Library Notes

by A. P. Russell

X.

CONTRASTS.

The world will never be tired reading and talking of the peculiarities and struggles of some of its literary worthies, they seem so incredible. Poor Goldsmith, for example: every incident relating to him is interesting, even if colored by envy—as most of the contemporaneous gossip about him was. "I first met Goldsmith," says Cumberland, "at the British Coffee House. He dined with us as a visitor, introduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and we held a consultation upon the naming of his comedy, which some of the company had read, and which he detailed to the rest after his manner with a great deal of good-humor. Somebody suggested She Stoops to Conquer, and that title was agreed upon.... 'You and I,' said he, 'have very different motives for resorting to the stage. I write for money, and care little about fame.'... The whole company pledged themselves to the support of the poet, and faithfully kept their promise to him. In fact, he needed all that could be done for him, as Mr. Colman, then manager of Covent Garden Theatre, protested against the comedy, when as yet he had not struck upon a name for it. Johnson at length stood forth in all his terror, as champion for the piece, and backed by us, his clients and retainers, demanded a fair trial. Colman again protested, but, with that salvo for his own reputation, liberally lent his stage to one of the most eccentric productions that ever found its way to it, and She Stoops to Conquer was put into rehearsal. We were not over-sanguine of success, but perfectly determined to struggle hard for our author; we accordingly assembled our strength at the Shakespeare Tavern in a considerable body for an early dinner, where Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of a long table, and was the life and soul of the corps: the poet took post silently by his side, with the Burkes, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Caleb Whitefoord, and a phalanx of North British predetermined applauders, under the banner of Major Mills, all good men and true. Our illustrious president was in inimitable glee, and poor Goldsmith that day took all his raillery as patiently and complacently as my friend Boswell would have done any day or every day of his life. In the meantime, we did not forget our duty, and though we had a better comedy going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we betook ourselves in good time to our separate and allotted posts, and waited the awful drawing up of the curtain. As our stations were preconcerted, so were our signals for plaudits arranged and determined upon in a manner that gave every one his cue where to look for them and how to follow them up. We had amongst us a very worthy and sufficient member, long since lost to his friends and the world at large, Adam Drummond, of amiable memory, who was gifted by nature with the most sonorous, and, at the same time, the most contagious, laugh that ever echoed from the human lungs. The neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes was a whisper to it; the whole thunder of the theatre could not drown it. This kind and ingenuous friend fairly forewarned us that he knew no more when to give his fire than the cannon did that was planted on a battery. He desired, therefore, to have a flapper at his elbow, and I had the honor to be deputed to that office. I planted him in an upper box, pretty nearly over the stage, in full view of the pit and galleries, and perfectly well situated to give the echo all its play through the hollows and recesses of the theatre. The success of our manœuvres was complete. All eyes were upon Johnson, who sat in a front row of a side box, and when he laughed everybody thought themselves warranted to roar. In the meantime, my friend followed signals with a rattle so irresistibly comic that, when he had repeated it several times, the attention of the spectators was so engrossed by his person and performances that the progress of the play seemed likely to become a secondary object, and I found it prudent to insinuate to him that he might halt his music without any prejudice to the author; but, alas, it was now too late to rein him in; he had laughed upon my signal where he found no joke, and now unluckily he fancied that he found a joke in almost everything that was said; so that nothing in nature could be more malapropos than some of his bursts every now and then were. These were dangerous moments, for the pit began to take umbrage; but we carried our play through, and triumphed, not only over Colman's judgment, but our own." It is related that Goldsmith, during the performance of the comedy, walked all the time in St. James's Park, in great uneasiness; and when he thought it must be over, he hastened to the theatre. His ears were assailed with hisses as he entered the green-room, when he eagerly inquired of Mr. Colman the cause. "Pshaw! Pshaw!" said Colman, "don't be afraid of squibs, when we have been sitting on a barrel of gun-powder these two hours." The fact was, that the comedy had been completely successful, and that it was the farce which had excited those sounds so terrific to Goldsmith.

A scene very different from that occurred at another "first acting"—as remarkable if not as famous. It was on the occasion of the first presentation of Lamb's farce of Mr. H., thirty years later, at Drury Lane. That acute dramatic scholar and critic had written a tragedy,—John Woodvil,—the fate of which his friend Procter has pleasantly narrated: "It had been in Mr. Kemble's hands for about a year, and Lamb naturally became urgent to hear his decision upon it. Upon applying for this he found that his play was—lost! This was at once acknowledged, and a 'courteous request made for another copy, if I had one by me.' Luckily, another copy existed. The 'first runnings' of a genius were not, therefore, altogether lost, by having been cast, without a care, into the dusty limbo of the theatre. The other copy was at once supplied, and the play very speedily rejected. It was afterward facetiously brought forward in one of the early numbers of the Edinburgh Review, and there noticed as a rude specimen of the earliest age of the drama, 'older than Æschylus.'" But the condemnation of his tragedy did not discourage him; he now tried his genius upon a farce. Its acceptance, Talfourd says, gave Lamb some of the happiest moments he ever spent. He wrote joyously to Wordsworth about it, even carrying his humorous anticipations so far as to indulge in a draft of the "orders" he should send out to his friends after it had had a successful run: "Admit to Boxes. Mr. H. Ninth Night. Charles Lamb." Hear what he says about it to his friend Manning, then in China: "The title is Mr. H., no more; how simple, how taking! A great H— sprawling over the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly rich—all the ladies dying for him—all bursting to know who he is—but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.; a curiosity like that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you any idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you that after much vehement admiration, when his true name comes out,—'Hogsflesh,'—all the women shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change her name for him—that's the idea: how flat it is here, but how whimsical in the farce! And only think how hard upon me it is that the ship is dispatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the Wednesday after; but all China will ring of it by and by.... I shall get two hundred pounds from the theatre if Mr. H. has a good run, and I hope one hundred pounds for the copyright.... Mary and I are to sit next the orchestra in the pit, next the dweedle dees." The Wednesday came, the wished-for evening, which decided the fate of Mr. H. "Great curiosity," says Talfourd, "was excited by the announcement; the house was crowded to the ceiling, and the audience impatiently awaited the conclusion of the long intolerable opera by which it was preceded. At length the hero of the farce entered, gayly dressed, and in happiest spirits,—enough, not too much, elated,—and delivered the prologue with great vivacity and success. The farce began; at first it was much applauded; but the wit seemed wire-drawn; and when the curtain fell on the first act, the friends of the author began to fear. The second act dragged heavily on, as second acts of farces will do; a rout at Bath, peopled with ill-dressed and over-dressed actors and actresses, increased the disposition to yawn; and when the moment of disclosure came, and nothing worse than the name Hogsflesh was heard, the audience resented the long play on their curiosity, and would hear no more. Lamb, with his sister, sat, as he anticipated, in the front of the pit; and having joined in encoring the epilogue, the brilliancy of which injured the farce, he gave way with equal pliancy to the common feeling, and hissed and hooted as loudly as any of his neighbors!" Away went the poet's fame, and the hoped-for three hundred pounds! Not even the autocratic countenance of Johnson, and the big, contagious laugh of Drummond, could have saved them. The next morning's play-bill contained a veracious announcement, that "the new farce of Mr. H., performed for the first time last night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause, and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow;" but the stage lamps never that morrow saw! An amusing, sad spectacle the whole thing was; Lamb, especially,—the dramatic scholar, critic, and wit, the theatre-goer, the associate of playwrights and actors,—hissing and hooting his own bantling! In a letter afterward to Manning, he labors to be amusing over the catastrophe in this ghastly and extravagant manner: "So I go creeping on since I was lamed by that cursed fall from off the top of Drury Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese; with roaring sometimes like bears; mows and mops like apes; sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us! that God should give his favorite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labors of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them! Heaven be pleased to make the teeth rot out of them all, therefore! Make them a reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their tongues at them! Blind mouths! as Milton somewhere calls them."

Poor Elia! Of crazy stock; himself in a mad-house for six weeks at the end of his twentieth year; his sister insane at intervals throughout her life; his mother hopelessly bed-ridden till killed by her daughter in a fit of frenzy; his father pitifully imbecile; his old maiden aunt home from a rich relation's to be nursed till she died—all dependent upon him, his more prosperous brother declining to bear any part of the burden; his work for more than thirty years monotonous, and most of it performed at the same desk in the same back office; pinched all the time by adversity; with no ear for music; the list of his few friends, to use his own words, "in the world's eye, a ragged regiment,"—including the poet Lloyd, who died insane, and the scholar Dyer, who was so absent-minded as at one time to empty the contents of his snuff-box into the tea-pot when he was preparing breakfast for a hungry friend, at another, with staff in hand, and at noonday, to walk straight into the river,—the humor, we say, of dear, wretched, gentle Charles Lamb must stand a wonder in English literature.

Not less incredible was the steady growth of the prodigious genius of Charlotte Brontë, under circumstances hardly less awfully depressing. Think of the woful life of that suffering prodigy, in that cheerless village of forbidding stone houses, whose grim architecture illustrated the rigid hardness of their inhabitants. Above, below, all around, were rocks and moors, "where neither flowers nor vegetables would flourish, and where even a tree of moderate dimensions might be hunted far and wide; where the snow lay long and late; and where often, on autumnal and winter nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the houses as if they were wild beasts striving to find an entrance." Stone dikes were used in place of hedges. The cold parsonage, at the top of the one desolate street, with its stone stairs and stone floors in the passages and parlors, was surrounded on three sides by the "great old church-yard," which was "terribly full of upright tomb-stones," and which poisoned the water-springs of the pumps. The funeral bells, tolling, tolling, and the "chip, chip" of the mason, as he cut the grave-stones in a shed close by, were habitual sounds. The pews in the old church were of black oak, with high divisions, with the names of the owners painted in white letters on the doors. Her father, the clergyman, harsh, hard, and unsocial; at all times denying flesh food to his puny children; at dinner permitting them only potatoes, and rarely or never taking his meals with them; with a temper so violent and distrustful as to cause him always to carry a pistol, which he was in the habit of discharging from an upper window whenever in a fit of passion; who burned the little colored shoes of his children, presented by their mother's cousin, lest they should foster a love of dress; who cut in strips the silk gown of his wife because its color was not suited to his puritanical taste—at the time, too, when she was slowly dying of an internal cancer. Sent from home to be educated at a miserable school provided for the daughters of clergymen, where were bad air and bad food, and which caused the speedy death of both her elder sisters. So short-sighted that "she always seemed to be seeking something, moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it." Having no visitors; visiting, during her childhood, but at one house, and that for but a short time. Her only intimate associates her two younger sisters. Wonderful trio! "At nine o'clock they put away their work, and began to pace the room backward and forward, up and down, over the stone floors,—as often with the candles extinguished, for economy's sake, as not,—their figures glancing in the firelight, and out into the shadow, perpetually. At this time they talked over past cares and troubles; they planned for the future, and consulted each other as to their plans. In after years, this was the time for discussing together the plots of their novels. And again, still later, this was the time for the last surviving sister (Charlotte) to walk alone, from old accustomed habit, round and round the desolate room, thinking sadly upon the 'days that were no more.'" Is there anything in books more sad and touching? Her only pet was a fierce bull-dog, and her only male associate her brilliant, drunken brother (who willfully died upon his feet, in an upright position, to fulfill an oft-declared purpose), a continual disgrace and terror as long as he lived. And much of the time, poor thing, in an agony about the fate of her soul! How the little, pinched victim of all this misery and wretchedness could have written a narrative which at once took its place, in spite of faithless and unsympathizing critics, and securely kept it, too, amongst the highest and best productions of the age, is a startling marvel in literature. Out of her own life she wrought her wonderful works. "The fiery imagination that at times eats me up," she wrote to her friend. In her stories she but told her own agonies, as Cowper noted the progress of his insanity, and the French physiologist his ebbing pulse under the deadly influence of burning charcoal.

But, recurring to Lamb and his set, what impossible, incomprehensible characters it included: Elton Hammond, for instance, a contemporary if not an associate. He inherited his father's tea business in Milk Street. In order, he said, to set an example to the world how a business should be carried on, and that he might not be interfered with in his plans, he turned off the clerks and every servant in the establishment, which soon wound up the business altogether. For a while he had no other society than a little child, which he taught its letters, and a mouse, that fed out of his hands. He journalized his food, his sleep, his dreams. He had a conviction that he was to have been, and ought to have been, the greatest of men, but was conscious in fact that he was not. The reason assigned by him for putting an end to his life was that he could not condescend to live without fulfilling his proper vocation. He said to one of his friends that he was on the point of making a discovery which would put an end to physical and moral evil in the world. He quarreled with another of his friends for not being willing to join him in carrying a heavy box through the streets of London for a poor woman. He refused a private secretaryship to Rough, a colonial chief justice, on the ground of the obligation involved to tell a lie and write a lie every day, subscribing himself the humble servant of people he did not serve, and toward whom he felt no humility. Here are a few things he wrote: "When I was about eight or ten I promised marriage to a wrinkled cook we had, aged about sixty-five. I was convinced of the insignificance of beauty, but really felt some considerable ease at hearing of her death, about four years after, when I began to repent of my vow."... "I always said that I would do anything to make another happy, and told a boy I would give him a shilling if it would make him happy; he said it would, so I gave it to him. It is not to be wondered at that I had plenty of such applications, and soon emptied my purse. It is true I rather grudged the money, because the boys laughed rather more than I wished them. But it would have been inconsistent to have appeared dissatisfied. Some of them were generous enough to return the money, and I was prudent enough to take it, though I declared that if it would make them happy I should be sorry to have it back."... "It is not pain, it is not death, that I dread, it is the hatred of a man; there is something in it so shocking that I would rather submit to any injury than incur or increase the hatred of a man by revenging it."... "The chief philosophical value of my papers I conceive to be that they record something of a mind that was very near taking a station far above all that have hitherto appeared in the world."... "It is provoking that the secret of rendering man perfect in wisdom, power, virtue, and happiness, should die with me. I never till this moment doubted that some other person would discover it; but I now recollect that when I have relied on others I have always been disappointed. Perhaps none may ever discover it, and the human race has lost its only chance of eternal happiness."... "I believe that man requires religion. I believe that there is no true religion now existing. I believe that there will be one. It will not, after eighteen hundred years of existence, be of questionable truth and utility, but perhaps in eighteen years be entirely spread over the earth, an effectual remedy for all human suffering, and a source of perpetual joy. It will not need immense learning to be understood, it will be subject to no controversy."... "Another sufficient reason for suicide is, that I was this morning out of temper with Mrs. Douglas (for no fault of hers). I did not betray myself in the least, but I reflected to be exposed to the possibility of such an event once a year was evil enough to render life intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word is to me overpowering."... "I am stupefied with writing, and yet I cannot go my long journey without taking leave of one from whom I have received so much kindness, and from whose society so much delight. My place is booked in Charon's boat to-night at twelve. Diana kindly consents to be of the party. This is handsome of her. She was not looked for on my part. Perhaps she is willing to acknowledge my obedience to her laws by a genteel compliment. Good. The gods, then, are grateful." To the coroner and his jury he wrote, "Let me suggest the following verdict, as combining literal truth with justice: 'Died by his own hand, but not feloniously.' If I have offended God, it is for God, not you, to inquire. Especial public duties I have none. If I have deserted any engagement in society, let the parties aggrieved consign my name to obloquy. I have for nearly seven years been disentangling myself from all my engagements, that I might at last be free to retire from life. I am free to-day, and avail myself of my liberty. I cannot be a good man, and prefer death to being a bad one,—as bad as I have been and as others are."

And there was Blake—"artist, genius, mystic, or madman?" "Probably all," thought Robinson, one of his warmest admirers; for he had admirers, and some of them were eminent. Coleridge knew him, and talked finely about him. Wordsworth thought he had "in him the elements of poetry much more than either Byron or Scott." Lamb liked his poems. Hazlitt said of them, "They are beautiful, and only too deep for the vulgar." His genius as an artist was praised by Flaxman and Fuseli. His countenance is described as "Socratic," with "an expression of great sweetness;" "when animated he had about him an air of inspiration." Though in great poverty, he was ever a gentleman; with genuine dignity and independence, he scorned all presents. He wrote songs, composed music, and painted, at the same time he pursued his business as an engraver. Among his friends he gave out that his pictures were copied from great works revealed to him, and that his lessons in art were given him by celestial tongues. When he spoke of his "visions," it was in the ordinary unemphatic tones in which we speak of every-day matters. He conversed familiarly with the spirits of Homer, Moses, Pindar, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Sir William Wallace, Milton, and other illustrious dead, giving repeatedly their very words in their conversations. Sometimes, too, he wrangled with demons. His books (and his MSS. are immense in quantity) are dictations from the spirits. He possessed, it was said, the highest and most exalted powers of the mind, but not the lower. "He could fly, but he could not walk; he had genius and inspiration, without the prosaic balance-wheel of common sense." In poetry, it was observed, he most enjoyed the parts which to others are most obscure. His wife Katherine, good soul, believed in him, and was invaluable to him. She was ever sitting by his side, or assisting him at the press. "You know, dear," she said, believingly, "the first time you saw God was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the window, and set you a-screaming." Both believed that his pictures were veritable visions transferred to the canvas or the plate. Sixteen of his mystical designs are illustrations of "The Gates of Paradise," one hundred of "Jerusalem," and twenty-seven "singular, but powerful drawings" disclose the mysteries of hell. He wrote to Flaxman, addressing him as "Dear Sculptor of Eternity," and saying, in his strange, wild way, "In my brain are studies and chambers filled with books and pictures of old, which I wrote and painted in ages of eternity, before my mortal life; and these works are the delight and study of archangels." A friend said to him, "You express yourself as Socrates used to do. What resemblance do you suppose there is between your spirit and his?" "The same as between our countenances," he answered. After a pause he added, "I was Socrates;" and then, as if correcting himself, said, "a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them." Once he said, "There is no use in education. I hold it to be wrong. It is the great sin. It is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault of Plato. He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God's eyes." Being asked about the moral character of Dante, in writing his "Vision,"—was he pure? "Pure," said Blake, "do you think there is any purity in God's eyes? The angels in heaven are no more so than we. 'He chargeth his angels with folly.'" He afterward represented the Supreme Being as liable to error. "Did he not repent him that he had made Nineveh?" Though he spoke of his happiness, he also alluded to past sufferings, and to suffering as necessary. "There is suffering in heaven, for where there is the capacity of enjoyment, there is also the capacity of pain." Comparing moral with natural evil, he said, "Who shall say that God thinks evil? That is a wise tale of the Mahometans, of the angel of the Lord that murdered the infant" (alluding to the Hermit of Parnell). "Is not every infant that dies of disease murdered by an angel?" "I saw Milton," he said on one occasion, "and he told me to beware of being misled by his Paradise Lost. In particular he wished me to show the falsehood of the doctrine, that carnal pleasures arose from the Fall. The Fall could not produce any pleasure." He spoke of Milton as being at one time a sort of classical atheist, and of Dante as being now with God. His faculty of vision, he said, he had had from early infancy. He thought all men partook of it, but it is lost for want of being cultivated. "I assert for myself," said he, "that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hinderance and not action. 'What!' it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?' Oh no, no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.' I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it."... "I have written more than Voltaire or Rousseau. Six or seven epic poems as long as Homer, and twenty tragedies as long as Macbeth."... "I write when commanded by the spirits, and the moment I have written I see the words fly about the room in all directions. It is then published, and the spirits can read. My MS. is of no further use. I have been tempted to burn my MSS., but my wife won't let me."... "Men are born with a devil and an angel."... "I have never known a very bad man, who had not something very good about him."... "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much taken from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." For the greater part of his life, he "lived in a garret, on crusts of bread." Death he considered as nothing but "going from one room to another." He died with his pencil in his hand, making a likeness of his wife, and chanting pleasant songs. Died, she said, "like an angel."

And George Dyer—a pet acquaintance of Lamb's—what a character was he! A bundle of contradictions if ever there was one. Poor and always struggling, but never envious, and utterly without hatred of the rich. A poet whose poetry was to himself "as good as anybody's, and anybody's as good as his own." A bachelor, his life was solitary, but he never thought of his solitude, till it was suggested to him by an observing, sympathizing widow, who kindly and generously consented to share it with him—her fourth husband! He is characterized by one of his literary friends as "one of the best creatures morally that ever breathed." He was a ripe scholar, but to the end of his days (and he lived to be eighty-five) he was a bookseller's drudge. He made indexes, corrected the press, and occasionally gave lessons in Greek and Latin. Simple and kind, he repeatedly gave away his last guinea. He was the author of the Life and Writings of Robert Robinson, which was pronounced by Wordsworth and Samuel Parr one of the best biographies in the language. The charm of the book is that Robinson's peculiar humor was wholly unappreciated by the simple-minded biographer. Robinson was a fine humorist; Dyer had absolutely no sense of humor. It was when he was on his way from Lamb's to Mrs. Barbauld's, that, in his absent-mindedness, he walked straight into New River, and was with difficulty saved from drowning. (Young, one of Fielding's intimate friends, who sat for the portrait of Parson Adams, was another such character. He also "supported an uncomfortable existence by translating for the booksellers from the Greek," overflowed with benevolence and learning, and was noted for his absence of mind. He had been chaplain of a regiment during Marlborough's wars; and "meditating one evening upon the glories of nature, and the goodness of Providence, he walked straight into the camp of the enemy; nor was he aroused from his reverie till the hostile sentinel shouted, 'Who goes there?' The commanding officer, finding that he had come among them in simplicity and not in guile, allowed him to return, and lose himself, if he pleased, in meditations on his danger and deliverance.") It is said that certain roguish young ladies, Dyer's cousins, lacking due reverence for learning and poetry, were wont to heap all sorts of meats upon the worthy gentleman's plate at dinner, he being lost in conversation until near the close of the repast, when he would suddenly recollect himself and fall to till he had finished the whole. Talfourd, speaking of Lamb and Dyer, says, "No contrast could be more vivid than that presented by the relations of each to the literature they both loved,—one divining its inmost essences, plucking out the heart of its mysteries, shedding light on its dimmest recesses; the other devoted with equal assiduity to its externals. Books, to Dyer, 'were a real world, both pure and good;' among them he passed, unconscious of time, from youth to extreme old age, vegetating on their dates and forms, and 'trivial fond records,' in the learned air of great libraries, or the dusty confusion of his own, with the least possible apprehension of any human interest vital in their pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy glancing across them. His life was an academic pastoral. Methinks I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by trousers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hanging about him like those garments which the aristocratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic dress; his long head silvered over with short yet straggling hair, and his dark gray eyes glistening with faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity which has gently disturbed his studies as to the authorship of the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in the strictest confidence, that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the Congress of Sovereigns at Vienna. Off he runs, with animated stride and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, 'as a public writer,' ought to be possessed of the great fact with which George is laden! Or shall I endeavor to revive the bewildered look with which just after he had been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord? 'Oh dear, no, Mr. Lamb,' responded he with earnest seriousness, but not without a moment's quivering vanity. 'I could not think of such a thing; it is not true, I assure you.' 'I thought not,' said Lamb, 'and I contradict it wherever I go. But the government will not ask your consent; they may raise you to the peerage without your ever knowing it.' 'I hope not, Mr. Lamb; indeed—indeed, I hope not. It would not suit me at all,' responded Dyer, and went his way musing on the possibility of a strange honor descending on his reluctant brow. Or shall I recall the visible presentment of his bland unconsciousness of evil when his sportive friend taxed it to the utmost by suddenly asking what he thought of the murderer Williams, who, after destroying two families in Ratcliffe Highway, had broken prison by suicide, and whose body had just before been conveyed in shocking procession to its cross-road grave? The desperate attempt to compel the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature produced no happier success than the answer, 'Why, I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather an eccentric character.'" Honest, simple soul! My Uncle Toby over again, for all the world.