racter.

arts, of the churches full of pictures, of the manner in which he passed his time, studying and looking into all the rooms in the Vatican he had no fault to find with Italy, and no wish to leave it. "Gracious and sweet was all he saw in her!" As he talked, he looked as if he saw the different objects pass before him, and his eye glittered with familiar recollections. He said, Raphael did not scorn to look out of himself or to be beholden to others. He took whole figures from Masaccio to enrich his designs, because all he wanted was to advance the art and ennoble human nature. After he saw Michael Angelo, he improved in freedom and breadth, and if he had lived to see Titian, he would have done all he could to avail himself of his colouring. All his works are an effusion of the sweetness and dignity of his own chaHe did not know how to make a picture; but for the conduct of the fable and the developement of passion and feeling (noble but full of tenderness) there is nobody like him. This is why Hogarth can never come into the lists. He does not lift us above ourselves: our curiosity may be gratified by seeing what men are, but our pride is soothed by seeing them made better. Why else is Milton preferred to Hudibras, but because the one aggrandises our notions of human nature, and the other degrades it? Who will make any comparison between a Madona of Raphael, and a drunken prostitute by Hogarth? Do we not feel more respect for an inspired Apostle than for a blackguard in the streets? Raphael points out the highest perfection of which the human form and faculties are capable, and Hogarth their lowest degradation or most wretched perversion. Look at his attempts to paint the good or beautiful, and you see how faint the impressions of these were in his mind. Yet these are what every one must wish to cherish in his own bosom, and must be most beholden for to those who lend him the powerful assistance of their unrivalled conceptions of true grandeur and beauty. Sir Joshua strove to do this in his portraits, and this it was that raised him in public estimation; for we all wish to get rid of defects and peculiarities as much as we can. He then said of Michael Angelo, he did not wonder at the fame he had acquired. You are to consider the state of the art before his time, and that he burst through the mean and little manner even of such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Pietro Perugino, and through the trammels that confined them, and gave all at once a gigantic breadth and expansion that had never been seen before, so that the world were struck with it as with a display of almost supernatural power, and have never ceased to admire since. We are not to compare it with the examples of art that have followed since, and that would never have existed but for him, but with those that preceded it. He found fault with the figure of the flying monk in the St. Peter Martyr, as fluttery and theatrical, but agreed with me in admiring this picture, and in my fondness for Titian in general. He mentioned his going with Prince Hoare and Day to take leave of some fine portraits of Titian's that hung in a dark corner of a Gallery at Naples, and as Day looked at them for the last time with tears in his eyes, he said, "Ah! he was a fine old mouser!"-I said I had repeated this expression (which I had heard him allude to before) somewhere in writing, and was surprised that people did not know what to make of it. N said, Why that is exactly what I should have thought. There is the difference between writing and speaking. In writing, you address the

average quantity of sense or information in the world; in speaking, you pick your audience, or at least know what they are prepared for, or previously explain what you think necessary. You understand the expression because you have seen a great number of Titian's pictures, and know that cat-like, watchful, penetrating look he gives to all his faces, which nothing else expresses, perhaps, so well as the phrase Day made use of: but the world in general know nothing of this; all they know or believe is, that Titian is a great painter like Raphael, or any other famous person. Suppose any one was to tell you, Raphael was a fine old mouser: would you not laugh at this as absurd? and yet the other is equally nonsense or incomprehensible to then. No, there is a limit, a conversational licence which you cannot carry into writing. This is one difficulty I have in writing: I do not know the point of familiarity at which I am to stop; and yet I believe I have ideas, and you say I know how to express myself in talking."

I inquired if he remembered much of Johnson, Burke, and that set? He said, "Yes, a good deal, as he had often seen them. Burke came into Sir Joshua's painting-room one day, when N--, who was then a young man, was sitting for one of the children in Count Ugolino. (It is the one in profile with the hand to the face,) He was introduced as a pupil of Sir Joshua's, and, on his looking up, Mr. Burke said, 'Then I see that Mr. N is not only an artist, but has a head that would do for Titian to paint.'-Goldsmith and Burke had often violent disputes about politics; the one being a staunch Tory, and the other at that time a Whig and outrageous anti-courtier. One day he came into the room, when Goldsmith was there, full of ire and abuse against the late king, and went on in such a torrent of the most unqualified invective that Goldsmith threatened to leave the room. The other, however, persisted, and Goldsmith went out, unable to bear it any longer. So much for Mr. Burke's pretended consistency and uniform loyalty! When N first came to Sir Joshua, he wished very much to see Goldsmith; and one day Sir Joshua, on introducing him, asked why he had been so anxious to see him? Because,' said N, he is a notable* man.' This expression notable, in its ordinary sense, was so contrary to Goldsmith's character, that they both burst out a-laughing very heartily. Goldsmith was two thousand pounds in debt at the time of his death, which was hastened by his chagrin and distressed circumstances; and when "She Stoops to Conquer" was performed, he was so choked all dinner-time that he could not swallow a mouthful. A party went from Sir Joshua's to support it. The present title was not fixed upon till that morning. N went with Ralph, Sir Joshua's man, into the gallery, to see how it went off; and after the second act, there was no doubt of its success." N-— says, people had a great idea of the literary parties at Sir Joshua's. He once asked Lord Boringdon to dine with Sir Joshua and the rest; but though a man of rank and also of good information, he seemed as much alarmed at the idea as if you had tried to force him into one of the cages at Exeter-'Change. N- remarked that he thought people of talents had their full share of admiration. He had seen young

ladies of quality, Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys, peeping into a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with all the same timidity and curiosity as if it were some preternatural being-I am sure more than if it had been the queen. He then made some observations on the respect paid to rank, and said, "However ridiculous it might seem, it was no more than the natural expression of the highest respect in other cases. For instance, as to that of bowing out of the king's presence backwards, would you not do the same if you were introduced to Dr. Johnson for the first time? You would contrive not to turn your back upon him, till you were out of the room." He said, "You violent politicians make more rout about royalty than it is worth it is only the highest place, and somebody must fill it, no matter who: neither do the persons themselves think so much of it as you do. They are glad to get into privacy as much as they can. Nor is it a sinecure. The late King (I have been told) used often to have to sign his name to papers, and do nothing else for three hours together, till his fingers fairly ached, and then he would take a walk in the garden, and come in to repeat the same drudgery for three hours more. So, when they told Louis XV. that if he went on with his extravagance he would bring about a Revolution, and be sent over to England with a pension, he merely asked, 'Do you think the pension would be a pretty good one?" He noticed the Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, and praised them for their extreme vivacity and great insight into human nature. Once when the mob had besieged the palace, and the Cardinal was obliged to go and appease them, a brick-bat was flung at him and knocked him down, and one of the assailants presenting a bayonet at his throat, he suddenly called out, "Oh, you wretch! if your father could have seen you in this barbarous action, what would he have said?" The man immediately withdrew, though, says the Cardinal, "I knew no more of his father than the babe unborn." N- then adverted to the talent of players for drollery and sudden shifts and expedients, and said that by living in an element of comic invention, they imbibed a portion of it. He repeated that jest of Reynolds, who filled up the blanks in a militia paper that was sent him with the description, "Old, lame, and a coward;" and another story told of Matthews, the comedian, who being left in a room with an old gentleman and a little child, and the former putting the question to it, "Well, my dear, which do you like best, the dog or the cat?" by exercising his powers of ventriloquism, made the child seem to answer, "I don't care a damn for either," to the utter confusion of the old gentleman, who immediately took the father to task for bringing up his son in such profaneness and total want of common humanity.

He then returned to the question of the inconsistent and unreasonable expectations of mankind as to their success in different pursuits, and answered the common complaint, "What a shame it was that Milton only got thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence by 'Paradise Lost."" He said, "Not at all; he did not write it to get money, he had gained what he proposed by writing it, not thirteen pounds nine shillings and sixpence, but an immortal reputation. When Dr. Johnson was asked why he was not invited out to dine as Garrick was, he answered as ifit was a triumph to him, ' Because great lords and ladies don't like to have their mouths stopped!' But who does like to have their mouths

stopped? Did he, more than others? People like to be amused in general; but they did not give him the less credit for wisdom, and a capacity to instruct them by his writings. In like manner, it has been said, that the King only sought one interview with Dr. Johnson; whereas, if he had been a buffoon or a sycophant, he would have asked for more. No, there was nothing to complain of: it was a compliment paid by rank to letters, and once was enough. The King was more afraid of this interview than Dr. Johnson was; and went to it as a schoolboy to his task. But he did not want to have this trial repeated every day, nor was it necessary. The very jealousy of his self-love marked his respect and if he had thought less of Dr. Johnson, he would have been more willing to risk the encounter. They had each their place to fill, and would best preserve their self-respect, and perhaps their respect for each other, by remaining in their proper sphere. So they make an outcry about the Prince leaving Sheridan to die in absolute want. He had left him long before: was he to send every day to know if he was dying? These things cannot be helped, without exacting too much of human nature." I agreed to this view of the subject, and said,-"I did not see why literary people should repine if they met with their deserts in their own way, without expecting to get rich; but that they often got nothing for their pains but unmerited abuse and party obloquy."-" Oh, it is not party spite," said he, “but the envy of human nature. Do you think to distinguish yourself with impunity? Do you imagine that your superiority will be delightful to others? Or that they will not strive all they can, and to the last moment, to pull you down? I remember myself once saying to Opie, how hard it was upon a poor author or player to be hunted down for not succeeding in an innocent and laudable attempt, just as if they had committed some heinous crime! And he said,They have committed the greatest crime in the eyes of mankind, that of pretending to a superiority over them! Do you think that party abuse, and the running down particular authors, is any thing new? Look at the manner in which Pope and Dryden were assailed by a set of reptiles. Do believe the John Bull and Blackwood had not their prototypes in the party-publications of that day? Depend upon it, what you take for political cabal and hostility is (nine parts in ten) private pique and malice oozing through those authorized channels."

you

We now got into a dispute about nicknames; and H-me coming in and sitting down at my elbow, my old pugnacious habit seemed to return upon me. N contended, that they had always an appropriate meaning and I said,-" Their whole force consisted in their having absolutely none but the most vague and general."-" Why," said N- "did my father give me the name of 'Fat Jack,' but because I was lean?" He gave an instance which I thought made against himself, of a man at Plymouth, a baker by profession, who had got the name of Tiddydoll-he could not tell how. "Then," said I, "it was a name without any sense or meaning."-" Be that as it may," said N- -,"it almost drove him mad. The boys called after him in the street, besieged his shop-windows; even the soldiers took it up, and marched to parade, beating time with their feet, and repeating, Tiddydoll, Tiddydoll, as they passed by his door. He flew out upon them at the sound, with inextinguishable fury, and was knocked down

and rolled in the kennel, and got up in an agony of rage and shame, his white clothes covered all over with mud. A gentleman, a physician in the neighbourhood, one day called him in and remonstrated with him on the subject. He advised him to take no notice of his persecutors. What," he said, 'does it signify? Suppose they were to call me Tiddydoll ?''There,' said the man, 'you called me so yourself; you only sent for me in to insult me!' and, after heaping every epithet of abuse upon him, flew out of the house in the most ungovernable passion." I told N this was just the thing I meant. Even if a name had confessedly no meaning, by applying it constantly, and by way of excellence to another, it seemed as if he must be an abstraction of insignificance: whereas, if it pointed to any positive defect, or specific charge, it was at least limited to the one, and you stood a chance of repelling the other. The virtue of a nickname consisted in its being indefinable and baffling all proof or reply. When H-me was gone, N- extolled his proficiency in Hebrew, which astonished me not a little, as I had never heard of it. I said, he was a very excellent man, and a good specimen of the old Presbyterian character, who had more of the idea of an attachment to principle, and less of an obedience to fashion or convenience, from their education and tenets, than any other class of people. N- assented to this statement, and concluded by saying, that H--me was certainly a very good man, and had no fault but that of not being fat.

DEVOTION.

How poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method, and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's every grave, except the heart !"-BURNS.

On the breath of evening comes the hymn,
The hymn of the vesper hour,

Floating tranquilly through the twilight dim,
With the fragrance of the flower;

And many thoughts with the wild notes fleet
Of many a parted year;

And recollections sad and sweet

Arise and disappear.

There is magic great in that high-arch'd pile-
In the long aisles dark and chill,

When the full tones hang on the vaults awhile,

Like light on a sunny hill,

And the organ's swell with a thrilling sound

Makes the cluster'd columns shake,

And the pavement graven with names renown'd,

And the buried seem to wake.

Then the deep bell tolling overhead

A note from a loftier clime,

Seems to come as a voice from the mighty dead

That would mingle with present time;