understand that which, if it be not self-taught, is incommunicable. But to return from this digression to my crazed, self-taught artist. His father was a wealthy merchant; and designing his only son for the church, his education had been completed at Cambridge. But he was born a painter; and renouncing, with the recklessness and impetuosity of a youthful mind, goaded onwards by the fiery impulses of one predominant, one devouring passion, he renounced everything for it. This was an offence not at first to be forgiven by a father who had as strong a passion of another kind; who would rather have seen his son's name enrolled among the Tillotsons, Sherlocks, Taylors, and Barrows of the English hierarchy, than heard him hailed by the general voice as the Raffael or Titian of his country. But there was doubtless a pardon that might have been slowly won from the parental heart, had not every hold upon it been dissevered by a second offence, that of marrying a beautiful, virtuous, and amiable girl, who was as poor as poverty herself in all things else. Pride discarded him from his home, and pride kept him voluntarily a stranger to it ever after. He had now to struggle with adversity under all its most trying afflictions. He could not stoop to make the noble art to which he had devoted himself a trading commodity among the shopkeepers of the metropolis. He disdained to colour canvas for wages that would barely suffice to maintain him. He chose rather (when the small fund was exhausted which his father placed at his disposal in renouncing him, and which had been husbanded most thriftily) to depend for precarious subsistence upon slender loans solicited from former friends or acquaintance, while finishing his first serious effort in historical composition. The subject was a fine one-Oliver Cromwell surveying the dead body of Charles I. the night after his execution. It was exhibited. The best judges were struck with its grandeur and poetical conception as a whole, and with the felicitous power displayed in many of its details. It soon found a purchaser at the modest price demanded by the artist, who was thus "While the assassinates that crept up and down afraid of every man they met, pointed at as monsters in nature, finished not their treason when they had ended his martyrdom, one (O. C.), to feed his eyes with cruelty, and satisfy his solicitous ambition, curiously surveyed the murdered carcass, when it was brought in a coffin to Whitehall, and to assure himself the body was quite dead, with his fingers searched the wound whether the head was wholly severed from the body or no."-Lloyd Memoirs. VOL. III. enabled to discharge his obligations to his friends, and provide for immediate wants. In this way he continued to wrestle with his fate for several years, alternately a borrower and a payer, as his various pieces were bought. He buried himself meanwhile in solitude; for nowhere can a man live so solitary as in a crowded city, especially if he be poor. It is there only he may be one of thousands, without one of the thousands amid whom he moves knowing enough of him to call him by his name. His ambition was of the true quality; incapable of repose or satisfaction; discontented with all that it achieved; eager for all that its restless aspirings aimed at, and confident that all was within its reach. He denied himself rest, almost food; frequently sat at his easel eighteen or twenty hours together; and during that time contented himself with a few biscuits or a little fruit to rally his sinking energies. Then, fevered and exhausted, he would throw himself on his bed; not to sleep, but to dream and talk of the visions of his waking thoughts. This ceaseless labour, this intense musing upon bright images of renown that were incessantly streaming into his mind, uniting with the distraction caused by pecuniary embarrassments, first shattered his health, and finally unsettled his reason! His wife imagined she perceived occasional symptoms of a disturbed intellect long before she was summoned to witness an alarming evidence of it. One day she heard him shouting and dancing furiously in his room. She hastened to him. What was her dismay when she saw him with a large carving-knife in his hand, and the floor strewed with the shreds of three pictures for which he was to be paid a considerable sum when finished; but which, with the habitual improvidence of his character, he had suffered to remain unfinished for months (he and his family all but starving meanwhile), because he had begun, and was concentrating his whole soul upon the execution of, the Last Judgment. He had slashed them into ribands, and was exulting over his achievement with the boisterous rejoicing of a man who had vanquished some tormenting evil that had been pursuing him at every turn. When he perceived his wife he pointed to the bits of painted canvas, exclaiming with a strange mixture of ludicrous solemnity and the fierce flashing of satiated vengeance— "Now, my dear Martha, I am free! I have triumphed over these fiends, these insulting fiends, who stood grinning at me with looks of gaunt defiance, as if they were the personi 61 She will bring thee, a sogether. And to a shalt yaaf in :—thou shalt hear Bustle of the reaped corn: Sweet hinds antheming the mort: And in the same momens-bark! Ts the early April lark, Or the rockS. WITH DOST CBW. Sapphire queen of the mid-May; Oh, sweet Fancy! let her loose; Everything is spoil'd by use: Where's the cheek that doth not fade, Too much gazed at? Where's the maid Whose lip mature is ever new? Where's the eye, however blue, Doth not weary? Where's the face One would meet in every place? Where's the voice, however soft, One would hear so very oft? At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. Let, then, winged Fancy find Thee a mistress to thy mind: Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, Ere the God of Torment taught her How to frown and how to chide; With a waist and with a side White as Hebe's, when her zone Slipp'd its golden clasp, and down Fell her kirtle to her feet, While she held the goblet sweet, And Jove grew languid. -Break the mesh Of the Fancy's silken leash; Quickly break her prison-string, JOHN KEATS. STANDARD NOVELS.1 William Hazlitt, born at Maidstone, 10th April, 2779 died 19th September, 1830. The son of a Unitarian mster it was at first intended to educate him for his facher & profession. He, however, preferred art, and spect several years in the study of painting. He actuered some success as a portrait painter. but, dissatisfied with the results of his labcar, be laid down the brush in 197 and took up the pen. As a critic of art and literature his best talents were displayed, and he earned an enduring reputation. In 1913 he delivered a course of Secures at the Russell Institution, London, on the History of English Philosophy;" and at the Surrey Institution, in 15), another course on The Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, chiefly Dramatic." Of his other works the principal are Tobie-Talk, The Plain Spear, Characters of Skaks eard's Playas, The English Poets, and The Esh Cowie Winters, from which the following essay is taken. He was a constant contributor to the periodicals of his time. ] There is an exclamation in one of Gray's letters Be mine to read eternal new re mances of Marivaux and Crebillon!" If we do not utter a similar aspiration, it is not from any want of affection for the class of writing to which it belongs: for, without going quite so far as the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that more was to be learned from good novels and romances than from the gravest treatises on history and morality, we 1 Hazlitt was regarded as, in many respects, one of the best of our English critics, but it was lamented that he so often allowed prejudice, or what seemed to be prejudice, to interfere with his judgment. Professor Wilson observed of him: "One would suppose that he had a personal quarrel with all living writers, good bad, or indifferent. With him to be alive is not only a fault in itself, but it includes all other possible faults.... In short, if you want his praise, you must die for it; and when such praise is deserved and giver con amore, it is almost worth dying for." In the fiery the of Europe Sir Archibald Alison commented upon refined taste and chastened reflection contained m Hazlitt's disquisitions on the drama, "and which are more perspicuous in detached passages than in any entire work. He appears greater when quoted than when read. Possibly had his life been prolonged it would have been otherwise, and some work emanated from his gifted pen which would have placed his fame on a durable foundation." He wrote a life of the first Napoleon, which he re garded as his best work. He had an enthusiastic admiration for his hero, and it is said of him that he was "hardly able to forgive the valour of the conquerors" of Waterloo. As a must confess that there are few works to which we oftener turn for profit or delight, than to the standard productions in this species of composition. With the exception of the violently satirical and the violently sentimental specimens of the art, we find there the closest imitation of men and manners; and are admitted to examine the very web and texture of society, as it really exists, and as we meet with it when we come into the world. If the style of poetry has "something more divine in it," this savours more of humanity. We are brought sequainted with an infinite variety of characters-all a little more amusing, and, for the greater part, more true to general nature than those which we meet with in actual life-and have our moral impressions far more frequently called out, and our moral judgments exercised, than in the busiest career of existence. record of past manners and opinions, too, such writings afford both more minute and more abundant information than any other. To give one example only:-We should really be at a loss where to find, in any authentic documents of the same period, so satisfactory an account of the general state of society, and of moral, political, and religious feeling, in the reign of George II., as we meet with in the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. This work, indeed, we take to be a perfect piece of statistics in its kind; and do not know from what other quarter we could have acquired the solid information it contains, evenas to this comparatively recent period. What a thing it would be to have uch a work of the age of Pericles or Alexander! and how much more would it teach us as to the true character and condition of the people among whom it was produced, than all the tragedies and histories, and odes and orations, that have been preserved of their manufacture! In looking into such grave and ostentatious performances, we see little but the rigid skeleton of public transactions-exaggerations of party zeal, and vestiges of literary ambition; and if we wish really to know what was the state of manners and of morals, and in what way, and into what forms, principles and institutions were actually moulded in practice, we cannot do better than refer to the works of those writers who, having no other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for success from the fidelity of their pictures; and were bound (in their own defence) to reduce the boasts of vague theorists, and the exaggerations of angry disputants, to the mortifying standard of reality. We will here confess, however, that we are a little prejudiced on the point in question; and that the effect of many fine speculations has been lost upon us, from an early familiarity with the most striking passages in the little work to which we have just alluded. Thus, nothing can be more captivating than the description somewhere given by Mr. Burke, of the indissoluble connection between learning and nobility; and of the respect universally paid by wealth to piety and morals. But the effect of this splendid representation has always been spoiled to us by our recollection of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in Sir Thomas Booby's kitchen. Echard on the Contempt of the Clergy, in like manner, is certainly a very good book, and its general doctrine most just and reasonable; but an unlucky impression of the reality of Parson Trulliber always checks, in us, the respectful emotions to which it should give rise; while the lecture which Lady Booby reads to Lawyer Scout on the expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the parish, casts an unhappy shade over the splendid pictures of practical jurisprudence that are to be found in the works of Blackstone or De Lolme. The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to inculcate any moral: the professed moralist almost unavoidably degenerates into the partisan of a system: and the philosopher warps the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw the inference: if we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it is our own fault. The first-rate writers in this class are of course few; but those few we may reckon, without scruple, among the greatest ornaments and the best benefactors of our kind. There is a certain set of them, who, as it were, take their rank by the side of reality, and are appealed to as evidence on all questions concerning human nature. The principal of these are Cervantes and Le Sage; and, among ourselves, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and Sterne.1 As this is a department of criticism which deserves more attention than we have ever yet bestowed on it, we shall venture to treat it a little in detail; and endeavour to contribute something towards settling the standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind, in these several writers. We shall begin with the renowned history of Don Quixote; who always presents something more stately, more romantic, and at the same 1 We have not forgotten De Foe as one of our own writers. The author of Robinson Crusoe was an Englishman; and one of those Englishmen who make us proud of the name. strong feeling of sympathy pervaded every soul present. Witness, have you anything more to say?" inquired the president. "Lord bless your honour again and again for that kindness!" answered the coxswain. "I knew you would never throw a poor tar slap aback for speaking a bit of his mind. I've sarved my king-God bless him!-many years, and some of your honours knows that Jack Tiller never wanted a tow-line when boarding an enemy. Captain Wilkinson there will be a voucher for my experience in them 'ere matters, and so I think I can tell when a brave man does his duty; and as to Mr. Montagu, may I be I beg pardon, your honours, but I was going to say if ever a seaman fought as a seaman should fight, it was Mr. Montagu. But what's the worth of a heart that has no compassion for a signal of distress, and would leave a fellow-creature to be wrecked when a spare anchor would save 'em?" "Attend, coxswain," said the president: "do you think the prisoner had any other motive in going over to Corsoer than that which you have mentioned?" " Prisoner, your honours?" replied the coxswain doubtingly, and then, as if suddenly recollecting, he went on, "Oh ay, I understand now-you means Mr. Montagu. As for his motives I can't speak, but I know he had his side-arms and pistols." "Do you think that the cause of his quitting the prizes was pure generosity?" asked the president. "If it warn't, may I be I beg pardon again, your honours," said the coxswain. "And who can tell when they see the big round tears following in each other's wake down the cheeks of beauty-who can tell what tack they may stand on, or to what point of the compass they may head?-a brave man turns 'em into a sort of a language as quick as a marine turns into his hammock-there's no twisting 'em end for end, or convarting 'em deliberately into twice-laid." "The lady must have been very beautiful to have produced so great a fascination," said a young member of the court. now handed forward, to the great surprise of the court. Having done this, he took his station respectfully by the side of the person he had introduced, and in a business-like way removed the cloak, when Emilie Zeyfferlein, in all her loveliness, stood revealed to their eager gaze. Expressions of admiration issued from every part of the crowded cabin, but they were uttered only in an audible whisper. The president looked round him in a state of perplexed embarrass ment; the members of the court rose from their seats with marked respect; and the junior captain, who was the nearest to her, immediately offered her his chair. Captain Wilkinson came round to her side, and offered kind encouragement, whilst ill-repressed bursts of honest approval for several minutes issued from the bold tars without the cabin. But who could paint the feelings or the look of Montagu at the wholly unexpected appear ance of one who at that very moment occupied every thought of his heart?-it would be impossible. She looked imploringly towards the president; she tried to speak, but her voice faltered; yet her presence carried more energy and force with it than all the powers of language. She had braved the elemental strife of winds and waves, and there, a devotee to gratitude and love, she stood ready to plead for her benefactor. But this state of things could not be suffered to continue long. The president adjourned the court for the day; the prisoner was removed to his private cabin; and Emilie was conducted by the worthy Captain Clay to his wife and family till the sensation which had been created had somewhat subsided. She I must pass over the interview between the distressed Montagu and the fondly attached Emilie it was a mingling of delight with agony, a blending of smiles with tears. had come to England, accompanied by her father, in a neutral vessel, and furnished with letters from the regent of Denmark to the ruler on the British throne. They had gained information at the Admiralty of the intended court-martial, and not a moment was lost in hastening to Sheerness. On the following day the sitting of the court was resumed. The trial proceeded. A verdict of guilty was returned, and sentence of death passed upon the prisoner. Montagu heard it with every outward semblance of firmness-but oh! the agony of his heart! He had borne an irreproachable character—he had bravely fought for his country- he had an aged mother, who prized him as her dearest and most cherished treasure-he loved and was beloved-and to die by an ignominious execution, with thousands of eyes to witness his degradation!-oh! the rush of thought was dreadful. The But the spirit of the beauteous Emilie was stirred up, her mind was strengthened, her frame was nerved with energetic resolve; and, without seeing the condemned officer, she returned to the metropolis, and sought by every means within her power to influence the mercy of the crown in favour of Montagu. letters from Denmark were but little noticed by the regent, and the loss of lives caused by the defalcation of the doomed one was aggravated by the admiral; so that the only boon the supplicant could obtain was that the life of the lieutenant should be spared. This, however, was renewed existence to herself, for whilst he lived she was prepared to share his lot whatever it might be; and the heavy weight which threatened to crush the young bud of her future hopes was removed from her heart. Yet the blow had been too severe for the parent of the prisoner; his situation had been incautiously disclosed to the fond mother; the tender fibres which bound her to the world were severed; and she sank to the grave, with no child to close her eyes in death, and to see her laid in the receptacle for perishing mortality. Montagu was dismissed the service. Every tie that had bound him to his country was broken. He returned with the devoted Emilie to Copenhagen, changed his name, married the lovely girl, and rose to the rank of a Danish admiral, high in the confidence of the monarch. THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. Of Nelson and the North, And her arms along the deep proudly shone; By each gun the lighted brand, In a bold determined hand, And the prince of all the land Like leviathans afloat, Lay their bulwarks on the brine; It was ten of April morn by the chime: As they drifted on their path, There was silence deep as death; And the boldest held his breath, |