"My lord-I would not have you take too much and winked knowingly at Charles to hold his tongue. physic; for it doth always make me worse, and 1 Shortly afterwards, the king was much amused by think it will do the like with you. I ride every day, perceiving the nobleman feeling one pocket after and am ready to follow any other directions from another in search of his treasure. At last he could you. Make haste to return to him that loves you. resist no longer; and, looking about him, (probably "To my Lord of Newcastle. CHARLES, P." to make certain that the thief had escaped,) he called The king's escape after Cromwell's "crowning out to the injured person, You need not, my lord, mercy" of Worcester, is one of the most remark-give yourself any more trouble about it; your box is able adventures in modern history; and is clearly, gone, and I own myself an accomplice. I could not though not very effectively, told by Mr. Jesse. help it, I was made a confidant.'" Many relics connected with the escape are still remaining, which those who want an autumn trip may go in search of.

The superiority of Charles, not merely in politeness and refinement of manner, but even in wit, will be best appreciated by comparing him with any of Zimri" of Dryden, was a man of acknowledged his courtiers. Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the wit; but how much of coarseness, or disregard of others' feelings-neither of which Charles ever allowed himself to indulge in-are visible in these anecdotes! There is, too, a vulgarity about them, which rudely jars against one's ideas of the man whose carriage was so graceful that the eye could not help following him as he moved along the

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witty."

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"BUCKINGHAM FOILING A JESUIT.

"Boscobel House is still standing-indeed, is almost in the same state as when it was visited by Charles; but the old mansion of White Ladies has been pulled down, though the ruins of its more ancient monastery still remain. Mosely Hall, the seat of the Whitegraves, with its green lanes and old gable-ends, is still an interesting relic of the past. Bentley Hall, the residence of the Lanes, and Abbotsleigh, the seat of the Nortons, are no more. The old house at Trent still remains, and, independent of Presence-chamber, and whose cognomen was the all other associations, would alone be rendered classic ground, from its church containing the monuments of the loyal Wyndhams. Hele has passed from the family of Hydes, and has been recently pulled down. Many other interesting mementos of Charles's wanderings are still in existence; but modern Vandalism, or what is styled improvement, will probably soon lay them in the dust. The old inns of Mere and Charmouth were recently in being, and may possibly be yet standing. Near the old parish church at Brighton may still be seen the tomb of Nicholas Tattersal, who conveyed the king to Fecamp. But the royal oak, the most interesting of all these relics, has long been gathered to his fathers. An offspring, however, sprung from one of the father acorns, still points out the memorable spot. An iron railing protects it from harm; and may it long be regarded with reverence by the lovers of the past!

"PRUDENCE OF A DEBAUCHEE.

"Charles never permitted the revels of the night to be referred to on the following morning. By this means he in some degree prevented the over-familiarity of his less eligible associates, and put a stop to expectations that he might have held out in the hilarity of the moment and the over-fulness of his heart. Among his boon companions, also, he seems to have been more on his guard than might have been expected. To one, who importuned him for a favour in one of his jovial moments, You had better,' he said, 'ask the king to-morrow.'

เ

"A CONFIDENT PICKPOCKET.

"Charles loved what may be called fun as much as the youngest of his courtiers. On one of his birthdays, an impudent rascal of a pickpocket had obtained admission to the drawing-room, in the garb of a gentleman. He had succeeded in extracting a gold snuff box from a nobleman's pocket, and was quietly transferring it to his own, when, looking up, he suddenly caught the king's eye, and discovered that he had been perceived by his majesty. The fellow, aware, in all probability, of the king's character, had the impudence to put his finger to his nose,

King James the Second took considerable interest in Buckingham's spiritual welfare, and by means of Fathers Petre and Fitzgerald endeavoured to convert him to popery. There is extant an account of his conference with the former divine, which affords an agreeable instance of Buckingham's wit. Father Petre,' says the relater of the anecdote, undertook to convert the Duke of Buckingham to popery; and, among other arguments that he was prepared with, set out with this, which these casuists commonly urge, and which, attacking the imagination in its weakest point, fear, draws in many silly people. We,' said the good Jesuit, deny that any one can possibly be saved out of our church; your grace allows that our people may be saved.' No, curse ye,' said the duke, 'I make no doubt but ye will be all damned to a man.' The reverend father started, and void of all charity.' I did not expect, my reverend said gravely, Sir, I cannot argue with a person so father,' said the duke calmly, 'such a reproach from you, whose whole reasoning with me was founded on the very same instance of want of charity in yourself.'

6

"BUCKINGHAM ON HIS DEATH-PED.

"An incident is related of Buckingham during his last illness, which, both as a death-bed anecdote, and as affording a last specimen of his peculiar humour, will be read with interest. The circumstance in question is related by the younger Richardson; who, however, unfortunately omits mentioning his authority. As Georg Villiers Duke of Buckingham was dying, which he did at an inn, the Duke of Queensbury, going down to Scotland, heard of it when he was within a few miles of the place, and went to make him a visit. Seeing him in this condition, he asked him if he would not have a clergyman? 'I look upon them,' said the duke, to be a parcel of very silly fellows, who don't trouble themselves about what they teach.' So Queensbury asked him if he would have his chaplain, for he was a dissenter? No,' says Buckingham, those fellows

From Blackwood's Magazine.
THE LATE JAMES SMITH.

anecdote but it lies chiefly among the dead and gone. The mention of Sheridan acts upon him with the effect of a match put to a firework. The composition goes off in a long succession of explosions, all Social qualities must be dear to mankind from the of the bluest kind, until every ear is tired, and then general regret which is felt when any one dis- the feu d'artifice, in every sense, drops dead to the tinguished for them leaves the world. We can part ground; and every one flies from the racket case. with nine-tenths of what are called public men, with Yet he has mixed a good deal in society; not the a very moderate sense of their loss to the communi- best, however; for it has been chiefly with the set ty. If the whole treasury bench were decimated to- gathered round the table of Holland House, where morrow, we question if a tear the more would be people are assembled for the declared purpose of shed in the circuit of the globe. We equally ques-talk, a process which makes every thing as formal tion whether a very considerable mortality at the bar as a parade in St. James's Park, as sets men minuet would occasion a national mourning; and we are dancing in odes, epodes, and "the last new tragedy," fully convinced that many individuals who, from and of course reduces all conversation to the dregs bustling and brawling in "the service of the public of an article in the Edinburgh Review. What and themselves," have acquired a habit of thinking must be, for instance, the dying state of a conversathat the world could by no means go on without tion where the noble host has called on every body them, would, in twenty-four hours, be nowhere found round the table to pull pencil and paper from his recorded but in the parish register. pocket, and write down on the spot the names of the ten most amusing books that he had ever read! And all those grown children have done the deed accordingly. A game at forfeits would have been rational, and a game at blind man's buff profitable, to those sexagenarian diversions.

But this was not the case with him whose name heads these pages. There were few men mixing in general society by whom he was not known, and fewer still by whom his easy pleasantry, his gentlemanly manners, and his unwearied good-humour, were not noticed as they deserved. James Smith was a wit; yet we never remember to have heard of his falling into the grand error of wits-sarcasm. Obviously awake to the follies round him, he was never severe; nor did he ever attempt to reinforce his merriment by offences to propriety in any form. He never urged conversation, and never declined it. He was always ready with his remark or his repartee; but the remark was never invidious, and the repartee never carried any personal sting. To those who have had many opportunities of meeting professed wits, and who have found them often the most uncertain, captious, and peevish of mankind, the pleasantry of James Smith always formed a happy exception. He was among the best, because the safest and easiest, conversationist whom we ever remember to have seen.

The talent of conversation is not quite so simple a thing as it is generally conceived. Even in the extensive and varied circle of London society, there have not been half-a-dozen in the last half-century, who had established any kind of name in this rather private path to renown. A man may have considerable knowledge, may have seen a great deal of the world, and may, besides, know well the ambition of figuring in the conversational world, without the talents of a good conversationist. The late Sir James Mackintosh had all these he had fluency of speech, and now and then brilliancy of conception. But he was given to talking over much-he often prosed alarmingly; his anecdotes were from hacks, his sentences had the formality, with but seldom the point of Johnson; and his recitations of verse, which were frequent and generally of merciless length, showed that he had taken the trouble of preparing his memory for the occasion, and that he was determined not to have his trouble thrown away.

"Conversation Sharpe," as he was called, was amusing and clever. But he repeated himself. Novelty is essential, and his was soon exhausted. The third time of meeting him was fatal to his

charms.

Rogers, the poet of Memory, has abundance of
MUSEUM.-Nov. 1840.

Jekyll was a good converser, for he had wit; though, as no man is perfect, his wit was often pun, and there are some specimens of it on record which are not to be mentioned to "ears polite." But the bar had made him too professional. He talked too much of old judges and their senilities; and though always diverting, grew more barristerial, until he grew little more than a relic of himself, and disappeared into his nightgown and slippers, and was no more for this world.

Canning was lively; but he had not a fund of talk for all days. He had high spirits, but was uncertain; and there were times when, like Hamlet, he seemed to think the earth "flat, stale, and unprofitable," and the sky a collection of pestilent vapours. The fluctuations of his public career might have, in some degree, accounted for this; for admirable as his house of commons talents were, he never felt himself recognised as one of the natural possessors of power. His obscure origin and narrow income always placed him in the light of an adventurer before the very courteous, but very arrogant, aristocracy of England.

If he got high office, it was always regarded by them as a piece of luck, pretty much like the luck of an adventurer who goes into a gaming-house with a shilling in his pocket, and comes out with a thousand pounds. It was all accounted for by the turn of the die. No man in public life was so often thrown off and thrown on. Even his final possession of the highest office produced only a gaze of astonishment from his own party, an instant secession of every man of rank among them, and that explosion of aristocratic scorn, which blew him over, singed and crippled as he was, into the ranks of the whigs, who nursed his bruises until they smothered him. Want of birth may be compensated by great fortune, want of fortune by high birth; but want of both is fatal to ministerial eminence in England.

But even in the midst of society, Canning was often silent, sometimes singularly so; melancholy, distract, and embarrassed: though, at other times, lively, innocent, and entertaining. Low spirits killed

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him at last, and robbed the country of an elegant, cultivated, and not ill-disposed public mind.

uniform of a colonel of the guards, scarlet faced with blue, she always thought the most elegant thing in the world." The oldest Sappho on earth, or under it, her ladyship gives neither dinner nor supper more; and men of wit and many idle hours walk about town, not knowing where to deposit either the one or the other,-peace be to her tea-kettle, her album, and her tongue!

Burke's reputation belongs to the last century. Johnson said of him that he "was always ready for talk, that he was never humdrum, that he spoke from the fulness of his mind." All excellent preparations, but still wanting the finish of conversation. His fault was, that he "declaimed" in society; he was rapid, abrupt, and altogether too "political" for a The poets have not succeeded much as conversamaster of conversation; he frequently threw out fine tionists. They are generally heavy, decorous, and ideas, but he was seldom happy in their expression. silent men, not often thinking in company, yet not His excellence was with the pen in his hand. He the more lively for their want of thought. In genethen had time to contrast, arrange, and polish the ral, the only way to rouse a coterie of poets, is to beauty of his powerful conceptions. Of all the start the topic of some furious Quarterly or Scotch thinkers of England, living or dead, he was the most Review of somebody or other. The effect is somevivid, various, and imaginative. But this was the times like dropping a shell, with the fusee burning, product of his desk; there he carried his diamonds into a group of sleeping soldiers-every man who in the rough, and shaped and set them, until he has any legs to take care of, is on them at the inoffered them to the world flashing and sparkling, as stant; but the effect sometimes, too, goes the same no dealer in intellectual brilliants had ever exhibited length in both instances, and the parties run away. them before. But Burke has left few conversational The late William Sotheby was a favourite every remembrances distinguished for either happiness or where. He was a man of fortune, without any of pungency, for easy elegance or pointed splendour. the airs belonging to the "landed interest"-a man Curran, the Irish barrister, had perhaps the highest of general literature, without pedantry-and a poet, conversational ability of any man of his day. He too, without pressing his poetry on any one, unless certainly had astonishing wit. There are more after a considerable term of acquaintance. This renshowy conceptions of Curran on record, than of any dered his old friendship somewhat formidable; but other man of his time or ours, and the period was it was seldom inflicted under an intercourse of four remarkable for the animation and cultivated elegance or five years; and by that time his bosom friends of its society. Devonshire House and the prince's were sufficiently on their guard to escape, by very table were the centres round which perpetual plea-weak eyes, an habitual headach, an immediate ensantry gathered; where a perpetual rivalry of wit gagement out of town, or some other ingenious was sustained; and where political disappointments expedient found effectual in previous cases of dif forced the associates to look for their resources in culty. Their escapes were, now and then, narrow sportive contempt and showy ridicule. As men are enough. forced by the gloom and tempest without, to shut "Take that tragedy home with you, and let me their doors, light candles, and forget the inclemency know your opinion of it as an old friend and an exof the night in double comfort and gaiety within-in cellent critic, as I know you to be," said an author those assemblages, all men learned to adopt the tone, to his visiter. The friend put it in his pocket. On if they could not seize the spirit, of the hour. Charles their next meeting, "Have you read my tragedy? Fox became a wit for the time, and wrote epigrams; and what do you think of it? I ask your candid Fitzpatrick turned poet, and wrote sentimental songs; opinion," said the author. "The fact is, I have not Hare, Harding, Courtenay, and a crowd of those in- read it yet, but intend to take the first opportunity," ferior names which float on the surface of gay socie- said the old friend. "Then lose no time, I beg; ty, and sink after the agitation of the day has passed for if you think that it will answer for either the -those motes in the sunshine, of whose existence press or the stage, I have five more ready, of which no one would have dreamed but for the casual en-you shall have the first reading, in preference to any trance of the beam, were all busy with their little lively contributions; and the showy and good-natured duchess, and the not less showy and good-natured prince, received all like divinities, equally welcoming the incense streaming from golden wine, and the fragrance of the flower.

man in England," said the author. The old friend next day discovered that he had particular business at Paris or the Antipodes, and set off by the mail, returning the tragedy with a thousand regrets for its non-perusal.

We shall not say to whom all this happened; but from the moment that the story got wind, the word tragedy was enough to put all the old friends of the prolific author to flight, and he was forced to wait for the readers of another generation.

Among orators, the professions, and public men in a body, there are now no conversationists of any repute. We live in degenerate days; and for our consolation must only believe that we have found some other and better gifts in place of the old, or Scott was a pleasant converser; easy, affable, and revert in our despair to the blue stocking of Lydia well furnished. In Scotland he must have been peWhite, and those vigorous tea-givers, the Misses culiarly pleasing, from his nationality of topic. But Berry. Lady Cork, too, rests at last. She gathers England is not national; its taste abjures locality; the flies of fashionable talk round her cream-jug no and the moment that an Irishman begins to tell Irish more; she no longer lights her wax chandelier to stories, or a Scotsman talks of either Highlands or bring fluttering round it all the bookworms, trans- Lowlands, they listen to him only as they would formed into moths. She has given, for the last time listen to a Welshman talking of Mertin or Owen in a hundred successive years, the funeral baked-Glendower. But Scott was always a favourite, from meats of dear Dr. Goldsmith, and gay Mr. Gar- his natural civility and unwearied good humour. rick, whose performance in a tie-wig, and the full The late Lord Dudley was made to be a memorable

trouble was taken in vain.

In the "Literary Remains" of this amiable man, published by his nephew, the very first passage in a treatise on his belief, saves us the task of giving a specimen of his conversation.

man; but he was spoiled at nurse. From boyhood, corpulent alderman. He wrote good poetry in his he was what the provincials call cracked. He was youth; but muddled his Helicon with metaphysics not altogether mad, at least in the beginning of his as he fell into years. It is remarkable that his policareer; but there were crevices in his cerebellum, tics purified as his poetry grew thick. Beginning through which external things streamed, like the with proposals for throwing off the incumbrances street lamps through the cracks in shutters, strongly of coat and pantaloons, and founding an original confusing the lights within. He had mingled in all commonwealth in the western wilderness, he ended the odd society of all the countries of Europe-a sort with Christian habiliments, a cottage at Highof voluntary exile in all the period of his youth, and gate, and in honest devotion to Conservatism. But picking up all odd kinds of knowledge, of which he he was no conversationist. He declaimed; he never made the least use; something in the style of harangued; he talked long and loftily: his reveries those geologist ladies and gentlemen who ramble were of the pagan muthoi, of Mesmerism, of the about Derbyshire, hammer in hand, filling their reti- Samothracian impostures, and the profundities of cules and pockets with fragments of mica and lime, science lost to mankind in the burning of the Alexand learning just enough to chatter of primary and andrian library. His mind was like one of the secondary formations, till all the world runs away obelisks of his favourite land-wild, odd, antique, from them and the topic together. He lived upon a covered with characters which, doubtless, meant guinea a-day, or perhaps a shilling; and after this something, but which no man could interpret, and preparation for the life of an English legislator, re-puzzling every body with the question, why so much turned to take upon himself the duties of a peerage, a great English landlord, and an estate of £75,000 a-year. To accumulate evil on evil, his friend Canning induced him to load his brain with the burden of office; and this crazy and curious hypochondriac came forth to mankind as secretary for foreign affairs. "The absolute subjectivity, whose only attribute But the farce was too soon a tragedy. Poor Dudley is the Good-whose only definition is, that which is grew wild, talked, did, and dreamed all kinds of essentially causative of all possible true being; the eccentricities; threw up office-threw up the world adorable gegarev, which, whatever is assumed as after it; and, after holding imaginary conversation, the first, must be presumed its antecedent, Ous withoften of the cleverest order, with Julius Cæsar and out an article, and yet not as an adjective," &c. Jack the painter, with Cleopatra and Madame de This we conceive to be in the purest style of the Staël, with Semiramis and Lady Holland, he sud-hieroglyphics, and to establish Coleridge's oracudenly died, leaving a million of pounds sterling and larity beyond all question. lands unlimited to a cousin, and nothing to mankind. James Smith held the office of solicitor to the Vathek Beckford was a clever converser; but this ordnance, in which he succeeded his father, a man was fifty years ago. He was then clever in every of respectability in his profession, and of considerthing. The finest musician, the most general lin-able acquirement out of it, a member of the royal guist, the most scientific connoisseur, and the most brilliant romance-writer of his day. He has since disappeared, abandoning the faculty of speech; he shut himself up for twenty years in the midst of a desert in Wiltshire, which he converted into a park and a palace. He has since abandoned the solitude, and gone to Bath, to prove that he despises mankind as much in the city as in the wilderness. He towers over the city of vapour-baths and scandal, exchanges civilities with nothing but his King Charles's spaniels, and wholly exercises the finest understanding of man in preventing the most acute senses in Europe from being annoyed by the sight of human beings, or the smell of dinners. For the latter purpose, he has his meals dressed in an opposite mansion; and for the former he has built on his hill battlements lofty enough to defy any thing but an invasion of Titans.

antiquarian societies, and acceptable to a large circle of society. His son was born on the 10th of Feb. 1775, and was thus sixty-five at his death.

All tastes, good and bad, begin at school. James, at school in Chigwell, a village in Essex, in some boyish exploit found Hoole's Ariosto. This was rather a leaden entrance to the gardens of the muse; for if bad translation were within the statute, Hoole must have been hung by any jury without leaving the box. Still the brilliancy of Ariosto gleams through all the mire so carefully emplastered over it by the clerk of the India House; the volume became dear to him, from its being the first that ever touched his poetic sensibilities; and Hoole had the honour, of which he could never have dreamed, of giving the first impulse to a poet.

It is pleasing, and perhaps singular, to find in a man of society, and remarkably attached to that soColeridge was not a converser: he was a lecturer.ciety, even the remnants of the unadulterated tastes His sentences were dissertations; his very metaphors of boyhood. In the memoir, by his accomplished had beginning, middle, and end; his divisions were brother Horace Smith, we are told that, for the as numerous, parenthetical, and positive as those of village of Chigwell and its pleasant neighbourhood, a preacher of the Moravian connection; and in the James Smith cherished in after life a marked and briskest conversation he seemed never able to disen- unvaried predilection, rarely suffering a long intergage himself from the idea, that it was his duty at val to elapse without paying it a visit, and wanderonce to enlighten and astound the whole living race ing over the scenes that recalled the truant excursions of mankind, besides leaving a handsome legacy for of himself and his chosen playmates, or the solitary all generations to come. He was an honest man, rambles and musings of his youth. The whole of and without a stain on his reputation except the the surrounding country, every picturesque view, praises of the small gang of literaturists who con-each alley green and bosky bourne,' nay every instantly followed him as flies wing and cling round a dividual field and tree, remained so firmly pictured