IN presenting his Whims and Oddities to the Public, It happens to most persons, in occasional lively moments, At a future time, the Press may be troubled with some decidedly humorous; but a gentleman cannot always be breathing his comic vein. It will be seen, from the illustrations of the present work, that the Inventor is no artist ;-in fact, he was never "meant to draw"-any more than the tape-tied curtains mentioned by Mr Pope. Those who look at his designs, with Ovid's Love of Art, will therefore be disappointed; his sketches are as rude and artless to other sketches, as Ingram's rustic manufacture to the polished chair. The designer is quite aware of their defects: but when Raphael has bestowed seven odd legs upon four Apostles, and Fuseli has stuck in a great goggle head without an owner;-when Michael Angelo has set on a foot the wrong way, and Hogarth has painted in defiance of all the laws of nature and perspective, he does hope that his own little enormities may be forgiven-that his sketches may look interesting, like Lord Byron's Sleeper,"with all their errors." Such as they are, the Author resigns his pen-and-ink fancies to the public eye. He has more designs in the wood; and if the present sample should be relished, he will cut more, and come again, according to the proverb, with a New Series. London, 1826. WHIMS AND ODDITIES. First Series. MORAL REFLECTIONS ON THE CROSS OF ST PAUL'S. I. goes HE man that pays his pence, and Women and men : The world is all beneath his ken, He sits above the Ball, He seems on Mount Olympus' top, Among the Gods, by Jupiter! and lets drop On mortal crowds. II. Seen from these skies, How small those emmets in our eyes! |