this wooded avenue of ascent, against the cold white sky! The watchmen and patroles, which the careful citizens have planted in abundance within a mile of their doors, salute us with their "good mornings; "-not so welcome as we pretend; for we ought not to be out so late; and it is one of the assumptions of these fatherly old fellows to remind us of it. Some fowls, who have made a strange roost in a tree, flutter as we pass them;---another pull up the hill, unyielding; a few strides on a level; and there is the light in the window, the eye of the warm soul of the house,one's home. How particular, and yet how universal, is that word; and how surely does it deposit every one for himself in his own nest!

NEW PIECES AT DRURY-LANE.-A WORD TO THE

MANAGER.

WE are sorry to have nothing favourable to say of the new after-i piece at this house (the Haunted Inn); nor yet of the grand operatical piece, the Black Prince, which has been got up with great care. Mr Peake, the author of the farce, is a clever man, with a real turn for humour, and even for invention, as his immortal old Charity-boy testifies, that Wilkinson used to perform. Item, Mr Reynolds, the adapter of the grand piece, is an old dramatic acquaintance of ours, whom we long to speak well of, especially after his good-humoured Memoirs; and finally, we like extremely what we hear of the fair and straight-forward dealing of the Manager, Mr Price, who is just the man to get this long-suffering theatre up again, if he takes care not to encumber it with mediocrity.' Good actors in good pieces ought to be his motto. We began to think it was, when we heard of the way in which he had got up the Critic; and he seems to have speculated in the same manner, by the actors that appear in the new afterpiece. The Black Prince put us out of this reckoning, Not that there is no good actor in it; but there is a dearth of good actors. We are sorry, on the other account, that the new afterpiece has failed; and we would suggest to Mr Price, that it has not failed the less, because the play-bills tell us that it has "decidedly" succeeded.→

reverse.

That word "decidedly" was added out of the consciousness of the Now Mr Price is a man of energy, with a great desire (if we mistake not) to be sincere. Let him in future not mince these matters with the public, of success and failure. Let him say boldly that a thing has not succeeded; and the public will as surely take his word for the contrary, whenever that is the case, as they will take it in neither case, if he goes the way of all managerial flesh. But then, it may be asked, how is he to secure the success? By securing a good piece, let it be never so old, provided there be plenty of good performers in it. Only let the public be sure, that there is something to be seen at the theatre, in which the talents of good performers are really fetched out, and they will go to see it, let it be as old as Methusalem. We never knew an instance to fail. The success of the Critic, night after night, is an evidence of it. Is the reader old enough to remember the way in which Love-d-la-Mode was got up, and what a treat it was, when we used to have on the stage, all at once, Lewis in Squire Groom, Simmonds in Beau Mordecai, Irish Johnstone in Sir Callagan, and Cooke in Sir Archy? These are the things to draw crowded houses, and to make people as fond of a set of performers, as of a room full of old friends. Good parts, and good actors will not disdain to play in them. Good actors, and the people will no more refuse to enjoy them than they would any other good. } if

+

WILLIAM I.

WILLIAM II.

HENRY I.

STEPHEN.

HENRY II.

RICHARD I.

JOHN.

HENRY III.
EDWARD I.

EDWARD II.

EDWARD III.

THE ROYAL LINE.

The sturdy Conq'ror, politic, severe;
Light-minded Rufus, dying like the deer;
Beau-clerc, who everything but virtue knew;
Stephen, who graced the lawless sword he drew;
Fine Henry, hapless in his sons and priest;
Richard, the glorious trifler in the East;
John, the mean wretch, tyrant and slave, a liar;
Imbecile Henry, worthy of his sire;

Long-shanks, well nam'd, a great encroacher he;
Edward the minion, dying dreadfully;

The splendid veteran, weak in his decline;

RICHARD II.
HENRY IV.

HENRY V.

HENRY VI.

EDWARD IV.

EDWARD V.
RICHARD III.
HENRY VII.
HENRY VIII.
EDWARD VI.
MARY.

ELIZABETH.
JAMES I.
CHARLES I.
CROMWELL.
CHARLES II.

JAMES II.
WILLIAM III.

Another minion, sure untimely sign;
Usurping Lancaster, whom wrongs advance;
Harry the Fifth, the tennis-boy of France;
The beadsman, praying while his Margaret fought;
Edward, too sensual for a kindly thought:
The little head, that never wore the crown;
Crookback, to Nature giving frown for frown;
Close-hearted Henry, the shrewd carking sire;
The British Bluebeard, fat, and full of ire;
The sickly boy, endowing and endow'd;
Ill Mary, lighting many a living shroud ;
The lion-queen, with her stiff muslin mane;
The shambling pedant and his minion train;
Weak Charles, the victim of the dawn of right;
Cromwell, misuser of his home-spun might;
The swarthy scape-grace, all for ease and wit;
The bigot out of season, forc'd to quit;
The Dutchman, call'd to see our vessel through;
Anna, made great by conquering Marlborough;
George, vulgar soul, a woman-hated name;
Another, fonder of his fee than fame;

A third, too weak, instead of strong, to swerve;
And fourth, whom Canning and Sir Will preserve.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

The advice of a Constant Reader will meet with due consideration. Correspondents shall be noticed in our pages, and not in the covers, if it be only to gratify our "fast and faithful friend, F. F." We trust we have settled the matter of pence in our present number. The Poet's Corner in our correspondent's letter was highly welcome to us. We only wish we may deserve it.

The merits of our rival companions, Tabitha Single's cat, poodle, and parrot , shall undergo the requisite meditation.

LONDON:

Published by HUNT and CLARKE, York street, Covent garden: and sold by all Booksellers and Newsvenders in town and country.-Price 4d.

PRINTED BY C. H. REYNELL, BROAD STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE.

THE

COMPANION.

No. VI. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 13, 1828.

"Something alone yet not alone, to be wished, and only to be found, in a friend."-SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.

THE TRUE STORY OF VERTUMNUS AND POMONA.

WEAK and uninitiated are they who talk of things modern as opposed to the idea of antiquity; who fancy that the Assyrian monarchy must have preceded tea-drinking; and that no Sims or Gregson walked in a round hat and trowsers before the times of Inachus. Plato has informed us (and therefore everybody ought to know) that at stated periods of time, everything which has taken place on earth is acted over again: there have been a thousand or a million reigns, for instance, of Charles the Second, and there will be an infinite number more: the tooth-ache we had in the year 1811, is making ready for us some thousands of years hence; again shall people be wise and in love, as surely as the May-blossoms reappear; and again will Alexander make a fool of himself at Babylon, and Bonaparte in Russia.

Among the heaps of modern stories, which are accounted ancient, and which have been deprived of their true appearance by the alteration of colouring and costume, there is none more decidedly belonging to modern times than that of Vertumnus and Pomona. Vertumnus was, and will be, a young fellow, remarkable for his accomplishments, in the several successive reigns of Charles the

VOL. I.

6

Second; and, I find, practised his story over again in the autumn of the year 1680. He was the younger brother of a respectable family in Herefordshire; and from his genius at turning himself to a variety of shapes, came to be called, in after-ages, by his classical name. In like manner, Pomona, the heroine of the story, being the goddess of those parts, and singularly fond of their scenery and productions, the Latin poets, in after-ages, transformed her adventures according to their fashion, making her a goddess of mythology, and giving her a name after her beloved fruits. Her real name was Miss Appleton. I shall therefore waive that matter once for all; and, retaining only the appellation which poetry has rendered so pleasant, proceed with the true story.

Pomona was a beauty, like her name, all fruit and bloom. She was a ruddy brunette, luxuriant without grossness; and had a spring in her step, like apples dancing on a bough. (I'd put all this into verse, to which it has a natural tendency; but I have'nt time.) It was no poetical figure to say of her, that her lips were cherries, and her cheeks a peach. Her locks, in clusters about her face, trembled heavily as she walked; the colour called Pomonagreen was named after her favourite dress. Sometimes in her clothes she imitated one kind of fruit and sometimes another, philosophizing in a pretty poetical manner on the common nature of things, and saying there was more in the similes of her lovers than they suspected. Her dress now resembled a burst of white blossoms, and now of red; but her favourite one was green, both coat and boddice, from which her beautiful face looked forth like a bud. To see her tending the trees in her orchard (for she would work herself, and sing all the while like a milk-maid)—to see her, I say, tending the fruit-trees, never caring for letting her boddice slip a little off her shoulders, and turning away now and then to look up at a bird, when her lips would glance in the sunshine like cherries bedewed, such a sight, you may imagine, was not to be had everywhere. The young clowns would get up in the trees for a glimpse of her, over the garden wall; and swear she was like an angel in Paradise.

Everybody was in love with her. The squire was in love with her; the attorney was in love; the parson was particularly in love.