arm of the fell monster Death, who is grinning with savage pleasure at the havoc he is making. The monsters are breathing fire, and from their pestiferous dugs, dropping streams of blood, as the milk of their nourishment."

Having given some of Mr. Ward's ideas as they are written, we leave those who have not seen his picture to judge what such ideas must be upon canvas, with a clumsy hand, and the worst possible

taste.

All we have to do in this affair is to call upon the Directors of the British Institution, if they mean to patronise real merit, or to make their rewards honourable and of value, to disclaim all approbation of the most illustrious and full-sized specimen of pictorial humbug that ever drew shillings out of the pockets of John Bull.

We have indeed been told that the Institution have (somewhat too late) discovered that they employed an animal painter to paint them an allegorical picture-they were not aware of their mistake in the outset; but in order to rectify it and induce Mr. Ward to rub out his allegory, they have resolved, it is said, to give him an opportunity of shewing his talents in his own line, by sitting to him for their likenesses, it is added that the portrait of Mr. Richard Payne Knight, is already in a high state of forwardness.

THE LIBERAL.

[JOHN BULL, 1822.]

WE perceive an eulogium passed on the Sheriffs of Norwich the other day for having done their duty to the letter in attending the execution of some malefactors in that city. We feel it an equally unpleasant task, for the sake of public justice, to quote into our paper some of the nonsensical blasphemy which has appeared, during the week, in a magazine called the "Liberal."

To analyse a work which, in all probability, will never reach a second number,-certainly, not a third, -may appear needless; but it is not so, because we believe that by making a few extracts we shall effectually prevent the spreading of a contagion, which other writers are endeavouring to cure.

There have been (shame be to those who have so prostituted their abilities) blasphemous parodies written by Whigs, in which something like talent exhibited itself; we should instance the infamous productions of that great Whig favourite, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, whose works Lord Holland has, with a most amiable and Christian-like care, edited for the edification of the rising generation.* Others there are which it is quite unnecessary here to recapitulate; suffice it to say, that there were marks of

* Sir Charles Hanbury Williams composed an impious parody on the Athanasian Creed, &c.

something like genius in those things, but in the poetry of the "Liberal," the most inveterate dulness, the most unadorned abominations, the most bungling versification, bad taste, and even bad grammar, stare one in the face. We will not, however, waste time in vituperating that to the just censure of which no words are adequate; but, painful as is the task, lay before our readers a few extracts from this Italianized Cockney magazine.

The preface, full of liberal opinions, is so decidedly dull that we pass it over, merely observing that the suicide of the Marquis of Londonderry is made a matter of merriment, which occupies the space of several pages. What such writers say on such subjects, it is true, can have little effect; because the wretched Shelley, the fellow who denied his God, and for selling whose infamous writings Clark was convicted this very week, is called "the noblest of human beings," and so on; but when we turn to the “Vision of Judgment," we feel it our duty simply to quote a few of its verses. We will be sparing of commentthe horrible blasphemy requires none.

Opposition to a disapproved system, the sharpest scrutiny into the actions of our rulers, the most jealous support of the democracy, all—all may be palliated, all approved, because there is an end to gain, a purpose to be fulfilled, perhaps an advantage to be reaped; but to attack a departed monarch in his grave, who, had he been the worst, instead of one of the best of kings, has passed away from human judgment, and to ridicule the two great calamities

under which he laboured,-to burlesque the hopes of happiness and the great promise of the Almighty to man, merely to vituperate him who never injured a human being, and on whose memory the country dwells as on that of a parent; to sneer at his domestic virtues-to load with personal abuse a dead woman-and a Queen-who formed and shared that King's domestic happiness for more than half a century a pattern to her sex-seem to us to be acts of such cold-blooded atrocity, that the gross stupidity of the verses themselves, which renders them contemptible even as a magazine contribution, cannot upon the score of pity for their folly, save the author from the execration of all men, of all parties, of all sects, and of all denominations, who have one spark of devotion to their God, or one atom of respect for themselves.

Surely, the Attorney-General will not suffer this execrable and idiotic performance to escape the punishment it deserves. The blasphemies of Shelley, gross and infernal as they were, were light, compared to the detailed burlesque of the heavenly kingdom which is contained in this farrago of absurdity. We say, and we say it in the pure spirit of justice, that if the poor little wretched Waddington is to be imprisoned for selling, to get his livelihood, the blasphemies of mere plebeians, he who has framed this horrible disgusting poem, without actually wanting bread (for other things than poverty can exile men), deserves a ten-fold visitation of the law.

These levellers cannot object rank to the operation of a wholesome law, and as they do not profess a

belief in future rewards or punishments, what can restrain these heartless atheists, but the arm of temporal correction?

The prose is beneath all criticism: nothing we can find untinctured by that chimney-sweeping school of cockneyism, which even treason and blasphemy fail to invigorate. We certainly must quote three epigrams on the death of Lord Londonderry, as a windup of our observations on the infamous part of the work they are brutal in their spirit, and as wretched in their composition, as the things one sees inserted in the poetical department of the "Morning Chronicle," which department, we should suppose, is not a little indebted to the persons who conduct the "Italian-Cockney Magazine." The epigrams fol

"Oh! Castlereagh, thou art a patriot now;
Cato died for his country-so didst thou;
He perished rather than see Rome enslaved;
Thou cut'st thy throat, that Britain may be saved."

II.

"So! Castlereagh has cut his throat!-the worst
Of this is that his own was not the first."

III.

"So he has cut his throat at last-he?-who?-
The man who cut his country's long ago."

And this is the poetry of my Lord Byron's new magazine! There certainly is a woeful falling off in

VOL. II.

H