The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-02 00:00:00

AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE.

Mr. Ainsworth heads the present Number with his
tale of the " Miser's Daughter," wherein we find an
animated account of the proceedings of a Jacobin
Club, who are surprised in the midst of their discus-
sions, by the abrupt entrance of a party of Grenadiers,
sent out to arrest them. The escape of the would-be
conspirators over the roofs of the adjoining houses, is
very spiritedly described ; and the conspirators them-
selves are well pourtraved, with the single exception
of a formal, pedantic old Baronet, Sir Norfolk Sains-
bury, whose conversation, abounding to excess in hard,
learned phrases, is most ridiculously caricatured.
" Beauty and Time," is a fanciful little allegory from
the pen of Miss Paldoe, whose powers of versification
are by no means of an ordinary character. The
" Russian Prince," is a passable story, whose scene is
laid in Oxford. " Legends of the Monts-Dores," are
by Miss Costello. They are told with much earnest-
ness and simplicity, and the descriptive touches inter-
spersed through them, greatly assist their effect.
" The Murder Prevented," is a rhymed narrative, the
lines of which halt a little in places. The serious por-
tions are by far the best, for the humour ap-
pears forced, and pumped up as if with pro-
digious effort. An " Exhibition Gossip," is a
series of brief, off-hand critical notices of some of the-
more remarkable paintings in the present exhibition.
Most- of the remarks are shrewd and pertinent, but
Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh overrates, we think,
the merits of 'Maclise's painting of Hamlet. It is
clever, and the drawing is good ; but the countenance
of Hamlet is absurdly exaggerated, and as for the
King, he is a wretched failure, without expression,
force, or dignity. We perfectly agree with the
critic's strictures on Turner's pictures, whose: ge-
nius seems of late to have fallen into a state of torpor
or dotage ; yet, because he is an R.A., his inexpli-
cable daubs are all hung in the most conspicuous
places, while others of infinitely greater excellence
are placed in such obscure positions that it is scarcely
possible they can catch the spectator's eye. " People
Who Haven't Time" is an ingenious little essay,
containing several miniature sketches from life. here
is one, the truth of which will be obyious to every
reader who possesses the slightest facultiei of
observation :—" Hairbrain is always in a hurry,
and always too late. Ile has never yet
found sufficient time to complete anything he
undertook to do. Life is just long enough to allow
of a beginning; and to break off in the middle is his
destiny. He never seems to lose a minute ; he would
turn every moment to account, yet he never has a
single instant at his command. Life has no pauses for
him ; he talks, reads in breathless haste, without the
slightest reference to punctuation, and would not
stay while he could count one, even at a full stop.
He has no patience with the rests in music, and
which have called out in the pit, to Garrick delivering
the soliloquy, to 'get on.' He is the most honest
fellow in the world, but he once borrowed fifty
pounds, and has never had time to return it. Ex-
istence is too short, he argues, to allow any man to
premise and to perform too." The " joiner and his
Mates" is a translation from a German poem. We
cannot vouch for its accuracy, being unacquainted
with the original, but it reads off with spirit. " A
Gossip about Edward Alleyn," is a short biographi-
cal sketch of the founder of Dulwich College, from
which we select the following extract :
The sources, then, of Alleyn's wealth were numerous,
and like springs in the earth, from whence flow the fer-
tilizing streams, many of them lay out of sight, and were
unknown to his contemporaries. He trafficked in dogs,
and bulls, and bears, and kept itinerant showmen to
traverse the provinces, and bring him in the profits of
their exhibitions. He was himself an exhibitor, in like
manner, at Paris Garden, and baited a lion before King
James in the Tower, with three dogs. He lent out
money by way of annuities, and upon interest. He specu-
lated to an unprecedented extent in theatres, possessed
inns and houses in different parts of the town, and was
an actor to boot, and a dealer in the literature of the
drama (which he evidently followed as any equally
literally-minded man would any common trade), in his
managerial capacity. Yet even all this fortunate com-
bination of speculations would scarcely have stood him
in so much profit, if he had not had a peculiar genius
for procreating money. He never lost an opportunity of
turning the merest trifle to account. This sense of gain
was perpetually present to him.
knew that what
wa,s saved was gamed; and he suffered nothing to go to
waste. Ho was always getting his theatrical dresses
mended, or his 1:105° dyed; and he used to write copies

of his h tiers, or other privaie memoranda, on the backs
of any scraps of pap,: that had already been um d to
some other purpose, and that were thus 'made to do
double duty. He had the keen and subtle instinct of
all money-p. t ers, and did not suffer external appearanc3
'to keep pace with the progress of his fortune, but pru-
dently restrained himself all along within the same
cautious and economical habits that marked his outset.
The original nature of the grub still inspired him in that
advanced state of being which the entomologists call the
imago form. Ile never left the old house on the Bank-
side throughout his entire career, until he settled filially
in the manor-house at Dulwich, where he died. He kept
close on the one spot, where he made his money, still
accumulating more sand more, until the time came for
his avatar amongst the groves and gipsies of Norwood.
Such a man was sure of distinguished honours in his
parish. lie was rated to the poor at the highest rate
that was paid by anybody in Southwark—namely, six-
pence per week; and he served the office of church-
warden. But it is a great comfort to know that Shak-
speare was also rated in the same place, at the same
time, at the same amount, so that he had at least as good
a house as Alleyn; although his poetical nature ren-
dered him so far anti-parochial, that it does not appear
ho ever served the office of churchwarden.
" There was no intercourse between Shakspeare and
Alleyn. They lived near. each other, but were as far
apart in spirit as summer and winter. All that is knOwn
of private visiting between them or their families, is,
that during Alleyn's absence in the country, immediately
after his marriage, Shakspeare called upon Mrs. Alleyn
to tell her that he was not zequainted with a certain
Mr. Chaloner, who wanted to borrow 101. from her, and
who was rogue enough to pretend that he was known to
her husband and to Shakspeure. This was a simple act
of neighbourly courtesy. Shakspeare had heard that
the fellow was an impostor, and he said as much, and
was glad Mrs. Alleyn did not lend the money.
"Like almost all men who make fortunes as Alle3 n
did, he was of a litigious disposition, and constantly in-
volved in disputes and law-suits. On such occasions, he
generally contrived to throw the onus upon his oppo-
nents, so as to make it appear, if possible, that they
broke the peace, and not he. He rarely commenced an
action, but he reduced the circumstances at issue to such
an extremity, that his opponent was compelled to begin,
and to incur the initial expenses, or abandon his claims.
Alleyn was on the 'vantage-ground of capital, and knew
it. He could afford to wait, and starve the enemy into
coinpliance. In all his money quarrels (and he does not
appear to have had any other, for he was vulnerable only
on the ono spot), hiS active subtlety was visible through
every articulation of the argument. His guards and
feints were full of inve.stions and adroitness. He always
anticipdted the defence or assertions of his antagonists,
which suggests an ill-natured suspicion as to how he
came to know them so well beforehand. He always
seemed to apprehend, when he was recovering a debt,
that his opponent would plead having already paid it,
but, thoughtlessly, without getting a receipt ; and when
others were recovering debts from him, he put them
upon the proof of th obligation, anticipating, at the
same time, that they might possibly allege that they had
foolishly suffered the obligation to be incurred, without
obtaining an acknowledgment in writing. Align was,
in all human truth, what is called a hard, honest man ;
but his honesty had a very ugly body-guard in his
sharp practice."'