GOLIGHTLY’S ESSAY ON BLUES. A FRAGMENT.

Lady Dabble is a True Blue. She is a meddler in literature of every sort and description. Poetry and prose, pamphlets and plays, sermons and satires, overtures and odes—all are her hobbies, all are the objects of her patronage, all are subjects of her harangues. At her house is the synod held: where criticism and tea are poured out together, where sweet sugar and sweeter sonnets melt in delicious unison. It is delightful to spend a few hours at Lady Babble’s conversazione. All inferior wits and witlings flit around her like twinkling stars; while her ladyship, with her full-moon face—but it strikes us that this is a very old simile.

Of all Blues we think the Light Blue is our favourite. Mark the surprising difference which exists between Emilia, the Light Blue, and her sister Sophia, the Dark Blue. Sophia is a fine vessel, properly supplied with everything requisite for a long voyage; but a villanous slow sailer. Emilia is the same vessel, but certainly it has thrown out a vast quantity of ballast. To speak in plainer language, Sophia talks learnedly, and puzzles you; Emilia talks[Pg 157] learnedly, and amuses you; the latter sets you a laughing, and the former sends you to sleep. A good painter will select for his picture only the most agreeable parts of the landscape which lies before him; a good talker will notice the more pleasing points of his subject, while he will throw aside the tedious. But, alas! Emilia will describe a statue, while Sophia is treating of a finger; and the Light Blue will analyse the “Iliad,” while the Dark Blue is discussing the Digamma.

Fannia is a fair one, who endeavours to unite the extreme of fashionable dress with the extreme of unfashionable Blue-ism. Mr. Hodgson made a vile pun (as usual) when he denominated her a Blue Belle.

The only remaining Blue of whom we shall here make mention is Eva, the Sky-Blue. The habit of talking sentiment, in which the Sky-Blue commonly indulges, is in general sufficiently annoying; but in the person of Eva, far be it from us to apply to it such an epithet. Eva is always in heroics: she never speaks a sentence which is not fit to go into a German romance. All this sits very well upon youth and beauty, but in age and ugliness it is insufferable. Eva has a pretty pair of blue eyes, a finely polished neck, an enchanting white arm, and a voice withal, which is never heard but in a whisper, an aria, or a sigh. She has, in short, such a talent at turning our brains, that our Secretary has not inappositely styled her “Blue Ruin.”