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He made strange havoc of Fuseli's fantastic hieroglyphics, violent humors, and oddity of dialect. Curran, who was sometimes of the same party, was lively and animated in convivial conversation, but dull in argument; nay, averse to anything like reasoning or serious observation, and had the worst taste I ever knew. His favorite critical topics were to abuse Milton's "Paradise Lost," and "Romeo and Juliet." Indeed, he confessed a want of sufficient acquaintance with books when he found himself in literary society in London. He and Sheridan once dined at John Kemble's with Mrs. Inchbald and Mary Woolstonecroft, when the discourse almost wholly turned on Love "from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day!" What a subject! What speakers, and what hearers! What would I not give to have been there, had I not learned it all from the bright eyes of Amaryllis, and may one day make a "Table-talk" of it! Peter Pindar was rich in anecdote and grotesque humor, and profound in technical knowledge both of music, poetry, and painting, but he was gross and overbearing. Wordsworth sometimes talks like a man inspired on subjects of poetry (his own out of the question), Coleridge well on every subject, and Godwin on none. To finish this subject— Mrs. Montagu's conversation is as fine cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she says leaves a flavor, like fine, green tea. Hunt's is like champagne, and Northcote's like anchovy sandwiches. Haydon's is like a game at trap ball, Lamb's like snapdragon, and my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike a game at ninepins!... One source of the conversation of authors is the character of other authors, and on that they are rich indeed. What things they say! What stories they tell of one another, more particularly of their friends! If I durst only give some of these confidential communications! The reader may perhaps think the foregoing a specimen of them but indeed he is mistaken.

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I do not know of any greater impertinence than for an obscure individual to set about pumping a character of celebrity. "Bring him to me," said a Dr. Tronchin, speaking of Rousseau, "that I may see whether he has anything in him." Before you can take measure of the capacity of others, you ought to be sure that they have not taken measure of yours. They may think you a spy on them, and may not like their company. If you really want to know whether another person

can talk well, begin by saying a good thing yourself, and you will have a right to look for a rejoinder. "The best tennis players," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "make the best matches."

-For wit is like a rest

Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best players.

We hear it often said of a great author, or a great actress, that they are very stupid people in private. But he was a fool that said so. Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners. In conversation, as in other things, the action and reaction should bear a certain proportion to each other. Authors may, in some sense, be looked upon as foreigners, who are not naturalized even in their native soil. Lamb once came down into the country to see us. He was "like the most capricious poet Ovid among the Goths." The country people thought him an oddity, and did not understand his jokes. It would be strange if they had; for he did not make any while he stayed. But when he crossed the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old colleges were "hail fellow well met"; and in the quadrangles he "walked gowned."

There is a character of a gentleman; so there is a character of a scholar, which is no less easily recognized. The one has an air of books about him, as the other has of good breeding. The one wears his thoughts as the other does his clothes, gracefully; and even if they are a little old-fashioned, they are not ridiculous: they have had their day. The gentleman shows, by his manner, that he has been used to respect from others; the scholar that he lays claim to self-respect and to a certain independence of opinion. The one has been accustomed to the best company; the other has passed his time in cultivating an intimacy with the best authors. There is nothing forward or vulgar in the behavior of the one; nothing shrewd or petulant in the observations of the other, as if he should astonish the bystanders, or was astonished himself at his own discoveries. Good taste and good sense, like common politeness, are, or are supposed to be, matters of course. One is distinguished by an appearance of marked attention to every one present; the other manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of mind. The one is not an upstart, with all the self-important airs of the founder of his own fortune; nor the other a self

taught man, with the repulsive self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of what hundreds have known before him. We must excuse perhaps a little conscious family pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other. As there is a class of the first character which sinks into the mere gentleman, that is, which has nothing but this sense of respectability and propriety to support it—so the character of a scholar not unfrequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing is left of it but the mere bookworm. There is often something amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know one such instance, at least. The person I mean has an admiration for learning, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives among old authors, if he does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers, and turns over the pages, and is familiar with the names and dates. He is busy and selfinvolved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its shadow; but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk and leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning, and has never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things. He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he finds the names of these things in books. He thinks that love and friendship are the finest things imaginable, both in practice and theory. The legend of good women is to him no fiction. When he steals from the twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like an illuminated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many figures in a camera obscura. He reads the world, like a favorite volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old work which he is preparing for the press, only to make emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipped in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful, affectionate creatures-if Tray could but read! His mind cannot take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart and when he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others, or the consciousness of one in itself!

POEMS OF JOANNA BAILLIE.

[JOANNA BAILLIE, Scotch poet and dramatist, was born in Bothwell Manse, Lanarkshire, September 11, 1762, and came to London in 1784, to reside with her brother, Matthew Baillie, one of the physicians in ordinary to George III. and George IV. Subsequently she moved to a house in Hampstead, and was visited by men of genius from all over the world. In 1798 she published the first series of her "Plays on the Passions," in which she delineates the principal passions of the mind, each passion being made the subject of a tragedy and a comedy. "De Montfort" was produced by John Kemble at Drury Lane, and "The Family Legend" met with great success at the Theater Royal, Edinburgh, where it was brought out under the auspices of Sir Walter Scott. Miss Baillie died at Hampstead, February 23, 1851.]

WOOED AND MARRIED AND A'.

[Version taken from an old song of that name.]

THE bride she is winsome and bonny,
Her hair is snooded sae sleek,
And faithful and kind is her Johnny,
Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek.
New pearlins are cause of her sorrow,
New pearlins and plenishing too,
The bride that has a' to borrow
Has e'en right mickle ado.

Wooed and married and a'!
Wooed and married and a'!

Is na' she very weel aff

To be wooed and married at a'?

Her mither then hastily spak',
"The lassie is glaikit wi' pride;
In my pouch I had never a plack
On the day when I was a bride.
E'en tak' to your wheel, and be clever,
And draw out your thread in the sun;

The gear that is gifted, it never
Will last like the gear that is won.
Wooed and married and a'!

Wi' havins and tocher sae sma'!

I think ye are very weel aff

To be wooed and married at a'!"

"Toot, toot I," quo' her gray-headed faither,
"She's less o' a bride than a bairn,

She's ta'en like a cout frae the heather,
Wi' sense and discretion to learn.
Half husband, I trow, and half daddy,
As humor inconstantly leans,

The cheil maun be patient and steady,

That yokes wi' a mate in her teens.

A kerchief sae douce and sae neat,

O'er her locks that the winds used to blaw.

I'm baith like to laugh and to greet,

When I think o' her married at a'!"

Then out spak' the wily bridegroom,
Weel waled were his wordies I ween,
"I'm rich, though my coffer be toom,
Wi' the blinks o' your bonny blue een.
I'm prouder o' thee by my side,

Though thy ruffles or ribbons be few.
Than if Kate o' the Croft were my bride,
Wi' purfles and pearlins enow.

Dear and dearest of ony!

Ye're wooed and buikit and a'!
And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny,
And grieve to be married at a'?"

She turned and she blushed and she smiled,
And she looket sae bashfully down;

The pride o' her heart was beguiled,

And she played wi' the sleeves o' her gown;

She twirled the tag o' her lace,

And she nippet her bodice sae blue,

Syne blinket sae sweet in his face,
And off like a maukin she flew.
Wooed and married and a'!
Wi' Johnny to roose her and a'!
She thinks hersel' very weel aff,

To be wooed and married at a'!

IT WAS ON A MORN.

It was on a morn, when we were thrang,
The Kirn it crooned, the cheese was making
And bannocks on the girdle baking,

When ane at the door chappt loud and lang.

Yet the auld gudewife and her mays sae tight,

Of a' this bauld din took sina' notice I ween;

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