "in almost illegible characters," his learning is as accurate and familiar as is that of the very ablest of us all in its broadest and plainest outlines. "The Inn at Upton!"-it was reaching Shakespeare's birth-place, it was visiting Virgil's tomb, when I crossed its hallowed threshhold! And worthy is the priest of the sanctuary!-the castle has an appropriate lord! Let me give all publicity to the name of the admirable Benbow, who is the present occupant of the famed hostelry. For not only is he justly proud of the mansion in which he is so fortunate as to dwell, but he shews all its hallowed spots, and venerated places, in full credence of the deeds there done being recorded in a veritable history. The "battle of Upton" fought in the kitchen-the muff sent to the unoccupied dormitory-are incidents narrated, in what is to him an unquestioned and unquestionable chronicle. Seriously, he believes that all the events, of which his inn is the locale, positively took place; doubting them no more than Mr. Banks does the early history of Rome. And, in good faith, I do not wonder that it should be so-for all Field ing's scenes have a reality, which makes it almost matter of surprise when reflection tells us they are but fable. The inn (which evidently Fielding must have visited), was a smaller one than I expected, seeing that the landlady was so vain-glorious of all the "quality" that stopped at her house. But it had an old (not an ancient) air, which tallied well with that square-cut period, the reign of George the Second. The butcher's shop, whose quondam master could always "cut up a sheep warm," if his meat-consuming neighbours required it, is still close by, and I looked till I almost expected to see the whole groupe, with Jones and the immortal Partridge at its head, issue from the door. The house is but a common-place sort of house after all—but then it is hallowed as the scene of great actions. The battle is, perhaps, like some others of Fielding's Homeric battles, rather over-wrought-but the whole of the subsequent doings!—the rivalry between Mrs. Waters and the powdered beef and bottled ale, each triumphing in turn-Sine Cerere, &c." the driver of horses," and the "leader of men" who would not submit to be a non sequitur-the landlord, "lord of this body and no land beside"—not even of his own kitchen, where his lady reigned paramount-and the landlady herself, the very Bondeur, the Zenobia of that ancient calling, the Thalestris of the Amazon raceMrs. Honour's red hands, and saucy bearing, and well-stuffed portmanteau, and poor Sophy's beauty, and muff, and jealousy, and assurances of perfect ease and satisfaction-and the Irish beau, reading one of Mrs. Behn's novels to cultivate his understanding and, above all, the ineffable Partridge himself-what character! what grouping! what knowledge of every condition of human nature! I wish to heaven that Hogarth had illustrated Fielding's works; I am sure the Inn at Upton would have furnished two or three of the principal pieces. In these days, we have such a craving desire to have every thing figured forth to the physical as well as the mental eye, that even the eternal Greek noses and lanky legs of Messrs. Westall and Stothard are sought after and relished, when grafted upon our favourite fictions. What would not, then, have been Hogarth's illustrations of Fielding! I believe Charles Lamb, in his remarks on Hogarth, has noticed the similarity of the genius of the two men ; at all events, it is too remarkable not to strike one. Fielding was a great admirer, and I believe a personal friend of Hogarth; and it might well be so, on the principle that a man admires his own image in a glass. Both told admirable stories, and both painted admirable pictures; for who can deny that the painter is excellently narrative, that the author is strikingly pictorial? Are not the Rake's Progress and the Marriage A-la-mode histories,-in the lump and in the details? Are not the scenes at Upton, in bower and in hall, above stairs and below, -pictures? Truly they are so; the same quality of genius inspired both, but the mechanical organ of the one man was a pen, of the other, a painting-brush or a graver. There are, I believe, some people in the world, who consider the term 'genius' here misapplied, who are so unhappy as to regard Hogarth as a mere caricaturist, and Fielding as little better than a vulgar farcer. The reason of this I take to be, that the staple of the productions of each is nature in a comparatively humble station. It is true, that both deal occasionally in lords and ladies, -and admirably too, when they trench upon them-witness Lady Bellaston, Lady Booby, and the Marriage A-la-mode; but the great body of the creations of both are persons out of the pale of fashionable society; and dandy-like critics-the great vulgar-have accordingly, like the footman in Tom Jones, voted the introduction of such characters and feelings, low! But, perhaps, this very choice of station is one great reason which makes the works of Hogarth and Fielding such treasures as they are. They are not only a record, but a vivid and present embodying, of the manners, feelings, and personal appearance of the great bulk of the English nation, during the middle of the eighteenth century. Nor this alone-for, while the stamp of the particular period is individualized and preserved, the general and unchangeable laws of the heart are followed and rendered with a truth and minuteness to be found no where else. Those whose admiration for these things is as warm as mine, should make a pilgrimage to Upton. Not only is it delightful to see the veneration and Catholic faith of the worthy host, but it is doubly so to be, from the very force of locality, almost bitten, as I was, by the same belief. Truly may I use the words of a popular writer, with reference to the banks of the Arno, instead of the Severn, "How real a thing is that which most men call ideal!" The town retains its old appearance, as most country towns do where there is no stream of commerce to wash away the land-marks of time. Above all, the inn' is, as I have said, almost wholly unchanged. I do not know whether the people of the place share with the landlord the feelings of classicality attached to their abode; but certain it is, that all about the inn, down to "the non-descript animal yclept Boots," seem to claim their share of the importance derivable from the dwelling. They received, also, with a grin of delight, the questions of evident interest with which I accosted all and sundry. The landlord, in especial, warmed towards me, and rewarded me with some Worcestershire perry, so excellent, that I no longer regard with disrespect the taste of Jones and Mrs. Waters, in imbibing its ancestral liquor, in full confidence of its being generous and heartstirring champagne. A few days after my visit to Upton, I passed through Ross. I was able to stop there only a very short time, but I asked a sort of gentleman of the neighbourhood (as I found) whom I met at the inn, if they shewed where the Man of Ross had lived. 66 Really, Sir," he said, with an air of some surprise," I never heard of him." Now why is this, that the fiction at Upton has become more real than the reality at Ross, although the latter speaks of the highest virtues of humanity? Gentle reader, I will tell thee. Pope, though no courtier, was a courtly poet, and wrote in strains fitted for the great, and for them only. He had no dominion over the great human heart; his sway was confined to its crimped and conventional existence. Fielding's works are for all mankind. Human nature was the book he read,-human nature was the book he wrote. The feelings, not of an artificial class, but of universal man, were his study and his theme;-and truly he has had his reward. B. ON PARTING WITH MY BOOKS. YE dear companions of my silent hours, Dear books, awhile, perhaps for e'er, adieu! No more by winter's fire-in summer's bowers, My toil-worn mind shall be refresh'd by you. We part! sad thought; and while the damp devours Your leaves, and the worm slowly eats them through, Dull poverty, and its attendant ills, Wasting of health, vain toil, corroding care, And the world's cold neglect, which surest kills, Must be my bitter doom-yet I shall bear Unmurm'ring, for my good perchance these evils are. STANZAS. THOU silver stream, that past me gliding, Go, where my gentle love's abiding, Thou western wind, that idly playeth Go, where the maid her locks arrayeth, And bear those words which ne'er should fail. Tell her, while with her fair hair playing, Her absence momently I mourn; Then, as amongst its curls thou'rt straying, ODE TO AN INSECT. CHILD of the sunbeam, nursling of May, Sail through the air while the rainbow is glowing Where the opal-armoured legions play, Where the dream-like-murmuring springs are heard, The grasshopper's note, the song of the bird, And the whispering boughs by the zephyrs stirred,— Soft or piercing-swift or slow, Like a wave of crystal every one Springing up, and eddying on From the emerald earth below, Where the musical echoes float and stray: -Plume thee thy light wings,-hie thee away. II. Ere the tints of the veined young leaves fade, Under the woof of the green-wood shade I. 1. The shroud of the petals of spring flowers made With a hurtling sound, and a faint perfume -Plume thee thy light wings, and haste thee away. III.: Sport with thine image o'er pool and stream, Rest thee thy tender limbs at night In the moon-illumined lime-bowers bright; When the world is asleep and the forest is still, To thine in its measure, though narrow the span His may walk in the sunless shroud Of sorrowing years, which Life we call; Both in the shadow of death are bowed, The mystery-veiling pall! But thine are the pleasures unfollowed by sorrow, No care of the present, no fear of the morrow: All our joys that can ever shine Are not in ecstasy deep as thine,— Nought in memory so divine! Thy end is the calmest, unlooked-for, unknown, The swift change comes o'er thee,-thy spirit is flown! Thy year is all summer, thy summer all May: Go plume thee thy light wings, and haste thee away! * All that's bright must fade,- But to be lost when sweetest! LONDON:-Published by HENRY L. HUNT, 38, Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, and 22, Old Edinburgh, Messrs. Bell and Bradfute. Glasgow, W. R. Macphun. Exeter, T. Smith. T. Besley, jun. High-street. Leeds, James Mann, Duncan-street. Liverpool, T. Smith. Birmingham, J. Drake. Bath, at the London Newspaper Office. Norwich, Burks and Kinnebrook, Mer- Yarmouth, W. Meggy. Leicester, T. Thompson. Printed by C. W. REYNELL, Broad-street, Golden-square. |