-་ T de so got again to the highway. I had determined upon but one more trial, which made me cautious in selecting it, and, presenting myself at the window, by way of reconnoitre, I discerned within a young man and two women, evidently keeping later hours than the generality of their neighbours, for they were seated in comfortable enjoyment by their fireside. Knocking at the doors having proved ineffectual, I thought I would this time make known my wants by means of the window; so calling to the man within, I begged he would come and speak to me at either one or the other. A muttered denial, however, given by a dogged shake of the head, and the churlish monosyllable, "No, no!" was all I could gain from him; until the women, probably discerning from my appearance that I was much fatigued, looked wistfully in their companion's face; a silent appeal in my favour, but a vain one; until the two, tauntingly upbraiding him with "vous avez peur, cous avez peur !" the man rose gingerly, and with slow, cautious step, approached the window. To my question respecting a cart and horse, he informed me in as few words as possible that at a house a little farther on, there was a cart to be had, but, alas! there was no horse; and where there was a horse, the owner had no cart; the fact being, that they would not stir out of their bed to assist what they supposed to be an "Irlandois," were it to save his life; so seeing that all efforts to obtain a conveyance were ineffectual, I gathered up the little strength I had left, and proceeded the rest of the way (about ten miles) still on foot. The whole valley was now in darkness, the inhabitants having all retired to rest; but a large fire, kindled by the Indians on the outskirts of the wood, which I understood to be at that minute in use for the manu facture of maple sugar, burnt brightly, impossible," for "knocked up" I certainly was to the full extent of the word, having walked nearly forty miles without rest, and passed seventeen hours unable to obtain food; for, relying upon the chance of getting some con veyance by means of which I might finish my expedition with ease, I had set off wholly unprovided with a traveller's comforts, save and except a stout heart and a well-practised pair of legs. In conclusion, it is but fair to say, that want of hospitality or even of politeness is not a general trait in the character of the French Canaqualities. Their antipathy and fear dians, for they excel in both these of the Irish (for one of whom, no doubt, they mistook me) will account for the behaviour I have observed upon in the instance before us. In broad daylight I have gone amongst these same people, experiencing from them nothing but the utmost kindness and attention, and often I have been surprised and delighted to find the habitan courteously and even gracefully performing the functions of host, guide, or ferryman, as might be required, without claiming or expecting the slightest compensation. A BROTHER OF THE PRESS ON THE HISTORY OF A LITERARY MAN, LAMAN BLANCHARD, AND THE CHANCES OF THE LITERARY PROFESSION. IN A LETTER TO THE REVEREND FRANCIS SYLVESTER AT ROME, London, Feb. 20, 1846. MY DEAR SIR,-Our good friend and patron, the publisher of this Magazine, has brought me your message from Rome, and your demand to hear news from the other great city of the world. As the forty columns of the Times cannot satisfy your reverence's craving, and the details of the real great revolution of England which is actually going on do not sufficiently interest you, I send you a page or two of random speculations upon matters connected with the literary profession: they were suggested by reading the works and the biography of a literary friend of ours, lately deceased, and for whom every person who knew him had the warmest and sincerest regard. And no wonder. It was impossible to help trusting a man so thoroughly generous and honest, and loving one who was so perfectly gay, gentle, and amiable. A man can't enjoy every thing in the world; but what delightful gifts and qualites are these to have! Not having known Blanchard as intimately as some others did, yet, I take it, he had in his life as much pleasure as falls to most men; the kindest friends, the most affectionate family, a heart to enjoy both; and a career not undistinguished, which I hold to be the smallest matter of all. But we have a cowardly dislike, or compassion for, the fact of a man dying poor. Such a one is rich, bilious, and a curmudgeon, without heart or stomach to enjoy his money, and we set him down as respectable: another is morose or passionate, his whole view of life seen blood-shot through passion, or jaundiced through moroseness: or he is a fool who can't see, or feel, or enjoy any thing at all, with no ear for music, no eye for beauty, no heart for love, with nothing except money: we meet such people every day, and respect them somehow. That donkey browses over five thousand acres; that mad man's bankers come bowing him out to his carriage. You feel secretly pleased at shooting over the acres, or driving in the carriage. At any rate, nobody thinks of compassionating their owners. We are a race of flunkies, and keep our pity for the poor. I don't mean to affix the plush per sonally upon the kind and distinguished gentleman and writer who has written Blanchard's Memoir; but it seems to me that it is couched in much too despondent a strain; that the lot of the hero of the little story was by no means deplorable; and that there is not the least call at present, to be holding up literary men as martyrs. Even that prevailing sentiment which regrets that means should not be provided for giving them leisure, for enabling them to perfect great works in retirement, that they should waste away their strength with fugitive literature, &c., I hold to be often uncalled for and dangerous. I believe, if most men of letters were to be pensioned, I am sorry to say I believe they wouldn't work at all; and of others, that the labour which is to answer the calls of the day is the one quite best suited to their genius. Suppose Sir Robert Peel were to write to you, and, enclosing a cheque for 20,000l., instruct you to pension any fifty deserving authors, so that they might have leisure to retire and write "great" works, on whom would you fix? People in the big-book interest, too, cry out against the fashion of fugitive literature, and no wonder. For instance, The Times gave an extract the other day from a work by one Doctor Carus, physician to the King of Saxony, who attended his royal master on his recent visit to England, and has written a book concerning the jour ney. Among other London lions, the illustrious traveller condescended to visit one of the largest and most remarkable, certainly, of metropolitan roarers-the Times printing-office; of which, the Doctor, in his capacity of a man of science, gives an exceedingly bad, stupid, and blundering ac count. he Carus was struck with "disgust," says, at the prodigious size of the paper, and at the thought which suggested itself to his mind from this enormity. There was as much printed every day as would fill a thick volume. It required ten years of life to a philosopher to write a volume. The issuing of these daily tomes was unfair upon philosophers, who were put out of the market; and unfair on the public, who were made to receive (and, worse still, to get a relish for) crude daily speculations, and frivolous ephemeral news, where they ought to be fed and educated upon stronger and simpler diet. We have heard this outery a hundred times from the big-wig body. The world gives up a lamentable portion of its time to fleeting literature; authors who might be occupied upon great works fritter away their lives in producing endless hasty sketches. Kind, wise, and good Doctor Arnold deplored the fatal sympathy which the Pickwick Papers had created among the boys of his school: and it is a fact that Punch is as regularly read among the boys at Eton as the Latin Grammar. the ways of small men beneath him. I mean, seriously, that I think the man was of so august and sublime a nature, that he was not a fair judge of us, or of the ways of the generality of mankind. One has seen a delicate person sicken and faint at the smell of a flower, it does not follow that the flower was not sweet and wholesome in consequence; and I hold that laughing and honest storybooks are good, against all the doctors. Arguing for liberty of conscience against any authority, however great -against Doctor Arnold himself, who seems to me to be the greatest, wisest, and best of men, that has appeared for eighteen hundred years; let us take a stand at once, and ask, Why should not the day have its literature? Why should not authors make light sketches? Why should not the public be amused daily or frequently by kindly fictions? It is well and just for Arnold to object. Light stories of Jingle and Tupman, and Sam Weller quips and cranks, must have come with but a bad grace before that Laughing is not the highest occupation of a man, very certainly; or the power of creating it the height of genius. I am not going to argue for that. No more is the blacking of boots the greatest occupation. But it is done, and well and honestly, by life, who arrogate to themselves (if persons ordained to that calling in they are straightforward and worthy shoe-blacks) no especial rank or privilege on account of their calling; and not considering boot-brushing the greatest effort of earthly genius, nevertheless select their Day and Martin, or Warren, to the best of their judgment; polish their upperleathers as well as they can; satisfy their patrons; and earn their fair wage. pure and lofty soul. The trivial and familiar are out of place there; the harmless joker must walk away abashed from such a presence, as he would be silent and hushed in a cathedral. But all the world is not made of that angelic stuff. From his very height and sublimity of virtue I have chosen the unpolite shoeblack comparison, not out of disrespect to the trade of literature; but it is as good a craft as any other to select. In some way or other, for daily bread and hire, almost all men are labouring daily. Without necessity they would not work at all, or very little, probably. In some instances you reap Reputation along with Profit from your labour, but Bread, in the main, is the incentive. Do not let us try to blink this fact, or imagine that the men of the press glory, or go onward impelled by an are working for their honour and irresistible afflatus of genius. If only men of genius were to write, Lord help us! how many books would there be? How many people are there even capable of appreciating genius? Is Mr. Wakley's or Mr. Hume's opinion about poetry worth much? As much as that of millions of people in this honest, stupid empire; and they have a right to have books supplied for them as well as the most polished and accomplished critics have. The literary man gets his he could but look down and deplore bread by providing goods suited to VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCV. the consumption of these. This man of letters contributes a police report; that, an article containing some downright information; this one, as an editor, abuses Sir Robert Peel, or lauds Lord John Russell, or vice versa; writing to a certain class who coincide in his views, or are interested by the question which he moots. The literary character, let us hope or admit, writes quite honestly; but no man supposes he would work perpetually but for money. And as for immortality, it is quite beside the bargain. Is it reasonable to look for it, or to pretend that you are actuated by a desire to attain it? Of all the quill-drivers, how many have ever drawn that prodigious prize? Is it fair even to ask that many should? Out of a regard for poor dear posterity and men of letters to come, let us be glad that the great immortality number comes up so rarely. Mankind would have no time otherwise, and would be so gorged with old masterpieces, that they could not occupy themselves with new, and future literary men would have no chance of a livelihood. To do your work honestly, to amuse and instruct your reader of to-day, to die when your time comes, and go hence with as clean a breast as may be; may these be all yours and ours, by God's will. Let us be content with our status as literary craftsmen, telling the truth as far as may be, hitting no foul blow, condescending to no servile puffery, filling not a very lofty, but a manly and honourable part. Nobody says that Dr. Locock is wasting his time because he rolls about daily in his carriage, and passes hours with the nobility and gentry, his patients, instead of being in his study wrapt up in transcendental medical meditation. Nobody accuses Sir Fitzroy Kelly of neglecting his genius because he will take any body's brief, and argue it in court for money, when he might sit in chambers with his oak sported, and give up his soul to investigations of the nature, history, and improvement of law. There is no question but that either of these eminent persons, by profound study, might increase their knowledge in certain branches of their profession; but in the meanwhile the practical part must go on-causes come on for hearing, and ladies lie in, and some one must be there. The commodities in which the lawyer and the doctor deal are absolutely required by the public, and liberally paid for; every day, too, the public requires more literary handicraft done; the practitioner in that trade gets a better pay and place. In another century, very likely, his work will be so necessary to the people, and his market so good, that his prices will double and treble; his social rank rise; he will be getting what they call "honours," and dying in the bosom of the genteel. Our calling is only sneered at because it is not well paid. The world has no other criterion for respectability. In Heaven's name, what made people talk of setting up a statue to Sir William Follett? What had he done? He had made 300,000l. What has George IV. done that he, too, is to have a brazen image? He was an exemplar of no greatness, no good quality, no duty in life; but a type of magnificence, of beautiful coats, carpets, and gigs, turtle-soup, chandeliers, cream-coloured horses, and delicious Maraschino,-all these good things he expressed and represented and the world, respecting them beyond all others, raised statues to "the first gentleman in Europe." Directly the men of letters get rich, they will come in for their share of honour too; and a future writer in this miscellany may be getting ten guineas where we get one, and dancing at Buckingham Palace while you and your humble servant, dear Padre Francesco, are glad to smoke our pipes in quiet over the sanded floor of the little D But the happy homme de lettres, whom I imagine in futurity kicking his heels vis-à-vis to a duchess in some fandango at the court of her majesty's grandchildren, will be in reality no better or honester, or more really near fame, than the quilldriver of the present day, with his doubtful position and small gains. Fame, that guerdon of high genius, comes quite independent of Berkeley Square, and is a republican institution. Look around to our own day among the holders of the pen: begin (without naming names, for that is odious) and count on your fingers those whom you will back in the race for immortality. How many fingers have you that are left untold? It is and dear**, and dear ††, you who think you are safe, there is futurity, and limbo, and blackness for you, beloved friends! Cras ingens iterabimus æquor: there's no use denying it, or shirking the fact; in we must go, and disappear for ever and ever. And after all, what is this Reputation, the cant of our trade, the goal that every scribbling penny-a-liner demurely pretends that he is hunting after? Why should we get it? Why can't we do without it? We only fancy we want it. When people say of such and such a man who is dead, "He neglected his talents; he fritaway in fugitive publications time and genius, which might have led to the production of a great work;" this is the gist of Sir Bulwer Lytton's kind and affecting biographical notice of our dear friend and comrade Laman Blanchard, who passed away so melancholily last year. tered sant and often brilliant as they are, give no idea of the powers of the author, or even of his natural manner, which, as I think, was a thousand times more agreeable. He was like the good little child in the fairy tale, his mouth dropped out all sorts of diamonds and rubies. His wit, which was always playing and frisking about the company, had the wonderful knack of never hurting any body. He had the most singular art of discovering good qualities in people; in discoursing of which the kindly little fellow used to glow and kindle up, and emphasize with the most charming energy. Good-natured actions of others, good jokes, favourite. verses of friends, he would bring out fondly, whenever they met, or there was question of them; and he used to toss and dandle their sayings or doings about, and hand them round to the company, as the delightful Miss Slowboy does the baby in the last Christmas Book. What was better than wit in his talk was, that it was so genial. He enjoyed thoroughly, and chirped over his wine with a good humour, that could not fail to be infectious. His own hospitality was delightful: there was something about it charmingly brisk, simple, and kindly. How he used to laugh! As I write this, what a number of pleasant, hearty scenes come back! One can hear his jolly, clear laugh I don't know any thing more dis- ter; Sir Bulwer Lytton's account of him will be read by all his friends with pleasure, and by the world as a not uncurious specimen of the bioThe me moir savours a little too much of the funeral oration. It might have been a little more particular and familiar, so as to give the public a more intimate acquaintance with one of the honestest and kindest of men who long and friendly intercourse with ever lived by pen; and yet, after a Blanchard, I believe the praises Sir Lytton bestows on his character are by no means exaggerated: it is only than the preparation of questionable the style in which they are given, great works, to get his family their dinner. A man must be a very Great man, indeed, before he can neglect this precaution. His three volumes of essays, plea which is a little too funereally encomiastic. The memoir begins in this way, a pretty and touching design of Mr. Kenny Meadows heading the biography:— |