in an unguarded moment, set a fashion to the dandies, such as the dress of the ancients and the decency of the moderns had hitherto precluded.

a

I now come to your remark, confirmed to me by my own observation, upon the hostilities at such parties. A beldame with prominent eyes, painted mole-hairs, and abundantly rich in the extensive bleaching-ground of cheeks and shoulders German as I imagine was speaking all manner of spiteful things against a young person called pretty; and after a long discussion, not only on her defects, but also on those of her family and parchments, Who is she, I should like to know, terminated the effusion. My betrayer had absconded, not without engaging another to find me and conduct me home. As we were passing through the folding-doors, I saw the baroness (for such he called her) with her arm upon the neck of the girl, and looking softly and benignly, and styling her my young friend here in such a sweet guttural accent, so long in drawing up, you would have thought it must have come from the heart at the very least. I mentioned my surprise.

"She was so strongly the fashion at the close of the evening," said my Mentor, "that it would never do (for the remainder of the night) not to know her; and, as proper time was wanting to get up a decent enmity, nothing was left for it but sworn friendship. To-morrow the baroness will call her my protégée, and the day after ask again, Who is she, unless she happens to hear that the girl has a person of high rank among her connections, which I understand she has; then the baroness will press her to the heart, or to that pound of flesh which lies next it.'

:

Trifling people are often useful, unintentionally and unconsciously illustrations may be made out of them even for scholars and sages. A hangman sells to a ragman the materials on which a Homer is printed. Would you imagine that in places like these it was likely for me to gain a new insight into language?

Southey. I should not, indeed. Children make us reflect on it occasionally, by an unusual and just expression; but in such society every thing is trite and trivial.

Porson. Yet so it was. A friend who happened to be there, although I did not see him, asked me afterward what I thought of the naked necks of the ladies.

"To tell you the truth," replied I, "the women of all countries, and the men in most, have usually kept their necks naked."

"You appear not to understand me, or you quibble,” said "I mean their bosoms."

he;

I then understood for the first time that neck signifies bosom when we speak of women, though not so when we speak of men or other creatures. But if bosom is neck, what according to the same scale of progression ought to be bosom? The usurped dominion of neck extends from the ear downward to where mermaids become fish. This conversation led me to reflect that I was born in the time when people had thighs : before your memory, I imagine. At present there is nothing but leg from the hip to the instep. My friend, Mr. Small, of Peter-house, a very decent and regular man, and fond of fugitive pieces, read before a lady and her family, from under the head of descriptive, some verses about the spring and the bees. Unluckily, the honeyed thighs of our little European sugar-slaves caught the attention of the mother, who colored excessively at the words, and said with much gravity of reproof, "Indeed, Mr. Small, I never could have thought it of you," and added, waving her hand with matronly dignity toward the remainder of the audience, "Sir, I have daughters.' And I know not what offence the Great Toe can have committed, that he never should be mentioned by the graver and more stately members of the family, or, if mentioned, be denounced with all his adherents; when many of these graver and statelier walk less humbly, and with much less heed against offending. In Italy, if any extremity of the human body is mentioned, it is preceded by the words, "with respect;" so that most respect is shown to the parts, as to the characters, that least deserve it.

Southey. Pray tell me what else appeared to you remarkable at the rout; for when a person of your age and with your powers of observation is present at one for the first time, many things must strike him which another sees without reflection.

Porson. I saw among the rest two or three strangers of distinction, as I understood by their dresses and decorations; and, observing that nobody noticed them, except the lady of the house, who smiled and dropped a few syllables as she

passed, I inquired the next day whether they were discreditable or suspicious. "On the contrary," said my informant, "they are of the highest character as well as of the highest rank, and, above all, of well-proved loyalty: but we Englishmen lose our facility of conversation in the presence of strangers; added to which, we consider it an indecorous thing to pay the least attention to persons to whom we never were introduced. Strangers act otherwise. Every man of education, and of a certain rank, does the honors, not of the house, but of society at large. In no company at Paris, or any other capital in the world, would a foreigner stand five minutes without receiving some attention and courtesy. Abroad all gentlemen are equal, from the duc et pair to the Gascon who dines on chestnuts; and all feel that they are. The Englishman of ancient but private name is indignant and sullen that his rights at home are denied him; and his wounded pride renders him unsocial and uncivil. Pride of another kind acts on our society in the same manner. have seen Irish peers, issuing from the shop and the desk, push rudely and scornfully by the most ancient of the French nobility; the cadets of whose families founded the oldest of ours, and waved the sword of knighthood over our Plantagenets. For which reason, whenever I sit down at table in any public place with an Irish or even an English peer of recent creation, I select the sturdiest of my servants to stand behind my chair, with orders to conduct him by the ears out of the room, should I lift up a finger to indicate the command."

I

I ought not to have interrupted you so long, in your attempt to prove Wordsworth, shall I say, the rival or the resembler of the ancients?

Southey. Such excursions are not unseasonable in such discussions, and lay in a store of good humor for them. Your narrative has amused me exceedingly. As you call upon me to return with you to the point we set out from, I hope I may assert without a charge of paradox, that whatever is good in poetry is common to all good poets, however wide may be the diversity of manner. Nothing can be more dissimilar than the three Greek tragedians: but would you prefer the closest and best copier of Homer to the worst (whichever he be) among them? Let us avoid what is indifferent or doubt

ful, and embrace what is good, whether we see it in another or not; and if we have contracted any peculiarity while our muscles and bones were softer, let us hope finally to outgrow it. Our feelings and modes of thinking forbid and exclude a very frequent imitation of the old classics, not to mention our manners, which have a nearer connection than is generally known to exist with the higher poetry. When the occasion permitted it, Wordsworth has not declined to treat a subject as an ancient poet of equal vigor would have treated it. Let me repeat to you his Laodamia.

Porson. After your animated recital of this classic poem, I begin to think more highly of you both. It is pleasant to find two poets living as brothers, and particularly when the palm lies between them, with hardly a third in sight. Those who have ascended to the summit of the mountain sit quietly and familiarly side by side; it is only those who are climbing with briers about their legs, that kick and scramble. Yours is a temper found less frequently in our country than in others. The French poets, indeed, must stick together to keep themselves warm. By employing courteous expressions mutually, they indulge their vanity rather than their benevo lence, and bring the spirit of contest into action gayly and safely. Among the Romans we find Virgil, Horace, and several of their contemporaries intimately united and profuse. of reciprocal praise. Ovid, Cicero, and Pliny are authors the least addicted to censure, and the most ready to offer their testimony in favor of abilities in Greek or countryman. These are the three Romans the least amiable of nations, and (one excepted) the least sincere — with whom I should have liked best to spend an evening.

Southey. Ennius and old Cato, I am afraid, would have run away with your first affections.

Porson. Old Cato! He, like a wafer, must have been well wetted to be good for any thing. Such gentlemen as old Cato we meet every day in St. Mary Axe, and wholesomer wine than his wherever there are sloes and turnips. Ennius could converse without ignorance about Scipio, and without jealousy about Homer.

Southey. And I think he would not have disdained to nod his head on reading Laodamia.

Porson. You have recited a most spirited thing, indeed;

and now to give you a proof that I have been attentive, I will remark two passages that offend me. In the first stanza,

With sacrifice before the rising morn

Performed, my slaughtered lord have I required;
And in thick darkness, amid shades forlorn,
Him of the infernal Gods have I desired,

I do not see the necessity of Performed, which is dull and cumbersome. The second line and the fourth terminate too much alike, and express to a tittle the same meaning: have I required and have I desired are worse than prosaic; beside which there are four words together of equal length in each.

Southey. I have seen a couplet oftener than once in which every word of the second verse corresponds in measure to every one above it.

Porson. The Scotch have a scabby and a frost-bitten ear for harmony, both in verse and prose; and I remember in Douglas two such as you describe:

This is the place the centre of the grove,

Here stands the oak the monarch of the wood.

After this whiff of vapor I must refresh myself with a draught of pure poetry, at the bottom of which is the flake of tartar I wish away:

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away, no strife to heal,
The past unsighed for, and the future sure;
Spake, as a witness, of a second birth,

For all that is most perfect upon earth.

How unseasonable is the allusion to witness and second birth ! which things, however holy and venerable in themselves, come stinking and reeking to us from the conventicle. I desire to find Laodamia in the silent and gloomy mansion of her beloved Protesilaus; not elbowed by the godly butchers in Tottenham-court Road, nor smelling devoutly of ratafia among the sugar-bakers' wives at Blackfriars.

Mythologies should be kept distinct: the fire-place of one should never be subject to the smoke of another. The gods of different countries, when they come together unexpectedly,