books which young Hood so graphically described, it became necessary for his health that he should take a daily walk. The parks naturally offered the best London substitute for the longed-for country air, but the sight of the children playing there caused him such exquisite pain by recalling his own absent little ones that he was forced to keep to the house. This piteous recoil from that "music of human speech," the laughter of children, brings De Quincey nearer to our hearts, I take it, than the loveliest word-picture his fancy ever painted. Those magazines dinners must have been intensely enjoyable, and across the walnuts and the wine many a good story must have been told, and many an audacious joke perpetrated. Mingling with De Quincey's flood of eloquence, breaking into Tom Hood's avowal of his favorite theory of government-"An angel from heaven, and a despotism' -and mocking the ravings of the impetuous Hazlitt, would come Lamb's forcible stutter, and Bryan Procter's genial laugh; while the peasant-poet Clare would sit silent in round-eyed astonishment at the doings of "the gentry," and John Poole would coolly take notes of any peculiar speech or characteristic which could serve to clothe the then skeleton play, Paul Pry.

One of the wisest of the company, as far as actual knowledge went, was Henry Cary, who contributed the "Notices of the Early French Poets. His best work was his translation of Dante, and one of the prettiest of literary anecdotes is told in connection with his book. Cary had published the first volume in 1805, but he had too much of the dreaminess of the scholar and too little of the shrewdness of the man of business to push the work, and it fell very flat indeed. In the summer-time of 1807 he and his little son were strolling along the beach at Littlehampton, and the father was giving a lesson in Homer. For several days they had been passed by a burly-looking man who had looked at them curiously, and at last one morning the pair were startled by a loud resonant voice : Sir, yours is a face I should know. am Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He confessed that it was the sound of the Greek which had attracted him, and forthwith plunged into

the subject of Homer. Passing from Grecian to Italian literature, the talk turned on Dante, and Cary naturally referred to his own translation, of which, equally naturally, Coleridge had never heard. But he straightway went back to the former's house with him and asked for the loan of a copy, and when the new friends met again on the following day, Coleridge could not only recite whole pages from the translation, but he volunteered to mention it in his forthcoming lectures at the Royal Institution. The great man was not particularly famed for keeping his promises, but the unpretending erudition of the gentle helpless scholar had made an impression on him, and he was as good as his word. It is gratifying to read the sequel of this chance meeting. The work was at once eagerly sought for; about a thousand copies of the first edition which remained on hand were immediately disposed of, and in less than three months a new edition was called for." The Edinburgh and the Quarterly echoed Coleridge's praises, and Henry Cary's fame was secured.

In direct contrast to the studious life of gentle Mr. Cary" was that of Thomas Wainwright, who was also on the staff of the London, where he wrote under the name of Janus Weathercock. He was an immense favorite with both his colleagues and employers, and when in 1837 the popular and polished man was brought to justice and sentenced to transportation for life, the amazement of his friends was unparalleled. The soberer among them had laughed at Wainwright as a fop and a dandy it was true, but he had nevertheless been dubbed the prince of good fellows by universal consent, and his house at Turnham Green had been the scene of many a pleasant supper-party. It was afterward discovered that this worthy had two several ways by which he supplemented his literary earnings. Poor John Scott had introduced him to his fatherin-law, who was none other than Colnaghi the noted printseller in Pall Mall; and Wainwright persuaded the latter to let him sell some costly engravings on commission. The engravings once in his possession, he cut them from their mounts, and, selling them for what they would fetch, put cheap copies of the

self-same engravings in their place. The mounts, of course, bore the price, etc., clearly written in Colnaghi's well-known handwriting, and as purchasers never thought of disputing with such a trustworthy and noted judge, Wainwright was enabled to sell his pictures for perhaps a hundred times their value. His second method was even simpler. He poisoned his wife's mother and sister, his uncle and his niece, and it is believed other people as well, for the sake of obtaining the money for which their lives were insured; and the not least extraordinary part of the matter is that, through some legal hitch which the mind of a mere layman cannot grasp, he was never tried for murder, but simply for forgery. The fact of his dying raving mad gave some coloring to the kindly theory that he had never been wholly right in his mind; but neither his monthly articles nor his social bearing were other than those of a perfectly sane man. In person he was short and rather fat, with nervous, fidgety ways, a low voice, and shining eyes.

Turning over the earlier pages of our old magazine, we come upon a poem by Bryan Procter, or "Barry Cornwall," as he elected to be called; and another by John Keats. In their way these two poets were as strongly contrasted to each other as the book-lover Cary to the murderer Wainwright. The one was such an embodiment of life, of intensity of action, of brightness, and of sunshine. Whether we think of him as the young solicitor, whose rhymes rang in his head as he paced the London streets, and who contracted the whimsical habit of rushing into the nearest shop and buying the first article that caught his eye, for the sake of scribbling the newlymade verses upon the paper in which it was wrapped; or whether we think of him as the delicately-minded gentleman who, suspecting a struggling writer to be in money difficulties, forced upon him the loan of fifty pounds, with the remark, "I shall not tell even my wife!"-in either case we feel equally the sunny personality of the man.* And

* For the benefit of those who like the sequel to a pretty story, we may add that the money thus generously given was the means of prolonging a dear life, and that it was eventually most scrupulously repaid.

66

if "Life" be the first word which rises to our lips in connection with Barry Cornwall, it would not perhaps be an overstretched expression to say that his fellow-worker might be named as the poet of Death. Not that John Keats was a particularly morbid-minded man. His intense love of the beautiful kept him from that world-sickened feeling which is the especial characteristic of morbid natures; but his mind was intensely introspective, and the knowledge of a rapidly coming death tinged his entire thought, and consequently his writing. The bright buoyant letters of the elder poet, which he wrote to his future wife when on the eve of marriage, are as different as laughter from tears to the sad pathetic messages sent by the dying Keats to his beloved Fanny. Send me the words Good-night' to put under my pillow," he pleads, when warned by the twilight that he cannot see her until the morrow; and the patient wistfulness with which he awaits the charm which is to bring him "a sleep full of sweet dreams, is as haunting as the cheery laugh of his luckier fellow-poet. Fronting the page where Tom Hood's maiden effort is suitably inscribed "To Hope," we light upon a graphic description of the violent burst of party feeling which showed itself in June, 1821, when Queen Caroline entered the Covent Garden Theatre. The writer was William Hazlitt, who was responsible for the dramatic intelligence; but as we sat turning over the dusty pages of the old London Magazine, we did not do more than glance at the account and pass on. Like Charles Lamb, the dearest and most loveworthy member of this literary group, we must confess to being "a bundle of prejudices," and we do not sufficiently care for Hazlitt to be able to appreciate or to sympathize with him. We fully indorse Leigh Hunt's admiration of Hazlitt as a brilliant colorist and word-painter, and think the former's curt criticism one of the best ever penned : Hazlitt's criticism on Art threw a light upon the subject as from a painted window." But at the same time we would beg to differ from Barry Cornwall's contemptuous despair an age that has forgotten to read Hazlitt." One of the latest volumes (for the

of

66

magazine stopped in 1825) affords us a peep of Walter Savage Landor in the "Conversation," where he reviewed

Wordsworth's poems, and gained thereby a letter of thanks from the Lake poet and a dozen other names might have been added to the list of the magazine contributors, but the scanty winter sunshine was failing, and the last half-hour was to be devoted to the quaint delicious writings of the man whom his enthusiastic comrade De Quincey dubbed "the very noblest of human beings.'

Charles Lamb. What a rush of memories comes with the mere utterance of the name! How thoroughly we seem to be at home with the man whose intense individuality was so strongly marked, even in those times of remarkable men, that there was not one member of the staff of the London Magazine but thought his first sight of Lamb a noteworthy occurrence, and deserving of special mention. There is no time There is no time when he is hidden from our sight. We can follow him as a lad of one-andtwenty, starving at the India House since seven o'clock without any dinner," getting overworn and quite faint,' and then returning to the desolate household where the bent figure of his old father was not a more actual presence to him than the remembrance of his murdered mother and his poor banished sister. We can be with him through the long home evenings when his whole spirit rebelled against its thraldom and cried fiercely for the necessary leisure in which to frame its glowing thoughts into words. We can be close to him in the long years that followed, when he chose to burden himself with the charge of his sister, rather than cherish the love-hopes that were springing into life. We can track the pair as they lived their life, now seeing them in the sweet security of the streets," bargaining at some old bookstall, or waiting at the entrance of the theatrical pit, and again meeting them on their way to the Hoxton madhouse, weeping bitterly, and hand in hand.

66 The Southsea House' was Elia's first essay in the London, and it appeared in the August number of 1820; while the last was "Captain Jackson," which

came out in November, 1824. The papers did not create the immense stir and discussion which followed on De Quincey's "Confessions," but never were essays so widely read. A proof of the impetus they gave to the circulation of the magazine is afforded in the fact that the proprietors paid their writer two or three times the amount of the usual rate of a guinea a page.

Never was there a man who wrote so thoroughly for writing's sake, if we may judge by the polish and perfection which he bestowed upon his private letters, no less than upon his essays. He added sensibly to the wealth of literature. His Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets" was the first attempt of the kind to revive the lesser Shakesperian lights: his Tales for Children," and more especially his delicious story of Prince Dorus," form in themselves a weighty addition to that child-literature in which so few writers have been successful: his verses have nearly always the true poetring about them: his essays have given delight to thousands. But his letters are his chiefest monument; and this is so because Charles Lamb's mind was essentially one which worked best when wholly untrammelled and at ease. He could not write under pressure, 'You must remember they were task-work, he said to Coleridge when speaking of his Poetry for Children," and consequently it is in his letters, where his writing came spontaneously and straight from the heart, that Lamb is emphatically at his best. He was odd and whimsical if you will, for those were not levelling days, and no modern Radical despotism then checked originality as it now does with such relentless severity (no despot equal to your democrat for intolerance), but Lamb was true and tender, and he never hurt a woman or betrayed a friend. It is easy to cavil with Carlyle at Lamb's undoubted peculiarities, or to recall the one grave failing of his life; but it should at the same time be remembered that it is not so easy to sum up

"That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love."

Of these Lamb's life was full.

As we close the old magazine we echo

the concluding words of the poem which Lamb's friend Henry Cary penned when the sad news of the essayist's death reached him :

"'Tis done, and thou hast joined a crew
To whom thy soul was justly due ;
And yet, I think, where'er thou be,
They'll hardly love thee more than we.
-Temple Bar.

"

ENGLISH musicians have not yet succeeded in asserting their country's musical supremacy, and the day still seems distant when we shall win the envy or admiration of Europe for our musical prowess. English painters have done something in a similar direction for the sister art, but our music-makers, our composers, are to-day nowhere in international music councils. Hopelessly in Hopelessly in arrears, so far as great English works are concerned, the world's répertoire is filling up without a single magnum opus from the hand of the British workman. Our present day composers are, it is true, at work, but with scarcely an exception they are writing only for the hour. Enraptured critics may seek to prove otherwise, and the musical representative of this or that house, interested in the latest new score, may continue to declare it to be music for all time; but when the artistic atmosphere cools a little, when the gas goes off, and this highly-treated element crystallizes, we get the true salt in the shape of an almost worthless residuum of paper and print stock, which publishers would be only too willing to sell at the butterman's price.

And to arrive at this it seems as if there were but one road to take, and only one foregoer to follow-the first, that beaten track between the modern German and Italian schools of music; the second, that much-copied model who, because of his prolific genius as a melodist, has honestly captivated the modern national ear and made a name in English hearts and homes second only to the composer of The Messiah" itself Mendelssohn. The idea of following a model which has proved so eminently acceptable to the country at large is commendable commendable and feasible enough, but, unfortunately, the work of imitating Mendelssohn has been attended with the inconvenience of bring

ing more honor to the original than to the copyists; and not one of the latter has approached sufficiently close to the model to become acquainted with its particular mould and characteristics, or to learn enough of it to enable him to go out into the broad field of Art and do likewise. One who approached Mendelssohn closer than any others was William Sterndale Bennett, but he only succeeded sufficiently to win the questionable reputation of being, perhaps, the most eminent among the disciples of that master. But how came it that he so resembled in style the composer of the "Midsummer Night's Dream music? He would have been none the less our greatest modern English composer had he been trained as pure Bennett instead of Bennett-cum-Mendelssohn.

"

We want to have done with being disciples, or, in other words, followers and imitators. Cannot we call upon the gods to favor us with, say, an earthquake, that shall rid us of everything that serves as style, model, foundation, or what not, in our musical creations ? Or, let us appeal to the heavens to rain down and wash from us every trace and vestige of the colorings and forms of Wagner, Offenbach, Verdi, and others. Then the native composer would perforce breathe in another atmosphere, and in his next production he might spare us the infliction of listening to dextrously weaved combinations of musical all-sorts, at which the palate has long since sickened. The new musical coatings given to these old forms and flavorings have ever been the curse of musical progress in this country, and it is high time that such "dishings-up" were turned away from, once and forever, by the music-loving public. As things now are the composer is playing into the hands of the music-publisher, and the public in the end suffers, for it

has to satisfy its voracious musical appetite with whatever is thrown to it. Would that it could be smitten with such a dyspeptic attack as would give it the mind to think for a while and pause over what it consumes, and, for the present, digests! Only such a reminder can, it would seem, bring about the necessary artistic revolution.

66

We are musical enough in this country. We buy pianofortes, tin whistles, and cornets; not a few industrious youths study the ophicleide; our sisters fiddle with remarkable vigor; that choice music-hall effusion, "They're all very fine and large," is heard in the same breath as the Maid of Athens" and the Heart bow'd down"; all this goes on in this musical England, yet we produce neither great composers, nor a characteristic school of music, nor anything like an indication of what is to be a traditionary style. The fact is, we are not seriously working for what we so much profess to want, and the national mind has yet to be made up upon the question of being either an artistic people or a nation of barterers in Art.

The croakers say we shall never produce a Beethoven, a Handel, or a Mozart. No! not if we continue training our students upon the present lines, and hampering them at the whim of every master with the influence of German, French, or Italian style, without the slightest regard to the pupils' voice, until it is too late, and the future English composer finds himself so schooled into the traditions of one or other, or all, of these foreign styles, that he is quite unable to throw off the taint and to free himself from trammels which effectually preclude him from striking out a path for himself a path akin to his own instinct and fancy, and partaking of the Old English musical character. At the outset he is fastened to lines on which really he should never be until his style is formed, and he is able to maintain his identity. It has scarcely yet been found desirable to send our children to Germany, France, and Italy to learn to speak and write the mother tongue; nor are we likely to find a characteristic musical feeling and instinct while we continue to draft the young musical element into foreign countries to learn principles, forms, and colorings-all of which

should be imparted to and learned by it here. Or, if our students do not acquire this foreign taint abroad, our schools, colleges, and academies here are so stocked with foreign masters, to the exclusion of native professors-who are often better qualified-that the young mind is, from the first, alienated from its native influences, and the incipient mischief ripens rapidly until it gets past all cure.

The fact is, we growl about the lack of native talent in the several branches of music, but to speak truth we have men and methods to teach all we need to know, and this should equal anything that has ever been learned in, and brought home from, foreign musical academies. Let us once and forever give up the craze about foreign musical art and artists. Let us encourage our own conductors, singing-masters, composers, vocalists, and instrumentalists. These are all here with us, living, and some few prospering, upon the gains of the clear-sighted few who listen to them and take instruction from them; but the battle is against them. There must be a national revolutionary effort in this direction. English art is not, and season after season brings with it the exasperating circumstance of hordes who sight to a nicety the barometer of English musical turn and sentiment. Had we no pianoforte-makers here capable of holding their own with any makers in the world; were there not men capable of wielding the bâton with any foreign conductor; were our best-and these are English-singing-masters lacking in the traditions and styles that have always obtained in this country; had we no really eminent violinists, flautists, organists, worthy of the world's survey; were there not many others in every branch of the art lingering between eminent mediocrity and actual greatness, simply for the want of what it is in the power of their countrymen at large to give them-their unqualified confidence and patrona ge; then we might reasonably go out into the highways and byways of Art and compel to come in and permanently dwell with us those who now pay us visits with a regularity and promptness which every new season renders only more marked. But there will be no need to call in help, if we will but