OUR FRIENDS IN FICTION. THEY used to call the good Sir Walter the "Wizard of the North." What if some writer should appear who can write so enchantingly that we shall be able to call into actual life the people whom he invents? What if Mignon and Margaret and Goetz von Berlichingen are alive now (though I don't say they are visible), and Dugald Dalgetty and Ivanhoe were to step in at that open window by the little garden yonder? Suppose Uncas and our noble old Leather Stocking were to glide in silent? Suppose Athos, Porthas, and Aramis should enter, with a noiseless swagger, curling their moustaches? And dearest Amelia Booth, on Uncle Toby's arm; and Tittlebat Titmouse, with his hair dyed green; and all the Crummles company of comedians, with the Gil Blas troop; and Sir Roger de Coverley; and the greatest of all crazy gentlemen, the Knight of La Mancha, with his blessed squire? I say to you, I look rather wistfully towards the window, musing upon these people. Were any of them to enter, I think I should not be very much frightened. Dear old friends, what pleasant hours I have had with them! We do not see each other very often, but when we do, we are ever happy to meet.-Thackeray's Roundabout Papers. CHARACTER OF FALSTAFF. FALSTAFF'S wit is an emanation of a fine constitution, an exuberation of good-humour and good-nature; an overflowing of his love of laughter and good fellowship; a giving vent to his heart's case and over-contentment with himself and others. He would not be in character if he were not so fat as he is ; for there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of his imagination, and the pampered self-indulgence of his physical appetites. He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his jokes as he would a capon or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come again; and pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain "it snows of meat and drink." He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and we live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and a dozen. Yet we are not to suppose that he was a mere sensualist. All this is as much in imagination as in reality. His sensuality does not engross and stupefy his other faculties, but "ascends me into the brain, clears away all the dull crude vapours that environ it, and makes it full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes.” His imagination keeps up the ball after his senses have done with it. He seems to have even a greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description which he gives of them than in fact. He never fails to enrich his discourse with allusions to eating and drinking; but we never see him at table. He carries his own larder about with him, and he is himself "a tun of man." His pulling out the bottle on the field of battle is a joke to show his contempt for glory accompanied with danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean philosophy in the most trying circum stances. Again, such is his deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain whether the account of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack, with only one halfpenny worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, etc., and yet we are not offended, but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to show the humorous part of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites, and convenience has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view, than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian, who should represent him to the life, before one of the police offices.— Hazlitt's Characters of Shakspeare. A GREAT BOOK, A GREAT EVIL. THE smallness of the size of a book is always its own commendation, as, on the contrary, the largeness of a book is its own disadvantage, as well as a terror of learning. In short, a big book is a scarecrow to the head and pocket of the author, student, buyer, and seller, as well as a harbour of ignorance. Small books seem to pay a deference to the reader's quick and great understanding; large books to mistrust his capacity, and to confine his time as well as his intellect.-Holkot's Philobiblion. BYRON ON SHERIDAN AND COLMAN. IN 1815 I had occasion to visit my lawyer in Chancery Lane; he was with Sheridan. After mutual greetings, etc., Sheridan retired first. Before recurring to my own business, I could not help inquiring that of Sheridan. Oh," replied the attorney, "the usual thing! to stave off an action from his wine merchant, my client." "Well," said I," and what do you mean to do?" Nothing at all for the present. Would you have me proceed against old Sherry? What would be the use of it?" And here he began laughing, and going over Sheridan's good gifts of conversation. Now, from personal experience I can vouch that my attorney is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly accessible to any kind of impression out of the statute or record; and yet Sheridan, in half an hour, had found the way to soften and seduce him in such a manner, that I almost think he would have thrown his client (an honest man, with all the laws and some justice on his side) out of the window, had he come in at that moment. Such was Sheridan he could soften an attorney! There has been nothing like it since the days of Orpheus. He told me that on the night of the grand success of his "School for Scandal" he was knocked down and put into the watch-house, for making a row in the street and being found intoxicated by the watch men. When dying he was requested to undergo "an operation." He replied that he had already submitted to two, which were enough for one man's lifetime. Being asked what they were, he answered, “having his hair cut, and sitting for his picture." I have met George Colman occasionally, and thought him extremely pleasant and convivial. Sheridan's humour, or rather wit, was always saturnine, and sometimes savage; he never laughed (at least that I saw, and I watched him), but Colman did. If I had to choose, and could not have both at a time, I should say, "Let me begin the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman." Sheridan for dinner, Colman for supper; Sheridan for claret or port, but Colman for everything, from the madeira and champagne at dinner, the claret with a layer of port between the glasses, up to the punch of the night, and down to the grog, or gin-and-water of daybreak; all these I have threaded with both the same. Sheridan was a grenadier company of life-guards, but Colman a whole regiment, of light infantry to be sure, but still a regiment.-Byron's Journals, Letters, etc. POETICAL PORTRAITS. SHAKSPEARE. His was the wizard spell, MILTON. His spirit was the home THOMSON. The seasons as they roll Shall bear his name along; And, graven on the soul Of Nature, live thy song! GRAY. Soaring on pinions proud, BURNS. He seized his country's lyre With ardent grasp and strong, And made his soul of fire Dissolve itself in song. SOUTHEY. Where Necromancy flings COLERIDGE. Magician, whose dread spell, WORDSWORTH. He hung his harp upon CAMPBELL. With all that Nature's fire SCOTT. He sings, and lo! Romance His strain, like holy hymn, In mountain vale remote. HEMANS. To bid the big tear start Unchallenged from its shrine, And thrill the quivering heart With pity's voice, are thine. SHELLEY. A solitary rock In a far distant sea, An emblem stands of thee. HOGG. Clothed in the rainbow's beam, ’Mid strath and pastoral glen, He sees the fairies gleam Far from the haunts of men. BYRON. Black clouds his forehead bound, MOORE. Crowned with perennial flowers, He wanders through the bowers Robert Macnish. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TASTE AND GENIUS. TASTE and genius are two words frequently joined together, and therefore, by inaccurate thinkers, confounded. They signify, however, two quite different things. The difference between them can be clearly pointed out, and it is of importance to remember it. Taste consists in the power of judging; genius in the power of executing. One may have a considerable degree of taste in poetry, eloquence, or any of the fine arts, who has little or hardly any genius for composition or execution of any of these arts; but genius cannot be found without including taste also. Genius therefore deserves to be considered as a higher power of the mind than taste. Genius always imports something inventive or creative, which does not rest in mere sensibility to beauty where it is perceived, but which can, moreover, produce new beauties, and exhibit them in such a manner as strongly to impress the minds of others. Refined taste forms a good critic; but genius is further necessary to form the poet or the orator.-Blair's Lectures. THE USES OF FICTION. EVEN the nobler tenets of morality are comparatively less interesting, in an insulated and didactic state, than when they are blended with strong imitations of life, where passion, character, and situation bring them deeply home to our attention. Fiction is, on this account, so far the soul of poetry, that without its aid as a vehicle, poetry can only give us morality in an abstract and comparatively uninteresting shape. But why does fiction please us? Surely not because it is false, but because it seems to be true; because it spreads a wider field and a more brilliant crowd of objects to our moral perception than reality affords. Morality (in a high sense of the term, and not speaking of it as a dry science) is the essence of poetry. We fly from the injustice of this world to the poetical justice of fiction, where our sense of right and wrong is either satisfied, or where our sympathy, at least, reposes with less disappointment and distraction than on the characters of life itself. Fiction, we may indeed be told, carries us into " a world of gayer tint and grace,” the laws of which are not to be judged by solid observations on the real |