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slay not, but glide in among them like a spirit; thrust your blade, for anger strikes, but revenge stabs, and I will secure the gangway and fight along with you.' I heard and obeyed, and gliding among them, thrust one of them through and through; a second, and a third dropped, ere they saw who was among them. The captain attempted to draw a pistol, but my sword, and my friend's, entered at back and bosom; and though two yet remained unhurt, I struck my sword a second time through the bosom of my mortal enemy, as he lay beneath me; and the last expiring glance of his eye was a look worth remembering. Ere this was accomplished, the other two were both lying with their companions. I have frequently imagined that a firmness and strength, more than my own, were given me during this desperate encounter. Meanwhile the remainder of the crew below set no bounds to their merriment and shouting, and seemed, as my Scottish friend remarked, ordained to die by my hand, since their clamour, by drowning the groans of their comrades, prevented them from providing for their safety. We fastened the cabin door, and barricaded the gangway, keeping watch with pistol and sword, with the hope of seeing some friendly shore, or a compassionate sail, while the vessel,

urged onward by a strong wind, scudded with supernatural swiftness through the midnight waters. We had entered the Solway sea, when the storm, augmenting every moment, carried us rapidly along, and when opposite Allanbay, a whirlwind seizing our ship by the rigging whirled her fairly round, and down she went head foremost. Even in this moment of extreme peril, I shall never forget the figure that, couched among the slain, started to its feet before me, in health and unhurt. There is a fate in all things: it was that fiend in human form whom I slew to-night. Revenge is sweetest when it comes unhoped for. As we sank, a passing vessel saved my pretty May Colvine, her murdered mother's image, and her wretched father's love, and saved too the heroic sailor; while the drunken wretches went to the bottom, without the chance of swimming for an existence they deserved not to prolong."

Such was the narrative of Miles Colvine. He has been dead for several years, and though his daughter wedded the man who saved her father and her, he refused to forsake the sight of the Solway and the sound of its waters, and was found at his cottage door cold and stiff, with his eyes open and looking seaward.

Lammerlea, Cumberland.

MY FIRST PLAY.

Ar the north end of Russell-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a wine vault. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to Old Drury-Garrick's Drury-all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, VOL. IV.

from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-buildings, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was

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to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath-the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. From either of these connexions it may be inferred that my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure-and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre-and he was content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's familiarity-or supposed familiarity was better to my godfather than money.

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versâ-but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than they would now do read aright from Seneca or Varroin his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicized, into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.

He is dead-and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans!-slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian paradises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my ownsituate near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon me,

and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger paces over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing but an Agrarian can restore it.

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them!-with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door-not that which is left-but between that and an inner door in shelter-O when shall I be such an expectant again !—with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensible play-house accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, "Chase some oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill of the play;"-chase pro chuse. But when we got in, and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed-the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, in Rowe's Shakspeare-the tent scene with Diomede-and a sight of that plate can always bring back in a measure the feeling of that evening.-The boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling a homely fancy-but I judged it to be sugarcandy-yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy!—The orchestra lights at length arose, those "fair Auroras!" Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again—and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The curtain drew up-I was not past six years old—and the play was Artaxerxes!

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History- the ancient part of it-and here was the court of Persia It was being admitted to a sight of

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the past. I took no proper interest
in the action going on, for I under
stood not its import-but I heard the
word Darius, and I was in the midst
of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed
in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens,
palaces, princesses, passed before me.
I knew not players. I was in Persepo-
lis for the time; and the burning idol
of their devotions was as if the sun it-
self should have been brought down
to minister at the sacrificial altar.
I took those significations to be
something more than elemental fires.
Harlequin's Invasion followed; where,
I remember, the transformation of
the magistrates into reverend bel-
dams seemed to me a piece of grave
historic justice, and the taylor carry-
ing his own head, to be as sober a
verity as the legend of St. Denys.

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime, called Lun's Ghost-a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead-but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire), Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud-the father of a line of Harlequins-transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead.

My third play followed in quick succession. It was the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the old Round Church (my church) of the Templars.

I saw these plays in the season when I was from six to 1781-2, seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven other years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all

Was nourished, I could not tell how

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reference, was gone!-The green curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present

a royal ghost," but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights-the orchestra lights-came up a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell-which had been, like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries-of six short twelvemonthshad wrought in me.-Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which (with unmixed perception) I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of recrea

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JOHN PAUL FREDERICK RICHTER.

Virum, ex hodiernis Transrhenanis, quem ego præ cæteris stupeo, et qui locum principis in litteris Germanicis mereatur jure: de quo spero quod mihi gratias agetis, utpote nomen ejus, hactenus inauditum per nostras Athenas, nunc palam apud vos proferenti-libros vero speciosissimi argumenti in usum vernaculi lectoris civitate posthac donaturo. Quod si me fefellerit opinio quam de illo habeo, sciatis nusquam gentium reperiri inter Teutonicos scriptores qui possit penitus approbari.-Trebell. Pollio (inter Historia Augustæ Scriptores: Is. Casauboni, Par. 1603, 4to. p. 274) ex editione Grasmeriensi.

MY DEAR F.-You ask me to direct you generally in your choice of German authors; secondly, and especially, among those authors to name my favourite. In such an ocean as German literature, your first request is of too wide a compass for a letter; and I am not sorry that, by leaving it untouched, and reserving it for some future conversation, I shall add one moment (in the language of dynamics) to the attractions of friendship, and the local attractions of my residence ;-insufficient, as it seems, of themselves, to draw you so far northwards from London. Come, therefore, dear F., bring thy ugly countenance to the lakes; and I will engraft such German youth and vigour on thy English trunk, that henceforwards thou shalt bear excellent fruit. I suppose, F., you know that the Golden Pippin is now almost, if not quite, extinct in England: and why? Clearly from want of some exotic, but congenial, inoculation. So it is with literatures of whatsoever land; unless crossed by some other of different breed, they all tend to superannuation. Thence comes it that the French literature is now in the last stage of phthisis - dotagepalsy, or whatever image will best express the most abject state of senile -(senile? no! of anile)-imbecility. Its constitution, as you well know, was, in its best days, marrowless and without nerve; its youth without hope, and its manhood without dignity. For it is remarkable, that to the French people only, of all nations that have any literature at all, has it been, or can it be, justly objected that they have "no paramount book;" none, that is to say, which stands out as a monument

Grasmere, Oct. 18, 1821. adequately representative of the intellectual power of a whole nation; none which has attested its own power by influencing the modes of thinking, acting, educating, through a long tract of centuries. They have no book on which the national mind has adequately acted; none, which has re-acted, for any great end, upon the national mind. We English have mighty authors, almost, I might say, almighty authors, in whom (to speak by a scholastic term) the national mind is contained eminenter; that is, virtually contained in its principles: and reciprocally these abstracts of the English mind continue, in spite of many counteracting forces, to mould and modulate the national tone of thought; I do not say directly, for you will object, that they are not sufficiently studied; but indirectly, inasmuch as the hundreds in every generation, who influence their contemporary millions, have themselves derived an original influence from these books. The planet Jupiter, according to the speculations of a great German philosopher, is just now coming into a habitable condition: its primeval man is, perhaps, now in his Paradise; the history, the poetry, the woes of Jupiter, are now in their cradle. Suppose then, that this Jovian man were allowed to come down upon our earth, to take an inquest among us, and to call us-nation by nation-to a solemn audit on the question of our intellectual efforts and triumphs. What could the earth say for herself? For our parts, we should take him into Westminster Abbey: and, standing upon the ancestral dust of England, we should present him with two volumes-one containing Hamlet,

Lear, and Othello; the other containing Paradise Lost. This, we should say, this is what we have achieved: these are our Pyramids. But what could France present him? and where? Why, her best offering must be presented in a Boudoir: the impudence even of a Frenchman would not dare to connect the sanctities of religious feeling with any book in his language: the wildest vanity could not pretend to show the correlate of Paradise Lost. To speak in a language suitable to a Jovian visitor, that is, in the language of astronomy, our books would appear to him as two heavenly bodies of the first magnitude, whose period, the cycle and the revolution of whose orbit, were too vast to be calculated: whilst the very best of France could be regarded as no more than satellites fitted to move about some central body of insignificant size. Now whence comes this poverty of the French literature? Manifestly hence, that it is too intensely steeped in French manners to admit of any influences from without: it has rejected all alliance with exotic literature; and like some royal families, or like a particular valley in this county, from intermarrying too exclusively in their own narrow circle, it is now 'on its last legs; and will soon go out like a farthing rushlight.

Having this horrid example before our eyes, what should we English do? Why, evidently we should cultivate an intercourse with that literature of Europe which has most of a juvenile constitution. Now that is beyond all doubt the German. I do not so much insist on the present excellence of the German literature; (though, poetry apart, the current literature of Germany appears to me by much the best in Europe:) what weighs most with me is the promise and assurance of future excellence held out by the originality and masculine strength of thought which has moulded the German mind since the time of Kant. Whatever be thought of the existing authors, it is clear that a mighty power has been at work in the German mind since the French revolution, which happily coincided in point of time with the

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influence of Kant's great work.Change of any kind was good for Germany. One truth was clearWhatever was, was bad. And the evidence of this appears on the face of the literature. Before 1789 good authors were rare in Germany: since then they are so numerous, that in any sketch of their literature all individual notice becomes impossible: you must confine yourself to favourite authors, or notice them by classes. And this leads me to your question -Who is my favourite author? My answer is, that I have three favourites: and those are Kant, Schiller, and John Paul Richter. But setting Kant aside, as hardly belonging to the literature, in the true meaning of that word,-I have, you see, two. In what respect there is any affinity between them, I will notice before I conclude. For the present, I shall observe only, that in the case of Schiller, I love his works chiefly because I venerate the memory of the man: whereas, in the case of Richter, my veneration and affection for the man is founded wholly on my knowledge of his works. This distinction will point out Richter as the most eligible author for your present purpose. In point of originality, indeed, there cannot arise a question between the pretensions of Richter and those of any other German author whatsoever. He is no man's representative but his own: nor do I think that he will ever have a successor. Of his style of writing, it may be said, with an emphatic and almost exclusive propriety, that except it proceeds in a spirit of perfect freedom it cannot exist; unless moving from an impulse self-derived it cannot move at all. What then is his style of writing? What are its general characteristics?-These I will endeavour to describe with sufficient circumstantiality to meet your present wants: premising only that I call him frequently John Paul, without adding his surname, both because all Germany gives him that appellation, as an expression of affection for his person, and because he has himself sometimes assumed it in the title-pages of his works.

First, the characteristic distinc

The Critik der Reinen Vernunft was published about five years before the French Revolution, but lay unnoticed in the publisher's warchouse for four or five years.

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