NO. II.—WEDNESDAY, FEB. 4, 1807.

FROM THE ELBOW-CHAIR OF LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQUIRE.

In the conduct of an epic poem, it has been the custom, from time immemorable, for the poet occasionally to introduce his reader to an intimate acquaintance with the heroes of his story, by conducting him into their tents, and giving him an opportunity of observing them in their night-gown and slippers. However I despise the servile genius that would descend to follow a precedent, though furnished by Homer himself, and consider him as on a par with the cart that follows at the heels of the horse, without ever taking the lead, yet at the present moment my whim is opposed to my opinion; and whenever this is the case, my opinion generally surrenders at discretion. I am determined, therefore, to give the town a peep into our divan; and I shall repeat it as often as I please, to show that I intend to be sociable.

The other night Will Wizard and Evergreen called upon me, to pass away a few hours in social chat, and hold a kind of council of war. To give a zest to our evening, I uncorked a bottle of London Particular, which has grown old 25with myself, and which never fails to excite a smile in the countenances of my old cronies, to whom alone it is devoted. After some little time the conversation turned on the effect produced by our first number; every one had his budget of information, and I assure my readers that we laughed most unceremoniously at their expense; they will excuse us for our merriment—’tis a way we’ve got. Evergreen, who is equally a favorite and companion of young and old, was particularly satisfactory in his details; and it was highly amusing to hear how different characters were tickled with different passages. The old folks were delighted to find there was a bias in our junto toward the “good old times;” and he particularly noticed a worthy old gentleman of his acquaintance, who had been somewhat a beau in his day, whose eyes brightened at the bare mention of Kissing-bridge. It recalled to his recollection several of his youthful exploits at that celebrated pass, on which he seemed to dwell with great pleasure and self-complacency; he hoped, he said, that the bridge might be preserved for the benefit of posterity, and as a monument of the gallantry of their grandfathers, and even hinted at the expediency of erecting a toll-gate there, to collect the forfeits of the ladies. But the most flattering testimony of approbation which our work has received, was from an old lady who never laughed but once in her life, and that was at the conclusion of the last war. She was detected by friend Anthony in the very fact of laughing most obstreperously 26at the description of the little dancing Frenchman. Now it glads my very heart to find our effusions have such a pleasing effect. I venerate the aged, and joy whenever it is in my power to scatter a few flowers in their path.

The young people were particularly interested in the account of the assembly. There was some difference of opinion respecting the new planet, and the blooming nymph from the country; but as to the compliment paid to the fascinating little sylph who danced so gracefully, every lady modestly took that to herself.

Evergreen mentioned also that the young ladies were extremely anxious to learn the true mode of managing their beaux; and Miss Diana Wearwell, who is as chaste as an icicle, has seen a few superfluous winters pass over her head, and boasts of having slain her thousands, wished to know how old maids were to do without husbands; not that she was very curious about the matter, she “only asked for information.” Several ladies expressed their earnest desire that we would not spare those wooden gentlemen who perform the parts of mutes, or stalking horses, in their drawing rooms; and their mothers were equally anxious that we would show no quarter to those lads of spirit, who now and then cut their bottles to enliven a tea-party with the humors of the dinner-table.

Will Wizard was not a little chagrined at having been mistaken for a gentleman, “who is no more like me,” said Will, “than I like Hercules.” “I was well assured,” continued Will, 27“that as our characters were drawn from nature, the originals would be found in every society. And so it has happened—every little circle has its ’Sbidlikens; and the cockney, intended merely as the representative of his species, has dwindled into an insignificant individual, who having recognized his own likeness, has foolishly appropriated to himself a picture for which he never sat. Such, too, has been the case with Ding-dong, who has kindly undertaken to be my representative; not that I care much about the matter, for it must be acknowledged that the animal is a good-natured animal enough,—and what is more, a fashionable animal,—and this is saying more than to call him a conjurer. But I am much mistaken if he can claim any affinity to the Wizard family. Surely everybody knows Ding-dong, the gentle Ding-dong, who pervades all space, who is here and there and everywhere; no tea-party can be complete without Ding-dong, and his appearance is sure to occasion a smile. Ding-dong has been the occasion of much wit in his day; I have even seen many puny whipsters attempt to be dull at his expense, who were as much inferior to him as the gad-fly is to the ox that he buzzes about. Does any witling want to distress the company with a miserable pun?—nobody’s name presents sooner than Ding-dong’s; and it has been played upon with equal skill and equal entertainment to the bystanders as Trinity-bells. Ding-dong is profoundly devoted to the ladies, and highly entitled to their regard; for I know no man who 28makes a better bow, or talks less to the purpose than Ding-dong. Ding-dong has acquired a prodigious fund of knowledge by reading Dilworth when a boy; and the other day, on being asked who was the author of Macbeth, answered, without the least hesitation, Shakespeare! Ding-dong has a quotation for every day of the year, and every hour of the day, and every minute of the hour; but he often commits petty larcenies on the poets—plucks the gray hairs of old Chaucer’s head, and claps them on the chin of Pope; and filches Johnson’s wig to cover the bald pate of Homer; but his blunders pass undetected by one-half of his hearers. Ding-dong, it is true, though he has long wrangled at our bar, cannot boast much of his legal knowledge, nor does his forensic eloquence entitle him to rank with a Cicero or a Demosthenes; but bating his professional deficiencies, he is a man of most delectable discourse, and can hold forth for an hour upon the color of a ribbon or the construction of a work-bag. Ding-dong is now in his fortieth year, or perhaps a little more—rivals all the little beaux in the town, in his attentions to the ladies—is in a state of rapid improvement; and there is no doubt that by the time he arrives at years of discretion, he will be a very accomplished, agreeable young fellow.” I advise all clever, good-for-nothing, “learned and authentic gentlemen,” to take care how they wear this cap, however well it fits; and to bear in mind, that our characters are not individuals, but species; if, after this warning, any person chooses to represent 29Mr. Ding-dong, the sin is at his own door; we wash our hands of it.

We all sympathized with Wizard, that he should be mistaken for a person so very different; and I hereby assure my readers, that William Wizard is no other person in the whole world but William Wizard; so I beg I may hear no more conjectures on the subject. Will is, in fact, a wiseacre by inheritance. The Wizard family has long been celebrated for knowing more than their neighbors, particularly concerning their neighbor’s affairs. They were anciently called Josselin; but Will’s great-uncle, by the father’s side, having been accidentally burnt for a witch in Connecticut, in consequence of blowing up his own house in a philosophical experiment, the family, in order to perpetuate the recollection of this memorable circumstance, assumed the name and arms of Wizard, and have borne them ever since.

In the course of my customary morning’s walk I stopped in a bookstore, which is noted for being the favorite haunt of a number of literati, some of whom rank high in the opinion of the world, and others rank equally high in their own. Here I found a knot of queer fellows listening to one of their company, who was reading our paper; I particularly noticed Mr. Ichabod Fungus among the number.

Fungus is one of those fidgeting, meddling quidnuncs with which this unhappy city is pestered—one of our “Q in a corner fellows,” who speaks volumes in a wink, conveys most portentous 30information by laying his finger beside his nose, and is always smelling a rat in the most trifling occurrence. He listened to our work with the most frigid gravity—every now and then gave a mysterious shrug, a humph, or a screw of the mouth; and on being asked his opinion at the conclusion, said, he did not know what to think of it; he hoped it did not mean anything against the government, that no lurking treason was couched in all this talk. These were dangerous times—times of plot and conspiracy; he did not at all like those stars after Mr. Jefferson’s name—they had an air of concealment. Dick Paddle, who was one of the group, undertook our cause. Dick is known to the world as being a most knowing genius, who can see as far as anybody—into a millstone, maintains, in the teeth of all argument, that a spade is a spade; and will labor a good half hour by St. Paul’s clock to establish a self-evident fact. Dick assured old Fungus that those stars merely stood for Mr. Jefferson’s red what-d’ye call-’ems, and that, so far from a conspiracy against their peace and prosperity, the authors, whom he knew very well, were only expressing their high respect for them. The old man shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, gave a mysterious Lord Burleigh nod, said he hoped it might be so; but he was by no means satisfied with this attack upon the President’s breeches, as “thereby hangs a tale.”

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MR. WILSON’S CONCERT.

BY ANTHONY EVERGREEN, GENT.

In my register of indisputable facts I have noted it conspicuously, that all modern music is but mere dregs and draining of the ancient, and that all the spirit and vigor of harmony has entirely evaporated in the lapse of ages. O! for the chant of the Naiades and Dryades, the shell of the Tritons, and the sweet warblings of the Mermaids of ancient days! Where now shall we seek the Amphion, who built walls with a turn of his hurdy-gurdy, the Orpheus who made stones to whistle about his ears, and trees hop in a country dance, by the mere quavering of his fiddle-stick! Ah! had I the power of the former, how soon would I build up the new City Hall,^[9] and save the cash and credit of the Corporation; and how much sooner would I build myself a snug house in Broadway—nor would it be the first time a house has been obtained there for a song. In my opinion, the Scotch bagpipe is the only instrument that rivals the ancient lyre, and I am surprised it should be almost the only one entirely excluded from our concerts.

Talking of concerts reminds me of that given a few nights since by Mr. Wilson, at which I had the misfortune of being present. It was attended by a numerous company, and gave great satisfaction, if I may be allowed to judge from 32the frequent gapings of the audience; though I will not risk my credit as a connoisseur by saying whether they proceeded from wonder or a violent inclination to doze. I was delighted to find in the mazes of the crowd my particular friend ’Sbidlikens, who had put on his cognoscenti phiz—he being, according to his own account, a profound adept in the science of music. He can tell a crotchet at first sight; and, like a true Englishman, is delighted with the plum-pudding rotundity of a semibref; and, in short, boasts of having incontinently climbed up Paff’s musical tree,^[10] which hangs every day upon the poplar, from the fundamental concord to the fundamental major discord; and so on from branch to branch, until he reached the very top, where he sung “Rule Britannia,” clapped his wings, and then—came down again. Like all true transatlantic judges, he suffers most horribly at our musical entertainments, and assures me that what with the confounded scraping and scratching and grating of our fiddlers, he thinks the sitting out one of our concerts tantamount to the punishment of that unfortunate saint who was frittered in two with a handsaw.

The concert was given in the tea-room at the City Hotel; an apartment admirably calculated, by its dingy walls, beautifully marbled with smoke, to show off the dresses and complexions of the ladies; and by the flatness of its ceiling to repress those impertinent reverberations of the music, 33which, whatever others may foolishly assert, are, as ’Sbidlikens says, “no better than repetitions of old stories.”

Mr. Wilson gave me infinite satisfaction by the gentility of his demeanor, and the roguish looks he now and then cast at the ladies, but we fear his excessive modesty threw him into some little confusion, for he absolutely forgot himself, and in the whole course of his entrances and exits, never once made his bow to the audience. On the whole, however, I think he has a fine voice, sings with great taste, and is a very modest, good-looking little man; but I beg leave to repeat the advice so often given by the illustrious tenants of the theatrical sky-parlor, to the gentlemen who are charged with the “nice conduct” of chairs and tables—“make a bow, Johnny—Johnny, make a bow!”

I cannot, on this occasion, but express my surprise that certain amateurs should be so frequently at concerts, considering what agonies they suffer while a piece of music is playing. I defy any man of common humanity, and who has not the heart of a Choctaw, to contemplate the countenance of one of these unhappy victims of a fiddle-stick without feeling a sentiment of compassion. His whole visage is distorted; he rolls up his eyes, as M’Sycophant says, “like a duck in thunder,” and the music seems to operate upon him like a fit of the colic; his very bowels seem to sympathize at every twang of the catgut, as if he heard at that moment the wailings of the helpless animal that had been sacrificed to harmony. 34Nor does the hero of the orchestra seem less affected; as soon as the signal is given, he seizes his fiddle-stick, makes a most horrible grimace, scowls fiercely upon his music-book, as though he would grin every crotchet and quaver out of countenance. I have sometimes particularly noticed a hungry-looking Gaul, who torments a huge bass viol, and who is doubtless the original of the famous “Raw-head-and-bloody-bones,” so potent in frightening naughty children.

The person who played the French horn was very excellent in his way, but ’Sbidlikens could not relish his performance, having some time since heard a gentleman amateur in Gotham play a solo on his proboscis, in a style infinitely superior. Snout, the bellows-mender, never turned his wind instrument more musically; nor did the celebrated “knight of the burning lamp,” ever yield more exquisite entertainment with his nose; this gentleman had latterly ceased to exhibit this prodigious accomplishment, having, it was whispered, hired out his snout to a ferryman, who had lost his conch-shell; the consequence was that he did not show his nose in company so frequently as before.

Sitting late the other evening in my elbow-chair, indulging in that kind of indolent meditation, which I consider the perfection of human bliss, I was aroused from my revery by the entrance of an old servant in the Cockloft livery, 35who handed me a letter, containing the following address from my cousin and old college chum, Pindar Cockloft.

Honest Andrew, as he delivered it, informed me that his master, who resides a little way from town, on reading a small pamphlet in a neat yellow cover,^[11] rubbed his hands with symptoms of great satisfaction, called for his favorite Chinese inkstand, with two sprawling Mandarins for its supporters, and wrote the letter which he had the honor to present me.

As I foresee my cousin will one day become a great favorite with the public, and as I know him to be somewhat punctilious as it respects etiquette, I shall take this opportunity to gratify the old gentleman, by giving him a proper introduction to the fashionable world. The Cockloft family, to which I have the comfort of being related, has been fruitful in old bachelors and humorists, as will be perceived when I come to treat more of its history. My cousin Pindar is one of its most conspicuous members—he is now in his fifty-eighth year—is a bachelor, partly through choice, and partly through chance, and an oddity of the first water. Half his life has been employed in writing odes, sonnets, epigrams, and elegies, which he seldom shows to anybody but myself after they are written; and all the old chests, drawers, and chair-bottoms in the house, teem with his productions.

36In his younger days he figured as a dashing blade in the great world; and no young fellow of the town wore a longer pig-tail, or carried more buckram in his skirts. From sixteen to thirty he was continually in love, and during that period, to use his own words, he be-scribbled more paper than would serve the theatre for snow-storms a whole season. The evening of his thirtieth birthday, as he sat by the fireside, as much in love as ever was man in this world, and writing the name of his mistress in the ashes, with an old tongs that had lost one of its legs, he was seized with a whimwham that he was an old fool to be in love at his time of life. It was ever one of the Cockloft characteristics to strike to whim: and had Pindar stood out on this occasion he would have brought the reputation of his mother in question. From that time he gave up all particular attentions to the ladies; and though he still loves their company, he has never been known to exceed the bounds of common courtesy in his intercourse with them. He was the life and ornament of our family circle in town, until the epoch of the French Revolution, which sent so many unfortunate dancing-masters from their country to polish and enlighten our hemisphere. This was a sad time for Pindar, who had taken a genuine Cockloft prejudice against everything French, ever since he was brought to death’s door by a ragout: he groaned at Ça Ira, and the Marseilles Hymn had much the same effect upon him, that sharpening a knife on a dry whetstone has upon some people—it set his teeth chattering. He might in time have been reconciled to 37these rubs, had not the introduction of French cockades on the hats of our citizens absolutely thrown him into a fever. The first time he saw an instance of this kind, he came home with great precipitation, packed up his trunk, his old-fashioned writing-desk, and his Chinese inkstand, and made a kind of growling retreat to Cockloft Hall,^[12] where he has resided ever since.

My cousin Pindar is of a mercurial disposition—a humorist without ill-nature—he is of the true gunpowder temper; one flash, and all is over. It is true when the wind is easterly, or the gout gives him a gentle twinge, or he hears of any new successes of the French, he will become a little splenetic; and heaven help the man, and more particularly the woman, that crosses his humor at that moment—she is sure to receive no quarter. These are the most sublime moments of Pindar. I swear to you, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would not lose one of 38these splenetic bursts for the best wig in my wardrobe; even though it were proved to be the identical wig worn by the sage Linkum Fidelius, when he demonstrated before the whole University of Leyden, that it was possible to make bricks without straw. I have seen the old gentleman blaze forth such a volcanic explosion of wit, ridicule, and satire, that I was almost tempted to believe him inspired. But these sallies only lasted for a moment, and passed like summer clouds over the benevolent sunshine which ever warmed his heart and lighted up his countenance.

Time, though it has dealt roughly with his person, has passed lightly over the graces of his mind, and left him in full possession of all the sensibilities of youth. His eye kindles at the relation of a noble and generous action, his heart melts at the story of distress, and he is still a warm admirer of the fair. Like all old bachelors, however, he looks back with a fond and lingering eye on the period of his boyhood; and would sooner suffer the pangs of matrimony than acknowledge that the world, or anything in it, is half so clever as it was in those good old times that are “gone by.”

I believe I have already mentioned, that with all his good qualities he is a humorist, and a humorist of the highest order. He has some of the most intolerable whimwhams I ever met with in my life, and his oddities are sufficient to eke out a hundred tolerable originals. But I will not enlarge on them—enough has been told to excite a desire to know more; and I am much 39mistaken if, in the course of half a dozen of our numbers, he don’t tickle, plague, please, and perplex the whole town, and completely establish his claim to the laureateship he has solicited, and with which we hereby invest him, recommending him and his effusions to public reverence and respect.

Launcelot Langstaff.

TO LAUNCELOT LANGSTAFF, ESQ.

DEAR LAUNCE,

As I find you have taken the quill,

To put our gay town and its fair under drill,

I offer my hopes for success to your cause,

And send you unvarnish’d my mite of applause.

Ah, Launce, this poor town has been wofully fash’d;

Has long been be-Frenchman’d, be-cockney’d, be-trash’d,

And our ladies bedevil’d, bewilder’d astray,

From the rules of their grandames have wandered away.

No longer that modest demeanor we meet,

Which whilom the eyes of our fathers did greet;

No longer be-mobbled, be-ruffled, be-quilled,

Be-powder’d, be-hooded, be-patch’d, and be-frill’d.

No longer our fair ones their grograms display,

And stiff in brocade, strut “like castles” away.

40O, how fondly my soul forms departed have traced,

When our ladies in stays, and in bodice well laced,

When bishop’d, and cushion’d, and hoop’d to the chin,

Well calash’d without, and well bolster’d within;

All cased in their buckrams, from crown down to tail,

Like O’Brallaghan’s mistress, were shaped like a pail.

Well—peace to those fashions—the joy of our eyes—

Tempura mutantur, new follies will rise;

Yet, “like joys that are past,” they still crowd on the mind,

In moments of thought, as the soul looks behind.

Sweet days of our boyhood, gone by, my dear Launce,

Like the shadows of night, or the forms in a trance;

Yet oft we retrace those bright visions again,

Nos mutamur, ’tis true—but those visions remain.

I recall with delight, how my bosom would creep,

When some delicate foot from its chamber would peep;

And when I a neat stocking’d ankle could spy,

By the sages of old I was rapt to the sky!

All then was retiring, was modest, discreet;

The beauties, all shrouded, were left to conceit—

To the visions which fancy would form in her eye,

41Of graces that snug in soft ambush would lie;

And the heart, like the poets, in thought would pursue

The elysium of bliss which was veiled from its view.

We are old-fashion’d fellows, our nieces will say:

Old-fashioned, indeed, coz—and swear it they may—

For I freely confess that it yields me no pride,

To see them all blaze what their mothers would hide:

To see them, all shivering, some cold winter’s day,

So lavish their beauties and graces display,

And give to each fopling that offers his hand,

Like Moses from Pisgah—a peep at the land.

But a truce with complaining—the object in view

Is to offer my help in the work you pursue;

And as your effusions and labors sublime,

May need, now and then, a few touches of rhyme,

I humbly solicit, as cousin and friend,

A quiddity, quirk, or remonstrance to send:

Or should you a laureate want in your plan,

By the muff of my grandmother, I am your man!

You must know I have got a poetical mill,

Which with odd lines, and couplets, and triplets I fill;

And a poem I grind, as from rags white and blue

The paper-mill yields you a sheet fair and new.

42I can grind down an ode, or an epic that’s long,

Into sonnet, acrostic, conundrum, or song:

As to dull hudibrastic, so boasted of late,

The doggrel discharge of some muddle-brain’d pate,

I can grind it by wholesale—and give it its point,

With billingsgate dished up in rhymes out of joint.

I have read all the poets, and got them by heart;

Can slit them, and twist them, and take them apart;

Can cook up an ode out of patches and shreds,

To muddle my readers and bother their heads.

Old Homer, and Virgil, and Ovid I scan,

Anacreon, and Sappho, who changed to a swan;

Iambics and sapphics I grind at my will,

And with duties of love every noddle can fill.

O, ’twould do your heart good, Launce, to see my mill grind

Old stuff into verses and poems refin’d:—

Dan Spenser, Dan Chaucer, those poets of old,

Though covered with dust, are yet true sterling gold;

I can grind off their tarnish, and bring them to view,

New-modell’d, new-mill’d, and improved in their hue.

But I promise no more—only give me the place,

And I’ll warrant I’ll fill it with credit and grace;

43By the living! I’ll figure and cut you a dash—

As bold as Will Wizard, or ’Sbidlikensflash!

Pindar Cockloft.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Perhaps the most fruitful source of mortification to a merry writer, who, for the amusement of himself and the public, employs his leisure in sketching odd characters from imagination, is, that he cannot flourish his pen but every Jack-pudding imagines it is pointed directly at himself; he cannot, in his gambols, throw a fool’s cap among the crowd, but every queer fellow insists upon putting it on his own head; or chalk an outlandish figure, but every outlandish genius is eager to write his own name under it. However we may be mortified, that these men should each individually think himself of sufficient consequence to engage our attention, we should not care a rush about it, if they did not get into a passion, and complain of having been ill used.

It is not in our hearts to hurt the feelings of one single mortal by holding him up to public ridicule; and if it were, we lay it down as one of our indisputable facts, that no man can be made ridiculous but by his own folly. As, however, we are aware that when a man by chance gets a thwack in the crowd, he is apt to suppose the blow was intended exclusively for himself, 44and so fall into unreasonable anger, we have determined to let these crusty gentry know what kind of satisfaction they are to expect from us. We are resolved not to fight, for three special reasons: first, because fighting is at all events extremely troublesome and inconvenient, particularly at this season of the year; second, because if either of us should happen to be killed, it would be a great loss to the public, and rob them of many a good laugh we have in store for their amusement; and third, because if we should chance to kill our adversary, as is most likely, for we can every one of us split balls upon razors and snuff candles, it would be a loss to our publisher, by depriving him of a good customer. If any gentleman casuist will give three as good reasons for fighting, we promise him a complete set of Salmagundi for nothing.

But though we do not fight in our own proper persons, let it not be supposed that we will not give ample satisfaction to all those who may choose to demand it, for this would be a mistake of the first magnitude, and lead very valiant gentlemen perhaps into what is called a quandary. It would be a thousand and one pities that any honest man, after taking to himself the cap and bells which we merely offered to his acceptance, should not have the privilege of being cudgeled into the bargain. We pride ourselves upon giving satisfaction in every department of our paper; and to fill that of fighting, have engaged two of those strapping heroes of the theatre, who figure in the retinues of our 45gingerbread kings and queens; now hurry an old stuff petticoat on their backs, and strut senators of Rome, or aldermen of London; and now be-whisker their muffin faces with burnt cork, and swagger right valiant warriors, armed cap-a-pie, in buckram. Should, therefore, any great little man about town take offense at our good-natured villainy, though we intend to offend nobody under heaven, he will please to apply at any hour after twelve o’clock, as our champions will then be off duty at the theatre and ready for anything. They have promised to fight “with or without balls;” to give two tweaks of the nose for one; to submit to be kicked, and to cudgel their applicant most heartily in return; this being what we understand by “the satisfaction of a gentleman.”

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