We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of natural feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnell; whereas, in the very thickest of their conceits,-in the bewildering mazes of tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, the "sum" of which, "forty thousand " of those natural poets, as they are called, "with all their quantity," could not make up.

D.* commenced life, after a course of hard study, in the "House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a knavish, fanatic schoolmaster at at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this poor stipend he never received above half in all the laborious years he served this man. He tells a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. would take no immediate notice; but after supper, when the school was called together to evensong, he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily against riches, and the corruption of the heart occasioned through the desire of them,— ending with, "Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish,"-and the like,-which, to the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, but, to poor D., was a receipt in full for that quarter's demands at least.

And D. has been under-working for himself ever since,-drudging at low rates for unappreciating

* George Dyer.

L

booksellers, wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars who have not the art to sell themselves to the best advantage. He has published poems which do not sell, because their character is inobtrusive, like his own; and because he has been too much absorbed in ancient literature to know what the popular mark in poetry is, even if he could have hit it. And therefore his verses are properly what he terms them,-crotchets; voluntaries; odes to Liberty and Spring; effusions; little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables and window seats, at parting from friends' houses, and from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrimage. If his Muse of kindness halt a little behind the strong lines in fashion in this excitement-craving age, his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy, natural mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of conversation.

"Pray God, your honour relieve me," said a poor beads-woman to my friend L- one day: "I have seen better days.' "So have I, my good woman," retorted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just then threatening a storm; and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester.

It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to the stocks or the parish beadle.

But L has a way of viewing things in a paradoxical light on some occasions.

I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin verses, which I believe to be unique. It is entitled, Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatorum libri quinque. It purports to be printed at Perth, and bears date 1679. By the appellation which the author gives

himself in the preface, hypodidasculus, I suppose him to have been an usher at some school. It is no uncommon thing now-a-days for persons concerned in academies to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. The "master of a seminary for a limited number of pupils at Islington" lately put forth an edition of that scarce tract, "The Elegy in a Country Churchyard," (to use his own words,) with notes and head-lines! But to our author: These epigrams of Alexander Fulton, Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides extreme dulness and insipidity; but there is one, which, by its being marshalled in the front of the volume, seems to have been the darling of its parent, and for its exquisite flatness, and the surprising strokes of an anachronism with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion. It is addressed, like many of the others, to a fair one :

AD MARIULAM SUAM AUTOR.

"Moverunt bella olim Helenæ decor atque venustas
Europam inter frugifer atque Asiam.

Tam bona, quam tu, tam prudens, sin illa fuisset,
Ad lites issent Africa et America !"

Which, in humble imitation of mine author's peculiar poverty of style, I have ventured thus to render into English :

THE AUTHOR TO HIS MOGGY.

"For Love's illustrious cause, and Helen's charms,
All Europe and all Asia rush'd to arms.

Had she with these thy polish'd sense combined,
All Afric and America had join'd!"

The happy idea of an American war undertaken in the cause of beauty ought certainly to recommend the author's memory to the countrymen of Madison and Jefferson; and the bold anticipation of the dis

covery of that continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight beyond the Sibyl's books.

A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA.*

BY A FRIEND.

THIS gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to Nature. He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the London Magazine will henceforth know him no more.

Exactly at twelve, last night, his queer spirit departed; and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining-room of his friends T. and H.;† and the company, assembled there to welcome in another 1st of January, checked their carousals in mid-earth, and were silent. Janus wept. The gentle Pr, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an elegy; and Allan C.,§ nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes, full and friendly, as a Tale of Lyddalcross.

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two years and a half's existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.

* From the London Magazine, 1823. A part of this article was republished by its author, as a Preface to The Last Essays of Elia.-EDITOR.

+ Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the London Magazine."

Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall.
Cunningham.

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well founded. Crude they are, I grant you,-a sort of unlicked, incondite things,-villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his if they had been other than such; and better it is that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not know that what he tells us as of himself was often true only (historically) of another; as in his Third Essay, (to save many instances,) where, under the first person, (his favourite figure,) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections,—in direct opposition to his own early history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of another, making himself many, or reducing many unto himself, then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly?

My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him hated him ; and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern about what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would ever out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or 'ersuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments.