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.

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.
ANNE.
GEORGE I.

GEORGE II.

GEORGE III.

GEORGE IV.

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.

The peasantry in their smock-frocks, old and young, were all in love. You never saw such a loving place in your life; yet somehow or other the women were not jealous, nor fared the worse. The people only seemed to have grown the kinder. Their hearts overflowed to all about them. Such toasts at the great house! The Squire's name was Payne, which afterwards came to be called Pan. Pan, Payne (Paynim), Pagan, a villager. The race was so numerous, that country-gentlemen obtained the name of Paynim in general, as distinguished from the nobility; a circumstance which has not escaped the learning of Milton:

"Both Paynim and the Peers."

Silenus was Cy or Cymon Lenox, the host of the Tun, a fat merry old fellow, renowned in the song as Old Sir Cymon the King. He was in love too. All the Satyrs, or rude wits of the neighbourhood, and all the Fauns, or softer-spoken fellows,— none of them escaped. There was also a Quaker gentleman, I forget his name, who made himself conspicuous. Pomona confessed to herself that he had merit; but it was so unaccompanied with anything of the ornamental or intellectual, that she could not put up with him. Indeed, though she was of a loving nature, and had every other reason to wish herself settled, (for she was an heiress and an orphan), she could not find it in her heart to respond to any of the rude multitude around her; which at last occasioned such impatience in them, and uneasiness to herself, that she was fain to keep close at home, and avoid the lanes and country assemblies for fear of being carried off. It was then that the clowns used to mount the trees outside her garden wall to get a sight of her.

Pomona wrote to a cousin she had in town, of the name of Cerintha.-"Oh, my dear Cerintha, what am I to do! I could laugh while I say it, though the tears positively come into my eyes; but it is a sad thing to be an heiress with ten thousand a-year, and one's guardian just dead. Nobody will let me alone. And the worst of it is, that while the rich animals that pester me, disgust one with talking about their rent-rolls, the younger brothers force me to be suspicious of their views upon mine. I could throw all my money