thousand ages-ate their meat raw, clawing it or biting it from the living animal just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. The period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius, where he designates a kind of golden age, by the term cho-fang, literally, the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes to say, that the art of roasting or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The Swine-herd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which in kindling quickly spread a conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage, (a very antediluvian make-shift of a building you may think it) what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest period that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think—not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or so, at any time, but for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? not from the burnt cottage-he had smelt that smell before-indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb or weed or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next, stooped down to feel the pig to see if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it), he had tasted-crackling !*

66

Again he felt the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still hé licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so and tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin, with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly *Crackling, the rind of roasted pork.

wickedness about Covent Garden, the watchmen, drunken scenes, the crowds, the very dirt and mud, the sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, old book-stalls, the soup-kitchens, the pantomimes-London itself a pantomime and masquerade-all these things work themselves into my mind, and feed me without power of satiety. The wonder of the sights impels me into night-walks about the city's crowded streets, and I often shed tears on the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life."

Dr. Johnson also loved London as Lamb did, and preferred it to all the nature outside.

Lamb held for years a place as clerk in the India House, and his slight, stooping figure, clad in clerkly black, coming down Fleet street to his lodgings in the Temple, where he lived many years, is one of the most vivid pictures in my imagination. His sister Mary, who is the Bridget of his essays, was his housekeeper. She was subject to fits of insanity, and he devoted his life to unfailing care of her-a care repaid on her part by tenderest gratitude and love. When these melancholy attacks were over, she was a clever woman and charming companion.

When Lamb was about fifty, he was pensioned by the India House where he had so long been a clerk, and for the rest of his days he lived in freedom. One must read his own account of his delight at his emancipation, in his letters to friends, to see how keen and boyish was his enjoyment of the liberation from his daily drudgery.

The Essays of Elia are delightful reading. Their humor is so quaint, and yet so tender, that in reading them one often laughs with tears in the eyes.

One series in the essays on Popular Fallacies : That handsome is that handsome does. That a man never should laugh at his own jokes. That illgotten gains never prosper. That we must rise with the lark-are in Lamb's wittiest vein.

I quote for you from his Essays of Elia the greater part of his amusing dissertation upon Roast Pig:

was

"Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend Mr. obliging enough to read and explain to me-for the first seventy

thousand ages-ate their meat raw, clawing it or biting it from the living animal just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. The period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius, where he designates a kind of golden age, by the term cho-fang, literally, the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes to say, that the art of roasting or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The Swine-herd Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which in kindling quickly spread a conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage, (a very antediluvian make-shift of a building you may think it) what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest period that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think—not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor of an hour or so, at any time, but for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? not from the burnt cottage-he had smelt that smell before—indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb or weed or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next, stooped down to feel the pig to see if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it), he had tasted-crackling! *

66

'Again he felt the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still hẻ licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so and tasted so delicious; and surrendering himself to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin, with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly

Crackling, the rind of roasted pork.

a series of lectures which Hazlitt gave on the old poets of the Elizabethan Age, and on Shakspeare's plays, are well worth reading. He also wrote on English comic writers the comic dramatists, Congreve, Wycherly, Vanbrugh and Farquhar and beside all this critical work, he wrote a great many essays on all sorts of subjects, which are collected under the name of Table Talks.

It is not easy to quote from Hazlitt's essays without quoting at length. Yet he is rich in strong, epigrammatic sentences, as this from the essay on the Immortality of Youth: “No young man believes he shall ever die. There is a feeling of eternity in youth which makes amends for everything;" or this: "Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end," or this grand sentence: "I can forgive the dirt and sweat of the gypsy under the hedge, when I consider the earth is his mother, the sun his father." Among his essays is a series on Men of the Time, in which he gives, among many others, sketches of Coleridge and of Wordsworth, which I advise you to read, although it is to be kept in mind that Hazlitt held all through life the liberal opinions which Coleridge and Wordsworth held only in youth, and that there was in Hazlitt a little bitterness at what seemed to him their desertion of a cause.

An essay not to be omitted in reading him, is On my first acquaintance with poets, in which he tells how, as a boy, he first met Coleridge, and describes the charm he held over him. And you must not miss another-On persons one would wish to have seen—an essay reporting a conversation on that subject, in which Hazlitt, Lamb, Leigh Hunt and others, took part. One feels quite sure that the conversation was held at Lamb's rooms in the Temple, on one of those charming evenings at which mirth and wit presided, and one wishes, after reading, that it were possible to have been present.

Indeed I do not know any of Hazlitt's essays which are not interesting, and for my own part, I wish life were long enough to permit me to read every word he has written.

Leigh Hunt was a friend of Hazlitt and Lamb, as well as Born 1784. of Byron and Shelley. He was a writer of poems. Died 1859. plays, stories, essays; his pen was tried in every kind of writing. He began early to edit a newspaper, The Examiner, and made a brilliant paper, but for a libel against the prince-regent, which it printed, he was imprisoned for two years. He made his room in the jail a bower of taste, painting the ceiling like the sky-cloud-covered; papering the walls in patterns of flowers; and with books, piano, statuary, and all sorts of bric-a-brac, made the visitors who came to see him feel as if they had entered a fairy-land. Here all the principal men of the time visited him-Byron, Moore, Hazlitt, Lamb, William Godwin, Shelley, and many others, till his cell seems like the meeting ground of the wits of that day. His works are too great in number even to mention the titles. Some of his shorter poems are very pretty; among them I am sure you will know the little fable of Abou Ben Adhem. One of his longest poems, Rimini, is on an Italian subject. He was very fond of Italy and her poets, and his translations from them, and tales derived from Ariosto, Tasso, and the other great poets, are among his best works. He was, like Hazlitt, a good critic of the drama and literature. He is a graceful writer, with so much enthusiasm for that which he likes in his favorite writers, that he makes his reader share his own pleasure in reading them.

His prose works, such as A Book for a Corner, Imagination and Fancy, and Tales from the Italian Poets, will outlive his reputation as a poet; and it is as prose-writer and journalist that we shall best remember him.

Walter Savage Landor, who was the friend of WordsBorn 1775. Worth, Lamb, Coleridge, the life-long and intiDied 1864. mate friend of Southey, was a man who outlived his associates and companions by almost a generation of time. He was born in 1775, and lived to be almost ninety.