the future world itself, this solace of conjecture must be but a very languid and chilled exertion of the mind. L. I grant it. I am not referring to the herd, whether of one faith or another, or of none. I have often pleased myself with recalling an anecdote of Fuseli-a wonderful man, whose capacities in this world were only a tithe part developed; in every thing of his, in his writings as well as his paintings, you see the mighty intellect struggling forth with labour and pain, and with only a partial success; and feeling this himself-feeling this contest between the glorious design and the crippled power-I can readily penetrate into his meaning in the reply I am about to repeat. Some coxcomb said to him, "Do you really believe, Mr. Fuseli, that I have a soul ?"" I don't know, sir," said Fuseli, "whether you have a soul or no, but, by God! I know that I have." And really, were it not for the glorious and all-circling compassion expressed by our faith, it would be a little difficult to imagine that the soul, that title-deed to immortality, were equal in all-equal in the dull, unawakened clod of flesh which performs the offices that preserve itself, and no more, and in the bright and winged natures with which we sometimes exalt our own, and which seem to have nothing human about them but the garments (to use the Athenian's* familiar metaphor,) which they wear away. You will smile at my pedantry, but one of the greatest pleasures I anticipate in arriving at home-as the Moravian sectarians so endearingly call Heaven-is to see Plato, and learn if he had ever rested, as he himself imagined, and I am willing to believe, in a brighter world before he descended to this. So bewitching is the study of that divine and most christian genius, that I have often felt a sort of jealous envy of those commentators who have devoted years to the contemplation of that mystical and unearthly philosophy. My ambition—had I enjoyed health-would never have suffered me to have become so dreaming a watcher over the lamp in another's tomb: but my imagination would have placed me in an ideal position, that my restlessness forbade me in reality. This activity of habit, yet love of literary indolence -this planning of schemes and conquests in learning, from which one smile from Enterprise would decoy me, when scarce begun, made C call me, not unaptly, "the most extraor dinary reader he ever knew-in theory." I see, by the by, that you are leaning upon the "Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury"-will you open the page in which I have set a mark? * Socrates. We were speaking of the soul, and that page expresses a very beautiful, and eloquent, if not very deep sentiment, on the subject. Will you read it? * A. Certainly," As in my mother's womb, that formatrix which formed my eyes, ears, and other senses, did not intend them for that dark and noisome place-but, as being conscious of a better life, made them as fitting organs to apprehend and perceive those things which occur in this world,—so I believe, since my coming into this world, my soul hath formed or produced certain faculties, which are almost as useless for this life as the above named senses were for the mother's womb; and these faculties are Hope, Faith, Love, and Joy, since they never rest or fix on any transitory or perishing object in this worldas extending themselves to something farther than can be here given, and, indeed, acquiescing only in the perfect Eternal and Infinite." L. It is fine-is it not? A. Yes. It is a proof that the writer has felt that vague something which carries us beyond the world. To discover the evidence of that feeling, is one of my first tasks in studying a great author. How solemnly it burns through Shakspeare! with what a mournful and austere grandeur it thrills through the yet diviner Milton! how peculiarly it has stamped itself in the pages of our later poets-Wordsworth, Shelley, and even the more alloyed and sensual, and less benevolent verse of Byron. But this feeling is rarely perceptible in any of the Continental poets, except, if I am informed rightly, the Germans. L. Ay; Goëthe has it. To me there is something very mysterious and spiritual about Goëthe's genius-even that homely and plain sense with which, in common with all master-minds, he so often instructs us, and which is especially evident in his Memoirs, is the more effective from some delicate and subtle beauty of sentiment with which it is always certain to be found in juxtaposition. A. I remember a very delicate observation of his in "Wilhelm Meister," a book which had a very marked influence upon my own mind; and though the observation may seem commonplace, it is one of a nature very peculiar to Goethe: "When," he remarks," we have despatched a letter to a friend which does not find him, but is brought back to us, what a singular *I am not sure that I retail this passage verbatim. I committed it to memory, and (writing in the country) I cannot now obtain the book by which to collate my recollection. emotion is produced by breaking open our own seal, and conversing with our altered self as with a third person." L. There is something ghost-like in the conference, something like a commune with one's wraith. A. You look in vain among the works of Scott for a remark like that. L. Is the accusation fair? You look in vain in the "Wilhelm Meister" for the gorgeous painting of "Ivanhoe." But I confess myself no idolater of the "Waverley" novels; nor can I subscribe to the justice of advancing them beyond the wonderful poetry that preceded them. All Scott's merits seem to me especially those of a poet; and when you come to his prose writings, you have the same feelings, the same descriptions, the same scenes, with the evident disadvantage of being stripped of a style of verse peculiarly emphatic, burning, and original. Where, in all the novels, is there a scene that, for rapidity, power, and the true lightning of the poet, if I may use the phrase, equals that in "Rokeby," not often quoted now, in which Bertrand Risingham enters the church "The outmost crowd have heard a sound, A scene, very celebrated for its compression and bold painting, is to be found in the "Bride of Abydos"— "One bound he made, and gain'd the strand." Bride of Abydos, Canto 2, stanza 24. Compare the two. How markedly the comparison is in favour of Scott. In a word, he combines in his poetry all the merits of his prose; and the demerits of the latter-the trite moral, the tame love, the want of sympathy with the great herd of man, the aristocratic and kingly prejudice, either vanish from the poetry or assume a graceful and picturesque garb. I venture to prophesy that the world will yet discover that it has overrated one proof of his mighty genius, at the expense of injustice to another. Yes, his poetry burns with its own light. A reviewer in the "Edinbro' " observes, that " in spirit, however different in style, Shakspeare and Scott convey the best idea of Homer." The resemblance of Shakspeare to Homer I do not, indeed, trace; but that of Scott to the Great Greek, I have often and often noted. Scott would have translated Homer wonderfully, and in his own ballad metre. A. Of all enthusiasts, the painter Blake seems to have been the most remarkable. With what a hearty faith he believed in his faculty of seeing spirits and conversing with the dead! And what a delightful vein of madness it was—with what exquisite verses it inspired him! L. And what engravings! I saw, a few days ago, a copy of the "Night Thoughts," which he had illustrated in a manner at once so grotesque, so sublime—now by so literal an interpretation, now by so vague and disconnected a train of invention, that the whole makes one of the most astonishing and curious productions which ever balanced between the conception of genius and the raving of insanity. I remember two or three of his illustrations, but they are not the most remarkable. To these two fine lines- "Tis greatly wise to talk with our past Hours, And ask them what report they bore to heaven;" he has given the illustration of one sitting, and with an earnest countenance conversing with a small, shadowy shape at his knee, while other shapes, of a similar form and aspect, are seen gliding heavenward, each with a scroll in its hands. The effect is very solemn. Again, the line "Till Death, that mighty hunter, earths them all," is bodied forth by a grim savage with a huge spear, cheering on fiendish and ghastly hounds, one of which has just torn down, and is griping by the throat, an unfortunate fugitive: the face of the hound is unutterably death-like. The verse "We censure Nature for a span too short," obtains an illustration, literal to ridicule.-A bearded man of gigantic stature is spanning an infant with his finger and thumb. Scarcely less literal, but more impressive, is the engraving of the following: "When Sense runs savage, broke from Reason's chain, You perceive a young female savage, with long locks, wandering alone, and exulting-while above, two bodiless hands expand a mighty pall, that appears about to fall upon the unconscious rejoicer. A. Young was fortunate. He seems almost the only poet who has had his mere metaphors illustrated and made corporeal L. What wonderful metaphors they are; sometimes trite, familiar, common-place-sometimes exaggerated and fantastic, but often how ineffably sublime! Milton himself has not surpassed them. But Young is not done justice to, popular as he is. He has never yet had a critic to display and make current his most peculiar and emphatic beauties. A. We can, to be sure, but ill supply the place of such a critic; but let us, some day or other, open his "Night Thoughts" together, and make our comments. L. It will be a great pleasure, to me. Young is, of all poets, the one to be studied by a man who is about to break the golden chains that bind him to the world-his gloom, then, does not appal or deject: for it is a gloom that settles on the earth we are about to leave, and casts not a single shadow over the heaven which it contrasts-the dark river of his solemn and dread images sweeps the thoughts onward to Eternity. We have no desire even to look behind; the ideas he awakens are, in his own words, "the pioneers of Death;" they make the road broad and clear; they bear down those "arrests and barriers," the Affections; the goal, started and luminous with glory, is placed full before us; every thing else, with which he girds our path, afflicts and saddens. We recoil, we shudder at life; and, as children that in tears and agony at some past peril bound forward to their mother's knee, we hasten, as our comfort and our parent, to the bosom of Death. CONVERSATION THE SECOND. L▬▬'s increase of illness-Remarks on a passage in Bacon-Advantages in the belief of immortality-An idea in the last conversation followed out-A characteristic of the sublime-Feelings in one dying at the restlessness of life around. WHEN I called on L- the third day after the conversation I have attempted to record, though with the partial success that must always attend the endeavour to retail dialogue on paper, I found him stretched on his sofa, and evidently much weaker |