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strength of his own genius that can assit him upon his journey. He knows nothing of the thousand auxiliaries," the appliances and means to boot," that are so instrumental towards the acquisition of a name. He cannot enter into minutiæ; his mind embraces only the great leading truths, the abstract principles, that avail him nothing. He has no cunning, no trickery, no tact. He is above any thing of the kind. His soul looks down with contempt upon the petty dealing of false pretenders. He says," I have reared a column, and against that will I lean-I will not enter the temple of Fame by a side door." He is buruing for distinction, and yet he is too proud to solicit it. He cannot trumpet forth his own fame in a newspaper puff; he does not know how to strike a bargain with a bookseller; he cannot run about here and there talking upon his " new work," and acting the part of a moveable advertisement. Perhaps, at first starting, his work is refused by a publisher and his courage damped-his spirits prostrated. He locks up his manuscript for a year, and then ventures a second time to make an offer. He is told that poetry is a drug in the mar. ket," and receives a hint about publishing "at his own risk." He does so; and perhaps his darling work, which is to secure him an immortality of fame, is a dead failure-it falls "still-born from the press." He has not consulted the taste of the times. He has written without reference to any particular age. He has had noble and spiritual ideas floating in his mind; they are too grand, too ætherial for a mechanical people. His profoundness is mistaken for obscurity, his imagination is looked upon as extravagance. His great work is not read; the publisher has perhaps no interest in the sale, and, therefore, takes no trouble in announcing its existence. The poet himself is above interfering in the business. He looks into a review, and reads a few short, cutting, damning remarks upon his unfortunate book. Perhaps in the very next page a work of shallow flippancy by a fashionable writer, is extolled, and quoted from, and spoken of as being "full of genius and of thought." The young author grows disgusted; he closes the review with a determination of never writing again, unless it be his own epitaph. He is sick at heart-life no longer has any charm for him-what then is there to be done? What then is there left for him? Nothing, alas; nothing but this,

"To hang his lute on some lone tree, and die."

Our next two brief extracts are from an Essay which is full of striking and pleasing illustrations.

"On Men of the World,"

A MAN OF THE WORLD.

A thorough man of the world, in all his dealings, will endeavour first to find out your weak points. He will attack the citadel where the defence is least formidable. He will humour your particular taste with a dainty, and get you in to his hands by a bait. He will entrap you unawares, and be quietly gaining his point, whilst you fancy that he is only tickling your palate. He will make you the most abject tool, whilst you imagine that he is your most obedient servant. If you be religious, he will quote Scripture to you. If a bon-vivant, he will drink with you. If an author, he will read your works. If a sportsman, he will bet upon your horses. He wants a vote for a county or a borough, and calls upon a family man. He praises the beauty of the children to the wife, and the taste displayed in the house and grounds to the husband. He does not stick upon trifles, and draws no line between falsehood and truth. If you are as ugly as Lucifer, he will not hesitate to tell you that you are beatiful as an angel.. If he has been nearly poisoned by your wines, he will not scruple to tell you that they are excellent. He will listen, in agonies, to the most perfect bore under the sun for hours and hours, and then call his dull prolixities "a series of luminous and important illustrations." Nothing is too pitiful, too contemptible for him, when his own interest is at stake. Fear alone keeps him under control. If he were not afraid of being discovered, he would pick your pocket to-morrow. He would apostatize from the creed of his father if he thought that he would be the gainer in the long-run. He would change his politics for a pension, and his country for an appointment. He has no qualms of conscience, and no notions of becoming a martyr to principle. He puts himself up to auction, and goes to the highest bidder. He is not particular whom he serves, and declares that he has "no false delicacy." He makes a point of siding with the strongest party, and likes to come in for a share of the spoils. His agility is extreme; in the see-saw of public or private life, he is always beside the party that is uppermost. He will change his dress as often upon one evening, as Matthews "at home." He is a very Proteus in all that he says, does, or talks of doing. If in the army, his opinions and his way of life alter with the colonel of his regiment. If in the navy, with the captain of his ship. If an author (though, thank God, he will rarely be that), they will coincide with those of the Peer whom he dedicates to-if a clergyman, with those of the Bishop of his diocese. Get him a situation in Rothschild's house, he will turn Jew. Send him upon an embassy to China, and he will wear a pigtail. It matters little to him, whether he gets into your house by the front door, or through the coal-hole; he does not consider the way of doing a thing, so that he does do it. He is a very Spartan in his philosophy, and thinks it no harm to commit sin, but much to be discovered He will tell one lie at first, and fifty, afterwards, to support it. He will act, like Joseph Surface in the play, and " part with his virtue to preserve his reputation."

* Lady Teazle. So, so; then I perceive your prescription is, that I must sin in my own defence; and part with my virtue to preserve my reputation.

Joseph Surface. Exactly so, upon my credit, ma'am.

Lady T. Well, certainly this is the eldest doctrine, and the newest receipt for avoiding calumny.

Joseph S. An infallible one, believe me. Prudence, like experience, must be paid for.-School for Scandal,

We shall go on now with our specimens of these Essays without the ceremony of an introduction.

DANGER OF A LOVE OF EXCITEMENT.

Mankind, in general, is fond of excitement; but there are few people who know what is the best for them, and fewer still who make use of the knowledge, when they have gained it. It is ridiculous to say, that the man, who is constantly desiring a change, can be a happy one; because, he is at once proved to be dissatisfied, and as such, he is as miserable as he well can be. When a man once begins to look for happiness in constant excitement, there is no stopping him. He is like a machine wound up" to the top of its bent;" there is no pause until the chain has fairly unwound itself. He cannot cease, when he would desire to do so; he cannot check the impulse that he has given to himself, and having taken one step, he must go onward till he reaches the bottom of the descent. He is a kind of moral Mazeppa, bound to the fiery steed of his own passions and his own desires. They hurry him on whither he knoweth not; he is beaten backwards and forwards like a shuttlecock; he does not know what it is to be quiet, except by compulsion; and then he is the most wretched creature in the whole world. He is like the habitual dram-drinker, and would die without his accustomed potation; he has no time to think, and therefore he has no time to be happy. He is so constantly in action, and his mind so engrossed with the pursuit, that he can scarcely enjoy pleasure, when he has gained it; he is even as the man in the engagement, who said that "he had no time to be afraid." If he reflects at all it is never upon the past, but always upon the future. Memory is nothing to him, hope is every thing. He never looks backward; he never profits by experience; he is in a whirlpool of action. He resembles a person with "St. Vitus's dance," and scarcely knows what he is doing. If he looks into the mirror of self-investigation, he is startled at his grimaces, and never dares to look into it again. Were he to persevere, he might be cured, but the first glance is for him a sufficiency, and he endeavours to forget his infirmity, instead of attemption to rid himself of it. He cannot bear the re-action that must follow, and, therefore, he is endeavouing to plunge as quickly as possible into fresh excitement; he is a lucky man if he does not kill himself before he has done. The bow that is always bent soon loses its efficacy; the wheels that are always revolving, are soon disabled and unfit for service.

EFFECTS OF SIGHT-SEEING ON CHILDREN.

A savage upon first seeing a common time-piece would take it for a live animal, nay, perhaps for a god. He sees only the dial-plate, and is told that the hands revolving point out the hour of the day. The watch immediately becomes, in his estimation, almost upon a level with the sun. He sees that in some respects it answers the same purpose, and is even superior, because there are no clouds to obscure it. But the sun is worshipped by him as a divinity; why then should not the watch be so likewise. Travellers tell us that it has been, and I am by no means inclined to doubt the assertion. The barbarian sees nothing but the external parts of the machine, and recognizes two of the most important signs of animal life, sound and motion. He is acquainted with nothing inanimate that intrinsically possesses these qualities, excepting what he considers the great ruling powers, such as the sun, the wind, the waters, &c. These, however, are his duties. The savage, therefore, has every reason to suppose that what he sees before him is endowed with life, even before he is acquainted with the purport of its revolutions. But when this increase of knowledge, brings with it the reflection, that the attributes of what he holds in his hand are similar to those of the great power which he adores; when he sees that the thing itself is not only endowed with life, but with a higher order of intelligence, which he had always considered to be divine, is there any wonder that the time-piece should, at first, appear to him in the light of a god! But when the same person shall see the machine opened before his eyes, and have an opportunity of examining the wheels by which the hands are made to revolve-when he sees that by pressure upon a certain part, the action of the machine is instantly impeded, and the sound is hushed-when he is shewn, that, at the expiration of a certain period of time, all animation ceases until the chain be unwound and thus vitality restored, that which was looked upon as a deity, now becomes nothing but a box of minute wheels, and screws, and chains, and jewels; a very curious, a very ingenious, a very wonderful one, but still nothing but a box. We are the savages in our childhood; we see upon the stage kings, and warriors, and magicians. We see the insignia of royalty, the armour of the soldier, the wand and cabalistic signs of the conjuror. We hear words proceeding out of their mouths applicable each to their separate offices. We have no reason to think that this is any thing less than reality. We judge by what we see, and do not form opinions by reason and analogy, in those days. How should we know better?-What ideas can we form of sovereignty beyond the sceptre and the ermine?-What know we of heroism beyond the spear and the battle-axe ? We have never coned over a king's speech at the opening of parliament, or looked into general orders in hopes of promotion. We see upon the stage exactly what corresponds with our early notions of superior being S. We recognize the emperor by his spangled robes; the general by the plumes in his helmet. They are like what we have seen in our picture-books; what we have read of in the Arabian Nights. We can no more fancy a king without a crown upon his head, than a jack-ass without ears. The Prince of Wales was pointed out to me, when a child, as he entered the "royal box" of Drury Lane. I would not believe the people, who told me so; I pointed to the stage, as much as to say, "There are the kings; there are the princes." Was not this perfectly natural? I expected, as a matter of course, that he, who was exalted above all other men, and held the reins of government in his hand, must possess some physical advantages far superior to all the rest of mankind. At least that he should be better dressed, and wear some badges of distinction that would shine forth from a distance. There is nothing either so absurd in this opinion as may be supposed. Herodotus tells us in the

Cambyses as a king, because he was not big enough for them, adding that "rov av Táv ἀστῶν κρίνωοὶ μέγιστόν τε εἶναι, καὶ κατὰ τὸ μέγαθος ἔχειν τὴν ἰσχύν, τοῦτον ἀξιοῦσι βασιλεύειν.” "Whomsoever of the citizens they should fix upon as being of the largest stature and strong in proportion, him they deemed worthy to be a king." They chose their sovereigns in those days, as we do the drum-major of a regiment, and upon the sa e principles, mutato nomine, is the election of both. The band are even as the ministry; they perform and the king walks before, brandishing a long stick, but doing nothing. In those days, His Majesty, like the drum-major, was intended to be looked at ; but now-a-days we require no qualifi cations whatever, no testimonials beyond those of legitimacy. I must confess that I cannot see why in one case there is absurdity and in another wisdom.

SENSITIVENESS OF MEN OF GENIUS.

What renders unsightliness of person a far greater curse to the man of genuis, than to any less gifted individual, is not only his own natural sensibility, but also the malignity of his enemies, which seeketh every opportunity to remind him of his infirmities. Envy is an arch-leveller, it delighteth in discovering the imperfections of greatness, and where no moral or intellectual blemishes are to be found, there is still the consolation left that an attack upon personal defects may answer the purpose that is intended. How refreshing is it for mediocrity to reflect, that in some points at least it has the advantage over genius! How pleasent is it to detect a halt in the poet's gait, a cast in the philsopher's eye! What a fine thing it is for dulness to attach a nick-name to the former, or to stick a caricature of the latter in every print-seller's shop! How delicious to find a vulnerable part against which they can aim their tiny arrows, as the Liliputians did against Gulliver; how sweet to write anonymous lampoons in a daily paper, and to fire off their penny squibs in the dark when they cannot be detected! Oh! these petty, personal attacks are indeed villainous; and yet how frequent they are, and yet how stinging! The wretches that dare to make them advance boldly under the shelter of their own insignificance; they cluster like flies upon the back of a noble animal, and settle where the yoke has galled it; they work their way like splinters into the flesh; though the smallest things in existence, they inflict the acutest pain, till the wound festers, and the effects are visible to the world, whilst the cause remains unseen, and, at times even, unsuspected. Personal reflections are at all times cruel enough, but when they are made in our presence, we know how to act; we see what it is that stings us, and, therefore, we have only to brush off the insect, or to crush it under our feet. Not so when a covert attack is made upon our peace we may bleed, we may writhe under the tortures, but we cannot escape them. We know not from what quarter the missiles are coming: we know not whither to turn for safety-whi ther for protection. All that we can do is, to seat ourselves with resignation upon the ground, and cry with, the suffering monarch in the play,

"Pour on, I will endure."

There are some people who seem to think that it matters not with what weapons they carry on their warfare, an attack is an attack with them, no matter with what instruments it is made. Thus we frequently see in literary and political controversies personal allusions, which ought to make the authors of them blush deep as scarlet, upon reflection. The enemies of Pope, it is true, were mostly the offspring of his own satirical powers; and yet the attacks upon him, that spoke of his deformity, were no less cruel and heartless in the extreme. Pope might have been, and undoubtedly was, severe enough, in his Dunciad, upon all the small wits of the age in which he lived, and many might have suffered by his severity; but that is no reason why they should have compared his figure to that of an ape, and published to the world the notable discovery that the initials of his two names and the final letter of the latter one, made up A P. E. the characters of the very animal they likened him unto. And whatever provocation might have been given to Hogarth he ought sooner to have cut off his right hand, than have suffered it to draw that cruel picture of Wilkes, which sticks and will stick like a foul blot upon the painter's name, as long as gentleness and humanity shall have any hold upon the heart. Nothing in the "North Briton"nothing that the pen of Churchill, dipt in gall, could have written, can warrant that wretched and infamous caricature. It is said that the death of Hogarth was brought on by the subseqent attack of Churchill, in the famous "Epistle" that the poet addressed to him. If this be true, it only shews the painter in a worse light, for he had neither the courage nor the power to withstand the effects of his own weapons, when turned back upon himself. If Hogarth was killed by Churchill's satire, he, at least, had the satisfaction of knowing, like Perillus in the Brazen Bull, that his death was nothing else but the fruits of his own machinations. I do not pity him.-I cannot feel for his misfortunes. He died the death of those heartless boys, who mocked at the bald head of the prophet. Who can say that he deserved not his end? Who can say that the blow was not dealt with justice,

A HYPOCHONDRIA CAL FEeder.

Croak was another acquaintance of mine. He did not forswear flesh, bnt he was always com. plaining that he had no appetite. His appearance bore him out in his assertions, for he looked as if he could not have swallowed an ounce of meat for the last fifty years. He had the externals of a man living upon vinegar and biscuit. The expression of his face was the most dolorous that can possibly be concieved; it reminded you of an unripe solitary lime hauging upon a withered branch. Croak was always" dying;" he felt that he was wearing away by degrees;" his digestion was gone -he had no pleasure in eating-he had no appetite. He was in the most melancholy state that could possibly be imagined; he suffered from the nightmare; from the heartburn; from a vertigo in his head. He never met you in the streets without running over a long catalogue of his

doctor. By his own accounts, it would have been natural to conceive that he was dying from starvation-from rigid and continued abstinence. I really believe that he thought so himself; and yet, if you wish to know the actual cause of poor Croak's multifarious complaints, ask him to dine with you. He will hum and haw; and beg to be excused. He will tell you that for a man in such a condition as himself, to dine out, is" really a mockery." He will say that he" has no ap. petite," rarely takes any dinner, and fears that he is dying. Upon the strength of this, if you do not know Croak, and happen to be an economical man, you will order a small dinner, something light and easy to be digested, enough for yourself to eat, and a little for Croak to play with. Reader; you may do this once, but I venture to say that you will never do it a second time. Croak plays a better knife and fork than any other man of my acquaintance. His appetite is prodigious. He will devour your delicate repast in five miuutes, and leave you to go dinnerless to bed. He eats as much as a regiment of soldiers, and yet the most provoking part of the story is, that he has got nothing to shew for it. Your good things are thrown away upon him. He does no credit to your hospitality. He sits down at your table as a "looker on," and clears the board before the grace is out of your mouth. If he dines with you often, you will get the character of a skin flint, for Croak looks as hungry when he goes away from, as when he first entered, your house. Croak is either a rogue or a fool. He either practises the most gross hypocrisy, or his self-delusion is miraculous. All his sufferings, all his hypochondria result solely from over-eating himself. He is too great a glutton ever to grow fat, and yet he endeavours to persuade you that he is abstemious as an anchorite. Perhaps Croak has so persuaded himself. Out of charity, I hope, that he is. Croak likes dining by himself, and patronizes the chop-houses Every waiter in Town knows him well, and charges him double. At the common prices he would ruin the best house in all London as it is, I doubt whether the landlords make any thing by him. Croak goes to" Offley's" on a Wednesday night "to hear the singing," and calls out "kidneys for three." Croak is not a drunkard; he never eats and drinks together; he maintains that wine and spirits destroy the natural senbility of the palate. Perhaps he would drink after dinner, but that he always sleeps. Nature exhausted calls for repose. Croak is an extraordinary character.

ON SCHOOL BOYS.

In spite of the popular prejudices against them, I have a partiality for school-boys. But they must be real, thorough-going school-boys; none of your little, band-box gentlemen, looking for all the world, like miniature likenesses of their fathers, or their guardians, and walking about with sparrow-like steps, stiff neckcloths, and lips mocking the phraseology of their elders. Such as these may be boys at school, but they are not worthy to be called school-boys. A school boy is quite a different animal-a fine, independent dread-nought creature with a flushed face, and ink-bespettered fingers. He has a heart light as air, and a body healthy from exercise. He" takes no thought for the morrow," and " knuckles down at taw," with as much joyousness as his companions, though he knows that he is to be flogged when the bell rings. He has a hole in his knees, a patch in his elbows, and a hat, like a dethroned monarch, guiltness of a crown. He carries his hands, when, he is not using them, like Moore's crocodile, in his breeches' pocket, and never, as he does in afterlife, considers that those pockets are empty. He spends his money as fast as he gets it, and when it is gone, resolves philisophically to "go without."-He is seldom or never" troubled with fits of narrowness," and is as willing to lend as he is at times anxious to borrow. He will have no qualms of conscience at robbing his master's orchard, but will give away his last six-pence to a poor woman in distress. He will be generous before he is just, because he has a more distinct idia of generosity than he has of justice, and acts always from impulse, never from deliberation. He never does any thing of which he is ashamed; he has not a particle of false delicacy; he will run into the presence of a stranger, unabashed, with a face dirty as Vulcan's, and clothes that would be refused by a Hebrew. If he is a duke's son it will matter not; school like Death levels all titular distinctions, and the embryo peer is no better than the tallow-chandler that is to be. There is something unique in the character of a school-boy, that stands out in solitary prominence from the canvas of life. A school-boy resembles nothing else in the world; he is no more like to a boy brought up at home than a deviled kidney is to a piece of sopped bread. The one is all life, all spirit-free, reckless, and animated. He has a rosy cheek, a loud voice, and a hearty laugh. His every motion is springy and elastic; he runs forward impetuously, never looks round, and never stops to consider. He falls into a ditch, and the more dirty he is, by so much is he the more delighted. If he hurts himself, he disdains to acknowledge it. If he offends, he disdains to deny it; if he is offended, he takes the affair into his own hands. It is all give and take with him; he will fight with a boy one day, and share his purse with him the next. He cares not about his beauty, and therefore he cares little about a black-eye; on the contrary, he looks upon it as a trophy, and is proud to carry about with him the insignia of his valour. He will tell a lie for his friend, seldom for his self; and is as little afraid of a flogging, as he is of a ghost. When it is cold, he will run about the play-ground, till his whole frame is in a glow; he despises the very name of a great coat, and would as soon see his hands in fetters as he would in gloves. In the summer, he throws off his upper garments, and plays at cricket; then he rushes down towards the river, slaking his thirst by the way at a clear spring, and plunges, all heated as he is, into the stream. He is none the worse for it; he snaps his finger at all his grandmother's stories about cold, and about danger; he is a fine healthy fellow with the constitution of a rhinoceros; he will live, if I mistakenot, to eighty.

There are several other Essays, well worthy of quotation, and especially one "On Convalescence," in which the author embodies some very admirable critici.m on some of our older dramatists; but we must abstain from further

specimens of Mr. Kaye's talents and acquirements. They abound in just and striking thoughts, and the illustrations, which are very copious, indicate extensive reading, and are, in general, in very good taste. The faults of the Essays appear to us to be, that the author, in his desire of being original, is occasionally betrayed into paradox, and that he is rather too fond of classical quotations and allusions.

Besides the Essays to which we have been referring, of which there are twelve, occupying three and four, and sometimes five or six closely printed quarto pages, Mr. Kaye contributed to the Calcutta Literary Gazette, a great many poetical effusions, a story entitled the DOUBLE FIRST, in which he develops the character of Everard Sinclair, one of the principal personages of his novel of Jerningham, and Gaspar Henric, a tale in twelve chapters, of three or four pages each, all within the short space of six months,between January and July 1334,—although, during that period, he had two serious attacks of illness! We need not say more to prove that he is a fertile and industrious writer.

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Of his poetry in the Literary Gazette, we shall have to speak hereafter. Of the tale of The Double First" we need not say any thing at present, since when we notice his first novel, we shall have to advert to the hero of it.

Gasper Henric is a rather wild and improbable fiction; and one of the characters is very revolting, although he repents at last, very suddenly, tamed by the dread of starvation and the extraordinary generosity and humanity of his intended victims. The tale, however, is powerfully and eloquently, though not skilfully, told, for the conclusion is very abrupt and rather clumsily managed.

Soon after Mr. Kaye arrived in Europe, he'printed, in Jersey, for private circulation, a small volume of poems, some of which had appeared in the Calcutta Literary Gazette. Many of the poems in this volume have great merit; and some rank very high in our estimation. Our first specimen shall be a few stanzas from the first in the book, the poem,

ON THE DEATH OF SHELLEY.

I.

Calmly and slowly the little boat
From the distant land was seen to float
Like a snow-white swan; and the glassy sea
Basked in the sun so peacefully,

That the sky, though it wore its brightest blue,
Was scarcely of a deeper hue.
There sat the poet at the helm,
A book upon his knee.

It was a volume full of sweet

And gifted poesie ;

The last words of a youthful bard

Who died in life's first spring;
He was not fit for this rough world,
So delicate a thing,

And satire's keen, envenom'd dart
Pierced through, and rankled in his heart,

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That spake at once a heart at peace
With all mankind;

And ever and anon a smile

Upon his lips arose ;
None but a poet ever had
Such lips as those.*

III.

There is a small cloud on the sky

Like an isle in a far-off sea,

And the poet is watching that little cloud
With strange intensity;

But that which was a little speck,

Is growing now apace;

And now, like a mourning veil of black,
It has hidden the sun's broad face.
And, hark! the wind is rising too-
What is the little boat to do?
For the dæmon of the storm has shaken
Himself from a long, long sleep;
And now, too, he begins to waken
The spirits of the deep;

Look above, and look below!
Black as night and white as snow

Are the sky and the ocean:

Thunder and wind are trying to smother
The shouting and bellowing of each other;
Woe! Woe! Woe!

With fine lips a person is never wholly bad, and they never belong to the expression of emotions

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