that "his friendship for the author would end but with his life, and that he had not had justice done him that night." The talking to his audience was, in Elliston, a perfect disease. I hope he has left it off.

We

But why talk we of midges like these, when the young eagle of the stage had reared his eyry in the North, and Mr. Jackson, of Edinburgh, written a pamphlet to announce the prodigy, William Henry West Betty, the young Roscius? shall shortly have to exhibit him in town, and, therefore, will not detain our readers to listen to anything of his Young Norval but its effect upon the author of the play. Home, it appears, by Jackson's pamphlet, had been placed in his old station, at the wing, by the complaisance of the manager. The vain old bard pronounced the boy, Betty, the genuine hero he had created, and, at length, quite in ecstasy with the applause of the house, he suddenly quitted his seat, rushed on the stage, made his way to the lamps, and there he stood, bowing his acknowledgments for the triumph of his play. We may conceive the effect of such an appearance upon an audience, every man, woman, or child of which knew the author's person; considering too, as we must, the honour

of all Scotland engaged in the only tragedy of their own growth, transplanted, originally, a slip from their own "Childe Morris," and written by their own countryman, Johnny Home. What could be added to their delight but the realisation of their hope that the young actor might himself be nearly or remotely connected with the land of cakes, for "whence, indeed, could sic a clever fellow come fra but Scotland?" But, at the time I am writing, they have, indeed, a genius to be proud of. Edinburgh has been styled the modern Athens, but I shall let "Rome" remain in the following quotation, which fairly applies to him:

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about,

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

When went there by an age, since the great flood,
But it was fam'd with more than with one man?"

But, if I have leave to admire my fill at the genius of this great man, I will take the liberty to censure the mere employments of his industry. Why is all literature to be rewritten and cast in a new mould, of English, too, by no means the purest, simply for the prevalence of a name foot

hot; or, if he likes it better, in the language of the poetical bishop, his countryman, fute-hate?1

I see, too, that many of such publications teem with blunders of haste and negligence: we have often rubble, instead of sound masonry, covered over, like the houses of the regent among us, with the uniform white plaster, which has become indispensable. There are other pens for miserable abridgments and children's stories, and the rifacimento of such lives, as the long research of such a man as Malone may have enabled him to compile. Nor is it sufficient on such occasions to acknowledge obligation. The real illustrator is defrauded of his just place; it is his life of the poet that should precede the edition of his works, and not a flourish of the mere translator, who assumes the profit without the pains, and at best writes a voyage of discovery from the navigator's journal. I would hang no weights upon the wings of genius; no, far from it. Let it "fly at infinite," and welcome, but let it use its wings, and not, fettering their noble use,

crawl, unaided by them,

upon the earth with the mere spirit of a trader, to monopolise and grow wealthy. I expect to

I" Wyth sic wourdis scho ansueris him fute-hate."

– Douglas, b. xii. p. 443.

hear from a hundred tongues the obvious remark upon this freedom, which half accuses it of enmity: "A friendly eye could never see such faults."

this the same poet shall furnish an answer:

"A flatterer's would not, though they do appear
As huge as high Olympus."

Το

In the meantime, lest the original standard works should be bought up, and the substitutes be everywhere obtruded in their stead, I should recommend the steady progress of reprinting our great authors, with unceasing vigilance as to their correctness. Divest them of insinuating comments that swell the book and interrupt its perusal by impertinence. From some late specimens I begin to hope that the race of the Didots is not extinct, nor native to France alone. It was on the 10th of July, 1804, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, that François Ambroise Didot died at Paris, and his art was dear to him in death itself. Five times did that perfect printer read over and correct the sheets of the stereotype Montaigne," published by his sons. From four o'clock in the morning he laboured, during the last year of his life, at this favourite work. was collecting for it an alphabetical index, and

He

his materials were copious beyond belief. Such should be our works and such the editions of them in a country which should be as proud of its literature as its arms.

Elliston had grown so popular at Colman's, that he was obliged to take his benefit this season at the Opera House, and, had every visitor paid, he must have got a thousand pounds by the night; but the public took the theatre by storm, and burst through the bars of the pit entrance, sweeping away all checks and their takers. The pressure in the pit amounted to suffocation; the active, among the men, climbed into the boxes, and would not be removed. Those who had taken places in them were to be accommodated somewhere, and the stage offered its ancient area, with a lane of entrance and exit for the performers. All this was, in truth, delightful to everybody but Elliston; for, who now cared a straw for "Pizarro," or "Love Laughs at Locksmiths?" His taste for addressing the people was now in high exercise. He stated to them the loss he must sustain, if the terms of admission were not complied with, and, trusting to their honour, he sent his play-wardens among them with pewter plates, to collect the unpaid dues, and something