judge. Have I not said elsewhere that there are one or two wonderfully old gentlemen still alive who used to give me tips when I was a boy? I can't be a fair critic about them. I always think of that sovereign, that rapture of raspberry tarts, which made my young days happy. Those old sovereign-contributors may tell stories ever so old, and I shall laugh; they may commit murder, and I shall believe it was justifiable homicide. There is my friend Baggs, who goes about abusing me, and of course our dear mutual friends tell me. Abuse away, mon bon! You were so kind to me when I wanted kindness, that you may take the change out of that gold now, and say I am a cannibal and negro, if you will. Ha, Baggs! Dost thou wince as thou readest this line? Does guilty conscience throbbing at thy breast tell thee of whom the fable is narrated? Puff out thy wrath, and, when it has ceased to blow, my Baggs shall be to me as the Baggs of old-the generous, the gentle, the friendly.

No, on second thoughts, I am determined I will not repeat that joke which I heard Hood make. He says he wrote these jokes with such ease that he sent manuscripts to the publishers faster than they could acknowledge the receipt thereof. I won't say that they were all good jokes, or that to read a great book full of them is a work at present altogether jocular. Writing to a friend respecting some memoir of him which had been published, Hood says, 'You will judge how well the author knows me, when he says my mind is rather serious than comic.' At the time when he wrote these words, he evidently undervalued his own serious power, and thought that in punning and broad-grinning lay his chief strength. Is not there something touching in that simplicity and humility of faith? To make laugh is my calling,' says he; I must jump, I must grin, I must tumble, I must turn language head over heels, and leap through grammar'; and he goes to his work humbly and courageously, and what he has to do that does he with all his might, through sickness, through sorrow, through exile, poverty, fever, depressionthere he is, always ready to his work, and with a jewel of genius in his pocket! Why, when he laid down his puns and pranks, put the motley off, and spoke out of his heart, all England and America listened with tears and wonder! Other men have delusions of conceit and

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fancy themselves greater than they are, and that the world slights them. Have we not heard how Liston always thought he ought to play Hamlet? Here is a man with a power to touch the heart almost unequalled, and he passes days and years in writing Young Ben he was a nice young man', and so forth. To say truth, I have been reading in a book of Hood's Own until I am perfectly angry. You great man, you good man, you true genius and poet,' I cry out, as I turn page after page. 'Do, do, make no more of these jokes, but be yourself, and take your station.'

When Hood was on his deathbed, Sir Robert Peel, who only knew of his illness, not of his imminent danger, wrote to him a noble and touching letter, announcing that a pension was conferred on him:

I am more than repaid (writes Peel) by the personal satisfaction, which I have had in doing that, for which you return me warm and characteristic acknowledgements.

You perhaps think that you are known, to one with such multifarious occupations as myself, merely by general reputation as an author; but I assure you that there can be little, which you have written and acknowledged, which I have not read; and that there are few, who can appreciate and admire more than myself, the good sense and good feeling which have taught you to infuse so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on with the consciousness of independence, as free and unfettered, as if no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names of those, whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary, or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the truth of my statement.

One return, indeed, I shall ask of you,-that you will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance.

And Hood, writing to a friend, enclosing a copy of Peel's letter, says: Sir R. Peel came from Burleigh on Tuesday night, and went down to Brighton on Saturday. If he had written by post, I should not have had it till to-day. So he sent his servant with the enclosed on Saturday night; another mark of considerate attention.' He is frightfully unwell, he continues, his wife says he looks quite green:

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but ill as he is, poor fellow, his well is not dry. He has pumped out a sheet of Christmas fun, is drawing some cuts, and shall write a sheet more of his novel.'

O sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's figure is, standing by that sick bed! how generous his words, how dignified and sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn to him and say 'If it be well to be remembered by a minister, it is better still not to be forgotten by him in a "hurly Burleigh"! Can you laugh? Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow-as one reads of Catholics on their death-beds putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of the world-here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly motley, and uttering one joke more.

He dies, however, in dearest love and peace with his children, wife, friends; to the former especially his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity, simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most pure, modest, honourable life, and living along with him, you come to trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate, and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can we say as much of all lives of all men of letters? Here is one at least without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of a pure life, to his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted.

And what a hard work, and what a slender reward! In the little domestic details with which the book abounds, what a simple life is shown to us! The most simple little pleasures and amusements delight and occupy him. You have revels on shrimps; the good wife making the pie ; details about the maid, and criticisms on her conduct; wonderful tricks played with the plum-pudding-all the pleasures centring round the little humble home. One of

the first men of his time, he is appointed editor of a magazine at a salary of 300l. per annum, signs himself exultingly 'Ed. N. M. M.', and the family rejoice over the income as over a fortune. He goes to a Greenwich dinner-what a feast and rejoicing afterwards!

'Well, we drank "the Boz" with a delectable clatter, which drew from him a good warm-hearted speech. . . . He looked very well, and had a younger brother along with him. . . . Then we had songs. Barham chanted a Robin Hood ballad, and Cruikshank sang a burlesque ballad of Lord H―; and somebody, unknown to me, gave a capital imitation of a French showman. Then we toasted Mrs. Boz, and the Chairman, and Vice, and the Traditional Priest sang the "Deep deep sea," in his deep deep voice; and then we drank to Procter, who wrote the said song; also Sir J. Wilson's good health, and Cruikshank's, and Ainsworth's: and a Manchester friend of the latter sang a Manchester ditty, so full of trading stuff, that it really seemed to have been not composed, but manufactured. Jerdan, as Jerdanish as usual on such occasions-you know how paradoxically he is quite at home in dining out. As to myself, I had to make my second maiden speech, for Mr. Monckton Milnes proposed my health in terms my modesty might allow me to repeat to you, but my memory won't. However, I ascribed the toast to my notoriously bad health, and assured them that their wishes had already improved it-that I felt a brisker circulation—a more genial warmth about the heart, and explained that a certain trembling of my hand was not from palsy, or my old ague, but an inclination in my hand to shake itself with every one present. Whereupon I had to go through the friendly ceremony with as many of the company as were within reach, besides a few more who came express from the other end of the table. Very gratifying, wasn't it? Though I cannot go quite so far as Jane, who wants me to have that hand chopped off, bottled, and preserved in spirits. She was sitting up for me, very anxiously, as usual when I go out, because I am so domestic and steady, and was down at the door before I could ring at the gate, to which Boz kindly sent me in his own carriage. Poor girl! what would she do if she had a wild husband instead of a tame one.'

And the poor anxious wife is sitting up, and fondles the hand which has been shaken by so many illustrious men ! The little feast dates back only eighteen years, and yet somehow it seems as distant as a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, or a meeting at Will's.

Poor little gleam of sunshine! very little good cheer enlivens that sad simple life. We have the triumph of the magazine then a new magazine projected and produced then illness and the last scene, and the kind Peel by the dying man's bedside, speaking noble words of respect and sympathy, and soothing the last throbs of the tender honest heart.

I like, I say, Hood's life even better than his books, and I wish, with all my heart, Monsieur et cher confrère, the same could be said for both of us, when the ink-stream

of our life hath ceased to run. Yes if I drop first, dear Baggs, I trust you may find reason to modify some of the unfavourable views of my character, which you are freely imparting to our mutual friends. What ought to be the literary man's point of honour nowadays? Suppose, friendly reader, you are one of the craft, what legacy would you like to leave to your children ? First of all (and by Heaven's gracious help) you would pray and strive to give them such an endowment of love, as should last certainly for all their lives, and perhaps be transmitted to their children. You would (by the same aid and blessing) keep your honour pure, and transmit a name unstained to those who have a right to bear it. You would,-though this faculty of giving is one of the easiest of the literary man's qualities-you would, out of your earnings, small or great, be able to help a poor brother in need, to dress his wounds, and, if it were but twopence, to give him succour. Is the money which the noble Macaulay gave to the poor, lost to his family? God forbid. To the loving hearts of his kindred is it not rather the most precious part of their inheritance ? It was invested in love and righteous doing, and it bears interest in heaven. You will, if letters be your vocation, find saving harder than giving and spending. To save be your endeavour too, against the night's coming when no man may work; when the arm is weary with the long day's labour; when the brain perhaps grows dark; when the old, who can labour no more, want warmth and rest, and the young ones call for supper.

I copied the little galley-slave who is made to figure in the initial letter of this paper, from a quaint old silver spoon which we purchased in a curiosity-shop at the Hague. It is one of the gift-spoons so common in Holland, and which have multiplied so astonishingly of late years at our dealers in old silver ware. Along the stem of the spoon are written the words: Anno 1609, Bin ick aldus ghekledt gheghaen '-' In the year 1609 I went thus clad.' The good Dutchman was released from his Algerine captivity (I imagine his figure looks like that of a slave amongst the Moors), and, in his thank-offering to some godchild at home, he thus piously records his escape.