NOTE 6. Page 117.

Meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing; and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words,

·‘jurisque secundi

Ambitus impatiens, er summo dulcius unum

Stare loco,'

than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, which, most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection:

'And impotent desire to reign alone,

That scorns the dull reversion of a throne.'

But the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, is a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original; and this for two reasons: First, Because Dr. Joseph Warton has deliberately asserted, that in our whole literature, we have scarcely eight more beautiful lines than these;' and though few readers will subscribe to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these must be wonderful lines for a boy, which could challenge such commendation from an experienced polyhistor of infinite reading. Secondly, Because the lines contain a night-scene. Now it must be well known to many readers, that the famous night-scene in the Iliad, so familiar to every schoolboy, has been made the subject, for the last thirty years, of severe, and in many respects. of just criticisms. This description will therefore have a double interest by comparison; whilst, whatever may be thought of either taken separately for itself, considered as a translation, this which we now quote is as true to Statius as the other is undoubtedly faithless to Homer:

'Jamque per emeriti surgens confinia Phœbi

Titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti

Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera biga.

Jam pecudes volucresque tacent: jam somnus avaris
Inserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat,

Grata laboratæ referens oblivın vitæ.'

Theb. i. 336-341

"T was now the time when Phoebus yields to night,

And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light;

Wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew

Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew.

All birds and beasts lie hush'd. Sleep steals away

The wild desires of men and toils of day;

And brings, descending through the silent air,

A sweet forgetfulness of human care

NOTE 7. Page 118.

One writer of that age says, in Cheapside; but probably this difference arose from contemplating Lombard Street as a prolongation of Cheapside.

NOTE 8. Page 123.

Dr. Johnson said, that all he could discover about Mr. Cromwell, was the fact of his going a hunting in a tie-wig; but Gay has added another fact to Dr. Johnson's by calling him, honest katless Cromwell with red breeches ' This epithet has puzzled the commentators; but its import is obvious enough. Cromwell, we learn from more than one person, was anxious to be considered a fine gentleman, and devoted to women. Now it was long the custom in that age for such persons, when walking with ladies, to carry their hats in their hand. Louis XV. used to ride by the side of Madame de Pompadour hat in hand.

NOTE 9. Page 127.

It is strange enough to find, not only that Pope had so frequently kept rough copies of his own letters, and that he thought so well of them as to repeat the same letter to different persons, as in the case of the two lovers killed by lightning, or even to two sisters, Martha and Therese Blount, (who were sure to communicate their letters,) and that even Swift hal retained copies of his

NOTE 10. Page 138.

The word undertake had not yet lost the meaning of Shak speare's age, in which it was understood to describe those cases where, the labor being of a miscellaneous kind, some person in

chief offered to overlook and conduct the whole, whether with or without personal labor. The modern undertaker, limited to the care of funerals, was then but one of numerous cases to which the term was applied.

NOTE 11. Page 151.

We may illustrate this feature in the behavior of Pope to Savage. When all else forsook him, when all beside pleaded the insults of Savage for withdrawing their subscriptions, Pope sent his in advance. And when Savage had insulted him also, arrogantly commanding him never to presume to interfere or meddle in his affairs,' dignity and self-respect made Pope obedient to these orders, except when there was an occasion of serving Savage. On his second visit to Bristol, (when he returned from Glamorganshire,) Savage had been thrown into the jail of the city. One person only interested himself for this hopeless profigate, and was causing an inquiry to be made about his debts at the time Savage died. So much Dr. Johnson admits; but he forgets to mention the name of this long-suffering friend. B was Pope. Meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the lying legend of Savage; he was doubtless no son of Lady Macclesfield's, but an impostor, who would not be sent to the tread-mill.

CHARLES LAMB.

Ir sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a lad sense, to say that in every literature of large compass some authors will be found to rest much of the interest which surrounds them on their essential non-popularity. They are good for the very reason that they are not in conformity to the current taste. They interest because to the world they are not interesting. They attract by means of their repulsion. Not as though it could separately furnish a reason for loving a book, that the majority of men had found it repulsive. Primá fucie, it must suggest some presumption against a book, that it has failed to gain public attention. To have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a good sign. That argues power. Hatred may be promising. The deepest revolutions of mind sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to have left a reader unimpressed, is in itself a neutral result, from which the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even simple failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result from positive powers in a writer, from special originalities, such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of the ordinary understanding. It seems little to be perceived, how much the great scriptural idea

of the worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in literature as well as in life. In reality the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for recognizing its own; and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it does in the realities of life.

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class here contemplated; he, if ever any has, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to be for ever unpopular, and yet for ever interesting; interesting, moreover, by means of those very qualities which guarantee their non-popularity. The same qualities which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless. which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to command a select audience in every gene ration. The prose essays, under the signature of Elia, form the most delightful section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of