330

THE POWER OF PEPPER.

some scores of snails, a gowpenful of gnats, countless caterpillars, of our smaller British insects numbers without number numberless as the sea-shore sands

Shepherd. No at this time o' the year, you gowk. You're thinking o' simmer colleyfloor

Tickler. But their larvæ, James

Shepherd. Confound their larvæ! Awmrose! the pepper. (Dashes in the pepper along with the silver top of the cruet.) Pity me! whare's the cruet? It has sunk doun intil the hotch-potch, like a mailed horse and his rider intil a swamp. I maun tak tent no to swallow the bog-trotter. What the deevil, Awmrose, you've gien me the Cayawne!!

Mr Ambrose. (tremens.) My dear sir, it was Tappytoorie. Shepherd (to Tappy). You wee sinner, did ye tak me for Mosshy Shaubert?

English Opium-Eater. I have not seen it recorded, Mr Hogg, in any of the Public Journals, at least it was not so in the Standard,-in fact the only newspaper I now read, and an admirable evening paper it is, unceasingly conducted with consummate ability,-that that French charlatan had hitherto essayed Cayenne pepper; and indeed such an exhibition would be preposterous, seeing that the lesser is contained within the greater, and consequently all the hot varieties of that plant-all the possibilities of the pepper-pod-are included within Phosphorus and Prussic acid. Meanly as I think of the logic

Shepherd. Oma mouth! ma mouth!-Logic indeed! I didna think there had been sic a power o' pepper about a' the premises.

English Opium-Eater. The only conclusion that can be legitimately drawn

Shepherd. Whisht wi' your College clavers—and, Awmrose, gie me a caulker o' Glenlivet to cool the roof o' my pallet. Ma tongue's like red-het airn-and blisters ma verra lips. Na! it 'ill melt the siller-spoon

North. I pledge you, my dear James

English Opium-Eater. Vermicelli soup, originally Italian, has been so long naturalised in this island, that it may now almost be said, by those not ambitious of extremest accuracy of thought and expression, to be indigenous in Britain-and as it sips somewhat insipid, may I use the freedom, Mr Tick1 See ante, p. 27.

A MOUNTAIN-WELL.

331

ler-scarcely pardonable, perhaps, from our short acquaintance -to request you to join me in a glass of the same truly Scottish liquor?

Tickler. Most happy indeed to cultivate the friendship of Mr De Quincey. [The Four turn up their little fingers. Shepherd. Mirawculus! My tongue's a' at ance as cauld's the rim o' a cart-wheel on a winter's nicht! My pallet cool as the lift o' a spring-mornin! And the inside o' my mouth just like a wee mountain-well afore sunrise, when the bit muirland birdies are hoppin on its margin, about to wat their whussles in the blessed beverage, after their love-dreams amang the dewy heather!

English Opium-Eater. I would earnestly recommend it to you, Mr Hogg, to abstain

Shepherd. Thank you, sir, for your timeous warnin-for, without thinkin what I was about, I was just on the verra eve o' fa'in to again till the self-same fiery trencher. It's no everybody that has your philosophical composure. But it sits weel on you, sir—and I like baith to look and listen to you; for, in spite o' your classical learning, and a' your outlandish logic, you're at a' times—and I'm nae bad judge-shepherd as I am―intus et in cute—that is, tooth and nail-naething else but a perfeck gentleman. But oh, you're a lazy cretur, man, or you would hae putten out a dizzen volumms sin' the "Confessions."

English Opium-Eater. I am at present, my dear friendallow me to call myself so-in treaty with Mr Blackwood for

a novel

Shepherd. In ae volumm-in ae volumm, I hope and that 'ill tie you doun to whare your strength lies, condensation at ance vigorous and exquisite-like a man succinct for hapstep-and-loup on the greensward-each spang langer than anither-till he clears a peat hand-barrow at the end like a catastrophe.-Hae I eaten anither dish o' hotch-potch, think ye, sirs, without bein' aware o't?

Tickler. No, James-North changed the fare upon you, and you have devoured, in a fit of absence, about half-a-bushel of pease.

Shepherd. I'm glad it wasna carrots-for they aye gie me a sair belly. But hae ye been at the Exhibition o' Pictures by leevin artists at the Scottish Academy, Mr North,-and what think

ye o't?

332

THE EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS,

North. I look in occasionally, James, of a morning, before the bustle begins, for a crowd is not for a crutch.

Shepherd. But ma faith, a crutch is for a crood, as is weel kent o' yours, by a' the blockheads in Britain.-Is't gude the year? North. Good, bad, and indifferent, like all other mortal exhibitions. In landscape, we sorely miss Mr Thomson1 of Duddingston.

Shepherd. What can be the maitter wi' the minister ?—He's no deid?

North. God forbid! But Williams is gone-dear delightful Williams-with his aerial distances into which the imagination sailed as on wings, like a dove gliding through sunshine into gentle gloom-with his shady foregrounds, where Love and Leisure reposed-and his middle regions, with towering cities grove-embowered, solemn with the spirit of the olden time-and all, all embalmed in the beauty of those deep Gre

cian skies!

Shepherd. He's deid. What matters it? In his virtues he was happy, and in his genius he is immortal. Hoots, man! If tears are to drap for ilka freen "who is not," our een wad be seldom dry.-Tak some mair turtle.

North. Mr Thomson of Duddingston is now our greatest landscape painter. In what sullen skies he sometimes shrouds the solitary moors!

Shepherd. And wi' what blinks o' beauty he aften brings out frae beneath the clouds the spire o' some pastoral parish kirk, till you feel it is the Sabbath!

North. Time and decay crumbling his castles seem to be warring against the very living rock-and we feel their endurance in their desolation.

Shepherd. I never look at his roarin rivers, wi' a' their precipices, without thinkin, some hoo or ither, o' Sir William Wallace! They seem to belang to an unconquerable country.

North. Yes, James! he is a patriotic painter. Moor, mountain and glen-castle, hall, and hut-all breathe sternly or sweetly o' auld Scotland. So do his seas and his firths—roll, roar, blacken and whiten with Caledonia-from the Mull of Galloway to Cape Wrath. Or when summer stillness is upon them, are not all the soft shadowy pastoral hills Scottish, that in their still deep transparency invert their summits in the transfiguring magic of the far-sleeping main?

1 See ante, vol. i. p. 69, note 1.

2 Ibid. p. 316, note.

MRS GENTLE'S EYES.

333

Tickler. William Simpson, now gone to live in London, is in genius no whit inferior to Mr Thomson, and superior in mastery over the execution of the Art.

North. A first-rater. Ewbank's moonlights this season are meritorious; but 'tis difficult to paint Luna, though she is a still sitter in the sky. Be she veiled nun-white-robed vestal -blue-cinctured huntress-full-orbed in Christian meekness -or, bright misbeliever! brow-rayed with the Turkish crescent --still meetest is she, spiritual creature, for the Poet's love! Shepherd. They tell me that a lad o' the name o' Fleming, frae the west kintra, has shown some bonny landscapes.

North. His pictures are rather deficient in depth, Jameshis scenes are scarcely sufficiently like portions of the solid globe-but he has a sense of beauty-and with that a painter may do almost anything-without it, nothing. For of the painter as of the poet, we may employ the exquisite image of Wordsworth, that beauty

"Pitches her tents before him."

For example, there is Gibb,' who can make a small sweet pastoral world out of a bank and a brae, a pond and a couple of cows, with a simple lassie sitting in her plaid upon the stump of an old tree. Or, if a morning rainbow spans the moor, he shows you brother and sister-it may be—or perhaps childish lovers-facing the showery wind-in the folds of the same plaid-straining merrily, with their collie before them, towards the hut whose smoke is shivered as soon as it reaches the tops of the sheltering grove. Gibb is full of feeling and genius. Shepherd. But isna his colourin ower blue ?

North. No, James. Show me anything bluer than the sky —at its bluest.-Not even her eye

Shepherd. What! Mrs Gentle? Her een aye seemed to me to be greenish.

North. Hush, blasphemer! Their zones are like the skylight of the longest night in the year-when all the earth lies half asleep and half awake in the beauty of happy dreams. Shepherd. Hech! hech!

"O love! love! love!

Love's like a dizziness,
It wunna let a puir bodie
Gang about his bizziness!

1 See ante, vol. i. p. 315, note 2.

334

COLVIN SMITH'S PORTRAIT OF JEFFREY.

English Opium-Eater. I have often admired the prodigious power of perspective displayed in the large landscapes of Nasmyth. He gives you at one coup-d'ail a metropolitan eity-with its river, bridges, towers, and temples-engirdled with groves, and far-retiring all around the garden-fields, tree-dropped, or sylvan-shaded, of merry England. I allude now to a noble picture of London.

North. And all his family are geniuses like himself. In the minutiæ of nature, Peter is perfect—it would not be easy to say which of his unmarried daughters excels her sisters in truth of touch-though I believe the best judges are disposed to give Mrs Terry the palm-who now-since the death of her lamented husband teaches painting in London with eminent success.

Tickler. Colvin Smith' has caught Jeffrey's countenance at last-and a fine countenance it is-alive with intellect— armed at all points-acute without a quibble-clothed all over with cloudless perspicacity — and eloquent on the silent canvass, as if all the air within the frame were murmuring with winged words.

North. Not murmuring-his voice tinkles like a silver bell. Shepherd. But wha can tell that frae the canvass ?

North. James, on looking at a portrait, you carry along with you all the characteristic individualities of the original -his voice-his gesture-his action-his motion-his manner-and thus the likeness is made up "of what you halfcreate and half-perceive,"―else dead—thus only spiritualised into perfect similitude.

Shepherd. Mr De Quinshy should hae said that!

English Opium-Eater. Pardon me, Mr Hogg, I could not have said it nearly so well-and in this case, I doubt not, most truly-as Mr North.

North. No one feature, perhaps, of Mr Jeffrey's face is very fine, except, indeed, his mouth, which is the firmest, and, at the same time, the mildest the most resolute, and yet, at the same time, the sweetest, I ever saw-inferior in such mingled expression only to Canning's, which was perfect; but look on them all together, and they all act together in irresistible union;

1 Mr Alexander Nasmyth was an eminent landscape-painter of Edinburgh. He died at a great age about 1840. He had a son (Peter), settled in London, who also rose to high distinction as a painter, who died in 1831.

2 See ante, vol. i. p. 144, note 1.