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to it yet. Go on, Will.' And Will does go on, much to edification. But we must stint,' as we wish to give the Doctor's admonition against poetry, and the story of young Wellerby. The justice inquires whether Shakspeare did not get himself lectured for his versifying propensities. To which he replies:

"Sir, to my mortification I must confess, that I took to myself the counsel he was giving to another; a young gentleman who, from his pale face, his abstinence at table, his cough, his taciturnity, and his gentleness, seemed already more than half poet. To him did Doctor Glaston urge, with all his zeal and judgment, many arguments against the vocation; telling him that, even in college, he had few applauders, being the first, and not the second or third, who always are more fortunate; reminding him that he must solicit and obtain much interest with men of rank and quality, before he could expect their favour; and that without it the vein chilled, the nerve relaxed, and the poet was left at next door to the bellman. In the coldness of the world,' said he, in the absence of ready friends and adherents, to light thee upstairs to the richly tapestried chamber of the muses, thy spirits will abandon thee, thy heart will sicken and swell within thee; overladen, thou wilt make, O Ethelbert! a slow and painful progress, and, ere the door open, sink. Praise giveth weight unto the wanting, and happiness giveth elasticity unto the heavy. As the mightier streams of the unexplored world, America, run languidly in the night,* and await the sun on high to contend with him in strength and grandeur, so doth genius halt and pause in the thraldom of outspread darkness, and move onward with all his vigour then only when creative light and jubilant warmth surround him.'

"Ethelbert coughed faintly; a tinge of red, the size of a rose-bud, coloured the middle of his cheek; and yet he seemed not to be pained by the reproof. He looked fondly and affectionately at his teacher, who thus proceeded:

"My dear youth, do not carry the stone of Sisyphus on thy shoulder to pave the way to disappointment. If thou writest but indifferent poetry, none will envy thee, and some will praise thee: but nature, in her malignity, hath denied unto thee a capacity for the enjoyment of such praise. In this she hath been kinder to most others than to thee: we know wherein she hath been kinder to thee than to most others. If thou writest good poetry, many will call it flat, many will call it obscure, many will call it inharmonious; and some of these will speak as they think; for, as in giving a feast to great numbers, it is easier to possess the wine than to procure the cups, so happens it in poetry; thou hast the beverage of thy own growth, but canst not find the recipients. What is simple and elegant to thee and me, to many an honest man is flat and sterile; what to us is an innocently sly allusion, to as worthy a one as either of us is dull obscurity; and that moreover which swims upon our brain, and which throbs against our temples, and which we delight in sounding to ourselves when the voice has done with it, touches their ear, and awakens no harmony in any cell of it. Rivals will run up to thee and call thee a plagiary, and, rather than that proof should be wanting, similar words

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to some of thine will be thrown in thy teeth out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.""—pp. 193–196.

*

"Ethelbert! I think thou walkest but little; otherwise I should take thee with me, some fine fresh morning, as far as unto the first hamlet on the Cherwell. There lies young Wellerby, who, the year before, was wont to pass many hours of the day poetising amidst the ruins of Godgson nunnery. It is said that he bore a fondness toward a young maiden in that place, formerly a village, now containing but two old farm-houses. In my memory there were still extant several dormitories. Some love-sick girl had recollected an ancient name, and had engraven on a stone with a garden-nail, which lay in rust near it,

me.

POORE ROSAMUND.

I entered these precincts, and beheld a youth of manly form and countenance, washing and wiping a stone with a handful of wet grass; and on my going up to him, and asking what he had found, he showed it to The next time I saw him was near the banks of the Cherwell. He had tried, it appears, to forget or overcome his foolish passion, and had applied his whole mind unto study. He was foiled by his competitor; and now he sought consolation in poetry. Whether this opened the wounds that had closed in his youthful breast, and malignant Love, in his revenge, poisoned it; or whether the disappointment he had experienced in finding others preferred to him, first in the paths of fortune, then in those of the muses, he was thought to have died brokenhearted.

"About half a mile from St. John's College is the termination of a natural terrace, with the Cherwell close under it, in some places bright with yellow and red flowers glancing and glowing through the stream, and suddenly in others dark with the shadows of many different trees, in broad overbending thickets, and with rushes spear-high, and partycoloured flags.

"After a walk in Midsummer, the immersion of our hands into the cool and closing grass is surely not the least among our animal delights. I was just seated, and the first sensation of rest vibrated in me gently, as though it were music to the limbs, when I discovered by a hollow in the herbage that another was near. The long meadow-sweet and blooming burnet half concealed from me him whom the earth was about to hide totally and for ever.

"Master Batchelor!" said I, "it is ill-sleeping by the water-side." "No answer was returned. I arose, went to the place, and recognised poor Wellerby. His brow was moist, his cheek was warm. A few moments earlier, and that dismal lake whereunto and wherefrom the waters of life, the buoyant blood, ran no longer, might have received one vivifying ray reflected from my poor casement. I might not indeed have comforted-I have often failed: but there is One who never has; and the strengthener of the bruised reed should have been with us. Remembering that his mother did abide one mile further on, I walked forward to the mansion, and asked her what tidings she lately had received of her son. She replied, that having given up his mind to light studies, the fellows of the college would not elect him. The master had warned him beforehand to abandon his selfish poetry, take up

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manfully the quarterstaff of logic, and wield it for St. John's, come who would into the ring. We want our man,' said he to me, and your son hath failed us in the hour of need. Madam, he hath been foully beaten in the schools by one he might have swallowed, with due exercise.'

"I rated him, told him I was poor, and he knew it. He was stung, and threw himself upon my neck, and wept. Twelve days have passed since, and only three rainy ones. I hear he has been seen upon the knoll yonder, but hither he hath not come. I trust he knows at last the value of time, and I shall be heartily glad to see him after this accession of knowledge. Twelve days, it is true, are rather a chink than a gap in time; yet, O gentle sir! they are that chink which makes the vase quite valueless. There are light words which may never be shaken off the mind they fall on. My child, who was hurt by me, will not let me see the marks."

"Lady!" said I, "none are left upon him. Be comforted! thou shalt see him this hour. All that thy God hath not taken is yet thine." She looked at me earnestly, and would have then asked something, but her voice failed her. There was no agony, no motion, save in the lips and cheeks. Being the widow of one who fought under Hawkins, she remembered his courage and sustained the shock, and said calmly, "God's will be done! I pray that he find me as worthy as he findeth me willing to join them."

"Now, in her unearthly thoughts, she had led her only son to the bosom of her husband; and in her spirit (which often is permitted to pass the gates of death with holy love) she left them both with their Creator.

"The curate of the village sent those who should bring home the body; and some days afterwards he came unto me, beseeching me to write the epitaph. Being no friend to stone-cutter's charges, I entered not into biography, but wrote these few words:

66 JOANNES WELLERBY, LITERARUM QUÆSIVIT GLORIAM, VIDET DEI."

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p. 209-214.

There is only one fault that we can find with this book; and it has left us not much disposed to find that. The author seems to us to have formed a conception of the youth of Shakspeare, which, with all its truth and beauty, has yet too complete a correspond-. ence with the characteristics of his maturity; which presents, in fact, the unfolding germs of all the qualities by which he was afterwards distinguished. In this respect, the picture fails of correspondence with the course of nature. The boy is father of the man,' but the boy is not, altogether, the man in little. His faculties bear not the same proportions. In men of genius it continually happens, that some of the most striking qualities of their maturity were wholly latent in early life. There is always, no doubt, the germ, but it sometimes waits for the stimulating influences of a comparatively late period to excite it to vital action. The acorn is not the miniature of an oak. When it shoots up,

the plant is not a tiny tree, with its mock branches and minikin seeds. Nor is the morning merely a dim day. Some powers in man, like some arts in society, speedily attain to excellence, while others wait for the appropriate excitement or discipline. This must be taken into account in reasoning backward from maturity to youth; although what allowance should be made for it is a question not very easy of solution.

A PORTRAIT.

BEAUTIFUL eyes! they seem to fill all space
With light, and love, and hope, and purity!
To watch the gleam that plays about thy face
Is like a glimpse of fairy land, we try
In vain to track the spell so wondrously
Revealed in thee-whence is it? for where'er

Thy presence comes, so rare a grace we see
In its poetic charm, the very air

By thee seems newly gifted to make all things fair.

Excelling voice! whose spirit tone can reach

The whole world of the heart in one brief minute,
And by its music-eloquence can teach

What deeply hidden treasures lie within it;
Thou hast a power to charm the soul, to win it
To deeds of nobleness-oh! then to praise,

As voice to song, the heart leaps to begin it!

Whence comes thy power? whence that excelling grace?
Whence the surpassing light that shines from out thy face?

Love answers for thee! he has shed around thee
The atmosphere of light wherein you dwell;
Even the reptiles who crawl forth to wound thee
Are decked with glowing colours by thy spell;
They cannot harm thee, and thine eye might well
Charm serpents dumb, who fain would hiss at thee-
Let them hiss on, heed not their venom's swell;
Bear on and fear not! thou art guarded by
The finely-tempered shield of thine own purity!

Shine on, thou sunborn child of light! thou star
That dwellest brightly in thine own calm heaven!

What tho' the ignorant world send up afar
Its noxious vapours! Yet to thee 'tis given
To live thy life of light for ever; even

The clouds that thicken darken not thy way;

Theirs is the mist of earth-thine light from heaven;
The changeful wind shall waft the cloud away,

While thou shalt shine serene in thine own changeless ray.

S. Y.

57

A CHAPTER ON CHIMNIES.

THERE is a world above and a world below, and if people will build such monotonous houses, like the four-and-twenty fiddlers 'all of a row,' where is the wonder if we turn to the chimnies for a little variety? And there is a world of matter of fact, and a world of imagination, and unless my readers can step with me into the latter, with no help from the former but a chimney-pot for a walking-stick, they may pass over the page that will appear to them but

As the smoke, like flag upfurling,

Above the blackened chimney curling.'

As there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in Horatio's philosophy, so there are more things in the ups and downs of chimney existence, than are dreamt of in ours. A word or two, and see if your next walk within sight of the far-famed blackened pottery groves of which London may boast, does not help to discover them. See there's a goodly row! What are they like? A set of pandeans for Aolus. If I were a wind I would blow' till I cracked my cheeks in whistling an air along the goodly pipes. A terrible blow for the cooks! but if it would hasten the time when one shall do the work of twenty, one fire the work of one house, one chimney the work of that fire, we would say,

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Blow high! blow low! let the black soot scare
The cook beside the board.'

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Look at that row of houses! Think of the twenty breakfastings, dinings, and suppings; twenty troubles in housekeeping,' ay, troubles, unless the mistress of the ménage have a penchant for putting her mind into mahogany and rosewood, her capabilities into creams and custards, and her perceptions into pies and puddings; where all might be done by one; without that stimulus to the selfish and degrading vanity of keeping a better table than your neighbour. What do you say to it, you group of chimney gossips, stunt and steady, with one taller than the rest for your oracle? And you, little Miss Beffin of a one, with not a leg to stand upon, and your arms cut off at the shoulders, what do you say to such doings? are you not ashamed to be smoked by such people? We hear of people eating their own words;' it is, in other phrase, but consuming their own smoke. Look to it chimnies, and do not any longer be imposed upon. There is a group, like soldiers, square-shouldered, compact, regular, awaiting the word of command-not to fire be it hoped; and there are two friends who have remained firm to each other through wind and weather; their bases parted, their tops meeting, like to, but happier than, the two willows on the seal Fate sepa

No. 97,

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