NOTES OF THE MONTH.' 99 



it is a matter of very little moment to a man, who finds himself in a 

 quagmire, whether he has been led there by the light of a glowworm 

 or the blaze of Nottingham castle. 



ANTI-POETICS. Sentiment, if we go on as we have lately been 

 going, must very speedily be placed in the errata page of dictionaries. 

 It must become absolutely unintelligible in a twelve month, and, in 

 fact, it can hardly be said to mean any thing at present. Matter-of- 

 fact rules predominant in our every action even our very dreams 

 have a business-like air about them. The race of bread-and-butter 

 romances have become unique, as the remains of fossil elephants ; 

 and, as for a speculative or enthusiastic boarding-school girl, you 

 might as well hope to find an antideluvian hippopotamus in St. 

 James's Park. A couple of years ago, an exquisite of Waterloo 

 House, who would inquire of his tape-cutting coadjutators " If any 

 gentleman in this establishment had got another gentleman's scis- 

 sors," would faint at the bare idea of his inamorata sneezing or eating 

 cabbage. A tailor's apprentice then spouted heroics, if he only asked 

 what o'clock it was, and made love to a Cheapside beauty from Man- 

 fred or Lalla Rookh. People have now become more refined ; but 

 it is wordly refinement, not the exquisite distillations of Minerva 

 press novelists, or any thing of the kind; but a regular, and business 

 sort of artificiality. Truly says James Montgomery, " when I am a 

 man is the thought of the child ; when I was a child is the thought 

 of the man." What will men, in twenty years time, say about their 

 childhood ? Verily, it will be different from what men say now. 

 Alas, it goes through us as a broadside from a three-decker would 

 penetrate a cock-boat, to disturb the airy visionings of the sentimen- 

 tal dreamers of the perfectability of our species. But only think oh 

 poetic reader ! of that quintessence of all that's etherial, that day- 

 dream embodied in humanity, that sylph, that creation of the m jst 

 intellectual of fancied loveliness, that Rousseau-like conception of 

 imaged woman, Taglioni only think, we repeat, of this being, whom 

 the Spectator designates "the poetry of motion" refusing to give a 

 single spin on her fairy heel (even though the opera-house was filled 

 by the elite of the land, including some of the royal family), with- 

 out being first paid her night's salary. Only fancy such a creature 

 casting a thought upon so contemptible a commodity as money. It's 

 enough to make one forswear excursions to Chelsea, and the rurali ties 

 of Putney-bridge, for the remainder of the season. Then again, think 

 of the lessee, poor Laporte's anti-romantic twichings in coming to the 

 foot-lights, and informing ladies and gentlemen, that, for some very 

 strange reason, Mademoiselle Taglioni could not be prevailed upon 

 to dance that evening. To see this sprite come bounding on the 

 stage, like a young antelope, disdaining almost the support of the 

 air she breathed, fit to be one of the elves of Shakspeare," that on the 

 sands with printless foot, do chase the eb'bing Neptune, and do fly 

 him when he comes back," to gaze on her, all life and loveliness and 

 joy ; and then to think of her ascending the outside of a Holy head 

 stage coach, on her way to Dublin, wrapped in a driver's box coat ; 

 think of that Master Brook, or more sentimental Mr. Tompkins. Is 



