When the Doctor was deeply engaged in writing one of his tragedies, the Duke made him a very different kind of present. He procured a human scull, fixed a candle in it, and gave it to the Doctor as the most proper lamp for him to write tragedy by.

RICHARDSON'S NOVELS.

High as Richardson's reputation stood in his own country, it was even more exalted in those of France and Germany, whose imaginations are more easily excited, and their passions more easily moved, by tales of fictitious distress, than are the cold-blooded English. Foreigners of distinction have been known to visit Hampstead, and to inquire for the Flask Walk, distinguished as а scene in Clarissa's history, just as travellers visit the rocks of Mellerie to view the localities of Rousseau's tale of passion. Diderot vied with Rousseau in heaping incense upon the shrine of the English author. The former compared him to Homer, and predicts for his memory the same honours which are rendered to the father of epic poetry; and the last, besides his wellknown burst of eloquent panegyric, records his opinion in a letter to D'Alembert: "On ne jamais fait encore, en quelque langue que ce soit, de roman égal à Clarisse, ni même approchant." (Sir Walter Scott.) But Lord Byron could not, he said, read Clarissa.

However, Richardson's popularity in England was very great. He tells us that he "slid into the writing of Pamela” in the following manner: "Two booksellers, my particular friends, entreated me to write for them a volume of letters, in a common style, on such subjects as might be of use to those country readers who were unable to indite for themselves. Will it be any harm,' said I, 'in a piece you want to be written so low, if we should instruct them how they should think and act in common cases, as well as indite?' They were the more urgent with me to begin the volume for this hint. I set about it; and in the progress of it, writing two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, who were obliged to go out to service, as we phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be laid against their virtue, the above story recurred to my thought; and hence sprung Pamela." When the work first appeared, in 1740, it was received with a burst of applause: Dr. Sherlock recommended it from the pulpit,

Mr. Pope said it would do more good than volumes of sermons; and another literary oracle declared, that if all other books were to be burnt, Pamela and the Bible should be preserved. "Even at Ranelagh," Mrs. Barbauld assures us, "it was usual for the ladies to hold up the volumes to one another, to show they had got the book that every one was talking of." And, what will appear still more extraordinary, one gentleman declares that he will give it to his son, as soon as he can read, that he may have an early impression of virtue. Indeed, the success of Clarissa and Grandison procured Richardson praise and admiration from nearly all quarters.

He bought a pleasant retreat in the suburbs of London, then far more rural than in the present day; and it was in seeking this retreat of the novelist, that Sir Richard Phillips found a very different knowledge of Richardson's fame, of which the worthy Knight used to relate, with much glee, the following:

"A widow kept a public-house near the corner of Northend-lane, about two miles from Hyde Park-corner, where she had lived about fifty years; and I wanted to determine the house in which Samuel Richardson, the novelist, had resided in North-end-lane. She remembered his person, and described him as 'a round, short gentleman, who most days passed her door,' and she said she used to serve his family with beer. 'He used to live and carry on his business,' said I, in Salisbury-square.'* 'As to that,' said she, 'I know nothing, for I never was in London.' 'Never in London!' said I; 'and in health, with the free use of your limbs?' 'No,' replied the woman; I had no business there, and had enough to do at home.' Well, then,' I observed, 'you know your own neighbourhood the better-which was the house of Mr. Richardson, in the next lane?' 'I don't know,' she replied; I am, as I told you, no traveller. I never was up the lane-I only know that he did live somewhere up the lane.' 'Well,' said I, but living in Fulham parish, you go to church?' 'No,' said she, 'I never have time; on a Sunday our house is always full. I never was at Fulham but

6

* Richardson wrote his Pamela, and printed his novels, on premises with a frontage in Salisbury-square, the house being at the top of the court, now No. 76, Fleet-street. Goldsmith was once Richardson's reader, and here the latter was visited by Hogarth, Dr. Johnson, Dr. Young; Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury; and Mrs. Barbauld, when a playful child.—Curiosities of London, p. 306.

once, and that was when I was married; and many people say that was once too often, though my husband was as good a man as ever broke bread-God rest his soul!'"

"THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO."

This "Gothic story" was first published, in the year 1764, by Horace Walpole, anonymously, as a work found in the library of an ancient Roman Catholic family in the north of England, and printed at Naples, in black letter, in 1529. "I wished it to be believed ancient," said Walpole, "and almost everybody was imposed upon." The ancient romances have nothing more incredible than a sword which required a hundred men to lift it; or a helmet that by its own weight forces a passage through a courtyard into an arched vault, big enough for a man to go through; yet the locality is real, and is a massive fortress at Otranto, situated at the southern extremity of the kingdom of Naples. Walpole has described, with his characteristic minuteness, the several portions of the Castle, and the tourist halts to admire the splendid gateway, and, perchance, is spell-bound in the courtyard, where the gigantic helmet appeared. Such is the veritable "Castle of Otranto."

In a Letter to the Rev. William Cole, Walpole confesses how the story was suggested to him :—

"When you read of the picture quitting its panel, did not you recollect the portrait of Lord Falkland, all in white, in my gallery? Shall I even confess to you what was the origin of this romance? I waked one morning, in the beginning of last June, from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost banister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening, I sat down, and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of itadd, that I was very glad to think of anything rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary, that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph."

PROGRESS OF METHODISM.

Walpole was an intolerant hater of Methodism. He delights in recording this bon mot of my Lady Townshend. We were talking of the Methodists; somebody said, "Pray, Madam, is it true that Whitfield has recanted?" "No, sir, he has only canted."

Again, he says: "Lady Fanny Shirley-'the Fanny blooming fair,' of Chesterfield and Sir Charles Williams, and to whom Pope addressed a copy of verses on receiving from her a standish and two pens-has chosen this way of bestowing the dregs of her beauty; and Mr. Lyttleton is very near making the same sacrifice of the dregs of all those various characters which he has worn. The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon; and, indeed, they have a plentiful harvest. I think what you call flagrancy was never more in fashion. Drinking is at the highest winemark, and gaming joined with it so violent, that at the last Newmarket meeting, in the rapidity of both, a bank-bill was thrown down, and nobody immediately claiming it, they agreed to give it to a man that was standing by."

MISS SEWARD AND MR. HAYLEY.

Reciprocal flattery is rarely so amusingly portrayed as in the following jeu d'esprit upon the praises the above votaries used to bestow on each other :—

Miss Seward Pride of Sussex, England's glory,
Mr. Hayley, that is you.

Mr. Hayley-Ma'am, you carry all before you,
Trust me, Lichfield swan, you do.

Miss Seward-Ode, dramatic, epic, sonnet,

Mr. Hayley, you're divine.

Mr. Hayley-Ma'am, I'll give my word upon it,

You yourself are-all the Nine, &c.

GRAY'S "ELEGY."

Mitford.

When General Wolfe and his comrades lay in "Wolfe's Cove," about to attack Quebec, he repeated, in a low voice, to the other officers in his boat, the beautiful elegy written in a country churchyard, by Gray. One noble line,

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave,"

must have seemed, at such a moment, fraught with mournful meaning. At the close of the recitation Wolfe added, "Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec." This anecdote is related by Professor Robison, of Edinburgh, who was then a midshipman, and was in the boat with Wolfe.

THE CURSE IN "TRISTRAM SHANDY."-STERNE'S DEATH.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, Thomas Chaloner (afterwards Sir Thomas) while travelling in Italy, examined some alum-works of the Pope's, and finding that it was only want of experienced workmen which prevented his working the alum on his estate near Guisborough, in Yorkshire, he endeavoured to persuade some of the Pope's workmen to accompany him to England. He succeeded; and, in order to smuggle them away, he put two or three of them into casks, and in this manner conveyed them to a ship which was ready to sail. The enraged Pope then thundered a curse against him, which curse is to be found in Charlton's History of Whitby, word for word the same as that read by Dr. Slop. Sterne also used continually to stay with his friend John Hall Stephenson (the liegeman of his story) at Skelton Castle, near Guisborough, and there of course became well acquainted with the curse in question, which is familiarly known to everybody in the neighbourhood.-Spectator.

Edward Malone gives the following circumstantial account of the strange exit of the humourist :

"The celebrated writer, Sterne, after being long the idol of this town, died in a mean lodging, without a single friend who felt interest in his fate except Becket, his bookseller, who was the only person that attended his interment. He was buried in a graveyard near Tyburn,* belonging to the parish of Marylebone, and the corpse being marked by some of the resurrection men (as they are called), was taken up soon afterwards, and carried to an anatomy professor of Cambridge. A gentleman who was present at the dissection, told me he recognized Sterne's face the moment he saw the body."

Sir James Prior's Life of Malone. The burial-ground referred to is that of the chapel-of-ease in the Bayswater-road, where a head-stone was set up by two Freemasons; and many years after was restored by a shilling subscription.