He rapturously apostrophizeth Porter, the true source of Paradisaical felicity; its virtuous influences are more potent than the Elysian spells of the Enchantress, conferring the blessings of robust health on the body, and raising the mind to the purest felicity. He concluded in the pious spirit of loyalty and universal philanthropy. FYTTE THE SIXTH. Oh, Porter! stream of Paradise! Thy virtues on the mortal frame, For whilst on pious votaries They bounteously bestow A prize far 'bove rouleaus of wealth, With like beneficence they shed 'Making assurance doubly sure,' Then let us sing God save the Queen! And may we never know regret One day throughout the week. NOTES TO FYTTE THE FIRST. O Heavy Wet! thy excellence.] An apostrophe far more spirited and soul-sprung than that wherewith Byron opens his celebrated lyric,' The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece,' inasmuch as the object is in the one case addressed directly in the second person singular; in the other indirectly in the third plural. Nectar of man.] As nectar is the beverage of the supernal gods, so is porter the drink of those mortals who seek to approximate the felicity of the Olympians, 'to make of earth a heaven.' Who ever heard of a man metamorphosed into a fiend by potations of porter, whereas (not to mention the daily frightful effects of spirituous liquor) the savage Saxons, and those ferocious pirates, the Danes, considered it the height of enjoyment to swill deep and frequent potations of ale. Which Guinness from Eblana sends.] Guinness is a famous brewer in Dublin (Eblana), whose stout is to be met with among every civilized people throughout the globe. The poet frequently, when upholding the superiority of porter in convivial circles, used to quote the following lines from 'An Idyl on the Battle,' as affording a comprehensive catalogue of beverages much in vogue, but all of which he maintained hid their diminished heads when placed in juxta-position with his idolized drink. The versification being unfamiliar to many, I shall take the liberty of facilitating its scansion by marking each verse into its several feet. 'Ales from the famous | towns of Burton, Marlbro', | Taunton; Hollands that ne'er saw Holland, rum, brown-stout, perry, and cyder; NOTES TO FYTTE THE SECOND. When noontide Phabus.] In the opening stanza, the regular irregularity' of his daily life is set forth in terms of mythological embellishment, which invest the subject with a singular poetic grace. Two facts regarding his habits are clearly deducible; the one that he indulged without fail in a nocturnal carousal,—the other, that he never rose earlier than twelve o'clock. As it takes eight, or at least seven hours' sleep to 'recruit' a person properly, we may likewise conclude that his couch-seeking hour was not later than five, or earlier than four in the morning. Cathay] China. The patriotism of the poet is here manifest in his denunciation of that unnatural beverage, tea, for which so many millions are annually abstracted from our pockets to fill those of the pig-eyed and pig-headed, rat-eating, and rat-tailed Chinese. Were the money so thrown away expended at home in the consumption of porter; and, taking it for granted that, even as it is, one Englishman is a match for any three Frenchmen, how many frog-fed Mounseers could he not then dispose of? A similar spirit of contempt for the effeminacy of tea drinking is evinced by O'Dogherty in his ninety-seventh maxim. 'Of tea, I have on various occasions hinted my total scorn. It is a weak, nervous affair, adapted for the digestion of boarding-school misses, whose occupation is painting roses from the life, practising quadrilles, strumming on the instrument, and so forth.' On the use of soda-water here condemned, as on that of bacon lauded in the following stanza, I allow that many opinions exist. I have more than once heard the father of the Irish bar boast of his utter innocence of two acts, which he held in deepest abhorrence, viz. drinking soda-water, or tasting swine's flesh. And I fully appreciate the soundness of his self-gratulation; for the first I have ever regarded as an abominable compost, ever since the day that some of it being spilled on one of my boots speedily burned a hole through the leather; and, as to hogs'-flesh, with the exception of Westphalian ham, it is fit food only for the great unwashed. On soda-water, as it has its patrons, one word more. Its use is disapproved of by the ladies. If you must have some gaseous waking-drink, let it be ginger-beer, qualified with rum or brandy, the former (crede experto) is the better. Whose savoury catabasis.] For the benefit of such readers as do not profess an acquaintance with the Greek tongue, I beg to mention that the word catabasis signifies descent, in the same manner as anabasis does ascent. The derivation of these words is curious, and was, I confess, unknown to me, until lately communicated by an eminent philologist. There lived at Athens, in the time of Pisistratus, a wealthy and powerful man of Scythian extraction, whose name was Abasis. He had two daughters, of singular beauty and accomplishments, the objects of universal admiration, and on his death he bequeathed to them immense fortunes. The one, by a virtuous and prudent bearing, rose higher and higher every year in the esti mation of the Athenians till she finally attained to unexampled influence in the city. But the other, through extravagances and improprieties, retrograded in a like proportion, till she sunk into the depths of indigence and ignominy. Hence their names became 'household words,' that of Ann Abasis, the elder and discreeter of the two, being used to personify a progressive exaltation in good; and that of the other sister, Catharine, or Cat Abasis, a fall into the abyss of evil. The words, in course of time, came to be employed in a more unrestricted sense, e. g. Xenophon's Anabasis, &c., &c. NOTE TO FYTTE THE FOURTH. When summoned to the table, &c.] That tocsin of the soul, the dinner-bell.'-BYRON. Among a host of excellences it is difficult to make a selection; but perhaps of the entire poem this and the succeeding stanza are more pregnant with exquisite matter than any other. While the poet, led away by the warmth of his feelings, enters into a wide and varied field, replete with the choicest flowers and sweetest thoughts, it is to be remarked how beautifully he has preserved the harmony of design by making them all subservient to his great object, the praise of Porter, without which all the excellences he has introduced would be shorn of their effect. This, as Horace tells us, is the true art of poetry. What a throng of moving images appear in a small space! rising in rapid succession like the apparitions in Macbeth, a scene which the poet must have had in mind; for, like them, they are seven in number, and, like them, each overpowering, in a separate and peculiar way, the senses of the beholder. 'Cutlet,' 'rump, fowl,' 'gammon,'' salmon,' turbot,'' sole.' Here he stops for a moment, as if fearful of the effects he might produce on the excited imagination of the reader, did he not, by bringing the stanza to a close at this peculiar spot, give breathing-time to observe how gracefully he descends from his circling height in the ensuing line: 'With Stilton's crumbling mass wound up.' And then the finishing of the fytte with the glorious picture of all things floating in harmony upon the mellow tide. What is there in Byron's apostrophe to the ocean that equals this? Nothing. N. B. Never take lobster-sauce to salmon; it is mere "painting of the lily." The only true sauce for salmon is vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, and parsley.' -MAXIM TWENTY-SIXTH. NOTE TO FYTTE THE FIFTH. Land of Ire,] poeticé for Ireland. Hannibal is now proved to have understood the use of gunpowder, and the ancient Egyptians that of steam-engines, and the art of brewing. It is also beyond doubt that brewing was well known to the Scythians, with a colony of whom, the ancient Irish, perished the knowledge of one of the sublimest mysteries ever known to man, the art of making heath-beer from the blossoms of the heath-plant. And this was the manner of its loss. The Danes on their invasion found (to use the words of the chronicler) amonge the famylys of the chiefetaynes a most sweete savoured and cunnynge drinke.' The secret of its manufacture was so highly prized, that it was kept strictly confined to the chief of one particular tribe and his eldest son, the persons employed in making it being invariably put to death on the completion of their task, like the slaves who performed the office of sextons for Alaric. Phelim Olladh Oge, who was the possessor of the secret shortly before the reign of Brian Boru, was one of the most warlike and strenuous adversaries of the Danes, but was at length defeated in a bloody battle, and taken prisoner, together with his only son. On being brought before the Danish leader, they were offered their lives on condition of revealing the mys tery of the heath-beer. For many days they stedfastly refused to do so; but at length, as narrated by Dalton in his records, the sayde Phelim did feyne to consente unto theyre wishes, on condition that they wolde fyrste putte hys sonne to dethe before hys eyes, whiche beyng presently done, he clapped hys handis with delite, and mockit them grately, saying, "Doe unto me as ye liste; lo, the yuthe is dedde, and there is none that remayns to tell." Whereatte the kynge, chokeynge with rage, did slaye hym strately with hys own hande.' That the ancient Germans also knew how to produce this liquor is proved by Tacitus. Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento in quamdam similitudinem vini corruptus.' De moribus Germanorum, sec. xxiii. See also Pliny, lib. xiv. c. 22. The Egyptians (of whose acquaintance with the art of brewing mention has been made above) ascribed the invention of beer to Osiris, whom they venerated nearly as much as Bacchus. They called it 'zethum,' and considered it little inferior to wine. See Diodorus, lib. i. pp. 17 and 31; Herodotus, lib. ii. c. 77. The classical reader will recollect the passage in the Anabasis, in which Xenophon encounters a race of beer-drinkers in Armenia. Their houses were under ground, the entrance like the mouth of a well, but spacious below. The inhabitants entered by means of ladders; but the way for their cattle was dug down, so as to enable them to walk in as on an inclined plane. In these abodes were goats, oxen, birds, and their young. The cattle were fed on fodder; and we found among them wheat, and barley, and pulse, and a wine made from barley, which is kept in jars; and there were reeds at hand, large and small, and when they would drink they applied the reeds to the jars and sucked up the liquor, which was of great strength, unless when mixed with water. We found it a most delightful drink. Their tables were covered with lamb, pork, kid, and veal, with great plenty of wheaten bread; and when the health of a friend was to be drunk they repaired to a jar, and applying their mouths to the reeds, sucked in a bending posture like as the ox drinketh, and thus satisfied their desire." SECOND STAGE OF MR. LEDBURY'S GRAND TOUR. BY ALBERT SMITH. THE bright sun was shining as impudently as he well might into the double-bedded room occupied by our travellers at Boulogne, when Mr. Ledbury arose the next morning from his slumbers. It is true his dreams of anticipated pleasure had been somewhat prematurely disturbed by Jack Johnson's singular love of harmony. This vivacious gentleman, always wide awake, and on the present occasion extra vigilant, had been indulging since five o'clock in an extemporaneous vocal and instrumental concert, as he lay in bed,―vocal, as regarded his execution of several new and popular comic songs, which would have frightened John Parry into fits, but were withal very diverting, and instrumental, from the introduction of a solo on his pocket-comb enveloped in a piece of newspaper, on which he was imitating the cornet-à-piston, and performing an intricate air, which he termed Hallelujah upside down.' They were not long in completing their toilet; and having locked their carpet-bags, and bolted their breakfast, they walked down to the office of the diligence in the Rue de l'Ecu, a quarter of an hour before the time of starting. There was a bustling throng of people, speaking every language ever known, round the bureaux of the rival conveyances; and Mr. Ledbury was all astonishment. Indeed, the lumbering form of the vehicles, the motley crowd of passengers, the costume of the postillions and conducteurs, and the running accompaniment of extraordinary oaths, and apparently violent altercations, without which the French can never do anything, and which are peculiarly in force during the lading of a diligence, all these things together formed a scene so thoroughly novel and continental, that minds less reflective than Mr. Ledbury's would have been interested in observing them. Their places had been taken in the banquette, that being the most agreeable as well as the cheapest part of the diligence; and Jack Johnson had rushed into a shop as they came along, and purchased a bottle of cognac, and also one of vin ordinaire for their especial solace on the road. When their names were called over, he climbed up to his perch by a series of violent gymnastic exertions; and then, taking the bottles from Mr. Ledbury, and stowing them away under the seat, he assisted his friend in the assent to the summit, which was not accomplished until he had several times lost his footing, and still clinging to the strap, had swung about in the air like a samphire-gatherer. At last the reading of the list of travellers was concluded, and the passengers were secured in the diligence,-the luggage-tarpaulin had been strained as tight as a drum,-the postillion contrived to collect about fifty reins, more or less, in one hand from all the six horses,— the conducteur first threw up his portefeuille, and then himself, and the huge machine moved on. Then Jack Johnson put himself into pantomimic attitudes, expressive of deep affection towards all the females he perceived at the windows; and even Mr. Ledbury, becoming rather joyous and excited, nodded familiarly to strange people in the street, and then, frightened at his temerity, drew back into a corner of the banquette, blushing deeply. After that, Jack Johnson asked the conducteur if he would favour him with the loan of his horn to play Mal |