"Hear, nobles, subjects, all,

'Tis I, the king, command, To-morrow yield ye to festival The court of fair Scotland.

"Let music raise her strain,
The minstrel's song be heard,

And feasting and dance in my palace reign-
It is my sovereign word."

The morrow came, and joy—

The joy of palaces,

That basks on the lip to the heart's annoy,
And music and feast were his.

The wine-cup flush'd with life,
Even envious souls were gay,

And the festering heart hid the gall of strife
From the gazer's eye that day.

Enthroned in pomp of power,

The king exulting sate,

'Till the merry dance and the midnight hour Made him descend from state.

The monarch left behind,

He now put on the man,

And to pleasure his lordly soul resign'd,

And with the dance began.

He saw a lady stand,

Her face mysterious veil'd,

And he led her among the joyous band

But why that face conceal'd?—

"O show to me thine e'en,

Fair partner," said the king,

Thou fear'st their lustre, too bright in sheen,

May work us suffering.

"But we have bright eyes here,

If not as bright as thine,

And lips as fresh as young roses are,

Just pluck'd from love's own shrine.

"I sue, who might command, Fair lady, bare thy brow,

For the dance is o'er: in all Scotland

Sure none is coy as thou!"

He felt the hand he held

In his grow deadly chill,

And his blood, that before like a river roll'd,

Shrink back, and then be still.

A hollow voice, yet low,

Mutter'd in fleshless tone ;

"O monarch, I have no beauty now

For thee to gaze upon.

"I come whence dance and song

Break not the dread repose,

Where strength parts not the weak and strong, Nor hate the direst foes

"From the spirits' land of shade,
To bid thee ready be,

When the sum of thy rule and hours is made
With thy deeds of sovereignty."

Aside her veil she cast

What gazed that king upon!

An orbless skull whence the life had past,
A wither'd skeleton! *

ANECDOTICAL RECOLLECTIONS.

I THINK it is Walpole who has said, in substance, that if any private individual were to commit to writing the scenes and events of his life, so pleasing is biographical detail, that even such a memoir would be replete with interest. When we consider how much the life of one man is the life of another, this is not surprising. We are fond of perusing that which, even to a limited extent, is a record of our common feelings, a history of human nature in general. The study of man is not now confined to a few philosophers. We have an innate

curiosity to know all which the experience of our fellow men can develope. In this respect we are none of us anti-social, none of us are man-haters. The anchorite or Trappist, who lived in solitude, disgusted with mankind, or pretended to live so, who had flown into retirement from the ill usage of the world, or abandoned it with ruined fortunes, if a volume of biography, or of auto-biography, the most attractive of the two kinds, were placed before him, would peruse it with eagerness. We cannot wonder, when luxury is so far spread abroad as in the present day, if the agreeable be preferred generally to the useful, if works of anecdote and fancy supersede all others, and that which amuses be foremost in attraction. This vogue or fashion, moreover, is not without its utility. Family hoards and dark repositories are explored, the contents of worm-eaten papers are examined with a view to publication; and, among much which is frivolous, works are discovered worthy of preservation, historically useful and sufficiently solid to descend to posterity; witness the manuscripts of Evelyn and Pepys.

Musing on the foregoing subject the other day, during a morning walk in Hyde Park, it struck me, that if an individual, who had mingled but a little in general society, were, instead of writing his own private history (which a man, not a sexagenarian, might be wanting in modesty to publish), to enumerate such anecdotes, traits of character, or sayings of remarkable men, as had come under his notice, and to which the world was a stranger, matters not unentertaining to the reader might be elicited. For this he would tax his recollection of past years, and here and there bring up something from which the memoir-writer might make an addition to his compilations. The writer of this paper is well aware how circumscribed his own capacity of doing this is, compared with that of many others; but the example may operate upon those better qualified for the task-upon such as have had opportunities of penetrating deeper into the recesses of social

*This incident tradition affirms to have happened to Alexander III. of Scotland.

life, and mingling in the society of distinguished men, with which chance never favoured him. The present article, therefore, is but an avantcourier for others better qualified to follow with a stock of more sterling value; it is a medley written down as it recurs, a sort of washingday meal, to use the house-wife's phrase, consisting of homely scraps laid in disorder upon the board.

On this 29th of September, then, I find myself at my writing-table, with my chin resting upon my hand, calling upon memory for what it may be able to afford me of the nature which I have mentioned. The traces of many things I would record, time has utterly obliterated. Johnson's Dictionary is upon the table: it reminds me of something I have been told respecting the ponderous lexicographer, which, in my belief, has never yet been Boswellized. The writer of the life of Young, in Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," who died about ten years ago, told me that the Doctor was always willing to listen to the literary compositions of his friends, and afford his advice in correcting them. Many requests of this nature were made to him; if they were made from persons whom he knew, and of whose talents he had the smallest opinion, he never slighted them; but he would crush with scorn the selfopinionated Tyro. This gentleman was one day reading to Johnson an article he had penned for publication: it was in the year 1779. Johnson suddenly stopped him at a passage he came to, in which the word "with" was repeated too often; and, looking at him in his severe way, said," Sir, I know not how you will manage to finish your paper; for I tell you without 'with,' though with 'without' or with 'with,' if you prefer it, that I shall withstand your using 'with' or 'without' more than five times in any other sentence."

The gentleman from whom I had the foregoing anecdote, also said, that drinking tea with Johnson, at the house of the blind poetess, Mrs. Williams, on the 31st of December, 1779, the Doctor got up after finishing his twelfth cup of tea, and addressed him" Well, Sir, good night; and a happy new year to us all to-morrow! Poor Garrick's curtain is dropped, and the learned Bishop Warburton's pen is at rest. Where shall we all be in another twelvemonth? There's another worn out year added to the cast-off wardrobe of old Time, or rather to the rich stores of some present Tacitus or future Herodotus! As to you, my young friend, while you are walking home, sum up all that you or others have done, right or wrong, in the course of the past year, rub out the old score, and to-morrow morning begin a wiser one."

I remember one day asking Wolcot if he had known Johnson. He told me he had been in his company, I think at Plymouth. "Every body," said Wolcot," was in awe of him; and I confess I felt some awe too, yet I determined to say something; and recollecting to have heard that he was fond of contradicting the opinions of others, even when he thought as they did, I laid a trap to discover whether this rumour about him was right. Watching my time, I said,—“ I think, Dr. Johnson, that picture of Reynolds is one of the best he ever painted." -"Sir, I differ from you in opinion: I think it is one of his worst, Sir!" Wolcot was silent. With the shrewdness of his own character, Wolcot observed to me, on relating this anecdote-"Traps are good things to prove a man's character; lay them well, and they will always

bring it out." The picture, which hung in the room, and to which he alluded, was one of Reynolds's earliest and best.

A friend has just sent to me to borrow the "Life of Baron Trenck." Though not a very appropriate character to rank after Johnson, I must catch"the Cynthia of the minute," lest I forget I have any scrap to record of this extraordinary man. I remember some years ago meeting, in the garden of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, with Count du Roure. Accident turned the conversation upon Trenck, when Du Roure told me he knew him well: they were fellow-captives in the prison of St. Lazare during the French revolution, pending which, as is well known, Trenck was guillotined. Trenck was fond of the marvellous, besides which he had a very fertile imagination. He was always inveighing against his imprisonment; and reports of the Prussians marching upon Paris, of which the gaolers could not discover the source, were circulated in the prison. This indiscreet conduct was fatal to him. Not long before the downfal of the party in power, indeed, as I recollect, but a few days, Trenck indiscreetly boasted that he had communications with persons outside the walls of the gaol, and that he knew every thing going on there. The prisoners were pleased at the hopes he gave them of being speedily liberated. The turnkeys were incessantly labouring to discover the origin of these rumours. Early one morning Trenck again set the prison in an uproar, by asserting that deliverance was at hand, for he had that day received intelligence of the Prussians being then only two or three leagues from Paris. He even gave a detail of their numbers and movements. Unfortunately, some of the prisoners recollected that the gates were not yet opened, and that no communication with the exterior could possibly take place so early. This staggering fact was bruited about, and reached the ears of the gaolers. He was taken from the prison, tried, and executed the next day. His remains were interred in a spot of ground, forty feet square, near the Rue St. Antoine, which had been a garden to a convent, and where, in about a year preceding June 1794, no less than one thousand two hundred and ninety-eight bodies were deposited with layers of lime, victims to the revolutionary tribunal. The prisoners whom Trenck had left behind were liberated by the downfal of the government; and Trenck would have escaped among them, had he not been fond of telling extraordinary stories. His adventures were dictated by himself, but put together on paper by another person, and are rather understood to be "founded in fact," as novelists say, than true in their details. The book is a most entertaining one notwithstanding.

What a coil the newspapers make about the abuses of the Chancery court: it is indeed an Augean stable.* This recalls a letter written by a clerical friend of mine, now no more, containing the following anecdote of Lord Eldon. It is at all events curious. The writer says:

For the delays of justice and abuses in this court, I recommend the reader to a perusal of the "Life of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guilford," &c. The same evils then excited attention and complaint, which have been suffered to run on increasing a hundred and fifty years more: the monies held in the fangs of this hydra of mischief having increased in the same time from a hundred thousand, or two, to 40,000,0002. !!

"Just before I exchanged London for Oxford, and retired to the house in that university, where the good Bishop Berkley died in the office of watching over his son's education, I left one day my friend (as he called himself) Lord Chancellor Thurlow sitting in Lincoln's-inn Hall, where I had no briefs, and I met Jack Scott, who had no more briefs than I, under the gateway that goes into Carey-street, where the eloquent Alleyne died of a broken heart, because all his talents could not procure him briefs enough. 'So you are going to leave us,' said Scott, as I hear, to return to Alma Mater and to take orders.'Why yes, the Chancellor promises me his patronage, though he called me yesterday at dinner, in his pious language, a damn'd fool for quitting the Bar.' So you, Scott, must give your patronage to an old friend when he is a poor curate, and you fill Thurlow's seat.'-'0 by Jove,' said Scott, 'I shall soon follow you; if not to take orders, as I have not, like you, a Thurlow for a friend, at best to be a country counsel in some corner of my native county.'-'Then, Scott,' said I, you will certainly do wrong; your perseverance and talents will carry you through by and by. I cannot trace a single brief to the appearance which the partiality of my friends was pleased to think I made with my first in the Court of Chancery. As to you, my friend, you have never yet had any briefs; perhaps the first will be followed by such success as Alleyne deserved to have found after the Negro cause, and as Erskine both deserves and finds after the Greenwich Hospital cause.' Thus Scott and I talked in 1781." Twenty years after, Scott was Lord Chancellor in reality, making good, indeed, that there is "a tide in the affairs of men."

Dr. Brinkly, I see, has just been appointed to an Irish bishoprick: this recalls to me that, during Fox's administration, that minister made himself an enemy in a very curious manner. A vacancy occurring in the church, he promoted an old fellow-collegian and schoolfellow, Dickson, to an Irish bishoprick. Dickson's father was only a dean, and seriously quarrelled with his son for presuming to be a bishop when he was no higher than a dean. This circumstance was mentioned by Mr. Sackville Gardiner, uncle of the brave and unfortunate Lord Mountjoy, whose death no one regretted more than Fox. The father became Mr. Fox's uncompromising foe.-So much for the odium theologicum.

Speaking of Fox, he had more of simple nature about him than any man of his time; and this joined to his great talents was the more remarkable. He made friends not by his preparations and appearance, but by the kindness of heart at first sight discernible in his physiognomy. The Marquis of Kildare going with a friend (from which friend I had the story) to call at the house of a very charming woman, in Paris, on whom Fox had just called, she said, "Ah, pourquoi vous autres Anglais, n'êtes vous pas tous aussi aimables que M. Fox." The compliment was not very civil to her visitors, but it described the impression Fox left upon strangers to a hair. It is astonishing what nature does for man in this respect: some carry the world by the impression of their countenances; others are "rough diamonds," like poor Opie, and must make their way with their hands.

I once asked Wolcot, if it were true, as some had asserted, that he was first struck by Opie's paintings for their promising appearance