unruffled but energetic language, and is assured by the echoes of the world.”

Upon the death of Scott in a duel, the magazine still continued in existence. "It was still rich in essays of surpassing individual merit, among which the masterly vindication of the true dramatic style, by Darley, the articles of Cary, the admirable translator of Dante and the Confessions of an English Opium Eater,' held a distinguished place. Mr. De Quincy, whose youth had been inspired by an enthusiastic admiration of Coleridge, shewn in contributions to 'The Friend,' not unworthy of his master, and substantial contributions of the blessings of fortune, came up to London, and found an admiring welcome from Messrs. Taylor and Hesse, into whose hands the 'London Magazine' had passed. After the good old fashion of the GREAT TRADE, then general, booksellers used to assemble all their contributors round their hospitable board, then in Fleet Street, where Mr. De Quincy was introduced to his new allies. Among the contributors who partook of their professional festivities, was a gentleman, whose subsequent career has invested the recollection of his appearances in the familiarity of social life with fearful interest-Mr. Thomas Griffiths Wainwright. He was then a young man, on the bright side of thirty; with a sort of undress military air, and the conversation of a smart, clever, lively, heartless, voluptuous coxcomb. It was whispered that he had been an officer in the dragoons, had spent more than one fortune and he now condescended to take a part in periodical literature, with the careless grace of an amateur, who felt himself above it. He was an artist also, sketched boldly and graphically, exhibited a portfolio of his own drawings of female beauty, in which the voluptuous trembled on the indelicate; and seized on the critical department of the fine arts, both in and out of the magazine, undisturbed by the pretensions of the finest critic on art who ever wrote-William Hazlitt. On this subject, he composed for the magazine, under the signature of Janus Weathercock,' articles of flashy assumption, in which disdainful notices of living artists were set off by fascinating references to the personal appearance, accomplishments, and luxurious appliances, of the writer, ever the first hero of his essay. He created a new sensation in the sedate circle, not only by his braided surtouts, jewelled fingers, and various neckhandkerchiefs, but by ostentatious contempt for everything in the world but elegant enjoyment. Lamb, who delighted to find sympathy in dissimilitude, fancied that he really liked him; took, as he ever did, the genial side of character; and, instead of disliking the rake in the critic, thought it pleasant to detect so much taste and good-nature in a fashionable roué; and

regarded all his vapid gaiety, which, to severer observers, looked like impertinence, as the playful effusion of a remarkably guileless nature. Thus, when expatiating on his list of choicest friends, in Elia's letter to Southey, he reckons W, the light and warm, as-light-hearted Janus' of the London ;' and two years afterwards, adverting to the decline of the maga zine, in a letter to Mr. Barton, he persists in his belief of Wainwright's light-heartedness, as pertinaciously as all the halfconscious dupes in "Othello" do in the assertion of Iago's honesty ;-"They have pulled down Hazlitt, P—-, and their best stay, kind, light-hearted W, their Janus."

The cream of Lamb's correspondence has already been given to the world. This final publication respecting him has somewhat of a book making air, or would have, did it relate to persons of less interest than Elia and his friends. Nevertheless, it does strengthen whatever respect may have been already excited for the character of Lamb. He presents an altogether nobler aspect no longer does he seem an airy trifler, chasing the bubbles of his fancy, as if the world were to him a painted show, and as if life had for him no duties nor claims, as if all man had to aim at was how best to pun, or most gracefully to joke. The curtain is withdrawn, and a most painful scene is presented. All this gaiety is but the thin covering by which the sadness of a life is concealed and in some degree alleviated. Were it not for the humour that bursts from every line he ever wrote, life would have been to him a burden greater than he could have borne. Its rough blasts would have felled him to the earth; beneath its waves he would have been hopelessly lost. He did not cant with Byron about the hollow-heartedness of the world; he did not with Hazlitt turn sour, and contemptuously arraign and arrogantly condemn the existing arrangements of society; he did not join Wordsworth and Southey in the formation of visionary hopes, which subsided into a conservatism immoveable and intense; but he did better, he taught the world how genius and exemplary industry, and the most faithful discharge of daily duty might co-exist; he left behind the memory of deeds well done, of self-sacrifice joyfully endured, of social love which many waters were unable to quench. Amongst England's literati, few men can be found of more tender heart, of more guileless life, than Charles Lamb. Never was there a better son, a more affectionate brother, a truer friend. He is gone from us, but his actions still speak, his life still is remembered, his memory is still blest.

We have referred to Lamb's friends. Not the least interesting part of Sergeant Talfourd's work is the account he has given us of them,-an account very valuable as a contribution

to the literary history of our age. Lamb's at homes are thus graphically described. "Now turn to No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, at ten o'clock, when the sedate part of the company are assembled, and the happier stragglers are dropping in from the play. Let it be any autumn or winter month, when the fire is blazing steadily, and the clean swept hearth and whist tables speak of the spirit of Mrs. Battle, and serious looks require the vigor of the game.' The furniture is old fashioned, and worn; the ceiling low, and not wholly unstained by traces of 'the great plant,' though now virtuously forborne; but the Hogarths in narrow black frames, abounding in infinite thought, humour, and pathos, enrich the walls, and all things wear an air of comfort and hearty English welcome. Lamb himself, yet unrelaxed by the glass, is sitting with a sort of Quaker primness at the whist table, the gentleness of his melancholy smile half lost in his intentness on the game; his partner, the author of Political Justice' (the majestic expression of his large head not disturbed by disproportion of his comparatively diminutive stature), is regarding his hand with a philosophic, but not a careless eye; Captain Burnly, only not venerable because so young in spirits, sits between them; and H. C. R., who alone now and then breaks the proper silence to welcome some incoming guest, is his happy partner, true winner in the game of life, whose leisure, achieved early, is devoted to his friend. At another table, just beyond the circle which extends from the fire, sit another four. The broad, burly, jovial bulk of John Lamb, the Ajax Telamon of the slender clerks of the old South Sea House, whom he sometimes introduces to the rooms of his younger brother, surprised to learn from them that he is growing famous, confronts the stately but courteous Alsager, while P, his few hairs bristling at gentle objurgation, watches his partner, Mr. B, dealing. In one corner of the room you may see the pale earnest countenance of Charles Lamb, who is discoursing of fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute,' with Leigh Hunt, and if you choose to listen, you will scarcely know which most to admire-the severe logic of the melancholy reasoner, or its graceful evasion by the tricksome fantasy of the joyous poet. Basil Montague, gentle enthusiast in the cause of humanity, which he has lived to see triumphant, is pouring into the outstretched ear of George Dyer some tale of legalized injustice which the recipient is vainly endeavouring to comprehend.

"Soon the room fills; in slouches Hazlitt from the theatre, where his stubborn anger for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo has been softened by Miss Stephens's angelic notes, which December, 184S.-VOL. LIII.-NO. CCXII.

HB

'chase anger, and grief, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, from mortal or immortal minds.' Kenney, with a tremulous pleasure, announces that there is a crowded house to the ninth represeutation of his new comedy, of which Lamb lays down his cards to inquire; or Ayrton, mildly radiant, whispers the continual triumph of Don Giovanni,' for which Lamb, incapable of opera, is happy to take his word. Now and then an actor glances on us from the rich Cathay' of the world behind the scenes, with news of its lighter human kind, and with looks reflecting the public favour. Liston, grave beneath the weight of the town's regards, a Miss Kelley, unexhausted in spirit by alternating the drolleries of high farce with the terrible pathos of melodrama;—a Charles Kemble revives the chivalry of thought, and ennobles the party by bending on them looks beaming with the aristocracy of nature. Meanwhile, Becky lays the cloth on the side table, under the direction of the most quiet, sensible, and kind of women, who soon compels the younger and more hungry of the guests to partake largely of her cold roast lamb, or boiled beef, the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes, and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots which the best tap of Fleet-street supplies. Perfect freedom prevails, save when the hospitable pressure of the mistress excuses excess; and perhaps the physical enjoyment of the play

exhausted with pleasure, or of the author, jaded with the labour of the brain, is not less than that of the guests at the most charming of aristocratic banquets. As the hot water and its accompaniments appear, and the severities of whist relax, the light of conversation thickens. Hazlitt, catching the influence of the spirit, from which he has just begun to abstain, utters some fine criticism with struggling emphasis. Lamb stammers out puns suggestive of wisdom, for happy Barrow Field to admire and echo. The various driblets of talk combine into a stream, when Miss Lamb moves gently about, to see that each modest stranger is duly served, turning now and then an anxious, loving eye on Charles, which is softened into a half humourous expression of resignation to inevitable fate, as he mixes his second tumbler. This is on ordinary nights, when the accustomed Wednesday men assemble; but there is a difference on great extra nights, gladdened by the bright visitations' of Wordsworth or Coleridge. The cordiality of the welcome is the same, but a sedater wisdom prevails. Happy hours were they for the young disciple of the desperate, but now triumphant cause of Wordsworth's genius, to be admitted to the presence of the poet who had opened a new world for him in the undiscovered riches of his own nature, and its affinities with the

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outer universe; whom he worshipped the more devoutly for the world's scorn; for whom he felt the future in the instant, and anticipated the All hail, hereafter!' which the great poet has lived to enjoy. To him to speak of his own poetry, to hear him recite its noblest passages, and to join in the brave defiance of the fashion of the age, was the solemn pleasure of such a season; and of course superseded all minor disquisitions. So when Coleridge came; argument, wit, humour, criticism, were hushed. The pertest, smartest, and the cleverest felt, that all were assembled to listen; and if a card table had been filled, or a dispute begun, before he was excited to continuous speech, his gentle voice, undulating in music, soon

'Suspended whist, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience.'

Of this group, certainly the most amusing was George Dyer, a most learned, simple, kind-hearted man, whom Lamb appears to have pursued with pleasantry through life, and allusions to whom form the staple of some of the richest parts of Lamb's letters to his friends. "Methinks," writes Mr. Talfourd, "I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by trowsers too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hanging about him like those garments which the aristocratic Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable rustic dress, his long head, silvered over with short yet straggling hairs, and his dark grey eyes glistening with faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the curiosity, which has gently disturbed his studies, as to the authorship of the Waverley novels, by telling him in the strictest confidence that they are the works of Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the congress of sovereigns at Vienna! Off he runs, with animated stride and ambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, as a public writer ought to be possessed of the great fact with which George is laden. Or shall I endeavour to describe the bewildered look with which, just after he had been announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he was to be made a lord. 'Odear, no, Mr. Lamb,' responded he, with earnest seriousness, but not without a moment's quivering vanity, 'I could not think of such a thing; it is not true, I assure you.' 'I thought not,' said Lamb'' and I contradict it wherever I go; but the government will not ask your consent: they may raise you to the peerage without your even knowing it. I hope not, Mr. Lamb, indeed, indeed I hope not. It would not suit me at н н 2