We announce with satisfaction that our Chest has this week a superabundance of treasure, which obliges us to defer several pieces of merit. Some of them most reluctantly as the excellent letter from Mr Prosai Poetico. The Reading Baker, the verses signed E.R. &c. &c. &c. As we have already given our testimony of approbation to the sonnet addressed to a Tea Kettle we should be accused of irregular proceedings if we were to read it a second time. We however will do what we can to oblige a writer we so highly esteem, and therefor in the language of Parliament it is “ordered to lie on the Table.”
We are much obliged to the correspondent who discovered the “gleanings” in the room of Atticus Scriblerus; they are in themselves invaluable, and evince both taste and industry in the young gentleman as well as a laudable attention to turn his acquisitions to benefit. The epigram on the Lady’s marriage with Mr Day is very happily turned, and the “Translation from the Persian” is superlative in characteristic elegance. As the period approaches when the Birthday Poem will have its appropriate time, we hope the author will admit this, in addition to the foregoing reasons, as an apology for delaying the reading of it.
The Romance of Positive House is finished, as far as relates to its establishment. The personages are all married and dispersed over the world, yet still it affords amusement. The scent of the kewra long remains after the flower is removed and delights with a sweet voluptuous fragrance when its source is perhaps wither’d in the dust. Besides the letter we have already alluded to, found in Mr Beauclerc’s apartment, and “The Gleanings”, we have the Auctioneer’s Advertisement for the sale of sundry articles of its electrical furniture, with a detached leaf of the sale catalogue. These we shall give to our audience, and we hope they will recall come of the pleasure produced by the whimsical transactions of the this uncommon academy.
With respect to the Charade, we shall request those of our auditors who have good memories to “give God thanks and make no boast of it,” while to those who were not present at the conversation which suggested ti, we will if necessary present a pair of nut crackers. This charade is a proof of what we have long thought and sometimes said that the most trifling species of poetry my in the hands of a poet whose mind is well-stored, not only please by its proper excellence, but be the means of conveying or renovating knowledge. Like the Riddle on Glass which appeared at a former meeting, this Charade seems to ennoble what has been deemed the most trifling and contemptible employment of the Muses, by condensing ideas and allusions of far higher value, than the ingenuity displayed in selecting the syllables of a word that may have each a distinct meaning, and collectively another. We have seen this power exemplified even in routs mimics and other puerile species invented by the small wits to kill time. It is said by Johnson that the object of poetry is to please and of didactic poetry to instruct by pleasing, but we think the latter should be more or less the object of all poetry, and for this reason we have indulged in these reflections, more perhaps than the subject appears to warrant; that our auditors my bear in mind that tuneful verse is only the ornament, not the substance of poetry. “The sisters of the sacred well,” while they temper the waters of Helicon with saccharine sweetness, must not forget the infusion of the valuable herd which clears the head, and invigorates the understanding. We are compelled to acknowledge that the productions of our correspondents have shown that the Attic Society have little need of this caution.
As the author of the Tales written in exemplification of the peculiarity of national poetry took leave of us in the last number, we have been agreeably surprised at receiving a Morean Tale, tho’ not exactly of the same character. But what shall we say of the Beacon of the Black Forest. It is very long. If our friends have brought their nightcaps with them, it may be read, and if they are not lulled asleep before it be finished, they may take their night’s repose comfortably in their chairs, when all is over. Or they may nod between the fits after the antient practice, when the minstrel sang the achievements of his Lord’s illustrious ancestors in 1000 cantos, each of 1000 stanzas, four to twenty hours before a new day — or more wisely, as we think, they may clip it in the middle and sit down to supper. We shall patiently wait the event.