Poor

is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He declareth may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little against fish, the turbot being small, yet suffereth himself to be importuned into a slice against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too obsequious, or not civil enough to him. The guests think they have seen him before.' Every one speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him to be a tidewaiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he had less diffidence. With half the familiarity, he might pass for a casual dependent; with more boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for what he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up no rent; yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him for one. He is asked to make one at the whist-table; refuseth on the score of poverty, and resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth to go for a coach, and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant anecdote of the family. He knew it when it was not quite so flourishing as he is blest in seeing it now.' He reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth favourable comparisons. With a reflecting sort of congratulation he will inquire the price of your furniture; and insults you with a special commendation of your windowcurtains. He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape; but, after all, there was something more comfortable about the old tea-kettle, which you must remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know till lately that such and such had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable, his compliments perverse, his talk a trouble, his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away, you dismiss his chair into a corner as precipitately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuisances.

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is a female poor relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off tolerably well; but your indigent she-relative is hopeless. He is an old humorist,' you may say, 'and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a character at your table, and truly he is one.' But in the indications of female poverty there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth must out without shuffling. 'She is plainly related to the L- -s, or what does she at their house!' She is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He may require to be repressed sometimes -aliquando sufflaminandus erat-but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped after the gentlemen. Mr. -requests the honour of taking wine with her; she hesitates between port and Madeira, and chooses the former because he does. She calls the servant sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronises her. The children's governess takes upon her to correct her when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord.

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages to which this chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance

foolish blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady
with a great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed
by the malignant maternity of an old woman, who
persists in calling him 'her son Dick.' But she has
wherewithal in the end to recompense his indignities,
and float him again upon the brilliant surface, under
which it had been her seeming business and pleasure
all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of
Dick's temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life,
who, wanting Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed.
W was of my own standing at Christ's, a fine
classic, and a youth of promise. If he had a blemish,
it was too much pride; but its quality was inoffen-
sive; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart
and serves to keep inferiors at a distance; it only
sought to ward off derogation from itself. It was the
principle of self-respect carried as far as it could go,
without infringing upon that respect which he would
have every one else equally maintain for himself. He
would have you to think alike with him on this topic.
Many a quarrel have I had with him when we were
rather older boys, and our tallness made us more
obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because
I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the
town with him to elude notice, when we have been
out together on a holiday in the streets of this sneer-
ing and prying metropolis. W- I went, sore with
these notions, to Oxford, where the dignity and sweet-
ness of a scholar's life, meeting with the alloy of a
humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate
devotion to the place, with a profound aversion from
the society. The servitor's gown-worse than his school
array-clung to him with Nessian venom.
He thought
himself ridiculous in a garb under which Latimer must
have walked erect; and in which Hooker in his young
days possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable
vanity. In the depth of college shades, or in his lonely
chamber, the poor student shrunk from observation.
He found shelter among books which insult not, and
studies that ask no questions of a youth's finances.
He was lord of his library, and seldom cared for look-
ing out beyond his domains. The healing influence
of studious pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to
abstract. He was almost a healthy man, when the
waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a
second and worse malignity. The father of W-
had hitherto exercised the humble profession of house-
painter at N-, near Oxford. A supposed interest
with some of the heads of colleges had now induced him
to take up his abode in that city, with the hope of being
employed upon some public works which were talked of.
From that moment I read in the countenance of the
young man the determination which at length tore him
from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unae-
quainted with our universities, the distance between the
gownsmen and the townsmen, as they are called-the
trading part of the latter especially-is carried to an
excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The
temperament of W's father was diametrically the
reverse of his own. Old W- was a little, busy,
cringing tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm,
would stand bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to
anything that wore the semblance of a gown-insensible
to the winks and opener remonstrances of the young
man, to whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing,
perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously
ducking. Such a state of things could not last.
W- must change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated.
He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who
strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can
bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the
struggle. I stood with W the last afternoon I ever
saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling.
It was in the fine lane leading from the High Street
to the back of college, where W kept his

rooms. He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ventured to rally him-finding him in a better mood -upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop, either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W- looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, 'knew his mounted sign, and fled.' A letter on his father's table the next morning announced that he had accepted a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first who perished before the walls of St Sebastian.

refused, with a resistance amounting to rigour, when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would sometimes press civility out of season-uttered the following memorable application: 'Do take another slice, Mr Billet, for you do not get pudding every day.' The old gentleman said nothing at the time-but he took occasion in the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to utter, with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I write it-' Woman, you are superannuated.' John Billet did not survive long after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me that peace was actually restored! and, if I remember aright, another pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the offence. He died at the Mint-anno 1781-where he had long held, what he accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five pounds fourteen shillings and a penny, which were found in his escritoire after his decease, left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was-a Poor Relation.

WILLIAM SOTHEBY.

WILLIAM SOTHEBY, an accomplished scholar and translator, was born in London on the 9th of November 1757. He was of good family, and educated at Harrow School. At the age of seventeen he entered the army as an officer in the 10th Dragoons. He quitted the army in the year 1780, and purchased Bevis Mount, near Southampton, where he continued to reside for the next ten years. Here Mr Sotheby cultivated his taste for literature, and translated some of the minor Greek and Latin poets. In 1788, he made a pedestrian tour through Wales, of which he wrote a poetical description, pub

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this matter are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table-no very splendid one-was to be found every Saturday the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence. I had little inclination to have done so-for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was in no case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father had been school-fellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined, and I thought he was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inex-lished, together with some odes and sonnets, in 1789. plicable doom I fancied him obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive—a stately being let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, who, in spite of a habitual general respect which we all in common manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in some argument touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of Lincoln are divided, as most of my readers know, between the dwellers on the hill and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school) and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain-a sufficient cause of hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardihood, of the above boyshis own faction-over the below boys-so were they called-of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot were the skirmishes on this topic-the only one upon which the old gentleman was ever brought out-and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the recommencement-so I expected-of actual hostilities. But my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some adroit by-commendation of the old minster; in the general preference of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill and the plain-born could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I remember with anguish the thought that came over me-'perhaps he will never come here again.' He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand which I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had

In 1798, he published a translation from the Oberon of
Wieland, which greatly extended his reputation, and
procured him the thanks and friendship of the
German poet. He now became a frequent competitor
for poetical fame. In 1799, he wrote a poem com-
memorative of the battle of the Nile; in 1800,
appeared his translation of the Georgics of Virgil; in
1801, he produced a Poetical Epistle on the Encourage-
ment of the British School of Painting; and in 1802,
a tragedy on the model of the ancient Greek
drama, entitled Orestes. He next devoted himself
to the composition of an original sacred poem, in
blank verse, under the title of Saul, which appeared
in 1807. The fame of Scott induced him to attempt
the romantic metrical style of narrative and des-
cription; and in 1810, he published Constance de
Castille, a poem in ten cantos. In 1814, he repub-
lished his Orestes, together with four other tragedies;
and in 1815, a second corrected edition of the
Georgics. A tour on the continent gave occasion
to another poetical work, Italy. He next began
a labour which he had long contemplated, the
translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, though he was
upwards of seventy years of age before he entered
upon the Herculean task. The summer and autumn
of 1829 were spent in a tour to Scotland, and the
following verses, written in a steam-boat during an
excursion to Staffa and Iona, shew the undiminished
powers of the veteran poet :

Staffa, I scaled thy summit hoar,

I passed beneath thy arch gigantic,
Whose pillared cavern swells the roar,
When thunders on thy rocky shore
The roll of the Atlantic.