The Whigs wished to pay a compliment to the Duke, so they gave a literary pension of 2001. a-year, to the editor of the Duke's Despatches. Nor was the pension undeserved. Far from it. Colonel Gurwood has rendered a lasting service to the military and political history, not of Britain alone, at the time, but of the whole civilised world. "Could a man live by poetry, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet." The sentiment is not ours further than by adoption-it belongs to Goldsmith. The truth of it is beyond dispute. He who writes an heroic poem leaves an estate entailed, and gives a greater gift to posterity than to the present age. Love of fame," and officiousness of conscience," are the great promotions to the toil of compiling books; not any idle expectation of riches, "for those that spend time," said Sir William Davenant, "in writing to instruct others may find leisure to inform them. selves how mean the provisions are which busy or studious minds can make for their own sedentary bodies." Surely, then, a government is to be commended that puts a literary man of merit above want, and keeps his mind apart for the good of the public from the week-day world annoyances of life. We are not altogether in favour of a very extended list of pensions to literary men. Necessity is a sharp task-mistress; but sufficiency, while it puts the mind at ease, is apt to occasion indolence,a common attendant on the literary character. Let us not, however, run into the other extreme, and starve our writers to sharpen their wits, as men put out nightingales' eyes to make them sing the better. What we should like to see set about would be the appropriation by parliament of an adequate annual grant for the advancement of works of great national importance, which can only be undertaken by co-operative labour. The formation of an English Etymological Dictionary is a work of this description; a History of England is a second; a Biographia Britannica a third; a kind of Camden's Britannia a fourth. In this way, as Southey remarks, literature might gain much by receiving national encouragement; but government, as he adds most properly, would gain a great deal more by bestowing it. Some abuse there would certainly be, as in the disposal of all preferments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical; but nothing so gross, we conceive, as the Record Commission, so positively bad as the British Museum Catalogue of Books, or so slow in publication, or priced so dear when published, as the quarto Collection of State Papers, issued under the authority of her majesty's government. The nation that gave the estate of Woodstock and the palace of Blenheim to the descendants of the great Duke of Marlborough has as yet no kind of record of the actions of the duke worthy of the name of history. We vote bronze statues and marble monuments to our heroes, but what are they worth? Lord Heathfield is seen in St. Paul's as a drunken sentinel; he has no such monument to his memory as Drinkwater's Siege. King Charles I. bestowed the laurel on Jonson with an increased annuity (worth much more than it is now), especially," it is said, "to encourage him to proceed in those services of his wit and pen which we have enjoined unto him, and which we expect from him." But the two Pre come again! No more, no more of that!" Gray and Sir Walter Scott declined the laurel when it was offered them; but the greatest of our poets hereafter will accept it with pride, redeemed from courtly stains and Dunciad strains as it has been, by Southey and by Wordsworth. The office of historiographer to the crown has been still worse bestowed among historians than the laurel of the court among English poets. Howell, the entertaining letter-writer, enjoyed the office for some time, and was succeeded by Dryden, who could have made but a slender title to the distinction. Shadwell succeeded Dryden, and Rymer succeeded Shadwell. The compiler of the Fœdera deserved the office, a compliment we are unwillng to pay to any one of his successors. Who has heard of Robert Stephens, Thomas Phillips, Richard Stonehewer, or even Mr. J. S. Clarke? For this same Mr. Clarke it was that Southey was refused the office. Both had written biographies of Nelson, but few have heard of Mr. Clarke's, while Southey's is, without question, the most faultless piece of biography in the language. The Prince Regent had something to do with this appointment. Mr. Clarke was his fi brarian, and he was under a promise to exert his influence in his behalf. The prince expressed his regret, and, under the circumstances, he could do no more. "God maketh poets," says Daniel to Lord Ellesmere, "but his creation would be in vain if patrons did not make them to live." Ben Jonson got but 201. by all his works. Booksellers paid but a small purchasemoney there were few readers, and they could not afford to pay more. What was to be done? The poet relied on his patron for remuneration. Spenser has seventeen dedicatory sonnets before his Faëry Queen; Chapman, sixteen before his translation of Homer. Shakspeare addresses his two printed poems to Lord Southampton in the language of one who would be glad of a reward. Dryden, the great master of praise in prose, drew the arrow of adulation to the head. He has three distinct dedications to his Virgil; Dr. Young has a dedication before each Satire (this is what Swift calls flattering knaves), and Thomson four dedications in verse before his Seasons. Well might Walpole affirm, that nothing can exceed the flattery of a genealogist but that of a dedicator. Let us, not, however, too severely condemn the poets who pursued the trade of flattery in a dedication. But booksellers, as new readers arose, improved the price of literature. The patron was no longer a necessary part of a poet's existence. Dr. Johnson could do without Lord Chesterfield; could substitute in satire the patron for the gurret :"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail; Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol;" could call Andrew Millar the bookseller the Mecænas of his day, and add a compliment that was well deserved, "I respect Andrew Millar, sir, he raised the price of literature." But Millar, and his apprentice Cadell, did more than this, they raised an author above the necessity of relying on a patron. We trust that literary men will, before long, assume as a class a permanent position for themselves, and for the authors who come after them, THE FIRST FLOWER-PAINTER. A LEGEND OF SICYON. "Life but repeats itself, all stale and worn; SICYON is among the most celebrated He was the son of Bries, or Brietes, as some call it, and instructed by him in the first rudiments of an art in which he afterwards arrived at singular perfection, considering the age in which he lived, and subsequently studied encaustic in the school of Pamphilus. The word encaustic signifies a kind of painting, in which, by heating or burning in (as the Greek term implies), the colours are rendered permanent in all their original splendour. But as neither Vitruvius, nor any other ancient author has left a clear account of the method employed, it may be reasonably doubted whether, among the various processes adopted or recommended by the moderns, the right one has yet been discovered. With this, however, we have nothing to do, further than briefly alluding to the extraordinary progress made by Pausias under his gifted master, which left all future competitors far behind. In every thing he undertook he was almost equally successful, and soon gained for himself a name engraven among the records of that bright land. And there it might have remained, covered with the dust of ages, blotted out with thousands more from the dim and time-stained annals of the past, or preserved only in dictionary lore, but for the halo of a sweet romance which circled round it like a glory, blending the classical and poetical together in the golden web of human sympathy and association. We can have but few thoughts and feelings in common with that young Greek artist, existing so many centuries back; the city in which he dwelt retaining but the name of what it was then; his style, the very means by which he achieved celebrity, long since passed away. But when we read that in his youth he loved and was beloved-ay, even as it is with the young in our own times the past comes home, as it were, to the heart, and we long to hear more, imagination promptly supplying every broken link in the chain of bygone events. History tells us that the maiden's name was Glycera, that she was a maker of garlands, and he became enamoured of her in early youth. Why the very announcement reads like a poem! What a new perception of the beautiful broke over the mind of Pausias about this period, refining and idealising it in a strange manner! One might have detected it in every thing he set about; the harsh outline, and rude, unfinished conception which characterised some of his first productions, rapidly disappeared, and were succeeded by a delicacy and polish unrivalled at that period. About this time he first began to paint flowers. How Glycera laughed, and clapped her little white hands joyfully together, when Pausias attempted to copy a wreath of roses which she was twining for a festival, laying the original down beside it, and smelling first to one and then to the other, as though she would fain have the young artist believe that she could not tell them apart! But though Pausias laughed with her—who could help it? he felt that they might have been better done, while with the feeling came the determination that they should be. Meanwhile Glycera took away the wreath to sell-for it was thus she earned her simple livelihood-asking leave to keep the copy; and, as he never refused her any thing, it was set up in her little studio, for that garland-maker was an artist, too, in her way-at least, no one could dispute her rare taste in the blending together of those glowing colours which formed her picturesque employment. When Pausias came to see his picture surrounded by the real flowers themselves, in all their beauty and freshness, he grew painfully alive to its many faults; but as Glycera, with a pretty wilfulness, absolutely refused to have it removed until he painted her another to put in its place, he was forced to comply with her request. Certain it is that the second was a wonderful improvement, although the artist himself was still far from satisfied, resting not until he gradually arrived at the highest perfection in that new art, of which he may truly be said to be the inventor-the first flower-painter! Glycera was, most likely, only a simple garland-wreather, and without much mind to comprehend the more ambitious aspirings of her gifted lover. But what did that matter, so she had the heart to love and reverence him as she must needs have done? But in this new pursuit, which he had learned of her, or to please her, the maiden dearly loved to play the connoisseur. First of all, it was ten to one she would own that there was any fault in her eyes; but when Pausias was urgent that she should try and find some-for well he knew that, from constant association with the original, her taste for the picturesque and beautiful was pure and judicious, and liking, perhaps, to be taught of her, if it was only for the very novelty of the thing -Glycera would draw up her little graceful figure to its utmost height, and fixing her dark eyes, half playfully, half deprecatingly,on his, as though wondering at her own temerity in schooling him, and looking ever gentlest when she chided, begin criticising with the softest voice and the sweetest smile imaginable. And when Pausias exclaimed that she was right, and he had not noticed the defect before, would look so proud for a little moment, and then be quite angry at his fancying she meant to call it a defect, when it was nothing, positively nothing, or only what the least shade of colour would rectify in an instant. The alteration was made, and Pausias even thanked her for the suggestion; but Glycera, like a true woman, took care that this should not happen very often. After all, it is so much pleasanter to admire than criticise; so difficult to find any fault in the compositions of those we love. "How strange!" said Glycera, one evening, as she sat among her flowers; "these roses fade even before I can well make use of them, while yours will live for ever!" "Not quite," answered the artist, with a smile. "I wish it could be so." "And what is there to hinder it ?" "Nothing," replied her lover, with a wild enthusiasm that seemed to defy all earthly obstacles. "There is no barrier between genius and immortality; not even death itself, so it allow us time only to achieve greatness!" Glycera looked up wonderingly in her lover's face, without venturing to speak again, and it seemed to her like the countenance of a god. "Have I frightened you, dear one?" asked he at length. "No, I love to hear you talk thus. I, too, should like to be immortal." "You, Glycera?" And there was something of pity in the fond smile of the young artist as he bent towards her. "Yes, indeed, and it is in your power to make me so, if you will!" "If-but you are talking idly now, my Glycera!" 66 Why, what should hinder you drawing me, as well as yonder wreath? and then I, too, should live for ever through your genius!" The artist was struck with the idea; and the girl's perfect and trusting reliance on his skill and power to bring it to pass, seemed to gift him with superhuman strength. After all, even if he failed, there would be no great harm done; and should he succeed, and something whispered that it would be so, how glorious a triumph would be his! Yes, Glycera should have her wish-immortality through him, and their names be blended together throughout all ages! 66 Pausias, speak to me !" exclaimed his companion, startled by the pale cheek and burning eyes of her enthusiastic lover. "You are not angry, surely? But, perhaps, you think me too presumptuous?" "Not a whit-it shall be done! You believe that I can do this, Glycera?" "I believe that you can do any thing!" "And yet it is a difficult task," observed the painter, as his flashing glance rested on that young and beautiful face. "Nay, I will sit so still and quiet -only try." "We will begin to-morrow, then.” "So soon! oh, what happiness!" Such was the origin of the famous Stephaneplocos," or garlandwreather, as it was afterwards called. 66 The following day Pausias commenced his labour of love; nor had all Glycera's little coquettish arts in the interim been entirely thrown away, for never did she look more beautiful; and the artist resolved to paint her as she was then, sitting among her flowers, and holding a wreath of them carelessly in her hand, as though she had just finished twining it. Truth to say, the original of that celebrated picture was charming enough to have inspired one even less gifted than the young Greek. The attitude, the timid consciousness of her own loveliness, beaming forth in that half-playful, half-bashful glance, although perfectly natural and unstudied, appeared the very perfection of artistic grace; and Pausias had only to suggest to his fair sitter-and it was a needless caution the necessity of her keeping her attention fixed upon him. Weeks passed on, and the picture grew in beauty beneath his mastertouch. Glycera, in her wild delight, knew not which to admire most, herself or the flowers, and would persist in maintaining that the former was flattered-for the pleasure, perhaps, of being contradicted by her lover, as a matter of course; and told, for the hundredth time, how utterly impossible it was for any human artist ever even to hope to delineate the changeful beauty of that radiant face. 2 But Pausias had many other things to engage his attention, and, manlike, began to tire a little of being so constantly chained to one subject; and although he always hoped that the "Stephaneplocos" would be his chef-d'œuvre, and bestowed more pains upon it than upon all the rest of his works put together, he did not seem in any great hurry to get it finished, but lingered over the subject in a sort of playful dalliance, without making much visible progress. Pausias has been accused by his contemporaries, and not without some shadow of truth, of being a slow painter; and although the censure was effectually silenced at the time by his famous "Hemeresios," or work of a day, that being the brief period in which he completed the picture of a boy, executed with wonderful taste and delicacy, taking into consideration the shortness of the time allotted to his self-imposed task, the satire was, nevertheless, not entirely without foundation. And what if it was so? The rivals who criticised him have passed into oblivion, while the artist is remembered still. All great things are born of time, and matured by study and reflection. But for that very slowness he might never have arrived at the eminence he afterwards attained in the skilful management of lights and shadows, for which the works of this great painter are peculiarly distinguished. Glycera evinced, at length, so much impatience that the picture should be gone on with, that Pausias could not help inquiring with a smile, whether she was afraid all the flowers would fade away? "It is not the flowers only that are mortal, my Pausias!" replied the girl, turning aside her head." Struck by the sad tones of her voice, he gazed upon her more attentively. Surely she was much changed! Could it be the light which fell upon her? Or the crimson flowers wreathed amid her dark hair? They were enough to make any one look pale,-but not so thin, so strangely attenuated. "You are ill!" said Pausias. It was the first time he had noticed it ; but we often find it thus: those who love us best and truest are frequently the last to observe a change, long |