one individual. Such would be the Shakspeare of Biography. To say that the author of this delightful volume had perfectly accomplished this, would be to say too much; but he has gone far towards it. He has fully felt what Biography might be: he has all the accomplishments and much of the nice delicacy of judgment requisite for his great undertaking. We say great, because we feel convinced at every page that he is working with the fervor of an artist to establish a great model: he is advancing on the mighty but rude efforts of a Titan of literature; and, disgusted with the "flimsy insufliciencies" of the Carlo Marattis, is more inclined to follow the grandeur of the Michael Angelo of letters, and endeavours to unite the graces of one school with the forces of another. The author of "The French Revolution" and "The Protector" has done more than any man of our time to expose the impostures of history-to show how its professors bridge over with words impassable chasms, and connect, with flimsiest fragments, the remnants that are left. In his History of Cromwell he proceeds with most reverent step-he pauses on the brink of each fissure that suspends the plain path of his narrative, he tells you when he is quite off the scent, and keeps up no yelping babble to make a pretence that the clue is still there. He thus shows how fragmentary must be the narrative of a great one's story. He is, however, quick of scent and sharp of sight; and the merest morsel over which the mind of his great game has passed is a revealment. He does this in utterances convenient to himself, glowing from his fancy; but not convenient to the lazy thinker, who will not trouble himself to go from his old associations. The author of the present volume has not studied this noble writer without profiting greatly by his theory and a little by his phraseology. He has much of his vigor and none of his violence; and may be compared to an athlete who has acquired the graces of dancing. The consequence of all this is, that we have a great unity of interest. His one great aim is to carve out the "true effigy" of his subject. This is his great cardinal aim, and this he accomplishes happily, and, on the whole, very successfully. We are not quite sure that a man of far inferior capacities and acquirements might not have given a more striking likeness — more striking, perhaps, because less perfect; as we frequently gain our ideas more correctly from happy suggestions than elaborate descriptions. We do not think the Goldsmith of the Club was at all the Goldsmith of the Islington pot-house; and he is represented too much in the society of those who rather depressed than developed his general nature. The true benevolence of John son, doubtless, commanded the warmest affections of Goldsmith; but he had a delicacy of sensibility, and a disregard of conventionalities, together with an unbounded flux of animal spirits, bred of a love of admiration and fullness of heart and mind that sought less rigid companions. He was not so much a scholar as a genius: his aim was to be popular, and gratify his intense sensibility by its utterance. It is a great mistake, made by many writers, that if a man forsake the society of the acknowledged great, that he falls into an utter blankness of existence, or into worse a vicious companionship. But all genius does not show itself in books; and wits and sages are to be found, known but to a few, and too genuine to seek other manifestation than their own spontaneous utterances, and of too limited a sphere to be recorded. The brightest flashes of many a wit have fulfilled their function when they have set the table in a rear: and there are Parson Adamses and Primroses out of select clubs or literary parties. The greatest discovery that could be made would be a diary during his long secessions from "the Club;" or even one of Mrs. Fleming's, his landlady, telling of his doings. Peradventure we should see then a much more joyous, a much brighter man, than when he appears amongst the prudent Reynoldses, the worldly Garricks, the stiff Percys, and the arrogant Hawkinses and Boswells. Above all things is apparent the extreme coarseness that could ever condescend to make a butt of Goldsmith. The good — the great-Johnson never did. He, too, had known poverty-squalid poverty-though not so long, or perhaps so intensely, as Goldsmith. Oliver was poor, ugly, and had no artificial manners; but he had the highest sense of the dignity and worth of the human soul and mind, and could not bear to be thought or made ridiculous. His humor, as it appears in his writings and comedies, is broad and almost burlesque. It had none of the vigor or venom of witty repartee. No wonder, then, that though he saw and esteemed great goodness, great talents, in such men, that he was more at home in less pretentious society, and where a more genuine tribute was paid to his nobility of nature, and his gay lively fancy. We would rather have spent an evening with him at his Wednesday's than at his Bigwig Club. The end and object of this book, after all, we take to be, to erect a frame-work for the introduction of much observation of literary life, and collected knowledge of the last age. And viewed in this light, it becomes a more important work than a mere biography; though, as we have already said, the artistic treatment of the biography is excellent. It contains, however, several other portraits on a smaller scale, and we have ua's, and the assemblies at the Royal Academies. We cannot give a better sample of the graphic style which predominates throughout the work. SIR JOSHUA'S DINNERS. the miniatures of all the important literary men one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself. connected with Goldsmith, with occasional groups Though so severe a deafness had resulted from and some picturesque interiors, such as the cele- cold caught on the continent in early life, as to brated Literary Club, the dinners at Sir Josh-compel the use of a trumpet, Reynolds profited by its use to hear or not to hear, or as he pleased to enjoy the privileges of both, and keep his own equanimity undisturbed. He is the same all the year round,' exclaimed Johnson, with honest envy. In illness and in pain, he is still the same. Sir, he is the most invulnerable man I know; the man with whom, if you should quarrel, you will find the most difficulty how to abuse. Nor was this praise obtained by preference of any, but by cordial respect to all; for in Reynolds there was as little of the sycophant as the tyrant. However high the rank of the His dinners guests invited, he waited for none. His was not the fashionable ill breeding, says were served always precisely at five o'clock. Mr. Courtenay, which could wait an hour for two or three persons of title,' and put the rest of the company out of humor by the invidious distinction." "Well, Sir Joshua,' said lawyer Dunning, on arriving first at one of these parties, and who have you got to dine with you to-day? The last time I dined in your house the company was of such a sort, that by- I believe all the rest of the world enjoyed peace for that afternoon.' But though vehemence and disputation will at times usurp quieter enjoyments, where men of genius and strong character are assembled, the evidence that has survived of these celebrated meetings in no respect impairs their indestructible interest. They were the first great example that had been given in this country, of a cordial intercourse between persons of distinguished pretensions of all kinds; poets, physicians, lawyers, deans, historians, actors, temporal and spiritual peers, house of commons men, men of science, men of letters, painters, philosophers, and lovers of the arts; meeting on a ground of hearty ease, good humor, and pleasantry, which exalts my respect for the memory of Reynolds. It was no prim fine table he set them down to. There was little order or arrangement; there was more abundance than elegance; and a happy freedom thrust conventionalism aside. Often was the dinner board prepared for seven or eight, required to accommodate itself to fifteen or sixteen; for often, on the very eve of dinner, would Sir Joshua tempt afternoon visitors with intimation that Johnson, or Garrick, or Goldsmith was to dine there. Nor was the want of seats the only difficulty. A want of knives and forks, of plates and glasses, as often succeeded. In something of the same style too, was the attendance; the kitchen had to keep pace with the visitors; and it was easy to know the guests best acquainted with the house, by their never failing to call instantly for beer, bread, or wine, that they might get them before the first course was over, and the worst confusion began. Once was Sir Joshua prevailed upon to furnish his table with dinner glasses, and decanters, and some saving of time they proved; yet as they were demolished in the course of service, he could never be persuaded to replace them. But these trifling embarrassments,' added Mr. Courtenay, describing them to Sir James Macintosh, only served to enhance the hilarity and singular pleasure of the entertainment.' It was not the wine, dishes, and cookery, not the fish and venison, that were talked of or recommended; those social hours, that irregular convivial talk, had matter of higher relish, and fare more eagerly enjoyed. And amid all the animated bustle of his guests, the host sat perfectly composed; always attentive to what was said, never minding what was eat or drank, and leaving every But it would be endless to extract the similar lively descriptions or the still more valuable brief, but pregnant dissertations that arise gracefully and effectively out of the narrative. Here is one which shows how constant is the writer's mind to the chief duty of literature, the advocacy of the great claims of humanity. It arises from a very admirable criticism on "The Vicar of Wakefield." DOCTOR PRIMROSE AND THE HANGMAN. "There had been, in light, amusing fiction, no such scene as that where Doctor Primrose, surrounded by the mocking felons of the gaol into which his villanous creditor has thrown him, finds in even those wretched outcasts a common nature to appeal to, minds to instruct, sympathies to bring back to virtue, souls to restore and save. In less than a fortnight I had formed them into something social and humane.' Into how many hearts may this have planted a desire which had as yet become no man's care! Not yet had Howard turned his thoughts to the prison, Romilly was but a boy of nine years old, and Elizabeth Fry had not been born. In Goldsmith's day, as for centuries before it, the gaol existed as the gallows' portal: it was crime's high school, where Law presided over the science of law-breaking, and did its best to spread guilt abroad. This prison, says Dr. Primrose, makes men guilty where it does not find them so; it encloses wretches for the commission of one crime, and returns them, if returned alive, fitted for the perpetration of thousands. With what consequence? New vices call for fresh restraints; penal laws, which are in the hands of the rich, are laid upon the poor; and all our paltriest possessions are hung round with gibhets.' It scares men now to be told of what no man then took heed. Deliberate murders were committed by the State. It was but four years after this that the government which had re duced a young wife to beggary by pressing her | French Revolution. It is a curious fact, that husband to sea, sentenced her to death for en 6 tering a draper's shop, taking some coarse linen off the counter, and laying it down again as the shopman gazed at her; listened unmoved to a defence which might have penetrated stone, that inasmuch, since her husband was stolen from her, she had had no bed to lie upon, nothing to clothe her children, nothing to give them to eat, perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she hardly knew what she did; and finally sent her to Tyburn, with her infant sucking at her breast. Not without reason did Horace Walpole call the country one great shambles.' Hardly a Monday passed that was not Black Monday at Newgate. An execution came round as regularly as any other weekly show; and when it was that shocking sight of fifteen men executed,' whereof Boswell makes more than one mention, the interest was of course the greater. Men not otherwise hardened, found here a debasing delight. George Selwyn passed as much time at Tyburn as at White's; and Mr. Boswell had a special suit of execution black, to make a decent appearance near the scaffold. Not uncalled for, therefore, though solitary and as yet unheeded, was the warning of the good Dr. Primrose. Nay, not uncalled for is it now, though eighty years have passed. Do not, he said, draw the cords of society so hard that a convulsion must come to burst them; do not cut away wretches as useless, before you have tried their utility; make law the protector, not the tyrant of the people. You will then find that creatures whose souls are held as dross, want only the hand of a refiner; and that very little blood will serve to cement our security.' 6 The estimate of Goldsmith's position is very fairly made. It may, perhaps, appear to many modern readers somewhat too highly fixed; for there has been so much brilliant writing since, and so much that is captivating to younger readers, that but few of this generation have turned to the authors of the last century. That they have lost their hold on the public mind, is sufficiently established by the simple fact, that the booksellers have long discontinued the trade editions of them; and that even the more speculating traders, who seek for cheap works for the rising generation, do not think it worth while to reprint them collectively. They rather go back another hundred years, and reprint the works of Shakspeare, and the poetry which succeeded him. This we take to be a favorable sign, for in these writers there is a passion and a purpose deeper and more enduring than of the somewhat dilettante age the present biography illustrates. There is nothing more striking in reviewing it, as it is so well revived in this book, than its total want of passion. No great motive animated it, nor did its individual promulgators appear to possess any of the vigorous aspirations that have so illuminated the works on this side of the great no trace appears of Goldsmith's ever being in love. Not a single letter, nor a single anecdote, refers to any such emotion; without, indeed, the very slight allusions to his cousin in Ireland, or to Miss Horneck, be thought to indicate it. We must, however, say, that although we believe that the present, as well as his previous biographer, Mr. Prior, have collected all that is possible of his life, that there is yet a large section of it unrevealed; and possibly in this unknown period of his existence he may have manifested this important portion of his humanity. But we rather think not, for there is no trace of it in his writings; and there the passions, be of what kind they may, are sure to evolve themselves. It probably may be said that neither he nor his illustrious friend, Johnson, were ever really in love; and indeed the latter asserted, that it was a matter of indifference what woman was wedded, provided she was virtuous and decent. It were a curious inquiry to trace how it was that so little of this feeling appeared amongst the literary men of the age; and whether they, by their writings, acted upon the age in producing this lukewarmness towards the most universal of the passions, or whether they themselves were subdued by the reasonable and logical tone of the age, and were so trained both by others and themselves, that they brought such feelings to the milder level of the affections. Whatever the cause, it had a sensible effect on their writings, and so on literature; and we no more can fancy a Byron manifesting himself at that period than a Napoleon. This absence of passion, and consequently, as we think, in a great degree of imagination, gives an air of simplicity and almost of insipidity to much that was written. Dignity contented itself with a strut, and strength with dogmatic assertion. The architecture and the costume of the age furnishes a very striking index to the prevailing feeling and sentiment; and nothing could be more prosaic than the one, and absurd than the other. It might be an age in which the perfection of common sense was cultivated; but it was as certainly an age of poor conventionalities and trivial emotions. Learning had too much usurped the place of wisdom, and sentiment of poetry. The effort was to say good things; not to feel mighty ones. And the mere effort to say caused many comical distortions both of language and reasoning. Of all this, no one than the present biographer is better aware; and different was his treatment of that preceding hundred years, wherein the mightiest passions were exerted, and he consequently had to delineate a succession of heroes. And here we must say we prefer, though not so carefully written, his Lives of the Statesmen of the sev- owed to those old evenings at Strasburg. The enteenth, to his biography of the beaux-esprits strength which can conquer circumstance; the of the eighteenth century. He has, however, happy wisdom of irony which elevates itself penetrated beneath the grotesque fashion of even above every object, above fortune and misfortune, good and evil, death and life, and attains this mediocre period, and fairly and wisely elicitto the possession of a poetical world; first visited the essential truths promulgated by the sub-ed Goethe in the tone with which Goldsmith's jeet of his memoir. No one can peruse his book tale is told. The fiction became to him life's without being enlightened, and without acknowl- first reality; in country clergymen of Drusenedging that even in this apparently superficial heim there started up Vicars of Wakefield; for and barren era, seeds were sown by the gentle Olivias and Sophias of Alsace, first love fluthand of the much enduring literary hack, and tered at his heart; and at every stage of his illusunsuccessful medical doctor, that have spread recurred to him. He remembered it, when, at trious after-career, its impression still vividly world-wide, and given to civilization germs of the height of his worldly honor and success, he perennial flowers that will blossom for ever. made his written Life (Wahrheit und DichBut herein the author shall, in some little de- tung') record what a blessing it had been to gree, minister for himself. him; he had not forgotten it, when, some seventeen years ago, standing, at the age of eightyone, on the very brink of the grave, he told a friend that in the decisive moment of mental GOLDSMITH INSPIRES GOETHE. "It was not an age of particular earnestness, this Hume and Walpole age: but no one can be in earnest himself without in some degree affecting others. I remember a passage in the Vicar of Wakefield,' said Johnson, a few years after its author's death, which Goldsmith was afterwards fool enough to expunge. I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing?' The words were little, since the feeling was retained; for the very basis of the little tale was a sincerity and zeal for many things. This, indeed, it was, which, while all the world were admiring it for its mirth and sweetness, its bright and happy pictures, its simultaneous movement of the springs of laughter and tears, gave it a rarer value to a more select audience, and connected it with not the least memorable anecdote of modern literary history. It had been published little more than four years, when two Germans, whose names became afterwards world-famous, one a student, at that time in his twentieth, the other a graduate, in his twenty-fifth year, met in the city of Strasburg. The younger, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a law-scholar of the University is so constantly obvious. He makes his readty, with a passion for literature, sought knowledge from the elder, Johann Gottfried Herder, for the course on which he was moved to enter. Herder, a severe and masterly though somewhat cynical critic, laughed at the likings of the young aspirant, and roused him to other aspiration. Producing a German translation of the Vicar of Wakefield, he read it out aloud to Goethe, in a manner which was peculiar to him; and as the incidents of the little story came forth in his serious simple voice, in one unmoved unaltering tone (just as if nothing of it was present before him, but all was only historical; as if the shadows of this poetic creation did not affect him in a life-like manner, but only glided gently by '), a new ideal of letters and of life arose in the mind of the listener. Years passed on; and while that younger student raised up and reestablished the literature of his country, and came at last, in his prime and in his age, to be acknowledged for the wisest of modern men, he never ceased throughout to confess what he development, the Vicar of Wakefield had formed his education, and that he had lately, with unabated delight, read the charming book again from beginning to end, not a little affected by the lively recollection' how much he had been indebted to the author seventy years before.” It is almost superfluous to say that the biographer is very fond of his subject; though indeed he may be said to be above his subject in more senses than one; for it is a fate set down in the decrees of doom that “ poor Goldy" shall be patronised alive or dead. Indeed, it is the pa- !, tronage of a kind man, and of one capable of esteeming; but yet "poor Goldy," could he note it, would find that he was still rather looked down upon than up to. So much force has manner, and so little power innate unadorned greatness, with even the best specimens of humanity. But he sincerely loves the object of his work, and perhaps the more that his mortali er also participate in his affection, and not unfrequently weep at the miseries, indignities, and sufferings, that the tender, noble, and gifted writer endured. The following appeal would have been acknowledged by Goldsmith, for his fellow-sufferers, as well as for himself, as a noble | demonstration. THE MARTYRDOM OF LITERATURE. "IN A GARRET WRITING FOR BREAD, AND EXPECTING TO BE DUNNED FOR A MILK SCORE. The ordinary fate of Letters in that age. There had been a Christian religion extant for now seventeen hundred and fifty-seven years; for so long a time had the world been acquainted with its spiritual responsibilities and necessities, yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century, was the one common eminence conceded to the spiritual teacher, the man who comes upon the earth to lift his fellow-men above its miry ways. Up in a garret, writing score. of for bread he cannot get, and dunned for a milkscore he cannot pay. And age after age, the comfortable, prosperous man sees it; and calls for water and washes his hands of it; and is glad to think it no business of his; and in that year grace and of Goldsmith's suffering, had doubtless adorned his dining room with the Distrest Poet of the inimitable Mr. Hogarth, 'and invited laughter from easy guests at the garret and the milkYet could they have known the danger to even their worldliest comforts, then impending, perhaps they had not laughed so heartily. For were not those very citizens to be indebted to Goldsmith in after years for cheerful hours, and happy thoughts, and fancies that would smooth life's path to their children's children. And now, without a friend, with hardly bread to eat, and uncheered by a hearty word or a smile to help him on, he sits in his melancholy garret, and those fancies die within him. It is but an accident now, that the good Vicar shall be born; that the Gentleman in Black shall dispense his charities; that Croaker shall grieve; Tony Lumpkin laugh; or the sweet soft echo of the Deserted Village come always back upon the heart, in charity, and kindness, and sympathy with the poor. For, Despair is in the garret; and the poet, overmastered by distress, seeks only the means of flight and exile. With a day dream to his old Irish playfellow, a sigh for the "heavy scoundrels" who disregard him, and a wail for the age to which genius is a mark of mockery; he turns to that first avowed piece, which being also his last, is to prove that "blockheads are not men of wit, and yet men of wit are actually blockheads." With this we shall conclude, and probably we have said more than enough of this interesting, powerful, and manly work; the well known scholarship and accomplishments of the biographer will be sure to attract the attention of ev | ery one making any pretensions to belles lettres; and the interest of the subject, and its elegant treatment, will give it a prominent place on the book shelves. It is, as we have said, an admirable delineation of one of God's noblest creatures, a benevolent man of genius." It also is a collection of interesting portraits. Scarcely a man of celebrity, from Jonas Hanway to Wilkes, but is nicely sketched. And many public events are cleverly interwoven. Wilkes' Riots, The Shakspeare Jubilee, and of course the events more immediately connected with the poet and dramatist. Above all, the just demands of authorship are gallantly maintained against trade usurpations, and it may, indeed, be said to be throughout a very temperate and masterly declaration of the Rights of Literature. But even here we cannot help detecting the influences of taste, for the conduct that is so ably denounced in the booksellers, is almost defended in the managers of the theatres. Griffiths and Gardner are scoundrels, but Garrick and Colman, though playing with the hopes and wants of their victim for years, with the coolness and dexterity of anglers, are excused. Some other slight blemishes might also be pointed out; and we think some of the long quotations from Boswell, towards the end, as over well-known, might be spared. The illustrations are numerous, and are faithful as portraits, but otherwise not remarkable. That there is scarcely a new fact in the work cannot be urged against the author, for he has not professed to afford any. His object was to use with skill and genius those already known, and in this he has admirably succeeded. — Douglas Jerrold's Magazine. ITALIAN AFFAIRS. We have received two additional contribu-| tions to our knowledge of Italian affairs, in a new pamphlet, by the Marquis d' Azeglio, and a Conversation by Mr. Landor. The latter purports to be a dialogue between Charles Albert and the Milanese Duchess, who has taken so prominent a part on the patriotic side. It is full of the ardent original thoughts which distinguish Mr. Landor on this and every other subject, and is written in his usual noble English. * "Austrian Assassination in Lombardy." By the Marquis Massimo d'Azeglio. Edited by Fortunate Prandi. Translated from the Italian. Newby. +Imaginary Conversation of King Carlo Alberto and the Duchess Belgioioso, on the Ailairs and Pros pects of Italy:" by Walter Savage Landor. Long man and Co. The King asks the Duchess to compose a manifesto for the Austrians and Hungarians in appeal against their rulers; and the dialogue is thus brought to a close: "King. Give us a specimen of appeal. "Princess. It would be like this: Austrians and Hungarians! why do you wish to impose on others a yoke which you yourselves have shaken off? If they whom you persist in your endeav ors of reducing to servitude, had attempted the same against you, then indeed resentment might warrant you, and retributive justice would be certainly on your side. It may gratify the vanity of a family to exercise dominion over distant states; and the directors of court pageants may be loth to drop-the fruits of patronage. These fruits are paid for with your blood. Of what |