disappointment; but there was also a significant beckoning of the fingers.-The horse lame? Not a bit of it, you Cockney! You'll frighten the ladies out of their wits with your mysterious communica

tions.

But although horse-flesh is always a mysterious subject, and engenders more nods and winks than that of an average state conspiracy, the whispers above the cabin roof had not been concerning it at all.

'I say, look yonder at whom Tyndall is bringing with him that fellow Adair is coming with us, it

seems.'

'The devil seize him!' muttered Allardyce between his teeth, while he waved his thin white hand in sign of welcome to the coming pair. 'Then we shall have to be doubly careful, or he will spoil sport.'

YESTERDAYS WITH AUTHORS. WHEN a great man is dead, and one who has known him proceeds to give the public an account of his private life, with extracts from his correspondence, there is sure to be a clamour among the critics about the 'desecration of the sanctity of home.' This would be more respectable if it were genuine; but, as matters stand, it only reminds one of the necropolis advertisements-the feelings of relatives consulted, and a gravelly soil' -which are but the prelude to business, since there is no literature so popular as the Reminiscences of great A or big B, even with the critics themselves. It gives them an opportunity of stating that they too were honoured with the acquaintance of A and B, or, failing that, of giving a sly kick to a dead Lion. Thus, Mr James Fields' Yesterdays with Authors* has been much abused-'the man scarcely waits till his dead friends are cold,' says one (not with reference to Pope, who is one of the authors treated of in the volume, surely !)

'Proclaim the faults he would not shew!
Break lock and seal; betray the trust!
Keep nothing sacred,'

In our

quotes another sarcastically: but the book is very eagerly read by everybody, nevertheless. humble judgment, it deserves to be so. There is little revealed in it, that we can see, which good taste should conceal, or likely to detract from the merits of those of whom it treats. The fastidious delicacy that caused Charles Dickens to burn a mountain of correspondence at Gad's Hill lest, after his death, its privacy should not be respected, is rare, and, upon the whole, it is fortunate that it should be so. If Boswell had been similarly conscientious, posterity would have been robbed, for the most delightful biography in the language would

but also with those of England, by whom the profits of advance sheets' have been accepted, in the absence of a just law of copyright, upon the principle of half a loaf being better than no bread. Being a man of parts and geniality, these business relations, as they are apt to do-and it is a fact that renders what is called 'the Trade' one of the most agreeable of callings-soon merged in his case into intimacy and friendship, and hence this interesting volume of Reminiscences. That the interest is unequal, is only what must be expected; but it is very considerable throughout. If the large space given to Hawthorne seems over-large, the memoir is, even in that respect, characteristic. He was a wordy writer: his immense cake had too few plums in it; and he seems to have been creditably aware of the fact. He had a pleasant, though, strange to say, rough humour, which revealed to him his own deficiencies of some of his mystic sketches, he confesses, with a burst of charming frankness, that they are also misty. Upon my honour, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning in some of these blasted allegories.' This will doubtless annoy the Weak among his admirers, but will do his reputation no real harm. We ourselves only regret that he does not shew himself with equal naturalness in his books as in his letters. From the former, one would never have guessed him to have been such an appreciator of the ridiculous as he really was. 'I once told him,' says Mr Fields, 'of a young woman who brought in a manuscript, and said, as she placed it in my hands: "I don't know what to do with myself sometimes, I am so filled with mammoth thoughts;" whereupon the author of the Scarlet Letter nearly perished in convulsions of laughter (as indeed any less romantic writer might actually have done). His criticisms were occasionally very manly and graphic. Of the works of Anthony Trollope, he writes: They precisely suit my taste. Solid and substantial; written on the strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of. These books are as English as a beefsteak.' Mr Hawthorne liked beefsteaks when he could get them, but the opportunity of doing so having ceased, he took to abusing the ox from which they were cut. There is no doubt that he repaid the universal hospitality and unstinted admiration of his English cousins with great ungenerousness, and indeed in that matter afforded another proof, unhappily not needed, that a man of genius is not of necessity a gentleman. Here is his own account of a speech he made at a public dinner, given, for all that we know to the contrary, in his own honour; at all events when it was necessary for him to make a speech: 'I tickled up John Bull's self-conceit (which is very easily done) with a few sentences of most outrageous flattery, and sat down in a general puddle of good-feeling.

A man who can form such an estimate of ' goodfeeling' and its causes may well be excused for being ignorant of what constitutes good taste. turn to metal more attractive-the

Let us

memoir headed 'Thackeray.' In this there are both good and characteristic things. It is well known that the great satirist was not a great speaker; but it will surprise many to learn that he could not speak, extempore, at all, and that even when well

primed, his tongue would often miss fire, a circumstance, however, which did not disturb him in the least. Once he asked me to travel with him from London to Manchester to hear a great speech he was going to make at the founding of the Free Library Institution in that city. All the way down he was discoursing of certain effects he intended to produce on the Manchester dons by his eloquent appeals to their pockets. This passage was to have great influence with the rich merchants, this one with the clergy, and so on. He said that although Dickens, and Bulwer, and Sir James Stephen, all eloquent speakers, were to precede him, he intended to beat each of them on this special occasion. He insisted that I should be seated directly in front of him, so that I should have the full force of his magic eloquence. The occasion was a most brilliant one; tickets had been in demand at unheard-of prices several weeks before the day appointed; the great hall, then opened for the first time to the public, was filled by an audience such as is seldom convened, even in England. The three speeches which came before Thackeray was called upon were admirably suited to the occasion, and most eloquently spoken. Sir John Potter, who presided, then rose, and after some complimentary allusions to the author of Vanity Fair, introduced him to the crowd, who welcomed him with ringing plaudits. As he rose, he gave me a half-wink from under his spectacles, as if to say: "Now for it; the others have done very well, but I will shew 'em a grace beyond the reach of their art." He began in a clear and charming manner, and was absolutely perfect for three minutes. In the middle of a most earnest and elaborate sentence, he suddenly stopped, gave a look of comic despair at the ceiling, crammed both hands into his trousers' pockets, and deliberately sat down. Everybody seemed to understand that it was one of Thackeray's unfinished speeches, and there were no signs of surprise or discontent among his audience. He continued to sit on the platform in a perfectly composed manner; and when the meeting was over he said to me, without a sign of discomfiture: "My boy, you have my profoundest sympathy; this day you have accidentally missed hear ing one of the finest speeches ever composed for delivery by a great British orator." And I never heard him mention the subject again.'

This philosophy of disposition, supposing it was not assumed, must have comforted himself mightily; but it was at times a little trying to his friends. If we are to take Mr Fields' account, indeed, as literally correct, it made him at times insufferably rude. I happened to be one of a large company whom he had invited to a six-o'clock dinner at Greenwich one summer afternoon, several years ago. We were all to go down from London, assemble in a particular room at the hotel, where he was to meet us at six o'clock sharp. Accordingly, we took steamer, and gathered ourselves together in the reception-room at the appointed time. When the clock struck six, our host had not fulfilled his part of the contract. His burly figure was yet wanting among the company assembled. As the guests were nearly all strangers to each other, and as there was no one present to introduce us, a profound silence fell upon the room, and we anxiously looked out of the windows, hoping every moment that Thackeray would arrive. This untoward state of things went on for one hour,

still no Thackeray and no dinner. English reticence would not allow any remark as to the absence of our host. Everybody felt serious, and a gloom fell upon the assembled party. Still no Thackeray. The landlord, the butler, and the waiters rushed in and out of the room, shrieking for the master of the feast, who as yet had not arrived. It was confidentially whispered by a fat gentleman, with a hungry look, that the dinner was utterly spoiled twenty minutes ago, when we heard a merry shout in the entry, and Thackeray bounced into the room. He had not changed his morning dress, and ink was still visible upon his fingers. Clapping his hands, and pirouetting briskly on one leg, he cried out: "Thank Heaven, the last sheet of the Virginians has just gone to the printer." He made no apology for his late appearance, introduced nobody, shook hands heartily with everybody, and begged us all to be seated as quickly as possible. His exquisite delight at completing his book swept away every other feeling, and we all shared his pleasure, albeit the dinner was overdone throughout.'

This dinner-party must have been composed of persons exceptionally patient, easily mollified, and not particular in their eating. If Mr Fields would take three-quarters of an hour off' that hour's waiting, in his next edition, he would greatly oblige all admirers of the author of Vanity Fair. What makes the matter worse, Mr Fields suggests, though without intending to do so, that such conduct arose from affectation. He narrates that on the occasion of Thackeray's first public appearance in America, he was horrified to hear him saythe lecture being advertised for half-past seventhat he hoped to be ready by eight o'clock, but thought it very doubtful: and on calling on him at fifteen minutes past seven, he finds him 'not only unshaved and undressed for the evening, but rapturously absorbed in making a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a passage in the Sorrows of Werther, for a lady, which he vowed he would finish before he budged an inch.' Mr Fields says that when Mr Thackeray, who has impaled snobbism so skilfully on his rapier, confessed that he himself was 'a snob' past cure, he was without doubt' guilty of an exaggeration; and let us hope that these two stories are exaggerated also. For the rest, the great satirist is painted throughout in rose-colour: it is charming to learn of him that in sheer delight at hearing all the seats in the lecture-hall were disposed of, he insisted on thrusting both his legs through the carriage-window on his way thither, out of deference to the ticketholders; and as good as a play' to read what he did, when subjected to the hydraulic pressure of a scientific bore. Mr Fields very imprudently took him to a geological lecture at Boston, though he knew it would be dangerous, and this is what occurred:

'My worst fears were realised. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman rose, and applied his auger with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to distraction. I dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt that his eye was upon me. My distress may be imagined, when he got up quite deliberately from the promi nent place where a chair had been set for him, and made his exit very noiselessly into a small anteroom leading into the larger room, and in which no one was sitting. The small apartment was

which that species of fish is supposed to exercise in these latitudes. Try them, and compare.'

Again, since his own immortal Sam Weller's remark, that he should have to proceed to tremities, as the nobleman said when he cracked the periwinkle in the door,' has there ever been read anything more funny than this account of a squeezed Quaker!

'By-the-bye, if you could only have seen the man at Harrisburg, crushing a friendly Quaker in the parlour-door! It was the greatest sight I ever saw. I had told him not to admit anybody whatever, forgetting that I had previously given this honest Quaker a special invitation to come. The Quaker would not be denied, and H. was stanch. When I came upon them, the Quaker was black in the face, and H. was administering the final squeeze. The Quaker was still rubbing his waistcoat, with an expression of acute inward suffering, when I left the town. I have been looking for his death in the newspapers almost daily.'

Dickens had continuous influenza while in the United States, and he attributed it to the oysters. 'I have long suspected them of a rheumatic tendency. Their feet are always damp; and so much damp company in a man's inside cannot contribute to his peace.' This consideration leads him to reflect on what becomes of the oysteropeners when that mollusc is not in season. What do they do? Do they break open tight drawers, and cupboards, and hermetically sealed bottles, for practice? Perhaps they are dentists out of the oyster season! Who knows?'

Well may Mr Fields say: "What a capital epistolary pen did Dickens hold his shortest note never without something piquant in it; while a letter was made an entertainment in itself from sheer force of habit. When I think of this man and all the lasting good and abounding pleasure he has brought into the world, I wonder at the superstition that dares to arraign him.' To read of his trip into Cornwall with Forster, Maclise, and Stanfield-too long, alas, for quotation hereis to yearn to have been of that pleasant party, of whom Dickens was the life and the soul. He was none of those dry wits who never smile at their own good things-as though they were good enough for other people, but not for them, or else because they have repeated them so often that there is no pleasure left in them; he enjoyed his own fun, and that of others also, like a man. 'I never laughed in my life,' says he, as I did on this journey. I was choking and gasping, and bursting the buckle off the back of my stock' [this was in 1842] all the way. And Stanfield (who is very much of your figure and temperament, but fifteen years older) got into such apoplectic entanglements, that we were often obliged to beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him. Seriously, I do believe there never was such a trip.' And indeed we think that quite likely.

No one who enjoyed the friendship of Dickens can have failed to have been struck with the deepdown delight he took in the contemplation of eccentricity, and his good-natured appreciation of absolute ignorance. One of the many guests whom his hospitality welcomed was a certain sea-captain, of whose manliness, honesty, and good temper he has much to say, and, of course, to his discredit nothing. Only, taking him to Drury Lane to see Much Ado about Nothing, I never could find out,'

'You know H's book, I daresay. Ah! I saw a scene of mingled comicality and seriousness at his funeral some weeks ago, which has choked me at dinner-time ever since. C and I went as mourners; and as he lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I drove C down. It was such a day as I hope, for the credit of nature, is seldom seen in any parts but these-muddy, foggy, wet, dark, cold, and unutterably wretched in every pos sible respect. Now, Chas enormous whiskers, which straggle all down his throat in such weather, and stick out in front of him like a partially unravelled bird's-nest; so that he looks queer enough at the best, but when he is very wet, and in a state between jollity (he is always very jolly with me) and the deepest gravity (going to a funeral, you know), it is utterly impossible to resist him; especially as he makes the strangest remarks the mind of man can conceive, without any intention of being funny, but rather meaning to be philosophical. I really cried with an irresistible sense of his comicality all the way; but when he was dressed out in a black cloak and a very long black hat-band by an undertaker (who, as he whispered me with tears in his eyes-for he had known Hmany years-was "a character, and he would like to sketch him"), I thought I should have been obliged to go away. However, we went into a little parlour where the funeral party was, and God knows it was miserable enough, for the widow and children were crying bitterly in one corner, and the other mourners-mere people of ceremony, who cared no more for the dead man than the hearse did-were talking quite coolly and carelessly together in another; and the contrast was as painful and distressing as anything I ever saw. There was an independent clergyman present, with his bands on and a Bible under his arm, who, as soon as we were seated, addressed C— thus, in a loud, emphatic voice: "Mr C, have you seen a paragraph respecting our departed friend, which has gone the round of the morning papers?" "Yes, sir," says C, "I have;" looking very hard at me the while, for he had told me with some pride coming down that it was his composition. "Oh!" said the clergyman. "Then you will agree with me, Mr C, that it is not only an insult to me, who am the servant of the Almighty, but an insult to the Almighty, whose servant I am, "How is that, sir?" said C-. "It is stated, Mr C, in that paragraph," says the minister, "that when Mr H failed in business as a bookseller, he was persuaded by me to try the pulpit, which is false, incorrect, unchristian, in a manner blasphemous, and in all respects contemptible. Let us pray." With which, my dear Felton, and in the same breath, I give you my word, he knelt down, as we all did, and began a very miserable