With Phœbus to bring back a warmer hour,
And turn his southern eye to our green places.
But the most insane of all the Idolators is at hand, in the shape of a certain Doctor, whose name, lest it should injure his practice, we shall not mention, and who (upon his knees, we presume,) makes an offering to the Idol of Cockaigne of a lock of Milton's hair!!!!
To M.D.
On his giving me a Lock of Milton's Hair.
I felt my spirit leap, and look at thee
Through my changed colour with glad grateful stare.
When after shewing us this glorious hair,
Thou didst turn short, and bending pleasantly
With gracious hand gav'st the great lock to me!!
An honouring gift indeed! which I will wear
About me, while I breathe this strenuous air,
That nursed his Apollonian tresses free.
See what it is to be a favourite of Apollo! Apothecaries and physicians flock in upon you from every side. And well might it be said of , M.D., in reference to Keats and Reynolds,
"The force of nature could no farther go
To make one Fool, she joined the other two."
Two more sonnets follow on the same subject, and Mr Hunt, we are told, a short time before his death, had the lock of Milton's hair put into a broach, in the figure of a naked Eve, and wore it, and the Mother of Mankind, on the frill of his shirt.
This fashion of firing off sonnets at each other was prevalent in the metropolis a short time since among the bardlings, and was even more annoying than the detonating balls. We nave heard them cracking off in the lobbies of the Theatres, and several exploded close to our ear one morning in Sir John Leicester's gallery. Like other nuisances of the kind, they are now laughed down; and, indeed, after Leigh Hunt's death, who was at the top of the fashion, it dwindled quite away, though sometimes even yet a stray sonneteer is to be found cantering along on his velocipede.
In our next we hope to publish "Luctus" on the death of Mr Hunt, by Webb, Keats, and Co. and also a funeral oration, by Mr Hazlitt. We ourselves intend to write his epitaph.
DECORATIONS OF EDINBURGH.
MR EDITOR,
I have read with some sorrow, and more shame, your correspondent's proposal to adorn Edinburgh with a Greek Temple. Is he serious? or does he write it as a satire upon Scottish invention? and is it true, that no living man is capable of conceiving a suitable structure to commemorate the glories of Scotland? That your correspondent shews good taste in admiring the Parthenon, who would deny—but he is unwise in recommending its restoration by his countrymen. The use to be made of ancient works, of the majestic remains of Grecian greatness, is not to transfer them in the gross into marble or stone, to carry them off, pillar and rafter, like the fabled church of Loretto,—but to contemplate and admire them, to elevate the mind and kindle a fire which may excite an emulation of their glories. But your correspondent thinks the sun of Scottish invention has sunk or has never risen: therefore, says he, let us not seek to create the new, but restore the old; let us make works which exercise the memory in recollections of Athens or Rome, rather than aspire after an hazardous reputation for originality. So thought the prudent—the calculating—the painstaking people of America, and what have they done, and what are they daily doing? Your correspondent knows this—you cannot climb an eminence in the United States but you see Spartas, Thebes's, and Athens's on all sides, hills abound with classic names—here is Ethos—there is Athos, Parnassus is near, and beyond it arises mount Pelion, the very hill you have climbed is the "Calicolone on the Simio's side."
"And what was Goose Creek once, is Tybet now."
Now all this is harmless enough, but what does it shew—all but an original spirit. In the same taste people may—and many people do baptize their children. I have seen Lucius Junius O'Flanagan, which is a so-
