.COWPER’S TOURIFICATIONS OF MALACHI MELDRUM. 
tending to the taylor’s shop, &c. &c. 
Mr. Meldrum, however, made his escape, 
and in his hurry mistook his road to the 
Saracen’s Head. Now this incident cer- 
tainly does not speak much in favour of 
his active benevolence. Nero, we are 
told, amused himself with fiddling while 
Rome was ‘burning; Mr. Meldrum, in- 
Stead of working at the bucket, took to 
his heels till he found a resting place 
which commanded a lonely and romantic 
view ; and while the taylor’s shop-board 
was in flames amused himself, it being the 
summer season, with the recitation of a de- 
scriptive Ode to Winter! However, we 
are not disposed to quarrel with him; a 
hundred brawny arms could be found 
to pump the fire-engine, and in sorrow 
be it spoken, few are the singers who 
strike the lyre with the same spirit, deli- 
cacy, and feeling of Malachi Meldrum, 
esquire. Our tourificator’s range is not 
avery extensive one: his musical medi- 
tations are interrupted by the appearance 
of a gentleman of the old school, Mr. 
Shuttlethrow the weaver, with whom he 
holds much sapient conversation on di- 
vers subjects of policy and commerce. 
To this delay succeeds another by an 
unexpected meeting with one of the most 
bewitching little madcaps in the world, 
Miss Watson, who draws him away with 
her to dinner, so that we really arrive at 
the end of one of the two volumes before 
Mr. Meldrum has discharged his first 
morning’s breakfast bill at the Saracen’s 
Head! 
Evils seldom come alone, as the say- 
jng is: Malachi will never get back to 
the inn. First the weaver stops him and 
talks politics, then that fascinating gip- 
sey, Miss Watson, sings songs to him, 
and by and by comes the parson, who is 
also a bit of a poet, and discusses literary 
subjects. The parson indted is a hetero- 
dox sort of a gentleman---not in his reli- 
gion but his literary creed: who, of all 
writers in the world, should he fall foul 
of but of Virgil? That Virgil was a flat- 
terer is very true, poets very commonly 
are so--now, do nét let Mr. Meldrum 
have the slightest suspicion that we make 
any personal allusion, that we mean to 
remind him of his own well-merited eu- 
logies on the reigning monarch, and on 
his prime minister, Henry Addington, 
_esquire--- Virgil too was a notorious imi- 
‘tator. 
_ originals? Is not the Georgics, without 
But did not he improve upon his 
exception, the most correct and polished 
poem in existence, and may we not pre. 
689 
sume that the Aeneid would have come 
down to us in a more finished form had 
the author lived to correct his manu- 
script? 
The parson, too, has a mind to revive 
the old controversy on the authenticity 
of Ossian’s poems; or more properly, 
perhaps, he has arbitrated between the 
parties, and settled the business by split- 
ting the difference. His statement of 
the case is probably a very just one, that 
Macpherson collected a great number of 
original fragments, “ and, aided by a 
man of ability, superior it was believed 
to his own, he arranged into an epic 
what was possible, and it is to their ho- 
nour that our feebleness appears to de. 
nounce.the patch-work. Those- poems 
which had little connection with Tingal, 
or Temora, or where Fingal and Te- 
mora could be carried on without them, 
were published in their insulated state ; 
but I would not aver, says the parson, 
that the soldering hand had not been 
upon them too.”” We are not much 
disposed to: agree with him in opinion, 
that “an hundred years hence, people 
may talk about the thing, but they will 
care little whether.James Macpherson, eés- 
quire, or Ossian, the son of Fingal, was 
the bard.” Peoplea hundred years hence 
will, probably, be as anxious as we are 
to trace the progress of poetry, to mark 
the periods of its splendor and obscurity, 
and connect them, as illustrative of the 
human mind, with the state of society in 
those particular periods. In this view 
of the question it was of importance to 
fix the date of Ossian’s poems; Mr. Mac- 
pherson has thrown darkness over a sub- 
ject which it was in his power to have 
enlightened. Well, well, we must leave 
Virgil, and Ossian, and Fingal, and Mac- 
pherson, and return to our friend Ma- 
lachi, or we shall be guilty of what, of 
all things in the world, is most unpardon- 
ble, a breach of good manners. 
Mr. Meldrum, and the little party who 
had increased around him, at length 
reaches the hospitable house of Mr. Wat- 
son: after dinner the bottle circulates 
with sufficient celerity till it is suspend- 
ed by Captain Hamilton’s narrative of 
the story of Jessy Hawthorn. The cha- 
racter of the Captain’s grandfather is ad- 
mirably drawn, and as to Jesse, let him 
who can read the-tale without emotior, 
without feeling all his best affections e:- 
cited, depart into the wilderness. | 
Before the evening began to close Mr. 
Malachi was warned by a confounded 
