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looked at the Comptroller. Lamb, who was dozing by the fire, turned round and said, "Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?" No, sir, I asked Mr. Wordsworth if he were not." "O!" said Lamb, "then you are a silly fellow." "Charles, my dear Charles," said Wordsworth; but Lamb, perfectly innocent of the confusion he had created, was off again by the fire. After an awful pause, the Comptroller said, "Don't you think Newton a great genius?" Haydon could not stand it any longer. Keats put his head into books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself, "Who is this?" Lamb got up, and taking a candle, said, "Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological development?" He then turned his back on the poor man, and at every question of the Comptroller he chaunted:

'Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John

Went to his bed with his breeches on.'

The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, "I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth." "With me, sir?" said Wordsworth; "not that I remember." "Don't you, sir? I am a Comptroller of Stamps." There was a dead silence; the Comptroller evidently thinking that was enough. While they were waiting for Wordsworth's reply, Lamb sung out:

'Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,'

chaunted Lamb; and then, rising, exclaimed, "Do let me have another look at that gentleman's organs!" Keats and Haydon hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door, and gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed, and tried to get Lamb away. They went back, but the Comptroller was irreconcilable. They soothed and smiled, and asked him to supper. He stayed, though his dignity was sorely affected. However, being a good-natured man they parted all in good humour, and no ill effects followed. All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, they

could hear Lamb struggling in the painting-room, and calling at intervals, "Who is that fellow? Allow me to see his organs once more."

ROAST PIG.

The following inedited Letter of Charles Lamb, from the Collection of his friend, Mr. George Daniel, of Canonbury, and communicated to the Illustrated London News, in 1855, it may be interesting to compare with Lamb's famous "Dissertation on Roast Pig."

Twelfth-day, '23.

The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some contention as to who should have the ears, but, in spite of his obstinacy (deaf as these little creatures are to advice), I contrived to get at one of them.

It came in boots, too, which I took as a favour. Generally these petty toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look taller.

He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been a Chinese, and a female.

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such prodigious volumes, seeing how much good can be contained in-how small a compass!

He crackled delicately.

I left a blank at top of my letter, not being determined which to address it to, so farmer and farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your chickens plump, and your envious neighbours lean, and your labourers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the day is long!

VIVE L'AGRICULTURE!

How do you make your pigs so little?
They are vastly engaging at that age.

I was so myself.

Now I am a disagreeable old hog

A middle-aged-gentleman-and-a-half.

My faculties, thank God! are not much impaired.

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect; and can read the Lord's Prayer in the common type, by the help of a candle, without making many mistakes.

Believe me, while my faculties last, a proper appreciator of your many kindnesses in this way; and that the last lingering relish of past flavours upon my dying memory will be the smack of that little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many happy returns (not of the pig) but of the New Year to both.

Mary, for her share of the pig and the memoirs, desires to send the same.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

A NIGHT WITH CHARLES LAMB.

Thomas Hood has left this charming picture of his visit to his brother humourist.

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"I put on my great-coat, and in a few minutes found myself, for the first time, at a door that opened to me as frankly as its master's heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked brown with old bokes,' and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard of Rydal his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one, but the palaver as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps my memory is in fault; 't was many years ago, and, unlike the biographer of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought on the carpet. But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one, must be glad at times to descend from saddle-back and feel his legs. He cannot, like the girl in the fairy tale, be always talking diamonds and pearls. It is a 'vulgar error' to suppose that an author must be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless, it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetizes his wife, sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends, and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings at Lamb's associated them in

stantly with his parochial mutual instruction evening schools, and remarked, 'Yes, yes, all very proper and praiseworthyof course you go there to improve your minds."'

BLACK-LETTER.

An old friend of Charles Lamb having been in vain trying to make out a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, laid down the precious volume, and with an erudite look told Lamb that "in those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent spelling;" and the antibibliomaniac seemed to console himself in the conclusion.

LITERARY BORROWING.

Sir Walter Scott, it seems, was a borrower of other men's wit. In his edition of Swift occurs the essay in which the following colloquy is given:

"Colonel.-Is it certain that Sir John Blunderbuss is dead at last?

"Lord Sparkish.-Yes, or else he's sadly wronged, for they have buried him."

But we find in Washington Irving's Abbotsford the following example of Scott's breakfast-table conversation:

"One morning at breakfast, when Dominie Thompson, the tutor, was present, Scott was going on with great glee to relate an anecdote of the Laird of Macnab, 'who, poor fellow!' premised he, is dead and gone.' 'Why, Mr. Scott,' exclaimed his good lady, 'Macnab's not dead, is he?' 'Faith, my dear,' replied Scott, with humorous gravity, 'if he's not dead, they have done him great injustice, for they've buried him.' The joke passed harmless and unnoticed by Mr. Scott, but hit the poor Dominie just as he had raised a cup of tea to his lips, causing a burst of laughter which sent half of the contents about the table."

SHOOTING GAME.

"Time has been," said Sir Walter Scott to Captain Basil Hall, "when I did shoot a great deal, but somehow I never very much liked it. I was never quite at ease when I had knocked down my black-cock, and going to pick him up, he

cast back his dying eye with a look of reproach. I don't affect to be more squeamish than my neighbours,—but I am not ashamed to say, that no practice ever reconciled me to the cruelty of the affair."

UNLUCKY REFLECTION.

Mr. Jephson, the elder, lived at Blackrock, and was, for a considerable period, the poet-laureate and master of the horse of the Viceregal court, at Dublin. He lost his place and pension by an untimely exercise of his wit, at a dinner given to the Lord Lieutenant, the Marquis of Buckingham, who happened to observe, in an unlucky mirror, the reflection of Jephson in the act of mimicking himself. The Marquis immediately discharged him from the offices he held.-Lord Cloncurry's Life and Times.

THE WAVERLEY NOVELS' SECRET.

Mr. Lockhart, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, has availed himself, with good judgment, of Mr. Leycester Adolphus's "eloquent paper of reminiscences of scenes at Abbotsford," in explanation of the great literary secret of that day,—the authorship of the Waverley Novels.

During Scott's visit to London, in July, 1821, there appeared a work which was read with eager curiosity and delight by the public-with much private diversion besides by his friends and which he himself must have gone through with a very odd mixture of emotions. This work was the volume of "Letters to Richard Heber, containing Critical Remarks on the series of Novels beginning with Waverley, and an attempt to ascertain their author;" which volume was soon known to have been penned by Mr. John Leycester Adolphus. Previously to the publication of these Letters, the opinion that Scott was the author of Waverley had, indeed, been well settled in the English, to say nothing of the Scotch, mind; a great variety of circumstances, external as well as internal, had, by degrees, co-operated to this general establishment; yet there were not wanting persons who still dissented, or at least affected to dissent, from it. It was reserved, (says Mr. Lockhart,) for the enthusiastic industry and admirable ingenuity of this juvenile academic, to set the