The following is amusing, and true—

The nativity of a proverb is a secret guarded by nature with its usual success: nobody could say who is its author, where and when it was born, how it came into circulation, till it has become the property of all. Everybody applying it to a particular circumstance in conversation, bears upon his countenance a slight shadow of satisfaction of having uttered something witty, if not strictly new. The only exception to that rule known to us is Swift, who had an odd humour of making extempore proverbs. Observing that a gentleman, in whose garden he walked with some friends, seemed to have no intention to request them to eat any of the fruit, Swift observed, that it was a saying of his dear grandmother, "Always pull a peach when it is within your reach;" and, helping himself, he induced the company to follow his example. At another time he framed "an old saying and true," for the benefit of a person who had fallen from his horse into the mire-"The more dirt the less hurt." The man rose much consoled; but as he happened to be a collector of proverbs, he wondered he had never heard that one before.

The second chapter, upon the characteristic mental capacities of different races, is the best and most original part of the work. Nearly all nations, Spaniards, Germans, English, Hungarians, Sclavonians, and Greeks, ancient and modern, are passed in review before us; and to each is assigned, often with considerable discrimination, their peculiar mental characteristics. We suspect, however, that if lions were painters, or, in other words, if our author were any other than an Englishman, our own race would not have figured as the type of all moral and intellectual pre-eminence; but we should have heard something of our cold reserve, of our mammon-worship, our "flunkeyism," &c. We have, however, this consolation, that whatever may be our faults as a race, nothing derogatory could be said against us containing half as much truth as the following

CHARACTERISTICS OF ITALIANS.

There is no other nation in Europe so unlike its ancestors; so decayed, degenerated, unmanned, and emasculated, as the Italians of our days. Timidity has ceased to be shameful-cowardice is not despised. They have vices belonging to timid dispositions, fraud and hypocrisy; and regard with lenity those crimes which require cunning, quick observation, knowledge of human nature, and self-command. Military courage they neither possess nor value; but a young highwayman, when successful, is with them a hero, though he is weltering in innocent blood; when entrapped, he excites universal sympathy, and is spoken of with endearment as a "poverino."

You see in Italy no ambition, no pride, no violent desire of distinction or wealth, no panting after fame, or at least notoriety, or reputation, no high aspirations. All nobility of thought is there withered up. They seem to have smothered in their breast all human passions, except hatred, which, after love, is their only cherished and fostered passion; and the only thing they are longing for is the "dolce far niente," and revenge. This last is corroding the ulcerated heart of an Italian, yet every look is a cordial smile, every gesture a familiar caress; he never excites the suspicion of his adversary by petty provocations or threats. His purpose is disclosed only when it is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his speech is courteous, till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point is

What is the cause of such appalling degeneracy? Our author discusses this question, and concludes that it is attributable to the climate; but is there any reason to suppose that the climate of Italy has materially altered since the days when the recently-uncovered pavement of the via sacra clanged with the tramp of Cæsar's legions, as they defiled in their hero's triumph; or when the glorious odes of Horace sparkled in the banqueting-halls of the nowcrumbling villa of Mæcenas? To our minds, the superstitions of Rome, and the withering tyranny of Austria, are much more probably the fiends, that have prevailed Against the seraphs they assailed."

66

It is but just, however, to our author, to state that, against this view, he cites the miserable failure of Italy, in a political sense, in 1848; but is it quite fair, after having educated a cur with kicks and cuffs, to blame it for treache rously snapping at your hand the first time you trust it within its reach?

The third chapter, on the intelligence of animals, and its limits, opens a subject of much interest, but is here most meagrely worked out; and for this there is less excuse, as the minds of some superior men have been recently brought to bear upon this subject. See, for instance, Sydney Smith's lectures on Moral Philosophy, and Cornwall Lewis's "Method of observation andr easoning on Politics." Any one who has perused these works will scarcely rest satisfied with our author's definition of the limits of animal intelligence-" that it has no consciousness of its own existence, and lacks the great faculty of reflection."

We have a chapter on Fools, and the varieties of that very extensive genus are elaborated with praiseworthy minuteness. Thus we have the "Irish innocent," the "tip top fool," the "blinking idiot," the "questioning fool," the "learned fool," the "simpleton," the "ninnyhammer," and many others, whose various characteristics are admirably described, often with excellent touches of racy humour. Then follows a chapter on the deficiencies of wit, as instanced in the "pedant," the "punster," the "quibbler," the "riddle-maker," the "penny-a-liner," and many others, including the "love-sick person," "whose indignation,' we are told, "spins out a golden string, throws rosy hues over all" (? the string) "and gives bewitching attraction to every minute action." We think we can recollect (for our own dancing days have been long over) what this means,

albeit not expressed so clearly as the subject merits.

Turning from the deficiencies of human na ture, the next three chapters exemplify the characteristics of wit, common sense, tact, and understanding: The definition of the last (p. 214) occupies about half a page of as involved and confused language as we ever remember to have read, even in a book professing to be entirely metaphysical. However, let the reader skip this, and he will find a good deal worthy of note in these chapters. Take, for example, the following characteristic of

THE MAN OF TACT.

He is never betrayed into argument, which always makes people more obstinate, even if they are confuted. Or, if constrained to reason, he is pitching the whole tone of his argument to the capacity, prejudices, and passions of those, whom he has to deal with intent only to govern the action of men by a sagacious calculation of their motives, he always prefers a feeble argument, but readily understood, to a stronger one, but apt to escape the appreciation of the common mind.

A chapter on the female intellect, in which "the witty Miss" plays a conspicuous part, is amusing, though destitute of any originality.

We have then the characteristics of scepticism, a part of the book we forbear from criticising, out of respect to its excellent tendency. After that, our author's ideas, like an Australian river, lose themselves, ere they reach their ocean limit, in the barren sands of metaphysics, whither it is certainly not our intention to follow them. Kant, Mr. Whitecross tells us, made "a great discovery," and "levelled with the ground all former philosophical systems." That our author has caught no inconsiderable portion of the obscurity of his great master is but too apparent. But we have a worse fault to find with him than that. His grammar is frequently so faulty, and he uses words so often in wrong

senses, that he renders the really good parts of his book needlessly repulsive. Take, for instance, the following sentence selected at random:

"A sceptic, in the (for from his ') love of paradox, wishes to prove every thing uncertain; is (for he is ') not inspired (for 'gifted' or imbued') with an intense love of truth, and never (subaudi 'is') in sincere search of it; he prefers refuting (and) re-arguing, instead of proving; has (for he has) no confidence in the evidence of ('the' or his') senses as well as (meaning probably nor of his ') reason; very clever when it comes to call any thing in question; he is never advancing (for never advances') an opinion," &c. &c.—p. 297.

Again, p. 102, we have Madiar for Magyar, and Herodote for Herodotus; p. 115, are decreasing for decrease; indeed, the last solecism of using the participle for the verb, meets us in every page. In p. 128 we have "drenching the thirst," and in p. 197, "a man takes the pains, and did not fail to examine," &c. : this error, also, is very frequent. But with all this the work is above mediocrity; and should it reach a second edition, we recommend the author to recollect that, even in a degenerate age, Statius did not venture to aspire to Mantuan fame until he had bestowed an amount of care and correction on his work that Mr. Whitecross evidently little dreams of.

Thebais, multâ conciata limâ,
Textat, audaci fide, Mantuanæ
Gaudia famæ.

We must add, that Mr. Whitecross has not been fortunate in some pilfering upon which he ventured. He has appropriated largely from the back Numbers of the "Edinburgh Review," and the writers are loudly reclaiming their property.

THAT Laureateship is "a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance" does not render its history, as it has existed, less interesting or less instructive. To learn how merit has stooped, and mediocrity been exalted, might teach a lesson to an age whose swans are so generally geese-an age that does not so much spurn genius, since so little exists in it, as it adores mock pretensions; in fact, an age of great appreciation, but with little to appreciate, yet, when it does, almost infallibly wrong. As to Laureateship in its ancient sense, it has been transferred from the palace to the tailor's shop. Instead of exalted personages, the mercenary

bard sings the clothes of mean ones: the liveries of Lord Mayors or their flunkeys are now-as days as warmly extolled in verse, as ever the masquerade dress of a monarch, who appeared decked with virtues, like garments which he never wore, save in the poet's conception-we beg pardon, the poet's song. If any thing were wanting to prove the absurdity of the Laureate institution, it would be the fact, that an objection has been made to this work by a somewhat bitter and surly critic, who wrote to the effect, that the lives of the giants composing part of the tuneful crew were too well known to need further illustration; and that the lives

of the pigmies forming the remainder were not worth illustrating; a dictum contradicted often by the reproach, that our authors have not discovered beauties which must certainly exist amid the trash perpetrated by the smaller bards. We ourselves think that the work is by no means badly executed. The diction is eloquent, although, perhaps, too florid, and the compilation and ohservation display considerable judgment. On the whole, it is an agreeable and satisfactory book, sometimes superior to the subject, and never below it.

Although we consider the authors give evidence of too much leaning towards the Wordsworthian and Tennysonian schools of poetry, yet they are by no means bigoted; which is evinced by some very just remarks on the character and mental attributes of the Cockermouth songster, and by their perfect appreciation of that dullest of all platitudes, the "Prelude," of which the author thought so much, and the world so little. However, when our authors say that Wordsworth wrote the "best and worst poetry in the language," we beg leave to differ from them as to the first half of their assertion. As to the last, Wordsworth bears the palm in triumph from any "Laureate," including even Pye and Eusden. To recur to the character given of him in the "Lives of the Laureates," we consider the following as both true and happy :-"We shall be induced to suppose," (if considering his views on great political and social questions) *"that, after his wayward boyhood was over, he had passed from youth to age without the intervening period of manhood; that he was an old man, at the time of life when others are young, and an old woman when he should have been an old man." This is severe enough from admirers. We think it deserved, because Wordsworth was essentially of the emasculated twaddling school. When we consider, however, that this butter-cup and daisy-sentimentalist "exulted in the destruction of the troops of his own country"-when he chose to sympathise with the sans-culottes of the first French revolution-we are by no means inclined to shew mercy to his gentle beneficence, or to abstain from flinging a stone, as we pass by, into the placid waters of that solitary lakeling -the Wordsworthian mind. With regard to the general scheme of the work, let us consider what we knew, previous to its appearance, of the fifteen Poets and Poetasters whose lives are here chronicled. Every one (which means the select few who are what is called well-read persons) has perused, or glanced at, Dryden's life, as written by Dr. Johnson or Sir Walter Scott; the same "every one" is, or was, acquainted with Gifford's defence of "rare Ben Johnson;" and a few have, perhaps, met with the

somewhat inaccurate memoir of a more recent writer. Some elaborate or accidental readers have been amused by the vain and garrulous narrative of Colley Cibber. "Every one," again, has of late been made aware, by the booksellers, of the great bad biographers of Southey and Wordsworth. Sir William Davenant we knew as the first manager of a theatre, in the sense in which we now use the word. Shadwell as the petty antagonist of Dryden. Tate as the coadjutor of Brady in Psalmody. Warton was well known as the author of the History of English poetry, but of the man himself little was known. Eusden is damned to fame in the Dunciad. We remember "Spartan Pye" as the source of much mirth to his contemporaries. Whitehead was but little known by his "Roman Father," though he was "somebody, by virtue of his Laureateship, in his own day

"Next Whitehead came, his worth a pinch of snuff; But for a Laureate he was good enough."

Now Messrs. Austin and Ralph have given us the best opinion they could of this Laureate, and surely it is not their fault if they could find nothing worth quoting from some of his brethren. The account of Colley Cibber's daughter, Charlotte Cibber, is both new and curious. We cannot refrain from giving it to our readers, together with one of those excellent, scant jests, affixed to conspicuous names, which go down to posterity one scarcely knows how.

THE ACCOMPLISHED YOUNG LADY.

In very early life she gave indications of an excitable temperament, and an unruly will, Among her juvenile pranks, she relates how one morning, when but four years herself as well as she could in male attire, and, mimicing old, she got up early, put on her father's wig, dressed the paternal strut, went out to receive the obeisances of the passers-by: how, on another occasion, her father was awoke by deafening acclamations, and on looking out of umphal entry into the village, sitting astride upon an the window, beheld his hopeful daughter making a triass, and attended by a retinue of screaming urchins, whom she had bribed to take part in the procession. At eight years of age she was sent to school, and devoted herself to her studies with passionate vehemence. The needle-woman's ordinary weapon against inactivityshe could never learn to manage; but every masculine pursuit or amusement had for her an irresistible attrac tion. She would hunt, shoot, ride races, dig, drink beer, do any thing, in short, that a young lady ought not to do. At fourteen, she went to live with her mother at a house near Uxbridge. There she became a capital shot, would rise early, spend the whole day at her sport, and return home, laden with spoil. Her gun, at the suggestion of a good-natured friend, was soon taken away from her, and she revenged herself by attempting to demolish the chimneys of the house, by firing at them with a huge fowlingpiece that had hung over the kitchen mantel-piece.

To the gun succeeded the curry-comb, and she became an adept in all the mysteries of the stable. She next applied herself to the study of physic, obtained some drugs, and with formal gravity practised among those poor people who were credulous enough to swallow her concoc

tions. Her next employment was gardening, which she pursued with her usual enthusiasm, and after two or three hours hard work would not allow herself rest even for her meals, but with some bread and bacon in one hand, and a pruning knife in the other, continue, unremittingly, her self-imposed labour. At this time her father was abroad, and the man who acted in the double capacity of groom and gardener was for some irregularity dismissed. Charlotte was in ecstacies, as she was now arch-empress of his two-fold domain, and unceasing were her manoeuvres to prevent the engagement of a successor. The dismissed servant having been seen straying near the house one evening, suspicions were aroused, which Charlotte skilfully inflamed by her dark suggestions, and then boldly undertook the defence of the leaguered house. The plate was carried up into her room, which she garnished with all the weapons of war the establishment could afford, and then sent the household to bed. After a long vigil, to her great mortification no attack was made, universal silence prevailed, when luckily a cur began to bark. Up went the window, and volley after volley was poured into the unoffending void, while her mother and the domestics lay below in trembling consternation. While still a girl, she married Mr. Charke, an eminent composer on the violin, but he was a worthless libertine, and, after the birth of a daughter, they separated. She then obtained an engagement on the stage, and relates with childish simplicity, how, for a whole week, she did nothing but walk from one end of the town to the other, to read her name on the bills. Her success was such as to justify expectations of her becoming a most accomplished actress, and as Lucy in "George Barnwell" she attracted considerable attention; but she soon quarrelled with the manager, and afterwards satirized him in a farce she wrote, termed, "The Art of Management." She then tried a new sphere, and opened a shop in Long Acre, as oil-woman and grocer, and her whole soul was absorbed in the fluctuations of sugar. The shop did not pay, and she quitted it to become the proprietress of a puppet-show, by which she lost all she had, and was arrested for a debt of seven pounds. Her release was effected by the contributions of some acquaintances, when she dressed herself in male attire, and assumed the name of Mr. Brown. Under this disguise, she engaged the affections of a young heiress, to whom, in order to escape a private marriage urged by the amatory damsel, she was compelled to disclose her secret. Shortly afterwards, she exhibited her valorous spirit by knocking a man down with a cudgel for having fabricated some story at her expense. She next obtained a situation as valet-dechambre to a nobleman, where she appears for a short time to have known something like comfort; but on being dismissed from this place, she became extremely reduced, her child fell ill, and ruin stared her in the face. A timely supply from a friend relieved her from her more immediate necessities, and with some small remainder she set up as an itinerant sausage-seller. This, like her other avocations, did not prove remunerative; and we next hear of her as a singer at some musical entertainment, then as a performer at Bartholomew fair, then as assistant to a master of legerdemain. She next, by means of some advances made by an uncle, opened a public-house in Drury Lane, the first she saw vacant, which of course failed; and her next employment was as a waiter in a tavern at Marylebone. Here she made herself so useful, that a kinswoman of the landlady intimated that her hand would not be refused if applied for; and the captivating waiter, to escape a second involuntary marriage, was obliged again to reveal the secret of her

sex.

She next engaged herself to manage Punch at a puppet-show, and afterwards joined a band of strolling

players. Tired of wandering, it would seem, she settled at Chepstow, and opened a pastry-cook's shop. When she had built her oven, she had not wherewithal to heat it, and when she had obtained the fuel, she was without the necessary materials for her trade; but every obstacle gave way before her ingenuity and perseverance. After a short trial, she removed her business to Pell, a place near Bristol, received a small legacy, with which she paid off her debts, and commenced life afresh. She wrote a short tale for a newspaper, and obtained thereby a situation as corrector of the press; but her earnings at this toilsome occupation being insufficient to support her, she obtained employment as prompter at the theatre at Bath. She afterwards returned to London and kept a public-house at Islington; but as we here lose the aid of her narrative, her movements at this epoch are uncertain. She finally had recourse to her pen for subsistence, and began the publication of her memoirs. Her next production was a novel, and a graphic picture has been given of her home at this period. When the publisher, with a friend, called for the purpose of purchasing her manuscript, she was living in a wretched hut near the Clerkenwell prison. The furniture consisted of a dresser, extremely clean, ornamented with a few plates, and a fractured pitcher stood underneath it. A gaunt domestic guarded the establishment, while on a broken chair by the grate sat the mistress in her strange attire. A monkey was perched on one hob, a cat on the other, at her feet lay a half-starved cur, and a magpie chattered from her chair. The remains of a pair of bellows laid upon her knees served as a desk, her inkstand was a broken teacup, and her solitary pen was worn to the stump. On her visitors seating themselves on a rough deal board, for there was not a second chair in the room, she began, with a beautiful clear voice, to read from the manuscript before her, and asked thirty guineas for the copyright. The grim handmaiden stared aghast at the enormity of the demand. The iron-hearted publisher proposed five pounds, but finally doubled the sum, and offered in addition fifty copies of the work. The bargain was struck, and the authoress was left in temporary affluence. From this time Mrs. Charlotte Charke disappears from our view, and she died shortly afterwards, on the 6th of April 1760.

We must now dismiss the "Lives of the Laureates," with the remark, that both pleasure and profit are to be derived from its pages. The chief fault we have to find is, that it is not a two-volume work; and that the authors, in their anxiety not to exceed their proposed limits, do not give sufficient illustrations of the We think they writings of the fifteen bards.

have, on the whole, performed their task well; and while stating our opinion that the "Lives of Laureates," as Laureates, will want no re-writing, we may be permitted to add, that we hope in future there will be no lives of Laureates to be written. The only men fit for such an office are the writers of national songs. Dibdin, in our opinion, was a much more eligible man than Wordsworth or Southey for some such distinction and remuneration; whilst, of all the writers of the past age, none perhaps had so good a title as Campbell. We believe it was offered to him in his old age, and refused; but of this we are not certain.

It is an admitted literary axiom, that in order to give the true delineation of a woman's character, a female hand must guide the pen; and further, that the mind and temperament of a biographer must correspond, in some degree, to that of the subject of the biography. Both these conditions are fulfilled in the present volume, which, accordingly, affords a striking and interesting picture of one of the most remarkable women of the age in which she lived. The incidents of her life, and the scenes she passed through, present hues as strongly contrasted, as those of the political world during the same period. The general European peace, on the close of the American war, which had every appearance of permanence, and, in the estimation of the most eminent statesmen of the day, promised the happiest results, was suddenly broken up by convulsions reducing the nations of the Continent to a state of depression and misery unexampled in the history of civilization. In like manner, magnis componere parva, the brilliant career of Madame de Staël in her beloved Paris, where she reigned the literary and social cynosure, was doomed to be exchanged for exile, perilous wanderings, and distresses of every kind, bringing her to a premature grave. It might have been expected that this idol of the haut ton would be amongst the first of those overwhelmed by the revolutionary torrent. Not so, however. Madame de Staël was "armed at all points, and fit for either fray;" whether the war of wits in the refined abandon of the salons, or the ferocious onslaught of the demon Jacobins. Without a thought of flying from their fury, she busied herself, amid the murderous din, in concealing or aiding to escape those of her friends who were in the most imminent danger. When the emissaries of the bloody tribunal presented themselves at her house, boldly facing them, she asserted the inviolability of the Swedish Embassy with so much of dignity and courage, as to gain time for securing the safety of those who had sought refuge under her roof. Subsequently, in presence of the dread Robespierre himself, she maintained the same undaunted bearing, bearded the lion in his den, and owed her escape from the death that impended over her, partly to the respect thus inspired into her savage judges, partly to the assistance of one of the leading revolutionists, Manuel, who thus requited the habitual solicitude of her father, Necker, to supply the Faubourg St. Antoine and other poor quarters with bread during periods of scarcity. While the storm from whose fury she thus escaped, was raging throughout her

native country, she paid her first visits to England and Germany, both of which are pleasantly described, and eagerly returned to Paris on the re-establishment of something like orderly government. Here, however, her evil genius soon declared himself in the person of the redoubtable Napoleon. He who strode on from one victory to another in unbroken succession, till he laid all the Continent at his feet, trembled before the influence of a woman. The antipathy he conceived against his fair adversary, which ultimately vented itself in the most relentless persecution, dated from an early period, and manifested its beginnings in malicious banter.

"Whom do you consider the greatest woman living or dead?" inquired Madame de Staël of General Bonaparte, at a party given by Monsieur de Talleyrand. "Her, madame, who has borne the most children," curtly replied the soldier. "It is said," she resumed, a little discomfited, "that you are not very friendly to the sex." "I am passionately fond of my wife," he answered, turning abruptly away to converse with some one else.

He forgot that Madame de Staël, in any combat of wit, was likely eventually to be the winner, and by his rebuffs he made himself an enemy, who, woman though she was, and the victim of his arbitary power, kept him at bay notice of her?" said some one to Napoleon, long subsewith her pen for many years. "Why do you take any "surely you need not mind a woman." quently: dame de Staël," replied the emperor, "has shafts which would hit a man were he seated on a rainbow."

"Ma

At what, indeed, did she aim these her farreaching shafts? At that giant despotism which she beheld establishing itself, far more grinding and oppressive than that which her father had striven, unhappily without success, to modify, under the legitimate monarchy, She had even warmly sympathised with, and vigorously advocated, the constitutional principles maintained by her father, adverse alike to irresponsible arbitrary power, and to republican or democratical licence. These principles the frowns neither of the First Consul nor of the Emperor could induce her to disavow. Hence his ever-increasing malignity towards her. When first he saw reason for taking precautions against the hostile influence she was exerting, he surrounded her with spies, from whom he received intimation that she had instigated Benjamin Constant to the covert attack made by him in the Senate on the ambitious projects of the First Consul. His displeasure quickly became known among friends:

her

She was to entertain several persons on the evening following Monsieur Constant's speech. Five o'clock came, and with it a note of excuse; the disappointing billets continued to flow in, and she spent her evening alone. to bear such things calmly. Whatever men profess, we No doubt it requires a considerable degree of philosophy cannot believe in such a thing as perfect indifference to