What may be in the Miscellany it is your business to find out. Here lie
the goods, warehoused, bonded, ticketed, and labelled, at your service.
You have only, with the Genius in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments,
to cry, "Fish, fish, do your duty;" and if they are under-cooked or
over-cooked, if the seasoning is too high or the fire too low, if they
be burnt on one side and raw on the other,--why, gentle readers, it is
your business to complain. All we have to say here, is, that we have
made our haul in the best fishing-grounds, and, if we were ambitious of
pun-making, we might add, that we had well baited our _hooks_--caught
some choice _souls_--flung our lines into right _places_--and so forth,
as might easily he expanded by the students of Mr. Commissioner Dubois's
art of punning made easy.
What we propose is simply this:--We do not envy the fame or glory of
other monthly publications. Let them all have their room. We do not
desire to jostle them in their course to fame or profit, even if it
was in our power to do so. One may revel in the unmastered fun and
the soul-touching feeling of Wilson, the humour of Hamilton, the dry
jocularity and the ornamented poetry of Moir, the pathos of Warren, the
tender sentiment of Caroline Bowles, the eloquence of Croly, and the
Tory brilliancy of half a hundred contributors zealous in the cause of
Conservatism. Another may shake our sides with the drolleries of Gilbert
Gurney and his fellows, poured forth from the inexhaustible reservoir
of the wit of our contributor Theodore Hook,--captivate or agitate us by
the Hibernian Tales of Mrs. Hall,--or rouse the gentlest emotions by the
fascinating prose or delicious verse of our fairest of _collaborateuses_
Miss Landon. In a third we must admire the polyglot facetiæ of our
own Father Prout, and the delicate appreciation of the classical and
elegant which pervades the writings of the Greek-thoughted Chapman;
while its rough drollery, its bold bearing, its mirth, its learning, its
courage, and its caricatures, (when, confined to the harmless and the
mirth-provoking, they abstain from invading the sanctuary of private
life,) are all deserving of the highest applause, though we should
be somewhat sorry to stand in the way of receiving the consequences
which they occasionally entail. Elsewhere, what can be better than
Marryat, Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful, Midshipman Easy, or whatever
other title pleases his ear; A Smollett of the sea revived, equal to
the Doctor in wit, and somewhat purged of his grossness. In short, to
all our periodical contemporaries we wish every happiness and success;
and for those among their contributors whose writings tend to amuse or
instruct,--and many among them there are to whom such praise may be
justly applied,--we feel the highest honour and respect. We wish that
we could catch them all, to illuminate our pages, without any desire
whatever that their rays should be withdrawn from those in which they
are at present shining.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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