PICTURE OF WORDSWORTH.

353

(Enter PETER with rizzers and cigars—he wheels his vener. able Master's easy-chair to the accustomed nook, and then places SOUTHSIDE so as to face the good old man—sets before each worthy his own little circular table, with its own Argand lamp―rakes and stirs the fire into a roaring glow-and stumps out, noiselessly closing behind him the double door, that looks like one of the numerous oakpanels of the wall.)

North. Affectionate and faithful creature!

Tickler. Ha! what worthies have we got here over the chimney-piece?

North (smiling). What do you think?

Tickler (with a peculiar face). Wordsworth, with Jeffrey on the one side, and Brougham on the other!

North. How placid and profound the expression of the whole Bard! The face is Miltonic-even to the very eyes; for though, thank Heaven, they are not blind, there is a dimness about the orbs. The temples I remember shaded with thin hair of an indescribable colour, that in the sunlight seemed a kind of mild auburn-but now they are bare,-and-nothing to break it-the height is majestic. No furrows-no wrinkles on that contemplative forehead-the sky is without a cloud"The image of a Poet's soul,

How calm! how tranquil! how serene!"

It faintly smiles. There is light and motion round the lips, as if they were about to "discourse most eloquent music." In my imagination, that mouth is never mute-Ï hear it

"Murmuring by the living brooks,

A music sweeter than their own."

Tickler. Is he wont so to sit with folded arms?

North. 'Twas not his habit of old, but it may be nowthere seems to my mind much dignity in that repose. He is privileged to sit with folded arms, for all life long those hands have ministered religiously at the shrine of nature and nature's God; and the Priest, as age advances, may take his rest in the sanctuary, a voiceless worshipper. There is goodness in the great man's aspect-and while I look, love blends with reveHow bland! The features in themselves are almost stern-but most humane the spirit of the grand assemblage

rence.

VOL. III.

354

PICTURE OF JEFFREY.

"Not harsh, nor greeting, but of amplest power

To soften and subdue!"

Tickler. Jeffrey has a fine face. Mere animation is common; but those large dark eyes beam with intellect and sensibility-naturally finest both-alive perpetually and at workyet never weary-as if that work were play-and needed not the restoration of sleep. Wit, in its full acceptation, is a weighty word—and by it I designate the mind of the Man! Taste in him is exalted into Imagination-Ingenuity brightens into Genius. He hath also Wisdom. But nemo omnibus horis sapit; and he made an unfortunate stumble over the Lyrical Ballads. He has had the magnanimity, however, I am told, to repent that great mistake, which to his fame was a misfortune—and, knowing the error of his ways, has returned to the broad path of Nature and Truth. How nobly has he written of Crabbe and Campbell, and Scott and Byron! Incomprehensible contradiction-the worst critic of the age is also the best; but the weeds of his mind are dead-the flowers are immortal. He is no orator, they say, in St Stephen's; but that mouth, even on the silent paper, gives them the lie; and I have heard him a hundred times the most eloquent of speakers. His is a brilliant name in the literature of Scotland.

North. It is-Francis Jeffrey.

Tickler. Brougham in his robes! Lord High Chancellor of England! Stern face and stalwart frame—and his mind, people say, is gigantic. They name him with Bacon. Be it so; the minister he and interpreter of Nature! Henry Brougham, in the eyes of his idolaters, is also an Edmund Burke. Be it so; at once the most imaginative and most philosophical of orators that ever sounded lament over the decline and fall of empires, while wisdom, listening to his lips, exclaimed,

"Was ne'er prophetic sound so full of woe!"

North. Come-come, Tickler-none of your invidious eulogies on the Man of the People.

Tickler. There he sits-a strong man-not about to run a

race

North. But who has run it, and distanced all competitors. There is something great, Tickler, in unconquerable and victorious energy

Tickler. A man of many talents he-some of them seeming

PICTURE OF BROUGHAM.

355

almost to be of the highest order. Sword-like acuteness-sun

like perspicacity

North. And sledge-hammer-like power.

Tickler. There is a wicked trouble in his keen grey eyes

North. No. Restless, but not unhappy.

Tickler. Scorn has settled on that wide-nostril'd proboNorth. No. It comes and goes—the nose is benevolent. Tickler. Do you say there is no brass on that hard forehead? North. I see but bone-and though the brain within is of intellect "all compact," the heart that feeds it burns with passions not unheroic.

Tickler. King of them all-ambition.

North.

"The last infirmity of noble minds!

Tickler. No-you misunderstand-you misrepresent Milton. He spoke of the love of fame.

North. So do I. In Brougham-do him justice-the two passions are one,—and under its perpetual inspiration he has

"Scorned delights, and lived laborious days,"

till with all his sins, by friend and foe, he is held to be, in his character of Statesman, the first man in England.

Tickler. Are you fuddled?

North. Not to my knowledge; yet that champagne does effervesce in an old man's brain

Tickler. And makes him utter confounded nonsense.

North. No-no-no-my dear friend, I am in sober sadness -and therefore I do not fear to ask you to look on-yonder picture.

Tickler. Where?

North. There!

Tickler. Ay-ay-ay-I cannot look on it-without a throb within my heart-a mist before my eyes,-Sir Walter to the very life!

North. Allan's.1

Tickler. Most admirable.

North. The Minstrel-the Magician-the Man.

1 Sir William Allan's picture, entitled "The Author of Waverley in his Study."

356

PICTURE OF SCOTT.

Tickler. At times I cannot believe that he is dead. 1 North. Nor I. He is buried! He once showed me the place where he hoped his bones would lie.

Tickler. And do they?

North. They do. The people of Scotland could not have endured to lose them-no-not if he had died in the most distant land; nor would his bones have rested in any sepulchre, though consecrated by a nation's tears, out of that dear region of the earth which his genius has glorified for ever.

Tickler. All's well.

North. How affectingly our friend Allan has strewn the silver hair along his magnificent forehead! The face is somewhat aged-and it had begun to look so a few years agobefore that, so healthful that it promised to filial eyes a long, long life. But there is a young expression of gladness in the eyes-unbedimmed as yet by any mortal trouble-the light of genius there being all one with that of gracious humanity,two words which, I feel, contain his character.

Tickler. Surrounded with relics of the olden time!

North. Ay-as he looked on them how his imagination kindled! At the sight of that Scottish spear, Flodden was before him-or Bannockburn.

Tickler. These deer-hounds have missed their master. Come -North. The picture is most beautifully painted—no man who looks at it needs be sorrowful.

North. All Scotland is sorrowful.

Tickler. No-her hills and valleys are rejoicing in the sunshine. Scotland is not sorrowful-though she has interred her greatest son. He will live for ever in the nation's heart. North. You remember Milton's lines on Shakespeare—

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones,

The labour of an age in pilèd stones;

Or that his hallow'd relics should be hid

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid !

Dear Son of Memory! Great Heir of Fame !

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy fame!

Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,

Hast built thyself a living monument.”

"About half-past one, P.M.," says Mr Lockhart, "Sir Walter breathed his last in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day-so warm that

MARTIN, THE KING OF THE VAST.

357

That high feeling was natural in such a soul as Milton's; but it would pass away, and the Poet of Paradise would have reverently regarded in his mind's eye a star-y-pointing Pyramid over the Swan of Avon. A national monument is a depository of many thoughts-the gathered tribute of millions raises it-yet every man sees in it his individual feelings—and therefore the work is blest. "It is an expression of gratitudean act of reverence."

Tickler. The nation will do what is right.

North. Homer represents Greece-Virgil, Italy-Cervantes, Spain-Voltaire, France-Goethe, Germany-Shakespeare, England-and Scotland, he in whom we exult-he whom we deplore. I hope you admire the arrangements of my Martins? Tickler. Eh?

North. The noblest of all his works is Belshazzar's Feast. Tickler. They are all noble. I do admire the arrangement of your Martins; for so should the prodigious shadowings of Sin, Wrath, Judgment, and Doom, be all gathered together in their own region that expands and extends far, wide, and high into the pomp and grandeur

North. Don't mouth so. Martin is the KING of the VAST. Tickler. Nineveh-Babylon-in our ears heretofore but names—now before our eyes cities

North. With all their temples renovated from the dustunshorn their towery diadems

Tickler. Or settling down in the "gloom of earthquake and eclipse."

North. This great painter is said to repeat himself—and I am glad of it; so does the rising and the setting sun.

Tickler. Have you seen his "Illustrations of the Bible?" North. They are lying on that table. Martin has shown in them that he has the finest feeling of beauty both in nature and in human life. "The fairest of her daughters, Eve," stands before us in the only painted Paradise that ever reminded me of Eden.

Tickler. What! You have been there?

ear,

every window was wide open-and so perfectly still, that the sound of all others most delicious to his the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around the bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes." He was buried in the Abbey of Dryburgh, on the 26th September 1832.