And often bent, as o'er some magic spell,

He'll pause and pick his shaped stone and shell:
Raptures the while his inward powers inflame,
And joys delight him which he cannot name;
Ideas picture pleasing views to mind,
For which his language can no utterance find;
Increasing beauties, freshening on his sight,
Unfold new charms, and witness more delight;
So while the present please, the past decay,
And in each other, losing, melt away.
Thus pausing wild on all he saunters by,
He feels enraptured, though he knows not why;
And hums and mutters o'er his joys in vain,
And dwells on something which he can't explain.
The bursts of thought with which his soul's perplexed,
Are bred one moment, and are gone the next;
Yet still the heart will kindling sparks retain,
And thoughts will rise, and Fancy strive again.
So have I marked the dying ember's light,
When on the hearth it fainted from my sight,
With glimmering glow oft redden up again,
And sparks crack brightening into life in vain ;
Still lingering out its kindling hope to rise,
Till faint, and fainting, the last twinkle dies.

Dim burns the soul, and throbs the fluttering heart,
Its painful pleasing feelings to impart ;
Till by successless sallies wearied quite,
The memory fails, and Fancy takes her flight:
The wick, confined within its socket, dies,
Borne down and smothered in a thousand sighs.

JAMES AND HORACE SMITH.

ence of the author; and Cumberland, besides,
was too vain, too irritable and poor, to secure a
good list of contributors. Smith then became a
constant writer in The Monthly Mirror-wherein
Henry Kirke White first attracted the notice of
what may be termed the literary world-and in
this work appeared a series of poetical imitations,
entitled Horace in London, the joint production
of James and Horace Smith. These parodies
were subsequently collected and published in one
volume in 1813, after the success of the Rejected
Addresses had rendered the authors famous. Some
of the pieces display a lively vein of town levity
and humour, but many of them also are very
trifling and tedious. In one stanza, James Smith
has given a true sketch of his own tastes and
character:

Me toil and ease alternate share,
Books, and the converse of the fair
(To see is to adore 'em);

With these, and London for my home,
I envy not the joys of Rome,
The Circus or the Forum!

To London he seems to have been as strongly attached as Dr Johnson himself. A confirmed metropolitan in all his tastes and habits, he would often quaintly observe, that London was the best place in summer, and the only place in winter; or quote Dr Johnson's dogma: "Sir, the man that is tired of London is tired of existence." At other JAMES SMITH (1775-1839) was a lively and times he would express his perfect concurrence amusing author both in prose and verse. His with Dr Mosley's assertion, that in the country father, Mr Robert Smith, was an eminent legal one is always maddened with the noise of nothing; practitioner in London, and solicitor to the Board or laughingly quote the Duke of Queensberry's reof Ordnance-a gentleman of learning and accom-joinder, on being told one sultry day in Septemplishments, whose latter years were gratified by the talents and reputation of his two sons, James and Horace. James, the eldest, was educated at a school at Chigwell, in Essex, and was usually at the head of his class. For this retired 'school-boy spot' he ever retained a strong affection, rarely suffering, as his brother relates, a long interval to elapse without paying it a visit, and wandering over the scenes that recalled the truant excursions of himself and chosen playmates, or the solitary rambles and musings of his youth. Two of his latest poems are devoted to his reminiscences of Chigwell. After the completion of his education, James Smith was articled to his father, was taken into partnership in due time, and eventually succeeded to the business, as well as to the appointment of solicitor to the Ordnance. With a quick sense of the ridiculous, a strong passion for the stage and the drama, and a love of London society and manners, Smith became a town wit and humorist -delighting in parodies, theatrical colloquies, and fashionable criticism. His first pieces appear to have been contributed to the Pic-nic newspaper, established by Colonel Henry Greville, which afterwards merged into The Cabinet, both being solely calculated for the topics and feelings of the day. A selection from the Pic-nic papers, in two small volumes, was published in 1803. He next joined the writers for the London Review-a journal established by Cumberland the dramatist, on the principle of affixing the writer's name to his critique. The Review proved a complete failure. The system of publishing names was an unwise innovation, destroying equally the harmless curiosity of the reader, and the critical independ

158

ber that London was exceedingly empty: "Yes,
but it's fuller than the country." He would not,
perhaps, have gone quite so far as his old friend
Jekyll, who used to say, that "if compelled to live
in the country, he would have the approach to his
house paved like the streets of London, and hire
a hackney-coach to drive up and down the street
all day long;" but he would relate, with great glee,
a story shewing the general conviction of his dis-
like to ruralities. He was sitting in the library at
a country-house, when a gentleman, informing him
that the family were all out, proposed a quiet stroll
into the pleasure-grounds. "Stroll! why, don't
you see my gouty shoe?" "Yes, but what then?
You don't really mean to say that you have got the
gout? I thought you had only put on that shoe
to avoid being shewn over the improvements."
There is some good-humoured banter and exag-
geration in this dislike of ruralities; and accord-
ingly we find that, as Johnson found his way to
the remote Hebrides, Smith occasionally trans-
ported himself to Yorkshire and other places, the
country seats of friends and noblemen. The
Rejected Addresses appeared in 1812, having
engaged James and Horace Smith six weeks, and
proving one of the luckiest hits in literature.
The directors of Drury Lane Theatre had offered
a premium for the best poetical address to
be spoken on opening the new edifice; and a
casual hint from Mr Ward, secretary to the theatre,
suggested to the witty brothers the composition of
a series of humorous addresses, professedly com-
posed by the principal authors of the day. The

* Memoir prefixed to Smith's Comic Miscellanies, 2 vols. 1841.

Thy writings, where satire and moral unite,
Must bring forth the name of their author to light.
Good and bad join in telling the source of their birth;
The bad own their EDGE, and the good own their
WORTH.

The easy social bachelor-life of James Smith was
much impaired by hereditary gout. He lived tem-
perately, and at his club-dinner restricted himself
to his half-pint of sherry; but as a professed
joker and 'diner-out,' he must often have been
tempted to over-indulgence and irregular hours.
Attacks of gout began to assail him in middle life,
and he gradually lost the use and the very form of
his limbs, bearing all his sufferings, as his brother
states, with an undeviating and unexampled
patience.' One of the stanzas in his poem on Chig-
well displays his philosophic composure at this

World, in thy ever-busy mart
I've acted no unnoticed part-

Would I resume it? O no!
Four acts are done, the jest grows stale;
The waning lamps burn dim and pale,

And reason asks-Cui bono?

work was ready by the opening of the theatre, but,
strange to say, it was with difficulty that a publisher
could be procured, although the authors asked
nothing for copyright. At length, Mr John Miller,
a dramatic publisher, undertook the publication,
offering to give half the profits, should there be
any. In an advertisement prefixed to a late edition
(the twenty-second!), it is stated that Mr Murray,
who had refused without even looking at the manu-
script, purchased the copyright in 1819, after the
book had run through sixteen editions, for £131.
The success of the work was indeed almost unex-
ampled. The articles written by James Smith
consisted of imitations of Wordsworth, Cobbett,
Southey, Coleridge, Crabbe, and a few travesties.
Some of them are inimitable, particularly the
parodies on Cobbett and Crabbe, which were also
among the most popular. Horace Smith contrib-period of his life :
uted imitations of Walter Scott, Moore, Monk
Lewis, W. T. Fitzgerald-whose Loyal Effusion
is irresistibly ludicrous for its extravagant adulation
and fustian-Dr Johnson, &c. The imitation of
Byron was a joint effusion, James contributing the
first stanza-the key-note, as it were-and Horace
the remainder. The amount of talent displayed by
the two brothers was pretty equal; for none of
James Smith's parodies are more felicitous than
that of Scott by Horace. The popularity of the
Rejected Addresses seems to have satisfied the
ambition of the elder poet. He afterwards con-
fined himself to short anonymous pieces in The
New Monthly Magazine and other periodicals,
and to the contribution of some humorous sketches
and anecdotes towards Mr Mathews's theatrical
entertainments, the authorship of which was known
only to a few. The Country Cousins, Trip to
France, and Trip to America, mostly written by
Smith, and brought out by Mathews at the
English Opera-house, not only filled the theatre,
and replenished the treasury, but brought the
witty writer a thousand pounds-a sum to which,
we are told, the receiver seldom made allusion
without shrugging up his shoulders, and ejaculat-
ing: 'A thousand pounds for nonsense!' Mr
Smith was still better paid for a trifling exertion
of his muse; for, having met at a dinner-party
the late Mr Strahan, the king's printer, then suffer-
ing from gout and old age, though his faculties
remained unimpaired, he sent him next morning
the following jeu d'esprit :

Your lower limbs seemed far from stout
When last I saw you walk;
The cause I presently found out
When you began to talk.

The power that props the body's length,
In due proportion spread,

In you mounts upwards, and the strength
All settles in the head.

Mr Strahan was so much gratified by the compli-
ment, that he made an immediate codicil to his
will, by which he bequeathed to the writer the sum
of £3000! Horace Smith, however, mentions that
Mr Strahan had other motives for his generosity,
for he respected and loved the man quite as much
as he admired the poet. James made a happier,
though, in a pecuniary sense, less lucky epigram
on Miss Edgeworth :

We every-day bards may 'anonymous' sign

That refuge, Miss Edgeworth, can never be thine.

He held it a humiliation to be ill, and never complained or alluded to his own sufferings. He died on the 24th December 1839, aged sixty-five. Lady Blessington said: 'If James Smith had not been a witty man, he must have been a great man. His extensive information and refined manners, joined to an inexhaustible fund of liveliness and humour, and a happy uniform temper, rendered him a fascinating companion. The writings of such a man give but a faint idea of the original; yet in his own walk of literature James Smith has few superiors. Anstey comes most directly into competition with him; yet it may be safely said that the Rejected Addresses will live as long as the New Bath Guide.

HORACE SMITH, the latest surviving partner of this literary duumvirate-the most constant and interesting, perhaps, since that of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more affectionate from the relationship of the parties—afterwards distinguished himself by various novels and copies of verses in The New Monthly Magazine. He was one of the first imitators of Sir Walter Scott in his historical romances. His Brambletye House, a tale of the civil wars, published in 1826, was received with favour by the public, though some of its descriptions of the plague in London were copied too literally from Defoe, and there was a want of spirit and truth in the embodiment of some of the historical characters. The success of this effort inspired the author to venture into various fields of fiction. He wrote Tor Hill; Zillah, a Tale of the Holy City; The Midsummer Medley; Walter Colyton; The Involuntary Prophet; Jane Lomax; The &c. None of these seem destined to live. Mr Moneyed Man; Adam Brown; The Merchant; Smith was as remarkable for generosity as for wit and playful humour. Shelley said once: 'I know not what Horace Smith must take me for sometimes: I am afraid he must think me a strange fellow; but is it not odd, that the only truly generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be a stockbroker! And he writes poetry too,' continued Mr Shelley, his voice rising in a fervour of astonishment-' he writes poetry and pastoral dramas, and yet knows

Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous !

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou 'rt standing on thy legs above-ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon.

Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones and flesh, and limbs and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect

To whom should we assign the Sphinx's fame?
Was Cheops or Cephrenes architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's pillar really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?
Perhaps thou wert a mason, and forbidden

By oath to tell the secrets of thy trade-
Then say, what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue, which at sunrise played? Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles Are vain, for priestcraft never owns its juggles. Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,

Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled :
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop, if that withered tongue

Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its
warning.

Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost for ever?
Oh, let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue, that, when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
The immortal spirit in the skies may bloom.

JOHN WILSON.

PROFESSOR WILSON, long the distinguished occupant of the chair of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, earned his first laurels by his poetry. He was born on the 18th of May 1785, in the town of Paisley, where his father had carried on business, and attained to opulence as a manufacturer. At the age of thirteen, the poet was entered of Glasgow University, whence, in 1804, he was transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he carried off the Newdigate prize from a vast number of competitors for the best English poem of fifty lines. Mr Wilson was distinguished in these youthful years by his fine athletic frame, and a face at once handsome and expressive of genius. A noted capacity for knowledge and remarkable literary powers were at the same time united to a predilection for gymnastic exercises and rural sports. After four years' residence at Oxford, the poet purchased a small but beautiful estate, named Elleray, on the banks of the lake Windermere, where he went to reside. He married-built a house-kept a yacht-enjoyed himself among the magnificent scenery of the lakes-wrote poetry-and cultivated the society of Wordsworth. These must have been happy days. With youth, robust health, fortune, and an exhaustless imagination, Wilson must, in such a spot, have been blest even up to the dreams of a poet. Some reverses, however, came, and, after entering himself of the Scottish bar, he sought and obtained his moral philosophy chair. He connected himself also with Blackwood's Magazine, and in this miscellany poured forth the riches of his fancy, learning, and taste-displaying also the peculiarities of his sanguine and impetuous muta-butions were collected and published (1842) in temperament. The most valuable of these contri

Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen,
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old, that history's pages
Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent, incommunicative elf!

Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But prithee tell us something of thyself;

Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house;
Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen-what strange adventures num-

bered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above-ground, seen some strange tions;

The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations, And countless kings have into dust been humbled, Whilst not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o'er thy head,

When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,
Marched armies o'er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O'erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,

And shook the pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb's secrets may not be confessed,
The nature of thy private life unfold:

A heart has throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusky cheek have rolled :
Have children climbed those knees, and kissed that
face?

What was thy name and station, age and race?

Statue of flesh-immortal of the dead!
Imperishable type of evanescence!
Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecayed within our presence,

three volumes, under the title of The Recreations of Christopher North. The criticisms on poetry from the pen of Wilson are often highly eloquent, and conceived in a truly kindred spirit. A series of papers on Spenser and Homer are equally remarkable for their discrimination and imaginative luxuriance. In reference to these 'golden spoils' of criticism, Mr Hallam characterised the professor as a living writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty waters.' The poetical works of Wilson consist of the Isle of Palms (1812), the City of the Plague (1816), and several smaller pieces. The broad humour and satire of some of his prose papers form a contrast to the delicacy and tenderness of his acknowledged writingsparticularly his poetry. He has an outer and an inner man-one shrewd, bitter, observant, and full of untamed energy; the other calm, graceful, and meditative-' all conscience and tender heart.' He deals generally in extremes, and the prevailing defect of his poetry is its uniform sweetness and