FANCY PORTRAITS.

THE BARD OF HOPE.

MANY authors preface their works with a portrait, and it saves the reader a deal of speculation. The world loves to know something of the features of its favorites; it likes the We may Geniuses to appear bodily, as well as the Genii. estimate the liveliness of this curiosity, by the abundance of portraits, masks, busts, china and plaster casts, that are extant, of great or would-be great people. As soon as a gentleman has proved, in print, that he really has a head, a score of artists begin to brush at it. The literary lions have no peace. to their manes. Sir Walter is eternally sitting like Theseus to some painter or other; and the late Lord Byron threw out more heads before he died than Hydra. The first novel of Mr. Galt had barely been announced in the second edition, when he was requested to allow himself to be taken "in one minute." Mr. Geoffrey Crayon was no sooner known to be Mr. Washington Irving, than he was waited upon with a sheet paper and a pair of scissors.

of

The whole world, in fact, is one Lavater: it likes to find its prejudices confirmed by the Hook nose of the author of Sayings and Doings, -or the lines and angles in the honest face of Izaak Walton. It is gratified in dwelling on the repulsive

ANACREON JUNIOR.

features of a Newgate ordinary; and would be disappointed to miss the seraphic expression on the author of the Angel of the World. The Old Bailey jurymen are physiognomists

to a fault; and if a rope can transform a malefactor into an Adonis, a hard gallows face as often brings the malefactor to the rope. A low forehead is enough to bring down its head to the dust. A well-favored man meets with good counte

THE AUTHOR OF BROAD GRINS.

nance; but when people are plain and hard-featured, (like the poor, for instance,) we grind their faces; an expression, I am convinced, that refers to physiognomical theory.

MR. CRABBE.

For my part, I confess a sympathy with the common failing. I take likings and dislikings, as some play music, -at sight. The polar attractions and repulsions insisted on by the phrenologist affect me not; but I am not proof against a pleasant

or villanous set of features. Sometimes, I own, I am led by the nose (not my own, but that of the other party)-in my prepossessions.

My curiosity does not object to the disproportionate number of portraits in the annual exhibition, -nor grudge the expense of engraving a gentleman's head and shoulders. Like Judith, and the daughter of Herodias, I have a taste for a head in a plate, and accede cheerfully to the charge of the charger. A book without a portrait of the author is worse than anonymous.

As in a churchyard, you may look on any

number of ribs and shin-bones as so many sticks merely, without interest: but if there should chance to be a skull near hand, it claims the relics at once, so it is with the author's head-piece in front of his pages. The portrait claims the work. The Arcadia, for instance, I know is none of mine: it belongs to that young, fair gentleman, in armor, with a ruff.

So necessary it is for me to have an outward visible sign of the inward spiritual poet or philosopher, that, in default of an authentic resemblance, I cannot help forging for him an effigy in my mind's eye, a fancy portrait. a fancy portrait. A few examples of

contemporaries I have sketched down, but my collection is far from complete.

How have I longed to glimpse, in fancy, the Great Unknown! the Roc of Literature but he keeps his head, like Ben Lomond, enveloped in a cloud. How have I sighed for a beau ideal of the author of Christabel, and the Ancient

MASTER GRAHAM.

Marinere! but I have been mocked with a dozen images, confusing each other, and indistinct as water is in water. My only clear revelation was a pair of Hessian boots, highly polished, or what the ingenious Mr. Warren would denominate his "Aids to Reflection"!

I was more certain of the figure at least of Dr. Kitchener, though I had a misgiving about his features, which made me