combined with a gentle voice and manner, gave him rather the semblance of some ancient philosopher-of Socrates after his unjust condemnation, or of Aristides, after his iniquitous ostracism-than of a modern and not undistinguished author, keeping, as he then did, an inferior shop for stationery and children's books in Skinner-street, not far from Holborn-hill. He was then writing elementary school-books, under the assumed name of Mylius, for his own would have been fatal to their success. Nay, so bitter was the ban and proscription of bigotry in those days, that he did not inscribe his own name over his own shop-door, substituting the figure of a hunchback, under which was written, in black-letter characters, to puzzle the ignorant, the word Æ SOP. Here have I sometimes shared his frugal early dinner, which, nevertheless, was luxurious enough for one who had rather partake of filberts with a philosopher than of venison with a fool. Sooth to say, however, he spoke but little, seemed averse from discussion, and was somewhat prone to somnolency, unsocial habits, partly attributable to his age, partly, perhaps, to the state of his affairs; for my visits had generally reference to his pecuniary embarrassments, which were of constant recurrence, spite of the frequent and munificent assistance he had received from his son-in-law, Shelley. His total ignorance of the tradesman's art must have occasioned these difficulties, for he lived in an almost primitive simplicity, and had no expensive habits. Though we rarely met except upon such unpleasant occasions, I never left him without feeling a deep regret at his uncongenial and painful position, and a sincere admiration of his talents and his virtues; which impressions may, perhaps, plead my excuse for republishing the following honourable testimouial from a contemporary who knew him well, and who was not likely to pronounce an eulogium upon any man unless it was fully merited.

"All observation on the personal character of a writer, when that conduct is not of a public nature, is of dangerous example; and, when it leads to blame, is severely reprehensible. But it is but common justice to say, that there are few instances of more respectable conduct among writers, than is apparent in the subsequent works of Mr. Godwin. He calmly corrected what appeared to him to be his own mistakes; and he proved the perfect disinterestedness of his corrections, by adhering to opinions as obnoxious to the powerful as those which he relinquished. Untempted by the success of his scholars in paying their court to the dispensers of favour, he adhered to the old and rational principles of liberty, violently shaken as these venerable principles had been, by the tempest which had beaten down the neighbouring erections of anarchy. He continued to seek independence and reputation, with that various success to which the fashions of literature subject professed writers; and to struggle with the difficulties incident to other modes of industry, for which his previous habits had not prepared him. He has thus, in our humble opinion, deserved the respect of all those, whatever may be their opinions, who still wish that some men in England may think for themselves, even at the risk of thinking wrong; but more especially of the friends of liberty, to whose cause he has courageously adhered."-Ed. Review, vol. xxv., p. 489.

It was my purpose to devote a brief notice to Mr. Maurice the author of "Indian Antiquities," to William Hazlitt, to Sir Robert Ker Porter, and his two gifted sisters, to Haydon, the artist and author, to Miss Landon, to Thomas Haynes Bayley, to Charles Lamb, to the Dibdin brothers, to Laman Blanchard, and other deceased literary persons with

whom, at different periods of my life, it has been my privilege to be acquainted; but I know not that I could furnish any information with reference to these parties that would be either new or interesting. I feel that I have already occupied sufficient space in a miscellany which requires variety of subject as well as of contributors, and I must guard against the garrulity of old age. With this number, therefore, the Graybeard will close his gossip. Before I do so, however, let me gratify myself, and perform an act of justice to my literary contemporaries, by declaring that my own lengthened experience, instead of confirming, completely repudiates the charge of their being an irritable race. Horace, their original accuser, may have found them so in the days of Augustus; but my observation, including the reigns of four English sovereigns, gives not the smallest warrant to the stigma, as applicable to modern times. To me the professors of literature have been a friendly brotherhood, ever ready to perform good offices, ever affording me courteous, urbane, instructive, and delightful society. Even against the reviewers who have noticed my humble attempts, I have no complaints to make. When they were severe, which happened but rarely, I endeavoured to benefit by censures which I generally felt to be just; when they noticed me with favour, their praises were not unwelcome; but I am not naturally sensitive, and I soon became indifferent to criticism when I found that it exercised little or no influence upon the opinion of the public.

A fragment of Simonides recommends us not to call to mind the dead, if we think of them at all, more than for a single day. This advice I have not adopted, and notwithstanding the obituary character which must inevitably pervade a Graybeard's reminiscences, I have found nothing melancholy in my retrospective gossip. Mine has rather been the feeling of Seneca, who found a solemn delight in recalling his departed friends, not looking upon them as lost-" Mihi amicorum defunctorum cogitatio dulcis ac blandis est; habui enim illos, tanquam amissurus; amissi tanquam habeam.”

One duty yet remains to me, and it is rather of a painful nature; for I purpose giving a summary of the results of authorship, so far as they have been brought within my own personal observation. Alas! how abundantly will they confirm Sir Walter Scott's dictum that literature may be a good walking-stick, but that it can never be depended on for a crutch! How wofully will they confirm the still more ominous warnings of other writers. "Sons of Parnassus !" exclaim the authors of the "Rejected Addresses,"

Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track,

Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng,

And reproduce, in rags, the rags ye blot in song.

Wordsworth pathetically ejaculates

We poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof comes in the end despondency and sadness!

Burns chants the same strain- "There is not in all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as that of the lives of poets." Shelley thus echoes back the doleful statement—

Most wretched men

Are cradled into poetry from wrong,

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

And mark in what a prophetic spirit poor Chatterton denounces the syrens

who lured him to his ruin. "D-n the muses! I abominate them and their works : they are the nurses of poverty and insanity ;"-a prediction which has been verified by scores of "mighty poets in their misery dead."

"I am not sure," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "that the life of an author is a happy life; but yet if the seeds of authorship be in him, he will not be happy except in the indulgence of this occupation. Without the culture and free air which these seeds require, they will wither and turn to poison." Enviable alternative for a scribbler, to dedicate himself to an unhappy calling, or to see his mind wither and turn to poison!

If to the list of deceased writers commemorated in these pages, I add the names of R. B. Peake, the dramatist, and J. T. Hewlett, for both of whose destitute families subscriptions have latterly been made, I find that four are known to have committed suicide; five are known to have died in a state of mental derangement; two passed many years, and one breathed his last sigh, in the rules of the King's Bench prison; ten, after a long struggle with poverty, escaped from life, some of them leaving families in such necessitous circumstances that subscriptions were made for their temporary relief; a few have obtained a moderate subsistence where their literary labours have been incessant; a few have derived from their occasional writings a trifling addition to the means they previously possessed; one single individual, Sir Walter Scott, realised, although he did not retain, a large fortune by his pen, accomplishing this unprecedented miracle not so much by his stupendous genius and unparalleled industry, as by his refusing to submit to that system of spoliation which monopolises the lion's share of the spoil for the rich publisher, and tosses the orts and offal to the poor scribbling jackal.

In the long term of years over which this melancholy recapitulation extends, I can only recall the bankruptcy of one eminent publishing firm -that of James Ballantyne and Co., of Edinburgh, occasioned by peculiar circumstances, with which the public are well acquainted. In the same course of time it were easy to mention the names of many publishers, who after splashing the tramping authors as they dashed past them in their carriages—after enjoying a life of luxury, of mental ease, and of perfect freedom from every intellectual exertion, have died not simply in independent circumstances, but in the possession of great and absolute wealth.

Oh, my dear brother scribblers! Oh, youthful candidates for an author's martrydom! "Look on this picture and on this"-the genuine presentment of two classes. If ye would despair of realising the independence of Simonides, who said that he had rather leave money to his enemies after his death than borrow it of his friends when living; if ye would avoid the frightful chances of suicide, madness, imprisonment, wretchedness, living toil, and dying destitution, devote not yourselves to literature as your sole profession. Verily, however, ye may still find your reward, for though the world would probably refuse ye a maintenance, perchance it may grant ye a monument. Ye ask for bread, and it will give ye a stone!

So fares the follower in the Muses' train;
He toils to starve, and only lives in death;
We slight him till our patronage is vain,
Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe,
And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe.

TICK;

OR,

MEMOIRS OF AN OLD ETON BOY.

BY CHARLES ROWCROFT, AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE COLONIES; OR THE ADVENTURES OF AN EMIGRANT."

6

CHAPTER IX.

IT was not long before I received an illustration of the practice of fagging" in my own person. The morning after my arrival, I was 'tting down to breakfast with my companions of the same room when my ears were suddenly assailed by a stentorian cry of "Lower boy!"

The cry came from the opposite side of the passage, and seemed to have something of the same effect on my companions as the roar of a wild beast in the woods. Linden, who was in the very act of conveying to his mouth a crumby portion of his hot roll, liberally buttered and judiciously salted-an epicurean morsel-at this terrible summons suspended the operation; but after a brief mental soliloquy he resumed his pleasing occupation, applying himself at the same time diligently to a plate of sausages, which smelt particularly savoury, and on which I was casting tender glances, for I was as hungry as a hunter.

Presently the call was heard again; but this time in a tone of more determined authority :

"Lower boy!"

"I believe

you must go," said my new friend. "Go!" said I; "go where ?"

"Don't you hear lower boy' called ?"

"Well-but what is that to me? If any one likes to call 'lower boy,' let him call as much as he pleases-only I don't see the fun of making so much noise. But it's nothing to me.'

"

"It's just this to you, my fine fellow-you are the lower boy that Green major is calling for; that's all."

"And why am I the lower boy more than any one else?" said I. "Because you happen to be the lowest boy in the school in our house. Don't you see? You were put in the 'second' yesterday; that's Yonge's form-your tutor, isn't he? That's a bit of a bore sometimes, because it's not easy to shirk your own tutor. Now, there's no other fellow in the 'second' but you: I'm in the third-There goes Green major, again! he seems to be in a bit of a rage. You had better go before he comes for you."

"Indeed,” said I, "I shall not go and leave my breakfast for Green or Brown, or any body else; and at any rate," said I, digging my fork affectionately into a sausage that looked so brown and crisp, and with such a graceful curl at one extremity-evidencing that it was fried to a turnthat it quite made my mouth water with sensual emotions, “not before I have disposed of this beauty."

As I uttered these words, our door was violently opened, and Green major stood before us! He had a very red face, and seemed very much excited, and he held in his hand a hazel-stick, which seemed to have seen some service.

Our senior, Elmes, beheld the apparition unmoved; but Linden changed colour and continued his chewing with a subdued air. As for me, I held up the sausage which was appended to my fork, with a little wonder, but with an innocent look such as that with which the lamb regards the butcher advancing with drawn knife to cut its throat.

"Pray," said the member of the upper fifth, for Green major was of no lower rank, "pray," said he, looking at Linden with by no means a smiling expression of countenance, "why didn't you come when I called 'lower boy?'"

Here he gave a little flourish with his hazel-stick.

66

Because," replied Linden, colouring up, but speaking with a forced calmness, and keeping his eye fascinatedly on the stick, "because I am not the lower boy.'

"When you heard me call twice it was your duty to come," said Green major, menacingly.

"Not when there's a lower boy in the same room," said Linden, trying to preserve an unconcerned air before the boy of authority.

6

"How's this? Oh! I see," said the upper fifth, "a new boy! And pray," he said to me, "why didn't you when heard lower boy' called ?"

come

you

"I didn't know I was to come," said I; "besides," I added, in my innocence, "I was at breakfast."

It is impossible to describe the air of astonishment and scorn with which the member of the upper fifth heard my plea of "being at breakfast," as a reason for not obeying the peremptory summons. It actually seemed to take away his breath! Such an excess of insolence exhibited with such effrontery by any boy, old or new, was astounding to his faculties, and argued some monstrous depravation of intellect surpassing ordinary audacity. Green major remained for a brief space overcome by his outraged feelings; but quickly recovering himself, he was about to put the hazel-stick into immediate exercise on the object of his indignation, when Elmes good-naturedly interposed and acquainted him that I was a "new boy" and had arrived only yesterday.

"That's no excuse for his not answering the call," said Green major, "but as this is his first fault, and as he is a new boy, I shall look it over for this time. Here," he continued, speaking to me, "go to Sutler's and bring me a 'potted beef;' and be quick."

I did not fully understand at that time my new obligations as one of the juniors liable to be fagged, nor did I sufficiently appreciate the immense difference of collegiate rank between a member of the second and a member of the upper fifth. It was owing to this happy state of ignorance, that I replied in my simplicity, pegging into the sausages all the while, that "I would go directly I had done my breakfast."

Elmes and Linden laughed outright at this, and seemed to enjoy the scene amazingly, although for my own part I could not see where the joke was; as nothing, as it appeared to me, was more simple and natural than that I should postpone doing the little favour which Green major requested of me, until I had finished my breakfast. But the upper fifth