would not have you omit it on any account." "Now, then, let me have it," exclaimed the biographer, taking out his note-book. "I'll give it you presently, Mr. Moore; but I must first men tion the circumstance in which it originated, that you may enter completely into its spirit. Why, you must know, Mr. Moore, that Mr. Sheridan, just after his marriage, was determined to take a trip to the continent with his wife, my sister. For this purpose, they took a small vessel at Harwich, which was bound to Rotterdam. the Minerva, Captain Brown-stop, stop, it was the Venus, Captain Thompson—or, I think, it was the Eliza, Captain" It was "It does not matter, Mr. Linley, what the ship was, or who commanded her.-Pray, let's have the epigram.” "You shall have it presently, Mr. Moore; but I have not yet come to it. Well, Sir, this Captain Brown of the Minerva, or Captain Thompson of the Venus, was a surly, ill-behaved fellow; and used Mr. Sheridan, and my sister, very shamefully. They were detained by contrary winds, and there was not a morsel to eat or drink on board. So, Sir, Sheridan was determined that the fellow should suffer for it;-so he wrote an epigram upon him, which is the severest thing I ever saw; it did for him completely." "Ay," said Moore, who was beginning to be impatient-" now for the epigram.” "To be sure," continued Linley, "it was the happiest hit that ever was-it did not spare the fellow, I assure you." Here a pause ensued, during which the reciter of the epigram was biting his lips in an apparent agony to recover it. "The epigram, the epigram, Mr. Moore-why-by G—, I have forgot the epigram!" This anecdote found its way to the Beef-Steaks, and after dinner there was a universal vociferation for the epigram, to the no small vexation of our worthy brother. A better heart never beat than that of this excellent creature, of which, his conduct to his unfortunate friend, Leftley, affords abundant proof. Poor Charles Leftley is, probably, by this time forgotten, except by the few who witnessed his extraordinary talents, and knew his modest and unobtrusive virtues. That re tiring, unostentatious kind of genius, which, though not unconscious of its powers, retires from the vulgar gaze, shrinking, like the tenderest of plants, whether it is wooed by the hot embrace of the sun, or chilled by "the rude breath of the north," was not unmarked of many who had watched its first timid buddings, and joyed over its expanding ripeness. But the early promise of that ill-fated youth, and the keen blast of adversity that crushed it, is a common, but a sad story. He was one of that numerous but luckless race, whose hopes of ingenuous fame are high and ardent, and whose fancy is wont to revel amidst the bright, though fallacious, visions that are incident to a strong poetic temperament, intensely excited. But neither genius, nor letters brought him the few humble distinctions which he merited; nor, after a season, the bread that nature must not be denied. With a constitution habitually delicate, and sinking under disappointment (for the iron had entered his soul), he attended the long midnight debates of Parliament as a reporter; and gave, in that capacity, the fullest satisfaction to his employers. Under these labours, aggravated by the unseen but unintermitted anxieties of his mind, his constitution sank rapidly; and our honest-hearted friend, Linley, rescued him, whilst he was on his deathbed, from the ruffians of the law, whom a low attorney had let loose upon him at that awful moment when all consciousness had nearly left him, and his life stood on his lips as if ready to depart. It was only within a small circle that the poetical talents of Charles Leftley were known or appreciated. The laboured mediocrity, the tinsel polished into glare, which, since his time, have been allowed to pass for poetry, and to usurp its rewards, placed by the side of his severe and chastened taste, and his simple but captivating imagery, glowing alike with the warmth of his heart, and of his imagination, would have faded into nothingness. I think Southey, who is never slow to discern, nor reluctant to acknowledge all kinds of contemporary merit, was the first who directed the public attention to poor Leftley's sonnets, as master-pieces in their kind. Alas! it was a thankless muse that he medi tated." Fortunately, he died before the existing *** school of poetry had arisen (if the sacred name of poetry is to be so prostituted), before praise and emolument had been showered down on the ** and the hoc genus omne, whose theory it is that nothing is poetical that does not recede from common sense in thought or perspicuity in expression, or the bitterness of his own disappointment would have been in no slight degree sharpened by the misdirected patronage of compositions so revolting to a mind that is truly and essentially poetic. The little life of Charles Leftley was "rounded by a dream;" but it was a dream into which the whole vitality, the very identity of a youthful poet, becomes transfused. He loved; and in his decaying health to have told him that his passion was not returned, would have at once snapped the filmy thread on which his existence hung: it was returned-not, indeed, with love, which comes at no one's bidding, yet with all. that a kind and compassionate nature could yield in its place by pity, which is generally supposed (perhaps erroneously) to be akin to it. He was willing to be deceived; and he believed that a |