hunter, with a look of commisera-
tion at me: but I thought, secretly,
that others were still more dis-
agreeable.
• But Mr Murray's

quite at ease, when the next day fessor. Ah! I suppose I must they both made their appearance. take it on my knee.'-'You are The Professor presented me for- very disagreeable,' said the fairymally. Herr Fairy-hunter made a great many bows; and as so many bows involve a good many curtsies, I inclined nearly as often. Then, with a last reverence he spoke, in Hand-book says it is dangerous to English, and said, very slowly,- take a heavy carriage over the 'I complain of you much, that you hills of Norway, and certainly a are so disagreeable; but now I roll down among such et ceteras make an extra.' I made my last would not be pleasant,' I added. reverence in reply. Such a speech, Herr Fairy-hunter moved uneasily by way of a complimentary one, on his chair, worked his hands towas rather startling, and not a little gether, shook his head disprovingly, alarming. I looked nervously at and said, 'You must be complained the Professor, who, with profound of."" Miss Bunbury at last sucgravity, interpreted his friend's ceeded in finding a guide and commeaning thus, 'He pities you for panion. being so disagreeably circumstanced; but he is making an abridgSCIENCE AND COMMERCE. ment of his book, and, therefore, The commercial world owes to cannot now make his tour.' I two retired philosophers, in the bowed with a sense of relief, and solitude of their study, Locke and the fairy-hunter and myself ex- Smith, those principles which digchanged some sentences which I do nify trade into a liberal pursuit, not record, as I believe the fairies and connect it with the happiness alone would be able to understand of a people. the language. 'I have got another plan for you,' said the Professor; "yes, this is the very thing. A The virtuous Duke of Montauteacher of music here wishes to sier, governor of the Dauphin of take his wife and child into the France in the reign of Louis XIV, country, and one of our opera- would never suffer his pupil to read voices, who also speaks Italian- the dedications that were addressed which you do likewise-will go to him. One day, however, he diswith them. They will all join you; covered him reading one of these but as they must leave their affairs epistles in private; but, instead of here, they expect you will pay all taking it from him, he obliged him the travelling expenses. They will to read it aloud, and, stopping him bring their own provisions, because at the end of every phrase, said, there are none to be got on the "Do you not see, sir, that they are road. That is fair.'-Very fair, laughing at you with impunity? indeed,' I answered, 'the very Can you sincerely believe yourself thing. I complain of you much!' possessed of all the good qualities murmured the fairy-hunter, look- ascribed to you? Can you read, ing at me compassionately. You without indignation, such gross must, then, take a carriage,' said flattery, which they would not the Professor.-'It will be quite presume to offer without having filled,' I replied. Four persons, the lowest opinion of your underwith horse-cloaks, pipes, tobacco-standing?"

DEDICATIONS.

pouches, provisions, and luggage !' At a time when the ministers of And the child,' added the Pro-state were frequently changed in

France, a certain author dedicated [ ful to M. de Chastellux, who saw his piece to the Brazen Horse, on that Madame Necker said word the Pont-Neuf; "for I am per- for word what she had written in suaded," said he, "that my patron her pocket-book. will long remain in place.'

LITERARY DINNERS.

"I knew a person," says Menage, "who occasionally gave entertainments to authors. His fancy was to place them at table, each according to the size and thickness of the volumes they had published, commencing with the folio authors, and proceeding through the quarto and octavo, down to the duodecimo, each according to his rank."

SIDNEY SMITH.

Smith observing Lord Brougham's one-horse carriage, he remarked to a friend, alluding to the B surrounded by a coronet on the panel, "There goes a carriage with à B outside and a wasp within."

SIDNEY SMITH AND LANDSEER.

A friend once sent Smith a note, requesting him to sit for his portrait to Landseer, the great animalpainter. Sidney wrote back, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?"

LOCKE AND SCOTT-ON ACQUIRING

KNOWLEDGE.

Mr. Locke was asked how he had contrived to accumulate a mine of knowledge so rich, yet so extensive and deep. He replied, that he attributed what little he knew to the not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to the rule he had laid down of conversing with all descriptions of men, on those topics chiefly that formed their own peculiar professions or pursuits.

him. This will account for the fact that he seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of everything.

MADAME NECKER'S TABLE-TALK. During one day, at Madame Sir Walter Scott gives us to underNecker's, the Chevalier de Chas- stand, that he never met with any tellux happened to arrive first of man, let his calling be what it the company, and so early that the might, even the most stupid felmistress of the house was not in low that ever rubbed down a horse, the drawing-room. In walking from whom he could not, by a few about, he saw on the ground, under moments' conversation, learn someMadame Necker's chair, a little thing which he did not before book, which he picked up; it was know, and which was valuable to a white paper book, of which several pages were in the handwriting of Madame Necker. It was the preparation for the very dinner to which he was invited. Madame Necker had written it the evening Noah Webster, in the preface to before, and it contained all she was his own Dictionary of the English to say to the most remarkable per- Language, thoroughly disparages sons at table. After reading the Dr. Johnson's, and most Americans little book, M. de Chastellux has-are of Webster's opinion. When tened to replace it under the chair. Stuart, their distinguished painter, A moment afterwards, a valet-de- was introduced to the leviathan of chambre entered to say, that Ma- our literature, Johnson, surprised dame Necker had forgotten her at his speaking such good English, pocket-book in the drawing-room. asked him where he learnt it; and It was found and carried to Madame Stuart's cool reply was, "Not in Necker. The dinner was delight-your dictionary!" In addition to

AMERICAN PRONUNCIATION.

BISHOP NEWTON AND HAWKESWORTH.

215

The doctor was writing his Inquiry into the present State of Polite Learning in a wretched, dirty room, in which there was but one chair; and when he, from civility, offered it to his visitant, he was obliged to seat himself in the window. Such was the humble abode of one of the first of English writers; and such was the place where two of the finest productions of English literature were written.

ADAM SMITH.

the use of words which are only to be found in their own vocabulary, they have notions of pronunciation that are peculiarly their private property. It is not the fashion with us, as we have already observed, to call "beauty" booty, nor "duty" dooty, nor "due" doo; neither would the adoption of tew for "too," nor of noos for "news," nor of en-gine for "éngine," nor of genu-ine for "génuine," of deefe for "deaf," of en-quirry for " enquiry,' and countless similar expressions, slip very glibly off our tongues; This distinguished philosopher but if you only ask an American was remarkable for absence of why he so pronounces them, he mind. As an anecdote of this pewill tell you that he believes it to culiarity, it is related of him, that be the right way; and if you re- having one Sunday morning walked mind him that there are no such into his garden at Kirkaldy, dressed words as he occasionally uses, in in little more than his night-gown, the English language, his answer he gradually fell into a reverie, from will be, "There mayn't be in yours, which he did not awaken till he but there are in ours!"-(Alfred found himself in the streets of DunBunn's Old England and New Eng- fermline, a town at least twelve land.) miles off. He had in reality trudged along the king's highway all that disGOLDSMITH AT GREEN ARBOR COURT. tance in the pursuit of a certain train The lover of literature will walk of ideas, and he was only eventually up the Break-neck Stairs, between stopped in his progress by the bells Seacoal Lane and the Old Bailey, of Dunfermline, which happened at with great pleasure, when he re- the time to be ringing the people flects that it will lead to Green to church. His appearance in a Arbor Court, where Goldsmith wrote his Vicar of Wakefield and his Traveller.

A friend of the doctor, paying him a visit in this place in March, 1759, found him in a lodging so poor and miserable that, he says, he should not have thought it proper to have mentioned the circumstance did he not consider it as the highest proof of the splendour of Goldsmith's genius and talents, that, by the bare exertion of their powers, under every disadvantage of person and fortune, he could gradually emerge from such obscurity to the enjoyment of all the comforts and even the luxuries of life, and admission into the best societies of London.

crowded church, on a Scotch Sunday morning, in his night-gown, is left to the imagination of the reader.

BISHOP NEWTON AND HAWKESWORTH.

So sensible was even the calm Bishop Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, by contradicting Newton in his old age; for no man was of "a more fearful temper." Whiston declares that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton's Chronology in his lifetime, "because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet's chap

CAVENDISH'S DISREGARD OF MONEY.

To the anecdotes given in a previous part of this volume, illustrative of the eccentricities of this great chemist, may here be added the following, characteristic of his disregard of money :

666

Sir, there is a person below, who wants to speak to you.'

666

'Who is he? Who is he! What does he want with me? "He says he is your banker, and must speak to you.'

"Mr. Cavendish, in great agitation, desires he may be sent up, and, before he entered the room, cries,' What do you come here for? What do you want with me?'

"Sir, I thought it proper to wait upon you, as we have a very large balance in hand of yours, and wish for your orders respecting it.'

"If it is any trouble to you, I will take it out of your hands. Do not come here to plague me.'

"Not the least trouble to us, sir, not the least; but we thought you might like some of it to be invested.'

Well! well! What do you want to do?'

"Perhaps you would like to have forty thousand pounds invested.'

"Do so! Do so, and don't come here and trouble me, or I will remove it."

BURKE.

"The bankers (says Mr. Pepys) It was a fine compliment which where he kept his accounts, in Johnson, when debilitated by sicklooking over their affairs, found he ness, paid to Burke-the only man had a considerable sum in their who was a match for that converhands, some say nearly eighty thou-sational tyrant: "That fellow calls sand pounds, and one of them said, forth all my powers. Were I to that he did not think it right that see Burke now it would kill me." it should lie so without investment." Can he wind into a subject, like a He was therefore commissioned to serpent, as Burke does?" was the wait upon Mr. Cavendish, who at shrewd question put to Boswell by that time resided at Clapham. Goldsmith. Upon his arrival at the house he desired to speak to Mr. Cavendish. "The servant said, 'What is your business with him?'

"He did not choose to tell the

servant.

"The servant then said, 'You must wait till my master rings his bell, and then I will let him know.' "In about a quarter of an hour the bell rang, and the banker had the curiosity to listen to the conversation which took place.

DOCTOR JOHNSON IN CONVERSATION.

Tyers says of Johnson, though his time seemed to be bespoke, and quite engrossed, his house was always open to all his acquaintance, new and old. His amanuensis has given up his pen, the printer's devil has waited on the stairs for a proofsheet, and the press has often stood still, while his visitors were delighted and instructed. No subject ever came amiss to him. He could

I

transfer his thoughts from one thing | ridge lecture on Shakspeare. to another with the most accommo- might have sat as wisely, and more dating facility. He had the art, comfortably, by my own fireside, for which Locke was famous, of leading people to talk of their favourite subjects, and on what they knew best. By this he acquired a great deal of information. What he once learned he rarely forgot. They gave him their best conversation, and he generally made them pleased with themselves for endeavouring to please him.

for no Coleridge appeared. I shall never forget the effect his conversation made upon me at the first meeting at a dinner-party. It struck me not only as something quite out of the ordinary course of things, but as an intellectual exhibition altogether matchless. The viands were unusually costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied; but Poet Smart used to relate, "that there seemed to be no dish like his first conversation with Johnson Coleridge's conversation to feed was of such variety and length, that upon, and no information so instrucit began with poetry and ended in tive as his own. The orator rolled fluxions." He always talked as if himself up, as it were, in his chair, he was talking upon oath. He was and gave the most unrestrained the wisest person, and had the most indulgence to his speech; and how knowledge in ready cash, that I fraught with acuteness and originever had the honour to be acquain-ality was that speech, and in what ted with. Johnson's advice was copious and eloquent periods did it consulted on all occasions. He was flow! The auditors seemed rapt in known to be a good casuist, and therefore had many cases submitted for his judgment. His conversation, in the judgment of several, was thought to be equal to his correct writings. Perhaps the tongue will throw out more animated expressions than the pen. He said the most common things in the newest manner. He always commanded attention and regard.

DOCTOR BIRCH.

Of Dr. Birch, Johnson was used to speak in this manner: "Tom is a lively rogue; he remembers a great deal, and can tell many pleasant stories; but a pen is to Tom a torpedo; the touch of it benumbs his hand and his brain. Tom can talk; but he is no writer."

wonder and delight, as one conversation, more profound or clothed in more forcible language than another, fell from his tongue. He spoke for nearly two hours with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. As I returned homewards to Kensington, I thought a second Johnson had visited the earth, to make wise the sons of men, and regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell, to record the wisdom and the eloquence that fell from the orator's lips.

"The manner of Coleridge was emphatic rather than dogmatic, and thus he was generally and satisfactorily listened to. It might be said of Coleridge, as Cowper has so happily said of Sir Philip Sidney, that he was the 'warbler of poetic prose.' There was always this characteristic COLERIDGE'S TALK. feature in his multifarious converDr. Dibdin has given an anima-sation-it was always delicate, reted description of Coleridge's lec- verent, and courteous. The chastest turing and conversation, which ear could drink in no startling concurs with the universal opinion. sound; the most serious believer "I once came from Kensington, never had his bosom ruffled by in a snow-storm, to hear Mr. Cole- one sceptical or reckless assertion.