Sir Walter Scott, "and was pathetically fond of any one that had a title." In corroboration of this, Lord Byron relates that at Oatlands, Lewis was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and his hair sentimental. Being asked why, he replied that when people said anything kind to him, it affected him deeply; "and just now, the Duchess (of York) has said something so kind to me, that—": here tears began to flow. "Never mind, Lewis," said Colonel Armstrong to him, never mind, don't cry: she could not mean it.”

66

A SHARK STORY.

In his Journal of a West India Proprietor, Mat. Lewis tells us, that "while lying in Black River Harbour, Jamaica, two sharks were frequently seen playing about the ship. At length, the female was killed, and the desolation of the male was excessive. What he did without her remains a secret, but what he did with her was clear enough; for, scarce was the breath out of his Eurydice's body, when he stuck his teeth in her, and began to eat her up with all possible expedition. Even the sailors felt their sensibility excited by so peculiar a mark of posthumous attachment; and to enable him to perform this melancholy duty more easily, they offered to be his carvers, lowered their boat, and proceeded to chop his better half in pieces with their hatchets; while the widower opened his jaws as wide as possible, and gulped down pounds upon pounds of the dear departed, as fast as they were thrown to him, with the greatest delight, and all the avidity imaginable. I make no doubt that all the time. he was eating, he was thoroughly persuaded that every morsel that went into his stomach would make its way to his heart directly! She was perfectly consistent,' he said to himself; 'she was excellent through life, and really she's extremely good now she's dead!' I doubt whether the annals of Hymen can produce a similar instance of post-obitual affection."

DELICATE CONTRADICTION.

Mat. Lewis, in reading Don Quixote was greatly pleased with this instance of the hero's politeness. The Princess Micomicona having fallen into a most egregious blunder, he never so much as hints a suspicion of her not having acted

precisely as she had stated, but only begs to know her reason for taking a step so extraordinary. "But pray, madam," says he, "why did your ladyship land at Ossima, seeing that it is not a seaport town?"

BOOKSELLERS, AUTHORS, AND CRITICS.

Walpole relates this droll story of Gibbon and a bookseller, when the former lodged at No. 76, St. James's-street, the house of Elmsley, the over-cautious man who would not enter upon "the perilous adventure of publishing 'the Decline and Fall.' "One of those booksellers in Paternoster-row, who publish things in numbers, went to Gibbon's lodgings in St. James'sstreet, sent up his name, and was admitted. 'Sir,' said he, 'I am now publishing a History of England, done by several good hands. I understand you have a knack of them there things, and should be glad to give you every reasonable encouragement.' As soon as Gibbon had recovered the use of his legs and tongue, which were petrified with surprise, he ran to the bell, and desired his servant to show this messenger of learning down stairs."

Byron relates that Murray was congratulated by a brother publisher upon having such a poet as himself. As if, says the noble writer, one were "a packhorse, or ass, or anything that was his;" or, as Mr. Packwood, who replied to some inquiry after "Odes on Razors," "Lord, sir, we keeps a poet." "Childe Harold and cookeries is much wanted," an Edinburgh bookseller wrote to Murray.

At the close of the first canto of Don Juan, its noble author, by way of propitiation, says,

"The public approbation I expect,

And beg they'll take my word about the moral,
Which I with their amusement will connect,
As children cuting teeth receive a coral :
Meantime, they'll doubtless please to recollect
My epical pretensions to the laurel ;

For fear some prudish reader should grow skittish,
I've bribed my Grandmother's Review-the British.
I sent it in a letter to the editor,

Who thank'd me duly by return of post.

I'm for a handsome article his creditor;
Yet if my gentle muse he please to roast,

And break a promise, after having made it her,
Denying the receipt of what it cost,
And smear his page with gall instead of honey,
All I can say is-that he had the money.

Canto I. st. ccix. ccx.

Now, The British was a certain staid and grave High Church Review, the editor of which received the poet's imputation of bribery as a serious accusation: accordingly, in his next number, after the publication of Don Juan, there appeared a postscript, in which the receipt of any bribe was stoutly denied, and the idea of such connivance altogether repudiated; the editor adding that he should continue to exercise his own judgment as to the merits of Lord Byron, as he had hitherto done in every instance! However, the affair was too ludicrous to be at once altogether dropped; and so long as the prudish publication continued to exist, it enjoyed the sobriquet of "My Grandmother's Review."

By the way, there is another hoax connected with this poem: one day, an old gentleman gravely inquired of a printseller for a portrait of "Admiral Noah" to illustrate Don Juan, canto the first.

Moore relates that having casually intimated, in a letter to his publishers (Longman & Co.), his opinion of one of Wordsworth's poems, the next letter on business he received from them concluded thus :-"We are very sorry you do not like Mr. Wordsworth's last poem, and remain, dear sir, yours obediently, L. H. R. O. and B."

Here is a story of earlier date than either of the preceding. An adventurous bookseller had printed a large edition of Drelincourt's Book of Consolation against the Fears of Death, which proved unsuccessful in sale, and lay a dead stock on the hands of the publisher. In this emergency he applied to De Foe, whose genius and audacity devised a plan, which, for assurance and ingenuity, is unrivalled; for who but himself would have thought of summoning up a ghost from the grave to bear witness in favour of a halting body of divinity? The apparition of Mrs. Veal is represented as appearing to a Mrs. Bargrave, her intimate friend, as she sat in her own house in deep contemplation of certain distresses of her own. the ghostly visitor had announced herself as prepared for a distant journey, her friend and she began to talk in the homely style of middle-aged ladies, and Mrs. Veal proses concerning

After

the conversations they had formerly held, and the books they had read together. Her very recent experience probably led Mrs. Veal to talk of death and the books written on the subject, and she pronounced, ex cathedra, as a dead person was best entitled to do, that "Drelincourt's book on Death was the best book on the subject ever written." She also mentioned Dr. Sherlock, two Dutch books which had been translated, and several others; but Drelincourt, she said, had the clearest notions of death and the future state of any who had handled that subject. She then asked for the work, and lectured on it with great eloquence and affection. Dr. Kenrick's Ascetick was also mentioned with approbation by this critical spectre (the Doctor's work was no doubt a tenant of the shelf in some favourite publisher's shop), and Mr. Norris's poem on Friendship, a work which, though honoured with the ghost's approbation, we may now seek for in vain. The whole account is so distinctly circumstantial, that, were it not for the impossibility, or extreme improbability at least, of such an occurrence, the evidence could not but support the story. The effect was wonderful. Drelincourt upon Death, attested by one who could speak from experience, took an unequalled run. The copies had hung on the bookseller's hands as heavy as a pile of bullets. They now traversed the town in every direction, like the same balls discharged from a fieldpiece. In short, the object of Mrs. Veal's apparition was perfectly attained.-Scott's Memoir of De Foe.

When the bon vivant Duke of Norfolk lay at the point of death at Norfolk House, St. James's-square, in 1815, a servant was dispatched to a bookseller's in Pall Mall, for a copy of Drelincourt's book, which, being obtained, afforded the repentant Duke consolation in his last moments.

"Publishers now-a-days," says Mr. Pycroft, " employ critical readers, but this is only to report as to the execution of a work: whether the subject will command a sale, they can judge better for themselves. But for the most part, in the last century, every publisher was his own critic. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to hear that some of the best works went begging from publisher to publisher. Prideaux's Connection between the Old and New Testament, Mrs. Thompson reminds us, was bandied from hand to hand between five or six booksellers for two years. By one publisher the author was gravely told that the subject was too dry; it should be

enlivened by a little humour.' Robinson Crusoe was refused by many publishers. Tristram Shandy was rejected as dear at fifty pounds. Blair's Sermons and Burn's Justice, valuable copyrights both, with difficulty found a publisher. Fielding was on the point of taking 251. for his Tom Jones, when Andrew Millar surprised him almost out of his senses by offering 2007. And yet for very easy and trifling work, when an author's name is established, he has earned as much, or more. For instance, Goldsmith received for his Selections of English Poetry, 2007. For this he did nothing but mark passages with a red-lead pencil; but then he used to add, with much gravity, 'A man shows his judgment in these selections, and a man may be twenty years of his life cultivating that judgment.""

WILLIAM COBBETT. BY HIMSELF.

"At eleven years of age, my employment was clipping of box-edges and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the Castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of beautiful gardens; and a gardener, who had just come from the King's gardens at Kew, gave such a description of them as made me instantly resolve to work in these gardens. The next morning, without saying a word to any one, off I set, with no clothes except those upon my back, and with thirteen half-pence in my pocket. I found that I must go to Richmond, and I accordingly went on, from place to place, inquiring my way thither. A long day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and cheese and a pennyworth of small beer, which I had on the road, and one halfpenny which I had lost somehow or other, left threepence in my pocket. With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond, in my blue smock-frock and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eye fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written: 'Tale of a Tub; price 3d.' The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I had the 3d., but, then, I could have no supper. In I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner of the Kew-garden, where