most parts of the earth. Still it is a Portrait. There is no mistaking its hideousness; and you cannot help feeling a sort of admiration of the Dauber who can thus present to you an unquestionable likeness of a friend (perhaps defunct,) in a face that at the same time cannot fail to suggest to your imagination the great Enemy of Mankind.

But to drop the metaphor, (if it be one,) what peculiar requisites does Mr Hazlitt possess for the task he has taken upon him, of giving us the "Spirit of the Age?" For instance, what can he know of the Lord Chancellor of Eng land? He may be said to live in the very lowest society, for he has for years absolutely been upon the Press. Then his manners and habits are avowedly such as would exclude him from the better circles, even if he had any wish (which he has not) to intrude himself into them. He is no scholar-indeed he prides himself upon his entire ignorance and has told us, a thousand times, that he can read no language but his own. Of law he knows nothing, except, perhaps, some little of the prac tice of our Scotch Commissary Court. How, then-we put it to his own candour-can he know anything whatever of the Lord Chancellor of England? And yet, to read him upon Lord Eldon, one might think they were quite hand in glove.

"Lord Eldon," quoth Mr Hazlitt " is an exceedingly good-natured man; but this does not prevent him, like other good-natured people, from consulting his own ease or interest." This is delightfully free and easy, and although a little severe, yet one cannot but believe that Mr Hazlitt would condescend to speak to the Chancellor on the street,that he would not cut him,-that, perhaps, he might even prevail upon himself to shake hands with his Lordship. Indeed he tells us so. "If a nation is robbed of its rights, ' if wretches hang that ministers may dine,'-the laughing jest still collects in his eye, the cordial squeeze of the hand is still the same." This is truly the height of familiarity; and then, what truth of character! How thoroughly Mr Hazlitt understands his man! Gluttonous, unjust, and unmerciful! From what follows, it appears that Mr Hazlitt has seen the Chancellor at dinner; or, perhaps, he means merely to say that he has been in his Lordship's kitchen.

"But tread on the toe of one of these amiable and imperturbable mortals, or let a lump of soot fall down the chimney and spoil their dinners, and see how they will bear it. All their patience is confined to the accidents that befal others; all their good-humour is to be resolved into giving themselves no concern about anything but their own ease and self-indulgence."

Our readers will remember the figure which Mr Hazlitt cut a year or two ago as the modern Pygmalion. He has not yet laid aside the amatory style. One might suppose that, in the following sentence, he was speaking of himself and the tailor's daughter of Southampton-Row, but it is only of the Lord Chancellor and the Law:"He hugs indecision to his breast, and takes home a modest doubt, or a nice point, to solace himself with it in protracted luxurious dalliance." There can, of course, be no more offensive character to a criminal than an honest judge; but surely Mr Hazlitt expresses himself too boldly when

he

says,

"The phlegm of the Chancellor's disposition gives one almost a surfeit of impartiality and candour; we are sick of the eternal poise of childish dilatoriness; and would wish law and justice to be decided at once by a cast of the dice, (as they were in Rabelais,) rather than be kept in frivolous and tormenting suspense.”

Mr Hazlitt concludes his Portrait of the Spirit of the Age, with this gentlemanly sentence :—

"As to abstract metaphysical calculations, the ox that stands staring at the corner of the street troubles his head as

much about them as he does; yet this last is a very good sort of animal with no harm or malice in him, unless he is goaded on to mischief, and then it is necessary to keep out of his way, or warn others against him!"

We are in more than usual goodhumour this evening with the whole world and all its inhabitants; and are determined not to use an uncivil word to the most worthless individual. Yet surely we may, with perfect bonhommie, ask, is not this a vile knave? The lies he here tells are of no moment, but are you not disgusted with his ape-like impudence? To bring the absurdity of the impudence of the Thing more home to itself, suppose, for a moment, such a person as Mr Hazlitt were to be made Lord Chancellor! Only think of Eldon's wig on

Pygmalion! Was ever a poor case before in such extremity? Yet, to hear the Creature speak, you would conclude that he feels his infinite superiority over his Lordship. No notion has he of the difference between one of the greatest of men and one of the meanest of monkeys. So have we seen one of that tribe keep mowing and chattering at Christian people, through the bars of his cage, aloft in Womwell's (read Colburn's) menagerie, manifestly, with a few nuts and an orange in his jaw, to keep him in antics odious alike to the visitors and his keeper.

Loathsome stuff, like the above quotations, must, we think, act like an overdose on the most malignant, and, by making them disgorge, in some degree clean their conscience. False as all their statements have been proved to be—unfair in their reasonings and party-spirit their sole impulse-still it is possible, with slight stomachqualms, to listen to Brougham, Williams, and Denman railing against the Chancellor, like baffled and breaking billows against the Eddystone Lighthouse. Although they may occasionally forget themselves, they are gentle men; and we feel that they are so, the more keenly our indignation and scorn are excited by their wilful violation of their native character. But here is an acknowledged scamp of the lowest order-a scamp, by his own confession, steep'd in ignorance and malice to his very ribald lips, arraigning the character of the most learned, the best, the wisest man in all England, in vocifierations ex cathedra of the cidercellar or the Shades. The Barristers cannot like to hear this; they wish to choose their own coadjutors; and will fear that the public, whom they have been so long striving to deceive, must look on them with more than a suspicion of their integrity, if they appear to have enlisted on their side a no less moral and conscientious corrector of abuses than the modern Pygmalion.

From the woolsack, let us turn to hair-bottoms. Mr Hazlitt has a crow to pluck with Mr Gifford, and includes that gentleman among the Spirits of the Age, that he may tell the Age he is no Spirit at all, but a mere clod. Here we are almost induced to exculpate the Quarterly Reviewer for calling Mr Hazlitt a blockhead; for who but a blockhead would cry upon

his fellow-creatures to execrate a critic, because that critic had kicked and cut up the crier? This is almost the only trait of honesty we ever observed in Mr Hazlitt's literary character. "You have abused me, and therefore I will abuse you!" And this from a person who paints "Contemporary Portraits," and says, behold for ten and sixpence, the Spirits of the Age! Hear the scarified simpleton, how he audi bly winces!

"Thus he informed the world that the author of TABLE-TALK was a person who could not write a sentence of common English, and could hardly spell his own name, because he was not a friend to the restoration of the Bourbons, and had the assurance to write Characters of Shakspeare's Plays in a style of criticism somewhat different from Mr Gifford's. He

charged this writer with imposing on the public by a flowery style; and when the latter ventured to refer to a work of his, called An Essay on the Principles of Human Action, which has not a single ornament in it, as a specimen of his original studies, and the proper bias of his mind, the learned critic, with a shrug of great self-satisfaction, said, 'It was amusing to see this person sitting like one of Brouwer's Dutch boors over his gin and tobacco-pipes, and fancying himself a Leibnitz!' The question was, whether the subject of Mr Gifford's censure had ever written such a work or not; for if he had, he had amused himself with something besides gin and tobacco-pipes."

Yes-yes-the writer in the Quarterly Review was right, after all. We humbly beg his pardon-he was no dunce and Hazlitt is a blockhead. For drawing the characters of the Lord Chancellor and Mr Gifford, we have seen what are Mr Hazlitt's peculiar qualifications, and, above all, his utter ignorance in the one case, and avowed personal spite in the other. It shews little knowledge of human nature, (in him, a Metaphysician, and author of an Essay on the Principles of Human Conduct,) thus to direct public attention, in hopes of exciting public sympathy, to the tingling, inflamed, discoloured, and perhaps raw parts, round which the lash of the Q. (almost as sharp as that of Z. himself) had so flourishingly played its periodical gambols. The most tenderhearted even of womankind feel themselves unable to shed a pensive tear over a culprit capering about with his hand on his sore breech, and all the

ing abroad into nature, and scanning the recesses of the human heart, winked and shut his apprehension up' to every thought or purpose that tended to the future good of mankind-who, raised by affluence, the reward of successful industry, and the voice of fame, above the want of any but the most honourable patronage, stooped to the unworthy arts of adulation, and abetted the views of the great with the pettifogging feelings of the meanest dependant on office-who, having secured the admiration of the public, (with the probable reversion of immortality,) shewed no respect for himself, for that genius that had raised him to distinction, for that nature which he trampled under foot-who, amiable, frank, friendly,

manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant politics were concerned-who reserved all his candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his contemporaries took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair means-who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect, to the sense of manhood-who, praised, admired by men of all parties alike, repaid the public libe. rality by striking a secret and envenomed blow at the reputation of every one who was not the ready tool of power-who strewed the slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn over the bud and prómise of genius, because it was not fostered in the hot-bed of corruption, or warped by the trammels of servility," &c. &c. Now that the Pillory is (perhaps wisely) taken down, what adequate and appropriate punishment is there that we can inflict on this rabid caitiff?

The old Germans used to enclose certain criminals in wicker creels, and sink them in mud and slime. "Is there a man in all Scotland," or in merry England, that would not give his vote for the temporary immersion of this unnatural liar in the jakes? Who, if that punishment were carried into effect by the hands of a mud-lark, would not laugh at the incurable culprit as he wriggled himself,

in laborious extrication, from the penal ordure, and, dropping at every faultering step filth from his body almost as loathsome as that which he had discharged from his soul, rushed for refuge into some obscene receptacle of the infamous and excommunicated, in the pestilent regions of Cockaigne?

Having gone out to take a little fresh air, we feel ourselves recovered from that sudden fit of sickness. Honest Mark M'Ivor, one of the Magazine porters, has called at the Lodge with rid of the offensive volume. a hamper of articles, and we have got

We begin to suspect, that we have yielded too much to our feelings; and that, after all, this is not the worst of Mr Hazlitt's productions. Nay, we incline to think it the best. Every page is not polluted with the same filth, at least not with the same quantity of filth. Honesty, of course, no one expects from this writer; but here and there we meet with some passable imitations of it. He occasionally lays aside his native brutality, in mimicry of a mirthful badinage; and the bear's dance for a few minutes is not unamusing. Avoid truth as you will, you must knock your head against it sometimes; and on such occasions Mr Hazlitt looks about him with the farcical air of the " Agreeable Surprise." Nothing can exceed his conceit, in the consciousness of now and then (perhaps three times in the course of 400 octavo pages) feeling almost as if he were not a Cockney, but a man; and although his thefts are in general not only barefaced but absurd,-his native inclination impelling him to steal only what is absolutely worthless,-yet justice forces us to acknowledge, that we have more than once detected his hand in the very act of pilfering a jewel; nor can we help even admiring the audacity with which, in broad day-light, he exhibits the pearls of which he has robbed genius, studded in the paste of his own vulgar and impoverished understanding.