6 A poetaster brought Addison | by my 'invincible spirit of antagoone of his compositions, and begged nism.' I wish the North American his opinion of it. It was a copy of Review to express no opinion of me very indifferent verses, and they whatever-for I have none of it. appeared the worse because he had In the meantime, as I see no motto prefixed to them several lines from on its title-page, let me recommend Homer, and thus exposed them to it one from Sterne's Letter from a very disadvantageous contrast. France. Here it is: As we rode Addison, with great warmth, struck along the valley, we saw a herd of out the lines from Homer; and asses on the top of one of the mounwhen the surprised poetaster asked tains-how they viewed and rethe reason, "Do you not recollect," viewed us.”” said Addison, "the Roman emperor, whose statues appeared to him very ridiculous when they were placed near those of the gods ?" MILTON AND JAMES II. A ROBBER'S REMORSE. Somebody once robbed the poet Montgomery of an inkstand, presented to him by the ladies of Sheffield. The public execration was so loud, that the thief restored the booty with the following note: James II., when Duke of York, made a visit to Milton, out of curiosity. In the course of their con"Birmingham, March, 1812. versation, the duke said to the poet, "Honoured Sir: When we robbed that he thought his blindness was your house we did not know that a judgment of heaven on him, you wrote such beautiful verses as because he had written against you do. I remember my mother Charles I., his (the duke's) father, told some of them to me when I' when the immortal poet replied, was a boy. I found what house "If your highness thinks that mis- we robbed by the writing on the fortunes are indexes of the wrath of inkstand. Honoured sir, I send it heaven, what must you think of back. It was my share of the your father's tragical end? I have booty, and I hope you and God will only lost my eyes-he lost his forgive me." head." POE THE AMERICAN POET. Edgar A. Poe, whose genius even those who most dislike his wild extravagances and psychological transcendentalism will at once acknowledge, thus vents his bitterest sarcasm upon the North American Review: 66 GOLDSMITH'S DESERTED VILLAGE." "The Deserted Village," says Mr. Best, an Irish clergyman, "relates to the scenes in which Goldsmith was an actor. Auburn is a poetical name for the village of Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath, barony of Kilkenny West. The name of the schoolmaster was Paddy Burns. "I cannot say that I ever fairly I remember him well. He was, incomprehended the force of the term deed, a man severe to view. 'insult, until I was given to under-woman called Walsey Cruse kept stand, one day, by a member of the the alehouse. North American Review clique, that this journal was 'not only willing, but anxious, to render me that justice which had been already rendered me by the Revue Francaise, and the Revue des Deux Mondes,' but was 'restrained from so doing' A Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place.' I have been often in the house. The hawthorn bush was remarkably large, and stood opposite the alehouse. COLERIDGE'S OPIUM-EATING. "I was once riding with Brady, titular Bishop of Ardagh, when he observed to me, 'Ma foy! Best, this huge overgrown bush is mightily in the way; I will order it to be cut down.' 'What, sir!' said I,' cut down Goldsmith's hawthorn bush, that supplies so beautiful an image in the Deserted Village?' 'Ma foy!' exclaimed the bishop, 'is that the hawthorn bush? Then ever let it be sacred from the edge of the axe, and evil to him that would cut from it a branch.'" TIT FOR TAT. Campbell, the poet, and Turner, the artist, were dining together with a large party, a few years ago. The poet was called upon for a toast, and, by way of a joke upon the great professor of the sister art, gave, "The Painters and Glaziers." After the laughter had subsided, the artist was of course summoned to propose a toast also. He rose, and, with admirable tact and ready wit, discharged the debt of his craft to the author of the Pleasures of Hope, by giving the "Paper-stain ers." COLERIDGE'S YOUTH. "From eight to fourteen I was a playless dreamer," he observes, "a helluo librorum, my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident: a stranger, who was struck by my conversation, made me free of a circulating library in King Street, Cheapside." "This incident," says Gilman, " was indeed singular. Going down the Strand in one of his day-dreams, fancying himself swimming the Hellespont, thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming, one hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand: turning round, he looked at him with some anger, exclaiming, 'What, so young, and so wicked!' at the same time accus 159 ing him of an attempt to pick his pocket. "The frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention, and explained to him how he thought himself Leander trying to swim the Hellespont. "The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing, and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy, that he subscribed, as before stated, to the library; in consequence of which, Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading. It is stated that at this school he laid the foundation of those bodily sufferings, which made his life one of sickness and torture, and occasioned his melancholy resort to opium. He greatly injured his health, it is said, and reduced his strength, by his bathing excursions; but is it not quite as likely that the deficiency of food, and those holidays when he was turned out to starvation, had quite as much to do with it?" COLERIDGE'S OPIUM-EATING. One of the most melancholy facts in the history of Coleridge is his indulgence in the use of opium. It had been continued for a long time, and had begun to weaken and obscure his vigorous and brilliant intellect before his friend Cottle became aware that he used it. In 1814, Cottle wrote to him a very faithful letter, full of dissuasives against the habit; and in Coleridge's reply occur the following affecting paragraphs :— "For ten years the anguish of my spirit has been indescribable, the sense of my danger staring, but the consciousness of my guilt worse far worse than all. I have prayed, with drops of agony on my brow; trembling, not only before the justice of my Maker, but even before the mercy of my Redeemer. 'I gave thee so many talents; what hast thou done with them?' "Secondly, overwhelmed as I am such intolerable restlessness, and with a sense of my direful infirmity, incipient bewilderment, that in the I have never attempted to disguise last of my several attempts to abanor conceal the cause. On the con- don the dire poison, I exclaimed in trary, not only to friends have I agony, which I now repeat in seristated the whole case with tears, ousness and solemnity, 'I am too and the very bitterness of shame, poor to hazard this.' Had I but a but in two instances I have warned few hundred pounds, but two hunyoung men, mere acquaintances, dred pounds,-half. to send Mrs. who had spoken of taking laudanum, Coleridge, and half to place myself of the direful consequences, by an in a private mad-house, where I awful exposition of its tremendous could procure nothing but what a effects on myself. physician thought proper, and where a medical attendant could be constantly with me for two or three months (in less than that time life or death would be determined), then there might be hope. Now there is none ! You bid me rouse myself: go bid a man, paralytic in both arms, to rub them briskly together, and that will cure him. Alas!' he would reply, 'that I cannot move my arms is my complaint and my misery.' "Thirdly, though before God I cannot lift up my eyelids, and only do not despair of his mercy, because to despair would be adding crime to crime, yet to my fellow-men I may say, that I was seduced into the accursed habit ignorantly. I had been almost bedridden for many months, with swellings in my knees. In a medical journal, I unhappily met with an account of a cure performed in a similar case, or what appeared to me so, by rubbing in Writing to another friend, a short laudanum, at the same time taking time after, he says, Conceive a a given dose internally. It acted poor miserable wretch, who for like a charm-like a miracle! I many years has been attempting to recovered the use of my limbs, of beat off pain by a constant recurmy appetite, of my spirits, and this rence to the vice that reproduces it. continued for near a fortnight. At Conceive a spirit in hell, employed length the unusual stimulus sub-in tracing out for others the road sided, the complaint returned, the to that heaven from which his supposed remedy was recurred to; but I cannot go through the dreary history. "Suffice it to say, that effects were produced which acted on me by terror and cowardice, of pain and sudden death, not-so help me God-by any temptation of pleasure, or expectation or desire of exciting pleasurable sensations. On the very contrary, Mrs. Morgan and her sister will bear witness so far as to say that the longer I abstained, the higher my spirits, the keener my enjoyments, till the moment, the direful moment arrived, when my pulse began to fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such falling down as it were, of my whole frame, 66 crimes exclude him. In short, conceive whatever is most wretched, helpless, and hopeless, and you will form as tolerable a notion of my state as it is possible for a good man to have. I used to think the text in St. James, that he who offends in one point offends in all,' very harsh; but I now feel the awful, the tremendous truth of it. In the one crime of opium, what crime have I not made myself guilty of! Ingratitude to my Maker, and to my benefactors injustice, and unnatural cruelty to my poor children, self-contempt for my repeated promise, breach, nay, too often, actual falsehood." It is interesting to know that COLERIDGE'S ABSENCE OF MIND. Coleridge afterwards broke away from this dreadful habit, and that his life was lengthened out some twenty years longer. BARON HALLER. Poets change their opinions of their own productions wonderfully at different periods of life. Baron Haller was in his youth warmly attached to poetic composition. His house was on fire, and to rescue his poems, he rushed through the flames. He was so fortunate as to escape with his beloved manuscripts in his hands. Ten years afterwards, he condemned to the flames those very poems which he had ventured his life to preserve. POPULARITY OF POETS. When Lord Byron was presented with an American edition of Childe Harold, he exclaimed, "This, now, is something like immortality." We are reminded of his remark by meeting in the Mexican correspondence of the Boston Atlas with this statement: "At Puebla I found in a convent a volume of Lalla Rookh, and another of the Lady of the Lake. On the battle-field of Contreras I picked up a volume of Burns' poems." VALUE OF A MANUSCRIPT. 66 161 three pounds! The hammer strikes. Hold!" says Mr. Foss. "It is mine," says the amateur. "No, I bid sixty-five in time." "Then I give seventy." "Seventy-five," says Mr. Foss; and fives are repeated again until the two bits of paper are knocked down, amidst a general cheer, to Payne and Foss, for one hundred pounds sterling! On these bits of paper are written the first draught of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray, including five verses which were omitted in publication, and with the poet's interlinear corrections and alterations-certainly an "interesting article:" several persons supposed it would call for a ten pound note, perhaps even twenty. A single volume with "W. Shakspere," in the fly-leaf, produced, sixty years ago, a hundred guineas; but, probably, with that exception, no mere autograph, and no single sheet of paper, ever before produced the sum of five hundred dollars! COLERIDGE'S ABSENCE OF MIND. Mr. Coleridge had solicited permission of Mr. Southey to deliver his fourth lecture on the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Roman Empire, as a subject to which he had devoted especial attention. The request was immediately granted, The original manuscript of Gray's and at the end of the third lecture Elegy was lately sold by auction in it was formally announced to the London. There was really quite audience that the next lecture would "a scene" in the auction-room. be delivered by Mr. Samuel Taylor Imagine a stranger entering in the Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cammidst of a sale of some rusty-look-bridge. ing old books. The auctioneer At the usual hour the room was produces two small half sheets of thronged. The moment of compaper, written over, torn, and mu- mencement arrived. No lecturer tilated. He calls it a 66 most inte- appeared. Patience was preserved resting article," and apologizes for for a quarter of an hour or more; its condition. Pickering bids ten pounds! Rodd, Foss, Thorpe, Bohn, Holloway, and some few amateurs, quietly remark, twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, and so on, till there is a pause at sixty but still no lecturer. At length it was communicated to the impatient assemblage, that a circumstance exceedingly to be regretted would prevent Mr. Coleridge from giving his lecture that evening, as intended. L Some few present learnt the truth, but the major part of the company retired not very well pleased, and under the impression that Mr. Coleridge had either broken his leg, or that some severe family affliction had occurred. Mr. Coleridge's rather habitual absence of mind, with the little importance he generally attached to engagements, renders it likely that at this very time he might have been found at T, College Street, composedly smoking his pipe, and lost in profound musings on his divine Susquehanna. was like a vision of paradise to him; but it lasted only a few moments, and the faculty continued torpid from that time. THEODORE E. HOOK. I remember, one day at Sydenham, Mr. Theodore Hook coming in unexpectedly to dinner, and amusing us very much with his talent at extempore verse. He was then a youth, tall, dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round than weak; a face that had character and humour, but no refinement. His extempore verses were really surprising. An eminent medical man in Bristol, who greatly admired Mr. Cole- It is easy enough to extemporize ridge's conversation and genius, on in Italian. One only wonders how, one occasion invited Mr. C. to dine in a language in which every thing with him on a given day. The in- conspires to render verse-making vitation was accepted, and this gen- easy, and it is difficult to avoid tleman, willing to gratify his friends rhyming, this talent should be so with an introduction to Mr. Cole- much cried up. But in English it ridge, invited a large assembly for is another matter. I have known the express purpose of meeting but one other person besides Hook him, and made a splendid enter- who could extemporize in English; tainment, anticipating the delight and he wanted the confidence to do which would be universally felt it in public. Of course, I speak of from Mr. Coleridge's far-famed rhyming. Extempore blank verse, eloquence. with a little practice, would be found as easy in English, as rhyming is in Italian. It unfortunately happened that Mr. Coleridge had forgotten all about it; and the gentleman, with In Hook the faculty was very his guests, after waiting till the unequivocal. He could not have hot became cold, under his mortifi- been aware of the character of all cation consoled himself by the re- the visitors, still less of the subject solve never again to subject himself of conversation when he came in, to the like disaster. No explanation or apology from Mr. Coleridge's friends could soothe the choler of this disciple of Galen. A dozen subscribers to his lectures fell off from this slip of his memory. WORDSWORTH'S WANT OF SMELL. Wordsworth had no sense of smell. Once, and once only in his life, the dormant power awakened. It was by a bed of stocks in full bloom, at a house which he inhabited in Dorsetshire, and he said it and he talked his full share till called upon. Yet he ran his jokes and his verses upon us all in the easiest manner, saying something characteristic of every body, or avoiding it with a pun; and he introduced so agreeably a piece of village scandal, upon which the party had been rallying Campbell, that the poet, though not unjealous of his dignity, was, perhaps, the most pleased of us all. Theodore afterwards sat down to the pianoforte, and enlarging upon this subject made an extempore, |