youth with sensations that few can appreciate, and none sufficiently express; forgetting for awhile, in dwelling on the days gone by, it was but a shadow I grasped at, which mocks us the more as our feelings are awakened, and never visits us without leaving its sting. Yet for the moment I felt more pleasure in mingling with things that were not, save in the memory and in the imagination, than the worldling in his dearest of sensual delights. Before me once stood the throne of my venerable tutor, from whence he issued his mandates and his laws, imperative as those of the Spartans, unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians. Here he reigned in absolute monarchy; the great and the little trembled at his nod; and his subjects, however they might murmur, dared not complain. I fancied him before me now-I beheld my school-mates around his chair-and I was among them, once more a boy. There sat one I loved; there, one I feared. Here was the tyrant of the school; and here one more dangerous— the master's favourite. All were before me, bending over their books, and I was among them, once more a boy. The sharp, penetrating eye of the tutor glanced over the circle; his warning voice was heard, and the more awful sound of his

cane, as it struck against his desk,

of

made the attentive, careful, and the idle, studious. Now the hum of business met my ear, and the call to examination. Some full of confidence, others of terror, arranged themselves round the master's seat. It was over. The wild uproar dismissal, and then the whoop from the play-ground, aroused me from my reverie. I was a boy no longer. I went to the place where I had so often joined in the revels of my playmates. It was no more what it then was. Cattle were quietly grazing there. Yet every spot of it was familiar to me, and 1 recognised every where some object that reminded me of joys which I have known, of happiness which I have felt. I was a poet in those early days, when most of warm passions and feelings are poets, and could pen a sonnet on a fair lady's eye, or a ballad to her eye-brows. For some time I went Eur. Mag. May, 1823.

hand in hand with the Muses, and they strewed flowers on my pathway: but the flowers withered, the Muses abandoned and my mistress jilted

me.

So the poetic fire was extinguished; I descended from my Pegasus, and drank no longer of that Castalian stream, whose waters gave Dr. Chandler the "stomach ache." I now stood on the very spot, still fresh in my memory, where my first stanzas were composed. The feasts on the banks of Helicon were dedicated to Love and the Muses. Cer tain it is, that without having been a lover no one was ever a poet. Love is the soul and source of poetry. It was so to me. Oh! with what feelings did I revert to those days when I loved, and thought not of deceit; when I shared my heart among the friends of my boyhood, and little dreamt that any would stab it to its core.

"But those who have lov'd, the fondest, the purest,

Too often have wept o'er the dream they believ'd;

And the heart that has slumber'd in friendship securest,

Is happy, indeed, if 'twas never deceiv'd."

It was in the morning of life, when hope brightens every thing, and the imagination dwells fondly on joys to come. When the heart, bidding pleasure all hail! walks flowers. There is not a shadow over forth gaily, and treads only on its path, or a blot on the page it studies. All its cares are ephemeral and die before the ardour of its own light. But the morning is succeeded by the noon; the feelings of man are changed; he finds the picture he has sketched has its shadows; and he learns, by mournful experience, how fading and how fleeting are all sublunary enjoyments; that happiness is but a syren's song, and charms to wound us; that pleasure is, indeed,

"The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below."

could gain little intelligence from its new inmates; and I sought to discover the residence of some of my old acquaintances, in order to learn the fate of my venerable tutor, and to hear something of the companions of my boyhood. I had little difficulty in finding the house of one of my school-fellows. He had lost all recollection of me, but he willingly gave me the information he possessed. He was the first I had seen for many years, with the exception of one, who was my friend at school. We met, long after our early intimacy, under circumstances of a me lancholy nature. We were both men, but we had not forgotten the sentiments of our youth. When we did meet, in was to part soon; he died in my arms. While a boy, he was remarkable for his pensive and almost gloomy disposition. It was this endeared him to me; for the countenance of sorrow always won ne more than that of joy. The heart speaks from it, and at least it does not deceive. It was far from our early haunts that we beheld each other. In him the sadness of his youth had been replaced only by despair; and he was on the bed from which he never rose. It seemed to me that some secret grief preyed upon his heart, and it must have been deeply seated. He never told it to me, and I respected the cause too much to ask it. But when he was dying he gave me a miniature, which he made me promise to bury with him in his grave. It was that of a female; the features were beautiful, but sad, like his own.-The man I now met was one of every day life, whom sorrow could scarcely touch, who cared little for the finer feelings of humanity, and who enjoyed them less. However, he told me much that I was anxious to know. My old master had been long dead Before his death he had been reduced almost to want, and owed all his comforts to one who had been his pupil. There was something very inelancholy in this; but how greatly was it softened, to hear that he had been led gently down the hill of life by him whom he had guided up it, who had rendered his pathway less rugged, and removed many a thorn from his pillow; that the tear I wept over it,

was not the only one that had glis tened on the old man's grave. It reminded me of the noble act of Pe trarch, who, while in poverty himself, pawned his most valuable and indeed his only property, his books, to console the misery and relieve the necessities of his old master, Convennole. I visited the church-yard where the good man's ashes reposed. I stood beside the grave over which his grateful pupil had raised a tablet to his memory, and I repeated the words engraven on it" may he rest in peace!" Not far from his bed slept one who had been his scholar. I knew his story, and it was a sad one. I remembered him when he was the gayest of the gay; when he trifled away life's morning, and spent it in folly, though not in vice. He hated thought and, with him, to be serious was to be dull. Like Beatrice, he seemed "born to speak all mirth, and no matter." He loved and then, like Benedict's, "his jesting spirit crept into a lutestring." He became altered, but improved. The passion, which gave Cymon a soul, taught him that man had other enjoyments than basking in the sunshine. His love was prosperous and fortune smiled; the smile was like the spring-blight to the flower, which comes tranquil as the breeze, but leaves behind it-death. Preparing himself for the profession of a surgeon, he studied in one of the Metropolitan Hospitals, and, his diploma obtained, he was to have been united to the object of his affections. Having been absent from the city, he had not seen her for some weeks. On the morning of his return he went to the hospital in which he studied, with his usual gay heart, whistling his favourite air to set care and sorrow at defiance, little dreaming of the precipice on which he stood; he entered the dissecting-room-and, beheld the body of the woman he loved. He never spoke; he never wept; but, from that moment reason left him, and he was soon in his grave at peace. She had died of a fever during his absence, and the circumstance that followed is of too common a nature to require explanation. He had not even heard of her illness; he had left her happy and in health; and he beheld her it was a blessing

IN pursuing our literary research es in the present day, we cannot but frequently observe the striking resemblance between various passages in the works of our best modern poets, either in character, images, or sentiment, or in some peculiar style or mode of expression; and this similarity is sometimes so close, as even to wear the appearance of direct imitation. But the reader must guard against forming a hasty conclusion on mere supposition. It will often happen, as a contemporary writer has justly observed, that the author whom we consider an imitator may be altogether unconscious of the resemblance; he may not even have read the work which he is thought to have followed; he may think a certain image original if he has not perceived it in the writings of another; or if he has read much, and, in general, allowed the thoughts of others to blend with his own, may after some time be unable to distinguish with precision the part which is his own from that which is borrowed. At all events, when two writers, who are nearly alike in their mode of thinking, happen to touch upon the same subject, it is highly probable that many of their ideas or expressions will appear as if taken from one another.

In illustration of the above remarks, I have selected the few following examples from the works of our best poets, as remarkable instances of coincidence of sentiment and similarity of description.

J.-" Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,

The God of life and poesy and light The Sun in human limbs array'd, and brow

All radiant from his triumph in the fight;

The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright

With an immortal's vengence; in his

eye

And nostril beautiful disdain, and might

And majesty flash their full lightnings
by,
Developing in that one glance the
Deity."

Childe Harold, Canto IV. st. clxi.

This beautiful picture of the Belvidere Apollo closely resembles the following passage: "An eternal spring of youth warms that celes tial countenance! Are you not awestruck by the majesty of the divinity in the calm turn of that head! in those luxuriant tresses waving as the golden hair of the God of Light should flow? There is nothing human about him-not a vein interrupts the softness, not a nerve swells the form; a celestial vapour circulates in the lovely contour of the whole figure! Disdain just opens his lips, indignation just breathes in his nostrils; but his forehead is smooth with perpetual tranquillity. Does he not seem to walk along the air? He does not touch the earth."

"

We may compare with these two passages the noble lines on the same subject in an Oxford prize poem, by the present Professor of Poetry in that University :

"Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky? Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry?

In settled majesty of fierce disdain, Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain,

The heav'nly archer stands—no human birth,

No perishable denizen of earth;
Youth blooms immortal in his beardless