first reply is likely to be in the negative, but with inquirers of this sort, by no means likely to be the final one.

Miscellanies, vol. i., pp. 49, 52, 62.

A SOIRÉE OF LIONS.

Glittering are the rooms, well lighted, thronged; bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde-gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished: oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thankful. For your lion-soirée admits not of speech; there lies the speciality of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civilisation gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dispensed with in it. Utterance there is not: nay there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. For which reason it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-soirées, might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters are? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good, his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with what farther ocular survey you find useful, and speech is not needed at all. O Fenimore Cooper, it is most true there is ‘an instinctive tendency in man to look at any man that has become distinguished;' and moreover, an instinctive desire in men to become distinguished and be looked at!

Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 99.

TOO MANY NOTED MEN.

In noted men, undoubtedly enough, we surpass all ages since the creation of the world; and from two plain causes: First,

GENERAL WORTHLESSNESS OF MODERN LITERATURE.

303 that there has been a French Revolution, and that there is now pretty rapidly proceeding a European Revolution; whereby everything as in the Term-day of a great city, when all mortals are removing, has been, so to speak, set out into the street; and many a foolish vessel of dishonour, unnoticed and worth no notice in its own dark corner, has become universally recognisable, when once mounted on the summit of some furniture-waggon, and tottering there (as Committee-president, or other head-director), with what is put under it, slowly onwards to its new lodging and arrangement, itself alas, hardly to get thither without breakage. Secondly, that the Printing Press, with stitched and loose leaves, has now come into full action; and makes, as it were, a sort of universal daylight, for removal and revolution and everything else to proceed in, far more commodiously, yet also far more conspicuously. A complaint has accordingly been heard that famous men abound, that we are quite overrun with famous men: however, the remedy lies in the disease itself; crowded succession already means quick oblivion. For waggon after waggon rolls off, and either arrives or is overset; and so, in either case, the vessel of dishonour, which, at worst, we saw only in crossing some street, will afflict us no more.

Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 112.

THE GENERAL WORTHLESSNESS OF MODERN LITERATURE. Considering the multitude of mortals that handle the Pen in these days, and can mostly spell, and write without glaring violations of grammar, the question naturally arises: How is it, then, that no Work proceeds from them, bearing any stamp of authenticity and permanence; of worth for more than one day? Ship-loads of fashionable Novels, Sentimental Rhymes, Tragedies, Farces, Diaries of Travels, Tales by flood and field, are swallowed monthly into the bottomless Pool: still does the Press toil; innumerable Paper-makers, Compositors, Printers' Devils, Book-binders, and Hawkers grown hoarse with loud

proclaiming, rest not from their labour; and still, in torrents, rushes on the great array of Publications, unpausing, to their final home; and still Oblivion, like the Grave, cries, Give! Give! How is it that of all these countless multitudes, no one can attain to the smallest mark of excellence, or produce aught that shall endure longer than 'snow-flake on the river,' or the foam of penny-beer? We answer: Because they are foam; because there is no Reality in them. These Three Thousand men, women, and children, that make up the army of British Authors, do not, if we will consider it, see anything whatever; consequently have nothing that they can record and utter, only more or fewer things that they can plausibly pretend to record. The Universe, of Man and Nature, is still quite shut up from them; the open secret' still utterly a secret; because no sympathy with Man or Nature, no love and free simplicity of heart has yet unfolded the same. Nothing but a pitiful Image of their own pitiful Self, with its vanities, and grudgings, and ravenous hunger of all kinds, hangs for ever painted in the retina of these unfortunate persons; so that the starry ALL, with whatsoever it embraces, does but appear as some expanded magic-lantern shadow of that same Image, and naturally looks pitiful enough.

Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 14.

THE FATE OF POPULAR WRITERS.

It is good to understand, that no popularity, and openmouthed wonder of the world, continued even for a long series of years, can make a man great. Such popularity is a remarkable fortune; indicates a great adaptation of the man to his element of circumstances; but may or may not indicate anything great in the man. To our imagination, there is a certain apotheosis in it; but in reality no apotheosis at all. Popularity is as a blaze of illumination, or alas, of conflagration, kindled round a man; shewing what is in him; not putting the smallest item more into; often abstracting much from him;

THE FATE OF POPULAR WRITERS.

305

conflagrating the poor man himself into ashes and caput mortuum! And then, by the nature of it, such popularity is transient; your 'series of years,' quite unexpectedly, sometimes almost all on a sudden, terminates! For the stupidity of men, especially of men congregated in masses round any object, is extreme, What illuminations and conflagrations have kindled themselves, as if new heavenly suns had risen, which proved only to be tar-barrels, and terrestrial locks of straw! Profane Princes cried out, 'One God, one Farinelli!'-and whither now have they and Farinelli danced? ****

Lope de Vega, whom all the world swore by, and made a proverb of; who could make an acceptable five-act tragedy in almost as many hours; the greatest of all popularities past or present, and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among popularities: Lope himself, so radiant, far shining, has not proved to be a sun or star of the firmament; but is as good as lost and gone out: or plays at best, in the eyes of some few, as a vague aurora-borealis, and brilliant ineffectuality. The great man of Spain sat obscure at the time, all dark and poor, a maimed soldier; writing his Don Quixote in prison. And Lope's fate withal was sad, his popularity perhaps a curse to him; for in this man there was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in few other popular men; and such far shining diffusion of himself, though all the world swore by it, would do nothing for the true life of him even while he lived: he had to creep into a convent, into a monk's cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow, that his blessedness had lain elsewhere; that when a man's life feels itself to be sick and an error, no voting of bystanders can make it well and a truth again. Or coming down to our own times, was not August Kotzebue popular? Kotzebue, not so many years since, saw himself, if rumour and hand-clapping could be credited, the greatest man going; saw visibly his Thoughts, dressed out in plush and pasteboard, permeating and perambulating civilised Europe; the most iron visages weeping with him, in all theatres from Cadiz to Kamtchatka; his own 'astonishing genius' meanwhile producing two tragedies or so

X

per month: he, on the whole, blazed high enough: he too has gone out into Night and Orcus, and already is not.

Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 110.

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR MINERVA PRESS NOVELISTS.

Consider the whole class of Fictitious Narratives; from the highest category of epic or dramatic Poetry, in Shakspeare and Homer, down to the lowest of froth Prose in the Fashionable Novel. What are all these but so many mimic Biographies? Attempts, here by an inspired Speaker, there by an uninspired Babbler, to deliver himself, more or less ineffectually, of the grand secret, wherewith all hearts labour oppressed: the significance of Man's Life ;-which deliverance, even as traced in the unfurnished head, and printed at the Minerva Press, finds readers. For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a superlative in every kind; and the most Foolish man in the Earth is now indubitably living aud breathing, and did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even now digesting the same; and looks out on the world, with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some unspeakable theory thereof: yet where shall the authentically Existing be personally met with! Can one of us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got sight of him, have orally communed with him! To take even the narrower sphere of this our English Metropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he has conversed with the identical, individual Stupidest man now extant in London? No one. Deep as we dive in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opens: where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new scenes of being we must pass before reaching it (except that we know it does lie somewhere, and might by human faculty and opportunity be reached), is altogether a mystery to us. Strange, tantalising pursuit! We have the fullest assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest of London men actually resident, with bed and board of some kind, in London; but that several persons