an empty puncheon clean through my brain. What a body mine for the wormsso full of healthy life! to be put under the earth like a bag of fermented jelly, which the cook has discarded from her kitchen, as no longer fit to be mingled with her kitchen-stuff."

He paused, groaned, and, withdrawing his eyes from the mirror, fixed them upon the lower extremity of the shroud, which was not succinct, but covered him to the very toes. He recommenced his melancholy soliloquy.

"I am no more of this world, surely! I cannot be alive-a man with a bullet through his sconce, cannot be alive;— it's quite impossible. And is this death? Is this to be among the angels? I am all alone, like a slug in an empty flower-pot! I seem to feel—and yet how should I?-a man with half-an-ounce of lead in his brains couldn't feel-I don't feel it's all fancy."

He at this moment knocked his nose against the edge of the shell, which made it contract like a squeezed worm, or a pocket telescope.

"And yet I do feel-my nose tingles as it was wont when Mrs. Joseph used to tweak it in the vehemence of her indignation. There is life then in death, or I'm no dead man. I know not what to think; by dad, I don't. Am I dead, or am I not? that is the question,' as the man said in the play. I should not have a shroud on, and be coffined, if I were alive. I am certainly dead-but how little fit to die! Had I lived longer, I should have loved spirits less. Oh it was too soon to call me from my comforts -a cruel call for me, as well as for poor Mrs. Joseph and the dear babbies. I shall never more behold her-never more see them-the chubby little dears! I shall never more visit the still-I'm still enough now! What a blockhead to fight! My name only will be remembered! This will be stuck over the shops of those who retail my rectified whiskey, when I shall be a sort of Lord Mayor's feast for worms!"

He carefully felt about his person, to ascertain if the worms had yet begun their banquet. He then sat up, and wept; but

seeing a basin of water near him, he plunged his hand into it, and mechanically raising it to his forehead, removed the black spot of charcoal. When he discovered that there was really no hole in his skull, of which a more minute examination in the glass soon convinced him, he shouted at the full pitch of his voice-"I am not dead!" and springing upon his feet, deliberately washed his face, divested his body of the shroud, and, seating himself in a chair, cried exultingly-"Thank God! I am a man again!"

The whole truth suddenly flashed upon his mind, and he perceived that he had been made the subject of a practical joke.

Vernon and Clifford, now thinking that the jest had been carried sufficiently far, advanced and congratulated Mr. Tomkins upon his fortunate escape. He looked very sheepish, from a consciousness of the want of spirit he had manifested in his late encounter with Clifford. The two friends offered him their congratulations with a mock gravity, which added extremely to his mortification. But when the whole truth reached the ears of Mrs. Tomkins, she flew into a violent rage, knocked her fair fists against the bed-posts, cracked a pitcher with the rapid momentum by which she jerked her foot out of its ordinary line of progression, and tore an India muslin dressing-gown, by hitching it in the fractured handle. She railed against poor Tomkins, to whom she applied all the vituperative epithets in her vocabulary, 'and for many weeks after twitted him with the adventure at Chalk Farm.

Clifford did not repeat his visits to the mercurial spouse of the wealthy distiller; and she, therefore, shortly directed the focus of her attractions towards a more humble suitor. A few months after the duel, it became the general gossip of the neighbourhood, that Mrs. Tomkins had absconded with a young tallow-chandler ; and that Mr. Tomkins had consequently got rid of a great plague: he was therefore vastly indebted to the man of wax (for all his candles were not tallow) for the abduction, with her own free will and consent, of the compliant Mrs. Joseph Tomkins.

Surry. Welcome among us, my noble descendant, Lord Carlisle you have lingered long on earth.

Carlisle. I found it wearisome and painful at last.

Surry. Yours were days of peace and luxury;—mine of trouble, peril, and bloodshed!

Carlisle. But yours were days of chivalry and glory; mine of revolutions and mobgovernment.

Surry. It was not chivalrous to die by the axe, on false accusations, at the command of a jealous tyrant.

Carlisle. Danger sweetens the hours of security: we had better pass our lives in vigorous contrasts.

model of Marino; but you cannot accuse me of it, if you look to my song addressed to Althea.

Pembroke. We passed our days in an amorous gallantry; and my love-poems, as well as Lovelace's, will, I hope, be found to have some passion.

Middlesex. An hundred years afterwards I had also the credit of writing elegant love-songs.

Surry. Your sword, Colonel Lovelace, was ready in the cause of loyalty, as well as your pen in the cause of the ladies.

Lovelace. It was a cause in which I suffered forfeiture, and the dreadful poverty of which I died.

Pembroke. A sudden and easy death re

Carlisle. Yes! Ennui consumed half days.

my

Surry. I am aware that these late times were mortifying to rank; but were they to literary genius?

Carlisle. The question is, what is literary genius? When I was old, the English public judged differently of it than in my youth. Literature latterly partook of the revolutionary character of the age.

Surry. To speak frankly, they thought you a little too finical.

Lovelace. Yes; you had not enough of passion or simplicity. You brought with you too much of the artifices of the great schools. You was of the ornate or florid style.

Carlisle. I know not, Colonel Lovelace, that authors of your date are entitled to make this criticism.

Lovelace. I allow that many of my cotemporaries followed the quaint and false

Middlesex. Mine was a gay life in calmer times, but not a happy one.

Surry. There is no pleasure but in an energetic discharge of our duty. There is no joy in effeminate ease. All the faculties must not only be kept alive, but rendered acute and strong by constant and persevering exercise. The senses become dull by indulgence in prolonged rest. By listening with intensity to the elements, we shall understand their language. For the winds, and the seas, and the thunders, speak to us; and the voices of aërial spirits travel upon the breeze. The short time I passed on earth, I endeavoured to polish my mind, as well as to strengthen my hand and my heart. I imported from Italy the sweetness of some of its lyrical compositions, and endeavoured to impart some elegance to our ruder poetry.

Middlesex. We all know how much just and generous admiration is due to you, and how delightfully you have illustrated the heroic and accomplished name of HOWARD.

Surry. How heartily I may return the compliment! Who greater than SACKVILLE

and BUCKHURST? Who can forget the Legend of Buckingham, and the brilliant, vigorous, and picturesque Induction?

Carlisle. We had almost forgot our old poetry when I came into life, till the Wartons and Percy began to revive it. I think that some time afterwards the study of it was carried too far. It introduced an affectation of obsoleteness, and a rude or quaint phraseology. Dr. Johnson thought so.

Middlesex. You had a partiality for Johnson: he thought well of your tragedy. But Johnson was not to my taste: I could not bear his pedantic pomp, and what, I believe, Horace Walpole called his "triplology."

Carlisle. I would not have chosen Johnson as a companion, any more than Lord Chesterfield would have done: but he had his revenge on Lord Chesterfield, who was a little-minded man.

Lovelace. In your time, men of high rank did not live much with men of literature:

Carlisle. That cannot be said. What were the cases of Burke, Sheridan, Hare, Trench, Lawrence, John Courtenay, Canning, George Ellis, and many others?

Lovelace. I do not think that this exactly contradicts my assertion. Politics, rather than literature, introduced these men.

Carlisle. I think it is happier for all to associate with those of their own station. Every class has its own manners.

Lovelace. The Puritan doctrines in my time confounded the peerage and commonalty. But the King was rather profuse of his peerages.

Carlisle. Yes, from the necessities of the crisis; but yet he cannot be much accused of want of selectness. He admitted scarcely any obscure names.

Lovelace. This is a difficult question;this adhesion to names, which are said not to be obscure. If we admit a new peerage, we must take into consideration personal merit.

Carlisle. Perhaps I would confine a peerage more to its old members, than the doctrines of the age admit to be just and reasonable.

Lovelace. Knowing, as we do here, what is passing above, I am aware that the character of the English peerage has entirely changed in the last half century.

Pembroke. I think the change has not been wise. The principles which justify it are principles which would uproot all peer

ages.

Carlisle. The ancient peerage stands upon the same ground as the ancient monarchy, and is coeval with it. It can hardly be said to spring from it, as from its fountain.

Pembroke. But how few there are of this class of the peerage-you would not have the peerage limited to them?

Carlisle. No: but still let these be distinguished from the others, as standing on a different title.

Middlesex. You are going very far back indeed; and refining upon this question with a vengeance.

Carlisle. I speak disinterestedly. I did not belong to this first class.

Lovelace. This whimsical idea amuses me. I must reflect upon it.

Carlisle. I have thrown it out: let us pass to something else.

Surry. We were proud and jealous of our nobility when I lived, and of our share of royal blood; and it cost us dear—no less than our heads.

Pembroke. I was prouder of the Sydney chivalry that flowed in my veins.

Middlesex. I allowed no adventitious considerations to colour the internal workings of my mind, and my bosom. I did not inquire whence I inherited the sensitiveness of my frame. I lamented that the languor, which, from whatever cause, oppressed me, disabled me from often bringing out and embodying that flow of sentiment which I so generally felt swelling within I said to myself, if this is the effect of rank, I wish I had been born in a lower station, where my energies would more have been called forth.

me.

Lovelace. This was an amiable and glorious mode of thinking, which placed you much higher than any rank could place you.

Middlesex. I threw aside all compositions of art, and looked only for natural sentiments and "wood-notes wild."

Pembroke. I wish I had been guided by the same taste: my poetry is now forgotten. Lovelace. But it has been latterly reprinted, as well as mine.

Pembroke. Yours has in consequence received some notice, but mine none.

Surry. Mine was never entirely neglected. I took the lead of my age, and this was a distinction which has kept me up. No secondary author, who is a mere follower of the fashion, ever lives. There is a freshness, a vivacity, a sincerity in originality, which imitators can never attain. We look

abroad upon nature, apprehend with clearness, and watch and embody ourown feelings and the visions that pass over our minds. Lovelace. It is a horrible guilt to put such men out of the world before their time. Surry. And my son also lost his head: and my grandson died, a young man, a prisoner in the Tower.

Lovelace. Such is the fate of lofty station in the days of arbitrary and relentless tyranny.

Middlesex. My cousin, the heroic Elizabeth, had somewhat too much of her father's temper.

Pembroke. But how she shines, with all her faults, before her pusillanimous and foolish successor.

Middlesex. What sad tales does the biography of greatness lay open! what crimes of ambition! what eccentricities and miseries of genius! what abuses of power! what persecutions of rivalry, jealousy and revenge! Independence in a secluded station, with health, books, and a rich and right mind, is all of valuable and solid that life can give. But then there must be content, arising from a knowledge how to appreciate the vanities and delusions of the world.

:

Lovelace. Yes all the show of life, and all the glitter of worldly pomp, is mere emptiness. It is but a gilded cloud, that vanishes in the embrace.

Carlisle. I found England safe from the violence of former ages, though the storm of revolution at one crisis approached our shores; and we had agitators who were willing to go all lengths. Pitt's firmness contributed much to preserve us; and had he not met with courage as well as ability the doctrines which my friend Fox, in his ambition to flatter the populace, very indiscreetly advocated, the bloodshed of France would have been repeated in England. Burke enlightened the thinking part of the nation, and turned off the delusion from their minds; but the head of our house unhappily assisted the voice of the eloquent demagogue, though no man had more of the haughtiness of aristocratic feelings. This is a contradiction of opinions and conduct less rare than would be supposed.

Pembroke. The late D- of N then, was an eccentric character. I was closely allied by marriage to his eccentric ancestor, delineated in such lively colours by Lord Clarendon, to whom in some points he seems to have borne a similitude, though he did not equally keep up his dignity.

VOL, X.-NO. 1.—JANUARY 1837.

Carlisle. The Suffolks and Effinghams kept up more familiarity with his Grace, than I did. In early life he had little chance of succeeding to the dukedom, and his habits were formed in another sphere of society. We all seek political power; but he enjoyed it in the shape and noise of electioneering intrigues.

Surry. And was it thus that my descendant and heir supported our chivalrous and poetical name?

Middlesex. No one, let him purify and exalt himself as much as he will, can secure stains from the blood he transmits.

Pembroke. The individual members of a family will be as wide from each other, as black from white. While one is glowing and generous, another is sharp, rapacious, cruel, and heartless ;-one is all light, another is all darkness; one is all genius, another all dulness; one melting as wax, another stubborn as the barren rock.

Middlesex. My grandfather, the witty companion of Rochester, did not bear much similarity in genius to his sombre ancestor Buckhurst, whose shadowy personifications were worthy of his prototype Dante.

Carlisle. Nothing is more strange than that that poem is so little known; because it has all the invention of Spenser, and all his poetical picturesqueness, while the colours are of a darker and deeper tint, and the language and versification are scarcely more obsolete.

Middlesex. It is impossible to argue on the caprice of popular appetite. The popular reader never really enjoys old poetry. Not one of this class can be found, who sincerely enjoys Spenser. It is nothing but the supremacy of his name which makes them fear to own, that they do not relish him. The modern routine of phraseology is all that they can apprehend.

Lovelace. But obsolete language is more often that which was artificial and studied, than the simple diction of the day in which it was written. I made a rule to myself to use the simplest and clearest form and order of words; and now at the end of nearly two centuries, there is not a word obsolete, nor out of its due and accustomed place, in my song to Althea.

Carlisle. You are right, and claim to yourself no more merit than is justly due to you. It is the elaborate language of studied learning, which grows obsolete. What ridiculously quaint stuff appeared to us that language which was admired in the

E

phuism!

Middlesex. The language of old George Wither, who wrote with a flowing pen, is not obsolete, though it is something too colloquial and vulgar.

Lovelace. But there are many very poetical pages in Wither, especially in his Shepherd's Hunting. I say this in justice to him, though I hated his factious politics, his querulous temper, and his uncourtly invectives.

Pembroke. I felt disgust at his puritanic cant. I saw many vices in the Court; but his spirit of detraction was malignant.

Middlesex. He suffered for it after the Restoration, and, I believe, died in prison.

Pembroke. My brother and successor took a part in those perilous troubles, which I wish could be blotted out from our family history.

Middlesex. Yes; and he did not use well the widow of my collateral ancestor, the famous Lady Anne Clifford, whose heroic father, George Earl of Cumberland, shone so brightly in the Elizabethan annals. What a curious memoir she has left of her own life!

Carlisle. She was the feudal Queen of our Cumberland and Westmorland districts, and her memory is yet venerated in the North. What a beautiful history has Dr. Whitaker given of that illustrious family in his History of Craven. Those, at least, must be admitted to have been ancient nobility. Will any one be so cold and unimaginative as not to feel the influence of such transmitted memorials? nor venerate the blood of Plantagenet and Tudor, as well as of all the old Anglo-Norman peerage, which centred in them?

Lovelace. I hear it echoed from above by many a voice, whencesoever the feeling may arise, that we have heard too much and too often of this, and that it is time to silence it as a worn-out tale! I am not one of those who pay much attention to such sarcasms: among a nobility, of whom the greater part are new and obscure, such attempts are

of the newest, are very glad to insult the absolute parvenus, they are equally desirous to veil over historical antiquity, and establish rules to exalt themselves and depress their superiors. Families may be ancient; yet not only not noble, but obscure.

Middlesex. You, Lord Carlisle, are accused of having neglected your young relation, when your countenance might have been of use to him.

Carlisle. I am not sure that I can entirely acquit myself. His mother had offended me; but I ought not on that account to have been cold to the son; nor is it perhaps any excuse that I was not aware of his genius. He was not of my blood; but I was of his, by my mother. He did not, therefore, belong properly to my protection. I had known his father; but circumstances had now thrown us entirely asunder from each other. His predecessor in the title had secluded himself from the world before I came into its society. I had contracted habits and manners so different from those in which the boy had by his ill fate moved, and I imagined that I saw so much of his mother's temper in him, that a renewal of our alliance was painful to me. Unluckily for me, if not for him, it turned out that I was wrong; and I had severe cause to repent, for he took ample vengeance on me. He afterwards electrified me by his genius, but it was too late the die was cast! However, I will still be frank enough to say, that the school of his poetry was not in all respects to my taste. It had too much occasionally of the roughness and violence of his own temper.

Middlesex. You are accused of fastidious

ness.

Carlisle. This may have been true. When I was young, the ancient nobles, as you well know, were a separate class: and they who had been brought up in another society were, however ancient themselves, alien to them. Captain Byron had lived in the high rank becoming his birth; but he died when his son was a very infant.