I never met with but one specimen of Jerdan's poetical powers, and that was the following contribution to a periodical of which I was the editor, and the MS. of which has turned up among some old letters:

ON MY GREY HAIRS. Ten years agone, ye monitors,

How I abhorred your hue,

And pluck'd ye singly from your hold,
As if I'd conquer you;

And so I did, like knight of old,

Who hundreds overthrew,

And fancied immortality

More sure the more he slew.

These years are fled, I greet ye now,

The dearest guests to me;

Why should the stem live when the boughs

Fall wither'd from the tree?

When keen affliction's piercing blast

Has nipt the foliage free,

And when the storm hath torn the hopes
Of blossomings to be?

I greet ye now, ye clustering come
And tell me of the past,

Of drear misfortune's saddening clime,
With bitterness o'er-cast,

Of friends-oh! friends, who shunned that

time,

As Fate were on the blast,

Of worldlings, iinked unto the world,
As 'twould for ever last.

Of pleasures whose fresh springing wealth,
Bode an eternal round;

Of jocund health, wherein no space
For lapse or wreck were found;
Those pleasures now all viewless, spent
Like an unearthly sound,
That health to pain and sorrow bent
Which craves the silent mound.
Of these ye speak, and I, grey hairs,
Rejoice in what is o'er;
Rejoice, because what has been felt
Again can touch no more;
But more rejoice, because ye point
To that untroubled shore,
Where thinly shed on my cold brow
We'll rest, though oceans roar.

My own grey hairs! I grateful hail
The promise ye impart ;
Strength is it to the weary soul,
Balm to the aching heart.
The sunny locks of youth will fail
When joys unnumbered start,
But ye are certain as the wings

That plume Death's certain dart. I therefore hail ye, as above

Thought's sore-vexed throne ye wave; Throw gentle shade upon the false

And the tyrannous brave;

Bid care's dull tide and passion's flood
No longer roll or rave;

But loves and fears, and griefs and tears,

All centre in the grave.

Jerdan once sent me a tale, which he had written expressly for my work, and was an exceedingly original and clever one; but the subject did not appear to me to be at all suited to the kind of publication, and, therefore, much to my annoyance, I felt compelled to decline it. He

did not like it, but it did not in the slightest degree alter the terms on which we had been hitherto. I may, perhaps, have been wrong in attributing to the editor the disfavour with which any literary adventure of mine was latterly received in the Gazette, which disfavour was visited not only on a book, but even of contributions to other volumes-the "Keepsake," for instance; for it happened that I had incurred the displeasure, in a parallel case, of one who had great influence in the Gazette, and contributed largely to its columns, and who, after having written to me half-a-dozen letters, wound up the appeal by reminding me of the writer's influence in it, and of that influence never having been exercised but in my favour. And it may be that to that individual I owed the change in the tone of the Gazette with regard to my writings.

THE question, what is ephemeral literature is more easily answered at the present day than the question, what is not?

It is fortunate for modern authors that they have not time to think, else they surely must look with regret to the days when to be an author at all was to be distinguished throughout a greater or less circle, while to be in the smallest degree above mediocrity was to have a place in the gallery of fame.

Who reads Beattie's poetry? Are there not a score of living poets that surpass Akenside? And yet these and such as these representatives of a past century take their place in the sacred museum of eminent British poets (or at least the biographical books tell us so); while the better men of the present are jostling one another vainly in the entrance, and will never get in, because they are too large a mob. It is pleasant from a general point of view to realise how much the literary standard must have risen; but to the men of great power who now obscure one another, and are mutually effaced, the wish may come that they had our simple-minded forefathers and foremothers for their audience, instead of being relegated to the hasty glance of the over-busy man of the present. Or instead of the very remote chance of the appreciation of that ineffable being, Posterity, who must favour some representative of each epoch, but becomes confused if offered too

many. If a faculty of silence could but fall upon our race and last a century, the literature of the Victorian age might have a chance of being appreciated. As things are, no one can grapple with it, for each new year is more prolific than the last, and calls more loudly for attention to its wares.

Nearly everyone can write, and eminent men are becoming so common, that the sharp peak of eminence itself, from being so stantly added to, is gradually subsiding into an almost undistinguishable mound.

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When we hear of myriads of individuals starving in China, we cannot summon the ready flow of sympathy for all of them, that would be evoked for one case that happened in our own village. If we are much bothered about the details of maintenance or boarding out of pauper children, we do not greet with a proper and sufficiently respectful sympathy the news that Mrs. Pauper has just presented the world with twins. From the variety of the demands made upon our sympathies, now that the whole world telegraphs us its troubles every morning, we insensibly grow a trifle callous. Our hearts have too much to do, and it is well for us if we do not contract them, and isolate ourselves even from the cry of our neighbours.

So in literature is it with the average intellect. It is overburdened by the calls made upon its attention. Finding it impossible to read, to mark, to learn, and far

less to inwardly digest, more than a thin little stream of the everflowing cornucopia of brain produce, a large number of persons have taken refuge in a kind of pseudo-literature, which requires the serious exercise of no faculty whatever, but is made to be glanced at and thrown aside. Superficial readers are so common, that writers who put a few years of thought into a little book would often be willing to exchange the ruck of skimmers for a single individual who would really care to read. And to find such an ideal individual-as, for instance, a shepherd, intellectually gifted, remote from men, and possessed of but two or three books might be difficult.

The amount of valuable work that floats past the reading public, gaining almost as little notice as a procession of pauper children, is prodigious. Half a century ago the scythe of a few conspicuous critics would sweep through the springing shoots, and the flowers that were allowed to be worth preserving were offered to the public with some empressement. Now they are thrown upon the general stream and float idly past, for criticism is undone. There are so many critical organs, that they counteract one another every literary venture is sure of receiving at least faint praise somewhere, which laudation can be judiciously multiplied by advertisement.

A new crop of eager writers ever springs spontaneous, and defies the critics; where the few notable scythes once mowed down the struggling ranks, the hosts of little spuds are now impotent even to root out weeds. Multitude is indeed the despair of criticism; for not only is there the chaos huge and inordinable of literary efforts, but also the equal chaos of criticism itself, within which stands no conspicuous beacon to win the

glances of all, and to embody in itself the words, Let there be Light.

The traditions of culture and the cosmopolitanism of modern life tend to destroy idiosyncrasy, and he will be a strong genius indeed who shall now rise head and shoulders above the eminent thinkers of a hemisphere, and make himself a distinct and lasting place above the magnificent ephemera of our time.

That all the current literature of the day is more or less ephemeral we are bound to allow, unless a new race should arise, so constituted as never to write, but ready to arrange existing matter and distribute it among its members for conscientious reading, in periods not too vast for individual study.

There are certain descriptions of written matter which are necessarily ephemeral, such as the daily budgets of the newspapers, which only attain permanence through the ordering and compressing hand of the historian. Criticism also is a mere passer-by. Who, except an occasional curiosity-monger, would refer to the Edinburgh of something over sixty years ago?-in order to learn that the publication of Coleridge's Christabel was "one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or understanding of the public... The thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from beginning to end not a ray of genius.' Here the poet has at least outlived the critic.

About the literature of which magazines are composed, there are curiously opposite views. Mr. Ruskin, writing four months ago in the columns of the periodical in which this gossiping sketch appears, was comparing the limi

tations, both as to quantity and range, of the old monthly publications, the meekness of the contributors, and the complacency of the public, with "the celestial state of authorship by whose courses we have now the felicity of being dazzled and directed." He told us how "it was enough for the editor of the Friendship's Offering' if he could gather for his Christmas bouquet a little pastoral story, suppose, by Miss Mitford, a dramatic sketch by the Rev. George Croly, a few sonnets or impromptu stanzas to music by the gentlest lovers and maidens of his acquaintance, and a legend of the Apennines or romance of the Pyrenees by some adventurous traveller who had penetrated into the recesses of their mountains, and would modify the traditions of the country to introduce a plate by Clarkson Stanfield or J. D. Harding." Whereas now, in Mr. Ruskin's opinion, the leading lunarians err in the entirely opposite direction; they are but too full of politics, speculative philosophy, and responsibility.

This kind of heavy matter should not surely be all ephemeral; and yet we find one of the leading critical weeklies remarking, propos of an article by a moderately wellknown author, "it seems strange that a writer possessed of such great gifts-possessed, at least, of an incisiveness of phrase that puts him beyond the reach of rivalry should be content to go on for ever writing articles for the magazines." This sort of comment seems to be an endeavour to keep out of the magazines the very kind of matter that a high literary journal ought to wish to keep in them. There is a difference to be noted, by the way, between writing articles for the magazines and writing articles which are published in the magazines. The former may be in

It is the convenience of publication in a magazine that enables it to obtain articles of this kind. The author finds that his paper (which, of course, to discerning eyes, is the only paper in the number) goes before all the leading reviewers without his taking the trouble to order copies to be sent. There is no delay such as is found in separate publication when it is not the season, or the publisher's printers have their hands full. The author's name is kept before the public, which seems to be a necessity in this jostling age, when quantity is the feature in literature, and to the writer who will not push himself there comes the danger of being lost in the vast competitive crowd. If the essay should have extended itself beyond the limits of a lunarian article, it can be offered to the public in monthly parts; for the constituency of the more dignified periodicals is one rather of continuous subscribers than of occasional buyers. occasional buyers. If the essay be short, the expense of its production in book form would be considerable; while, if it were brought out as a pamphlet, it would rarely repay the cost of advertisement, and would usually remain unnoticed by the reviewers, who have a prejudice against pamphlets. Finally, it is ensured a certain public at once, which is no small advantage; and is brought before that public in a regular and inoffensive manner, and not by bawling at the corner of the streets.

The advantages of the writer in such a case are substantial; his grievances are fanciful, such as the reproaches which the superior critic heaps upon him for including

his treatise under the head of "articles for the magazines," a class of literature regarded as ephemeral and worthless. If his article be really solid, inferior criticism will pass him by with the snarl that the general public will be unable to understand him,and, of course, magazines are made for the general public.

Magazines have of late years mostly divided themselves into two classes, the one comprising much heavier matter than the periodicals of half a century ago, the other manifesting a much lighter and more frivolous character than the ancient monthlies. Some of the more solid magazines, which call themselves reviews, contain SO much heavy matter that they must be far above the range of the simple family circle of Mr. Ruskin's memory, whatever may be the relation which they hold to the modern public, which devours, or appears to devour, them month by month.

The lighter magazines vie with each other which shall meet the wishes of the largest public, and produce the most ephemeral matter, pleasant for a very idle hour. This class of literature forms one with the undistinguishable romances of the circulating library.

There is a difficulty felt in minds of a certain character in the appreciation of that kind of periodical which designs, after the manner of those of Shakespeare's plays that alternate jests with tragedy, to mingle with its solid contents something light wherewith to relieve the mind, and so to afford within one cover matter for a few hours of thought, and an opportunity of relaxation therefrom. Such miscellanies, when their extremes are not too marked, satisfy a very worthy and natural class of persons, who object to extreme

frivolity, and yet do not care to take upon themselves the monthly burden of the heavier reviews, while they like to catch scintillations from modern thought, in order to learn from its lurid and clouded lights what position at least it holds within its own fog. Such a design is not the same as following a middle course between the ponderous and the superficial; it is rather to include both-to alternate, not to mingle, the grave and gay, severe philosophy and pleasant effervescence.

But this kind of coquetry with both the profound and the playful, on account of its placing matter of permanent value by the side of mere ephemera, is disliked by the conventional mind. which is nothing if not rigidly classificatory; and the reader whose aim is to be well-informed complains of articles which he would be inclined to seek out, being made hard to find amongst fugitive productions, and consequently likely to be lost sight of altogether. One of the trade journals, conscious of the unwieldy bulk of modern literature, was complaining twelve months ago that there was no index of literature: "No one can read all the journals and magazines published, many of which contain articles that persons interested in the subject would give any reasonable sum to see." And an instance was given of a valuable paper being almost wasted in obscurity through its appearance in a magazine where one would never dream of looking for such an article. One American journal is a trifle in advance of us, and does in fact publish a more or less complete index of such a kind.

Coleridge in his Lay - Sermon made an attempt in his own erratic way at ordering the chaos ; he chose to determine to whom his books ought to go. "Not