one now whom he loves well enough, or of whose esteem he is sufficiently confident, to talk with him of common things in a common way; no one unto whom, if a secret wish or a secret grief were ever to disturb him, it can be entrusted; no one to support him if he faulters; no one to reprove him if he errs. His heart therefore has become obsolete by disuse; and, feeling but little for himself, he cannot sympathize with the feelings of others. Moreover, there will occasionally come across him a thought that he was born for better things, especially at those moments when he is induced to reflect more seriously, and to call forth those faculties of the mind which have not yet entirely fallen away. He cannot then conceal from himself how little his present manner of life is answerable to the promise of his youth, how far it is beneath what he once wished and hoped for. But he strives to stifle these repinings, and to quench all self-reproach, by turning his evil eye from himself upon his neighbour, and, to get rid of the gall and bitterness of his heart, opens the sluices and discharges it upon the first person who comes athwart his path.

Thus admirably fitted for becoming a critic, he crowns all his other qualifications by possessing a more than common share of the prejudices and bigotry of our times; prejudices and a bigotry which spring not, like those of former ages, from a warm and full, but from a cold and dry, heart, as it were the pimples that are generated from poorness of blood. For of all the characteristics of this self-termed liberal age, none is more remarkable than its illiberality; the universal unwillingness to make the slightest allowance for any difference of opinion; the supercilious intolerance of all who are any thing more than mere fac-similes of ourselves; the persecution of them, not indeed by wrath and the sword, but by contempt and the pen. We have lost indeed the faith in the infallibility of the church, but we have substituted for it a faith in the infallibility of ourselves. Every thing that is not with us is against us, cry both the radical and the loyalist, both the political economist and the churchman; and the same words are graven upon Hargrave's soul. All who object to any thing in the dis

cipline or administration of our church are rank atheists with Hargrave; all who think that our constitution is susceptible of the slightest improvement, that our laws are not perfect, that our expenditure may be dimi nished, are radicals and traitors; and any measures may fairly and honorably be resorted to for their speedy and effectual extirpation.

Some months had elapsed since our last meeting; we were both intending to dine on the town; and we resolved to spend the evening together. Should the hours prove too long-lived, they might be killed at the opera, where, if the music be dull, Hargrave, from his knowledge of every fair face that looks for admiration from the boxes, is an excellent companion. But this resource was not needed. With the impressions of the preceding evening still fresh upon me, I could not let an hour pass without allusion to the work by which they had been produced. Hargrave had read the "Imaginary Conversations," and was too clever not to find out that the arm which is stretched forth therein is an arm of might. But this had only increased his aversion to a writer whose opinions were so utterly repugnant to his own. During the first fever of his disgust, he had given vent to it in a bitter criticism, for which he entertained the same extravagant regard that most authors feel for a three days' old bantling. "If I can but manage to get it published," he said to me, "Landor is done for. The Imaginary Conversations will rot in the warehouse. I grant you that there is hardly a work in our own language, or even in Latin or French, comparable to them in style; I grant you that many of the characters are admirably delineated; that the vo lumes are full of the keenest wit; that, where a loftier tone is assumed, one might fancy that Apollo himself was speaking, so pure and radiant and piercing is the language_on which the thoughts are borne. But this matters not. Such thoroughly detestable principles must be put down. No mercy must be shewn to so fierce an antagonist of church and state. The strength he has displayed only makes his attack more dangerous, and therefore more criminal. I would give the world if I could but render this one great service to

Our way lies. Father,

"Goethe, you see, has in the first stanza, wherein Mignon invites her beloved to Italy, selected objects at once beautiful in themselves and characteristic of the country whither they are to lure him—the blossom of the citron, the golden orange glowing amidst the dark leaves. There is an equal propriety in the following stanzas: in the character of her protector, William Meister is to be captivated by the description of the Italian villa; but no images, save those of gloom and horror, have any charm or fascination for the old man."

“Would,” said Hargrave, “that our poets could discover that images have a relative, as well as a positive beauty, and that, however good in themselves, they are not equally good at all times and in all places. At present, if they lay their hands on a violet-tuft, they stick it full of tulips and roses; if on a sweet-briar, they hang it round with lilies and pinks. Their poems are nosegays, instead of plants in blossom. The absurdity of Lord Byron's two lines must now, after its complete exposure in this dialogue, be apparent to the blindest discernment; and yet I would wager that they have been repeated many thousand times for beautiful, and that the reciter had a vague confused notion, that there must be some meaning behind such very pretty words. With such utter slovenliness do nine people out of ten read poetry."

"Very true!" I answered. " One thing however may be learnt from Lord Byron's misapplication of the citron; that poets ought not to borrow of one another. Whenever they try to mix up the produce of another mind with that of their own, the result is usually wanting both in beauty and in truth. It is in most cases a very clumsy piece of patchwork. Mignon will supply us with another instance. For it is evident that when our illustrious unknown novelist was delineating Fenella, in his Peveril of the Peak, this wonderful creation of

Thither, thither, let us go together.

Goethe's was floating before his eyes; it is equally evident that the copy is feeble and exaggerated, and many thousand degrees below the original. The character is not the native growth of the author's mind, and is only half assimilated with the beings by whom it is surrounded; hence in order that its weakness may be concealed, it is overdone. Never indeed does that great writer seem to me to have failed so entirely, not even when he was metamorphosing Fouque's lovely Undine into the White Lady of Avenel.

"But I was referring you to another passage in the Imaginary Conversa tions, of which the meaning, if you were not led to examine it narrowly, may perhaps have escaped you. Still if you will look over the account given by Burnet of Mr. George Nelly (vol. i. p. 160), you will perceive that at least the main part of it is designed for the noble satirist, who of late, whenever he has caught scent of Landor, has run after him to bark at his heels; and I leave you to decide which of the combatants puts in the strongest and neatest blows. The first part is in allusion to the quarrel with Southey, in which so much inkshed took place a couple of years ago; and with your knowledge of literary scandal you will not fail to discern many other palpable hits."

Hargrave handed me the volume, and I read to him the following passage:

Who would have imagined that the youth who was carried to his long home the other day, I mean my Lord Rochester's reputed child, Mr. George Nelly, was for several seasons a great poet? Yet I remember the time when he was so famous an one, that he ran after Mr. Milton up Snow-hill, as the old gentleman the Poultry, and, treading down the heel was leaning on his daughter's arm from of his shoe, called him a rogue and a liar, while another poet sprang out from a grocer's shop, clapping his hands, and crying

66

Bravely done! by Belzebub! the young cock spurs the blind buzzará gallantly! On some neighbour representing to Mr.

George the respectable character of Mr. Milton, and the probability that at some future time he might be considered as among our geniuses, and such as would reflect a certain portion of credit on his ward, and asking him withal why he appeared to him a rogue and liar, he replied: "I have proofs known to few: I possess a sort of drama by him, entitled Comus, which was composed for the entertainment of Lord Pembroke, who held an appointment under the king, and this very John has since changed sides, and written in defence of the Commonwealth."

Mr. George began with satirizing his father's friends, and confounding the better part of them with all the hirelings and nuisances of the age, with all the scavengers of lust, and all the link-boys of literature; with Newgate solicitors, the patrons of adulterers and forgers, who, in the long vacation, turn a penny by puffing a ballad, and are promised a shilling in silver, for their own benefit, on crying down a religious tract. He soon became reconciled to the latter, and they raised him upon their shoulders above the heads of the wittiest and the wisest. This served a whole winter. Afterwards, whenever he wrote a bad poem, he supported his sink ing fame by some signal act of profligacy, an elegy by a seduction, an heroic by an adultery, a tragedy by a divorce. On the remark of a learned man, that irregularity is no indication of genius, he began to lose ground rapidly, when on a sudden he cried out at the Haymarket, there is no God. It was then surmised more generally and more gravely that there was something in him, and he stood upon his legs almost to the last. Say what you will, once whispered a friend of mine, there are things in him strong as poison, and original as sin. Doubts however were entertained by some, on more mature reflection, whether he earned all his reputation by this witticism: for soon afterwards he declared at the Cockpit, that he had purchased a large assortment of cutlasses and pistols, and that, as he was practising the use of them from morning to night, it would be imprudent in persons who were without them either to laugh or to boggle at the Dutch vocabulary with which he had enriched our language. In fact, he had invented new rhymes in profusion, by such words as trackschuyt, Wageninghen, Skiermonikoog, Bergen-op-Zoom, and whatever is appertaining to the market-places of fish, flesh, fowl, flowers, and legumes, not to omit the dock-yards, and barracks, and gin-shops, with various kinds of essences and drugs.

Now, Mr. Hardcastle, I would not censure this: the idea is novel, and does no harm: but why should a man push his neck into a halter to sustain a catch or glee?

Having had some concern in bringing his reputed father to a sense of penitence for his offences, I waited on the youth likewise, in a former illness, not without hope of leading him ultimately to a better way of thinking. I had hesitated too long: I found him far advanced in his convalescence. My arguments are not worth repeating. He replied thus:

"I change my mistresses as Tom Southern his shirt, from economy. I cannot afford to keep few; and I am determined not to be forgotten till I am vastly richer. But I assure you, doctor Burnet, for your comfort, that if you imagine I am led astray by lasciviousness, as you call it, and lust, you are quite as much mistaken as if you called a book of arithmetic a bawdy book. I calculate on every kiss I give, modest or immodest, on lip or paper. I ask myself one question only; what will it bring me?" On my marveling and rais ing up my hands," You churchmen," he added, with a laugh, "are too hot in all your quarters for the calm and steady contemplation of this high mystery."

He spake thus loosely, Mr. Hardcastle, and I confess, I was disconcerted and took my leave of him. If I gave him any offence at all, it could only be when he said, I should be sorry to die before I have write ten my life, and I replied, Rather say before you have mended it.

"But, doctor," continued he, "the work I propose may bring me a hundred pounds." Whereunto I rejoined, "That which I, young gentleman, suggest in preference will be worth much more to you.'

At last he is removed from among the living: let us hope the best; to wit, that the mercies which have begun with man's forgetfulness will be crowned with God's forgiveness.