that will keep them there. There is a dilemma here, which is not easily got over; and to solve the difficulty and reconcile the contradiction, was the great problem of the late King's reign. The doubtful lubricity of Mr. Canning's style was one of the rollers by which the transition was effected, and Legitimacy shown to be a middle term between divine right and the choice of the people, compatible with both, and convertible into either, at the discretion of the Crown, or pleasure of the speaker. Mr. Canning does not disgrace his pretensions on other questions. He is a sophist by profession, a palliator of every powerful and profitable abuse. His shuffling, trifling speeches on Reform are well-known. He sometimes adds the petulance of the schoolboy to his stock of worn-out invention; though his unfeeling taunt on the "revered and ruptured Ogden" met with a reception which will make him cautious how he tampers again with human infirmity and individual suffering, as the subject of ribald jests and profligate alliteration.

The thing in which Mr. Canning excels most

is wit; and his wit is confined to parody. The Rejected Addresses have been much and deservedly admired; but we do not think the parodies in them, however ingenious or ludicrous, are to be compared with those in the Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin," and some of the very best of these are by Mr. Canning. Among others are, we believe, the German Play, and the imitation of Mr. Southey's Sapphics. Much as we admire, we do not wonder at Mr. Canning's excellence in this department. Real, original wit, he has none; for that implies sense and feeling, and an insight into the real differences of things; but from a want of sympathy with any thing but forms and common-places, he can easily let down the sense of others so as to make nonsense of it. He has no enthusiasm or sensibility to make him overlook the meanness of a subject, or a little irregularity in the treatment of it, from the interest it excites: to a mind like his, the serious and affecting is a kind of natural burlesque. It is a matter of course for him to be struck with the absurdity of the romantic or singular in any way, to

whom every thing out of the beaten track is absurd; and "to turn what is serious into farce" by transferring the same expressions to perfectly indifferent and therefore contemptible subjects. To make any description or sentiment ludicrous, it is only necessary to take away all feeling from it: the ludicrous is ready-made to Mr. Canning's hands. The poetry, the heart-felt interest of every thing escapes through his apprehension, like a snake out of its skin, and leaves the slough of parody behind it. Any thing more light or worthless cannot well be imagined.*

* We have said nothing here of the impiety of Mr. Canning's parodies, though a great deal has been said of the impiety of Mr. Hone's, which unfortunately happen to be on the other side of the question. It is true that one man may steal a horse sooner than another can look over a hedge. Mr. Hone is not a Cabinet Minister, and therefore is not allowed to take liberties with the Liturgy. It is to no purpose to urge that Mr. Hone is a very good-natured man, that he is mild and inoffensive in his manners, that he is utterly void of guile, with a great deal of sincere piety, and that his greatest vice is that he is fond of a joke, and given to black-letter reading. The answer is-" But he has written parodies”—and it is to no purpose to reply-So has Mr. Canning! He is a Cabinet Minister, and therefore incapable of any thing vulgar or profane. One would think that the triumphant question put by

Mr. Hone to his Jury, "Whether Mr. Jekyll's Parody on Black-eyed Susan was meant to ridicule Sir William Curtis or the ballad of Black-eyed Susan?” would have put an end for ever to the cant of this subject, if reason could put an end to cant on any subject. The fate of different men is curious. Mr. Canning, who has all his life been defending the most odious and mischievous men and measures, passes, on that very account, for a most amiable character and an accomplished statesman. Mr. Hone, who defended himself against a charge of blasphemy for a parody on the Church Service, of which Mr. Canning had furnished him with the precedent, rose from the attack by the force of good-nature, and by that noble spirit of freedom and honesty, in which to be unjustly accused is to be superior to all fear, and to speak truth is to be eloquent-but that he did not suffer himself to be crushed to atoms, and made a willing sacrifice to the prejudice, talent, and authority arrayed against him, is a resistance to the opinions of the world and the insolence of power, that can never be overlooked or forgiven.

"A wit's a feather, and a chief's a rod:

An honest man's the noblest work of God!"

MR. COBBETT.

PEOPLE have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers, and he " fillips the ear of the public with a three-man beetle." He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the go