LADY MORGAN'S BOUDOIR.*

LITERARY SPECTATOR.

LADY MORGAN'S boudoir is about the very last room in Dublin we should care to enter. Her book is a fair specimen of what we might expect to meet with in the conversation of its proprietor ; a lady in whom natural talent of a charming and peculiar kind is overgrown with affectation of every odious sort—affectation of gentility, fashion, learning, influence, taste—affectation of liberalism, of infidelity, in short, of every thing that is supposed to indicate superiority of intel- lect and character. Where Lady MORGAN confines herself to the sketches whether of humour or fancy in her works of fiction, we know no female writer who is superior to her in her line. When she com- mences- philosopher and politician, the disgust that her half-informed impertinence excites in our gentle breasts, would lead us to forgive even the bitter attacks of the Quarterly Review. In spite of a vast infusion of affected sprightliness, worse or duller books were never -written than France and Italy ; and yet more charming recollections we do not entertain of any works of fiction than of sketches and scenes in her novels, down from Glorvina to Belinda Taafe. As might be expected, the Boudoir, or in other words, Lady MOR- GAN'S Commonplace Book, contains much more of her essay and anecdote writing than of inVentions of the romantic description ; for which reason we are disposed to estimate it at a very low value. She informs us that it was not written for publication,—that Mr. COLBURN accidentally saw her packing it up in a trunk ; and that, with his ordi- nary perspicuity of vision, he perceived on the back of it that it was a taking MS. After a short parley, he ran away with it to the printer ; and so, naturally enough, without any previous intention on her part, it got published. Unluckily, however, the Boudoir contains far too much about herself to be written for private inspection ; for where she does not talk politics or philosophy, she speaks of herself versus the critics in such a way as leaves no doubt of the tribunal to which she is

appealing. '

The Boudoir is amusing in this respect to the curious observer—he may count the many outlets which the ingenuity of an authoress can discover for the display of her vanity. Self is here apropos to every thing. Sometimes she contrives to laugh at herself for the sake of the opportunity it affords ; sometimes she only hints at herself ; sometimes she speaks of herself, as it were solely for the illustration of a fact or a scene ; she is at one time incidental, at another essential, at another sole in the picture she is drawing,—all with one view, that she may place herself well before an admiring audience. So intense a consci- ousness surely never tormented human being—if indeed it he a tor- ment. By the complacency of her expression, when she herself is on the lapis, we should augur considerable self-satisfaction; and yet the nature of satisfaction is to be quiet.

Lady MORGAN, in her attacks upon illiberals and pietists, is most of all severe upon her critics, as is natural enough ; but we least of all expected an attack upon Mr. HAZLITT for his article on her Salrator Rosa in the Edinburgh Review. We have always considered that that paper was unwarrantably indulgent. The feelings of Lady MORGAN, however, prove, what we had reason to know before, that an author can bear nothing but downright fulsome praise ; an objection must not be hinted even for the sake of decency ; no criticisms can please

the author written in the public papers by his publisher. Pti _ nave ouserved enough of the nature of this weakness in writers, to believe that the authors, though they alone, see no exaggeration in the bookseller's puffs. This is a truth that has been absolutely forced upon us by long experience. Num- berless commonplaces lie a dead letter upon the timid until they are animated by the long recurrence of facts, when it appears that the truth

• The Book of the Boudoir. By Lady Morgan. 2-17015. London, 1825. Colhurn. only has been known in the form of words. An authors vanity is one of these commonplaces, and yet no one really understands it who has not been a reviewer.

In the instance before us, Lady MORGAN, in her abuse of HAZLITT, assumes the very same style and method which in Blackwood's Maga.. zinc she would condemn as something which .placed the writer out of the pale of civilization. She calls him a certain Cockney Liberal, the Lycurgus of Bow Bells, and the Solon of the Poultry ; she speaks of her book being cut up by the top sawyer ; she says her Salvator Rosa was " cut and come again" to the London journeyman ; and she al- leges, as a sort of by-accusation, that her reviewer knows nothing of the interior of Devonshire-house. Nevertheless he applied himself to the job; and then she proceeds to tell a tale of Mr. HAZLITT, after having written the critique, carrying it to Mr. COLBURN for his ap- probation, on the ground that he, HAZLITT, being on CoLBnRNs list of " My authors,' and she, Lady MoaoAst, being the " queen bee of that gentleman's authorical hive," there " was no knowing how it might be taken." The " queen-bee" happened to call while the jour- neyman was showing his work ; and she followed the servant " suffi- ciently close into the room to catch a glimpse of the long leg and ride- vant white stocking of the reviewer, in his escape by another door." Lady MORGAN then proceeds in her dialogue with the publisher ; re- presenting him in a very ridiculous light. We are astonished that any man should set his imprimatur to such a, caricature : Mr. COLBUILN must be a liberal publisher indeed, and undoubtedly deserves his repu- tation.

So much for the article " My Reviewers." There are better and less offensive things in the work ; among which we may mention " Mr. Owen's Tunic,"—a very amusing caricature of that eccentric indi- vidual. In his mania for doing good, he had invented a costume which it appeared to him richly deserved to be honoured by a general adop- tion : at his instance, for the sake of making a good lion for an evening party, she suspended it in her drawing-room; and the description of the circumstance is laughable.

MR. OWEN'S TUNIC.

"Talking the other day of small rooms and glaring lights, where all is in evidence, I made them my excuse for indulging in a tendency to make up my coterie of pleasant men and pretty women, and to keep out the twaddles of both sexes, for which I am much abused. It is not long since a philosophical friend of mine, one always deeply occupied in promoting the highest and best interests of society, by perfecting science in its most sublime and useful di. rections, called on me, and found me most frivolously, but earnestly, em-

ployed in filling up cards for a very small party. I am come,' he said, to ask a favour' I started,: for, delighted as at all times I am to improve my society, by enlisting him amongst its members, I was yet terribly afraid he was going to ask leave to bring with him some of those young disciples, who flock to his class from all parts of Europe, but who (unless one could ticket them) do not answer quite so well for a fashionable party, as for a laboratory or a dissecting-room. I was really, therefore, never more relieved,- than when I found it was not a card for my soiree he wanted, but only my head, literally and truly my head ;—that is, be it understood, when the commodity should no longer be of use to its owner. I readily gave him a post-obit on the only productive estate I ever possessed, delighted to save my at home' even at so capital an expense. " It would, however, be a mistake, to accuse me of aristocratical leanings with respect to society. Something I mdst have—worth, wit, rank, fashion, beauty, notoriety, or an old friend. I will take even a diamond necklace, or an hussar suit of regimentals, value one hundred pounds, with or without the wearer : but I do not want what musical cognoscenti call perruque;' because I have no spare space to fill up, no corners tocram, like people who have large houses. " A propos to an untenanted uniform and an unappropriated necklace— by way of lion, I once hung up on the divisions of my bookcase a little tunic; and it made the ,frais of my party, by giving rise to an infinity of fun, and some philosophical, though humorous, conversation. On the previous morning, the most benevolent, amiable, and sanguine of all philanthropists called on me, with a countenance full of some new scheme of beneficence and utility. It was Mr. Owen, of New Lanark, whose visits are always welcome in Kildare-street, though so few and far between.' " As soon as we had sunk into our arm-chairs, and put our feet on the fen- der, and before we had got on the usual topics of parallelograms and per- fectibility, New Lanark and a new social system, he began- " ' My dear Lady Morgan, you are to have a party to-night' " To be sure, my de.r Mr. Owen, and one made expressly for yourself. You are my lion : I hope you don't mean to jilt me'

" By no means ; but I have brought you a better lion than I could prove. " I doubt that ; but who is lie ? where is he ?'

" In my pocket.'

" You don't say so : is it alive?'

" Here it is,' said Mr. Owen, smiling; and drawing forth a little parcel, he unfolded and held up a canvas tunic, or chemise, trimmed with red tape. " I want you,' he added, 'to assist me in bringinc-p into fashion this true costume of nature's dictation, the only one that man should wear.'

" But woman, my dear Mr. Owen ?'

" Or woman either, my dear lady.'

" Consider, Mr. Owen, the olimate 1' " Your face does not suffer from it' " But then again, the decencies?'

" The decencies, as you call them, Lady M—, are conventional—they were not thought of some years ago, when you were all dressed in the adhe- sive draperies of antiquity, like that beautiful group on your chimney-piece. You see there the children of Niobe wore no more voluminous garments than my tunic,—that lovely child, for instance, which Niobe is endeavouring to save from the shafts of Apollo. And vet none of your fine gentlemen or ladies are shocked by the definition of "forms, which have ever been the in- spiration of art. I assure you I have already got several ladies to try this tunic on—'

" Oh ! Mr. Owen ! ! !'

" On their little boys, Lady Morgan ; and if I could only induce you to try it—' Me, my dear Mr. Owen ! You surely cannot suppose—' " I don't ask you to weer it, Lady M— : all I beg for the present, is, that you will give it a trial, by showing it off at your party to-night—recom- mend it—puff it oil !' " Quilts pour la pear, I promi,ed to do so, to the utmost of my appraising abilities; and so we suspended the little chemise tram the centrc of my book- case, under a. bust of the Apollo, " ' There !' said Mr. Owen, looking rapturously at the little model dress of future perfectibility, there it is worthily placed ! Such were the free vest- ments, that, leaving the limbs of the Greek athlete unrestrained, produced those noble forms, which supplied models for the Apollo of Belvedere' " It is certainly placed to great advantage, Mr. Owen' I replied with a sigh ; but it gives my pretty library very much the look of Rag-fair, or a back parlour in Monmouth-street.'

" My dear Madam,' he replied, emphatically, where the human race is to be benefited, no sacrifice is too great' And this sentiment, which is the governing principle of Mr. Owen's life, may serve for his epigraph.

"The little tunic, however, had a great success, and merited the well-known eulogium of Tam O'Shanter to a similar garment—

Weil loup'd, catty sark."