done for the author what the productions of several of his fellow labourers in the Indian literary field, have failed to effect for them-secured for him an European reputation. Independent of the gratification otherwise to be derived from a work of this kind, we may remark in passing, that as in the present case, the interest is greatly enhanced by a knowledge of the mental and personal history of the author. This leads one, as it were, to track his progress, and to trace up his ideas to their sources in the map of intellectual sojourn. We become his fellow travellers, sympathize with his difficulties, share in his misgivings, and exult in his success. We behold in this work the collected wealth of one adventurer in the realms of criticism, philosophic speculation and poetry. A fine taste and acute observation, pervade the " Literary Leaves," combined with a polished style and a most candid exercise of the critic's office. The author for many years has been before the public, more perhaps than might suit some of his more retiring cotemporaries. Be this as it may, how far he originally contemplated such a consummation is a point that need not be adverted to now. It often happens that what might at first have been the pastime of an hour may become an enduring pursuit. As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined, and the genial stroll of youth's sweet morning, may like the journey of Obidah, the son of Abensina, become a picture of the totality of a life. It is not improbable that in his earlier efforts the utmost immortality D. L. R. looked for, was that to be found in the columns of some Calcutta newspaper. The Mantuan bard has truly said of fame-Vires acquirit eundo-and to this, its inherent quality of progression, may be attributed the full grown ambition of our author, to be known beyond the limits of Indian celebrity--if such a thing can be said to exist, unless it first receive the imprimatur of a London publisher. How far this may be just and proper, we pause not to argue here. It sufficeth that it is so, and that perhaps it is quite natural that such should be the case. It is an illustration at any rate of the attraction of aggregation. The mass of intellect, so to speak, being in England, mental magnetism draws in that direction.

This has not been the only step in advance made by our author, for time has been, when prose writing seemed a domain altogether out of his beat; his walk was elsewhere, and his sympathies towards quite a different track. How singular are the chances of life's pilgrimage. Had D. L. R. early in his career, been smiled on by the sun of interest and patronage, in the line of his profession; had he got a good staff appointment in a tolerably healthy locality, it might have been better for the man in regard

to the argumentum ad crumenam, but literature would have lost a distinguished poet and critic. In days of yore, perhaps he thought no more of prose composition, as a pursuit, than Benvenuto Cellini at the outset of his career, did of statuary. He will hereafter, we suspect, be better known by his prose essays, and critical disquisitions than by his poetry. Now-a-days very few read poetry. It is considered a drug in the market! The exquisite gold and silver work of Cellini is more alluded to, than known. For one master-piece of either, that the public can learn any thing of, save by hearsay or tradition; thousands may behold his bronze Persius in the public plaza at Florence. For one that can appreciate, or even so much as look at a sonnet, hundreds will relish an essay. Thoughts, like works of art, contract a value from forms, independent of the intrinsic; and a brass Augustus might thus command a higher price than a golden Constantine.

Our author has a delicate perception of the ideal, though occasionally, it seems to us, chargeable with being fastidious; we may even add hypercritical if not finical. His pages are remarkable for purity of style and clearness of reasoning. Sometimes one is almost inclined to doubt whether he has a catholic appreciation of poetical merit. On the whole, however, though at issue with him on some points, we are free to admit that his qualifications, for a critic, are of a high order, though now and then he appears to form no exception to his own estimate of the discriminative skill we expect in poet-critics. No one has a better claim to belief in regard to the anxieties of literary pursuits than our author. They are accordingly delineated with the graphic fidelity of personal experience. When he states respecting literary men in general, that cheerfulness is always but a doubtful indication of the serenity of the heart, we must enter some grains of exception-unless indeed he be alluding to an enforced cheerfulness-which is no more the thing itself, than rouge is complexion. We have several living writers to disprove the always. When we call to recollection the characteristics of such authors as Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne, Fielding, Gay, Arbuthnot, the Colmans, Charles Lamb and Sir Walter Scott;-we have good reason to demur to our author's 'always.' The vivacity of their style, was the reflection of habitual cheerfulness. We might also, in support of our demur, refer to living writers, as Leigh Hunt, Lord Campbell, Lord Brougham, Washington Irving, Miss Mitford, Miss Edgeworth, Lady Blessington, Miss Martineau, Mr. Dickens, Mr. Thackeray, &c. Lord Byron formed no exception. His sadness was a sham, and a conventional affectation. In Childe Harold he wore it, may be, as a mask. In Don

Juan, he dropped his domino. We suspect the tradition of Swift's being never known to smile, to be an absurdity. It proves nothing. He was intellectually, obstreperously gay at times. He was the impersonation of irony, which seldom laughs save inwardly. Our own Shakespeare was of grave aspect. So was Cervantes. Those who laugh least themselves, are generally the most capable of producing laughter in others. The story of Carlini is well known. Go and amuse yourself-and have a hearty laugh-see Carlini''Alas! I am Carlini.' It was the same with Joe Grimaldi-with a breaking heart, he often set hundreds in a roar, and the whole term of his life was singularly unfortunate and unhappy.

We must also question the position, that "literary pursuits and literary distinctions, are often fatal to domestic pleasures and attachments." It is not the pursuit that is chargeable so much in such cases, as deficiency of temper, or of principle, in the individual. It were better almost that we had no literary men at all than that the converse, as a necessary consequence, were generally true. Literature were a curse instead of a blessing, if its cultivation always merged in domestic alienation and wretchedness. We could refer, were it necessary, to many names distinguished in letters, to shew that such pursuits are compatible with domestic order and felicity. Undoubtedly literary men do suffer at times, from a sensitiveness constitutional to them as a class, and wanting which there might be a palpable deficiency of some intellectual charm. Neither is it to be denied, that an irritability of a professional kind, or even a tinge of envy, is a besetting sin of literary men as well as artists. There are some who can bear no brother near the throne, and who sicken at the praise of others, as if it were so much drawn from the capital of their own fame. Literary pursuits, in short, are a bitter-sweet, that are liable continually to recur to the palate in either savour, according to circumstances, and individual peculiarity. D. L. R. testifies that, "there is something so inexpressibly charming in literary pursuits, and the glory that attends them, that no man who has once fairly enrolled himself in the fraternity of authors, can relinquish his pen without reluctance, and retire into ordinary life." This surely is a fearful confession! Let young aspirants to literary fame ponder it well. For our own part it makes us shudder. Though as yet wholly a stranger to the glory' of such pursuits, yet must we admit that there is a terrible fascination in them. This remark applies to them as a voluntary movement of elastic mental powers, and not as the 'accipe hoc' behest of a subsistence seeking necessity. Literary inspiration is a sort of Van Woedenblock devised leg, that is by no

means the best to be put foremost. Being an enchanted limb, it puts itself foremost whether or no, and despite its poor struggling possessor, carries him on at a tremendous pace and railway-like speed, nolens volens,

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

till at last the pestiferous limb wears out the man and renders him a ghastly spectacle to all beholders. Or to vary the simile, a decided literary taste may be compared to the sacred goor mentioned in Ramaseeana,' ,"* which, when once tasted, will convert the most lamb-like man into a ruthless thug. One cannot fancy without a shiver of terror D. L. R. tasting of such an infernal sop, and-but a truce to such an unsavoury supposition.

As one advantage of painting over poetry, our author appeals to the fact that, "the productions of the artist are regarded with a deeper feeling of personal interest than those of the author." The reason of this is, that we see the workmanship of the one exactly as it came from his hand, but not so of the other. Would it not be very interesting to see the manuscript of an author of established reputation? The interest of course would deepen with the antiquity of the writing. The reason given by our author for deciding in favor of the painter is, "because there is no agent like the printer, between the artist and his admirer.” Have we not the engraver and the lithographer? How few, comparatively, see original paintings of the old artists. Engravings of such, are what books are to literary men; and authors and painters are thus on a par. How precious would one book even, of the Iliad be, in the original, as it came from the amanuensis. Fancy a fragment of the broken table of stone cast down by the indignant prophet at the foot of Sinai, did it but contain one word! Who would not prize an autograph of Socrates were it only his voucher to an Athenian green grocer; or a note to Xenophon from Plato, written on his knee from the gardens of Academus. To come further down, a manuscript ode from Horace, or a shred of parchment of Virgil, containing the rough jotting down of Ille ego qui,' &c., would be worth fifty times their weight in gold. It is too true, as our author complains, that "the friends and associates of a man of genius are

This work of Colonel Sleeman's is, by far, the most original and interesting of the present century. It gives an account of an amiable society of peripatetic philosophers who boast of scrupulously abstaining from shedding blood. They have an off-hand way of recruiting the financial department, and have studied the mysteries of tying a neckcloth more deeply than Beau Brummel ever did. They carry out the principles of utilitarianism to an extent little dreamed of by European professors. Colonel Sleeman's work is one of fearful interest, and unfolds the sublime of the horrible.

generally among the last to discover his intellectual greatness. It is much the same with contemporaries, some of whom are eminently conceited in their depreciation of or surprisingly stupid in their blindness to real merit. Dr. Heylin, in reckoning up the famous dramatists of England, omitted Shakespeare. Who has not heard of Whitelock, who mentions the author of 'Paradise Lost,' as a certain blind man, Latin Secretary of the Parliament?' The author of the Tartuffe changed his illustrious name of Pocquelier, for the humble one of Molliere, that he might not disgrace his father the upholsterer.* In regard to an eminent divine and philosopher, Samuel Pepys, in his amusing diary, has this entry. "May 12th, 1661-At the Savoy-heard Dr. Fuller preach upon David's words-'I will wait with patience all the days of my appointed time, until my change arrive; but methought it was a poor dry sermon." We have a pretty good notion that the dry poverty was not in the preacher. His judgment regarding another work of genius, is of a piece. "This book (Hudibras) now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." In the prefatory account of the life of the Revd. John Ward, vicar of Stratford upon Avon, who had lived in habits of intimacy with and in attendance, as a medical practitioner, on Shakespeare's immediate descendants; Dr. Severn who, in such a congenial spirit, has so ably executed his task, of editing and illustrating a work that casts a few rays on Shakespeare's latter days; has these remarks. "The effect of time and proximity on human judg'ment, with regard to contemporaries, is aptly illustrated by the 'scantiness of Mr. Ward's records of that divinely gifted being, whose name has immortalized the obscure village where he dwelt, and whose simple tomb had so recently invested the humble roof of its rude church with a halo of splendour and 'fame, unknown to the proudest Mausoleum, that earthly wealth, 'or human pride, ever piled over the ashes of mortal grandeur. With unavailing regret, we perceive how numerous, varied, and 'precious our memorials might have been in these volumes, but 'for the strange and almost universal sentiment which prevents 'men from appreciating the talents of those with whom they hold 'familiar intercourse. His father and mother are with us, and 'his brethren we know,' is the language of envious mediocrity, ever prone to treat the genius, it can neither understand nor value, with insulting disregard."+

• Chateaubriand's Sketches of English Literature.

"Diary of the Revd. John Ward, A. M., Vicar of Stratford upon Avon, extending from 1618 to 1679, from the original MSS., arranged by Charles Severn, M. D., &c, &c.”

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