verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian, whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,

"What ser'es their grammars ?

They'd better ta'en up spades and shools,

Or knappin hammers,"

vehemently denounces all Philology as nothing but a sort of man-trap for authors, and heartily dals Lindley Murray for "inventing it."

It must have been at such a time, that Hilton conceived his clever portrait of C—, when he was "C. in alt." He was hardy, rough, and clumsy enough to look truly rustic-like an Ingram's rustic chair. There was a slightness about his frame, with a delicacy of features and complexion, that associated him more with the Garden than with the Field, and made him look the Peasant of a Ferme Ornée. In this respect he was as much beneath the genuine stalwart bronzed Plough-Poet, Burns, as above the Farmer's Boy, whom I remember to have seen in my childhood, when he lived in a miniature house, near the Shepherd and Shepherdess, now the Eagle tavern, in the City Road, and manufactured Eolian harps, and kept ducks. The Suffolk Giles had very little of the agricultural in his appearance; he looked infinitely more like a handicraftsman, town-made.

Poor Clare! It would greatly please me to hear that he was happy and well, and thriving; but the transplanting of Peasants and Farmers' Boys from the natural into an artificial soil, does not always conduce to their happiness, or health, or ultimate well-doing. I trust the true Friends, who, with a natural hankering after poetry, because it is forbidden them, have ventured to pluck and eat of the pastoral sorts, as most dallying with the innocence of nature,—and who on that account patronised Capt. Lofft's protégé-I do trust and hope they took off whole editions. of the Northamptonshire Bard. There was much about Clare for a Quaker to like; he was tender-hearted, and averse to violence. How he recoiled once, bodily-taking his chair along with him, from a young surgeon, or surgeon's friend, who let drop, somewhat abruptly, that he was just come "from seeing a child skinned!"-Clare, from his look of horror, evidently

thought that the poor infant, like Marsyas, had been flayed alive! He was both gentle and simple. I have heard that on his first visit to London, his publishers considerately sent their porter to meet him at the inn; but when Thomas necessarily inquired of the gentleman in green, "Are you Mr. Clare?" the latter, willing to foil the traditionary tricks of London sharpers, replied to the suspicious query with "a positive negative.'

The Brobdignagdian next to Clare, overtopping him by the whole head and shoulders—a physical "Colossus of Literature," the grenadier of our corps-is Allan, not Allan Ramsay, "no, nor Barbara Allan neither," but Allan Cunningham,—“ a credit,” quoth Sir Walter Scott (he might have said a long credit)" to Caledonia." He is often called "honest Allan," to distinguish him, perhaps, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was apt to mistake his neighbors' goods for his own-sometimes, between ourselves, yclept the "C. of Solway," in allusion to that favorite "Allan Water," the Solway Sea. There is something of the true moody poetical weather observable in the barometer of his face, alternating from Variable to Showery, from Stormy to Set Fair. At times he looks gloomy and earnest and traditional—a little like a Covenanter-but he suddenly clears up and laughs a hearty laugh that lifts him an inch or two from his chair, for he rises at a joke when he sees one, like a trout at a fly, and finishes with a smart rubbing of his ample palms. He has store, too, of broad Scotch stories, and shrewd sayings; and he writes— no, he wrote rare old-new or new-old ballads. Why not now? Has his Pegasus, as he once related of his pony, run from under him? Has the Mermaid of Galloway left no little ones? Is Bonnie Lady Ann married, or May Morison dead? Thou wast formed for a poet, Allan, by nature, and by stature too, according to Pope

"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art."

And are there not Longman, or Tallboys, for thy Publishers?

* Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. "And where will they stick me," asked Clare; "will they stick me in the instinct ?"

But, alas! we are fallen on evil days for Bards and Barding, and nine tailors do more for a man than the Nine Muses. The only Lay likely to answer now-a-days would be an Ode (with the proper testimonials) to the Literary Fund!

The Reverend personage on the Editor's right, with the studious brow, deep-set eyes, and bald crown, is the mild and modest Cary—the same who turned Dante into Miltonic English blank verse. He is sending his plate towards the partridges, which he will relish and digest as though they were the Birds of Aristophanes. He has his eye, too, on the French made-dishes.* Pity, shame and pity, such a Translator found no better translation in the Church! Is it possible that, in some no-popery panic, it was thought by merely being Dragoman to Purgatory he had Romed from the true faith?

A very pleasant day we "Londoners" once spent at a Chiswick parsonage, formerly tenanted by Hogarth, along with the hospitable Cary, and, as Elia called them, his Caryatides!t The last time my eyes rested on the Interpreter (of the House Beautiful as well as of the Inferno) he was on the Library steps of the British Museum. Ere this, I trust he hath reached the tiptop-nay, hath perhaps attained being a Literary Worthy, even unto a Trusteeship, and had to buy, at Ellis's, a few yards of the Blue Ribbon of Literature!

Procter, alias Barry Cornwall, formerly of the Marcian Colonnade, now of some prosaical Inn of Court-the kindly Procter, one of the foremost to welcome me into the Brotherhood, with a too-flattering Dedication (another instance against the jealousy of authors), is my own left-hand file. But what he says shall be kept as strictly confidential; for he is whispering it into my Martineau ear. On my other side, when I turn that way, I see a profile, a shadow of which ever confronts me on opening my writing-desk,-a sketch taken from memory, the

*I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very good old English poem. It proved to be a naturalization, by Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.

The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, "Make him an Apothe-Cary.'

day after seeing the original.* In opposition to the "extra man's size" of Cunningham, the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet's "Average Man," but still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of features, which look all the smaller from his wearing, in compliment, probably, to the Sampsons of Teutonic Literature, his locks unshorn. Nevertheless whoever looks again,

Sees more than marks the crowd of common men.

There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks, writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and no doubt sleeps philosophically-i. e. deliberately. There is nothing abrupt about his motions, he goes and comes calmly and quickly-like the phantom of Hamlet, he is here he is there-he is gone. So it is with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked emphasis,—the tide of talk flows like Denham's river, "strong without rage, without overflowing, full." When it was my frequent and agreeable duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember, the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle, with a sore throat, and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of Literature, in a storm,-flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs, billows of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,-on such occasions I have willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking than reading from a "handwriting on the wall." Now and then he would diverge, for a Scotch

*Unable to make anything "like a likeness," of a sitter for the purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the personalities attributed to it; amongst others" a formidable likeness of a Lombard Street Banker." Besides that one would rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.

mile or two, to the right or left, till I was tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman's not Hook's), "Do you never deviate ?"—but he always came safely back to the point where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to the end. But look!-we are in the small hours, and a change comes o'er the spirit of that “old familiar face." A faint hectic tint leaves the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by a growing shadow-signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his Confessions with his own name and mark to it:-—an apology for a certain stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring. "Within that circle none durst drink but he,”—in fact the impression, colored, of “ a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without su

That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead-with one finger hooked round a glass of champaigne, not that he requires it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself -is our Edward Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the life of Peter Corcoran. He is "good with both hands," like that Nonpareil Randall, at a comic verse or a serious stanza-smart at a repartee-sharp at a retort,-and not averse to a bit of mischief. 'Twas he who gave the runaway ring at Wordsworth's Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are sharp-flavored,-like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists,

*On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium, or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in the form of pills amongst the lower classes, in the vicinity of the Fens. It is not probable that persons in such a rank of life had read the Confessions,-or, might not one suspect that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale, flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the magnificent scenery that filled the splendid visions of its Historian?