purrs like a cat. Gimmer, a ewe. Are all ewes gimmers? The Agricultural Society do not think so. Gullies, large knives. A knife may be large enough to reach across a table without being a gully. Fadge, the fourth part of a round cake quartered. Does this mean the sixteenth part of a round cake? If so the good people of Scotiand are wonderfully minute in the subdivision of the necessaries of life; which shows the high estimation in which they are there held. Fee, cattle, hence property of any kind, and now more particularly wages, which, like the portions of Leah and Rebecca, were formerly paid in cattle and horses. Here the words cattle and horses, mean, according to Mr. Jamieson, goats and sheep; as may be seen by referring to the 30th chapter of Genesis. The word in truth means sheep, Sax. feoh, or Swed. fae: it occurs in the most ancient Scottish pastoral extant, Robeyn and Machin, by Robert Henryson, Keip and a flock of fie.' Lith, joint. In Scotland people say the lith of an orange, but we presume they do not mean to aver that oranges have joints. Lum, chimney-top. It means the whole vent from the grate to the chimney-top. Nowt, black cattle. Cattle of any colour, either black or otherwise, as may happen. Sober, poor. It were to be wished that all poor people were sober. Linn, the pool under a waterfall. It more generally signifies the rock over which the stream is precipitated, as in Burns's Hallow-E'en, Whiles ower a linn the burnie plays,' and in Duncan Grey, Spak o'louping owre alinn.' Woode-wale, a red breast. A woodlark is not a red breast. We almost think that Mr. James Grahame himself could have told the editor that. To mention all his inaccuracies would be endless. 6 In this glossary likewise the editor endeavours at etymology. He tells us, for example, that from the sound lip,' which is dear to children from their kissing it, come life' and love; that on the same principle the Latin word,' liberi,' children, means dear ones, and liberi, free persons, mean's children, not slaves or aliens. This is, according to Mr. Jamieson's own principles, very liberal, that is, very childish, and his book is very childish, that is, very dear. In a little scrap of dissertation on the word 'earn,' an eagle, he derives it from the Gaelic fear, which in the oblique cases drops the letter f; but unless it makes amends to itself, by taking up the letter n, it fails in its endeavours to make the word in question. The truth is, that the Saxon for an eagle is earn.' Having thus followed Mr. Jamieson through the whole of his work, we take the liberty of observing, that his arrange Aristides' Answer to the Letter to the Prince of Wales. 313 ver. ment is the worst we ever had the misfortune to discoHad he followed the three divisions that we have laid down in this review, all would have been well; but in fact every thing is mixed higgledy piggledy, as pleased the carelessness of the editor. His own compositions are mingled with those of the older time, like modern masonry with antique building; and sometimes, when a ballad has been presented in one form, it starts up before the astonished reader a hundred pages farther on, in another. As an excuse for all this, Mr. Jamieson tells us he was upon the wing for Denmark at the time this work was committed to the press. But the confusion we complain of pervades the whole performance, and is not accidental but systematic. Our readers will by this time have seen that neither Mr. Jamieson's abilities nor information are very remarkable. He is possessed however, with an overweening conceit of his own powers, which sometimes breaks out in a very ludicrous way. He is indignant that the ungrateful world should hitherto have been so blind to his merits; though it may be remarked that as these merits were formerly altogether unknown, so has the publication of the present volumes rendered them extremely problematical. This is not a country where literary merit is often allowed to pine unrewarded: at all events,to complain of the want of patronage, and even of pecuniary assistance, is not manly, especially in a printed book, and it is unjust even to wish from others, what it is our duty to procure for ourselves. "Those,' ex claims Mr. Jamieson, who have bestowed their best industry and abilities, and the most precious years of their lives, in labouring for the entertainment and instruction of others, have asked for an egg, and they have given them a serpent, they have asked for bread, and they have given them a stone. And what must I expect? "Ohe! jam satis est." To this exclamation we most heartily subscribe. ART. XI-An Answer to the Admonitory Letter to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, on the Subject of the late delicate Inquiry. By Aristides. 8vo. 2s. Johnson. 1806. THE indiscreet reports circulated by idle and gossiping people, concerning the conduct of an illustrious personage, have afforded a short but tolerably productive harvest to the lowest class of pamphleteers. Hence the Admonitory Letter (noticed in our last number) and the present answer to it, from which no mortal can derive any information, except it be of that kind which he may obtain daily at Billingsgate, that a profusion of eloquence may be exercised, and lies retorted in great numbers, without the least effect on the reader's judgment. The writer pretends to correct the errors of the Monitor, by shewing that he is as ignorant as himself. ART. XII.-Strictures on Cobbett's unmanly Observations relative to the delicate Investigation; and a Reply to the Answer to the Admonitory Letter to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, containing a true Account of the Cause why the Commissioners' Report has not yet been published, and many other additional Facts. By the Author of the Admonitory Letter. 8vo. 2s. Tipper and Richards. 1806. COBBETT,who quitted his sword and halbert first to follow Thomas Paine, then to wage war on him as a furious federalist in America, then to continue his warfare on democrats by becoming a frantic English Wyndhamite, is now, under the auspices of those great patriots at Wimbledon, Tooke and Burdett, returned to the point from which he started; that species of democratic frenzy, which consists in vilifying every thing elevated, preying on the unavoidable infirmities of the best characters, and aggravating evils, which real talents would endeavour to remove. He has been long playing about the subject of what is called a delicate investigation, but so as to alarm both parties; to be in readiness to pour his scurrilities on either, or both, as he may see occasion, or as the materials may suit his general purpose of gratifying the puny malignity of loungers at libraries, and readers to kill time. The present Strictures are written by the author of the Admonitory Letter, but in the same vague, and unsatisfactory manner with his former production; and we are satisfied his labour will be lost in attempting to flog the brawny back of Cobbett. We sincerely wish, however, that on this and on other most important subjects, an illustrious personage would change his advisers, if not his familiar companions. Frederic the Great of Prussia (whose name at this moment draws a sigh from all Europe) on being asked why he suffered about him several familiar fools, said, They are my pocket handkerchiefs. Il faut cracher quelquefois. This we readily allow to a lively and amiable Prince. But, il ne faut pas cracher toujours. ART. XIII.-The Stranger in Ireland; or, a Tour to the Southern and Western Parts of that Country in the Year 1805. By John Carr, Esq. Author of the Northern Summer, &c. &c. Two Vols. 4to. Phillips. 1806. MR. Carr is one of those good-humoured and gentle travellers who give an agreeable hue to every thing around them, however desolate, and have the effect of a rose-coloured window curtain on a dirty drawing-room. He may be considered as the exact reverse of Smollett, who was acute, ill-tempered, and entertaining. Mr. Carr's nosegay of polar flowers,' which he gathered in his ramble to the North of Europe, (See Crit. Rev. Feb. 1806) is not yet quite forgotten; and he has lately discovered in the breast of every Irishman every virtue which can adorn human nature. We envy him Hot his feelings; for, however amiable they may appear to the patrons of the Minerva press, the haberdasher and hosier readers of the day, such a want of discrimination argues incontestable vacuity. The mind, in the first period of our existence, has been compared to a blank sheet of paper. Our ideas, in general, grow with our years; but, although the writer under review has long arrived at the age of discretion, and during his contented progress through the world, has soiled many reams of costly quarto with his itinerary lucubrations, yet can we see nothing in all his works but a per fect blank! He is read indeed, and circulated--but so are the Winter in London; Covrelia, or the Mystic Tomb; and Fitzgerald's Verses on the death of Mr. Pitt. The favour which Mr. Carr receives, implies his demerit, for it is the fa vour of young maidens and of apprentices. We recognize the style of an old acquaintance in the first page. The epithets brown and bladeless,' reminds us of the same feeble alliteration in the Northern Summer. The laboured weakness too of the following expressions-a tale travelling through all the sinuosities of the ears to the seat of the understanding,' (P. 4) recalled us to many similar flights of fancy in the former travels of Mr. Carr. In page 5, he confesses that the birth-place of Shakespeare was incapable of rousing one poetic idea in his mind. We can readily believe this of the author of the following stanza, which we take from a ballad upon Poor Blind Bet, the mendicant so well known, not to say so troublesome, and sometimes impertiz nent, to the traveller in North Wales. Thou seem'st to say, "I've sunshine too!" 'Tis beaming in a spotless breast; No shade of guilt obstructs the view; Stranger in Ireland, vol. i. p. 14, The delights of bundling,' p. 11, we shall not explain: suffice it to say, that in this passage, as well as in another, (page 266,) where the author talks of female delicacy,' he not only has recourse to his old trick of incongruous titles, but displays the same propensity which we have before censured, to cater for the licentious taste of the inferior class of readers, for whom he successfully publishes. But these are the jokes of Mr. Carr; and indeed, his language, though not always correct, is always chaste: it is only his occasional choice of improper subjects which we here mean to reprehend. To revert to his information, which will, as usual, be found to be much upon a level with his jeux d'esprit. In page 7, he tells us that the beautiful vale of Llangollen is in Welsh called Thlangothlen: two sequent ll's being pronounced like Thl.' We do not dispute the truth of this assertion; its utility is all we controvert; unless our author writes for the nursery, which his allusions to bundling,' &c. render improbable. We knew the above fact very shortly after we learned our letters. Of much more naïvete, though hardly equal accuracy when applied to all Germany, was that remark in the Anti-Jacobin, that in theGerman language, 'ü twice dotted is pronounced like i'-leaving us never at a loss how to address the plodding commentator upon Eschylus (Schütz) by his proper title. But we are far from wishing to deny our author his due praise. His remarks, (page 60,) upon the deplorable state of the coin in Ireland, and upon the difficulties of exchange between that country and England,' are well worth attending to. Indeed, this is a subject which demands the strictest attention, and which cannot be adequately discussed except at great length. We do not mean to attribute any originality to Mr. Carr's suggestions in this business; we only approve of them as useful repetitions. Nor are his instances of Irish bulls original. Many of them are borrowed without acknowledgment from Miss Edgeworth's humorous Essays, and the rest we have either seen in Joe Miller, or frequently heard quoted in conversation. Such crambe repetita would disgust a taste less fastidious than that which critical duty imposes. Indeed, we almost expected to come to the stale joke of an Irishman's asking at what hour the basket went, if the coach set off at nine; for we have the equally old story of the gentleman who collected a large quantity of oranges to make lemonade, and the following addition is subjoined to it, page 276. The author of the bull was a gentleman of high classical attain |