Star.
London, England, 1815-12-19 00:00:00


• :ye
1.

PROLOGUE
TO THE 111 W COMEDY n
or "SMILES AND TEARS."
WRITTEN IT lOHN TAYLOR, RIM.

SPAKEN IV MR. AISOTT,

If, as our Drama's Sov'reign Lord proclaims,
The scenic art to copy Nature aims.
To *hew the Times their manners as they pass,
And Characters reflect as iu a glass,
To paint 'he world in all its mode: strife,
The gay and dread vleissicodes of life;
Here, Via. in .plendour, Virtue bent to earth,
Herr pining Want, and here luxurious Mirth,
Here airy Fa.lntm, and her sandy shows,
Here Maniac:: sportive mid the worst of woes,
Then must the Comic Muse front nature stray,
When laughter kolds an undivided sway ;
For such, alas! are all the scenes around,
And where can Pleasure unalloy'd be found!
Still Man must struggle with a cheipter'd fate,
Whate'er his climate, and whateser his state;
Hence if to-night our Author should appear,
'l'o deviate rashly front his proper sphere;
If be suspend the ludicrous and gay,
And at the shrine of Pity homage pay,
Yet Truth and Reason will his cause defend,
And spite of formal custom herd his end.
Not from the Drama seek for barren joy,
Which, to the mind well-balanc'd soots will cloy;
But In the words of en illustrious Sage,
Whose works shall moralise each future age,
All lighter feelings of the heart forego,
Fur useful mirth and salutary woe!

The Editor of a Weekly Paper, in announcing the
happy accoucheneent of Lady Byron, who has brought
her affectionate husband a daughter, congratulates tne
Noble Bard on this addition to his works. The Poets
of the present day seem more likely to continue their
name in this manner, as well as the other, than most
of their predecessors ; for it is a remarkable thing,
which he does not remember ever to have seen noticed,
that hardly any of the tribe on record have left pos.
terity. Scarcely a single ancient poets, from all that can
be gathered, had children.—Homer none—Anacreon
none ---Pindar n,,ne=-Theocritus, /Eschylus, Euri-
pides, Meander, Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Tibullus,
I'ropertius, Lucan, Lucretius, none of them any.
It appears to have been the same, as far as posterity
at least was concerned, with the Italian Poets.—
Dante had none; Tasso had none; Ariosto and
Tetrarch had natural children—the latter a son who
plagued him prodigiously, but the race has failed.—
Then for our great countrymen, their posterity seems
to have failed in the second or third generation.—
Chaucer's did; so did Shakspeare's, so did Milton's.
Pope, Dryden, Young, Gray, Collins, Shenstone,
Lord Surrey, Ben Jonson, Carew, Denham, Sandys,
Waller, Beaumont and Fletcher, Aikeuside, Chur-
chill, Goldsmith, Otway, Garth, Parnell, Prior,
Congreve, Gay, Thomson, Rochester, Butler, Cow.'
per, rec. &c.—none of them children. The only
families even that have maintained their name col-
laterally are the Paraells and Drydens—both of
them, by the way, Baronets. It is suspected, how-
ever, we believe, that there may be descendants
living of one Poet, whose name would make up for a
thousand ;—we mean Spenser. A Syliyanur Spenser,
his grandson, in the time of Steele and Addison,
who interested themselves for him, obtained from
Government a part of the Po.t's lands, which had
been lost during the troubles in Ireland. The fami-
lies of the living Poets, we trust, will be more for-
tun.,te. All of them, we believe, of any eminence,
have got children—Campbell, Coleridge, Moore,
Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, and now Byron. Mr.
Moore lost a little girl a short time since, but he h4s
two others ; and there is something in the idea of. a
poet's d.thter, which carries a recommendation with
it beyond even the usual charm of the sex. These
also are the fines, of titles; and Lord Byron .will ag.
grandize his posterity more by his name in the re-
public of letters, than if he had gathered about it all
the ribbons and coronets in the bestowal of Courts.

BONV-STREET.—Yesterday several proprietors and
drivers of stage coaches were convicted for an ob-
struction in Piccadilly, on the complaint of Mr.
Dean, the Inspector of Nuisances, for the parish of
St. George, tianover.square.
William Smith was charged with stealing a baker's
basket full of bread, from the gate of Carlton-house.
The prisoner, although a young man, pleaded po-
verty and hunger as the cause, saying, he was not
able to get any work. In some degree he gave
proof of it, as he bad actually no breeches on.

MANSION Housa.—Yesterday, James Harris, Joseph
Weak, and Judah Pollock, underwent a final examina-
tion, charged on suspi:ion of breaking open the
dwelling house of Mr. Henry H.trt, of Garden-place,
Middlesex-street, and stealing from thence various
articles of furniture, looking-glasses, bedding, linen,
several rolls of carpeting, and a quantity of other
goods. They were fully committed for trial.

MURDER.—Saturday se'snight, about 7 o'clock,
Robert Parsons, a confidential servant of Mr. Med-
ftn d, stocking•maker, of Glastonbury, Somerset, on
his road to Wells, with a cart, was most savagely
murdered- by a fellow workman, who beat oat his
Oains with the bone of a horse's leg, and also cut his
throat. It is supposed the villain meant to rob the
deceased of the money with which he was entrusted
to pay his master's work people, but in which he was
disappointed. He soon after confessed the foul deed,
and has been since committed to Ilchester gaol
for trial.

A vessel is arrived in the Thames from New South
Wales, after an extraordinary short passage of less
than five months. A dispute is said to have arisen
between the Governor and Vet- Gentlemen at the
head of the judicial department, which has occasioned
a suspension of the judicial business, till the matter
in question shall be decided by fresh instructions
from home. The point At. issue is, whether or not
convict Attornies, transported to the settlement in
virtue of legal sentences passed for crimes proved to
have been committed by them at home, shall be al.
lowed to practice professionally in the Colonial Courts.
The Governor, it is said, insists upon ibis professional
practice on behalf of several Attornies so circum-
stanced, among whom is Crossley. The head of the.
judicial department, it is said, refuses the privilege,
on the around that the dignity and purity of British
justice would not be likely to be duly sustained in
such hands; and that, moreover, there were in the
settlement Attornies, regularly appointed from home
by his Majesty's Government, fully competent to the
business, with whose offices the association of the
convict Anomie: in the practice would be an im-
proper interference.