terseness and vigour, or a fresh and unexpected turn of phrase, might no doubt be detected here and there by a critical and attentive reader; but as a rule the 'pot-boilers' of the gods are not distinguishable from those of ordinary mortals, and there are no traces of divinity about Carlyle's. They might have been written in an equally meritorious manner by any industrious day-labourer in the British Museum Library; and, to me at least, they seem all the more interesting on that very account. There is even something pathetic in their mere alphabetical sequence; it is so touchingly eloquent of the fact that the immortal contributor's subjects were determined not by his own preferences but by the requirements of his editorial task-master. From Montaigne' to 'Montagu (Lady Mary Wortley '), and from Lady Mary back again to France in 'Montesquieu,' are quaint enough transitions, as also is that from The Netherlands' to 'Northamptonshire' and from 'Necker' to 'Nelson.' Their initial letter connects them by a tie even slighter than that which satisfied Captain Fluellen in the case of Alexander the Great and Prince Hal. Even absolute identity of name does not ensure any congruity between subjects; and the diligent-going journeyman has no sooner turned out one Moore than he is at work upon another. So much for the author of Zeluco, now for the hero of Coruña. It is not only Pegasus plodding along on the hoof instead of soaring on the wing; it is Pegasus actually in the carrier's cartshafts. And it is in no spirit of irreverence but with something almost like tenderness that one traces the course of the noble animal with the vehicle which he so honoured, and note how little 'say' he had in the selection of his route.

The last piece, however, which has been rescued from the limbo of 'back numbers' is of quite a different order. 'Cruthers and Jonson, or The Outskirts of Life,' contributed to Fraser's Magazine for January 1831-that is to say about the date of Sartor Resartus-is a piece of remarkable interest, as illustrative of Carlyle's strength and weakness alike. Considered as a story, it

is 'stark naught.' It begins admirably, and prepares us to follow the fortunes of the two school-boy friends with the keenest sympathy and attention, as indeed we do up to the point at which Cruthers, now a yeoman farmer, visits and consoles his old class-mate Jonson, lying in Carlisle Castle under sentence of death for participation in the rebellion of the Forty-five. Later on the story slips limply out of the hand of its inventor and ends flatly enough. But the earlier part abounds in touches of the true Carlylean humour and pathos. The quarrel between the two boys, when Jonson, to avenge a drubbing at the hands of Cruthers, menaces his adversary with a large horse-pistol, to the dismay of Dominie Scroggs, is admirably related:

"The Dominie's jaw sank a considerable fraction of an ell; his colour went and came; he said, with a hollow tone, "The Lord be near us!" and sat down upon a stone by the wall-side, clasping his temples with both his hands, and then stooping till he grasped the whole firmly between his knees, to try if he could possibly determine what was to be done in this strange business. He spoke not for the space of three minutes and a half.'

One of the boys, he saw, must leave him; the only question was, which. Cruthers' father was a staunch yeoman who ploughed his own land, but was well-to-do. Jonson's was a laird who disdained the plough, who loved to hunt and gamble, and whose 'annual consumpt of whisky was very great.' Mr. Scroggs was a gentleman that knew the world, and at length he made up his mind :

""You Jonson," said he, rising gradually, "you have broken the peace of the school; you have been a quarrelsome fellow, and when Cruthers got the better of you, in place of yielding or complaining to me, you have gone home privily and procured fire-arms with intent, as I conceive, to murder, or at least mortally affright, a fellow Christian, an honest man's child; which, by the law of Moses, as you find in the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, and also by various Acts of Parliament, is a very heinous crime. You likewise owe me two quarters of school wages, which I do not expect you will ever pay; you cannot be here any longer. Go your ways, sirrah, and may all that's ill among us go with you.'

But a human instinct intervenes to save him :

'Apparently this most frank statement excited no very definite idea in Jonson's mind; at least he stood motionless on hearing it, his eyes fixed and tearless, his teeth clenched, his nostrils dilated, all his frame displaying symptoms of some inward agony by which his little mind was torn, but indicating no settled purpose of acting either this way or that. Most persons would have pitied him; but Mr. Scroggs was free from that infirmity: he had felt no pity during many years for any but himself. Cruthers was younger and more generous: touched to the quick at his adversary's forlorn situation, he stepped forward, and bravely signified that himself was equally to blame, promising, moreover, that if the past could be forgiven, he would so live with Jonson as to give no cause for censure in the future. "Let us both stay," he said, "and we will never quarrel more." Tears burst from Jonson's eyes at this unexpected proposal. The Dominie himself, surprised and pleased, inquired if he was willing to stand by it; for answer he stretched out his hand and grasped that of Cruthers in silence.'

The humorous, the pathetic, the dramatic touch of the future master-each surely is traceable here.

H. D. TRAILL.

DR. JOHNSON, it is said, when he first heard of Boswell's intention to write a life of him, announced, with decision enough, that, if he thought Boswell really meant to write his life, he would prevent it by taking Boswell's! That great authors should actually employ this preventive against bad biographers is a thing we would by no means recommend: but the truth is, that, rich as we are in Biography, a well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one; and there are certainly many more men whose history deserves to be recorded, than persons willing and able to record it. But great men, like the old Egyptian kings, must all be tried after death, before they can be embalmed: and what, in truth, are these Sketches,' Anas,' 'Conversations,' Voices,' and the like, but the votes and pleadings of so many illinformed advocates, jurors and judges; from whose conflict, however, we shall in the end have a true verdict? The worst of it is at the first; for weak eyes are precisely the fondest of glittering objects. Accordingly, no sooner does a great man depart, and leave his character as public property, than a crowd of little men rushes towards it. There they are gathered together, blinking up to it with such vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this way and

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1 Edinburgh REVIEW, No. 91.-Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Leben, nebst Characteristik seiner Werke; von Heinrich Döring. (Jean Paul Friedrich Richter's Life, with a Sketch of his Works; by Heinrich Döring.) Gotha; Hennings, 1826. 12m0, pp. 208.

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that, each cunningly endeavouring, by all arts, to catch some reflex of it in the little mirror of Himself; though, many times, this mirror is so twisted with convexities and concavities, and, indeed, so extremely small in size, that to expect any true image, or any image whatever from it, is out of the question.

Richter was much better-natured than Johnson; and took many provoking things with the spirit of a humorist and philosopher; nor can we think that so good a man, had he even foreseen this Work of Döring's, would have gone the length of assassinating him for it. Döring is a person we have known for several years, as a compiler, and translator, and balladmonger; whose grand enterprise, however, is his Gallery of Weimar Authors; a series of strange little Biographies, beginning with Schiller, and already extending over Wieland and Herder;-now comprehending, probably by conquest, Klopstock also; and lastly, by a sort of droit d'aubaine, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter; neither of whom belonged to Weimar. Authors, it must be admitted, are happier than the old painter with his cocks. for they write, naturally and without fear of ridicule, the name of their work on the title-page; and thenceforth the purport and tendency of each volume remains indisputable. Döring is sometimes lucky in this privilege; otherwise his manner of composition, being so peculiar, might occasion difficulty now and then. Biographies, according to Döring's method, are a simple business. You first ascertain, from the Leipsic Conversationslexicon, or Jördens's Poetical Lexicon, or Flögel, or Koch, or other such Compendium or Handbook, the date and place of the proposed individual's birth, his parentage, trade, appointments, and the titles of his works; the date of his death you already know from the newspapers: this serves as a foundation for the edifice. You then go through his writings, and all other writings where he or his pursuits are treated of, and wherever you find a passage with his name in it, you cut it out, and carry it away. In this manner a mass