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at a period when Poetry, generally speaking, with a few honourable exceptions, aimed at little beyond trim classicality; Humour, to a variation of the sketches of the Spectator and its progeny, (Fielding and Smollet were past) with the occasional sauce piquante of a New Bath Guide, or an epistle to Sir William Chambers; and Wit, to, now and then, a sprightly comedy, an abundance of epigrams and "such small deer." His dramas in rhyme, at this time of day, can scarcely encounter the perusal of persons exceeding the age of fourteen; and his Triumphs of Temper, considering its former popularity, in this age. of more forcible appeal and varied association, appears to us inexpressibly mawkish. His best works, in our estimation, are his "Young Widow," which few people read when it was published, and scarcely any body since; and his "Essay on Old Maids," which naturally producing no small portion of anger in a very irritable class, met with general attention. As for his Vers de Societé, which he appears to have thought very highly of himself, they are of the usual stuff of which such things are made,-eulogy of course is abundant; and most people recollect the wicked wit of Porson, in relation to the too lavish exchange of panegyric between him and Miss Seward. His compliment, congratulation, and condolence, found vent chiefly in octosyllabic verse, which could excite no vast deal of posthumous interest, even at a time when such composition was fashionable; but what can render it palatable some thirty years after the taste has expired? We know of nothing more difficult than to revive a relish for associations which have attained their natural period of decay, in the production of mental satiety. If something of this languor be perceptible even in the spirited resuscitation of Geoffrey Crayon, how little is to be expected from the tame and spiritless muse of Mr. Hayley. Two ponderous quarto volumes, half filled with defunct matter of this nature, are too much. Such a freightage might sink a seventy-four, to say nothing of a cockboat.

But this is a life, it may be said,-a piece of auto-biography; and a man of longevity like Hayley, moving in a respectable sphere, tolerably widely acquainted, and moreover eternally with a pen in his hand, may write a very pleasant account of himself and acquaintances, without any great claims of his own; as for example James Boswell and others. Nothing can be more correct; but it unfortunately happens, that owing to the very récluse and retired habits of Hayley,-habits which seem to have led to a separation from both his wives-excluded almost always in his beautiful family and village retirement in Sussex, with a determined resolution neither to visit or be visited, what is such a life to present? Lastly, as if every thing should conspire to make the work dull, the deceased has written his narrative chiefly in the sketchy way of note and memorandum, and in the unnatural and constrained form of the third person. A recipe for the production of ennui could scarcely have prescribed a method more appalling.

Are these volumes, then, entirely destitute of interest? Certainly not; but it is far too little to inspire so ponderous a mass of matter. There are, doubtless, some contemporary venerables existing, who will wade through it with satisfaction; and some of a succeeding generation, who, from connection, acquaintance, or other reasons, may also feel interested. The hop-skip-and-jump' tribe may also dip and try their fortune, with now and then the possibility of bringing up a stray anecdote or sexagenary incident worth remembering.

Hayley was a neighbour of Gibbon, and in consequence of a weak

ness in his eyes, as he never attended public worship personally, some people suspected his orthodoxy. We are happy to add, on the testimony of the Editor, the Rev. John Johnson, Rector of Yardham in Norfolk, substantiated by the very important document of a creed in his own hand-writing, which is judiciously supplied, that this very ominous imputation was unfounded. Q.

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BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE!

We shall have something to say, probably, from time to time, on the subject of this notorious publication. The public may be assured, that nothing is wanting but to take this goat by the horns, in order to show how weak as well as worthless it is.

The system at present pursued by the Scotch scribblers is,-not to attack the rival Magazines as formerly, when they were worsted, butto assail, by every species of unjust and impudent invective, the individuals who sustain the weight of those publications. Accordingly, we find that they have left off abusing the "London" and sneering at "Colburn's" Magazine, in order to cast their scurrility upon the contributors to each. They have abused or ridiculed, successively, Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Thomas Campbell, Mr. Charles Lamb, the "Opium Eater," the author of "Letters on England," Mr. Reynolds, Allan Cunningham, Barry Cornwall, Mr. Bowring (we believe) Janus Weathercock, &c. &c. together with other gentlemen whom we can only specify by recurring to the Scotch Magazine. Now, we know that Blackwood applied to several of these Gentlemen, and pressed them to contribute to his Magazine, and that when they declined to do so or abandoned it, he began to insult them.

The reader will perceive, that the object of Blackwood's crew is to neutralize, as far as possible, the effect of the writings of certain known contributors to the rival Magazines, perhaps to embroil them with the editors: for this will almost necessarily be the case, if the respective Magazines do not take up the cause of their partizans, and repel the attacks of the Scotchmen. We think that this may very easily be done, and that it ought to be done.

Persons familiar with Blackwood's writers, will recollect, that they have insulted not only the Edinburgh, but the Quarterly Review, Constable's, the London, the Monthly (both new and old) the Gentleman's Magazines, one after the other, as the falling off in their own sale, we suppose, required. Now, there is no existing work which has had recourse to such contemptible expedients, to lift itself into a short and bad popularity. There is, moreover, no humour so cheap, as that which springs from personal attack. Suppose we were (and we might make some amusing articles) to touch upon the following points? [We are not sure that we shall not do so, we shall turn the matter over in our minds.]

1. Private Memoirs of young Lockit, the Ballad-vamper.

2. The Literary Haberdasher; or a Picture of the Back Room in Dundas-street.

3. A Map of the Road to the Chair of Moral Philosophy.

4. The Son-in-law, or Curtain Lectures-(The Wife's Tale.)

5. The Baronet's Table, or the Vacant Place.

6. The Retreat of one of the Ten Thousand.

7. Sandy Eitherside, or the Puff and the Plague

with others too numerous to mention.-Till we determine upon this

point, the reader who still "hankers after" Blackwood,-(if indeed there be one still remaining amongst gentlemen)-will do well to see how the editors can both puff and defame,-in the cases of Wordsworth, Coleridge, &c. whose contributions have either bribed them to praise, or whose defection has stung them into impudent detraction. ARMATUS.

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LONDON:-Printed for and published by H. L. HUNT, 38, Tavistock-street, Covent-garden, by C. W. REYNELL, Broad-street, Golden-square.Price 5d.

THE

LITERARY EXAMINER.

No. II. SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1823.

THE INDICATOR.

No. LXXVIII.

There he arriving, round about doth fly,
And takes survey with busie, curious eye,

Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.SPENSEN.

MY BOOKS. (Concluded.)

I LOVE an author the more for having been himself a lover of books. The idea of an ancient library perplexes our sympathy by its map-like volumes, rolled upon cylinders. Our imagination cannot take kindly to a yard of wit, or to thirty inches of moral observation, rolled out like linen in a draper's shop. But we conceive of Plato as of a lover of books; of Aristotle certainly; of Plutarch, Pliny, Horace, Julian, and Marcus Aurelius. Virgil too must have been one; and, after a fashion, Martial. May I confess, that the passage which I recollect with the greatest pleasure in Cicero, is where he says that books delight us at home, and are no impediment abroad, travel with us, ruralize with us. His period is rounded off to some purpose :- "Delectant domi, non impediunt foris, peregrinantur rusticantur." I am so much of this opinion, that I do not care to be any where without having a book or books at hand, and like Dr. Arkborne in the novel of Camilla, stuff the coach or post-chaise with them whenever I travel. As books however become ancient, the love of them becomes more unequivocal and conspicuous. The ancients had little of what we call learning. They made it. They were also no very eminent buyers of books;-they madei books for posterity. It is true, that it is not at all necessary to love many books, in order to love them much. The scholar in Chaucer who would rather have

At his beddes head

A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red,"
Of Aristotle and his philosophy

Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltery,

doubtless beat all our modern collectors in his real passion for reading. But books must at least exist, and have acquired an eminence, before their lovers can make themselves known. There must be a possession also to perfect the communion: and the mere contact is much, even when our mistress speaks an unknown language. Dante puts Homer, the great ancient, in his Elysium, upon trust; but a few years afterwards, Homer, the book, made its appearance in Italy; and Petrarch,' in a transport put it upon his bookshelves, where he adored it like "the unknown God." Petrarch ought to be the God of the Bibliomaniacs, for he was a collector and a man of genius, which is an union that

VOL I.

2

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does not often happen. He copied out, with his own precious hand, the manuscripts he rescued from time, and then produced others for time to reverence. With his head upon a book he died.

Boccaccio,

his friend, was another: nor can one look upon the longest and most tiresome works he wrote (for he did write some tiresome ones, in spite of the gaiety of his Decameron) without thinking, that in that resuscitation of the world of letters, it must have been natural to a man of genius, to add to the existing stock of volumes, at whatsoever price. I always pitch my completest idea of a lover of books either in these dark ages, as they are called,

(Cui cieco a torto il cieco volgo appella—)

or in the gay town days of Charles II. or a little afterwards. In both times, the portrait comes out by the force of contrast. In the first, I imagine an age of iron warfare and energy, with solitary retreats, in which the monk, or the hooded scholar, walks forth to meditate, his precious volume under his arm. In the other, I have a triumphant example of the power of books and wit to contest the victory with sensual pleasure; Rochester staggering home to pen a satire in the style of Monsieur Boileau; Bútler cramming his jolly duodecimo with all the learning that he laughed at; and a new race of book poets come up, who, in spite of their periwigs or petit-maitres, talk as romantically of "the Bays," as if they were priests of Delphos. It was a victorious thing in books to beguile even the French of their egotism, or at least to share it with them. Nature never pretended to do as much. ́ ́And here is the difference between the two ages; or between any two ages in which genius and art predominate. In the one, books are loved, because they are the records of nature and her energies: in the other, because they are the records of those records; or evidences of the importance of the individuals, and proofs of our descent in the new and imperishable aristocracy. This is the reason why rank (with few exceptions) is so jealous of literature, and loves to appropriate or withhold the honours of it, as if they were so many toys and ribbons like its own. It has an instinct that the two pretensions are incompatible. When Montaigne (a real lover of books) affected the order of St. Michael, and pleased himself with possessing that fugitive little piece of importance, he did it because he would pretend to be above nothing that he really felt, or that was felt by men in general: but at the same time he vindicated his natural superiority over this weakness by praising and loving all higher and lasting things, and by placing his best glory in doing homage to the geniuses that had gone before him. He did not endeavour to think that an immortal renown was a fashion like that of the cut of his scarf; or that by undervaluing the one, he should go shining down to posterity in the other, perpetual lord of Montaigne and of the ascendant.

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There is a period of modern times, at which the love of books appears to have been of a more decided nature than at either of these: I mean the age just before and after the Reformation, or rather all that period when book-writing was confined to the learned languages. Eras mus is the god of it. Bacon, a mighty book-man, saw, among his other sights, the great advantage of loosening the vernacular tongue; and wrote both Latin and English. I allow this is the greatest closeted age of books,-of old scholars sitting in dusty studies,-of heaps of

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