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if a star be contemplated through a glass, [ty to remove his scaffolding when he had comtarnished however slightly by the smoke of a pleted his building? Or take a still aptlamp or torch, it glimmers into a speck of er specimen in the dramas of Skakspeare. light. The stars of literature undergo a simi- His plays, in five stories, were run up with lar eclipse and diminution, when beheld the swiftness of a speculator in Parnassus, through the tinted glass of jealousy or hatred. who had only a few plots of ground in eligible Arbuthnot.-Nay, even through misappre-situations and upon short leases. He was too hension;-Scaliger was unable to compre- idle to remove the machinery of his labor from hend the Latin of a Scottish gentleman who the eye of the beholder. It litters the balcohad addressed him, and he gravely apologiz-ny of Juliet, it appears in the battle-field of ed to him for not understanding the language Richard. of Scotland.

Pope.-Among the uses of criticism may be recollected the light which it throws over the design of an author. Few men build their verse or their argument according to their original plan. My own Sylph machinery was an after-thought. The light of criticism enables the reader to comprehend in one view the long perspective of imagination, to see what parts of the majestic outline have been embodied, what parts omitted, what parts modified or changed. This knowledge can only be obtained after a laborious survey of criticism, after a careful induction and comparison of particulars.

Arbuthnot.--How strikingly apparent is that contrast of different styles in the poem of Spenser,-the Ionic grace of the classic temple clusters, with all its florid luxuriance, over the solemn melancholy of the cathedral; the old and new worlds of fiction illuminate and darken each other,

"Till Peter's keys some christen'd Jove adorn, And Pan to Moses lends his Pagan horn."

Pope. You were wise to sweeten to my ear a censure of Spenser with a couplet of my own. The Faerie Queene I have always loved. And I confess that the union of antique and modern images has never appeared to me so startling or unpleasing. The effect of his pictures depends upon the manner in which you contemplate them. If you stand close to a cathedral window, when there is no light upon it, and minutely analyze each robe, and feature, and posture of the figures delineated upon it, your eye will be offended with the want of delicacy in the expression and

Arbuthnot. I have remarked that any attempts to improve the building when completed, have almost constantly resulted in diminishing its effect. The architecture assumes a composite form-an Elizabethan chimney tapers above a Norman gateway. Second and third editions of books, if amended, are generally inferior to the first. But while I deprecate these extensive alterations, I re-harmony in the coloring. It is so with respect the sentiment which suggests them.

gard to the representations which Spenser has given of scenery and life. His poem comprises a succession of paintings, which present certain features and dresses to the eye; they look cold and watery unless the light of his moral plays over the surface; then every feature glows and brightens; and all the pageant wakes and lives. He designated his work a perpetual allegory, or dark conceit. The sunshine of truth illuminates this allegory, as the sunshine of summer gilds the window of the cathedral.

Bolingbroke. Yes, truly; I can enter into the feeling which induced Virgil to direct that the MS. of his great poem might be destroyed. There is, you know, in the Laurentian library, a room by Michael Angelo, and the staircase, said to be his work, has still the scaffolding remaining at one part of it which he erected. Now, so it is with the Eneid and with the architecture of genius in general. Whether it be from accident, or indolence, or wilfulness, or premature death, some of the scaffolding is always hanging about the magnificent fabrics of invention and learning. The board, and the ladder, and the rope, deform the stateliness and grace of the palaces of fancy. Look, for example, at the edifice Pope. By denying the assertion. His reared after so many years of patient indus- figures and scenery were drawn and colored try by our own Milton. Who can fail to per- with the intention of being contemplated at ceive that the illustrations drawn from science a certain distance, and under certain lights. and mythology-the intricate theses spun out There are pictures whose charm reveals itof the cobwebs of schoolmen and the perplexi- self only as the spectator recedes from the ties of polemics-are so many remains of the canvass. The cathedral window was never tools and the materials which he had collect-painted in order that a curious lover of art ed for his toil-so many proofs that the archi- might fix a ladder to the roof and spell it, as tect had not the disposition or the opportuni- | he would a new grammar. Then, consider

Arbuthnot. But the improbability of his descriptions; the drawing, so out of proportion; the coloring, so heightened beyond reality.-How do you vindicate these?

that what is so unnatural to you was perfectly natural to Spenser. He was like a man who had lived so long in an Eastern climate that his countenance had begun to assume its hue. He had walked among Faeries and Genii, and slumbered in enchanted palaces, and wandered over Elysian fields, until he felt himself naturalized. When he goes back into antiquity, he ceases to be Spenser; and the spirit of the individual is merged in that of the age.

Bolingbroke.-Horace has long ago indicated, with that inimitable grace which was peculiar to him, this transmigration of the reader into the scene described; but he attributes it entirely to the sorcery of the magician, subduing time and space to his service. Sometimes, indeed, the spell of genius. is so mighty that it compels the eyes of thought to close upon the present, that they may open upon the past; but, for the most part, the consent of the intellectual system is required to the death of the thoughts with regard to things immediately affecting it.

Arbuthnot.-There is a certain description of biography which combines with these fascinations of fiction the more endearing charms of truth. Read Plutarch's life of Theseus; does it not breathe the romance of Spenser ? You see the glitter of arms, and hear the clanging trumpet, as in the Knight's Tale of Chaucer. Of all our poets, Shakspeare seems to have appreciated most fully the poetical character of Plutarch.

Bolingbroke. And so it must always be, as it always has been. He who would impart immortality to his book must impart himself. He must put his heart and his blood into it. In the manifestation of genius there is no selfishness. The image of the writer must not be reflected upon the stream of thought, but his fancy must descend, like some costly essence, into the lowest depths, and mingle with, and color, and sweeten, every drop in the stream. It was this union, this identification of the poet with his poem, that communicated so still and awful a grandeur to the Bolingbroke. I think your eulogy of Plucreations of classic genius. Who cannot per- tarch is well deserved. Of biography lying ceive that the great heart of Eschylus throbs between fiction and truth, and receiving lights with the agonies of Prometheus, when the vul- and shades from each, he is the most pleasing ture flaps his heavy wings upon the crags of illustrator. In gazing upon these delineations Caucasus? We recognise the same suppres- of eminent persons, whether of ancient or sion of individual insulated consciousness in modern times, the eye of the reader is pleasthe tragedies of Shakspeare; or, if you turned and refreshed. He discovers in them a to a sister art, in the pictures of Raphael. resemblance to those portraits of the VeneAnd this is one reason why the productions of tian or Lombard schools, in which the physiGreek imagination, in particular, seem to ognomy is heightened by every splendor and have been exempted from the common law of embellishment of costume; while a beautiful literary mortality. The dust of oblivion has background of landscape subdues and softens never been scattered on them, they have the composition into a gentle harmony and never been buried. Sophocles lives in Edi- grace. The difference between that biograpus, Euripides speaks in Orestes;-uninjur-phy which is too far removed from poetry to ed and undimmed by the darkness, and hurri- receive any of its lustre and heat, and that canes, and convulsions of so many centuries, biography which is lighted and kindled by it, they shine, stars in the pure firmament of is not unlike the difference which we trace thought; nor is their brightness stationary; between a portrait by Vandyck and a porthey journey on from clime to clime, and trait by Titian, where the accuracy and truth from age to age, shedding the light of beauty of the first are illuminated into a higher order upon generation after generation." of power and intellect by the second.

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Arbuthnot.-And if the writer of the book is to forget himself, so, in like manner, must

the reader.

Pope. Or the author will have forgotten himself in vain. In both there must be not merely a mutilation but an annihilation of personality. As the poet passes out of himself into the character which he delineates, so the reader must identify himself with the character when it is portrayed; and he must not only go out of himself, but out of his age, "he must forget himself, and his prejudices, and predilections and associations, and give up his thoughts to the work he is perusing, and try to take his stand on the author's point

of view."

Pope. A great painter with the pen, like the painter with the pencil, works his miracles of art with the slightest touches; what a wrinkle in a cloak, or a sword brought prominently forward, is to the artist, the unpremeditated word, or the brilliant repartee, is to the historian. You have spoken of Vandyck, of whom our own Clarendon may offer no unapt illustration; but if you seek for a Rembrandt of the pen, would you not lock for him in Tacitus? If you examine his wonderful delineations of nature with attention, you perceive that, while his portraits are presented to the eye with every circumstance to awaken fear and dismay, there hangs, never

theless, about them a dimness and obscurity peculiarly striking; an awful outline seems to be drawn with a few strokes, leaving the beholder or the reader (which, in this case, are terms convertible) much to fill up.

touch the figure into the canvass roughly and
vividly, but without arranging the background
and the accessories. Look at Homer's pic-
ture of wolves:-

Λαροντες γλωσσήσιν αραιησιν μελαν ύδωρ
Ακρον.

You see the minuteness and the rapidity of
his observation in the simple circumstance
which he introduces to give emphasis to his
sketch the slender tongue. The natural
precedes the picturesque; the first the char-
acteristic of an uninitiated, the second of a
refined, age.

Bolingbroke.-What, then, do you strictly understand by the picturesque in composition?

Pope. My friend Dr. Warburton told me that he had been recommending a very ingenious friend of his to cultivate his talent for a description of literature, of which we have no adequate specimen in our language. I mean that form of intellectual comparison and contrast which we call parallels. There seems, however, to be one defect inherent in the very nature of the composition itself, and that is the necessity, or at any rate, the almost irresistible temptation, to obtain, or produce, a strong opposition in design and coloring. The portrait of all light hangs by Pope. I understand every thing that rethe portrait of all shade, and we seem to lates to an arrangement of objects with a contemplate a Rembrandt by the side of a particular reference to the general effect of Titian, and to see a bandit of Salvator scowl- the picture-to what the French call the coup ing over a cottager of Ostade. But if the d'œil, and including, of course, the number style have its defects, they are redeemed by and position of the figures, the composition many charms and advantages. What a beau- and costume of the groups, the distribution tiful parallel might be drawn between Cow- of light and shade. Of this art Tasso was a ley and Spenser! They were both remark- great master, Shakspeare learned it by intu able for their personal beauty, and especially ition, Spenser presents some noble specifor a certain delicacy of expression almost mens of it, Virgil is pre-eminent, and Ĉlaufeminine. I have heard that the face of dian frequently reminds me of Rubens himCowley was peculiarly prepossessing; his hair, of a bright color, was rich and flowing; his eyes were full and brilliant; his forehead was exquisitely smooth, and his mouth is said to have been charming. It is interesting, also, to observe how far he was in advance of his own age in every critical opinion. His own writings do not reflect his clear perception of poetical excellence. "There is not," he said, "so great a lie to be found in any poet as the vulgar conceit of men that lying is essential to good poetry."

Bolingbroke. How fortunate would it have been for his fame had he put his theory into action! If you could now say of him as a distinguished person of our own time has observed of himself, that

self.

Bolingbroke. And in prose you might point to Livy, the Virgil without metre, and whose histories are only so many episodes in the great epoch of his country. In the historian, as in the poet, we trace the same eye of taste and imagination tinging every scene with its own soft and enchanting light. If you call Tacitus the Rembrandt, you must admit that Livy is the Correggio of his art.

Pope. There are shadows of flowers upon the stream of Livy, but there is gold in the magnificent tide of Tully. One writes to the eye, the other to the understanding; yet not without a profound insight into the machinery of the human will, and a thrilling mastery over the passions. I love him, also, for his deep conviction of another and an enduring existence. The radiancy of a future life seems, in his page, to dart its kindling heat and lustre through the shadows of the present. For my own part I feel so strong, so lively an impression of the immortality of the soul, that, as I have often remarked to you upon various occasions, I seem to feel it within me as by intuition. Nor can I sit with patience and hear this doctrine of conPope. The descriptions which are na-solation, not to say of dignity, derided and tural in Homer and Chaucer become pic- condemned. I think that even in some cases turesque in Latin writers. It is a noticeable I might be induced to give my suffrage fact in all early books of genius, that they do against the liberty of unlicensed printing. not so much delineate as indicate. They I confess with the eloquent Hooker, that I

“He stooped to truth, and moralized his song." It is the naturalness, the almost domestic simplicity, of his manner, that gives so hearty a freshness to Chaucer. The student who walks out into the fields of song, when the morning dew is upon the grass, is delighted to hear the sweet and joyous bird spring from beneath his feet into the air, which he makes to resound with his melody.

would put a chain upon these blaspheming tongues; I would not suffer them to spit their venom upon the innocent passers-by, and utter every word of contumely which the evil spirit that agitates and rends them may inspire.

Bolingbroke.-Nay, let criticism possess its rack, but not its inquisition. If you wish to strengthen an opinion, tie it down. Like this green bough, which I now bend with my finger, it will retain its altered position only while the hand of authority is applied to it, and will spring back again with a vigor increased by restraint, when that hand is withdrawn.

Guide to Government Situations would be incomplete, if it did not point out the way to the woolsack. Lord Brougham's short and easy method is to go and sit upon it whenever he can, so as to be prepared to push off the legitimate occupant on the first opportunity, or to take his place, in the event of his leaving it. The Attorney and Solicitorone of the safest roads to legal promotion, particuGeneralships are prizes worth having; and perhaps larly in Ireland, would be to get a brief for the Crown, and challenge the opposite counsel. Country Commissione:ships of Bankrupts, which are easily obtained, if we may judge by the manner in worth about a thousand a-year, seem to be very which these situations have been hitherto filled. It may be sufficient for the purposes of our Guide to state, that the only qualification that seems to be actually indispensable, is an utter ignorance of the law of Bankruptcy. We have arrived at this conclusion merely from a close observation of the qualities for which the new Commissioners of Bankruptcy have hitherto been distinguished. We should say, from our experience in this matter, that to know any thing whatever about the subject of his duties would be fatal to the pretensions of a

PUNCH'S GUIDE TO GOVERNMENT SITU- candidate for the highly lucrative offices alluded to

ATIONS.

From the Charivari.

A FEW years ago a delusive little Treatise was published under the title of "How to keep House upon a hundred a-year," which certainly told the public how the house might be kept, but not the family that lived in it.

CUSTOM-HOUSE DEPARTMENT.

been doubly eligible, for there has been not only This branch of the public service has, hitherto, the salary attached to the various places, but the pickings have been very considerable. The same pickings exist in other departments, to which we Seeing a book advertised with the title of "Ation to turn his attention, because the Custom-house recommend the applicant for a Government situaGuide to Government Situations," we bought the perquisites have been in a great degree curtailed by work, and, armed with its talismanic power, we the very awkward exposures that have recently rushed to the Treasury, where we requested to be transpired. This branch of the public service has shown a few Government situations, intending to been spoilt for the present, as a source of large walk into the most eligible, with the aid of our emolument; but there are numerous other departGuide Book. We presumed, in our simplicity, ments where the spirit of impertinent curiosity has that places under Government might possibly be not yet been able to penetrate. something like the 5000 straw bonnets thrown into the linen-drapers' windows at this time of the year, with the generous intimation, that they are to be (almost) GIVEN AWAY; and, indeed, we began to suppose that Government situations were plentiful enough, if people only knew where to go for them. We have, however, been cruelly deceived; for the only situation under Government into which the “Guide" seemed likely to get us, was that of first gentleman in waiting at the station-house.

EXCHEQUER DEPARTMENT.

In order to obtain the full benefit of the resources opened out by employment in this department, it was formerly desirable to cultivate an imitative style of hand-writing, and to form connections on the Stock Exchange. This branch of the public service was worked to the full extent of its capabilities by Mr. Beaumont Smith, who was, unfortuConsidering it possible that others may be sub-nately, not permitted to enjoy the fruits of his jected to a disappointment similar to that we ourselves experienced, we beg leave to offer to the public a guide of our own, which we think will be more efficacious than the one we have already

alluded to.

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ingenuity.

In concluding our Guide to Government Situations, we most earnestly express to the person in want of one, our most sincere, our most ardent, and our most heartfelt wish, that-he may get it.

THE GRAND MUSICAL FESTIVAL of the Palatinate will be celebrated, this year, at Deux-Ponts, under the direction of M. Félix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and last three days, the 30th and 31st of July and the 1st of August. The performers will be from 1,800 to 2,000 in number; and the programme includes Mozart's Symphony in D major, Beethoven's Heroic Symphony, and Spohr's Overture in a flat major; Mendelssohn's Oratorio of St. Paul,' Cherubini's Requiem,' and Handel's Cantana of Alexander's Feast.'-Athenæum.

A NIGHT FOR HISTORY.

FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF AN IRISH

From the Metropolitan.

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rontes, who had never known place or pension or bribe. Shippen was incorruptible where BARRISTER. all were corrupt, and his name passed into a proverb. The improved character of the times generated a different and less objectionable system; but down to the close of the last century, it may be safely affirmed that the plague of corruption stained alike "both their houses." Our departed friends in College Green were the creation of profligate times, and followed the example of their bettersthey erred only with their epoch. Infamous as they were, they did occasional good, and their praises still hang on the lips of the unthinking, who sigh for even such a restoration. Architecture," says Mr. Sheil, "has left its solemn attestation" of the fact that Ireland had a parliament; and the "Old House at Home" has become a standing or nament in our processional flags and banners, and its glories, marmorean and legislative, chanted in song and recited in glowing prose. Sir. Jonah's "Last Night" was, during the repeal fever of last year, a universal favorite. Often did we hear it on summer eves arresting the progress of the passer by on Carlisle Bridge, as the "true and faithful account" filled the warm air, and the warmer hearts of the enthusiastic crowd. It was recited, in a highly sustained key, by one of those cyclic rhapsodists who migrated at the era of the Round Towers or some such period of hoar antiquity, from the East into Ireland, and was listened to with as much wondering eagerness as the lays of Homer in ancient Greece. That the recital, like the "massacre of Mullaghmast," tended to create discontent and disaffection among her Majesty's Irish subjects, was evident. It must have reached the law officers, and we now admire their generosity to suffer the patriotic Zosimus* to provide a frugal supper at the expense of the public tranquillity.

SIR JONAH BARRINGTON, in his "Decline and Fall of the Irish Nation," a work of great historical merit, as containing the only authentic record of the most striking epoch in our history, gives a picturesque and touching description of the Last Night in the House of Commons. Whatever were the faults of the Admiralty Judge, the purity of his parliamentary conduct was unimpeachable. An Irishman in feeling, and imbued with the most inveterate hostility to the enterprise of the English minister, he looked on the Union as conceived in the spirit of a sordid selfishness, and executed with all the concentrated powers of political debauchery, corruption, and crime. It is, at least, one earnest proof of his sincerity, that he died as he had lived; and it was the consolation and pride of his last days to prepare for the Irish people that memorial of their greatness and degradation. He brought together all his recollections, and they were numerous and vivid,-in painting that Last Night, and he filled the canvass with the brilliancy and precision of a master. It is the last striking scene in his book. None can peruse that page without deep and mournful interest. That the Irish Commons were not the representatives of the free opinion of the nation, has been so often and truly insisted on, and posterity has so confirmed the accusation, that none has dared to defend them; but that they were, for that reason, fit objects for annihilation, is a question which admits of some doubt. True, they were not models of purity or independence, and like many more fortunate patriots of our own times, postponed the tnterests of their country to their own on many occasions, but still the material prosperity of the people rapidly increased under their influ

ence.

* Gibbon has made the reader of his work acThe Secretary of Hong Kong tells a the lower empire. quainted with one Zosimus, the Greek historian of We shall introduce him to andifferent story, but the proverbial stubborn- other. The Dublin wags have given our hero this ness of facts is opposed to his allegations; second baptism, to which he answers more readily and if his tables of British commerce with the than the name recognized by his godfathers and godFlowery empire be inlaid with the same num-old blind man, who earns a precarious livelihood mothers. Such is the power of habit. He is an ber of errors to produce an effect, we are in- by reciting the heroic deeds of our forefathers-the clined to believe that he will soon return to battles of Clonskeage, Clontarf, and Ventry Harbor, project new railways, or lend a disinterested varied occasionally with a miraculous page from the hand to the passing of private bills. It is sur-lives of St. Columb Kill and St. Bridget. His beat prising how English writers fall so mercilessly foul of our old representatives, forgetting all the turpitude of their own. One would imagine that the English Commons, from all time, were an incorruptible congress of Dorian legislators, sitting, most Homerically, on polished stones-venerable and virtuous Ge

lies from the College, over Carlisle Bridge, to the Rotundo, where he halts, and returns without decli nation to the point of departure. Of all the rhapsodical tribe, he has the most numerous and attentive class of listeners, and many a penny is dropped into his hat for the intellectual enjoyment he conveys. Unlike the Homeric rhapsodists, he is a great origi nal, and manufactures, from the loom of his inven tive brain, the most rare and interesting products of

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