DIARY

FOR THE MONTH OF MAY.

2d. We congratulate the higher classes in this country, on having at last a periodical work which they need not be ashamed to acknowledge that they read. We have before us the first number of the Court Journal'; and those of the ranks to whom alone it is dedicated who at this moment share that gratification, must feel a thrill of joy and gratitude at being at last represented to the continental countries, in a manner combining such extraordinary accuracy of knowledge of their habits, their tastes, and their feelings, with a power of such peculiar delicacy of pencil to represent them.

The work is instituted for the exclusive enjoyment of "the Court Circle." It is most generous in Mr. Colburn, to make such an incalculable pecuniary sacrifice, as this restriction must necessarily involve. The Court Circle of George IV., is not like that of Versailles in the time of Louis Quatorze, though this journal will probably soon extend it to similar dimensions. Since his present Majesty went to Windsor, the circle that surrounded him has been about equal in number to that which sat at the celebrated Round Table of one of his Saxon predecessors-namely, some two dozen. But Mr. Colburn feels, no doubt, a patriotic regret for those days, when in England no more than twenty-four persons could read-so, in disinterested pursuance of this noble feeling, he soars above all sordid considerations, and declares that the Court Journal' shall be confined to the Court Circle, whatever or wherever that may be.

We chance, however, to have obtained a copy, and shall therefore gratify those of our readers, who alas! may not be included in the Court Circle, with some specimens of the inexpressible purity and polish of its feelings, its manners, and its style.

We will begin with the apostrophe à la Mode, which is written in French, and in a style on which we would give much to hear the criticism of Grimm:-but the author might die with delight, or some other feeling equally strong-and, ah! what a loss this "Peacock" would prove to "the ladies."

"Déesse aux cent voix! Déesse aux mille caprices! Caméléon frivole, qui changeant à son gré de forme et de langage, se montre tourà-tour sage ou légère, coquette ou prude, orgueilleuse ou modeste, franche ou flatteuse, simple ou rusée; souveraine de tous les tems,idole de tous les âges, de tous les goûts, de toutes les couleurs, de toutes les conditions; qui ajuste ta robe à toutes les tailles, et ta marotte à toutes les folies! MODE! enfin, puisque il faut t'appeller par ton nom,'-c'est toi que j'invoque aujourdhui ! c'est sous ton ascendant entrainant, irresistible, que je place ces feuilles, légères comme toi, mais que le caprice, le goût, le zèle qui les dictent peuvent cependant t'engager à fixer, en les opposant au tems qui trop souvent se rit de

tes efforts, aux cabales des sots qui te devancent, et aux préjugés mêmes qui t'obéissant en te dénigrant. Mode, sois notre Lady Patroness!"

What exquisite taste-what admirable feeling !—how exactly suited in tone and style to the more cultivated classes in this country!

We now come to the metaphysics of the Journal.-A writer who compliments Rochefoucauldt, by calling himself his re-incarnation, has among others, the following " Maxims on Love."

"There never was a lover who was not fonder of his passion than of his mistress, and would not (if pressed to an extremity,) sacrifice the one to the other."

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Women never feel respect for the man who loves them not even when they love him. There is nothing capable of impressing women with an idea of your superiority, but the fact of your showing or seeming to show, indifference or disdain towards them. You cannot even admire them with safety. To admire them, indeed, is the way to make them like you; but for every step that you advance in their liking, you lose two in their respect."

We would willingly stake the reputation, as regards matters of the heart, of even the Court Journal,' upon these two exquisite maxims. The pure and noble admiration of the effects of love upon the minds of both sexes! Can any thing shew such an absence of selfishness— such a thorough devotion to the object of attachment-as the sentiment expressed in the first of these two aphorisms?-Impossible! Every man that has loved must feel his heart thrill at the moral truth and beauty of the maxim!

But the second! It speaks well for those in whom this author has studied the sex. Of course one whose writings appear in the 'Court Journal' must have wholly derived his knowledge from his observation of ladies in the highest circles and society. And their gratitude to him must be deep and keen at his thus representing them. It requires, indeed, great talents, and most amiable feelings to imbody so many exalted, noble, and delicate qualities into such few

words.

But now we come to something more general, "Some leaves from the Journal of the Countess ****" The following motto is pre

fixed from Voltaire :

"Vous qui possédez la beauté

Sans être vaine ni coquette,

Et l'extrême vivacité

Sans être jamais indiscrète :

Vous, à qui donnèrent les dieux
Tant de lumières naturelles,
Un esprit juste, gracieux,
Solide dans le serieux,

Et charmant dans les bagatelles ;
Souffrez qu'on présente à vous yeux

L'aventure d'une rivale."

We think our readers will, anon, agree with us in thinking almost magical the accuracy of the features of detail with which the Court Journalist has filled up Voltaire's really exquisite outline of a beautiful, accomplished, and gifted woman. We really cannot account for

it, unless the spirit of le Patriache has migrated from Ferney just to sketch the portrait of a fair denizen of Grosvenor-square, as though in her own person. After talking, as is the custom in the society in which countesses move in England of "The hoarsest watchman within the bills of mortality growling four,"-she enters into the pith of her subject thus: we must premise that she is a widow :

"To begin, then, at the very beginning, and an enchanting one it was. -I left my toilet about eleven, as perfect as Maradan could make me-jolie comme un cœur! Nardin had surpassed himself in my coëffure; and my chrysophrase necklace reflected that sort of subdued tint upon my countenance, that air à sentiment,-which, Alberville says, is like moonlight on the sea. En fait du genre pensif I was really perfect; yet I felt a sort of evil presentiment! I stumbled on the trimming of my dress as I was getting into the carriage; I knew it must inevitably be chiffonné somewhere or other; but, after the loss of five minutes in investigation, Mademoiselle could not detect the exact spot, and I was left in the horror of uncertainty! Another five minutes at Lady Mary's door!-who always keeps one whilst she is putting on her last nuance of Végétal superfin; and her great fat porter stands yawning in one's face. And this, by the way, is not the most provoking of her sins: she wears nothing but des couleurs prononceésamber, or ponceau, or emerald ;- -so that, whoever hazards an entrée by her side is sure to look vapid and faded. On the present occasion her ladyship had thought proper to blaze forth in a cerise satin, by which I was quite écrasée."

Two things will strike our readers: the exact resemblance to the manner in which women of education in England write; and the admirable exposition of the lines,

"Vous qui possédez la beauté

Sans être vaine

As for coquette, the following will suffice: she is almost engaged to be married to the Lord Alberville, who uses the new simile of

"like moonlight on the sea." She had told him "in the course of their morning's ride, but purely par epreuve et pour désoler son amourpropre that she should not be there." She, however, sees him on an ottoman with a certain Lady Alicia, and forthwith, being jamais indiscrète, rushes to the écarté table, and loses, Lord Alberville looking on, besides what she has in her purse, three hundred pounds, borrowed from a Sir Somebody Something, who is the object of her particular abhorrence. The next day she reflects thus:

"That I, with a jointure of six thousand a-year, cannot keep out of debt;-that I, at four-and-twenty years of age, cannot keep out of No! I will not write the word: never did four innocent letters combine to form one so miss-ish and so mawkish as that of Love. Quant au prémier délit, let me once get out of this scrape with Foley, and I will dream of nought but Joseph Hume and retrenchment; et quant au second, I have half a mind to trancher l'affaire, and forestall the declaration of Alberville's new engagement, by accepting Sir George at once, and devoting myself to the podagrian duties of a conjugal life,”

This certainly proves her to be jamais indiscrète, and to have,

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de lumieres naturelles,

Un esprit juste, gracieux,

Solide dans le serieux,

Et charmant dans les bagatelles."

Inexpressibly so indeed!

We can hold no longer. We will not sicken, we might almost say insult, our readers with any more of such a production as this. We cannot regard it otherwise than as a flagrant outrage, that this foolish, ignorant, and offensive vulgarity should be represented as forming the spirit, and giving tone to the manners, of good society in this country. We are certain that if Garrick had written his farce of High Life below Stairs on the same model, it would have been reckoned a scandal and ashame to attribute cuch manners and such morals even to Mrs. Kitty and my Lord Duke.

9th. We are among the very foremost of Mr. Mathews's real admirers as we think we have shewn on more than one occasion. We will say at once that we consider him to possess genius, and that of a very diversified sort. To those, if any such be left in the world, who consider him a mere farceur, we shall not address ourselves—but we do not at all consider him as no more than a very fine comedian to do full justice to his merits. Mr. Mathews goes further than this. His powers of creating emotion are great. If we use a periphrasis to avoid the word tragedy, it is because that word has been warped from its truest meaning. The real criterion is-" Were you touched?" If you were, the actor or actress had those gifts which can produce all the effects of the best and purest tragedy. We don't care what the vehicle may be—is the sensation conveyed? Who that heard Pasta sing the song to the harp, in Otello'-who that has seen Brigottini, in Nina la folle par Amour,' that has not been touched to the very quick by the most tragic emotions. What matters it that the one is an opera and the other a ballet? What does it signify whether it be prose or verse, speech, look, or gesture, that produces the effect, if it be produced?

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And has it not been produced by Mr. Mathews often? To say nothing of the touches of tenderness in some of his parts in the regu lar drama; look at his Gamester'-if you can bear to look-all the horrors of that odious passion are flung forth with a force that no tragedian ever surpassed. Look at his 'Mallet' for the picture of the softer and more pathetic feelings-every heart beat with him there.

Of his comic talents we need not speak-every body is full of them -but we say that his powers over both the fiercer and the softer passions, ought to be denominated tragic at once-though we do not care a cherry-stone what it is called as long as it is there. This gift, we think, is not sufficiently recognised by the public, and perhaps is too little cultivated by himself.

Having spoken thus, we are now not going to give him advice, like the people he complains of in his present At Home,' but to scold him at once. Not for any thing he does as an actor-but for his choice as

a manager. We respect his talents more than ever for the effect he is able to produce with such miserable materials-but he might get good ones, and he ought. We cannot afford to throw away the efforts of genius so uncommon as this upon such trumpery.

Mr. Mathews, we pretend to a slight knowledge of metaphysics, and therefore we regret most sincerely that your entertainments are not formed from your own observation, and the workings of your own mind upon what you observe. This very At Home,' now going on, proves us to be right. Our metaphysics always spring from facts. Those portions of it which are your own are admirable-impayable : the rest is never mind. One of the portions we are alluding to, we chanced to know was yours-" Company, up or down"—and it is your creation-for you made the actual occurrence what it was. Another part which we liked exceedingly, namely, the very beginning, we have since heard, is also your's, and it confirmed another idea of ours which we will tell you as a secret; we are quite certain you are totally ignorant of it yourself. Those passages which you feel come from nature-the humour which is frank and true-the pathos which really has something to say to the heart-you deliver in a manner as superior to the composition of men who undertake to furnish so many puns in a page as but we will make no comparisons-we are sure you understand

us now.

In the present At Home,' there is alas! no pathos: and very angry we are with you for it. But if you had heard your voice change from the regular business-like grind of the song-speech in the second part to the fine fresh reality, of " O' your nain-sell," when the snow began to fall in Cumberland, you'd give us a little more of it, or you're not the kind-hearted man we take you for. Kitchener is good -but there is too much of him; and there is this dilemma besides. To those who did not know him, he cannot be very interesting, and to those who did, it must be painful to see him even by you. We, indeed, always regret seeing you come to individual imitation. In the first place, the best-humoured imitation may be unpleasing at least to the party if not to the friends. It always does, and is mostly meant, to cast more or less ridicule-which is of necessity undeserved: for this reason, that mimicry is compelled to single out peculiarities, and leaves them unblended with, and consequently unsoftened by, all that the individual possesses in common with the rest of the world.

Our second reason is, that your condensation of general characteristics into one person is so admirable, that we are sorry that you should waste your powers in the lower and narrower sphere of imitating a real man. To borrow an illustration from painting, the one is a history-piece, the other only a portrait.

One word more. The man who is writing his life-the man who is cruel to animals because he endeavours to be kind-the passengers in the Ramsgate steamer-and all their coachings, boatings, dinings, inns, and conversation, (laus Deo!) never did, can, or shall exist. And, therefore, we cannot but lament and condemn the giving up to these lusus, not naturæ, but malæ artis, the time, and talents, and most wearing exertion, of one whose representations of real nature are like yours, Mr. Mathews.