mendation to Murray, with what he calls a vision, "Kubla Khan," which said vision he repeats so enchantingly, that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlor while he sings or says it; but there is an observation, "Never tell your dreams," and I am almost afraid that "Kubla Khan" is an owl that won't bear day-light. I fear lest it should be discovered by the lantern of typography and clear reducting to letters no better than nonsense or no sense. When I was young, I used to chant with ecstasy "MILD ARCADIANS EVER BLOOMING," ,"till somebody told me it was meant to be nonsense. Even yet I have a lingering attachment to it, and think it better than "Windsor Forest," "Dying Christian's Address," &c. Coleridge sent his tragedy to D. L. T.; it cannot be acted this season, and by their manner of receiving, I hope he will be able to alter it to make them accept it for next. He is, at present, under the medical care of Mr. Gillman (Killman ?) at Highgate, where he plays at leaving off laud-m; I think his essentials not touched; he is very bad, but then he wonderfully picks up another day, and his face, when he repeats his verses, hath its ancient glory; an archangel a little damaged. Will Miss H. pardon our not replying at length to her kind letter? We are not quiet enough; Morgan is with us every day, going betwixt Highgate and the Temple. Coleridge is absent but four miles, and the neighborhood of such a man is as exciting as the presence of fifty ordinary persons. 'Tis enough to be within the whiff and wind of his genius for us not to possess our souls in quiet. If I lived with him or the Author of the Excursion, I should, in a very little time, lose my own identity, and be dragged along in the current of other people's thoughts, hampered in a net. How cool I sit in this office, with no possible interruption further than what I may term material! There is not as much metaphysics in thirtysix of the people here as there is in the first page of Locke's "Treatise on the Human Understanding," or as much poetry as in any ten lines of the "Pleasures of Hope," or more natural "Beggar's Petition." I never entangle myself in any of their speculations. Interruptions, if I try to write a letter even, I have dreadful. Just now, within four lines, I was called off for ten minutes to consult dusty old books for the settlement of obsolete errors. I hold you a guinea you

don't find the chasm where I left off, so excellently the wounded sense closed again and was healed.

N. B.-Nothing said above to the contrary, but that I hold the personal presence of the two mentioned potent spirits at a rate as high as any; but I pay dearer; what amuses others robs me of myself; my mind is positively discharged into their greater currents, but flows with a willing violence. As to your question about work; it is far less oppressive to me than it was, from circumstances; it takes all the golden part of the day away, a solid lump, from ten to four; but it does not kill my peace as before. Some day or other I shall be in a taking again. My head aches, and you have had enough. God bless you!

C. LAMB.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LONDON MAGAZINE-CHARACTER AND FATE OF MR. JOHN SCOTT, ITS EDITOR-CHARACTER AND HISTORY OF MR. THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINWRIGHT, ONE OF ITS CONTRIBUTORS-MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS OF LAMB TO WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND OTHERS;-1818 To 1825.

LAMB's association with Hazlitt in the year 1820 introduced him to that of the "London Magazine," which supplied the finest stimulus his intellect had ever received, and induced the composition of the Essays fondly and familiarly known under the fantastic title of Elia. Never was a periodical work commenced with happier auspices, numbering a list of contributors more original in thought, more fresh in spirit, more sportive in fancy, or directed by an editor better qualified by nature and study to preside, than this "London." There was Lamb, with humanity ripened among townbred experiences, and pathos matured by sorrow, at his wisest, sagest, airiest, indiscreetest, best; Barry Cornwall, in the first bloom of his modest and enduring fame, streaking the darkest passion with beauty; John Hamilton Reynolds, lighting up the wildest eccentricities and most striking features of many-colored life with vivid fancy; and with others of less note, Hazlitt, whose pen unloosed from the chain which earnest thought and metaphysical dreamings had woven, gave radiant expression to the results of the solitary musings of many years. Over these contributors John Scott presided, himself a critic of remarkable candor, eloquence, and discrimination, unfettered by the dogmas of contending schools of poetry and art; apt to discern the good and beautiful in all; and having, as editor, that which Kent recognized in Lear, which subjects revere in kings, and boys admire in schoolmasters, and contributors should welcome in editorsauthority;-not manifested in a worrying, teasing, intolerable interference in small matters, but in a judicious and

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steady superintendence of the whole; with a wise allowance of the occasional excesses of wit and genius. In this respect, Mr. Scott differed entirely from a celebrated poet, who was induced, just a year after, to undertake the Editorship of the "New Monthly Magazine," an office for which, it may be said, with all veneration for his poetic genius, he was the most unfit person who could be found in the wide world of letters-who regarded a magazine as if it were a long affidavit, or a short answer in Chancery, in which the absolute truth of every sentiment and the propriety of every jest were verified by the editor's oath or solemn affirmation; who stopped the press for a week at a comma; balanced contending epithets for a fortnight; and, at last, grew rash in despair, and tossed the nearest, and often the worst article, unwhipped of justice," to the impatient printer. Mr. Scott, indeed, was more fit to preside over a little commonwealth of authors than to hold despotic rule over subject contributors; he had not the airy grace of Jeffrey, by which he might give a certain familiar liveliness to the most laborious disquisitions, and shed the glancing light of fancy among party manifestoes ;-nor the boisterous vigor of Wilson, riotous in power, reckless in wisdom, fusing the production of various intellects into one brilliant reflexion of his own master mind ;-and it was well that he wanted these weapons of a tyranny which his chief contributors were too original and too sturdy to endure. He heartily enjoyed his position; duly appreciated his contributors and himself; and when he gave audience to some young aspirant for periodical honors at a late breakfast, amidst the luxurious confusion of newspapers, reviews, and uncut novels, lying about in fascinating litter, and carelessly enunciated schemes for bright successions of essays, he seemed destined for many years of that happy excitement in which thought perpetually glows into unruffled but energetic language, and is assured by the echoes of the world.

Alas! a few days after he thus appeared the object of admiration and envy to a young visitor, in his rooms in Yorkstreet, he was stretched on a bed of mental agony—the foolish victim of the guilty custom of a world which would have laughed at him for regarding himself as within the sphere of its opinion, if he had not died to shame it! In a luckless hour, instead of seeking to oppose the bitter personalities of "Black

wood" by the exhibition of a serener power, he rushed with spurious chivalry into a personal contest; caught up the weapons which he had himself denounced, and sought to unmask his opponents and draw them beyond the pale of literary courtesy; placed himself thus in a doubtful position in which he could neither consistently reject an appeal to the conventional arbitrament of violence nor embrace it; lost his most legitimate opportunity of daring the unhallowed strife, and found another with an antagonist connected with the quarrel only by too zealous a friendship; and, at last, met his death almost by lamentable accident, in the uncertain glimmer of moonlight, from the hand of one who went out resolved not to harm him! Such was the melancholy result-first of a controversy too envenomed—and afterwards of enthralment in usages, absurd in all, but most absurd when applied by a literary man to a literary quarrel. Apart from higher considerations, it may befit a life destined for the listless excesses of gayety to be cast on an idle brawl; a youth of folly, an old age of cards" may be no great sacrifice to preserve the hollow truce of fashionable society: but for men of thought-whose minds are their possession, and who seek to live in the minds of others by sympathy with their thoughts -for them to hazard a thoughtful being because they dare not own that they prefer life to death-contemplation to the grave-the preparation for eternity, for the unbidden entrance on its terrors, would be ridiculous if it did not become tragical. "Sir, I am a metaphysician!" said Hazlitt once, when in a fierce dispute respecting the colors of Holbein and Van. dyke, words almost became things; "and nothing makes an impression upon me but abstract ideas ;" and woful, indeed, is the mockery when thinkers condescend to be duelists!

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The Magazine did not perish with its Editor; though its unity of purpose was lost, it was still rich in essays of surpassing individual merit; among which the masterly vindication of the true dramatic style by Darley; the articles of Cary, the admirable translator of Dante; and the "Confessions of an English Opium Eater;" held a distinguished place. Mr. De Quincy, whose youth had been inspired by enthusiastic admiration of Coleridge, shown in contributions to "The Friend," not unworthy of his master, and substantial contributions of the blessings of fortune, came up to Lon