with what exquisite beauty of comparison-as indeed in hundreds more pages of the writings of this honest soul-the whole character of the man is told his humble confession of faults and weakness; his pleasant little vanity, and desire that his village should admire him; his little scheme of good in which everybody was to be happy-no beggar was to be refused his dinnernobody in fact was to work much, and he to be the harmless chief of the Utopia, and the monarch of the Irish Yvetôt. He would have told again, and without fear of their failing, those famous jokes which had hung fire in London; he would have talked of his great friends of the Club-of my Lord Clare and my Lord Bishop, my Lord Nugent sure he knew them intimately, and was hand and glove with some of the best men in town-and he would have spoken of Johnson and of Burke, from Cork, and of Sir Joshua who had painted him and he would have told wonderful sly stories of Ranelagh and the Pantheon, and the masquerades at Madame Cornely's: and he would have toasted, with a sigh, the Jessamy Bride -the lovely Mary Horneck. The figure of that charming young lady forms one of the prettiest recollections of Goldsmith's life. She and her beautiful sister, who married Bunbury, the graceful and humorous amateur artist of those days, when Gilray had but just begun to try his powers, were among the kindest and dearest of Goldsmith's many friends; they cheered and pitied him, travelled abroad with him, made him welcome at their home, and gave him many a pleasant holiday. He bought his finest clothes to figure at their country house at Barton-he wrote them droll verses. They loved him, laughed at him, played him tricks, and made him happy. He asked for a loan from Garrick, and Garrick kindly supplied him, to enable him to go to Barton-but there were to be no more holidays, and only one brief struggle more for poor Goldsmith-a lock of his hair was taken from the coffin and given to the Jessamy Bride. She lived quite into our time. Hazlitt saw her an old lady, but beautiful still, in Northcote's painting room, who told the eager critic how proud she always was that Goldsmith had admired her. The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him. Vol. i. 63, 64. 'I was only five years old,' he says, 'when Goldsmith took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, and began to play with me, which amiable act I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap on the face: it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his cheek. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in, the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no bad step towards my liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating a nuisance. 'At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy, and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery-it was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I skulked and sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good-humour, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and a shilling under each. The shillings he told me were England, France, and Spain. 'Hey presto cockalorum!' cried the Doctor, and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like-but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph-and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humour delighting us still; his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it: his words in all our mouths: his very weaknesses beloved and familiar Spain all under one crown; but, as also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure.... From that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, I plucked his gown to share the good man's smile;' a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older; but it did not last long: my senior playmate died in his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh ... In all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his 'compassion-his benevolent spirit seems still to for another's woe' was always predominant; and my trivial story of his humouring a froward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence.' smile upon us: to do gentle kindnesses: to succour with sweet charity: to soothe, caress, and forgive: to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. THOMAS CARLYLE. THOMAS CARLYLE, a distinguished connoisseur of German literature, was born at Dumfries in Scotland in 1795. He was originally intended for the church, and for that purpose entered the university of Edinburgh; but the study of theology being incompatible with his tastes, he devoted himself to literature. After having studied the works of Schiller and Goethe, he was seized with a desire to introduce some of them into England, and with that idea composed his 'Life of Schiller' (1825), which was followed in 1827 by his 'German Romances,' a selection from Goethe, Tieck, Jean Paul, Hoffmann, &c. His 'French revolution,' a history published in 1837, is distinguished for the beautifully poetic style in which it is written. In 1839 he wrote a work On Chartism,' in 1841 another On Hero Worship,' and in 1843 'The Past and the Present.' Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, a certain rugged, sterling worth pervades whatever Burns has written: a virtue, as of green fields and mountain breezes, dwells in his poetry; it is redolent of natural life, and hardy, natural men. There is a decisive strength in him; and yet a sweet native gracefulness: he is tender, and he is vehement, yet without constraint, or too visible effort; he melts the heart or inflames it, with a power which seems habitual and familiar to him. We see in him But of all Carlyle's works his famous book, 'Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (1845) possesses the most historical worth. In 1845 appeared his 'Moral Phenomena of Germany,' in which he represents the present moral condition of Germany to be in a very poor state. His last work, "The Life of John Sterling, a biography of his friend, was brought before the public in 1851. Through his intimate acquaintance with the German, Carlyle has to a great extent imbibed the ideas and style of the literature and philoso phy of our nation: this has exercised such an influence upon his English productions as to make them appear peculiar, and in the opinion of many ridiculons, and caused their author to be less appreciated in his own country than by foreigners. He is also the author of a Life of Frederick the Great, He died in 1874. the gentleness, the trembling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force, and passionate ardour, of a hero. Tears lie in him, and consuming fire; as lightning lurks in the drops of a summer cloud. He has a resonance in his bosom for every note of human feeling: the high and the low, the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns to his 'lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit.' And observe with what a prompt and eager force he grasps his subject; be it what it may. How he fixes, as it were, the full image of the matter in his eye; full and clear in every | pickaxe; and he must be a Titan that lineament; and catches the real type hurls them abroad with his arms. and essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of which misleads him! Is it of reason; some truth to be discovered? No sophistry, no vain surface-logic detains him; quick, resolute, unerring, he pierces through into the marrow of the question; and speaks his verdict with an emphasis that cannot be forgotten. Is it of description; some visual object to be represented? No poet, of any age or nation, is more graphic than Burns: the characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance: three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. And, in that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward, metre, so clear, and definite a likeness! It seems a draughtsman working with a burnt stick; and yet the burin of a Retsch is not more expressive or exact. Let it not be objected to Burns that he did little: he did much, if we consider where and how. If the work performed was small, we must remember that he had his very materials to discover; for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert, where no eye but his had guessed its existence; and we may almost say that with his own hand he had to construct the tools for fashioning it. For he found himself in deepest obscurity, without assistance, without instruction, without model; or with models only of the meanest sort. It is in this last shape that Burns presents himself. Born in an age the most prosaic Britain had yet seen, and in a condition the most disadvantageous, where his mind, if it accomplished aught, must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil, nay, of penury, and desponding apprehension of the worst evils, and with no furtherance but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man's hut, and the rhymes of a Ferguson or Ramsay for his standard of beauty, he sinks not under all these impediments. Through the fogs and darkness of that obscure region, his eagle eye discerns the true relations of the world and human life; he grows into intellectual strength, and trains himself into intellectual expertness. Impelled by the irrepressible movement of his inward spirit, he struggles forward into the general view, and with haughty modesty lays down before us, as the fruit of his labour, a gift which time has now pronounced imperishable. Add to all this, that his darksome, drudging childhood and youth was by far the kindliest era of his whole life; and that he died in his thirty-seventh year; and then ask if it be strange that his poems are imperfect, and of small extent, or that his genius attained no mastery in its arts! Alas! his sun shone as through a tropical tornado; and the pale shadow of Death eclipsed it at noon! Shrouded in such baleful vapours, An educated man stands, as it were, the genius of Burns was never seen in in the midst of a boundless arsenal and clear azure splendour, enlightening the magazine, filled with all the weapons world. But some beams from it did, and engines which man's skill has been by fits, pierce through; and it tinted able to devise, from the earliest time; those clouds with rainbow and orient and he works accordingly, with a colours into a glory and stern granstrength borrowed from all past ages. deur, that men silently gazed on with How different is his state, who stands wonder and tears. on the outside of that storehouse, and feels that its gates must be stormed, or remain for ever shut against him! His means are the commonest and rudest: the mere work done is no measure of his strength. A dwarf behind his steam engine may remove mountains; but no dwarf will hew them down with the Herrig, British Auth. There is reason to believe that, in his later years, the Dumfries Aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves from Burns, as a tainted person, no longer worthy of their acquaintance. That painful class, stationed in all provincial cities, behind the outmost breastwork 38 of Gentility, there to stand siege, and do battle against the intrusion of Grocerdom and Grazierdom, had actually seen dishonour in the society of Burns, and branded him with their veto; had, as we vulgarly say, cut him. Alas! when we think that Burns now sleeps 'where bitter indignation can no longer lacerate his heart,' and that most of these fair dames and frizzled gentlemen already lie at his side, where the breast work of gentility is quite thrown down,-who would not sigh over the thin delusions and foolish toys, that divide heart from heart, and make man unmerciful to his brother? It was not now to be hoped that the genius of Burns would ever reach maturity, or accomplish aught worthy of itself. His spirit was jarred in its melody; not the soft breath of natural feeling, but the rude hand of Fate was now sweeping over the strings. And yet what harmony was in him! what music even in his discords! How the wild tones had a charm for the simplest and the wisest; and all men felt that here, too, was one of the Gifted! We are here arrived at the crisis of Burns's life; for matters had now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue. If improvement was not to be looked for, Nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and maddening warfare with the world and itself. We are not medically informed whether any continuance of years was, at this period, probable for Burns; whether his death is to be looked on as, in some sense, an accidental event, or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had preceded. The latter seems to be the likelier opinion; but it is by no means a certain one. At all events. as we have said, some change could not be very distant. Three gates of deliverance, it seems to us, were open for Burns; clear poetical activity; madness; or death. The first, with longer life, was still possible, though not probable; for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it: and yet Burns had an iron resolution; could he but have seen and felt, that not only his highest glory, but his first duty, and the true medicine for all his woes, lay here. The second was still less probable; for his mind was ever among the clearest and firmest. So the milder third gate was opened for him; and he passed, not softly, yet speedily, into that still country, where the hail-storms and fireshowers do not reach, and the heaviest-laden wayfarer at length lays down his load! APPENDIX. AMERICAN LITERATURE. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. THIS popular poet was born in the city of Portland (Maine), February 27th, 1807. After a very careful education, he accepted a professorship of modern languages in Bowdoin College. In order to prepare himself for the duties of his office, he passed several years in Europe. When Mr. Ticknor, in 1835, resigned his place at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mr. Longfellow was called to the vacant post, where he ever afterwards resided, except during two other visits to Europe. His earliest compositions were written for several periodicals. In 1833 he published a translation of 'Don Jorge Manrique's poem' on the death of his father; in 1835 his 'Outre-Mer, or a 'Pilgrimage beyond the Sea;' in 1839 'Hyperion,' a romance; in 1840 'Voices of the Night,' his first collection of EXCELSIOR. (1) The shades of night were falling fast, His brow was sad; his eye beneath 5 poems; in 1841 'Ballads' and other poems; in 1842 "The Spanish Student,' a play; in 1843 'Poems on Slavery in 1845 "The Poets and Poetry of Europe,' with introductions and biographical notices. Besides these he has written 'Evangeline,' 'The Golden Legend,' 'Hiawatha,' The Courtship of Miles Standish,' and several minor poems of much merit. The first complete edition of his poetical works was published in 1846. His translations from the continental languages into English are admirable. In speaking of the poet's popularity, we refer chiefly to the smaller pieces, which form, however, the larger portion of his collected works. He possessed true poetic sensibility, much original fancy, and a ready command of apt diction. He died in 1882. 'O stay!' the maiden said, 'and rest 'Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! At break of day, as heavenward In happy homes he saw the light "Try not the Pass!' the old man said, 15 20 (1) The title of this poem has been objected to, as ungrammatical. It is true, that accuracy requires ex celsius. 25 30 35 40 45 |