advancing. He is plump and jocund, rosy, | And each had the Delilahs that were their well favoured, double chinned. He wears own giant souls, and they were roused to a long, loose-pulled, fleecy, flaxen wig; a labour on, unhindered, undismayed, as drab square coat; a fine cambric neck-tie, brightly as if the skies of heaven were still with point-lace ends. If Cowper did not visible to them, and they had not to grope rise and whisper, their way through thick unyielding night." Ten thousand sit there would be much longer hesitation. For who, accustomed by Mr. Roubiliac to see a head wrapped in a straggling sort of untidy-looking bonnet-de-nuit, would recognize the true flesh-colour under a frizettish wig? But there is no mistaking Herr Georg Friedrich now; and when Cowper whispers again, Remember Handel? Who, that was not born Deaf as the dead to harmony, forgets Or can, the more than Homer of his age? he brings a thought present to the mind on which we will just linger. He likens the musician to the grave Homer. We wonder whether Handel — armer, lieber Handel! ever read that the great Greek had a deep affliction sent him, and was stricken blind! We wonder whether, when his own eyes were sightless, and he stretched forth his hands to feel his way, he ever thought of the fine "Samson " he had composed, and broke out into the soliloquies he joined to tune for him! "O loss of sight! are the words he inlaid with melody; O worse than beggary, old age, or chains! And did he come to hear painful meaning in these that the notes had never had before? And, if he did, we wonder whether it ever came to him also that he, John Milton, whose words had inspired his harmony, had been over-shadowed by the same calamity, and had held out his hand for help, blind too? If the one craved for sight, so had craved the other. The twin-creators of double song, now everlastingly allied, the strength and sorrow they both depicted were the strength and sorrow of the two; the sad shroud it was the choice of both to image, was the shroud doomed to fall on each alike. Each, too, pictured a Delilah; drawing nearer, and singing inspiritingly, Life is not lost; though lost your sight, Bring the laurels, bring the bays, What better words than these they both sung, can be the death-music sounding about them now? A letter of self-introduction is presented by a mere lad at this moment. "I am now only at the age of seventeen," the letter says (it sold the other day for six guineas), and there are some lines accompanying it, beginning "Be hush'd, be hush'd, ye bitter winds!" put in as a taste of the young writer's quality. Looking from the thin hand that gives this letter to the face that is so anxious over it, we see a fair smooth skin, a prominent bird-like nose, a full blue eye, a fine-cut mouth and chin, as clear and pure as if they were a girl's; the whole surmounted by over-hanging, wavy, palebrown hair. The young man wears a dainty shirt-frill, standing out fan-like from the heavy breast-piece and collars of a close cloth coat; he wears, wound and wound about his neck, a muslin handkerchief, as spotless in its whiteness as the fresh-fallen snow; and when we look to the signature of his letter, we see there is written there Henry Kirke White. Oh! what a noble heart was here undone, When science 'self destroyed her favourite son! And yes, poor young Nottingham butcher's child and lawyer's clerk, yours is another of the noble hearts indeed! In you there are none of the semi-dissoluteness and conscious affectation some talented youths assume; you labour on; striving at your goal; hiding all your fainting hours and self-denyings, because your family are poor, and you will not worry them with the thought that they cannot give you needful help. You are a stern economist, young and genius-pressed as you are. fide to your mother from Cambridge, "I think I must get sugar from London; for if I buy it here it will cost me one-and-sixpence per pound, which is rather too much.” But most likely you go without the sugar. You go without many another sweet that would make your cup last out much longer; and then, as Byron again writes of you, You con 'Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, And helped to plant the wound that laid thee low. As we look again at the face of Henry son! Oh! you great wide Samuel! If this Kirke White, we hope the memory of it is how you picked Mr. William Shakspeare will cling tightly to us. Surely, thinking to pieces to little Davy, the wonder is he of him will do us good. ever performed him at all! But, perhaps, it was that little Davy was so used himself to get picked to pieces, he knew the value of it! There is no chair at hand, quickly, for the lady whose presence is upon us now. "Madam," says Dr. Johnson to her, in echo of what he smiled when she called upon him at his own chambers, "you who so often occasion a want of seats to others, will the more readily excuse the want of one yourself! " And the lady, who is Sarah Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, is very tall and stately, but bien gracieuse and takes the place that is deferentially made for her, with a lofty air. She talks, when she is questioned, of the rôle she thinks best suited to her, and when she decides for Queen Catherine, Johnson tells her she is right, and cries, When you next perform it, madam, I will myself once more hobble out to the theatre to see!" Neither praise nor money seem to have depraved her, Johnson tells Mrs. Thrale; but when refreshments are brought round she makes us laugh. She says tragically, but quite unconsciously use having become her second nature I asked for water, boy; you brought me beer!" just as if it were a line out of some weak Shakspeare, and she must knit her brows to give it point! 44 66 Closely after Mrs. Siddons, follow David Garrick and his merry little Viennese wife. She is in white satin, with cushioned hair, and as many strings of pearls twined in it and on her neck and wrists as Garrick's love and improving fortune can afford to put there; but he is in a stage dress, and "Mackbeth" (as the "Rambler" spells it), and cries, 66 And the "Rambler," pointing, not at the actor, but at the poet, criticises. Mackbeth, he says, weakens his diction by the name of an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments," so that "connecting, as we do, a knife with sordid offices, we feel aversion rather than terror! " Mackbeth, too, is guilty of the "utmost extravagance of determined wickedness, when he does not wish his knife to see the deed it does ;" and the Rambler" can scarcely check his risibility at the next line, for who, without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avenger of guilt peeping through a blanket!" Öh! John 66 66 His besetting sin was, according to Sir John Hill-apothecary, botanist, writer - that he did not use the vowels I and U properly that he put one, in short, where he ought to put the other. Garrick replied to this complaint, If it is, as you say, that I've injured a letter, I'll change my note soon, and I hope for the better; May the right use of letters, as well as of men, Hereafter be fixed by the tongue and the pen. Most devoutly I wish they may both have their due, And that I may be never mistaken for U! And whilst we look at him, the witticism is buzzed from lip to lip amusedly, and there is many a smiling face hid behind an outspread fan. --- No one laughs more heartily at this, and at every other subject tickling her bright brain, than Mary Monckton, Countess of Cork. She comes made way for by the pleased crowd with her face so perfectly beaming with good-humour and vivacity, it makes itself a mark for every one at once. No one can overlook her. She quizzes, enjoys, rollicks, eighty years old as she is; and as every lion presses to her to obtain the cordon d'honneur of a moment's notice and a flash of comically-malicious chat, she looks as attractive and as savoury as a newmade bride. She is in bridal white satin, too, with a high blonde cap, and many sparkling jewels (not a particle brighter than her eyes, though!); and she sits upright in her chair, and sees and hears everything, letting no sound or incident pass by. Surely," she says to Dr. Johnson (only this is half a century ago), "surely Dr. Sterne's writings are sometimes pathetic! Why, some of them have even affected me!" And Johnson answers, rolling himself about and laughing, "That, dearest, is because you are a dunce!" For he loves her, as his own word is for his queer attachments, and he calls her any name that comes uppermost. She is a little wounded after this, and pouts; but Johnson appeases her by saying what is the pretty truth-that she may be sure he does not think her duncish, or he certainly would not tell her so. Other ladies are in the wake of this lively countess. The first is Amelie Alderson, Mrs. Opie. She is young and pretty and plaintive, and she is singing her song, 66 skims the cream of each critique, Breathes o'er the page her purity of soul, Reforms each error, and refines the whole; and she has such a bevy of wits and poets and politicians round her- all fresh arrivals, and all eagerly pressing in-we ought to take breath before presenting ourselves to be introduced. "Don't forget thy poor Hindoo!" and yet the day when we are narrowed into two), is paying all attention to her brisk and to have the goodness to marry her to bustling painter-husband, the earnest man somebody more of a gentleman than a Diswho, when he was asked how he mixed his dar Aga." Then come Ann and Jane Taycolours, cried out "With my brains!" lor, of" Who fed me on her gentle breast," The second i Hannah More. She is dining and other tender infant rhymings. They at Widow Garrick and is hiding her are tiny girls yet themselves, in white muslaughing face behind the back of a lady sit-lin frocks and pink sashes, playing with ting on the same settee, because Johnson parents and baby and little brothers in the has uttered an unconscious equivoque, and parsonage garden, and learning there, it has made everybody titter, and himself in surely, the loving ways and sympathy that a solemn rage. The third is Sarah Kirby, will make them afterwards feel kindly to Mrs. Trimmer. She looks beautiful; she young children, and bend their thoughts to has silver hair, a rosy face, and clear brown enrich their minds. And then the only very eyes; and her muslin-kerchiefed bosom is prominent figure among the group is Elizaso neat and matronly, many more than the beth Vassall, Lady Holland, in a vast updozen children she gave birth to might be right black velvet bonnet, a strip of a brightnestled there, and find it sweet consolation. hued scarf, barrel curls, and a sleek black Not far from her (being the fourth lady on satin dress. She is the very My Lady who, the list) is her Majesty Queen Caroline. the English Bard says, to help the Scotch Cobbett has just dedicated his " English Reviewers, Grammar" to her (there he is! see! reckoning up one hundred and sixty-nine and a doubtful one, of the two hundred grammatical errors he is detecting in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets "), and he has told her she is the only one amongst all the royal personages of the age who has justly estimated the value of the people." He says more. He entreats her not to be uneasy at the sayings of her enemies, for they have It is a hard matter, though, to keep away. "an absence of knowledge, a poverty of Amid such a goodly throng, it is impossible, genius, a feebleness of intellect, which noth-indeed, to withhold a greeting. One of the ing but a constant association with malevo- visitors chatters out something about "the lence and perfidy could prevent from being sheep-bells' tinkling tattle," and small ascribed to dotage or idiocy." The fifth runnels' gurgling rattle," and we know it lady, immediately next Her Most Gracious is Horace Smith, of the " Rejected AdMajesty, is Fanny Burney, Madame D'Ar- dresses," and as he is a wag, we must pass blay. She wears her wide hat, her winning a jest with him. Another exclaims, "Oh smile, and has quiet crossed hands; but she dear! in this heat one would like to take uncrosses these hastily, when the poor king, off one's flesh, and sit in one's bones!" and her master, sees her walking in Windsor seeing a fine man with plenty of flesh to Park, and sets to running after her; she make a riddance of, we recognize another runs then, and the physicians run after him, Smith, Sydney, and cannot decline being and there is a whole set of runners, through roused up to a laugh. Somebody else cries, the trees and across the glades, till she is Mind, whom you are touching, man! come up with, and the king embraces her, and he hiccoughs, "Lift me gently!" for and after a chat on things that have been he is in the gutter," know, man, that I am his habit, finds his poor madness that Wilberforce!" and as it is poor dunned much relieved, and the physicians assure her Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with wit thus there is no occasion to be afraid. The sparkling in the debasement of intoxication, sixth lady is Mary Russell Mitford. She is our restoration is complete, and we go on writing, Sweet is the balmy evening again with spirit and strength renewed. We hour;" and she looks as if her evening give a hand to Wordsworth, breaking were balmy, and its hour sweet too. Syd- through his pensiveness to cry, ney Owenson, Lady Morgan, is within a few seats of her. She is very jewelled and belaced and modish, and is being quizzed by Lord Byron unmercifully; he is beseeching her when next she borrows an Athenian heroine for her four volumes," (we have 66 66 Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks We sit for a moment by the side of a sunk to three now, happily! and may hail | lame man, of rustic aspect and with a small 66 grave head; he says (seasoned with a Scotch | he ought to be very slavish, and to go right accent, enough for palatable salting), "The down upon his knees, and the governor (beonly thing in nature I cannot understand is, ing a rich grocer, and priding himself upon why dogs twirl themselves round three his grand gruffness), says, pompously, "I times before lying down," and we whisper, presume, sir- - I presume you want my vote "Sir Walter Scott " to the friend upon our and interest at this momentous epoch of arm, and pass impressedly on. We come your life?" And Abernethy looks for a then to Rogers, melodious Rogers," with moment - just long enough for him to conhis wide, bald forehead, and stooping, atten- ceive the manœuvre - and cries out, "No, tive gait; we see, carving at the decorations I don't; I want a pen'north of figs! Look in his dining-room, Francis Chantrey, jour- sharp! Wrap them up, I must be off!" neyman, a guest there afterwards, under the And loses his vote, but gets elected all the very scrolls and flowers upon which he is at same, and retains his bright and bold indework, and pointing out to his convives the pendence. works of his skilful hand. We welcome Por- There is pressing forward now a lad of son (with his shaven, Napoleonic chin), and seventeen, breathless, fierce, unhappy, exwe share the start that comes when he utters cited, for he has run away from school at halfhis stinging prophecy, "Joan of Arc and past three of a July morning with an English Thalaba will be read when Homer and Vir- poet in one pocket, and Euripides in the gil are forgotten - but not till then!" And other; and he reads an English newspaper we welcome, also, Fowell Buxton, called off into Greek fluently, and he is Thomas Elephant Buxton, because he is a giant of de Quincy, and he will be homeless in Lonsix feet four inches high, and we applaud don, hungry, and in agony, sleeping at nights when he cries out heartily (being a brewer with a forlorn girl of ten, in an empty house, at his Uncle Hanbury's, as well as a great amidst the scampering of rats. Following warm philanthropist), "I can brew one him comes a weak-faced, bald-headed man, hour, do mathematics the next, and shoot very short in the mouth and chin, writing the next, and each with my whole soul!" mournfully in his diary, "Here began debt And then our hilarity dies out a little when and obligation, out of which I have never we come to the quiet, old-world Lambs- been, and never shall be, extricated as long Charles and Mary dark and graceless and as I live." It is Benjamin Robert Haydon, almost all gloom; she with a large-frilled and what he sets down is true; there is no heavy cap, and a straight-pinned woolen lightening of his distress and humiliation till shawl, offering no outward beauty as com- he bring Death to end them with his pensation to her brother for the devotion own hand. Then there arrives Coleridge, that has been hers since the fatal tragedy, saying; and that has never ceased. Near to the Lambs are three physicians - Baillie, Astley Cooper, and Abernethy. They are smooth, and sober, and serious, all; for they are listening to the maladies of the company, and feeling their pulses, and looking at their tongues, and they know why one is bilious, and another choleric, and what mad freaks of diet have upset all the rest; but in private they will lash out their learned opinions of their profession in their own characteristic way. Baillie says, and he says it with a sigh, as he turns uneasily on his sick bed, "I wish I could be sure that I have not killed more than I have cured!" Sir Astley Cooper declares, "The science of medicine is founded on conjecture, and improved by murder;" and John Abernethy blurts dryly, for he knows there is something funny coming, "There has been a great increase of medical men of late years, but upon my life, diseases have increased in proportion!" And Abernethy visits one of the governors of St. Bartholomew's Hospital to ask for his vote to elect him surgeon. It is supposed that There came and look'd him in the face This miserable knight ! And more than one among the company He Can none remember that eventful day, To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife! aware, He calls out, Moore! Harmonious favour- | ing-irons," and "gibbets," as he reads a ite of the Nine! the critic's Little adversary recent publication of the laureate's, in which and he laughs: 66 his name is mentioned with anything but praise. Byron is greatly disconcerted, but he goes on with his work. He brings forward, with a line or epithet for each, Canning, Sotheby, Dibdin, Hook, Montgommore kindly mention, Leigh Hunt, Colman, Shelley, Keats; and then he points to John Murray and Thomas Norton Longman, calmly looking at the whole. They seem suave, deliberate (Mr. Murray has, even at this moment, some MSS. in his hand); and it is odd to think how much depends on their decision, and how many of their fellow-company, who are now calmly sitting with them, have trembled often under their their sale or their suppression depends. sharp but kindly scrutiny, because on them and Tom, pert and spruce and very aspir-ery, Strangford, Hallam, Hoare, and with ing, appears on the bridge with him at Venice, and begins of the stars and waters and pale, placid moon. Byron stops him. it, Moore!" he cries, "don't be poetical!" and Moore comes in with a grin instead of a wrapt glance at heaven, and is just as happy as if it had been the other way. Byron resumes his rôle : Come forth, oh Campbell! give thy talents scope, Other forms and faces yet stand from the crowd distinct. Some belong to the fading past; others are so near the present the echo of their voices is still about us, and we cannot mention their names lightly, knowArouse thee, Gifford! Be thy promise claim'd! ing there is no hearing them any more. We Make bad man better, or at least ashamed! look at all; at Gray, Grattan, Reynolds, and Gifford, coming straight from Hatch- Burke, Godwin; at Lockhart, Wilson, Benard's shop in Piccadilly (then Wright's), tham, Hazlitt, Hogg; at Talfourd, Hood, turns his nice face to us - for nice it is, al- Praed, Macaulay; and at Leech, and Thackthough it is thrown back a little, and is full eray, and Prince Consort, and Mrs. Brownabout the neck, as if he were in the sulks-ing, and Charlotte Brontë: and we are Are they all dead! and apologizes for coming to us a little bit forced to turn away. is our cry. Must Death be the certificate perturbed. He was standing in the shop, he says, when suddenly Wolcot (Peter Pin- they cannot be without before they can get dar) aimed a cudgel at his head for a lam- admission here? And we know it is. We poon, and it would have hit him if a by- know their grouping has been no reality; has only been a semblance of the life that stander had not stepped in promptly; and, can never more return! It is over; it Gifford adds, his dress is in the disorder that we see, because he and the gentleman is done. But as the light that has shown have just been rolling the assailant in the them to us fades out, as the gallery is mud! The next person Byron introduces cleared, as the blinds are drawn, as the last foot lingers, and the last look is turned reis Southey. He says: luctanctly away, we think there might be a record of their meeting, and it stands here now. They have been re-scattered once more, some time; they have been re-sent hither, thither, wide and near; but this in memory of their gathering- this as witness that it has really taken place. Good-bye to our pleasant guests. Good-bye to them one and all. The varlet was not an ill-favoured knave; A good deal like a vulture in the face, gave A swart and sharper-looking sort of grace To his whole aspect; 66 and he calls him an arrogant scribbler-ofall-work," and mutters" whips," and brand On the 12th of March, the Hougli, one of the | ing traversed the Suez Canal without encounlargest of the packet-boats belonging to the tering the slightest obstacle. The cargo conMessageries Imperiales, of 2,000 tons burden sisted of 1,300 bales of silk, 300 chests of tes, and 500 horse power, entered the quarantine and other valuable freight, and there were in port of Frioul direct from the China seas, hav- addition seventy passengers. |
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