industry, could not but produce something valuable. When he pleases least, it can only be said that a good design was ill directed. ** In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas begin. ning "Yet even these bones" are to me original; I have never seen the notions in any other place: yet he that reads them here persuades himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray often written thus, it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise him.

WILLIAM COLLINS.-His diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order; seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure.

MARK AKENSIDE.—His great work is The Pleasures of Imagination; a performance which, published as it was at the age of twenty-three, raised expectations that were not amply satisfied. It has undoubtedly a just claim to very particular notice as an example of great felicity of genius and uncommon aptitude of acquisition; of a young mind stored with images, and much exercised in combining and comparing them. The subject is well chosen, as it includes all images that can strike or please, and thus comprises every species of poetical delight. The only difficulty is in the choice of examples and illustrations; and it is not easy in such exuberance of matter to find the middle point between penury and satiety. The parts seem artificially

disposed, with sufficient coherence so as that they cannot change their places without injury to the general design. His images are displayed with such luxuriance of expression that they are hidden, like Butler's moon, by a veil of light; they are forms fantastically lost under superfluity of dress. Pars minima est ipsa puella sui. The words are multiplied till the sense is hardly perceived; attention deserts the mind, and settles in the ear. The reader wanders through the gay diffusion, sometimes amazed, and sometimes delighted; but, after many turnings in the flowery labyrinth, comes out as he went in. He remarked little, and laid hold on nothing. To his versification justice requires that praise should not be denied. In the general fabrication of his lines he is perhaps superior to any other writer of blank verse. His flow is smooth, and his pauses are musical; but the concatenation of his verses commonly is too long continued, and the full close does not occur with sufficient frequency. The sense is carried on through a long intertexture of complicated clauses, and, as nothing is distinguished, nothing is remembered.

W

TABLE TALK.

HEN a fond parent told him that his two sons should repeat Gray's Elegy to him alternately, so that he might judge who had the happier cadence, "No, pray, sir," said he, "let the dears both speak it at once. More noise will by that means be made, and the noise will be sooner over." "Why did not you make me a Tory," inquired Garrick, "when we lived so much together?" Why," was the instant retort of Johnson pulling a heap of half-pence from his pocket, "did not the King make these guineas?"

Young's description of Night—

66

Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse

Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,
An awful pause-prophetic of its end-

was one day forced upon him as being superior to those of Shakspeare and Dryden. "This is true," was Johnson's comment; "but remember that, taking the compositions of Young in general, they are but like bright stepping-stones over a miry road. Young froths, and foams, and bubbles sometimes very vigorously; but we must not compare the noise made by your tea-kettle here with the roaring of the Ocean."

"Corneille is to Shakspeare as a clipped hedge to a forest,” was his reply to one who praised the former in opposition to the latter poet.

Some one lamented the weakness of a minister of the period, and complained that he was dull and tardy, and knew little of public affairs. "You may as well complain," was the Doctor's reply, "that the accounts of time are kept by the clock; for he certainly does stand still upon the stair-head; and we all know that he is no great chronologer.'

Dear Bathurst was a man to my very heart's content. He

hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig. He was a very good hater.

A gentleman was mentioned as having behaved oddly on an occasion where faction was not concerned. "Is he not a citizen of London, a native of North America, and a Whig?" says Johnson. "Let him be absurd, I beg of you. When a monkey is too like a man, it shocks one."

The hardships suffered in convents being the topic of conversation, "Remember," he said, "that a convent is an idle place, and where there is nothing to be done something must be endured. Mustard has a bad taste per se; but very insipid food cannot be eaten without it."

Infidels he could not abide. When some one praised Hume he broke out: "Let us never praise talents so ill employed, sir. We foul our mouths by commending such infidels." "Allow him the lumières at least," entreated one of the company. "I do allow him, sir," was the reply, "just enough to light him to Hell."

"Whither he is now gone," he said of a recently deceased Jamaica gentleman, "he will not, I believe, find much difference either in the climate or in the company."

While he was musing over the fire in the drawing-room at Streatham, a young gentleman somewhat unceremoniously (as he thought) called out to him: "Mr. Johnson, would you advise me to marry?" "Sir," answered he in a very angry tone, "I. would advise no man to marry who is not likely to propagate understanding."

When he was invited to pay attention to a piece of music which was being played by a lady upon the piano, and he was told, by way of securing his admiration, that the piece was one most difficult of execution, "Difficult!" he exclaimed; "would to Heaven that it had been impossible!"

Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions.

Let us all conform in outward customs, which are of no conse

quence, to the manners of those whom we live among, and despise paltry distinctions. Alas! A man who cannot get to Heaven in a green coat will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

The tediousness of the Law and its partiality being denounced by an acquaintance, "Let us hear, sir," he said, "no general abuse. The Law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public."

Why, a fellow must do something; and what so easy to a narrow mind as hoarding halfpence till they turn into sixpences? Officers are falsely supposed to have the carriage of gentlemen, whereas no profession left a stronger brand behind it than that of a soldier; and it was the essence of a gentleman's character to bear the visible mark of no profession whatever.

On his return from the Hebrides he was asked by one friendly to the Scotch, in a firm tone of voice, what he thought of the country. "That it was a vile country, to be sure," was the answer. "Well, sir," replied the other, somewhat mortified, "God made it." "Certainly he did," was the crushing return; "but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen; and comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan: but God made Hell."

Of one who disserted for some time upon the natural history of the mouse, "I wonder," he exclaimed, "what he would have said if he had ever had the luck to see a lion!"

A gentleman having petulantly opposed and contradicted Johnson at table in defence of King William's character, the host, apprehending disagreeable consequences, said—loud enough for the doctor to hear-“Our friend has no meaning in all this, except just to relate at club to-morrow how he teased Johnson at dinner to-day. This is all to do himself honour." "No, upon my word," observed the other, "I see no honour in it, whatever you may do." "Well, sir," returned Johnson sternly; "if you do not see the honour, I am sure I feel the disgrace.'