of it does not reach beyond his own club or circle-and the man of real or of pretended genius, who aims to draw upon his own resources of thought or feeling, and to throw a new light upon nature and books. This last personage (if he acts up to his supposed character) has too much to do to lend himself to a variety of pursuits, or to lay himself out to please in all companies. He has a task in hand, a vow to perform; and he cannot be diverted from it by incidental or collateral objects. All the time that he does not devote to this paramount duty, he should have to himself, to repose, to lie fallow, to gather strength and recruit himself. A boxer is led into the lists that he may not waste a particle of vigour needlessly; and a leader in Parliament on the day that he is expected to get up a grand attack or defence, is not to be pestered with the ordinary news of the day. So an author (who is, or would be thought original) has no time for spare accomplishments or ornamental studies. All that he intermeddles with must be marshalled to bear upon his purpose. He must be acquainted with books and the thoughts of others, but only so far as to assist him on his way, and “to take progression from them." He starts from the point where they left off. All that does not aid him in his new career goes for nothing, is thrown out of the account; or is a useless and splendid incumbrance. Most of his time he passes in brooding over some wayward hint or suggestion of a thought, nor is he bound to give any explanation of what he does with the rest. He tries to melt down truth into essences-to express some fine train of feeling, to solve some difficult problem, to start what is new, or to perfect what is old; in a word, not to do what others can do (which in the division of mental labour he holds to be unnecessary), but to do what they all with their joint efforts cannot do. For this he is in no hurry, and must have the disposal of his leisure and the choice of his subject. The public can wait. He deems with a living poet, who is an example of his own doctrine-

"That there are powers

Which of themselves our minds impress;

That we can feed this mind of ours

In a wise passiveness."

Or I have sometimes thought that the dalliance of the mind with Fancy or with Truth might be described almost in the words of Andrew Marvell's address "To his Coy Mistress:"—

"Had we but world enough and time,

This toying, Lady, were no crime;

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk and pass our love's long day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews.
My contemplative love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart:
For, lady, you deserve this state;

Nor would I love at lower rate!"

The aspiring poet or prose-writer undertakes to do a certain thing; and if he succeeds, it is enough. While he is intent upon that or asleep, others may amuse themselves how they can with any topic that happens to be afloat and all the eloquence they are masters of, so that they do not disturb the champion of truth, or the proclaimer of beauty to the world. The Conversation of Lords, on the contrary, is to this like a newspaper to a book—the latter treats well or ill of one subject, and leads to a conclusion on one point; the other is made up of all sorts of things jumbled together, debates in parliament, law-reports, plays, operas, concerts, routs, levees, fashions, auctions, the last fight, foreign news, deaths, marriages, and crim-cons, bankruptcies, and quack-medicines; and a large allowance is frequently to be made, besides the natural confusion of the subjects, for cross-readings in the speaker's mind! Or to take another illustration, fashionable conversation has something theatrical or melo-dramatic in it; it is got up for immediate effect, it is calculated to make a great display, there is a profusion of paint, scenery, and dresses, the music is loud, there are banquets and processions, you have the dancers from the Opera, the horses from Astley's, and the elephant from Exeter 'Change, the stage is all life, bustle, noise and glare, the audience brilliant and delighted, and the whole goes off in a blaze of phosphorus; but the dialogue is poor, the story improbable, the critics shake their heads in the pit, and the next day the piece is damned!

In short, a man of rank and fortune takes the adventitious and ornamental part of letters, the obvious, popular, fashionable, that serves to amuse at the time, or minister to the cravings of vanity, without laying a very heavy tax on his own understanding, or the patience of his hearers. He furnishes his mind as he does his house, with what is showy, striking, of the newest pattern: he mounts his hobby as he does his horse, which is brought to his door for an airing, and which (should it prove restive or sluggish) he turns away for another; or like a child at a fair, gets into a round-about of knowledge, till his head becomes giddy, runs from sight to sight, from booth to booth, and like the child, goes home loaded with trinkets, gew-gaws, and rattles. He

As when a person asks you "whether you do not find a strong resemblance between Rubens's pictures and Quarles's poetry?"-which is owing to the critic's having lately been at Antwerp and bought an Edition of Quarles's Emblems. Odd combinations must take place where a number of ideas are brought together, with only a thin, hasty partition between them, and without a sufficient quantity of judgment to discriminate. An Englishman of some apparent consequence passing by the St. Peter Martyr of Titian at Venice observed, "It was a copy of the same subject by Domenichino at Bologna." This betrayed an absolute ignorance both of Titian and Domenichino, and of the whole world of art: yet unless I had also seen the St. Peter at Bologna, this connoisseur would have had the advantage of me, two to one, and might have disputed the precedence of the two pictures with me, but that chronology would have come to my aid. Thus persons who travel from place to place, and roam from subject to subject, make up by the extent and discursiveness of their knowledge for the want of truth and refinement in their conception of the objects of it.

does not pore and pine over an idea (like some poor hypochondriac) till it becomes impracticable, unsociable, incommunicable, absorbed in mysticism, and lost in minuteness: he is not upon oath never to utter any thing but oracles, but rattles away in a fine careless hair-brained dashing manner, hit or miss, and succeeds the better for it. Nor does he prose over the same stale round of politics and the state of the nation (with the coffee-house politician), but launches out with freedom and gaiety into whatever has attraction and interest in it, "runs the great circle, and is still at home." He is inquisitive, garrulous, credulous, sanguine, florid,-neither pedantic nor vulgar. Neither is he intolerant, exclusive, bigoted to one set of opinions or one class of individuals. He clothes an abstract theory with illustrations from his own experience and observation, hates what is dry and dull, and throws in an air of high health, buoyant spirits, fortune and splendid connexions to give animation and vividness to what perhaps might otherwise want it. He selects what is palpable without being gross or trivial, lends it colour from the flush of success, and elevation from the distinctions of rank. He runs on and never stops for an answer, rather dictating to others than endeavouring to ascertain their opinions, solving his own questions, improving upon their hints, and bearing down or precluding opposition by a good-natured loquacity or stately dogmatism. All this is perhaps more edifying as a subject of speculation than delightful in itself. Shakspeare somewhere says " A man's mind is parcel of his fortunes," and I think the inference will be borne out in the present case. I should guess that in the prevailing tone of fashionable society or aristocratic literature would be found all that variety, splendour, facility, and startling effect which corresponds with external wealth, magnificence of appearance, and a command of opportunity; while there would be wanting whatever depends chiefly on intensity of pursuit, on depth of feeling, and on simplicity and independence of mind joined with straitened fortune. Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it. Accordingly, we find but one really great name (Lord Bacon) in this rank of English society, where superiority is taken for granted, and reflected from outward circumstances. The rest are in the second class ...... Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope idolized (and it pains that all his idols are not mine) was a boastful empty mouther! I never knew till the other day, that Lord Bolingbroke was the model on which Mr. Pitt formed himself. He was his Magnus Apollo; and no wonder. The late Minister used to lament it as the great desideratum of English literature, that there was no record any where existing of his speeches as they were spoken, and declared that he would give any price for one of them reported as speeches were reported in the newspapers in our time. Being asked which he thought the best of his written productions, he would answer, raising his eyebrows and deepening the tones of his voice to a sonorous bass, "Why, undoubtedly, Sir, the Letter to Sir William Wyndham is the most masterly of all his writings, and the first composition for wit and eloquence in the English language;"-and then he would give his reasons at great length and con amore, and say that Junius had formed himself entirely upon it. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, a house next-door to one belonging to Lord Chatham at Walham-Green; and

as the gardens joined, they could hear Lord Bolingbroke walking out with the company that came to see him in his retirement, and elaborately declaiming politics to the old lords and statesmen that were with him, and philosophy to the younger ones. Pitt learned this story from his father when a boy. This account, interesting in itself, was to me the more interesting and extraordinary, as it had always appeared to me that Mr. Pitt was quite an original, sui generis,

"As if a man were author of himself,

And own'd no other kin”

that so far from having a model or idol that he looked up to and grounded himself upon, he had neither admiration nor consciousness of any thing existing out of himself, and that he lived solely in the sound of his own voice and revolved in the circle of his own hollow and artificial periods. I have it from the same authority that he thought Cobbett the best writer and Horne Tooke the cleverest man of the day. His hatred of Wyndham was excessive and mutual.-Perhaps it may be said that Lord Chatham was a first-rate man in his way, and I incline to think it; but he was a self-made man, bred in a camp, not in a court, and his rank was owing to his talents.*

TO SHIP.

ALONG, along, thou gallant Ship!—
She walks the ocean well;
Her bowsprit in the flashing foam,
Her bow upon the swell.

Along, along, thou gallant Ship!→
She bravely rides the brine;
Her sails bright as the floating swan
In noon's unclouded shine.

The breezes bear her bravely on

Over the waste of waves,

Art's triumph, to the furthest shore
That father Ocean laves.

The symbol of the great and free,

The blue heaven o'er her head ;—

Like the wild wing of Liberty,

Her sails exulting spread.

From clime to clime, from line to pole,
Far sweeps her reinless prow;

A trackless thought, her course she steers
O'er plumbless gulphs below.

Along, along, thou gallant Ship!-
Still fresh the breezes be

With which thou glid'st along the foam,

A spirit of the sea!

* There are few things more contemptible than the conversation of mere men of the town. It is made up of the technicalities and cant of all professions, without the spirit or knowledge of any. It is flashy and vapid, or is like the rinsings of different liquors at a night-cellar instead of a bottle of fine old port. It is without body or clearness, and a heap of affectation. In fact, I am very much of the opinion of that old Scotch gentleman who owned that "he preferred the dullest book he had ever read to the most brilliant conversation it had ever fallen to his lot to hear!"

PICCADILLY JOURNALS.

To the Editor of the New Monthly Magazine.

MY DEAR SIR,-To begin with my birth and parentage (not my education, for that has nothing to do with the present matter), I am the second son of an Earl, whose London residence is No. —, Piccadilly. Though my father is a Tory, and of the strictest, I rather flatter myself on the liberal tone of my notions in general. This quality I did not take par descent, as the lawyers say; and therefore the pride which I feel in it, does not savour much of my aristocratical extraction. I am not, as my fellow-sprigs of quality usually are, an exclusionist in matters of society; and have therefore, ever since I became my own master, sought the company of the agreeable and the good in every respectable class of society. In pursuing this fancy, I have speculated not a little on men and manners, and amongst other things have renarked the extreme ignorance in one class of what passes in the next -different hours, different pursuits, and different customs of all sorts make them, as it were, different worlds. The set to which I by rights belong,-I mean that the laws of which are administered by Dukes and Duchesses, and other beaux and belles of distinction-strives to throw a veil of profound mystery over its principles of legislation, and screens them from the gaze of the profane vulgar, with a sedulousness to me truly ridiculous and provoking.

After all, its system appears so artificial, and so full of absurdities, that it ought to be exposed to the view of the world at large, and subjected to the speculations of ladies and gentlemen, of good sense and good taste, of all classes. To effect this, I have hit upon an expedient which I think ingenious enough; and you, my dear Sir, will, I hope, further my attempt as you best can.

You must know that my grandfather, of venerable memory (he was 87 when he died), had a vast notion of the importance and utility of keeping a Journal. He inherited this feeling from his grandfatherthe Chancellor, and the founder of the fortunes of our house (you see we are no chickens in respect of pedigree), and had expanded the idea prodigiously in his own view of it. Accordingly, on his death-bed, addressing himself more particularly to my father, (but at the same time looking round upon us all, so as to include us all in the advice he was going to give,) he began-" Ever, while you live, keep a Journal." He could say no more; but these few words sunk into the hearts of all who heard him, and from that hour every soul in the house set about making a diary. It was not confined to ourselves;—not a servant in the establishment but fell into the practice, and at this moment I have no doubt that the groom of the chambers keeps his Journal as regularly as my father himself. I alone have fallen off. For a year or two my daily record was diligently made out, my book looked as well and was kept as neatly as any body's; but by degrees I grew first to dislike and then to despise the practice, and have long since given it up altogether. I found that I was only registering silly and trifling details, of which the puerility was now and then relieved by a grave remark, not sufficiently candid to be of much use to myself, and not profound enough to be of any benefit to others.