For the victor's glory no voice may plead, And they bear him now on their wings away In parts superior what advantage lies? And his brow is crowned with the crown of All fear, none aid you, and few understand. life. WHAT'S FAME. ANNE C. LYNCH. Painful pre-eminence, yourself to view count : HAT'S fame? A fancied life in oth- Make fair deductions; see to what they ers' breath; A thing beyond us ev'n before our death. Just what you hear, you have; and what's The same, my lord, if Tully's or your own. In the small circle of our foes or friends, To all beside as much an empty shade, mount How much of other each is sure to cost; ease. Think, and if still the things thy envy call, Say wouldst thou be the man to whom they fall. Alike or when or where they shone or shine, To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly, Or on the Rubicon or on the Rhine. A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod: save As justice tears his body from the grave, Mark how they grace Lord Umbra or Sir Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life? The wisest, brightest, meanest, of mankind. Plays round the head, but comes not to the If all, united, thy ambition call heart. From ancient story, learn to scorn them all : One self-approving hour whole years out- There, in the rich, the honored, famed and weighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas, great, See the false scale of happiness complete. How happy-those to ruin these betray. Mark by what wretched steps their glory Good from each object, from each place acgrows, quired, From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice For ever exercised, yet never tired; rose, In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, And all that raised the hero sunk the man. Now, Europe's laurels on their brows behold, But stained with blood or ill-exchanged for gold; Then see them broke with toils or sunk in ease, Or infamous for plundered provinces. Oh, wealth, ill-fated, which no act of fame Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, 'Tis an assassin at the midnight hour Know, then, this truth-enough for man to And countenance serene as heaven's own sky, know : "Virtue alone is happiness below," But storms were raving in the world of thought; The only point where human bliss stands Oft have I seen a smile upon its brow, TABLE-TALK. THE greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to have it found out by accident. 'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to deny him; and if you relieve him, it is so much out of your pocket. Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their fancy; but, much oftener than is suspected, they consider what the world will say of it-how such a woman in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of that could not have struck the particular fancy of any man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture wives, as men buy furniture pictures because they suit this or that niche in their dining-parlors. Your universally-cried-up beauties are the very last choice which a man of taste would make. What pleases all cannot have that individual charm which makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to you only-perhaps you know not why. What gained the fair Gunnings titled husbands, who, after all, turned out very sorry wives? Popular repute. will long remember the mild virtues of Wil liam Dockwray, Esq. What said the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her at sight of him? "Ha, Sukey, is it you?" with that benevolent aspect with which he paced the streets of Ware venerated as an angel. "Come and dine with us on Sunday." Then turning away, and again. turning back, as if he had forgotten something, he added, "And, Sukey-do you hear?-bring your husband with you." This was all the reproof she ever heard from him. Need it be added that the match turned out better for Susan than the world expected? 66 We read the Paradise Lost as a task," says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. "Nobody ever wished it longer "-nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it or diminished from it with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller? CHARLES LAMB. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. CHARLES LAMB. It is a sore trial when a daughter shall marry against her father's approbation. A little hardheartedness and aversion to a reconcilement is almost pardonable. After all, Will Dockwray's way is perhaps the wisest. His best-loved daughter made a most impru-THIS distinguished writer, although not dent match-in fact, eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished her to marry. All the world said that he would never speak to her again. For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him. But in a casual rencounter he met her in the streets of Ware-Ware, that a novelist like Dickens and Thackeray in the sense of having produced extensive works of fiction, was, like them, a humorist and a satirist, and has left miscellaneous works of rare merit. works of rare merit. He was born in London, and was the son of a servant to one of the Benches of the Inner Temple; he was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he became the warm friend of Coleridge. In 1792 he received an appointment as clerk in the South Sea House, which he retained until 1825, when, owing to the distinction he had obtained in the world of letters, he was permitted to retire with a pension of four hundred and fifty pounds. He describes his feelings on this happy release from business in his essay on "The Superannuated Man." He was an eccentric man, a serio-comic character, whose sad life is singularly contrasted with his irrepressible humor. His sister, whom he has so tenderly described as Bridget Elia, in a fit of insanity killed their mother with a carving-knife, and Lamb devoted himself to her care. He was a poet, and left quaint and beautiful album verses and minor pieces. As a dramatist he is known by his tragedy John Woodvil and the farce Mr. H, neither of which was a success. But he has given us in his Specimens of Old English Dramatists the result of great reading and rare criticism. It is chiefly as a writer of essays and short stories that Lamb is distinguished. The Essays of Elia, in their vein, mark an era in the literature; they are light, racy, seemingly dashed off, but really full of his reading of the older English authors. Indeed, he is so quaint in thought and style that he Angel" are those of greatest power, but every one he has written is charming. His sly hits at existing abuses are designed to laugh them away. He was the favorite of his literary circle, and as a talker had no superior. After a life of care not unmingled with pleasures, he died in 1834. Lamb's letters are racy, witty, idiomatic and unlabored, and, as most of them are to colleagues in literature and on subjects of social and literary interest, they are important aids in studying the history of his period. THOMAS HOOD. THE greatest humorist, the best punster and the ablest satirist of his age, Hood attacked the social evils around him with such skill and power that he stands forth as a philanthropist. He was born in London in 1798, and after a limited education he began to learn the art of engraving, but his pen was more powerful than his burin. He soon began to contribute to the London Magazine his "Whims and Oddities," and in irregular verse satirized the would-be great men of the time and the eccentric legislation they proposed in Parliament. These short poems are full of puns and happy jeux de mots, and had a decided effect in frustrating the foolish plans. After this he published National Tales, in the same comic vein, but also produced his exquisite serious pieces "The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," "Hero and Leander," and others, all of which are striking and tasteful. In 1838 he commenced The Comic Annual, which appeared for several years, brimful of mirth and fun. He was editor of various magazines-The New Monthly and Hood's |