After the literary

the most criginal of the age. business had been settled, the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding 'we shall have a hare

'And-and-and-and many Friends!'

"The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the allusion, were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will perchance. have recognized already as the delightful Essayist, the capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers, so, that despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare's many friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope, when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bedroom, racked with the rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful 'Well, boy, how are you?' and the bland, sweet smile, extended the two fingers. They were eagerly clutched,

of course, and from that hour we were firm friends.

"Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to ask me to tea, 'to meet Wordsworth.' In spite of any idle jests to the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke Cottage with more alacrity than consisted with prudence, stiff joints, and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble, some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia and Heartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first man by many, who has met with a simple fracture through riding his theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains. If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of two years old; he has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies, and tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say 'We are seven. Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong meat for men. So I put on my great-coat, and in a few minutes found my. self, for the first time, at a door, that opened to me as frankly as its master's heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage, or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic

hearth. The room looked brown with 'old bokes,' and beside the fire sat Wordsworth, and his sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget.

*

"Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with 'Charles and Mary.' What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a holy Friar's! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer, to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made any temporary stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable, respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired the 'Old Man eloquent,' for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps, scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday con

gregation from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a pair of wings to flap about with, like a sort of celestial poultry?' After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from Loddiges' garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was glorious music, of the 'neverending, still-beginning' kind; and you did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon; you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried, spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams, giddy and dazzled, but not displeased, and had then been rained down again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of me all

recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen!"

We have drawn rather freely upon Hood's account of his early life, both because we think that these autobiographical sketches convey a lively and true impression of the personal character of the man, and because our information concerning his career after he became distinguished in literature consists, in the main, of barren facts which are already well known to the world.

Before Hood became connected with the London Magazine, he had, as appears above, printed some trifles in a Dundee newspaper and in the Dundee Magazine. His first book, Odes and Addresses to Great People, was published anonymously, and was partly the work of his brother-inlaw, Mr. J. H. Reynolds. His next was, we believe, the Progress of Cant. In 1826, he made a collection of his contributions to the London Magazine, and printed it with some additions, under the title of Whims and Oddities. and a third edition of this book was demanded by the public in the course of the two succeeding years. His National Tales appeared in 1827, and was followed by a little volume containing the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur, and other poems. He began the Comic Annual in 1829, and it was continued nine years. In the same year came

A second