We are much disappointed in not receiving the promised contribution of Mr Solve-Query’s experiments for the loss of which we do not consider Mr Buckskin’s string of questions not to be answered, and adequate compensation. From the Comte Léandre we have not heard, but a correspondent has favoured us with a translation of his last song, so scrupulously faithful that we think we may anticipate the praises it will doubtless receive from our society. We should not, however, be greatly surprised if M. Le Comte, whose obliquity of intellect we sincerely deplore, should again assert himself to be misconstrued, or even venture to deny the superior claims of Coffee so eloquently set forth by itself. To most of the pretensions of his aspiring plant we yield with pleasure, and will even own that we have often borrow’d a smile from his enlivening influence, but like most zealous orators, he injures his cause by saying too much, when he affirms that the Attic Chest cannot exist without his aid, and if he do not draw in his horns, we shall call upon that much injured mineral, Attic Salt, to destroy his root.
We have received a second act of the Novice of St Benedict, and what is more wonderful, the second act completes the tragedy, and without a single death. We could wish the author of Ul Dien had exchanged a little of his diffuseness with some of the other’s brevity. One is so good, that we only regret it is so short, and the other so good also, that we own the fault to be in our lungs and our attention, rather than in the writer, when we pronounce it too long. We have yet the fourth act unread, and can scarcely hope to do more than complete it this evening.
The Letters from France are continued, and we are amused with the Legend of St Fiacre. It had not before come to our knowledge, and we doubt whether there be no many very good Catholics who have not yet heard the story. The Arabian Anecdote is well told, and shows the bounds of Arabian hospitality more clearly than we have ordinarily found them marked. We are obliged to the Correspondent who communicated the Chimney Sweep’s song on the first of May, which pleases us by the cheering prospect it presents to the poor sweep in the midst of his dirt and privations. The idea is beautiful, the moral may be useful to all under affliction as well as to the sable sons of the soot, whose hardships are perhaps not greater than those of the apprentices in many other trades, though more ostensible, and apparently more degrading. To the same correspondent we are indebted for “The Tyger”, a poem of incomprehensible sublimity which rivals Pindar in obscurity. That great dealer in ballads in praise of horse jockeys and gods, seizes every idea that casually starts before him, and compels it, however slightly connected with his subject, to eke out the scanty materials of talents and virtues possessed by his victors. But in the verses of the Tyger, we can find no connection whatever. One might suppose them to have been written singly on scaps of paper, which being scattered by the winds like the leaves of the Sybil, have been collected and arranged as chance directed, head and tail, for an exercise to Œdipean sagacity.
In the progress of sculpture, of which we have received the continuation, we observe the same Pindaric quality; but like his Grecian master, the author has a mental, a recondite connection in the members of his subject which is obvious to attentive perusal though it might not be visible to the too hasty reader. It came too late for us to make any particular remarks, but we had anticipated with pleasure that the poem would terminate in a well merited compliment to one of our oldest, most distinguished and most respected members, in which we have not been disappointed. Just now, and almost too late for notice, has arrived a second epistle from M. Leon, informing Ma’amselle L’Editresse, that though he was make his complain to her, and was tell her she was bien honnête, she have not attend to him, no more dan noting at all, for non obstant, dat he bring forth a new ballet at Le Opera ce soir, we have again set up de Attic Chest in oppositions, but he is determined to make his revenge, and threatens us with a thin meeting. We have no doubt but “The Peruvians” are well worthy of notice, but as we said before, we cannot think of yielding the point, and as he writes rather angrily, have thought it better not to read his letter publicly.