begun to be known, though but vaguely, through the early mists. In all the corners there was twittering of smaller singers, simple yet tuneful-such as linger with the larks about the dewy fields, and take pleasure in their song without getting more credit for it than their little prototype; and in the pulpit there had risen a blear-eyed and rugged orator, with heavy features and à broad Fife accent, Thomas Chalmers, who was the greatest preacher of his day. At no time has Edinburgh come to such a climax of genius and fame. THOMAS CAMPBELL, born 1771; died 1844. Lyrics in Morning Chronicle, 1800-1802. Pilgrim of Glencoe, 1842. Annals of Great Britain. Life of Mrs. Siddons. Life of Petrarch. Edited the new Monthly Magazine in which the late JAMES GRAHAME, born 1765; died 1811. Biblical Pictures, 1806. British Energies, 1809. CHAPTER V. LONDON: THE LOWER CIRCLE- THE COCKNEY SCHOOL." A LITTLE before the beginning of the outburst of literary life in Edinburgh, which has been the subject of our recent chapters, a curious and characteristic circle, or series of circles, existed in London, quite distinct from the higher level of life and letters on which Canning and his polite associates flourished. This lower region possessed many peculiarities of the old Grub Street existence. It was poor; its life was full of literary schemes and compilations of all kinds, "Specimens," "Selections," Epitomes of History," Annual Registers," and many more—which, along with such poor scraps as were then required in the shape of magazine articles, answered the purpose of securing daily bread to a large body of writers to whom literature had become a trade; while ever and anon a poem, more or less ambitious, a drama, a philosophical essay, would burst forth from the obscurity to show how among these poor literary hacks, labouring hard in their vocation, there was some genius and much ambition, and that desire to do something worth remembering, or being remembered by, which gives a generous inspiration often to the merest scribbler. The most remarkable and individual figure among them was that of William Godwin, whose works, both of philosophy and imagination, if such a sombre and subtle study of motive and impulse as Caleb Williams can be called by the latter name, have taken a permanent place in literature. So much can scarcely be said for Holcroft, whose novels have dropped out of recollection altogether, though one or two of his dramas, notably the Road to Ruin, still hold the stage; or Hazlitt, most of whose essays and criticisms, though often brilliant, have fallen into that limbo which, alas is the natural place even of the ablest commentaries upon other men's works and lives. One of the most curious particulars in the life of these London coteries of the poorer kind is the quiet commonplace bourgeois existence which they carried on obscurely in out-of-the-way streets in all the usual subjection to law and social order, notwithstanding that the principles they maintained were wild enough, as they thought themselves, and as many people thought, to upset all the foundations of society and blow the British Empire out of its secure place in the protecting seas. Some of them were tried for high treason, no less, in those hot and exciting French Revolution days. They were considered dangerous to their country and to religion, and to everything that the ordinary mass holds sacred; yet, nevertheless, lived very quiet, humdrum, citizens lives, guilty of little more than an occasional indulgence in what is euphemistically called "wine," and fighting very hardly for existence in the lower levels of literary work. They possess a certain importance in literary history, chiefly as examples of that boundless underground of persevering labour which exists in every generation unseen, struggling with, yet clinging to, "the booksellers," concocting with them a hundred schemes which are as much trade" on the one side as the other, furnishing series of histories, of biographies, of editions of the poets, in continued repetition, yet fondly retaining still that hope of the dreaming fancy "To frame it knows not what excelling thing, And win it knows not what sublime reward Godwin, who was the most remarkable member of this group, was at the same time the most striking example of its union of extravagant opinions and humdrum life. Twice during his career his house and name came before the world with an original and even dazzling identity, in strange discordance with the calm and tradesmanlike tenor of his ordinary habits. One of these periods was that in which the philosopher, with his bold and wild opinions and prim pedantic yet romantic temper, found his mate in the beautiful and brave woman whose pensive countenance and untimely fate silence criticism, who was, like himself, a philosopher and sceptic, and whose name for long was the emblem of unwomanly revolutionism, regarded by the public with that horror which unbelief in a woman always inspires. Mary Wollstonecraft was Godwin's wife for not more than a year, but this brief romance gives him an interest which does not really belong to him as a human creature in his own right. Some seventeen years later the brilliant apparition of the young Shelley, sweetest, most visionary, and most lawless of poets, crossed this humdrum life, and once more it blazes out for a moment upon the world. In neither instance is the light without painful and bitter shadows, but it interrupts with curious intensity as obstinate, serious, self-willed, and dull a career as ever London citizen lived among the dingy little streets, monotonous in a half twilight of ordinariness and routine. Caleb Williams and the Political Justice burst out of this gray existence as Mary Wollstonecraft and young Shelley broke into it; but the time illustrated by these luminous points is as a half-hour in a long day of dull and regular occupation, domesticity, shopkeeping, homely meals, and humdrum surroundings. There was no wealth and little grace of aspect in this underground society, in the small houses and back parlours which were in themselves so unbeautiful; and it is difficult, without some aid of money, to give interest to domestic surrounding, at least in a great monotonous town, where the idyllic is out of place, and such a happy thrifty home as that of Southey's among the mountains is impossible. The Holcrofts and Hazlitts had not the gift of Boswell to make the bustling old streets and dingy coffee-houses picturesque and animated, and the atmosphere is dull which breathes about them, although the Lambs would sometimes come arm-in-arm to call, or Coleridge make his appearance looming largely against the sky, or Wordsworth pay a passing visit, bringing with him the breath of the hills. Otherwise we find little beauty, either of temper or manners, in this little world of literature. It is hopelessly plebeian and narrow, self-asserting and self-repeating. Except in the case of "Lamb, the frolic and the gentle," neither the conversations nor the letters are of a brilliant character that reach us out of that active, fluent, much-discussing, and reasoning community, where every individual possessed some notable features, and all were supposed to be, and believed themselves, guides of opinion and teachers of men. Upon the Lambs in their quaint city chambers, the walls lined with dark "Hogarths" and old books; the tables surrounded once a week with earnest whist-players; the supper spread on one side, cold beef and roast potatoes, and the kindest welcome-the spectator lingers lovingly. No such pair as that brother and sister are in all the bands of their contemporaries: the tender love that braved every suffering undaunted the forlorn delightful wit that made shift to smile amid its tears the union, passing that even of marriage, of common misfortune, of heroic |