exclaims in her anguish, "Je percerai le cœur que je n'ai pu toucher."

There is a delightful paper by Pope, again, in the Guardian, wherein, with his lighter vein of wit, he satirizes the mere "mechanical rules" of poetry manufacture, and gives "a receipt for making an epic poem," after the style of a cookery-book. He promises to show how "epic poems may be made without a genius- nay, even without learning and much reading;" and which, he says, “must necessarily be of great use to all those poets who confess they never read, and of whom the world is convinced they never learn." He wittily proceeds:

"What Molière observes of making a dinner that any man can do it with money, and if a professed cook cannot without, he has his art for nothing-the same may be said of making a poem; it is easily brought about by him that has a genius; but the skill lies in doing it without one."

The "recipe," admirable as it is, will not, on account of its length, allow of quotation; but it can be read at full in No. 78 of the Guardian, and here these scraps may serve for a taste of it: After describing how to prepare the "fable," the " argument," the "hero," the "machinery" of your "epic," he proceeds to the "descriptions." For instance: "For a tempest, take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster, and Boreas, and cast them together in one verse.'

[Una Eurusque, Notusque ruunt, creberque procellis Afri- Virgil.]

cus.

"Add to these, of rain, lightning, and thunder (the loudest you can), quantum sufficit. Mix your clouds and billows well together until they foam, and thicken your description here and there with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head before you set it a blowing." "For a battle, pick a large quantity of images and descriptions from Homer's Iliad,' with a spice or two from Virgil; and if there remain any overplus, you may lay them by for a skirmish. Season it well with similes, and it will make an excellent battle." "For the moral and allegory, these you may extract out of the 'fable' afterwards at your leisure. Be sure you strain them sufficiently."

I have purposely avoided allusion to the Spectator, in my present reference to the writings of Steele and Addison, because that delightful collection of essays formed an important feature in my previous remarks upon those two eminently brilliant wits. The Spectator succeeded the Tatler, and the Guardian was, in effect, no more than a continuation of the Spectator, under another name. Steele having had a quarrel with his bookseller, Tonson, abruptly concluded the Guardian, and commenced the Englishman, which he called "A Sequel to the Guardian." He afterwards originated and conducted a multitude of other works of a similar character; the mere titles of the books that Steele projected, as well as those which he actually undertook, would form a considerable list. His activity of invention in this direction only was extraordinary. In addition to the periodicals already named, we have the Spinster, the Reader, the Plebeian the Lover, the Tea-table, the Town-talk, the Examiner, the Connoisseur and the Theatre. It is in the last-named publication that he pays that honorable and affectionate tribute to the memory of his wife, whom he styles "the best woman that ever man had;" and he adds that "she frequently lamented and pined at his neglect of himself." Steele was a thoughtless and unthrifty man, so that his wife, being a true friend to him, and probably his monitor (what Charles Lamb used to say of his sister - his "second conscience,"), Lady Steele obtained the character among his associates of being "cold and penurious." The prudent partners of extravagant husbands must expect to be called "stingy," - it is the eulogy of squanderers. Steele, however, was not the mere talker about matrimonial interchanges of little kind actions; some of his letters to his wife — and some of them consisting of two or three lines only-express an unaffected and exquisite tenderness of sentiment; in short, with all his errors, and they were errors of the head alone,- Steele was as lovable as a man as he was refined as a wit.

The next eminent writer to be named in the list of our essayists is Dr. Johnson; and in doing so the question might be started whether the great lexicographer and burly moralist can be said to take any station among the humorous writers of England. Johnson, however, was not deficient in a certain comic vein of a peculiar cast; it was satiric, austere, and ponderous. Its freaks and sallies were elephantic. He himself compared the intellect of a genius to the trunk of that animal which "could knock down a man, and pick up a pin." The illustration was unfortunate as applied to his own mental conformation; for so little could he descend to the livelier and lighter graces of intellectual exercise, that one could hardly point to a more monographic and mannered style than his own in the whole range of our literature. He could, doubtless, have "knocked down the man" with his trunk, but it would have "picked up the pin " like a leg of beef. He was always magniloquent and unwieldy; had he had to describe the machinery of the universe, or to write a receipt for pickling cabbage, the phraseology would have been the same. The finer phase of Johnson's character evidently appears in his social and conversational hours, as we gather from that very industrious short-hand report of his commonest sayings and doings by Boswell.

Much has been said of Johnson's greatness and independence of soul; and Mr. Carlyle has placed him in his temple of heroes, laying frequent and much stress upon his magnanimous indignation in hurling out a pair of new shoes that some kind-hearted and (be it observed) anonymous worshipper had placed at his chamber door. He scorned the eleemosynary pair of shoes, but his " "independence did not extend to the consistency of rejecting a pension from the whole country. I can perceive no difference between receiving alms from one man and from one million of men; and rather would I receive, upon principle, from the unknown one, than from the ostentatiously bounteous million. When the pension was announced to him he acknowledged the boon in the following speech: "The English language is incapable of expressing my sentiments upon the occasion; I must refer to the French, I am accablé with his Majesty's bounty." Can he have intended this for irony? He, however, accepted the gratuity. Nevertheless, in many very many-points of his character, Johnson was a grand fellow, grand in some of his conceptions, grand in his social emotions. He was constant and steady to those whom he loved. There was a sort of intellectual conjugality in his friendship: he would satirize and even scourge those whom he esteemed; but to no one else would he allow the same privilege. Both Goldsmith and Garrick were subject to his tremendous sarcasms; but in their absence he was their champion and eulogist. Of Goldsmith especially he would bear glowing testimony to his fine qualities, both of head and heart. Mr. Forster has recorded some noble eulogies of Goldsmith's talent from the conversations of Johnson. And not the least grand feature in the Doctor's character is the strenuous and honest way in which he went on for years, steadily and sturdily, through huge obstacles, carving out and raising the monument of his own fame and fortune. Here, indeed, he was the honorable, the magnanimous, the truly "independent" man; and, for an example of his fearless and sturdy independence of soul, it is needful only to refer to his celebrated letter, addressed to Lord Chesterfield, when his great labor of the " Dictionary was completed and made public; in which he states that his lordly patron had neglected him during the progress of the work; but when he found that it was really finished, he thought to secure the dedication of it to himself by launching two "little cock-boat puffs" (as Johnson called them), announcing the approaching advent of the great undertaking. Johnson's sarcasm upon this occasion was sufficiently formidable to produce an explanation, if not a defence, on the part of the nobleman, and this has been attempted by an editor of Boswell's life of the Doctor; it has, therefore, been thought sufficient for this purpose to state that the Earl was so conscious of the wilfulness of the Doctor's misstatement, that he laid the public letter upon his own drawing-room

table, assuming that act to be sufficient to clear his conduct in the mind of every visitor who might read it. The act was doubtless a very ingenious one, and perfectly aristocratic in character; but we are to suppose that the general and public reader of the original charge would never suppose for a moment that Dr. Johnson would connect fierce and so formidable a statement, which, from beginning to end, would be an elaborate and a positive falsehood. The future reader of the whole transaction will therefore form his own opinion of it.

SO

The Idler, which is perhaps the least known of his periodical essays, at all events less than the Rambler, was written professedly in the manner of the Spectator. But it was hardly to be expected that the pen of the lofty and sonorous Doctor could be wielded with the ease and lightness so peculiarly characteristic of Steele and Addison in this walk of literature. There is accordingly a stiffness in the Idler's slip-shod moods; a consciousness in his assumed unconcern; while his playfulness is uncouth and grim. Among the papers, however, of this periodical, is one of a somewhat pleasant cast, upon the preparations for war that were then making, and the encampment of the troops "in the pathless deserts of the Isle of Wight." The Idler condoles with the "two hundred thousand ladies that are thus left to languish in distress, who (he says) in the absence of these warriors, must run to sales and auctions without an attendant; sit at the play without a critic to direct their opinion; buy their fans by their own judgment; dispose shells by their own invention; walk in the Mall without a gallant; go to the gardens without a protector; and shuffle cards with vain impatience, for want of a fourth to complete the party." "Of these ladies, some (he says) have lap-dogs, and some monkeys; but they are unsatisfactory companions. Many useful offices are performed by men in scarlet, to which neither dog nor monkey has adequate abilities. A parrot, indeed, is as fine as a colonel; and, if he has been much used to good company, is not wholly without conversation; but a parrot, after all, is a poor little creature, and has neither sword nor shoulder-knot, can neither dance, nor play at cards." When Johnson and Garrick were once introduced to a person who was reported to have great conversational powers, and had given a detailed specimen of his talent, the lively actor turned to his companion's ear, and imparted the following condensed criticism upon what they had heard: "Flabby, I think; flabby!" I fear that the same judgment must be passed upon the specimen just produced of the Doctor's humor. And here is a sample of the true Johnsonian style, from another paper in the Idler, wherein he maintains that the "qualities requisite to conversation are very exactly represented by a bowl of punch." The argument is conducted with his own portentous swing of diction. Thus, he tells us, that "acids unmixed will distort the face, and torture the palate;" that "the taste of sugar is generally pleasing, but it cannot long be eaten by itself!" And he concludes with the following peroration :—

--

"He only will please long who, by tempering the acidity of satire with the sugar of civility, and allaying the heat of wit with the frigidity of humble chat, can make the true punch of conversation; and as that punch can be drunk in the greatest quantity which has the largest proportion of water, so that companion will be the oftenest welcome whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness and unenvied insipidity!"

Surely Poole's parody upon the Johnsonian style, in the notes to his "Hamlet" travesty, was no caricature; but one would ask, which of our magazine editors of the present day would accept, and pay for, the above article, coming from an unknown writer?

We are to speak of Goldsmith, sincere Oliver Goldsmith, in the character of an essayist. Heretofore he has claimed our attention as an historian, a biographer, a naturalist, a poet, a dramatist, and writer of fiction. In the two last compartments of literature he shines to the greatest advantage, having taken his position among our classics as one of the elect. If any thing could prove the true test of genius under the cloud of prejudice, or say, of misappre

hension arising from misrepresentation, it would be the gradual and firm hold that the writings of this enchanting author have taken upon the affections of the civilized world, in the face of an insinuated contempt for his social character, and which produced an unrecognized influence upon that of the intellectual man. It is remarkable, that, in consequence of the stupid misconceptions by Boswell of Goldsmith's real nature and disposition, his talent has rarely been the subject of conversation, without the accompanying remark of his having been a very vain man, and a very weak man, - vain to a Narcissus-like admiration of his own person; and weak, even to envy, upon hearing a young lady praised for her beauty. And so the true character of Goldsmith has waited its time: "it could afford it," as Douglas Jerrold happily said; and it has now received retribution at the hands of Mr. Forster, in his ample biography of the man. I request emphatically to express my own individual thanks for the completion of this "labor of love," for such it has evidently been; and thereby for the justice rendered to the character and fame of a true genius, and an estimable being; for from my youth I have felt the necessity of the vindication that has at length been so fully and ably and gracefully fulfilled.

In the essays of Goldsmith, as in his "Citizen of the World" (which is but a series of lively essays, in another form, upon the national character, habits, and customs), the same unlabored fine sense is apparent in every page; the same shrewd perception of human nature in all its workings and petty chicaneries; the same sweet-tempered rebuke and raillery; the same toothless sarcasm; the same gentle wit and bland humor. What can be more lively and pleasant than his dialogue with the seaman who has lost a leg in the wars, and is deprived of assistance from his country, because the accident happened in a privateer's and not in the Government service: with his amusing and rational antipathy to our "national enemies,” as Christian rulers have called the French. "I hate the French (says Jack), because they are all slaves, and wear wooden shoes." The philosophy of fortitude, endurance, and cheerfulness in the midst of privation, so beautifully illustrated in the hero's own simple memoir, who, although his whole career has been a series of disaster, is merry and hopeful to the last. This is quite in the philosophy of Shakspeare.

66

"If I had had the good fortune (he concludes) to have lost my leg and use of my hand on board a king's ship, and not aboard a privateer, I should have been entitled to clothing and maintenance during the rest of my life; but that was not my chance: one man is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and another with a wooden ladle. However, blessed be God, I enjoy good health, and will forever love liberty and old England. Liberty, property, and old England forever. Huzza!"

And then succeeds one of Goldsmith's unostentatious little pieces of worldly wisdom:

:

"So saying, he limped off, leaving me in admiration of his intrepidity and content; nor could I avoid acknowledging that an habitual acquaintance with misery serves better than philosophy to teach us to despise it."

Again, in the conversation between the soldier, the porter, and the debtor, at the Counter-prison window, upon the prospect of an invasion from the French. The debtor's apprehension lest we lose our liberties; the porter's remark that the French are all slaves, and fit only to carry burthens; while the soldier's alarm is —

"Not so much for our liberties as for our religion. What will become of our religion, my lads? May the Devil sink me into flames (such was the solemnity of his adjuration) if the French should come over, but our religion would be utterly undone."

And so might be cited, from the little volume of his "Essays" alone, a hundred shrewd and lively and amiable passages and descriptions.

Again, and lastly, how thoroughly wise and practical (in the thick of its sprightly humor) is the moral at the end of his account of the friend, who, in his penury and destitution,

seeks in vain to borrow the sums which had been volunteered when he needed no assistance; and who ends in missing his aim even to be invited to a dinner that he wanted. There is something pathetic in the satiric truth and jesting that conclude this essay. It may appear trite to our ears; but many of Goldsmith's axioms have been re-fused and remodelled and re-applied, till they are like Old-World sayings. Few authors, indeed, have been more ruthlessly pillaged than Goldsmith was in his day. He was compelled to collect his essays, and subscribe his name to them, in order to prevent their being wholly and irredeemably claimed and possessed by mere marauders. In his preface to the collection he pleasantly excuses himself for the publication of papers so well known to the reading world:

"Most of these essays," he says, "have been regularly reprinted twice or thrice a year, and conveyed to the public through the channel of some engaging publication. If there be a pride in multiplied editions, I have seen some of my labors sixteen times reprinted, and claimed by different parents as their own. I have seen them flourished at the beginning with praise, and signed at the end with the names Philantos, Philalethes, Philalentheros, and Philanthropos. These gentlemen have kindly stood sponsors to my productions; and, to flatter me more, have always taken my errors on themselves."

This pleasantry has all the satiric grace of Steele or Addison. And here is the passage of half humorous, half pathetic advice that concludes his account of the man who could not compass an invitation to dinner:—

"O ye beggars of my acquaintance! whether in rags or lace, whether in Kent Street or the Mall, whether at the Smyrna or St. Giles's, might I be permitted to advise you as a friendnever seem to want the favor you solicit. Apply to every passion but human pity for redress: you may find permanent relief from vanity, from self-interest, or from avarice; but from compassion, never. The very eloquence of a poor man is disgusting... To ward off the gripe of poverty, you must pretend to be a stranger to her, and she will at least use you with ceremony. If you be caught dining upon a halfpenny porringer of pea-soup and potatoes, praise the wholesomeness of your frugal repast. You may observe that Dr. Cheyne has prescribed pease-broth. Hint that you are not one of those who are always making a deity of their bellies. If, again, you are obliged to wear flimsy stuff in the midst of winter, be the first to remark that stuffs are very much worn at Paris; or if there be found some irreparable defects in any part of your equipage, which cannot be concealed by all the arts of sitting cross-legged, coaxing or darning, say that neither you nor Samson Gideon were ever very fond of dress. . . . In short, however caught, never give in, but ascribe to the frugality of your disposition what others might be apt to attribute to the narrowness of your circumstances. To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise. Pride in the great is hateful; in the wise it is ridiculous; but beggarly pride is a rational vanity, which I have been taught to applaud and excuse."

And admirably has he illustrated the principle of this philosophy in the well-known account of that most amusing of all coxcombs and mendicant tuft-hunters, the inimitable little Beau Tibbs.

Goldsmith was a fine, warm-hearted, honest fellow; and the emotions of his heart are to be quite as much reverenced as the emotions of his head; and, of a surety, the results of the one are dependent upon the constitution of the other; they act in concert.

The cant phrase has been constantly applied to him (and has, in a former essay, been repeated), that "he was no man's enemy but his own; and, as Hazlitt well replied, "Then every man ought to have been his friend." In alluding to that truly fine writer, William Hazlitt, it will naturally be inferred that he should be introduced among our national "essayists;" and he stands, indeed, in the first rank with the greatest. But in this essay, forming one of the series upon "The Comic Writers of England," I could, with consistency, do little more than allude to him in his essay-character. Hazlitt was essentially a grave writer, possessing a metaphysical faculty of high order; also possessing a formidable power of contemptuous sar

casm, and at times displaying a lustrous feeling for, and effusion of, the poetical in his language. It has been objected to him that he was too prone to the paradox in his writings, a charge not groundless; but I think that upon almost every occasion of his using the paradox, he will be found both to prove his case and reconcile the apparent inconsistency. His "Table Talk," and other essays; his criticisms, dramatic and other lectures, have deservedly become standard classics; and he himself, in his public character, will live in the memory of posterity as being almost the only one of a knot of political out-and-out reformers, who to the last "held fast his integrity," — living and dying an honest, consistent lover and worshipper of liberty in the abstract.

They among my readers who happen not to have read Charles Lamb's two essays, the one upon "King Lear," and the other upon the " Genius of Hogarth," have yet to become acquainted with two among the most masterly compositions in this class of writing. They are to be read for their perfect comprehensiveness of the subjects; for their completeness of argument; for their refinement of taste; and for the choice and classic structure of the language. İ never knew Lamb, in conversation, fail to establish his position in an argument; and moreover, he was sure to attain his end by an unexpected and original train of thought. It was perfectly true what Hazlitt said of him, that whoever or how many soever might have been of the party, Lamb always said the wittiest and best thing of the evening. So in his written compositions, I could not name one of his contemporaries who would have been able to have treated the subjects he selected with more definitiveness of reasoning, more rareness and elegance of illustration, more novelty and delicacy of wit and humor; for the character of Lamb's wit and humor are quite as original as they are exquisite and true. Who could have surpassed him in that paper in the Elia series which is entitled " The Two Races of Men?" wherein he merges all classes and distinctions and varieties of the human animal into two master-races; and these he denominates "the borrowers and the lenders." "The human species (he says), according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend. To these original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, and red men. All the dwellers upon earth, 'Parthians and Medes and Elamites,' flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former (the borrower), which I choose to designate as the great race, is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The latter (the lenders) are born degraded. 'He shall serve his brethren.' There is something in the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious, contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of the borrower." The delicacy and polish of this satire is worthy of Addison in his richest vein; indeed, it is worthy of any wit, - it is worthy of Rabelais; and Rabelais has a wonderful chapter in commendation of borrowing: one of his arguments is, that the debtor has this advantage over the creditor, and the man of wealth with his heirs and his expectants, that the debtor is sure to have the prayers of all his creditors; because they take an intense interest in his existence and well-doing in the world. Not so the man of wealth, - the sooner he is out of it, the sooner others will be benefited. Lamb's portrait of one of the "great race" is sketched in his best manner. He says, "What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! what rosy gills! What a beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, taking no more thought than the lilies! What contempt for money! accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better than dross. What a liberal confounding of those pedantic distinctions of meum and tuum!... He is the true taxer, who calleth all the world up to be taxed;' and the distance is as vast between him and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it tribute-pittance at Jerusalem. His exactions, too, have such a cheerful, voluntary air! He

cometh to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season. .. He is the true Propontic, which never ebbeth ! - the sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand." If this be not wit, and of the first water, then are the terms convertible, and dulness has the ascendent. They have little perception and judgment who consider Lamb a mannered reflector of our old writers. He did live in the past confessedly he was a link in the golden chain of intellect that has descended from our Olympus; and he is one of the high conclave. Lamb thought like our great wits, but he thought also for himself; and he was a very original thinker, - so much so, that I know no one to whom I could strictly liken him, either in his sedate and grave moods, or in his wit and his humor. The choice and even fastidious delicacy of his fancy, his quickness of perception, the felicity and wisdom of his humor, all linked and glittering in sportive combination throughout his writings, are distinctly and implicitly

his own.

The least original of his compositions in point of manner, and perhaps the most artificial in style and sentiment (notwithstanding the beauty and gentleness of the machinery), is the "Rosamund Gray;" and he once, of his own accord, acknowledged to me that it was "affected in its construction, and that he wrote it in imitation of the sentimental school of Mackenzie."

One prominent characteristic of Lamb's mind consisted in an orthodox reverence for opinions and customs that have received ancestral sanction and respect. I never knew a more practical quietist than he. He disturbed no one's opinions where he thought them sincere, and he thwarted not the customs of his friends. It is not here inferred that he would refrain from a joke or a banter, but it would be a harmless one. Those whom he inclined to like (young people especially) he would try with sallies of satire; and, if they endured his ordeal with temper, they at once insured his friendly consideration. And what a "friend" he was to possess!-what frank and sincere advice! and what a sound and unerring judgment! For with all his living in the "past," and his remote associations with the Old World, Lamb had a social communion with the present. No one more truly sympathized with his species. He never chattered about sympathy, he acted. He allowed his infant school-mistress thirty pounds a year till her death. What millionist that ever existed dispensed the same proportion of his income to his mental nurse? Lamb had his reward here; for no man could have received more sincere respect and friendly affection than he. His grateful worshipper, Moxon, well and truly says of him, His very failings were such, that he was loved rather for them than in spite of them."

A worthy monument has been erected to his memory in the two last volumes of his life and letters. They ought to be known to all readers; for he there appears in a glory of unselfishness and magnanimity that of itself alone is sufficient to make one hopeful for human nature, in an age of speculative more than practical loving-kindness. Nothing but the divulging of Lamb's conduct towards his sister could have extenuated the publication of that awful catastrophe which befel her. We will not dwell upon the fact but to justify the recording of the sad event, on the ground that she most assuredly would have been the first to have sacrificed her own feelings upon the occasion, and in doing so have exalted the character and conduct of her brother.

The finest of Lamb's essays (after those already alluded to) are, "The New Year's Eve" "Mrs. Battle's Opinion of Whist," an exquisitely playful paper; "The Old and the New Schoolmaster," in which the touching description of the teacher's wife is from the pen of Mary Lamb; the essay upon "Imperfect Sympathies; " "Mackery End in Hertfordshire; "Grace before Meat," and which contains some of his finest and most varied thought; the description of "Some of the Old Actors;" that perfect one, "On the Acting of Munden," whose talent deserved such a recorder; and lastly, his most humorous and best known, the "Dissertation on Roast Pig." The mock gravity and quiet drollery in this remarkable paper has, I should suppose,

rarely been exceeded. How amusing the record of the infant dawn of the culinary art! - that the first discoveries of the glories of roast pork and of crackling should be traced to the burning down of a pigsty! And then the slow progress of human improvement, that houses were to be slightly built (for the sake of economy), in order that they might be fired when a pig was to be roasted; and lastly, the apotheosis upon the suckling when he is brought to table. "There is no flavor (says the eulogy) comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted crackling, as it is well called. The very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance with the adhesive oleaginous—oh, call it not fal!-but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it, the tender blossoming of fat, fat cropped in the bud, taken in the shoot, in the first innocence, the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food; the lean no lean, but a kind of animal manna, or rather fat and lean (if it must be so), so blended and running into each other that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance." The "Almanach des Gourmands" has no eloquence comparable with this. Apicius or Dartneuf, or any other epicure (Dr. Kitchener in the list), would have turned pale at such a carmen triumphale to the perfection of the art.

Lamb's letters, I was going to say, are as fine as his essays; and I do not feel inclined to withhold the opinion. In their class of composition, -as letters, — familiar communings with his friends, they are incomparable: so sportaneous; so little of the professor of literature in them; so natural, so reflective, so wise, so profoundly pathetic, so cheerful, so polished, so humorous, in short, so totally unconscious of their being converted into an epistolary apotheosis.

The one to Baron Field, who was a judge in South Australia, is absolutely perfect for its wit and originality of thought. Those also to Manning are full of pleasantry. One of this complexion, dissuading him from a project of making a tour to "Independent Tartary," is a complete transcript of his peculiar vein of drollery. "For Heaven's sake (he says), don't think any more of Independent Tartary.'... I tremble for your Christianity. There is a Tartar man now exhibiting at Exeter 'Change. Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first. Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen of his countrymen. But perhaps the best thing you can do is to try to get the idea out of your head. For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words 'Independent Tartary - Independent Tartary,' two or three times, and associate them with the idea of oblivion." Again he says, "Some say these Tartar people are cannibals and then conceive a Tartar-fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar!" Further on he returns to the charge: "The Tartars are really a cold, insipid, smouchy set. You'll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them. Pray, try and cure yourself. Take hellebore (the counsel is Horace's, 'twas none of my thought originally). Shave yourself oftener. Eat no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow.. Shave the upper lip.

Go about like a European. Read no books of voyages (they are nothing but lies); only now and then a romance, to keep your fancy under. Above all, don't go to any sights of wild beasts. That has been your ruin." And he concludes: "Have a care, my dear friend, of anthropophagi! their stomachs are always craving. 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at fip-pence a pound! To sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat! God bless you! Air and exercise may do great - why not your

things. father?

Talk with some minister,

In taking leave of a subject that has naturally run out ome length, I cannot, nevertheless, conclude without naming one essayist of our own time, who may rank with the very best I have enumerated. I mean the ever sparkling, ever graceful-minded Leigh Hunt, whose conversation was the champagne of colloquial wine; whose breakfast-table

--

was as vivacious as most men's supper-tables; whose lips flowed with sentences that might have figured in papers on blithe themes, or have suggested essays upon mirthful wisdom. Charmingly as Leigh Hunt wrote, — and few writers possess such an ever-fresh charm in their style, — his talk was even yet more charming. Effortless, brilliant, full of a delightful ease and spontaneity of expression; teeming with kindly and liberal thoughts towards his brother men; pregnant with the enchanting impression that he himself enjoyed what he was speaking of; possessing the added attraction of lively manner and demeanor, sweet voice and look, with a vast fund of animal spirits, Leigh Hunt's spoken effusions surpassed his written effusions in vivacity and impulse; although his essays are among the most vivacious and impulsive of animated writings. He had the gift of investing the most ordinary of subjects with a quite peculiar grace and zest, and could make even commonplace attractive by reason of his power in getting at the core of whatever beauty lay natively enshrined therein. The mere titles of some of his best papers in his Indicator and Companion testify this gift of Leigh Hunt's: witness his essays "On Coaches," "On Hats," "On Sticks," and "On a Pebble," each of which serves exquisitely to illustrate the philosophy of our great poet's significant words:

"Most poor matters point to rich ends."

CANDOR.

THERE are, in spite of all proper platitudes to the contrary, a good many virtues which are more offensive than vices. We can forgive a man for being an habitual drunkard, or even for habitual lying; but it is terribly difficult to forgive him for systematic punctuality and early rising. The whole group of virtues of which those practices are generally symptomatic is of an offensive cast. Probably their possessors are so well aware that their habits are generally considered insulting to their neighbors, that they wrap themselves in more than the ordinary pomp of selfrighteousness. They are obliged to wear a good thick armor to protect themselves from the odium due to their unsocial excellences. The taste for such observances grows by indulgence. As the first glass of brandy is frequently the ruin of the unfortunate man in whom a turn for dipsomania is latent, so the delight of rising one morning and glorying in imagination over millions of one's recumbent fellow-creatures is so keen, that the downward step is rapidly followed by others. The man who would be agreeable to mankind should guard against the first lapse into virtue. As a rule, the taste is acquired at an early period of life, before the full consequences of unswerving morality are appreciated. It is prevalent amongst those excellent and oppressive young men who at a later period rejoice in the possession of a high moral sense. A little knot of sympathetic youths gathers at a university; they divide the various talents and virtues among themselves with the confidence of youthful Alexanders partitioning the world among their followers; and, if the priggish element happens to be powerful, they affect what used to be called earnestness, a term which, as we believe, is now becoming utterly obsolete. It means a profound conviction that the earnest person regulates all his actions according to a lofty moral code; or, which is supposed to come to much the same thing, that a lofty moral code is sure to justify whatever he does. The duller members of the body have to content themselves with aggravated forms of punctuality, pecuniosity, and other small virtues; the cleverer probably succeed in imposing upon the world at large, which is always willing to join in a chorus of vigorous laudation, and develop into conscientious ministers, bishops, and chancellors. They are so elaborately scrupulous, that whatever they do has a peculiar grace; and those actions which would be considered as jobs or time-serving in the worldly, have a fine moral flavor in their mouths, which gives to any cavil a distinct air of profanity. The world is said to be censorious, and to be too ready to suspect good men of having

a touch of the Pecksniff in their compositions. We are more often surprised, we must confess, at the readiness with which a man's own valuation of his merits is generally accepted; but it is true that a certain smouldering disposition to revolt is frequently generated by these irrepressibly virtuous persons.

There is one virtue which is frequently affected by men of this kind. They are given to insisting, with ostentatious humility, upon their admirable candor. The objections to this quality in private life are pretty generally understood. It means a disposition to tell a friend of his faults, not because you want to annoy him, which is pardonable, but because you are anxious to do him good, which, as need hardly be said, is intolerable. The character is a tempting one for purposes of fiction, and has been pretty well worked out by novelists and playwrights. They indeed generally fall into the error of representing the practice as a piece of conscious hypocrisy. Sneer tells Sir Fretful Plagiary of the criticisms which have been directed against him with the comparatively innocent motive of deriving amusement from the irritability of his acquaintance. The more frequent character in real life is the man who really thinks that his unpleasant information will improve his victim. He has been so much accustomed to think of himself as a kind of voluntary missionary to the misguided mass of his fellowcreatures, that he falls into the natural error of believing good advice to be sometimes useful. He has convinced himself, or rather he has unawares adopted the pleasing delusion, that to tell a man to walk due south is not the most probable means of starting him towards the north pole. It requires unusual force of sympathetic imagination to understand the strange transmutations to which any sentiment will be subjected when it is transferred from your own mind to that of another person; and sympathetic imagination is precisely the quality in which a gentleman excusably absorbed in the contemplation of his own virtues is apt to be deficient. There is another form of the virtue, however, which is defended upon more refined principles, and which is, perhaps, not without its merits when it is genuine that, namely, which is called intellectual candor. The genuine quality is as useful as it is rare. Nobody can read much of the controversial literature of the day, without perceiving, that, as a general rule, each side confines itself to the study of its own literature. We should not see a confident opinion about matters in which the ablest men are at variance commended as a virtue in those who are to

tally unable to appreciate the first conditions of the problems at issue, were it not that each party generally forms a little world of its own, and is as incapable of appreciating the state of mind of its opponents as of entering into the prejudices of the inhabitants of the moon. Mr. Mill somewhere strongly recommends the practice of steadily reading the works of our antagonists; and he has himself given some excellent examples of the advantage of the practice. It has perhaps one recommendation which its advocate did not directly contemplate. A Radical, for example, who only reads Radical literature, is apt to become doubtful of his own convictions when he observes how many of the stupidest and most ignorant of mankind entertain them as firmly as himself. It is necessary, in order to restore his self-complacency, that he should plunge for a time into the hostile literature; he will be repaid for the first shock of natural antipathy by the discovery that folly and stupidity are not confined to any side of any question. The frame of mind which is generated by many-sided studies is certainly a desirable one, and it is frequently described by the name of candor. But there is a kind of bastard imitation of the same virtue, which is far more common, and by no means so estimable. A whole stock of commonplaces has been accumulated by the dealers in this commodity about theological and political questions. They are fond of talking about the falsehood of extremes, and have a summary mode of settling all controversies by striking a balance between the most remote opinions. There is something to be said for the ultra democrat, and something for the bigoted re-actionist. Go half-way between the two, and you cannot fail of being in the right. In æsthetic and