himself to be called out of church, alarming the neighbour. hood with knocking at his door in the night, receiving sudden messages in places of resort, and inserting his cures by way of news in the daily papers, had been so injudiciously hackneyed by every desperate sculler in physic that they had lost all their effect on the public, and therefore were excluded from the plan of our adventurer, &c., &c.; but this he considered as a temporary project only, until he should have acquired interest enough to erect an hospital, lock, or infirmary, by the voluntary subscription of his friends; a scheme which had succeeded to a miracle with many of the profession, who had raised themselves into notice upon the carcases of the poor.

"Yet even this branch was already overstocked, insomuch that almost every street was furnished with one of these charitable receptacles, which, instead of diminishing the taxes for the maintenance of the poor, encouraged the vulgar to be idle and dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and their families from the diseases of poverty and intemperance; for it remains to be proved, that the parish rates are decreased, the bills of mortality lessened, the people more numerous, or the streets less infested with beggars, notwithstanding the immense sums yearly granted by individuals for the relief of the indigent." So much for charity-mongering How about it now? Have we no scheming medical practitioners, no tuft-hunting clerical toadies who advocate soup-kitchens and harelip hospitals, that they may have excuse, 'in urging the claims of their valuable societies,' for calling on Bishops and pushing their way into the houses of great men ?

then!

The work of Smollett's genius, that is unquestionably the greatest, is "Humphry Clinker." It is not only valuable for the living pictures it gives of a society that has fairly gone from us, but also as illustrative of the true magnanimity of its author. It was his last achievement in litera

ture; its pages were prepared for the press by Smollett, in that secluded spot, far from his native land, to which he had retired to die; before the critics in London had well commenced their wrangling and jangling, their upstart clevernesses, and self satisfied stupidities, about it, its writer lay cold and still in his last rest. It makes the heart rise with love to him, to think of him, the disappointed, neglected, abused man, worn by poverty and disease, painting touch by touch family scenes of the most exquisite tenderness, and calling up his latest and best powers to celebrate the beauties of his birth-place, and the virtues of his native land. The closing scene of Smollett's drama was scarce less grand than Fielding's.

CHAPTER IX.

LAURENCE STERNE.

The Sterne family was originally of Suffolk, from which county a member of it migrated to Nottinghamshire. It became respectable by giving birth to an Archbishop, and illustrious by bestowing on the world the author of "Tristram Shandy." The following is a piece of the Sterne pedigree :

Roger Sterne was a penniless lieutenant in Handaside's regiment, who incurred a debt to a Mr. Nuttle (a well known suttler in Flanders, during Queen Anne's wars), and being unable to pay that which was due to this gentleman, relieved him of the burden of a step-daughter, and incumbered himself with a portionless wife, who followed her husband's regiment from place to place, regularly presenting him with a new child just at the moment when its advent was most unwished for. The progeny were seven in all, and were of the following names, and came in the fol

lowing order :-Mary, Laurence, Joram, Anne, Devijeher (named after Colonel Devijeher), Susan, and Catherine. Of these Mary, Laurence, and Catherine, grew to battle with life; the others died young-one on an expedition from Bristol to Hampshire, with the regiment, another in the barracks of Dublin, and a third in military quarters at Carrickfergus. Mary, according to Laurence's history of himself and family, "married one Weemans, in Dublin, who used her most unmercifully, spent his substance, became a bankrupt, and left my poor sister to shift for herself, which she was able to do but for a few months, for she went to a friend's house in the country, and died of a broken heart. She was a most beautiful woman, of a fine figure, and deserved a better fate." (Query. What did her brother do to render her lot brighter ?) Catherine, the trouble himself

other sister, survived Sterne, but he did not with keeping up an acquaintance with her. He mentioned her in his last days "as most unhappily estranged from me by my uncle's wickedness and her folly." Laurence, doubtless, was afflicted thereat.

Lieutenant Roger was a simple-hearted little man, but very irascible. At Gibraltar he had a quarrel with a brother officer about a goose; a duel was the consequence, and Roger was run through the body. With much difficulty he survived the wound, though with an injured constitution, and went to Jamaica, where he died of a fever, in March, 1731. Laurence was born at Clonmel, Nov. 24, 1713; so he was about eighteen years of age when he heard of his father's death. The boy had by this time been several years at school, under the tuition of a good master, and in the year 1733 his uncle, Dr. Sterne (Prebendary of Durham and holder of two valuable livings in the East Riding of Yorkshire), sent him to Cambridge, in which university he was a member of Jesus College, took his degree of B.A. in 1736, and his M.A. in the commencement of 1740.

At college he commenced an acquaintance (which became a warm friendship, and lasted throughout life), with his cousin John Hall Stevenson, a gentleman of fortune, considerable wit and scholarship, and a Shandean tendency to voluptuous excess, whose residence was Skelton Castle, in Yorkshire (or Crazy Castle as he christened it), from which he sent forth the "Crazy Tales," which, though now forgotten, attracted in their day much attention. They are as indecent as one would expect from a lover of Sterne, and abound with personality, as the following specimen will show.

My compliments to Dr. S-,
To whom this postcript I address,
Physician, Critic, and Reformer,

Expounder both of dream and riddle,

Historian and chief performer

Upon the Caledonian fiddle!

Master of dedication sweet,

Renowned translator of translations,
That, like old clothes in Monmouth-street,
Display their glittering temptations.
You are so us'd to a Northern trammel,
You cannot enter into Lyric fable;
One might as well expect to see a camel
Pass through a needle's eye, into a stable;
And therefore I am forced to study
To find out something you can understand,
Pleasant and fresh, though somewhat muddy,
Just like the mug of porter in your hand.
And yet when all is said and done,
This something's nothing but a pun.

A PUN.

You are so very good at smelling
For we have often heard you tell it,

I wonder you don't change your spelling,
And write yourself Professor Smellit.

The author of the above lines (unquestionably a man of some merit), is better at no time than when alluding to his