business matters between author and publisher boasts of a respectable antiquity. Dryden, at one time, looked upon it with an affectation of scorn. When he was to settle with Tonson, at a tavern, the terms for a translation of Virgil, Dryden wrote-" Be ready with the prices of paper and of the books. No matter for any dinner; for that is a charge to you. I care not for it. Mr. Congreve may be with us as a common friend." It is alleged that Tonson founded the Kit-Cat Club with a view to "business." There, at all events, he concluded a bargain with authors, by giving them a drink, to which he afterwards added the mutton-pies, for the making of which Christopher, the cook, was famous. Tonson has been an unjustly abused man, and by no one more unjustly than by Dryden. Lintot was not nearly so hospitable to Pope as Tonson was to Dryden. Bernard expected Pope to turn an ode of Horace into English while resting from travel on excoriating saddles, under a tree, on the road to Oxford. Lintot, however, could be hospitable to the poorer sort of critics, and boasted how a dinner of beef and pudding converted one who thought meanly of Pope's Homer to the conviction that the Homer and the pudding were equally excellent. There is a good subject for a picture in the scene at the Swan Tavern in Fleet Street, where Pope and Lintot met Curll, on the matter of the 'Letters' by Pope. How each fortified himself for the discussion is set down by Curll himself :-"My brother Lintot drank his half-pint of old hock, Pope his halfpint of sack, and I the same quantity of an emetic powder; but no threatenings passed." Curll is handed down to posterity enwrapped in more obloquy than he deserves. Whatever his sins, he was always a courageous man. As Dryden, when he could no longer write filthy comedies, expressed in the Ode on Mrs. Killigrew his repentance for having flooded the English stage with pollution, so Curll, when he became a religious publisher, acknowledged that in some previous passages of his life he had gone astray. We cannot help think ing that he was not utterly reprobate, though he sold unclean books to nasty-minded purchasers, and was fined for publishing a "broad" work on flagellation.

as

Amory, an enemy, said of Curll that to drink, he was too fond of money to spend any in making himself happy in that way; but at another's expense, he would drink every day till he was quite blind, and as incapable of self motion as a block." At that time "drunk as a Lord" was a popular and applicable phrase, and Curll, if he got as drunk as his enemies said of him, only imitated the manners of his betters. Constable's memoirs show us that publishers drank six fathoms deep, in later days, without losing their respectability. One of Hook's songs has chronicled the prowess of the head of a West End house, at the punch-bowl. As to profane language, Curll could not have been much more profane than the "religious publisher" of a generation ago, who, to distinguish him from a namesake, in the same line, was called, by his familiars, "Cursing. ....!" Undoubtedly, a frugal and prosperous bookseller of the Curll period looks better in history, namely Thomas Guy. Probably, Guy's enemies ridiculed him for meanness, inasmuch as that he dined daily on his counter, with a poor little last week's

newspaper for a table-cloth. Guy, however, whose dinner was often bought for sixpence, in a basin, at a neighbouring cook's shop, would treat a visitor with ungrudging hospitality. Guy was simply unselfish. His character is to be seen in the hospital which he founded and richly endowed, and that is only a part of the good effects of his dinners on his own counter. Tonson died regretting that he was worth only eighty thousand pounds, and that he could not begin the world again, and make a hundred thousand. again, and make a hundred thousand. Guy died grateful that he could leave hundreds of thousands for the benefit of his fellow-creatures. It must be confessed that all their "plums," as the slang phrase calls them, were not made in "business." Guy was one of the wary and successful speculators in South Sea stock. But he was not a hard task-master. His "authors" dined at his expense. He was not like Osborne of Gray's Inn Gate, whom hungry Johnson knocked down with a folio, to remind him that authors with appetites should have the latter attended to. Even Cave sent to his literary journeyman, Johnson, quill-driving behind the screen in Cave's shop, a "plate of victuals," when Johnson's dress was so shabby as to warrant his hiding the shabbiness behind a screen. Such "authors" were the very humble servants of the booksellers and publishers. No lackey was half so ill cared for as Goldsmith, when he was the hireling of Griffiths, and Mrs. Griffiths scolded him, and would have over-ruled the hireling's articles, would have over-ruled the hireling's articles, and his methods of writing; and when both the Griffithses taunted him with meanness, poor Goldy meekly replied, "I am guilty, I own, of meanness, which poverty unavoidably brings with it."

Johnson grew from a hungry hireling to be a well-fed dignitary of literature. For his eight years' labour on his Dictionary he received 1,575l. But this sum was paid in portions, while the work was in progress. When the Dictionary was published, a dinner was given in honour of the circumstance. At the dessert, the final business arrangements were gone into, Johnson's receipts were produced, and it was found that he had nothing more to receive. At the present day such dinners (without the business arrangements) are not uncommon. The one given a few years since, by the Messrs. A. & C. Black, at Greenwich, to the authors of articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica,' on the completion of the last edition of that great work, was among the most successful of these literary banquets. Occasionally the "author" was too crafty for the publisher. When Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) was in treaty with Robinson and Walker for the sale of the copyright of Peter's, then immensely popular, Poems, the question was whether he should have an annuity or be offered a lump sum. At the interview with Walker, Wolcot had a killing asthma on him, and the junior partner eagerly proposed an annuity of 2507. Wolcot immediately accepted the offer, and his asthma was at once completely cured. He outlived the other contracting parties, and he had little right to say, as regarded his own case, that "publishers quaff champagne out of the skulls of authors." Of this saying, Wolcot is said to have been the original author. Moore polished and turned it out anew, more suo, in his lines On the Death of Sheridan':

In the woods of the North, there are insects that prey
Oh Genius, thy patrons, more cruel than they,
On the brain of the Elk till his very last sigh.

First feed on thy brains and then leave thee to die. Some of the old book-publishers, perhaps, bore in mind the lines of Pope :—

Most authors steal their works or buy. Garth did not write his own Dispensary. However this may be, Robinson, the senior partner in the firm of Robinson, Walker & Co., had a well-deserved reputation for his hospitality to literary men. They were always heartily welcomed to his table, invited or uninvited, provided they did not appear after Robinson kept up dinner had commenced.

well the dignity of his position. Different booksellers have had different ideas as to dignity. The celebrated Lackington, when he burst into full-blown prosperity, abandoned his membership with the Wesleyans as something derogatory to his worldly calling. Wesley himself often said that he never could keep a bookseller six months in his flock! He recovered Lackington. After the latter retired from business he condescended to return to Methodism, and was welcomed as a lost sheep recovered.

In houses still existing, there is not only present hospitality, but traditions of it, and of some eccentric recipients of it in the olden times. One of the latter is the Ephraim Chambers, editor of the first Cyclopædia. Of Ephraim, it is said that he found in the first Longman "the liberality of a prince, and the kindness of a father." Chambers was an "absent" person, and when he was ill, jellies and other refreshments were put in his way, so that he could not avoid seeing and profiting by them. Ephraim was not himself a hospitable man; perhaps, as with Goldsmith, meanness was forced upon him by poverty; but he was never in such a plight with the Longmans as Goldsmith had been with the Griffithses. He was in chambers in Gray's Inn when a friend called on him and was asked to stay to dinner. "I dare engage," said the guest, "that you have nothing for dinner." "Yes," replied Ephraim, "I have a fritter; and if you'll stay with me, I'll have two!" A later Longman was more luxuriously entertained by Constable, who was sometimes off his guard after dinner. On one of these occasions, the London publisher complimented the Scotsman on the beauty of his swans. "Swans!" cried Constable, "they are only geese, man. There are just five of them. . . and their names are Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown." This skit cost the "crafty" a good bargain.

In one case, at least, the maker of good bargains was the sufferer. James Rivington and Fletcher cleared 10,0007. by Smollett's

History of England,' "the largest profit that had yet been made on any single book." This success led Rivington to betting on horse-racing, by which, as a matter of course, he was ruined; and any man of business who follows the same guilty course is sure to come to the same end, and is worthy of no better fate. But is Mr. Curwen sure that James Rivington turned rascal. The man went to America in 1760, and there he set up the Royal Gazette, under Government patronage. He continued it through the revolutionary war, and when that was over, and the French had saved the Republic for the Americans, as he had contrived somehow, it is said, by

forwarding early intelligence, to propitiate the enemy, he was allowed to continue his paper." Surely such a villainous story should not be allowed to rest on an "it is said." We may add here that the old Bible and Crown Rivingtons used always to put up their shutters on the 30th of January. There were "Saints" who did not publish under the sign of the Bible and Crown, and who did not mourn on the anniversary of Charles's martyrdom; and those publishers were famous for their " spreads." Chief of those was James Nisbet. "The 'Saints' were freely welcomed to his hospitable house, which was used as a free hotel by travelling missionaries and preachers, who often said a grateful 'grace for all the rich mercies of his table.""

We will not part from Mr. Curwen without giving one example of the stories he has woven into his narrative. The following refers to the James Rivington who was established in America in the last century:

"Even in those early and unsophisticated days, Yankee gentlemen had contracted the habit of 'cowhiding' obnoxious or impertinent editors, and the wit of the Royal Gazette was in its time sufficiently stinging and personal to involve its proprietor in many of these little difficulties.

James Rivington relates rather an amusing story

of an interview with Ethan Allen, one of the republican heroes, who came for the express purpose of administering chastisement. He says:I was sitting down, after a good dinner, with a bottle of Madeira before me, when I heard an unusual noise in the street, and a huzza from the boys. I was on the second story, and, stepping to the window, saw a tall figure in tarnished regimentals, with a large cocked hat and an enormously long sword, followed by a crowd of boys, who occasionally cheered him with huzzas, of which he seemed quite unaware. He came up to my door and stopped. I could see no more— e-my heart told me it was Ethan Allen. I shut my window, and retired behind my table and my bottle. I was certain the hour of reckoning had come there was no retreat. Mr. Staples, my clerk, came in, paler than ever, clasping his hands-"Master, he has come !"-"I know it." I made up my mind, looked at the Madeira, possibly took a glass. "Show him up, and if such Madeira cannot mollify him, he must be harder than adamant." There was a fearful moment of suspense; I heard him on the stairs, his long sword clanking at every step. In he stalked.-"Is your name James Rivington ?"-"It is, sir, and no man can be more delighted to see Colonel Ethan Allen."-"Sir I have come"-"Not another word, my dear Colonel, until you have taken a seat and a glass of old Madeira.”—“But, sir, I don't think it proper" -"Not another word, Colonel, but taste this wine; I have had it in glass (sic) ten years." He took the glass, swallowed the wine, smacked his lips, and shook his head approvingly. "Sir, I come-"Not another word until you have taken another glass, and then, my dear Colonel, we will talk of old officers, and I have some queer events to detail." In short, we finished three bottles of Madeira, and parted as good friends as if we never had cause to be otherwise.""

We have pointed out some of the shortcomings of this volume, but we willingly add that, notwithstanding these defects, the book is worth reading.

TWO VOLUMES OF ESSAYS.

Toilers and Spinsters. By Miss Thackeray. (Smith, Elder & Co.) Prose Idylls. By Rev. Charles Kingsley. (Macmillan & Co.)

We do not know how far the title which Miss Thackeray has given to the first of her essays

is intended to apply to the whole of them. The greater number have reference to various charitable works, and those who conduct them, who may not inaptly be named the Toilers; while there are two or three about authoresses, who by a little stretch of courtesy may be regarded as the Spinsters. At any rate, this will apply to Miss Austen, who is constantly before Miss Thackeray's mind as the standard whereby to measure others, and, indeed, seems to be to her what Fielding was to her father. The essay called 'Heroines and their Grandmothers,' for example, is a comparison à propos of Mrs. Riddell's stories, of the novel of modern times with that of seventy or eighty years ago; of "the analysis of emotion and the history of feeling" as against "the analysis of character and the history of events." We cannot go at any length into what Miss Thackeray says of these matters, but one remark of hers is so pertinent to a subject on which we have often taken up our parable, that we cannot refrain from quoting it :

"Are such stories written to cheer one in dull hours, to soothe, to interest, and to distract from weary thoughts, from which it is at times a blessing to escape? or is it to make one sad with sorrows which never happened, but which are told with so much truth and pathos, that they almost seem for a minute as if they were one's own? Is it to fill one's eyes with tears for griefs which might be, but which have not been, and for troubles that are not, except in a fancy? Where would past happiness be, if there was some one always standing by, as in this book (George Geith'), to point with a sigh to future troubles long before they come? My father used to say," she adds, "that a bad ending to a book was a great mistake; that he never would make one of his own finish badly. What was the use of it? Nobody ever cared to read a book a second time when it ended unhappily."

• ...

• ...

These essays are worth reading, as the criticisms of artists on other professors of their own art usually are; but for practical interest, we must give the preference to those which deal with the more practical subjects. Most of our readers will remember the walk which Mr. Thackeray took in company with the curate, Frank Whitestock: his daughter has pushed the same line of exploration further, and gives us accounts of her visits to the Newport Market Refuge, the Putney Hospital for Incurables (when will medical science refuse to recognize this word, except as applying to all who are afflicted with "the malady of life"?), Jewish Schools in the City, and so on, all told with a cheery sympathy, and touches of genuine Thackerayan humour; as when she mentions the pictures from which the little Hebrews learn, "Abraham with his beard, and Isaac and the ram, hanging up against the wall; Moses, and the Egyptians, and Joseph, and the sack and the brethren, somewhat out of drawing"; or the kindness of the State, which "does not refuse the little paupers a cup of cold water-a tin cup, so that they shall not break it.” The most remarkable account of all is, perhaps, that of the institution in Burton Crescent, for the purpose of teaching the dumb (i. e., the congenitally deaf) to speak. The treatment would appear to be fairly successful. This place also is managed mainly, or entirely, by Jews, whose industry in educational matters is very remarkable. If it be true, as is reported, that they are gradually acquiring the fee-simple of Palestine, they evidently do not intend that

In

the Promised Land shall be re-occupied by an uneducated people. Miss Thackeray makes some general remarks about the management (or mismanagement) of charitable funds, which are much to the point at the present time, when there are signs that these things are to undergo a close scrutiny, and that those who have the charge of them will have to give an account of their management. Suffice it to say here, that her experience is strongly against the existing system. calling attention to the charitable works which are going on among us, Miss Thackeray has, we think, done good service; and especially at such a time as this, when many persons, finding that faith is failing them, are being driven to take refuge in love and good works; for even if it be true that, as she says, as a rule, we who ask are not the people who work and achieve," these may yet claim to have done something for a good cause, if the result of their inquiries is to point out to those who wish to work a direction for their labour.

From Miss Thackeray (who, however, has also her sympathies with the country, as witness 'A Country Sunday,' and 'An Easter Holiday') and her "Toilers and Spinsters,' we

Of the six

turn to Canon Kingsley's 'Prose Idylls' of holiday-makers and ramblers; leaving the courts of Soho and the lanes of the City for the moors and streams, where, as we all know, the Canon finds scope for that "energy of the soul according to virtue," in which Aristotle tells us that happiness consists. essays in the book, three are old friends, having been published, not only in Fraser's Magazine, from 1849 to 1858, but also in Canon Kingsley's 'Miscellanies,' beloved, and deservedly, of undergraduates, to wit, 'Chalk-Stream Studies,' My Winter Garden,' and 'North Devon.' One of the remaining three, ‘A Charm of Birds,' has also appeared in Fraser, while 'The Fens,' and 'From Ocean to Sea' (an account of a journey from Biarritz to Cette), first time. are printed, as far as we know, now for the Whatever may be the Canon's shortcomings in Early English History, whatever his heterodoxy about Romans and Teutons, and the orthography of Dietrich and Smid, no one can deny that by a Berkshire trout-stream, or on board a Clovelly trawler in Bideford Bay, he is an instructive and amusing companion. It may be that even here specialists may, now and again, detect him in an inaccuracy; possibly, we cannot speak with confidence, he may give us the wrong Latin name for some strange fly, or the wrong date for the incursion of some Northern tribe; but these easily discovered slips are not likely to spoil our pleasure on a fine day, and, after all, he might plead that he has forgotten, for the moment, more than most of us ever knew. Only, instead of writing and republishing short essays, why does he not, in these days of analytical and emotional novels (to Miss Thackeray's just remarks. whereon we have already referred), give us another stirring "history of events," the more imaginary the better? Are we never to hear the long-promised story of how Tom Thurnall came across Claude Mellot in the South Seas, before that enchanted region has become wholly the property of airy young sceptics or energetic missionaries? We feel sure that the Canon has the whole story in his head, and, being a man of his word, needs only

are faulty. Drummond, while gently reproving the King and the Royalists for their intolerance, condemns in unmeasured terms the same vice in the Presbyterians. While feebly recommending liberty, he boldly advocates passive obedience. But his attitude is intelligible, and to some extent excusable. Mr. Masson, who exaggerates his merits as a literary man, hardly does justice to him as a politician. Mr. Másson's great hero found, to his grief, that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large." Drummond made the same discovery, yet earlier, and, all his predilections being for quiet, he thought that there was more chance of quietude in allowing Priests and Cavaliers to have their way than in adopting the bigoted tenets of Presbyterians and Roundheads. Therefore, he entered into an alliance with Montrose and the "Malig nants," wrote eloquent tracts against Presbyterianism, penned squibs and lampoons without number, and so committed himself to the Royalist cause that, though there is no ground at all for the tradition that he died of a broken heart in consequence of Charles the First's execution, he found very little to live for after that event and its issue in the triumph of Republicanism, and died in the same year, 1649, at the age of sixty-four.

So little is generally known of Drummond's life and works that we have thought it well to recapitulate some of the most notable facts therein from Prof. Masson's comprehensive memoir. Not much need be added to what we have already said in criticism of the book. Mr. Masson's merits as a biographer and an historian far exceed his faults, and those faults are pretty well known. He is apt to be too enthusiastic both in praise and in blame, and, perhaps, his rhetorical flourishes exaggerate the meaning that he intends to convey. With all his learned accuracy on most points, moreover, he occasionally makes queer slips. For instance, Drummond's couplet on the failure of the Duke of Buckingham's expedition to the Isle of Rhé in 1627,

Charles! would ye quail your foes, have better luck, Send forth some Drakes, and keep at home the Duck. is provided with what Mr. Masson himself calls an "elaborate explanation," to the effect that by Scotsmen duke was pronounced like duck, and that drake was the name of a small cannon; but he quite ignores what was surely the main point of the joke, a reference to Sir Francis Drake, who, as a fighting seaman, had proved himself so superior to the Duke of Buckingham.

We have said nothing about Drummond's record of Ben Jonson's famous tittle-tattle during his stay at Hawthornden in 1618. From this Mr. Masson makes copious extracts, but he hardly excuses his hero as well as he might have done for preserving the recollection of so much ill-natured gossip from an old and disappointed courtier, poet, and playwright, and he fails to point out, as he should have done, how faulty and mischievous some of that gossip was. Mr. Masson over-estimates the importance of the notes; and, seeing how unjustly Spenser, Sidney, and Raleigh were treated by Ben Jonson, we certainly do not echo Mr. Masson's wish, that Drummond, instead of contenting himself with the scanty mention he has made concerning Shakspeare, had "tapped this particular fountain of gossip in his guest, and kept it flowing for several

hours." "What a world of trouble Shakspeare's future biographers," he adds, "might have been saved by one such hour!" We think it very possible that Drummond did tap the fountain, and drew from it gossip too muddy to be worth preserving, and, if so, we may be grateful to him for his good taste. As it is, Shakspeare has suffered enough from the unkind statements of his rivals and detractors.

THE VAUDOIS AND THE HUGUENOTS.

The Huguenots in France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; with a Visit to the Country of the Vaudois. By Samuel Smiles. (Strahan & Co.)

SELF-HELP' is the most widely known of Mr. Smiles's writings. It is the book which has made his reputation, and in which he has given us the best of his thoughts and feelings. Indeed, his other volumes are but further illustrations of the same text. The idea which inspires them is the same. Whether he is describing the fortunes of the Huguenots, flying from the despotism of Louis the Fourteenth, spreading over Europe and founding colonies in England and Ireland, full of energy and faith, or, as in the work before us, is tracing their history in France itself, in the midst of persecutions and sufferings, triumphing by the power of endurance over the fury of their foes, Mr. Smiles is ever celebrating the victories of "Self-Help," of an inflexible conscience, and indefatigable perseverance. His books then are in reality the instruments of a propaganda, and the vehicles of moral teaching; and it would be unjust to ask, in the case of the work before us, for the minute accuracy and the wealth of documents and proofs which we expect to find in learned works. Mr. Smiles makes no attempt to demonstrate and prove he seeks to carry us with him by the contagion of his enthusiasm and his own strong convictions, of the generous sympathy which animates his whole narrative, and imparts to it life and colour. We may demur to this or that statement, point out some mistakes; we may see that the book lacks depth, that it shows an insufficient acquaintance with original sources, and that it is almost wholly compiled from second-hand authorities: still the volume is an excellent one for popular perusal. Nobody can read it without interest, without loving and admiring those whose struggles and hardships the author paints so well, or without feeling a wish to resemble them. The general public will derive from it clear, sound, and agreeable instruction; and if those who are already familiar with the subject find little that is new, they will derive from the narrative a moral stimulus that may be not without advantage. These are no ordinary merits.

Mr. Smiles's volume is in reality composed of two works different in subject and form, but animated by the same inspiration, and both tending to teach the same lessons. The first portion is a continuous history of the French Protestants from 1685 to 1789. The second is an account of a tour in the upper valleys of Dauphiné and Piedmont, where the Vaudois preserved intact, from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the present day, and in defiance of the incessant persecutions of the Kings of France and the Dukes of Savoy, a simple and pure faith. In this

The

second part of his work, Mr. Smiles does not relate historical events in their chronological order, but travels in a given route; and at each valley he visits, each village he passes through, he recalls the most important events of which it has been the scene. This portion of the volume appears to us the less successful. scenery of Dauphiné is sublime, but gloomy and monotonous. Mr. Smiles, who, to his credit be it said, endeavours always to be simple, does not aim at sublimity, and his descriptions recall only too faithfully the monotonous impression which the mountains he has traversed produce. Besides the historical details are, with the exception of the touching story of the "glorious return" of the Vaudois exiles to their valleys in 1689-90, too fragmentary and incomplete to be very interesting. The author gives an exact account of the laudable efforts of Dr. Gilly, General Beckwith, and Mr. Milsom to improve the lot of the Vaudois; but what he tells of their history is insufficient. Confining himself to the valleys he has himself visited, he omits to mention that, by their industry, the Vaudois had between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries spread themselves in Provence along the basin of the Durance as far as Vaucluse, and he does not even allude to the most tragic episode in their history, the great massacre of 1545, when, by order of Francis the First, President d'Oppède exterminated four thousand of them. Nor does he tell us enough about the character of the population. He celebrates their courage and faith; but we wish that, instead of dilating on the uncomfortable character of the inns in Dauphiné, and on the means of making them fit for English tourists, he had, since he has seen them close at hand, described in a more vivid fashion the qualities of this brave and simple, yet, as their songs and legends show, poetical race, who resemble those mountain plants which the eye at first hardly distinguishes from a common herb, but which are found to exhale the sweetest and most powerful perfume.

Were we to descend to details, we should have more than one cause of quarrel with Mr. Smiles. We do not believe, as he does, that the Vaudois have preserved, without interruption, since the first days of Christianity, the tradition of an evangelical faith. Their doctrines are in all probability derived from that current of ideas which, coming from the Slavo-Greek countries, pervaded between the ninth and twelfth centuries the whole of the south of France, and threatened to withdraw it from Catholicism.

These ideas were a mixture of very different elements, and Mr. Smiles is quite mistaken when he sees in the Albigenses "simple and sincere believers in the Divine Providence." Their doctrines were far from being so simple. In them Oriental Manichæism was mingled with a mysticism sometimes austere, sometimes voluptuous. The sole trait common to all the sects was hatred of the hierarchy and of ecclesiastical authority. This trait is found in the Vaudois, whose doctrines are much more evangelical than those of the Albigenses properly so called. Pierre Valdo, so named because he was a Vaudois (Waldensis), as Mr. Smiles rightly remarks, contributed, no doubt, much to fixing the principal characteristics of their belief. Isolation and