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born in that city on the 30th of May, 1783. At the age of seven, he entered the school of Christ's Hospital, where he enjoyed the benefit of the instruction of the Rev. James Bowyer and Rev. Dr. Trollope, and in 1802 he entered Pembroke College, Cambridge. On taking his degree in 1806, he was presented by the trustees with a silver cup, of the value of thirty guineas, for his distinguished classical attainments. In 1809, he obtained what is called an open fellowship," the more honorable as it is open to any competitors. After a term of years, he was obliged, by the statutes of the college, to vacate his fellowship. He then devoted his learning to private tuition and the press, commencing, in 1813, the series of interesting, instructive, and learned essays, in the "Quarterly Review," on Aristophanes and Athenian manners, which led to his own translation, in verse, of the Greek Comedian, which appeared in two volumes in 1820 and 1822. For the last twenty years of his life, Mr. Mitchell, having never married, resided with his relations in the county of Oxford, and employed his time in superintending the works issued from the "Clarendon Press," Oxford, and in editing editions of Aristophanes and Sophocles. He had commenced a new undertaking in Grecian literature, when he died suddenly from a fit of apoplexy, May 4, 1845.

England has produced few Greek scholars that can compare with Mr. Mitchell for extensive erudition and delicate and discriminating taste. The Grecian drama was his peculiar delight, and he probably had a more correct appreciation of its beauties and its powers than any living contemporary. His "Preliminary Discourse," of one hundred and sixty pages, to the "Comedies of Aristophanes," I have always considered as one of the choicest and most elegant pieces of literary criticism in the English language, and from it I have made the two following selections:

SOCRATES.

The name of Socrates is known to most readers only by the page of history, where nothing appears in its undress; and even in persons tolerably conversant with the learned languages, the knowledge of this singular man is often confined to that beautiful little work of Xenophon, which, indeed, deserves the classical appellation of "golden," and to that immortal trilogy of Plato, which has been embalmed by the tears of all ages. When we read the admirable system of ethics (some few blots excepted)

His articles, in the "Quarterly Review," are No. xvii. article 9; xlii. 1; xliii. 9; xlv. 12; xlviii. 8; liv. 6; lviii. 2; lxvi. 3; lxxxviii. 3.

One of the greatest, wisest, and best men of antiquity, and whose little infirmities only made him the more amiable, confesses that he never read the Phædon without an agony of tears. Quid dicam de Socrate? cujus morti illachrymare soleo Platonem legens.

Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. viii.

which is laid open in the former, and the simple narrations which conduct the author of them to the close of his mortal career in the latter, it is not simply a burst of admiration, or grief, or horror, which breaks from us, but a union of all three, so profound and so involved, that the mind must be strong indeed which can prevent the feelings, for a time, from mastering the judgment. Few readers, it is believed, even make the attempt; the prison-scene is an agony of suffering to which the mind gives way that it may not be torn by opposing it; Socrates drinking the poison shocks the imagination we feel, such is the merit of the sufferer, or such the consummate skill of his biographer, as if a sin had been committed against human nature-we think for a moment that a chasm has been left in society which can never again be filled up, and we feel as if we could stop nature herself in her course to protest against a transaction, the guilt of which seems to belong to all ages. It is an invidious task to interrupt the current of such feelings, even if there be anything illegitimate in their source; fortunately for the honor of our species, these feelings are mostly right in their application, and what deductions are made can be supplied from higher sources; we should spurn ourselves if we otherwise attempted to do them away.

That Socrates could have so commanded the spirits of two men so gifted as Xenophon and Plato, that they may be said to have devoted their lives to the delineation of his character and senti. ments, is a proof of ascendency which gives us the most astonishing opinion of his powers. It cannot, however, be sufficiently regretted that he did not take the task upon himself. The most interesting book, perhaps, that ever could have been written would have been that which traced gradually and minutely the progress of thought in the mind of Socrates, and through what changes and circumstances he arrived at that system of opinions which, if they sometimes remind us of what unassisted nature must be, more often recal to us "how glorious a piece of work man is! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in apprehension how like a god!" This, however, has not been done, and Socrates must now be taken as we find him by thus leaving the task to others, he has, perhaps, gained something in reputation on the score of intellect, but it can neither be concealed nor denied that, on the side of manners and morals, he has lost much both in purity and dignity.

PLATO.

A grasp and a capacity of mind the most astonishing—a spirit inquisitive and scrutinizing-a subtlety painfully acute-a comprehensiveness which could embrace with equal ease the smallest and most lofty knowledge-a suppleness which, with almost incredible facility, could descend from the deepest abstraction to the commonest topics of the world-a temper which, in the heat of disputation, could preserve the most perfect self-possession, and throw into disquisitions, which must have been the result of long study, solitude, and profound meditation, all the graces of society and the qualifying embellishments of the most perfect good-breeding- these are qualities which seem to have been inherent in the mind of Plato, and with these he has accordingly endowed the person whom he in general selected for the organ of conveying their joint sentiments to the world. In this union of opposite qualities, Plato may be said to resemble the Homeric chain of gold-if one end rested on earth, the other had its termination in heaven.

A residence in courts (and the court of the Dionysii seems to have been no ordinary one) adds to his attractions some of those charms so rarely to be found in republican writers; that tone of good society which sifts without exhausting, and plays upon the surface, as if to take breath from having sounded the bottom; that correctness of observation which, acting rather as the annalist than the spy in society, gives to raillery itself the character of wit, and to scandal a half tone of biography; that tact, rapid as light and as unerring as instinct, which, charitable as it may be to unassuming and natural manners, seizes instantly upon pretension and lays it bare with pitiless severity; that delicate intuition which, in manners, in conversation, and in authorship, watches with jealousy that nice point where, self-commendation beginning, the commendation of others is sure to cease: all this may be seen in Plato, and if less perfectly than in some modern writers, it was only because that sex, in whose society it is best learnt, had not yet been able to throw off the shackles of democratical tyranny, or to attain the accomplishments of a liberal education, without forfeiting what ought to be dearer to them than any accomplishments. At once a geometrician and a poet, the understanding and the fancy find in Plato a purveyor equally bountiful; for the one he supplies solid food, and he captivates the other by the most beautiful fables and tales. To his treasures the east and the south

equally contributed; he pours forth the one in all the pomp of oriental richness and profusion, with the lavish hand of youthful extravagance, and his intercourse with Egypt enables him to cast over his writings the imposing reserve of that mysterious eld who has surrounded the impotence of her old age with a solemn reverence, by affecting the possession of treasures of which she mysteriously withholds the key. To Plato the past, the present, and the future seem alike; he has amassed in himself all the knowledge of the first, he paints the present to the life, and, by some wonderful instinct, he has given dark hints, as if the most important events which were to happen after his time had not been wholly hidden from his sight. Less scientific in the arrangement of his materials than his great scholar, the Stagirite, he has infinitely more variety, more spirit, more beauty, evincing, at every step, that it was in his own choice to become the most profound of philosophers, the most pointed of satirists, the greatest of orators, or the most sublime of poets, or, by a skilful combination of all, to form such a character as the world had never yet seen, nor was ever after to witness. Nor is the language in which his thoughts are conveyed less remarkable than the thoughts themselves. In his more elevated passages, he rises, like his own Prometheus, to heaven, and brings down from thence the noblest of all theftsWisdom with Fire: but, in general, calm, pure, and unaffected, his style flows like a stream which gurgles its own music as it runs ; and his works rise, like the great fabric of Grecian literature, of which they are the best model, in calm and noiseless majesty.

THOMAS HOOD, 1798–1845.

FEW writers of this century have done more for humanity than the comic poet and quaint humorist, Thomas Hood. He was the son of a bookseller in London, and born in the year 1798. He was educated for the counting-house, and, at an early age, was placed under the charge of a city merchant. But the delicate state of his health soon put an end to his mercantile career, and he was sent to Dundee, to reside with some relatives. There he evinced his taste for letters, and made his first literary venture in the local journals. On the re-establishment of his health, he returned to London, and was apprenticed to an uncle, an engraver. But though he always retained his early love for the art, and had much facility in drawing, as the many quaint illustrations to his works testify, his tendencies were

literary, and in 1821 he became a sort of sub-editor of the "London Magazine." When this work stopped, he wrote for various periodicals, and was for some time editor of the "New Monthly Magazine." "His life was one of incessant exertion, embittered by ill health and all the disquiets and uncertainties incidental to authorship. When almost prostrated by disease, the government stepped in to relieve him with a small pension-one hundred pounds; and, after his premature death, on the 3d of May, 1845, his literary friends contributed liberally towards the support of his widow and family."

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Mr. Hood's productions are in various styles and forms. His first work, "Whims and Oddities," attained to great popularity. "He afterwards tried a series of National Tales,' but his prose was less attractive than his verse. A regular novel, Tylney Hall,' was a more decided failure. In poetry he made a great advance. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies' is a rich imaginative work, superior to his other productions. As editor of the Comic Annual,' and also of some of the literary annuals, Mr. Hood increased his reputation for sportive humor and poetical fancy; and he continued the same vein in his Up the Rhine'-a satire on the absurdities of English travellers. In 1843 he issued two volumes of ' Whimsicalities, a Periodical Gathering,' collected chiefly from the New Monthly Magazine.' His last production of any importance was the Song of the Shirt,' which first appeared in 'Punch,' and was as admirable in spirit as in composition. This striking picture of the miseries of the poor London sempstresses struck home to the heart, and aroused the benevolent feelings of the public. In most of Hood's works, even in his puns and levities, there is a 'spirit of good' directed to some kindly or philanthropic object. He had serious and mournful jests, which were the more effective from their strange and unexpected combinations. Those who came to laugh at folly remained to sympathize with want and suffering."

A PARENTAL ODE TO MY INFANT SON.

Thou happy, happy elf!

(But stop-first let me kiss away that tear)—
Thou tiny image of myself!

(My love, he's poking peas into his ear)-
Thou merry, laughing sprite!

With spirits feather light,

Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin-
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin !)

Thou little tricksy Puck!

With anfc toys so funnily bestuck,

Light as the singing bird that wings the air,
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!)
Thou darling of thy sire!

(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!)

1 Chambers' Cyc.

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