design was, no doubt, a common one, and might be seen on a score of landing places. All the way down, the same uniformity with other houses presented itself to his view; not a single point out of the common way that might serve, like the crumbs dropped by the children in the fairy tale, to guide him to the spot again. Dirty stairs, wormeaten oaken doors, here and there outside the doors ragged mats, iron bell-pulls rusted with age. As he set his foot on the last step, the light of the moon, streaming in through the open door, showed him that there was a crack or fissure in the stone-no very uncommon phenomenon, but to his excited fancy this fissure shaped itself into something not unlike the outline of a human head. On crossing the courtyard, too, he imagined that one of the pilasters supporting the outer gate leaned out of the perpendicular, as if the masonry on which it rested had at some time yielded under its weight. These were not very remarkable points, of a certainty; existing, very likely, only in his . fancy, and, even if real, not much calculated to lead to any result. Still he treasured them up carefully, as the traveller will sometimes treasure up a roadside flower, as being the only tangible momentos of the place he could hope to carry away. The same carriage that had brought them to the house, stood at the porte cochère, ready to receive him. He noticed this time, seated beside the driver on the box, a second figure: both were closely muffled up. They drove at the same rapid pace as before, Heinrich throwing himself back in his seat, and indulging in his reflections. More than once he felt tempted to burst open the door, and raise a hue and cry in the street, with the view of causing the vehicle to be stopped; but, as though his thoughts had been read, an ominous click, unpleasantly like that which would be caused by the cocking of a pistol, struck upon his ear from the seat opposite, and led him to reflect on the perils which such a course would involve. The streets were, by this time, empty and deserted; his voice might not be heard; he might be made away with, without exciting attention, the mere sound of a pistol being far too common in those troublous times to bring any of the sleepers to their doors or windows. On the whole, he adhered to his original plan, and waited impatiently for the time when he should be set down. Whom should he first run to, the mayor or the minister of police? He was interrupted in his reverie by the carriage stopping. He thought he could distinguish a sound like that of the challenge of a sentry, responded to by a voice from the box. Could this be the barrier? Again they moved on a short distance, and again the carriage came to a stop. "This side, if you please, Doctor Seeman," said his companion, politely throwing open the door on the left hand. Heinrich, hastily descending, found himself, to his astonishment, for the second time that night, in a large courtyard, the aspect of which was perfectly unknown to him. He was still staring in bewilderment about him, when the carriage drove rapidly through the entrance gate, which was instantly closed and locked behind it. How long he might have stood rooted to the spot it is impossible to say, for a sudden suspicion began to creep like an icy wind through his veins, chilling the life-blood, and set ing the stone walls and star-lit sky above them dancing together beforé his eyes. He was aroused by a rude tap on the shoulder, and saw himself confronted by two men. Both wore the red cap, surmounted by the tricolour cockade, and one, besides the short sword which hung by his side, was further distinguished by a bunch of huge keys dangling at his waist. "Now then, citizen, when you have done examining the external beauties of the place, perhaps you will permit us to show you the interior. It's worth a visit, I can tell you, and we accommodate some of the first society within our walls!" "What do you mean ?—where am I?" cried the affrighted young man. "This is all a mistake-a mistake I assure you. I was to have been put down at my lodgings in the Rue de where I occupy myself with medicine." "And instead of that, the sovereign people, to avoid you a roundabout and fatiguing walk back again, accommodates you with a lodging for which you will have nothing to pay, in its hospitable Salle de Reception, the CONCIERGERIE, where you may prepare yourself for an approaching interview with that excellent patriot, Fouquier Tinville. We have been expecting you all day, I can tell you. The sovereign people never make mistakes; look, here it is, large as life on this paper: 10, Nivose, an 2 de la Républicque. Heinrich Seeman, natif de Strasburgh, âgé de 25 ans, demeurant, Rue de Paris. Même jour, Frédéric Seeman, médecin, âgé de 55 ans, domicilié à Strasburgh. Accusés de tentative coupable ayant pour but de favoriser l'invasion de l'ennemi, et de conspiration contre le peuple soverain,' etcetera, etcetera. You see it's all perfectly ship-shape. Suffer me to introduce my friend and myself as the guardians of the place; and if Monseigneur pleases, as it is rather cold standing here in the night wind, we will walk in together and inspect your new quarters. The man, whose speech indicated a somewhat deep potation to the Goddess of Reason, took off his cap with an air of mock humility, as he uttered these words. Soon the young Doctor was conscious of being led by his guides into a long, low, narrow passage, and the grating of heavy bolts which reached his ears, seemed to give audible utterance to Dante's motto, and to shut out even hope behind them. PROH PUDOR! AN unpleasant truth is a draught that is bitter J. B. S. MISGUIDED ENTHUSIASM. BY J. HOLLINGSHEAD, E live in an age of literature, when the barriers between imagination and fact are broken down, and he receives the greatest praise who contrives to give the least amount of information with the greatest amount of style. The air is thick with encyclopaedic men, who are daunted by nothing that they find, or that is presented to them, in the whole range of literature and science. They will "edit" anything, from the Life and Letters (if any) of the venerable Bede to the correspondence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; they will "criticise" anything, from the Odes of Hafiz to the poems of John Clare, a peasant. If the prophecies want elucidating, an army of doctors is ready and willing; if the currency is to be placed on a sound and durable basis, a thousand men spring up, who have an intuitive perception of what is required; if an interesting document is to be translated from the cuneiform character, it is wonderful how many literati are equal to the task. And such men are undoubtedly wise in their generation. They know their public, which would rather be fed on what is graphic and amusing-even in matters of history and speculation-than what is prosaically true. They know the world, and they do not neglect those social advantages which are obtained by joining as many clubs, and frequenting as many dinner tables as possible. They know their critics; know them so well that they shake hands with them, and inquire after their families in the street; they know how a shallow incompetent writer becomes "learned and agreeable," by a judicious invitation, or a tavern dinner. Fact, as compared with fiction, is a dull thing in print. There is no English composition about settling a precise date, a precise name, a precise locality, in literary history. A volume may be written upon the shadow of a dream; a fact-a great and important fact-makes a paragraph, no more inviting than an ordinary tradesman's bill, in the corner of a newspaper. Then the difference in personal ease and comfort to the writer! The conscientious investigator walks miles in goloshes and under umbrellas, seeks out obscure individuals in obscurer localities, toils up staircases, and down cellars, tries to overcome every form of official sluggishness and aversion to trouble, examines and compares dirty papers that have been got at by an immense expenditure of time, labour, and capital, and walks away at last with a note of from twenty to thirty ordinary words. But the elegant commentator, or biographical critic, may sit in his warm study, in dressinggown and slippers, and with a ream of good paper, a flowing quill, and the whole English language before him, may, upon a foundation of sand -a foundation, the hollowness of which might have been discovered by an hour's journey into the next street-raise a superstructure of VOL. V. C words, that the critics, if no one else, will not willingly let die. Seeing this, who can wonder that the last class is numerous, and the first scanty? Who can wonder that instead of the sterling scholar we have only the glib translators? Who would not rather be the adored, brilliant idler of the literary world, than the working author, who leaves his mark, but not his name, upon the literature of his country? In 1856, were published a series of critical and biographical essays, chiefly upon English poets, by Mr. David Masson, A.M., Professor of English literature in the University of London. They extend over a rather broad area, comprising Shakspeare, Göthe, Milton, Luther, Dryden, and the literature of the Restoration, Dean Swift, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Chatterton. It is with the latter essay that I have to deal, as it presents nearly all the faults of that imaginative biographical style which is so popular compared with the literature of research and fact. The essay, which is the longest and most ambitious in the book, is entitled, "Chatterton: a Story of 1770;" and, to do the author justice, I may state that part of it was published in the Dublin University Magazine, during 1851. In structure, style, and adherence to fact, it might have been a novelette, by Mr Harrison Ainsworth. The primary error of the author is the very common one of looking upon the Chatterton of 1770 as the Chatterton of 1856-the clever, lying, fretful Bristol boy as the all but universally acknowledged author of the now admired and appreciated Rowley poems. It is not given to all men to realise their fame and its reward at once. The ten pounds for which Paradise Lost was sold was a fair market price for the poem of that day. There is nothing very remarkable about the fact, that when Chatterton left Bristol for London, his pockets were not stuffed with introductions to any literary notabilities of the day, although Professor Masson seems to think so, nor in the very common-sense estimate formed of him by his relation, Mrs. Ballance, the person at Shoreditch with whom he went to lodge, and her recommendation to him, to "get into some office," was eminently practical. If he had adopted it, he would not have been a whit less a poet, and would probably not have died a miserable suicide in Brooke-street, Holborn. Another feature of Mr. Masson's essay, is, that with a degree of enthusiasm of style that borders on the bombastico-pathetic, he does not seem to have taken the slightest trouble to inform himself of the truth or falsehood of any of the important or unimportant points in the history of Chatterton's brief London career, upon which he bases so much speculation and English composition. He assumes the place where the Bristol coach stopped in London, which brought the boy on the 25th of April, 1770; he assumes that Mr. Fell, one of the four London publishers upon whom Chatterton first called, was a needy, nondescript kind of bookseller, and this, upon what he himself admits to be a mere shadow of authority; and he assumes the treatment that the lad met with from the other three, Messrs. Dodsley, Hamilton, and Edmunds. Again, with regard to the house in Shoreditch, where Chatterton first resided, which was kept by a person of the name of Walmsley, a plasterer, he says:-"In what precise part of Shoreditch that house of Mr. Walmsley's was, where Chatterton lodged when he first came to London, and to which on that memorable day, he returned through many dark and strange streets, we do not know. London Directories of the year 1770, are not things easy to be found; and could we find one, we should not be very certain to find Mr. Walmsley's name in it. In these circumstances the literary antiquary, as he walks along Shoreditch, may be allowed to single out, as the object of his curiosity, any old-looking house he pleases, along the whole length of the thoroughfare on either side, it being stipulated only that the house so selected shall be conceivable as having once been the abode of a plasterer. For our part, we have an incommunicable impression, as if the house were to be sought in the close vicinity of the present terminus of the Eastern Counties Railway, or where Shoreditch passes into Norton Folgate. Let that fancy stand, therefore, in lieu of a better." The lazy litterateur, Professor Masson, may be allowed to dream about any house he may fancy in this way, but the literary antiquary would not be worthy of the name until he had exhausted the ratebooks and parochial records (if any exist) of St. Leonards, Shoreditch. It is strange that the professor should speak with admiration of the Rev. Sir Herbert Croft, as 66 a man who took more pains to inform himself of the real particulars of Chatterton's life, than any body else, from that time to this," for there is evidently very little in common between the late Sir Herbert and our author. Professor Masson's assumptions also reach the character of Mrs. Walmsley's niece, and imaginary conversations with Mr. Fell, about Mr. Wilkes, and the opinion he had of Chatterton. Then, with regard to the house in Brooke-street, Holborn, where Chatterton lived and died after he left Shoreditch, Professor Masson takes the authority of Mr. Peter Cunningham's Handbook of London, which fixes it at No. 4-an authority, he says, "in all such matters, the best that can be had;" although he ought, as a literary man, to know that such a work must of necessity be unreliable and superficial; -in this case it has been proved to be decidedly wrong. But the sandy foundation upon which Professor Masson has built up so much speculation and fine writing, is the "Report of the Inquest upon Chatterton," first communicated to Notes and Queries, in 1853, by Mr. J. M. Gutch, of Worcester, who obtained it, in 1837, from a Mr. Dix, who was at that time preparing a "Life of Chatterton," which, when published, neither contained the important document, nor any reference thereto. A most important communication to the Athenæum, of Dec. 5th, 1857, by Mr. W. Moy Thomas, conclusively proves this "Report" to be a gross forgery, and Mr. Gutch and his disciples the victims of an imposition. The article in question also establishes, carefully and satisfactorily, that the number of the house in Brooke-street, where Chatterton died, is No. 39, and not either No. 4, or No. 17, as stated in the forged report of the inquest. Mr. Moy Thomas is a very dull dog, of course, compared with Mr. Masson, but unfortunately his letter to the Athenæum completely establishes his point, and demolishes thereby the mass of pretty writing of the brilliant professor. Another victim who has fallen under the same axe, is the Rev. Dr. Maitland, F.R.S. and F.S.A., who devoutly believes in the pretended |