For many years, he said, he warned the drunkards in the most solemn manner of the doom they might expect in another world; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted into mist in the presence of a replenished jug on a market-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In the neighbouring town there was a clever medical man, a vehement teetotaller. Him he summoned to his aid. The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on the physical consequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with large diagrams which gave shocking representations of the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs, as affected by alcohol. These things came home to the drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the men and women of the parish took the total-abstinence pledge; and since that day, drunkenness has nearly ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement evanescent; it has lasted for two or three years.

The Archbishop, in the Annotations upon Simulation and Dissimulation,' discusses the question whether an author is justified in disowning the authorship of his anonymous productions. It is, indeed, a considerable annoyance when meddling and impertinent persons, in spite of every indication that the subject is a disagreeable one, persist in trying by fishing questions to discover whether we know who wrote such an article in Fraser's Magazine or the Edinburgh Review; and though no man of good sense or taste will do this, no author is

safe in the existing abundance of men who are devoid of both these qualities. We have known instances in which the subject was recurred to time after time by impertinent questioners; and in which, by sudden enquiries put in the presence of many listeners, and by interrogating the relatives and intimate friends of the supposed writer, attempts were made to elicit the fact.

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It is curious to remark the various opinions which have been put on record as to the casuistry of such cases. There is but one opinion as to the extreme impertinence of the questioners and so far as they are concerned, the curtest refusal to answer their enquiries would be the fittest way of meeting them. But, unhappily, a refusal to reply will in many cases be regarded as an answer in the affirmative and if the only alternatives were a correct answer and no answer, any meddling fool might reveal a literary secret of the highest importance. Dr. Johnson took up the ground that an author is justified in directly denying that he wrote his anonymous writings. Sir Walter Scott expressly declared that he was not the author of the Waverley Novels. Mr. Samuel Warren, when a lad at school, with characteristic presumption wrote to Sir Walter as such; and Sir Walter's answer, published in Mr. Warren's Miscellanies, expressly repudiates the authorship. Mr. Samuel Rogers drew a nice distinction. Some forward individual, in his presence, taxed Scott with the authorship of Waverley; Sir Walter replied, Upon my honour, I am not:' and Rogers thought that Scott might fairly have replied in the negative, but that he ought not to have said Upon

my honour.' Swift's reply to Serjeant Bettesworth approached a shade nearer the fact:

Mr. Bettesworth, I was in my youth acquainted with great lawyers, who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised me, that any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lampooned should ask, ‘Are you the author of this paper?' I should tell him that I was not the author: and THEREFORE I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these lines.

A writer in a recent Quarterly Review* appears to be for exact truth at all risks; saying that the question really is, whether impertinence in one person will justify falsehood in another? and maintaining that, if the least departure from veracity is admitted in any instance, there is no saying where the thing will end.

Archbishop Whately is reluctant to advise a departure from truth in any case, but advises a method of meeting prying questioners which we trust reviewers will make use of on occasion. We quote the passage in which his advice occurs; it. is admirable for point and pungency:-

A well-known author once received a letter from a peer with whom he was slightly acquainted, asking him whether he was the author of a certain article in the Edinburgh Review. He replied that he never made communications of that kind, except to intimate friends, selected by himself for the purpose, when he saw fit. His refusal to answer, however, pointed him out -which, as it happened, he did not care for-as the author. But a case might occur, in which the revelation of the authorship might involve a friend in some serious difficulties. In any such case, he might have answered something in this style: 'I have received a letter purporting to be from your lordship, but

* Quarterly Review, vol. xcix. p. 302.

the matter of it induces me to suspect that it is a forgery by some mischievous trickster. The writer asks whether I am the author of a certain article. It is a sort of question which no one has a right to ask; and I think, therefore, that everyone is bound to discourage such enquiries by answering them -whether one is or is not the author-with a rebuke for asking impertinent questions about private matters. I say " private," because, if an article be libellous or seditious, the law is open, and anyone may proceed against the publisher, and compel him either to give up the author, or to bear the penalty. If, again, it contains false statements, these, coming from an anonymous

pen, may be simply contradicted. And if the arguments be

unsound, the obvious course is to refute them. But who wrote it, is a question of idle or of mischievous curiosity, as it relates to the private concerns of an individual.

'If I were to ask your lordship, "Do you spend your income? or lay by ? or outrun? Do you and your lady ever have an altercation? Was she your first love? or were you attached to some one else before?" If I were to ask such questions, your lordship's answer would probably be, to desire the footman to show me out. Now, the present enquiry I regard as no less unjustifiable, and relating to private concerns: and, therefore, I think everyone bound, when so questioned, always, whether he is the author or not, to meet the enquiry with a rebuke.

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Hoping that my conjecture is right, of the letter's being a forgery, I remain,' &c.

In any case, however, in which a refusal to answer does not convey any information, the best way, perhaps, of meeting impertinent enquiries, is by saying, 'Can you keep a secret?' and when the other answers that he can, you may reply, 'Well, so can I.'-(pp. 68-9.)

There are some admirable remarks, under the head of the Essay on Parents and Children,' upon the propriety of considering in what direction a boy's talents lie, in making choice of a profession for him. Too frequently, when we speak of a boy's mind having a

bent to some particular course, it is understood that what is meant is, that he has an extraordinary genius for it. But it is to be remembered that

numbers of men who would never attain any extraordinary eminence in anything, are yet so constituted as to make a very respectable figure in the department that is suited for them, and to fall below mediocrity in a different one.—(pp. 72-3.)

Mr. Thackeray would be delighted with the short Annotations on the Essay Of Nobility.' It is in the nature of the Anglo-Saxon race to worship rank; and when (as in the United States) rank is altogether ignored, the very violence of the reaction from the way in which things are done on this side of the Atlantic, indicates how resolute is the bent of the species in the contrary direction. It is the man who has a strong disposition to fall down at the feet of a duke, that is most likely to deny a duke, because he is one, the courtesy due to a man. We think that Archbishop Whately holds the balance very fairly between the two

extremes :

In reference to nobility in individuals, nothing was ever better said than by Bishop Warburton-as is reported-in the House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute which had arisen between a peer of noble family and one of a new creation. He said that, high birth was a thing which he never knew anyone disparage, except those who had it not; and he never knew anyone make a boast of it who had anything else to be proud of.'

It was a remark by a celebrated man, himself a gentleman born, but with nothing of nobility, that the difference between a man with a long line of noble ancestors, and an upstart, is that the one knows for certain, what the other only conjectures at

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