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"The world forgetting, by the world forgot!"

We enjoy the cool shade with solitude and silence; or hear the dashing waterfall,

"Or stock-dove plain amid the forest deep,

That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale."

We set to work, and

We take up the pen-
We muse or paint,
The perfect leis-

It seems almost a shame to do anything, we are so well con-
tent without it; but the eye is restless, and we must have
something to show when we get home.
failure or success prompts us to go on.
cil, or lay it down again, as we please.
as objects strike our senses or our reflection.
ure we feel turns labor to a luxury. We try to imitate the
grey color of a rock or of the bark of a tree: the breeze wafted
from its broad foliage gives us fresh spirits to proceed, we dip
our pencil in the sky, or ask the white clouds sailing over its
bosom to sit for their pictures. We are in no hurry, and have
the day before us. Or else, escaping from the close-embowered
scene, we catch fading distances on airy downs, and seize on
golden sunsets with the fleecy flocks glittering in the evening ray,
after a shower of rain has fallen. Or from Norwood's ridgy
height, survey the snake-like Thames, or its smoke-crowned
capital;

"Think of its crimes, its cares, its pain,
Then shield us in the woods again."

No one thinks of disturbing a landscape-painter at his task: he seems a kind of magician, the privileged genius of the place. Wherever a Claude, a Wilson has introduced his own portrait in the foreground of a picture, we look at it with interest (however ill it may be done) feeling that it is the portrait of one who was quite happy at the time, and how glad we should be to change places with him.

Mr. Burke has brought in a striking episode in one of his later works in allusion to Sir Joshua's portrait of Lord Keppel, with those of some other friends, painted in their better days. The portrait is indeed a fine one, worthy of the artist and the critic,

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and perhaps recalls Lord Keppel's memory oftener than any other circumstance at present does.* Portrait-painting is in truth a sort of cement of íriendship, and a clue to history. That blockhead, Mr. C****r, of the Admiralty, the other day blundered upon some observations of mine relating to this subject, and made the House stare by asserting that portrait-painting was history or history portrait, as it happened; but went on to add, "That those gentlemen who had seen the ancient portraits lately exhibited in

"No man lives too long, who lives to do with spirit, and suffer with resignation, what Providence pleases to command or inflict: but indeed they are sharp incommodities which beset old age. It was but the other day, that in putting in order some things which had been brought here on my taking leave of London for ever, I looked over a number of fine portraits, most of them of persons now dead, but whose society, in my better days, made this a proud and happy place. Amongst these was the picture of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy of the subject, the excellent friend of that excellent man from their earliest youth, and a common friend of us both, with whom we lived for many years without a moment of coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to the day of our final separation.

"I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest and best men of his age; and I loved and cultivated him accordingly. He was much in my heart, and I believe I was in his to the very last beat. It was after his trial at Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal and anxious affection I attended him through that his agony of glory; what part, my son, in early flush and enthusiasm of his virtue and the pious passion with which he attached himself to all my connexions, with what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, just as I should have felt, such friendship on such an occasion."-Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 29, second edition, printed by T. Williams.

I have given this passage entire here, because I wish to be informed, if I could, what is the construction of the last sentence of it. It has puzzled me all my life. One difficulty might be got over by making a pause after "I believe he felt," and leaving out the comma between "have felt" and "such friendship," That is, the meaning would be, "I believe he felt with what zeal and anxious affection," &c., "just as I should have felt such friendship on such an occasion." But then again, what is to become of the "what part, my son?" &c. With what does this connect, or to what verb is "my son" the nominative case, or by what verb is "what part" governed? I should really be glad, if, from any manuscript, printed copy, or marginal correction, this point could be cleared up, and so fine a passage resolved, by any possible ellipsis, into ordinary grammar.

Pall-mall, must have been satisfied that they were strictly historical;" which showed that he knew nothing at all of the matter, but merely talked by rote. There was nothing historical in the generality of those portraits, except that they were portraits of people mentioned in history-there was no more of the spirit of history in them (which is passion or action) than in their dresses. But this is the way in which that person, by his pettifogging habits and literal understanding, always mistakes a verbal truism for sense, and a misnomer for wit! I was going to observe, that I think the aiding the recollection of our family and friends in our absence may be a frequent and strong inducement in sitting for our pictures; but that I believe the love of posthumous fame, or of continuing our memories after we are dead, has very little to do with it. And one reason I should give for that opinion is this, that we are not naturally very prone to dwell with pleasure on anything that may happen in relation to us after we are dead, because we are not fond of thinking of death at all. We shrink equally from the prospect of that fatal event as from any speculation on its consequenees. The surviving ourselves in our pictures is but a poor compensation-it is rather adding mockery to calamity. The perpetuating our names in the wide page of history or to a remote posterity is a vague calculation, that may take out the immediate sting of mortality-whereas we ourselves may hope to last (by a fortunate extension of the term of human life) almost as long as an ordinary portrait; and the wounds of lacerated friendship it heals must be still green, and our ashes scarcely cold. I think therefore that the looking forward to this mode of keeping alive the memory of what we were by lifeless hues and discolored features, is not among the most approved consolations of human life, or favorite dalliances of the imagination. own I should like some part of me, as the hair or even nails, to be preserved entire, or I should have no objection to lie like Whitfield in a state of petrifaction. This smacks of the bodily reality at least-acts like a deception to the spectator, and breaks the fall from this " warm, kneaded motion to a clod"-from that to nothing-even to the person himself. I suspect that the idea of posthumous fame, which has so unwelcome a condition annexed to it, loses its general relish as we advance in life, and that it is

Yet I

only while we are young that we pamper our imaginations with this bait, with a sort of impunity. The reversion of immortality is then so distant, that we may talk of it without much fear of entering upon immediate possession: death is itself a fable-a sound that dies upon our lips; and the only certainty seems the only impossibility. Fame, at that romantic period, is the first thing in our mouths, and death the last in our thoughts.

ESSAY IV.

Whether genius is conscious of its powers?

No really great man ever thought himself so. The idea of greatness in the mind answers but ill to our knowledge-or to our ignorance of ourselves. What living prose-writer, for instance, would think of comparing himself with Burke ? Yet would it not have been equal presumption or egotism in him to fancy himself equal to those who had gone before him-Bolingbroke or Johnson or Sir William Temple? Because his rank in letters is become a settled point with us, we conclude that it must have been quite as self-evident to him, and that he must have been perfectly conscious of his vast superiority to the rest of the world. Alas! not so. No man is truly himself, but in the idea which others entertain of him. The mind, as well as the eye, "sees not itself, but by reflection from some other thing." What parity can there be between the effect of habitual composition on the mind of the individual, and the surprise occasioned by first reading a fine passage in an admired author; between what we do with ease, and what we thought it next to impossible ever to be done; between the reverential awe we have for years encouraged, without seeing reason to alter it, for distinguished genius, and the slow, reluctant, unwelcome conviction that after infinite toil and repeated disappointments, and when it is too late and to little purpose, we have ourselves at length accomplished what we at first proposed; between the insignificance of our petty, personal pretensions, and the vastness and splendor which the atmosphere of imagination lends to an illustrious name? He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind. "What a pity," said some one, "that Milton had not the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost!" He could not read it, as we do, with the weight of im

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