was a notorious slug-a-bed, is peculiarly eloquent on the subject of early rising: "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake, Summer. Poor Steele, who, like his namesake, Richard Brinsley, was worse haunted by duns and bailiffs, than any saint in the calendar by evil spirits, writes indignantly upon the disgrace of being in debt, and solemnly on the advantages of economy. We fear he never was the better for his own doctrines; yet it is related that he composed the "Christian Hero" with a serious purpose of reforming himself. Addison, in his character of Moralist, enforces sobriety with somewhat of an ungenial strictness, yet it hath been recorded that he often proved by experiment-that good liquor will make a dumb man speak. It must be allowed, however, that the Spectator speaks with heart-felt satisfaction of his pipe, and seems to have entertained a sneaking affection for Brookes and Hellier. Otway was a great professor of royalty; yet how forced and frigid are his oblations to the throne. We may surely suspect that a writer, who sympathises so warmly with conspirators at Venicewho expounds with such experimental intelligence the very heart of treason-would have felt no small exultation at the overthrow of the order of things under which he was starving at home. Milton was a Republican-Massinger seems to have been a Whig-naturally enough, for he was poor. Beaumont and Fletcher, one of whom was the son of a Judge, and the other of a Bishop-who were probably, in their own right, companions of courtiers, and whose short lives passed away in gay prosperity-were courtly royalists. The high-church divinity of Fletcher on the divine right and irresponsibility of kings, clearly indicates his episcopal origin, and contrasts oddly with the general laxity of his plots. Ben Jonson, so highly, and in general so justly praised, for his adherence to costume, and close observance of the peculiarities of times and countries, has committed a glaring anachronism in his Sejanus. He introduces the sentiments and reasonings of King James's court into that of Tiberius. Ben's loyalty, however, is strongly tinged with laureate-sack, though no doubt heightened by his natural aversion to the Puritans, whom it was morally impossible for any dramatic writer to love. But Otway-first among our poets, and till our own times, almost alone-was a Jacobin. If it be asked how we are authorised to predicate such a character of a writer, whose professed opinions verge to the opposite extreme-we reply, that a man's opinions are not himself. It is not in the opinions of any author, verseman or proseman, that his heart is betrayed. Would any prudent chamberlain permit the representation of "Venice Preserved" in hard times? Is it in the expression of loyal or of treasonable sentiments that Otway shines-that he appears to have written con amore with heartfelt honest delight? By honest delight, be it understood it is by no means necessary to mean a delight in honesty. Hotspur speaks of "the sincerity of fear and cold heart;" and we have known people devoutly sincere in their love of roguery. For our own parts, we like a hearty self-complacent rascal of this sort infinitely better than the "hovering temporizer," who is "Half-honest, which is very much a knave,” as Rochester has it. DE OMNIBUS REBUS ET QUIBUSDAM : ALIIS. I WISH I was a Jew. Not that I envy the wealth of Mr. Rothschild, to whom Solomon, in all his glory, was but as a parish poor-box to the Catholic rent. Not that I love (more than beseems a devout and continent Christian) the black-eyed Rebeccas of Duke Street, though I have seen looks among them that might have melted an inquisitor. I wish they would attend a little better to the cleanly precepts of the Mosaic law they seem to think it unworthy of their sacred nation to wash in any waters but those of Siloa or Jordan. Their large gold ear-rings and brilliant eyes remind me of Virgil's obligations to Ennius. Yet it is not for their sakes that I wish myself an Israelite. No, good reader, neither avarice nor amativeness prompts this strange hankering. I envy not the Jew his bargains; I covet not his wife, nor his servant, nor his maid, nor anything that is his, except his pedigree and his real property in the Holy Land. The Jew is the only gentleman. The tree of his genealogy is the oak of Mamre. His family memoirs are accounted sacred, even by his worst enemies. He has a portion far away-in the land which, above all others, is the land of imagination, the scene of the most certain truths, and of the wildest fictions. He may, at least, feed his fancy with the product of his never-to-be-seen acres; and, though forbidden to possess a single foot of ground, may rank himself with the landed aristocracy. A strange passion possessed the European nations, of deriving their origin from the thrice-beaten Trojans. Even the Greeks caught the infection. So enamoured are mankind of a dark antiquity-so averse to consider themselves the creature of a day-that, not content with the hope of a future immortality, they would fain extend their existence through the dusk backward and abysm of Time, and claim a share in the very calamities of past generations. How great then the prerogative of the Jew, whose nation is his own domestic kindred; who needs not to seek his original amid the dust of forgetfulness, and the limitless expanse of undated tradition, but finds it recorded in the Book that teaches to live and to die! I am not ungrateful for the privilege of being an Englishman; but an Englishman, of all nations, has the least ground for national family pride. For my part, I know not whether my stock be Celtic or Teutonic, Saxon, Dane, or Norman. For land-I cannot tell whether any of my ancestors ever owned or claimed an acre. It were a pleasant thing could I say of one green field, one sunny-sided hill-this was my forefathers' property, even though they had been |