CRUMBS FROM THE "NOCTES"

MISS MITFORD

North. Miss Mitford has not in my opinion either the pathos or humour of Washington Irving; but she excels him in vigorous conception of character, and in the truth of her pictures of English life and manners. Her writings breathe a sound, pure, and healthy morality, and are pervaded by a genuine rural spirit-the spirit of merry England. Every line bespeaks the lady.

Shepherd. I admire Miss Mitford just excessively. I dinna wunner at her being able to write sae weel as she does about drawing-rooms wi' sofas and settees, and about the fine folk in them seeing themsels in lookin-glasses frae tap to tae; but what puzzles the like o' me, is her pictures o' poachers, and tinklers, and pottery-trampers, and ither neerdoweels, and o' huts and hovels without riggin' by the wayside, and the cottages o' honest puir men, and byres, and barns, and stackyards, and merry-makins at winter ingles, and courtship aneath trees, and at the gable-end of farm houses, 'tween lads and lasses as laigh in life as the servants in her father's ha'. That's the puzzle, and that's the praise. But ae word explains a'— Genius-Genius, wull a' the metafhizzians in the warld ever expound that mysterious monosyllable.-Nov., 1826.

HAZLITT

Shepherd. He had a curious power that Hazlitt, as he was ca'd, o' simulatin' sowl. You could hae taen your Bible oath sometimes, when you were readin him, that he had a sowl -a human sowl-a sowl to be saved-but then, heaven preserve us in the verra middle aiblins o' a paragraph, he grew transformed afore your verra face into something bestial,— you heard a grunt that made ye grue, and there was an ill smell in the room, as frae a pluff o' sulphur.-April, 1827.

WORDSWORTH

Shepherd. Wordsworth tells the world, in ane of his prefaces, that he is a water-drinker-and its weel seen on him.-There

was a sair want of speerit through the haill o' yon lang "Excursion." If he had just made the paragraphs about ae half shorter, and at the end of every ane taen a caulker, like ony ither man engaged in geyan sair and heavy wark, think na ye that his "Excursion" would hae been far less fatiguesome?-April, 1827.

North. I confess that the "Excursion" is the worst poem, of any character, in the English language. It contains about two hundred sonorous lines, some of which appear to be fine, even in the sense, as well as sound. The remaining seven thousand three hundred are quite ineffectual. Then, what labour the builder of that lofty rhyme must have undergone ! It is, in its own way, a small tower of Babel, and all built by a single man.-Sept., 1825.

COLERIDGE

North. James, you don't know S. T. Coleridge-do you? He writes but indifferent books, begging his pardon: witness his "Friend," his "Lay Sermons," and, latterly, his "Aids to Reflection"; but he becomes inspired by the sound of his own silver voice, and pours out wisdom like a sea. Had he a domestic Gurney, he might publish a Moral Essay, or a Theological Discourse, or a Metaphysical Disquisition, or a Political Harangue, every morning throughout the year during his lifetime.

Tickler. Mr. Coleridge does not seem to be aware that he cannot write a book, but opines that he absolutely has written several, and set many questions at rest. There's a want of some kind or another in his mind; but perhaps when he awakes out of his dream, he may get rational and sober-witted, like other men, who are not always asleep.

Shepherd. The author o' "Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner," had better just continue to see visions, and dream dreams for he's no fit for the wakin' world.—April, 1827.

FASHIONABLE NOVELS

North. James, I wish you would review for Maga all those fashionable novels-Novels of High Life; such as Pelhamthe Disowned.

Shepherd. I've read thae twa, and they're baith gude. But the mair I think on't, the profounder is my conviction

that the strength o' human nature lies either in the highest or lowest estate of life. Characters in books should either be kings, and princes, and nobles, and on a level with them, like heroes; or peasants, shepherds, farmers, and the like, includin' a' orders amaist o' our ain working population. The intermediate class—that is, leddies and gentlemen in generalare no worth the Muse's while; for their life is made up chiefly o' mainners,-mainners,-mainners ;-you canna see the human creters for their claes; and should ane o' them commit suicide in despair, in lookin' on the dead body, you are mair taen up wi' its dress than its decease.-March, 1829.

WILL CARLETON

Shepherd. What sort o' vols., sir, are the Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry [W. Carleton], published by Curry in Dublin.

North. Admirable. Truly, intensely Irish. The whole book has the brogue-never were the outrageous whimsicalities of that strange, wild, imaginative people so characteristically displayed; nor, in the midst of all the fun, frolic, and folly, is there any dearth of poetry, pathos, and passion. The author's a jewel, and he will be reviewed next number.— May, 1830.

BURNS

Shepherd. I shanna say ony o' mine's [songs] are as gude as some sax or aucht o' Burns's-for about that number o' Robbie's are o' inimitable perfection. It was heaven's wull that in them he should transcend a' the minnesingers o' this warld. But they're too perfeckly beautifu' to be envied by mortal man—therefore let his memory in them be hallowed for evermair.-August, 1834.

Shepherd. I was wrang in ever hintin ae word in disparagement o' Burn's Cottar's Saturday Night. But the truth is, you see, that the subjeck's sae heeped up wi' happiness, and sae charged wi' a' sort o' sanctity-sae national and sae Scottish-that beautifu' as the poem is-and really, after a', naething can be mair beautifu'-there's nae satisfying either paesant or shepherd by ony delineation o't, though drawn in lines o' licht, and shinin' equally w' genius and wi' piety.Nov., 1834.

LEIGH HUNT

Shepherd. Leigh Hunt truly loved Shelley.

North. And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt. Their friendship was honourable to them both, for it was as disinterested as sincere; and I hope Gurney will let a certain person in the City understand that I treat his offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt's London Journal with disdain. If he has anything to say against us or against that gentleman, either conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other channel, and I promise him a touch and taste of the Crutch. He talks to me of Maga's desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian-nay, a man-his heart and head too would tell him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever-and that Leigh Hunt has more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods. Mr. Hunt's London Journal, may dear James, is not only beyond all comparison, but out of all sight, the most entertaining and instructive of all the cheap periodicals; and when laid, as it duly is once a week, on my breakfast table, it lies there-but is not permitted to lie long-like a spot of sunshine dazzling the snow.-Aug., 1834.

27-(2438)

ANONYMOUS ON COLERIDGE

[From Blackwood's Magazine, October, 1817]

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE "BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA" OF S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ., 1817 WHEN a man looks back on his past existence, and endeavours to recall the incidents, events, thoughts, feelings, and passions of which it was composed, he sees something like a glimmering land of dreams, peopled with phantasms and realities undistinguishably confused and intermingled-here illuminated with dazzling splendour, there dim with melancholy mists, or it may be shrouded in impenetrable darkness. To bring, visibly and distinctly before our memory, on the one hand, all our hours of mirth and joy, and hope and exultation, —and, on the other, all our perplexities, and fears and sorrows, and despair and agony,-(and who has been so uniformly wretched as not to have been often blest ?-who so uniformly blest as not to have been often wretched ?)-would be as impossible as to awaken, into separate remembrance, all the changes and varieties which the seasons brought over the material world,-every gleam of sunshine that beautified the Spring, every cloud and tempest that deformed the Winter. In truth, were this power and domination over the past given unto us, and were we able to read the history of our lives all faithfully and perspicuously recorded on the tablets of the inner spirit, those beings, whose existence had been most filled with important events and with energetic passions, would be the most averse to such overwhelming surveywould recoil from trains of thought which formerly agitated and disturbed, and led them, as it were, in triumph beneath the yoke of misery or happiness. The soul may be repelled from the contemplation of the past as much by the brightness and magnificence of scenes that shifted across the glorious drama of youth, as by the storms that scattered the fair array into disfigured fragments; and the melancholy that breathes from vanished delight is, perhaps, in its utmost intensity, as unendurable as the wretchedness left by the visitation of calamity. There are spots of sunshine sleeping on the fields