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earth into four parts, so as to teach you readily to name the quarters. He must have a genius capable in some degree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from thence the not much dissimilar computation of the cardinal points, or hinges, upon which those invisible pheno mena, which naturalists agree to term winds, do perpetually shift and turn. He must instruct you, in imitation of the old Orphic fragments (the mention of which has possibly escaped you), in numeric and harmonious responses, to" deliver the number of solar revolutions within which each of the twelve periods, into which the Annus Vulgaris, or common year, is divided, doth usually complete and ter ub minate itself. The intercalaries and other subtle problems he will do well to omit, till riper years and course of study shall have rendered you more capable thereof. Hẻ He must be capable of embracing all history, so as, from the countless myriads of individual men who have peopled this'' globe of earth, for it is a globe, by comparison of their respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prowess, &c., to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, dogmatically and catechetically, who was the richest, who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was the meekest, man that ever lived; to the facilitation of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smattering of biography would in " no inconsiderable degree conduce. Leaving the dialects of men (in one of which I shall take leave to suppose you by this time at least superficially instituted), you will learn to ascend with him to the contemplation of that unarticu lated language which was before the written tongue; and, with the aid of the elder Phrygian or Esopic key, to interpret the sounds by which the animal tribes communicate their minds, evolving moral instruction with delight from the dialogue of cocks, dogs, and foxes." Or, marrying theology with verse, from whose mixture a beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, in your 1000 ind own native accents (but purified), you will keep time together to the profound harpings of the more modern or Wattsian hymnices. Jogoloud I19492 8

Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a "hill-side

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whence you may discern the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.” *

With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you see him.

I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant,

ELIA.

ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM

HOW

PROPER NAMES.

oddly it happens that the same sound shall suggest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the most opposite! I was conversing, a few years since, with a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and particularly that species of it which is known by the name of the epithalamium. I ventured to assert that the most perfect specimen of it in our language was the "Epithalamium” of Spenser upon his own marriage.

My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, and would not willingly be thought ignorant of anything remotely connected with the belles-lettres, expressed a degree of surprise, mixed with mortification, that he should never have heard of this poem; Spenser being an author with whose writings he thought himself peculiarly conversant.

I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy of the poet's works which I have at home. He seemed pleased with the offer, though the mention of the folio seemed again to puzzle him. But, presently after, assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to himself, "Poor Spencer !"

There was something in the tone with which he spoke these words that struck me not a little. It was more like the accent with which a man bemoans some recent calamity

* Milton's "Tractate on Education," addressed to Mr. Hartlib.

that has happened to a friend, than that tone of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a person, however excellent and however grievous his afflictions may have been, who has been dead more than two centuries. I had the curiosity to inquire into the reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation. My young gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than before, repeated, "Poor Spencer !" and added, "He has lost his wife !"

My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a height, that I began to think the brain of my young friend must be cracked, or some unaccountable reverie had gotten possession of it. But, upon further explanation, it appeared that the word "Spenser" which to you or me, reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, would naturally have called up the idea of an old poet in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that flourished in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called "The Fairy Queen," with "The Shepherd's Calendar," and many more verses besides—did, in the mind of my young friend, excite a very different and quite modern idea; namely, that of the Honourable William Spencer, one of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed, of this present poetical era, A.D. 1811.

MAN

ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A

DRUNKARD."

ANY are the sayings of Elia, painful and frequent his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his modesty!) without a name; scattered about in obscure periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of some of these it is our intention occasionally to revive a tract or two that shall seem worthy of a better fate, especially at a time like the present, when the pen of our industrious contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of his recent Continental tour, may haply want the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have been induced, in the first instance, to reprint a thing which

he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled "The Confessions of a Drunkard," seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding from their peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard, forsooth!) partly sat for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading among the essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper, in which Edax (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and it struck him that a better paperof deeper interest and wider usefulness-might be made out of the imagined experiences of a Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to work, and, with that mock fervour and counterfeit earnestness with which he is too apt to overrealize his descriptions, has given us-a frightful picture indeed, but no more resembling the man Elia than the fictitious Edax may be supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is, indeed, a compound extracted ont of his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centred (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the after-operation of a too-generous cup?); but then how heightened! how exaggerated! how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole! But it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefrom cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless. Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colours,—or, rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry, when he putteth forth his long-promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, "Confessions of a Water-drinker.”

AM

man living. Give me counsel, dear Editor. I was bred up in the strictest prine ciples of honesty, and have passed my life in punctual adherence to them. Integrity might be said to be int grained in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day coming to the gallows.

I I the miserablest of gozoized vlotten() odt

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meatrotoar

Till the latter end of last last autumn, I never experienced these feelings of self-mistrust, which ever since have im-) bittered my existence. From the apprehension of that, unfortunate man, * whose story began to make so great an impression upon the public about that time, I date myo I never can get it out of my head that I shall some time or other commit a forgery, or do some equally víle thing. To make matters worse, I am in a banking, house. I sit surrounded with a cluster of surroundedtters bank-notes. These were formerly no more to me than meat ot butcher's dog. They are now as toads now as toads and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins and pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleasure in counting/ out, and scraping up with my little tin shovel (at which I was the most expert in the banking-house), now scald, my, hands. When I go to sign my name, I set down that of another person, or write my own in a counterfeit character. I am beset with temptations without motive. I want no more wealth than I possess. A more contented being than myself, as to money matters, exists not. What should I fear? When a child, I was once let loose, by favour of a noble-s man's gardener, into his lordship's magnificent fruit-garden, with full leave to pull the currants and the gooseberries ; d only I was interdicted from touching the wall-fruit, Indeed, at that season (it was the end of autumn), there was little left. Only on the south wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brick-work?) lingered the one last peach. Now, peaches are a fruit which I always had, and still have, an i almost utter aversion to. There is something to my palate * Fauntleroy.