66 "Fanny" is popular, we conceive, because it is written in a taking," but false school of verse. This is emphatically the age of smartness, and "Fanny" is, comparatively speaking, a smart poem. It is, as we said before, an imitation of "Don Juan," which, in our opinion, is the most execrable school of verse ever in vogue, the very incarnation of mockery and infidelity. We leave to others the discussion of its moral tendencies, and take it up solely on the ground of taste and feeling. Not only does it violate the commonest principles of taste, we speak of the school now, not of any particular poem,but the best and purest feelings of the human heart; robbing man of faith in him self and his fellows, checking him in his nobler aspirations and emotions, or holding them up in such a ridiculous light that he is ashamed of them, even stripping the material world itself of its beauty and comfort. Nothing is safe from its sneers; it lays its irreverent hands on everything; is an universal image-breaker, a caster down of all temples and altars, false and true; its only aim is to be smart, to make a point, to raise a laugh, at any cost, at any sacrifice; purity and beauty of style, symmetry and proportion, sense and meaning, everything gives place to what its vitiated taste considers wit and humor, bearing the same proportion to true wit and humor that the galvanized grins of a corpse do to the hearty natural laugh of a jovial living man. “Don Juan,” despite its inherent faults, is in many of its parts truly poetic, and rarely missed being a true and exceedingly beautiful poem. It is beautiful, and sublime, in parts, because Byron was a great poet, with infinite capacities of mind. "He should have been a glorious creature; he Had they been wisely mingled; as it is, Mix'd and contending, without end or order, The wit of Don Juan is of the keenest; the humor, for there is real humor in it, genial and hearty, and its melancholy and pathos are positively beautiful. Everywhere are scattered "Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The "Fanny" of Halleck, and all other of the Don Juan imitations that we are 66 acquainted with, are at best but faint copies of their wonderful original, without its faults, and without its merits, or possessing both in such homœopathic doses that they were better without them. Fanny" has no merit as a story-indeed it pretends to none; and in our opinion—we may err, however-but little point as a satire. ning on stanza after stanza, and page after It is very thinly spread and diffusive; runpage for there are some eleven or twelve hundred lines of it to no palpable end, save that of making points, and saying smart things, both of which it does with considerable success. Once allow the legitimacy of the school of writing to which it belongs, and "Fanny" proves itself quite a poem. In conclusion, let us say that we consider Halleck a good poet spoiled he is a good poet in "Alnwick Castle," "Marco Bozzaris," "Burns," "Red Jacket," and "Magdalen;" and a good poet spoiled in "Fanny," and the other comic poems. Whether the spoiling process was owing to his circumstances of life, his bad models, Greene Halleck, individually, we shall not the spirit of the age, or to himself, Fitzattempt to determine; perhaps their com bination is the nearest to the truth. But the deed is done, and can't be helped. If one is not too critical, and we hope we have not been so, there is a good deal of pleasure to be got out of Halleck's volume. We must not look the gift horse too closely in the mouth. A GOLDEN RULE.-"I resolve," says Bishop Beveridge, "never to speak of a man's virtues before his face, nor of his faults behind his back." THE THE city of Lichfield, a hundred and twenty years ago, was reckoned, next to Exeter, the most considerable town in all the midland counties of England. It was the seat of a bishopric, and possessed its venerable cathedral. In yet earlier times also it was a place of some note; a castle crowned its hill-top, where scenes of war and revelry were witnessed by turns. In the times of the heptarchy, Lichfield was the capital of the kingdom of Marcia; and after their junction, of Marcia and East Anglia. Though not the shire-town of Staffordshire, in which it was situated, it enjoyed, by virtue of its franchises, most of the immunities of a county-town; and, in fact, its municipal corporation embraced in its domain a large portion of the county of Stafford, quite outside of the city. In the progress of affairs, during the seventeenth century and the former part of the eighteenth, this region kept pace with other parts of the kingdom. Its population was a settled one, chiefly occupied in husbandry, but not more rustic than the same classes in other parts. Among the principal families were a fair proportion of educated persons, whose attainments and social position entitled them to the, at that time, somewhat definite distinction of " the gentry." Out of these old families have arisen, especially during the last century, a large number of individuals who have achieved for themselves imperishable reputations. Compared with modern English towns of very moderate pretensions, however, Lichfield, in 1732, was a place of but little elegance or wealth. It was a long straggling town lying on both sides of the Trent, with only a few good houses, and in its whole aspect evincing very little taste or regard for personal convenience in its inhabitants. It might, indeed, boast of its cathedral, its free-school, and an extensive hospital for the sick and the poor. It had, however, but little trade, and its manufactures were inconsiderable. It lay on the great post-route leading to the northwest, and was a resting-place for the royal mail stages; so that the town was often filled with travelers, and its taverns were its most important establishments. But even then the growth of trade was beginning to effect those changes by which so thorough a revolution has been wrought in the social affairs of the nation. The old families that had long enjoyed hereditary opulence, with incomes of two or three hundred pounds, were, by the relative depreciation of money, becoming reduced to comparative poverty. Thus forced to increased activity, the younger members of such families began to seek more lucrative occupations, by which to maintain their position in society. In this manner began the movement of the country people to the cities and larger towns, by which the urban population has been greatly increased, and the interests of commerce and manufactures advanced beyond those of agriculture. Into this city of Lichfield, with all its provincial simplicity, we must now follow the subject of our observations. Johnson's connection with the university ceased, nominally, on the eighth of October, 1732, but it had virtually terminated some months before that time. In addition to the personal affliction already named, pecuniary want stood in the way of his completing his academical education. The resource on which he had depended when he first went to Oxford had failed in consequence of the return home of young Corbett; and the remittances from his father, which had never been large, were now wholly suspended by reason of the almost complete wreck of the affairs of the Lichfield bookseller. He, therefore, left college finally, without a degree, and returned home, himself wholly destitute of the means of a livelihood, and his father's fortunes in ruins. There are periods in human life when the severest calamities seem to come in troops, overwhelming all earthly hopes in a common ruin. Such seemed now to be Johnson's case. Only two months after the formal dissolution of his connection with Pembroke College his father died; and such was the reduced condition of his estate, that upon its distribution, only twenty pounds fell to his eldest son. In a little diary kept by Johnson at that time, is the following significant entry,* indicating at once his poverty and the greatness of his spirit in that dark hour: "I this day lay by eleven guineas, having received twenty pounds from my father's estate, which is all I can expect before The entry is in Latin, as follows: "Undecim aureos deposui, quo die quicquid ante matris funus (quod serum sit precor) de paternis bonis sperari licet, viginti scilicet libras accepi. Usque adeo mihi fortuna fingenda est. Interea, ne paupertate vires animi languescant, nec in flagitia egestas abigat, cavendum.” the death of my mother, which I pray may be far off. I am henceforth to fashion my own fortune. In the mean time let me take care that my spirit be not depressed by poverty, and that want do not betray me into baseness." He had now come to the threshold over which he must pass from the protection of parental care and go forth alone to the battle of life. The world was indeed rising up before him, but without smiles or promises. Everything in prospect was dark, cold and forbidding. The respectability of Johnson's parents, as well as his own good character and education, gave him ready access to the best society in Lichfield, and it is known that he maintained a good degree of intimacy with some of the best families of the place. He has himself informed us, in his Life of Edmund Smith, of his intimacy with and esteem for the family of Mr. Gilbert Walmsley, Registrar of the Ecclesiastical Court of Lichfield, a man of much learning and politeness, to whose conversation Johnson confessed himself always indebted. He was also on terms of friendship with the family of Captain Garrick, father of him who has made that name renowned throughout the world. The professional relations of Dr. Swinfen to his father's family and to himself individually, readily opened an intimacy between them. Besides these there were others of the same class of society to whom Johnson had ready access, and by whom he was treated with the consideration due to his character and the social condition of his family. Intercourse with such society probably did something toward smoothing the natural roughness of his manners, and also toward giving him practical notions of social life. There was a time in the history of most persons who have achieved their fortune, and risen from poverty and obscurity to independence and renown, when the first wants of our nature became the all-engrossing subjects of interest,-when the questions, "What shall I eat?" and, "What shall I drink?" and, "Wherewithal shall I be clothed ?" were painfully forced upon the attention, much less by avarice than by stern necessity. That period was to them a season of discipline, in which their souls gathered the strength by which subsequent triumphs were made, though many sink under its burdens and MARKET-BOSWORTH SCHOOL. The situation of usher in the school of Market-Bosworth, in Lichfield, was accordingly accepted by him; but, as might have been anticipated, that occupation proved irksome to the last degree. In a letter to a friend, a companion of his childhood, Mr. Hector of Birmingham, he complained of it as altogether intolerable, and declared that because of its monotonous routine of daily duties, one day contained as much as a whole lifetime; and that he scarcely knew whether it were more disagreeable for him to teach or for the boys to learn the grammar rules. To his discomforts in the school were added yet greater trials in his domestic affairs. He was domiciliated in the family of Sir Wolston Dixie, the patron of the school, where he officiated as a kind of domestic chaplain, and was treated with so much indignity that his situation became intolerable, and such was the impression made on his mind, that in his subsequent life this period was never referred to without evident horror. It is very probable that his host was proud, and of a violent temper, and looking upon his usher-chaplain as a kind of domestic servant, he treated him accordingly; but in forming a judgment of the whole matter the state of Johnson's mind and nervous system should not be forgotten. After enduring the complicated misery of his situation for a few months, he relinquished it with most positive disgust. Not long afterward he visited Birmingham at the invitation of Mr. Hector, but without any definite purpose as to finding employment there. Birmingham was then an inconsiderable country town, giving very little promise of the activity and progress that has raised it to the grade of a second-class city of the present time, and made it one of the most extensive seats of industry in the whole world. A few years before, there was no bookseller's shop in all the town, and the father of Dr. Johnson was accustomed to open a stall there on market days. But at this time a Mr. Warren had become established there as a bookseller; with him Mr. Hector boarded and lodged, and Johnson also now became an inmate of his house. The acquaintance thus accidentally formed seemed fortunate for both parties, as Johnson was able to be serviceable to his host both in his shop and in furnishing matter for a small newspaper issued by him. It is matter for regret that none of these earliest productions of the pen that afterward achieved so much in that very department, remain to the present time; for though their intrinsic value might be small, yet, as the first essays of a mighty genius, they could not fail to possess great interest. Having no settled plan of life, he remained at Birmingham longer than he expected when he first came there. The list of his acquaintances was gradually enlarged; and among the families with whom he became somewhat intimate were those of Mr. Porter, a mercer-whose widow he afterward married-and Mr. Taylor, who subsequently accumulated a fortune by his mechanical ingenuity. His principal inducements for continuing at Birmingham were, however, the pleasure of being near his friend, Mr. Hector, and the employment and remuneration afforded him by Mr. Warren. It was while he was thus tarrying at this place, that he undertook and executed the first literary work, which deserves to be ranked in the long list of the productions of his pen. An arrangement was made between himself and Mr. Warren, that the one should translate out of the French, and the other publish, the account of a voyage to Abyssinia, by Father Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, which Johnson had read at Pembroke College, and now spoke of in high terms of praise. The volume was accordingly procured, and a part of the work speedily accomplished, which was at once put into the hands of the printer; but the whole work was presently brought to a stand, by the indomitable indolence, or rather mental and bodily lassitude, of the translator. In this emergency his friend Hector, who knew his character, plied him with a motive to action that he knew would be most likely to prevail. Representing to him that the printer could do nothing else till this was finished, and that a helpless family were depending on his labor for their sustenance, this kindhearted man entreated Johnson, for their sakes, to arouse himself to activity. The expedient was successful. Taking the volume before him, as he sat up in his bed, he dictated his translation, while Hector wrote it down from his lips. In this way the work was completed; and, though printed at Birmingham, the date on the title-page is, London, 1735. The work performed by Johnson was one of no literary pretensions,-the design being simply to render into English the account of the Jesuit missionary. It however very satisfactorily demonstrated his capacity for the work of a translator. An original preface was prefixed, in which the hand of the future Johnson may be distinguished, though as yet it had not attained the force or facility that so distinguished its later performances. It appears that this narrative made an enduring and lively impression on Johnson's mind; as there can be no doubt that to this cause we are indebted for at least the form and imagery of "Rasselas," and the fiction of "Seged, King of Ethiopia," found in the Rambler. In August, 1734, a literary project was laid before the public, issuing from the city of Lichfield. This was no other than proposals to publish by subscription "the Latin poem of Politian, with a history of Latin poetry from the age of Petrarch to the times of Politian, edited by Samuel Johnson." Such an undertaking certainly evinces on the part of the proposed editor a good degree of confidence, though not an exaggerated one, in his own abilities. Not much, however, can be said in favor of the enterprise in its commercial aspects, as it could not be reasonably expected that a volume of Latin poems, issued by an obscure individual in a re |