top of his head. Mr. Kemble, addressing him as "My Lord," made us curious to see his face. The actor's face we saw very well. It was turned sidewise towards the great unknown, exhibiting all the dignity of its Roman profile; and the tone, high in dignity as in sound, in which the actor spoke, interested us extremely, considering the rank of the person he was conversing with. On a sudden this person turned rapidly towards his acquaintance, exhibiting his profile in turn, and letting us into the secret of his voice. The effect was ludicrous. The nobleman's person had given us a manly idea of him enough, though there was a dandyism in his bearing not of the genteelest kind; but his face! and his voice! The first was like a premature old woman's, the second worthy of it, at once high, mumbling, and gabbling. A little staring eye surmounted this odd imbecility. He rapidly uttered a few shuffling sentences, forming a most singular contrast with the lofty and measured tones of the actor; and we thought how much better the latter would have acted the nobleman off the stage than the former upon it. How ludicrous, indeed, the noble lord would have appeared in any serious character, on or off!

The next time we fell in company with a lord, he was talking on the subject of art, which he did very badly. We did not know who he was, nor was he acquainted with all the persons present. Somebody made a remark in dissent; we expressed (in all civility) our agreement with it. The stranger, who had a very insipid countenance, said nothing, but contrived to throw into his face an air of nonchalant

assumption, which appeared very odd. The secret was explained when we learnt who he was. But are these, we thought, the manners of high life? Are such the people that think to dispense with objection, and are these the faces their absurdity begets them? Who would have known this lord from an arrogant, mean citizen? His appearance is not a jot better.

Does the reader remember a little, withered old man, who used to emerge on fine days into his balcony in Piccadilly, take a chair there,

"And sun himself in Huncamunca's eyes"?

His business, it was said, was to watch the ankles of the ladies and the conscious giggle of the servingmaids. But he mixed it with wiser matter. He was taking a reverend care of his health."

66

Stories

of milk baths were told by the smiling passengers, of the doctor ever in attendance, and of the good done to old gentlemen by the company of pleasing faces and milk-maid breaths, without of necessity involving anything erroneous. This old lord (the Duke of Queensbury) had been a great turf-man in his youth; we know not what he was famous for in more advanced life. In old age he was eminent for sitting in a balcony and looking stupid. He was immensely rich. He probably could have had eighty thousand beefsteaks for his dinner every day. The money for these he left at his banker's, while he dabbled with a little spoon-meat, and his neighbors toiled all day to get a steak for their wives and children.

We leave this point to the reader's reflection. 1830.

A LETTER

ON, TO, AND BY THE BOOK-PERSONAGE KNOWN BY THE NAME OF "THE READER."

DE

EAR SIR, OR Very dear MadAM: Among the various phenomena of the literary world (to begin in proper book style), you have heard, doubtless, of editors who write letters to themselves, and are very much their humble servants, "Quidnunc," and "Philalethes." In other times the highest and the lowest periodical writers were equally given to this species of correspondence; the former in the excess of their wit, the latter because they get nobody but themselves to be their Constant Readers.* Of late years, such is the exuberance of literature, in Mr. Jerdan's, as well as the grammatical sense of the word, that we believe the custom survives with none but the very newest and worst setters-up of a publication. These gentlemen, here and there, are still auto-epistolary. One of them is his own "Impartial Observer," and differs with himself, "though with

* Mr. Spectator gleefully confesses that he is guilty of writing letters to himself. "I often choose," he says, "this way of casting my thoughts into a letter, for the following reasons. First, out of the policy of those who try their jest upon another before they own it themselves. Secondly, because I would extort a little praise from such who will never applaud anything whose author is known and certain. Thirdly, because it gave me an opportunity of introducing a great variety of characters into my works, which could not have been done had I always written in the person of the Spectator. Fourthly, because the dignity spectatorial would have suffered had I published as from myself those severe ludicrous compositions which I have ascribed to fictitious names and characters.” Spectator, No. 542. — ED.

deference to his superior judgment." Another is happy to subscribe to his own opinion, being, at the same time, a subscriber to his "interesting miscellany;" and a third, sitting in his editor's room, and despairing of success with his "widely-circulated journal," is his "sincere well-wisher and admirer, Thomas Jones, Appleby." A certain description of gentlemen" about town" are said to have made great use of this epistolary talent, and been half the women of their acquaintance; and a tribe of doctors, resembling them, have been enabled to bear such grateful testimony to their own merits as to acquire an extensive correspondence of the ordinary kind, and write themselves into an equipage and a mansion.

But you have yet to learn that a man may write a letter to himself and not be aware of it; nay, that all his readers but one may join him in the correspondence, and all be in the same predicament. You are now this minute doing it, so are they; and, what is more, myself, who am the sole exception, are you and they too. I am the editor and all his readers. I am a lady of quality and a blacksmith; I am a soldier, and at the same time a clergyman; a dandy and a quaker; an old lady and a young one; a man of yesterday, and yet Martial addressed epigrams to me; an intimate friend of Sophocles, and yet Sir Walter is continually bespeaking my good opinion. In short, I am the little, big, slender, robust, young, old, rich, plain, poor, handsome, male, female, and neuter personage, known by the name of "The Reader." I am you, Reader, whatever you may think of it, and you are all of us. You address your prefaces to me,

and have others addressed, for the same reason, to yourself. I am the Benevolent Reader of the old books; also the Courteous, the Indulgent, and the Impartial, but, above all, the Discerning. The affectation of independence in modern writers has induced them to leave off addressing me by some of these epithets, yet my good word is still bespoken as the Indulgent and the Candid; and if I am not always styled the Discerning, it is not the less given me to understand that I am so. I should like to see the author that ventured to treat me otherwise. It is true, a hint is now and then ventured about " commonplace readers," and "readers of the ordinary description:" but these are mere words. I will venture to affirm, that if the Reader ever chose to inquire whether it was he that was intended by those petulant appellations, the writer would infallibly say no. Reader is always treated with respect. The least thing said to him, is, that he is "requested: "- the Reader is requested to do so and so; to "observe," or to "bear in mind." It is also asked whether he will be "kind enough" or "good enough" to do this and that. Furthermore, being a man, he is of necessity a gentleman, as surely as the cobbler before the hustings; and inasmuch as he is of the female sex, he is fair; - the fair Reader; 66 our fair Readers

will do us the honor to observe," &c.

The

It is in this corporate character that I now address you. Being The Reader, I am everybody who reads, and therefore may safely speak in the first person; for nobody quarrels with himself in the person of another, however willing he may be to contemplate his