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more or less; but it does not of necessity | pit the actor. Jerrold sparkles like a firefollow that the results would have been fly through the tropic night; Hood, in that more valuable. A man's power in litera- tragic subject which his serious fancy loved, ture, as in everything else, is best meas- emits like the glowworm a melancholy ray. ured by his accomplishment, just as his But they could not shine for any continuous stature is best measured by his coffin. The period, and had the wisdom not to attempt man who can beat his fellows in a ten-mile it. Are they to blame that they did not race, is likely to maintain his superiority in write long books to prove themselves dull a race for a shorter distance. It is a mis- fellows? It is of no use to cry out against take to suppose that a man's largest work, the present state of things in literature. or the work on which he has expended the The magazines are here, and they have been greatest labor, is on that account his best. produced by a great variety of causes. Literary history is full of instances to the They demand certain kinds of literary wares; contrary. When mental power is equal, but whether the wares are valuable or the that is surest of immortality which occupies reverse, depends entirely upon the various the least space; scattered forces are then workmen. It is to be hoped, if magazine concentrated, like garden roses gathered writers possess a specialty, that they will into one bouquet, or English beauty in the stick to their specialty, and work it out boxes at the opera. Leisure and life-long faithfully-that no one will go out of his devotion to a task have often resulted in way, like Mr. Dickens, when he wrote tediousness. Large works are often too "The Child's History of England," or Mr. heavy for posterity to carry. We have too Ruskin, when he addressed himself to the many Canterbury Tales." The "Faery discussion of questions in political economy. Queen" would be more frequently read if it consisted of only one book, and Spenser's fame would stand quite as high. Milton's poetical genius is as apparent in "Comus" and "Lycidas" as in his great Epic, which most people have thought too long. Addison's "Essay in Westminster Abbey" is more valuable than his tragedy. Macaulay's Essays on Clive and Warren Hastings are as brilliant, powerful, and instructive as any single chapter of his "History"-with the additional advantage that they can be read at a sitting. Certain readers have been found to admire Wordsworth's "We are Seven" more than the "Excursion." Coleridge talked of spending fifteen years on the construction of a great poem; had he done so, it is doubtful whether his reader would have preferred it to the "Ancient Mariner." From all this it may be inferred that if writers, instead of "frittering themselves away" in periodicals, had devoted themselves to the production of important works, the world would not have been much the wiser, and their reputations not one whit higher. Besides, there are many men more brilliant than profound, who have more élan than persistence, who gain their victories, like the Zouaves, by a rapid dash; and these do their best in periodicals. These the immediate presence of the reader excites, as the audience the orator, the crowded

To the young writer, the magazine or review has many advantages. In many instances he can serve in the house of a literary noble, as the squire in the fourteenth century served in the house and under the eye of the territorial noble. He may model himself on an excellent pattern, and receive knighthood from his master as the reward of good conduct. If otherwise circumstanced, if, following no special banner, he writes under the cover of the anonymous, and if unsuccessful, he may retire without being put to public shame. In the arena of the magazines he can try his strength, pit himself against his fellows, find out his intellectual weight and power, gradually beget confidence in himself or arrive at the knowledge of his weakness,—a result not less valuable if more rarely acquired. If he is overthrown in the lists, no one but himself is the worse; if he distinguishes himself, it is a little unreasonable to expect him to keep his visor down when roses are showering upon him from applauding balconies. A man eminently successful in the magazines may fairly be forgiven for rushing to a reprint. Actors who make a hit at Drury Lane, almost immediately make a tour of the provinces. A reprint is to the author what a provincial tour is to the actor. If he is an amusing writer, people welcome him in his new shape with the gratitude

He

which people always entertain for those who whim, as emotion shapes the lyric. Monhave amused them; if he is a great writer, taigne wanders about at his own will, and people desire to shake hands with him, as has as many jerks and turnings as a swallow the elector is proud to shake hands with the on the wing. He seems to have the strancandidate whom he has elected as his repre-gest notions of continuity, and sometimes sentative. And, indeed, the magazinists his titles have no relation to his subjectmay fairly be compared to the House of matter, and look as oddly at the top of his Commons, a mixed audience, representing page as the sign-board of the Bible-merevery class, stormy, tumultuous, where great chant over the door of a lottery office. questions are being continually discussed; assails miracles in his "Essay on Cripples," an assembly wherein men rise to be leaders and he wanders into the strangest regions of parties; out of which men are selected to in his essay "Upon some Verses of Virgil." rule distant provinces ;-out of which also, In his most serious moods he brings illusevery now and again, a member is trans- trations from the oddest quarters, and tells lated to the Upper House, where he takes his such stories as we might suppose Squire seat among his peers, in a serener atmos- Western to have delighted in, sitting with a phere, and among loftier traditions. neighboring squire over wine, after his sister and Sophia had withdrawn. These essays, full of the keenest insight, the profoundest melancholy, continually playing with death as Hamlet plays with Yorick's skull, whimsical, humorous, full of the flavor of a special character,-philosopher and eccentric Gascon gentleman in one,-are, in the best sense of the term, artistic. There is a meaning in the trifling, wisdom in the seeming folly, a charm in the swallow-like gyrations. All the incongruous elements,— the whimsicality and the worldly wisdom, the melancholy, the humor and sense of enjoyment, the trifling over articles of attire and details of personal habit, the scepticism which questioned everything, the piety and the coarseness,-mix and mingle somehow, and become reconciled in the alembic of personal character. Oppositions, incongruities, contradictions, taken separately, are mere lines and scratches; when brought together, by some mysterious attraction they unite to produce a grave and thoughtful countenance

During the last year or two, there has been a large number of reprints from the magazines, consisting chiefly of essays and novels. With the latter at present we have no concern. The essay has always been a favorite literary form with magazine writers; and in the volumes before us we have specimens of various kinds. Of the most delightful kind of essay-writing, that of personal delineation, which chronicles moods, which pursues vagrant lines of thought, Montaigne is the earliest, and as yet the greatest example. Montaigne is as egotistical in his essays as a poet is in his lyrics. His subject is himself, his thinkings, his surroundings of every kind. He did not write to inform us about the events of his own time, though it was stirring enough; about his contemporaries, although he mingled much in society, and knew the best men of his day; about the questions which stirred the hearts and perplexed the intellects of the sixteenth-century Frenchmen, although he was familiar with them all, and had formed opinions ;-these he puts aside, to discourse of his chateau, his page, his perfumed gloves;-to discuss love, friendship, experience, and the like, in his own way, half in banter, half in earnest. Consequently we have the fullest information regarding himself, if we have but little regarding anything else. Of course essays written after this fashion cannot, from the very nature of them, be expected to shape themselves on any established literary form. They do not require to have a middle, beginning, or end. They are a law unto themselves. They are shaped by impulse and

that of Montaigne. He explains the essays, the essays explain him. Of course the writer's remoteness from the great French world, his freedom from the modern conditions of publication and criticism, his sense of distance from his reader-if ever he should possess one-contributed, to a large extent, to make himself his own audience. He wrote as freely in his chateau at Montaigne, as Alexander Selkirk could have done in his solitary island. Had there been upon him the sense of a reading public and of critical eyes, he could not have delivered himself up so completely into the guidance of whim. As it is, the essays remain among

the masterpieces of the world. He is the to interfere with him. He was actor and first of egotists, because, while continually audience in one. The English essayists, on writing about himself, he was writing about the other hand, had the English world to act what was noble and peculiar. No other lit- upon. They had its leisure to amuse, its erary egotist had ever so good a subject, follies to satirize; its books, music, and picand then his style is peculiar as himself. In tures, its public amusements, its whole sohis essays he continually piques the reader; cial arrangements, to comment upon, to every now and then more is meant than laugh at, to praise. As a consequence their meets the eye; every now and then a great essays are not nearly so instructive as Mondeal less. He plays at hide-and-seek with taigne's, although they are equally sparkling his reader round his images and illustrations. and amusing. We are introduced into a In reading Montaigne, we are always think- fashionable world, to beaux with rapiers and ing we are finding him out. lace ruffles, and belles with patches on their When the essay became a popular literary cheeks; there are drums and card-tables, form in England, the conditions of things and sedan chairs and links. The satire in had altogether changed since Montaigne's the Spectator is conventional; it concerns day. The Frenchman was a solitary man, itself with the circumference of a lady's with but few books except the classics, given hoops, or the air with which a coxcomb carto self-communion, constantly writing to ries his cocked hat beneath his arm. The please himself, constantly mastered by whim, essayists of the eighteenth century were satconstantly, as it were, throwing the reins irists of society, and of that portion of society upon the neck of impulse. He had no pub- alone which sneered in the coffee-houses and lic, and consequently he did not stand in buzzed round the card-tables of the metropawe of one. The country was convulsed, olis. They did not deal with crimes, but martyrs were consumed at the stake, coun- with social foibles; they did not recognize try houses were sacked, the blood of St. Bar- passions in that fashionable world; they did tholomew had been spilt, the white plume not reverence women, they took off their of Navarre was shining in the front of bat- hats and uttered sparkling compliments to tle. Amid all this strife and turmoil, the the "fair." Theirs was a well-dressed melancholy and middle-aged gentleman sat world, and they liked it best when seen by in his chateau at Montaigne, alone with his candle-light. They were fine gentlemen, dreams. No one disturbed him; he dis- and they carried into literature the fine-genturbed no one. He lived for himself and tleman airs. They dressed carefully, and for thought. When Steele and Addison ap- they were as careful of the dress of their peared as English essayists, they appeared thoughts as of their persons. Their epiunder totally different circumstances. The gram was sharp and polished as their rafour great English poets had lived and died. piers; they said the bitterest things in the The Elizabethan drama, which had arisen in most smiling way; their badinage was genMarlow, had set in Shirley. The comedy tlemanly. Satire went about with a colored of Wicherley and Congreve, in which pruri- plume of fancy in his cap. They brought ency had become phosphorescent, was in style to perfection. But even then one possession of the stage. Dryden had taken could see that a change was setting in. A immortal vengeance on his foes. Fragments poor gentleman down at Olney, under the of Butler's wit sparkled like grains of salt in strong power of the world to come, was the conversation of men of fashion. English feeding his hares, and writing poems of a literature was already rich; there was a religious cast, yet with a wonderful fascinawhole world of books and of accumulated tion, as of some long-forgotten melody, ideas to work upon. Then a public had haunting their theological peculiarities, which arisen; there was the "town," idle, rich, drew many to listen. Up from Ayrshire to eagerly inquiring after every new thing, Edinburgh came Burns, with black piercing most anxious to be amused. Montaigne was eyes, with all his songs about him, as if he an egotist, because he had little but himself had reft a county of the music of its groves; to write about; certainly he had nothing in due time a whole wild Paris was yelling nearly so interesting. He pursued his spec- round the guillotine where noble heads were ulations as he liked, because he had no one falling. Europe became a battle-field; a

new name rose into the catalogue of kings ; | Talfourd, the tragic shadow which darkened and when the essayists of our own century his home for years, one looks upon the porbegan to write, the world had changed, and they had changed with it.

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trait of Elia with pity tempered with awe. Lamb extended the sphere of the essay, not The essayists who wrote in the early por- so much because he dealt with subjects tion of the present century - Lamb, Hazlitt, which till his day had been untouched, but and Hunt- are not only different from their because he imported into that literary form predecessors, as regards mental character; a fancy humor and tenderness which resemthey differ from them also in the variety of bled the fancy humor and tenderness of no the subjects that engaged their attention. other writer. The manifestations of these And this difference arises not only from the qualities were as personal and peculiar as greater number of subjects attracting public his expression of countenance, the stutter in interest in their day, but also from the im- his speech, his habit of punning, his love of mensely larger audience they had to address. black-letter and whiskey-punch. His essays They were not called upon to write for the are additions to English literature, just as town, but for town and country both. So- Potosi silver was an addition to the wealth ciety was reading in all its ranks, and each of Europe-something which it did not prerank had its special interests. The essay-viously possess. Whatever his subject, it ists' subject-matter had been vastly enlarged, becomes interpenetrated by his pathetic and great actors had trod the boards, great fanciful humor, and is thereby etherealized, painters had painted, the older poets had made poetic. Some of his essays have all come into fashion, outside nature had again the softness and remoteness of dreams. re-appeared in literature. The essayist could They are not of the earth earthy. They are weave an allegory, or criticise, or describe, floating islands asleep on serene shadows in or break a social enormity on the wheel, or a sea of humor. The essay on Roast Pig explode an ancient prejudice, with the cer- breathes a divine aroma. The sentences tainty of always finding a reader. Lamb, hush themselves around the youthful chimthe most peculiarly gifted of the three-who ney-sweep, "the innocent blackness," asleep thought Fleet Street worth all Arcadia in the nobleman's sheets, as they might confined himself for the most part to the around the couch of the sleeping princess. metropolis, its peculiar sights, its beggars, Gone are all his troubles,-the harsh call of its chimney-sweeps, its theatres, its old ac- his master, sooty knuckle rubbed into teartors, its book-stalls; and on these subjects ful eyes, his brush, his call from the chimhe discourses with pathos and humor curi- ney-top. Let the poor wretch sleep! And ously blended. For him the past had an then, Lamb's method of setting forth his irresistible attraction: he loved old books, fancies is as peculiar as the fancies themold houses, old pictures, old wine, old friends. selves. He was a modern man only by the His mind was like a Tudor mansion, full of accident of birth; and his style is only modlow-roofed, wainscoted rooms, with pictures ern by the same accident. It is full of the on the walls of men and women in antique quaintest convolutions and doublings back garb; full of tortuous passages and grim upon itself; and ever and again a paragraph crannies in which ghosts might lurk; with is closed by a sentence of unexpected rhea garden with plots of shaven grass, and torical richness, like heavy golden fringe processions of clipped yews, and a stone depending from the velvet of the altar cover, dial in the corner, with a Latin motto anent -a trick which he learned from the "Rethe flight of time carved upon it, and a ligio Medici," and the "Urn Burial." As a drowsy sound of rooks heard sometimes from critic, too, Lamb takes a high place. His afar. He sat at the India House with the essay on the Genius of Hogarth is a triumheart of Sir Thomas Browne beating beneath phant vindication of that master's claim to his sables. He sputtered out puns among the highest place of honor in British art; his friends from the saddest heart. He and in it he sets forth the doctrine, that a laughed that he might not weep. Misery, picture must not be judged by externals of which could not make him a cynic nor a color, nor by manipulative dexterity-valumisanthrope, made him a humorist. And able as these unquestionably are-but by knowing, as now we all know from Sergeant | the number and value of the thoughts it con

tains; a doctrine which Mr. Ruskin has bor-pressing. He called one of his books, "A rowed, and has used with results. Book for the Parlor Window;" all his books are for the parlor window.