cient religious houses. As she every day, and then returned to walked along one side of this court, Scotland. Some months aftershe passed a man whose back was wards, when he had been libetowards her-a bulky-looking per-rated, she paid him another visit; son, slightly paralytic, and who but his utter inability to make shuffled in walking as if from prudent use of any money intrusted lameness. As she approached the to him, rendered it quite impossible door, she heard this man pronounce that they should ever renew their her name. "Jean," he said, and conjugal life. After this she never then immediately added, as under a saw him again. It is understood more formal feeling, "Mrs. Whelp- that this poor, unprotected woman dale!" It was her husband-the at length was led into an error gay youth of 1793 being now trans- which cost her the respect of soformed into a broken-down middle-ciety. She spent some time in a aged man, whom she had passed kind of vagrant life, verging on without even suspecting who he mendicancy, and never rising above was. The wife had to ask the the condition of a domestic servant. figure if he was her husband, and She never ceased to be elegant in the figure answered that he was. her form and comely of face; nor To such a scene many a romantic did she ever cease to recollect that marriage leads! There was kind- she had been the subject of some ness, nevertheless, between the long-dozen compositions by one of the separated pair. Jean spent a month greatest modern masters of the in Carlisle, calling upon her husband lyre.-(Chambers's Life of Burns.) POETRY AND POETS. LORD BYRON AND MR. CURRAN. When Lord Byron rose into fame, Curran constantly objected to his talking of himself, as the great drawback on his poetry. "Any subject," said he, "but that eternal one of self. I am weary of knowing once a month the state of any man's hopes or fears, rights or wrongs. I should as soon read a register of the weather, the barometer up so many inches to-day and down so many inches to-morrow. I feel scepticism all over me at the sight of agonies on paper, things that come as regular and as notorious as the full of the moon. The truth is, his lordship weeps for the press, and wipes his eyes with the public." POETS AT BREAKFAST. The following specimen of the table-talk of poets is taken from "Moore's Diary." The entry is dated October 27, 1820: "Wordsworth came at half-past eight, and stopped to breakfast. Talked a good deal. Spoke of Byron's plagiarisms from him; the whole third canto of Childe Harold founded on his style and sentiments. The feeling of natural objects which is there expressed, not caught by B. from nature herself, but from him (Wordsworth), and spoiled in the transmission. Tintern Abbey, the source of it all; from which same poem, too, the celebrated passage about Solitude, in the first canto of Childe Harold is (he said) taken, with this difference, that what is naturally expressed by him, has been worked by Byron into a laboured and antithetical sort of declamation. Spoke of the Scottish Novels. Is sure they are Scott's. The only doubt was nothing to what he had derived from Burke." EDGAR ALLEN POE. he ever had on the question did not arise from thinking them too good to be Scott's, but, on the contrary, from the infinite number of clumsy things in them; common- The conversation of Edgar Allen place contrivances, worthy only of Poe, the gifted American poet, was the Minerva press, and such bad at times, says R. W. Griswold, alvulgar English as no gentleman of most supermortal in its eloquence. education ought to have written. His voice was modulated with asWhen I mentioned the abundance tonishing skill, and his large and of them, as being rather too great variably expressive eyes looked refor one man to produce, he said, pose or shot fiery tumult into theirs that great fertility was the charac- who listened, while his own face teristic of all novelists and story-glowed or was changeless in pallor tellers. Richardson could have gone as his imagination quickened his on for ever; his Sir Charles Gran-blood or drew it back frozen to his dison was originally in thirty vo- heart. His imagery was from the lumes. Instanced Charlotte Smith, worlds which no mortal can see but Madame Cottin, &c., &c. Scott, since he was a child, accustomed to legends, and to the exercise of the story-telling faculty, sees nothing to stop him as long as he can hold a pen. Spoke of the very little knowledge of real poetry that existed now; so few men had time to study. For instance, Mr. Canning; one could hardly select a cleverer man; and yet, what did Mr. Canning know of poetry? What time had he, in the busy political life that he led, to study Dante, Homer, &c., as they ought to be studied, in order to arrive at the true principles of taste in works of genius? Mr. Fox, indeed, towards the latter part of his life, made leisure for himself, and took to improving his mind; and, accordingly, all his later public displays bore a greater stamp of wisdom and good taste than his early ones. Mr. Burke alone was an exception in this description of public men; by far the greatest man of his age; not only abounding in knowledge himself, but feeding, in various directions, his most able contemporaries; assisting Adam Smith in his Political Economy and Reynolds in his Lectures on Painting. Fox, too, who acknowledged that all he had ever learned from books with the vision of genius. Suddenly starting from a proposition exactly and sharply defined in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and, by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty-so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful creations, till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to common and base existence by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of the ignoblest passion. CHARLES LAMB. It is told of Charles Lamb, that one afternoon returning from a dinner-party, having taken a seat in a crowded omnibus, a stout gentleman subsequently looked in, and politely asked, "All full inside?" "I don't know how it may be with the other passengers," answered Lamb, "but that last piece of oysterpie did the business for me." Coleridge, during one of his interminable table - talks, said to Lamb," Charley, did you ever hear me preach?" "I never heard you DIPPING CHARLES LAMB. 135 do anything else," was the prompt introduction-"This reminds me of and witty reply of Elia, which has some verses I wrote when I was become a favourite byword at the very young." He then, to the aspresent day. tonishment of the gentleman in question, quoted something from the volume. The regular routine of clerkly business ill suited the literary tastes and the wayward though innocent habits of our essayist. Once at the India House, one in authority said to him-"I have remarked, Mr. Lamb, that you come very late in the morning." "Yes, sir," replied the wit, "but I go away early in the afternoon." The oddness of the excuse silenced the reprover, who turned away with a smile. A retired cheesemonger, who hated any allusion to the business that had enriched him, once remarked to Charles Lamb, in the course of a discussion on the poorlaw, "You must bear in mind, sir, that I have got rid of all that stuff which you poets call the 'milk of human kindness." Lamb looked at him steadily, and gave his acquiescence in these words: "Yes, sir, I am aware of it; you turned it all into cheese several years ago." CHARLES LAMB AND THE POETASTER. Lamb was once invited by an old friend to meet an author, who had just published a volume of poems. When he arrived, being somewhat early, he was asked by his host to look over the volume of the expected visitor. A few minutes convinced Elia that it possessed very little merit, being a feeble echo of different authors. This opinion of the poetaster was fully confirmed by the appearance of the gentleman himself, whose self-conceit, and confidence in his own book, were so manifest as to awaken in Lamb that spirit of mischievous waggery_so characteristic of the humorist. Lamb's rapid and tenacious memory enabled him during the dinner to quote fluently several passages from the pretender's volume. These he gave with this Lamb tried this a second time: the gentleman looked still more surprised, and seemed evidently bursting with suppressed indignation. At last, as a climax to the fun, Lamb coolly quoted the wellknown opening lines of Paradise Lost as written by himself. This was too much for the versemonger. He immediately rose to his legs, and with an impressive solemnity of manner thus addressed the claimant to so many poetical honours: "Sir, I have tamely submitted all this evening to hear you claim the merit that may belong to any little poems of my own; this I have borne in silence; but, sir, I never will sit quietly by and see the immortal Milton robbed of Paradise Lost" DIPPING CHARLES LAMB. Coleridge," says De Quincey, "told me of a ludicrous embarrassment which Lamb's stammering caused him at Hastings. Lamb had been medically advised to a course of sea-bathing; and accordingly, at the door of his bathingmachine, whilst he stood shivering with cold, two stout fellows laid hold of him, one at each shoulder, like heraldic supporters; they waited for the word of command from their principal, who began the following oration to them: "Hear me, men! Take notice of this; I am to be dipped--" What more he would have said is unknown to land or sea bathing machines; for, having reached the word dipped, he commenced such a rolling fire of di-di-di-di, that when at length he descended à plomb upon the full word dipped, the two men, rather tired of the long suspense, became satisfied that to turn his lines over and over they had reached what lawyers call again so often. This habit he conthe "operative" clause of the sen- tinued to the last, and he did it tence, and both exclaiming at once, with a surprising facility. "O, yes, sir, we're quite aware of that," down they plunged him into the sea. On emerging, Lamb sobbed so much from the cold, that he found no voice suitable to his indignation; from necessity he seemed tranquil; and again addressing the men, who stood respectfully listening, he began thus: "Men, is it possible to obtain your attention?" " O, surely, sir, by all means." "Then listen: once more I tell you I am to be di— di-di-,” and then, with a burst of indignation," dipped, I tell you "O, decidedly, sir." And down the stammerer went for the second time. CAMPBELL AND WILSON. "Campbell," says Dr. Beattie, "went to Paisley races, got prodigiously interested in the first race, and betted on the success of one horse, to the amount of fifty pounds, with Professor Wilson. At the end of the race he thought he had lost the bet, and said to Wilson, "I owe you fifty pounds; but really, when I reflect that you are a professor of moral philosophy, and that betting is a sort of gambling only fit for blacklegs, I cannot bring my conscience to pay the bet." "O," said Wilson, “I very much approve of your principles, and Petrified with cold and wrath, mean to act upon them. In point once more Lamb made a feeble at- of fact, Yellow Cap, on whom you tempt at explanation. "Grant me betted, has won the race; and, but pa-pa-patience; is it mum-um for conscience, I ought to pay you -murder you me-me- -mean? the fifty pounds; but you will exAgain and a- -ga-ga-gain, I tell cuse me.' you, I'm to be di-di-di-dipped now speaking furiously with CHATTERTON'S MISERY. the voice of an injured man. A prodigy of genius, the unforyes, sir," the men replied, we tunate Chatterton, was amusing know that we fully understand himself one day, in company with it; and, for the third time, down a friend, reading the epitaphs in went Lamb into the sea. Pancras Church-yard. He was so deep sunk in thought as he walked on, that, not perceiving a grave that was just dug, he tumbled into it. "O limbs of Satan!" he said, on coming up for the third time, "it's now too late. I tell you that I am -no, that I was to be di-di-didipped only once." POPE'S ACCURACY. "At fifteen years of age," says Pope, "I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He encouraged me much and used to tell me that there was one way left of excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct. He ended his remarks by desiring me to make accuracy my study and aim." This, perhaps, first led Pope His friend, observing his situation, ran to his assistance, and, as he helped him out, told him, in a jocular manner, he was happy in assisting at the resurrection of genius. Poor Chatterton smiled, and, taking his companion by the arm, replied, "My dear friend, I feel the sting of a speedy dissolution. I have been at war with the grave for some time, and find it is not so easy to vanquish it as I imagined. We can find an asylum to hide from every creditor but that." His friend endeavoured to divert JOANNA BAILLIE. his thoughts from the gloomy reflection: but what will not melancholy and adversity combined subjugate? In three days after, the neglected and disconsolate youth put an end to his miseries by poison. JAMES MONTGOMERY. A writer in the Boston Atlas gives the following account of an interview with Montgomery, the Cowper of his age : 137 say that this is the only subject which ruffles the habitual serenity of his mind; and well it may, for it must be no trifling annoyance to see that fame, which was acquired by years of toil and patient endurance, perilled in the minds of many by the productions of such a popinjay as the author of Oxford and Woman." JOANNA BAILLIE. "I found Montgomery, in con- "I believe," says Miss Sedgwick, versation, delightful. There was "of all my pleasures here, dear J. nothing of the I am a poet' about will most envy me that of seeing him; but he entered freely and Joanna Baillie, and of seeing her familiarly into conversation, and repeatedly at her home-the best expressed his opinions on the lite-point of view for all best women. rature of the day with as much diffidence as if he had himself only worshipped the Muse 'afar off.' She lives on Hampstead Hill, a few miles from town, in a modest house, with Miss Agnes Baillie, her only sister, a kindly and agreeable person. "Miss Baillie-I write this for J., for women always like to know how one another look and dressMiss Baillie has a well-preserved appearance: her face has nothing of the vexed or sorrowful expression that is often so deeply stamped by a long experience of life. It indicates a strong mind, great sensibility, and the benevolence that, I believe, always proceeds from it if the mental constitution be a sound one, as it eminently is in Miss Baillie's case. "In the course of the evening, the conversation turned on Robert Montgomery's poetry, which was then making some noise. James, for some time, took no part in what was going on, but was an attentive listener. At last it seemed as if flesh and blood could bear it no longer, for he commented on the meanness of Satan Bob in assuming his name, for the purpose of cheating the public into the purchase of his wares. 'It has been a serious business to me,' said the true Montgomery, 'for I am constantly receiving letters, evidently intended for another person, in "She has a pleasing figure, what which I am either mercilessly we call lady-like, that is, delicate, abused for what I never wrote, erect, and graceful; not the largeor bespattered with compliments boned, muscular frame of most of the most nauseating character. English women. She wears her Many, to this day, do not distin- own gray hair-a general fashion, guish between me and Robert by the way, here, which I wish we Montgomery; and so I am, in a elderly ladies of America may have great measure, robbed of what lit- the courage and the taste to imitle hard-earned fame I possess.' tate; and she wears the prettiest of brown silk gowns and bonnets, fitting the beau-ideal of an old lady—an ideal she might inspire, if it has no pre-existence. "The poet, evidently, was much mortified by Robert's assumption of his name, and did not endeavour to disguise his contempt for the literary pirate, who sailed under false colours. His intimate friends "You would, of course, expect her to be free from pedantry and |