musical voice, the ballad of 'Betty Foy.' I was not critically or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the rest for granted. But in the Thorn,' the 'Mad Mother,' and the Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman,' I felt that deeper power and pathos which have been since acknowledged,

'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,'

as the characteristics of this author; and the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something of the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the first welcome breath of spring,

'While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.' Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice sounded high

'Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute;'

as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall, gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Wordsworth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional superstitions of the place, and that there was a something corporeal, a matter-of-fact-ness, à clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty, in his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit that descended to him through the air: it sprung out of the ground like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which the goldfinch sang. He said, however, (if I remember right,) that this objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. The next day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I think I see him now. He answered in some degree to his friend's description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He was quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There was something of a roll, a lounge in his gait, not unlike his own 'Peter Bell.' There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about his temples, a fire in his eye, (as if he saw something in objects more than the outward appearance,) an intense, high, narrow forehead, a Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face. Chantry's bust wants the marking traits; but he was teased into making it regular and heavy: Haydon's head of him, introduced into the Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem, is the most like his drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear gushing accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table, and said triumphantly that 'his marriage with experience had not been so productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of the good things of this life.' He had been to see the 'Castle Spectre' by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He said, 'it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove." "

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"In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey, we set out, I on my return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and he was

to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked him if he had prepared any thing for the occasion? He said he had not even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. I did not go to hear him,this was a fault, but we met in the evening at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day's walk to Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me some descriptive lines from his tragedy of 'Remorse;' which I must say became his mouth and that occasion better than they some years after did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury Lane boards,

'O memory! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life.'

"I saw no more of hiin for a year or two, during which period he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest in Germany; and his return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey. The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a common-place book under his arm, and the first with a bon-mot in his mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft and Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best-Man as he was, or man as he is to be. 'Give me,' says Lamb, 'man as he is not to be.' This saying was the beginning of a friendship between us, which I believe still continues. Enough of this for the present.

'But there is matter for another rhyme,

And I to this may add a second tale.""

Hazlitt's irregular life as a reporter and a critic, being, as he says himself, "regularly transferred from one paper to another, sometimes formally, and sometimes without notice," probably contributed to a failing which injured his constitution, diminished his respectability, and no doubt impaired his domestic happiness. We allude to his fondness for strong drink. The fact, however, is here recorded, as his subsequent course in this respect was highly honourable to him, and shows what may be effected in this important point by a determined resolution of abstinence. By a strong exercise of the will, he so conquered. his propensity, that from the period of his abstinence to the day of his death, a space of sixteen years, he never touched either spirit or wine.

His condition as a married man was any thing but a happy one, and a divorce under the law of Scotland was the consequence. But little is known of the causes of this unfortunate termination of his marriage, though it is supposed to have been owing to Hazlitt's strange temper. The next year he found a lady more to his taste, and married again. His opinions, however, were very unfavourable to the happiness of the married state, and indeed to the sex. His own misfortunes in this respect had clouded his judgment, and blunted his feelings. This is evident from a very interesting essay, entitled "On the Conduct of Life, or Advice to a School-boy." As a whole, it

may be pronounced a very fine production. It contains much of the soundest and best advice, founded upon good principle and a deal of experience. The remarks upon the conduct of school-boys will be recognized as true by every one who has ever been embraced by that category. The independence of Hazlitt's mind, and his love of equality, are strikingly exemplified in this essay. We purpose to present our readers with some running extracts from it, upon the different topics of "conduct at school," "study," "society," "love and marriage." As to the first, he says:

"You complain since, that the boys laugh at you and do not care about you, and that you are not treated as you were at home. My dear, that is one chief reason for your being sent to school, to inure you betimes to the unavoidable rubs and uncertain reception you may meet with in life. You cannot always be with me, and perhaps it is as well that you cannot. But you must not expect others to show the same concern about you as I should. You have hitherto been a spoiled child, and have been used to have your own way a good deal, both in the house and among your play-fellows, with whom you were too fond of being a leader: but you have good-nature and good sense, and will get the better of this in time. You have now got among other boys who are your equals, or bigger and stronger than yourself, and who have something else to attend to besides humouring your whims and fancies, and you feel this as a repulse or piece of injustice. But the first lesson to learn is, that there are other people in the world besides yourself. There are a number of boys in the school where you are, whose amusements and pursuits (whatever they may be) are and ought to be of as much consequence to them as yours can be to you, and to which, therefore, you must give way in your turn. The more airs of childish self-importance you give yourself, you will only expose yourself to be the more thwarted and laughed at. True equality is the only true morality or true wisdom. Remember always that you are but one among others, and you can hardly mistake your place in society. In your father's house, you might do as you pleased: in the world, you will find competitors at every turn. You are not born a king's son, to destroy or dictate to millions: you can only expect to share their fate, or settle your differences amicably with them. You already find it so at school; and I wish you to be reconciled to your situation as soon and with as little pain as you can.

"It was my misfortune, perhaps, to be bred up among dissenters, who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, and set too high a value on their own peculiar pretensions. From being proscribed themselves, they learn to proscribe others; and come in the end to reduce all integrity of principle and soundness of opinion within the pale of their own little communion. Those who were out of it, and did not belong to the class of Rational Dissenters, I was led erroneously to look upon as hardly deserving the name of rational beings. Being thus satisfied as to the select few who are the salt of the earth,' it is easy to persuade ourselves that we are at the head of them, and to fancy ourselves of more importance in the scale of true desert than all the rest of the world put together, who do not interpret a certain text of Scripture in the manner that we have been taught to do. You will (from the difference of education) be free from this bigotry, and will, I hope, avoid every thing akin to the same exclusive and narrow-minded spirit. Think that the minds of men are various as their faces-that the modes and employments of life are

numberless as they are necessary-that there is more than one class of merit-that though others may be wrong in some things, they are not so in all-and that countless races of men have been born, have lived and died without ever hearing of any one of those points in which you take a just pride and pleasure-and you will not err on the side of that spiritual pride or intellectual coxcombry which has been so often the bane of the studious and learned !"

The following sensible remarks are made, among others, upon "study :"

"You are, I think, too fond of reading as it is. As one means of avoiding excess in this way, I would wish you to make it a rule, never to read at meal-times, nor in company when there is any (even the most trivial) conversation going on, nor ever to let your eagerness to learn encroach upon your play-hours. Books are but one inlet of knowledge; and the pores of the mind, like those of the body, should be left open to all impressions. I applied too close to my studies, soon after I was of your age, and hurt myself irreparably by it. Whatever may be the value of learning, health and good spirits are of more.

"I would have you, as I said, make yourself master of French, because you may find it of use in the commerce of life; and I would have you learn Latin, partly because I learnt it myself, and I would not have you without any of the advantages or sources of knowledge that I possessedit would be a bar of separation between us-and, secondly, because there is an atmosphere round this sort of classical ground, to which that of actual life is gross and vulgar. Shut out from this garden of early sweetness, we may well exclaim

'How shall we part and wander down

Into a lower world, to this obscure

And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits?'

I do not think the classics so indispensable to the cultivation of your
intellect as on another account, which I have seen explained elsewhere,
and
you
will have no objection to turn with me to the passage.
"The study of the classics is less to be regarded as an exercise of
the intellect, than as a discipline of humanity. The peculiar advantage
of this mode of education consists not so much in strengthening the un-
derstanding, as in softening and refining the taste. It gives men liberal
views; it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to
itself; to love virtue for its own sake; to prefer fame to life, and glory
to riches and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent, instead
of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe that there is
something really great and excellent in the world, surviving all the
shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that
low and servile fear which bows only to present power and upstart
authority. Rome and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind,
which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill,
which could not be hid; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines
like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time.

'Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;

Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.

Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,

As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!'

It is this feeling more than any thing else which produces a marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and which, by the weight and importance of the consequences attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.'

"Because, however, you have learnt Latin and Greek, and can speak a different language, do not fancy yourself of a different order of beings from those you ordinarily converse with. They, perhaps, know and can do more things than you, though you have learnt a greater variety of names to express the same thing by. The great object, indeed, of these studies is to be a cure for a narrow and selfish spirit,' and to carry the mind out of its petty and local prejudices to the idea of a more general humanity. Do not fancy, because you are intimate with Homer and Virgil, that your neighbours who can never attain the same posthumous fame are to be despised, like those impudent valets who live in noble families and look down upon every one else. Though you are master of Cicero's 'Orations,' think it possible for a cobbler at a stall to be more eloquent than you. 'But you are a scholar, and he is not.' Well, then, you have that advantage over him, but it does not follow that you are to have every other. Look at the heads of the celebrated poets and philosophers of antiquity in the collection at Wilton, and you will say they answer to their works: but you will find others in the same collection whose names have hardly come down to us, that are equally fine, and cast in the same classic mould. Do you imagine that all the thoughts, genius, and capacity of those old and mighty nations are contained in a few odd volumes, to be thumbed by schoolboys? This reflection is not meant to lessen your admiration of the great names to which you will be accustomed to look up, but to direct it to that solid mass of intellect and power, of which they were the most shining ornaments. I would wish you to excel in this sort of learning, and to take a pleasure in it, because it is the path that has been chosen for you: but do not suppose that others do not excel equally in their line of study or exercise of skill, or that there is but one mode of excellence in art or nature. You have got on vastly beyond the point at which you set out; but others have been getting on as well as you in the same or other ways, and have kept pace with you. What then, you may ask, is the use of all the pains you have taken, if it gives you no superiority over mankind in general? It is this-You have reaped all the benefit of improvement and knowledge yourself; and farther, if you had not moved forwards, you would by this time have been left behind."

To young men, particularly young students, who often enter the society of the world with very erroneous notions, which either destroy their own happiness, or injure permanently their reputation, the following reflections are of much value.

"Gravity is one great ingredient in the conduct of life, and perhaps a VOL. XX.--No. 40.

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