as wisdom, is ever docile, humble, vigilant, and ready to acknowledge the merit it seeks to appropriate from every quarter. That was Fuseli's mistake. Nothing was good enough for him, that was not a repetition of himself. So once when I told him of a very fine Vandyke, he made answer,-And what is it?-A little bit of colour. I wouldn't go across the way to see it.' On my telling this to Sir Joshua, he said,— 'Ay, he'll repent it! he'll repent it!' Wordsworth is another of those who would narrow the universe to their own standard. It is curious to see how hard you labour to prop him up too, and seem to fancy he will live."-" I think he stands a better chance than Lord Byron. He has added one original feature to our poetry, which the other has not; and this, you know, Sir, by your own rule, gives him the best title."—"Yes, but the little bit that he has added is not enough. None but great objects can be seen at a distance. If posterity looked at it with your eyes, they might think his poetry curious and pretty. But consider how many Sir Walter Scotts, how many Lord Byrons, how many Dr. Johnsons there will be in the next hundred years; how many reputations will rise and sink in that time; and do you think, amid these conflicting and important claims, such trifles as descriptions of daisies and ideotboys (however well they may be done) will not be swept away in the tide of time, like straws and weeds by the torrent? No, the world can only keep in view the principal and most perfect productions of human ingenuity; such works as Dryden's, Pope's, and a few others, that from their unity, their completeness, their polish, have the stamp of immortality upon them, and seem indestructible like an element of nature. There are few of these: I fear your friend Wordsworth is not one."

I said, I thought one circumstance against him was the want of popularity in his life-time. Few people made much noise after their deaths who did not do so while they were living. Posterity could not be supposed to rake into the records of past times for the Illustrious Obscure, and only ratified or annulled the lists of great names handed down to them by the voice of common Fame. Few people recovered from the neglect or obloquy of their contemporaries. The public would hardly be at the pains to try the same cause twice over, or did not like to reverse its own sentence, at least when on the unfavourable side. There was Hobbes, for instance: he had a bad name while living, and it was of no use to think at this time of day of doing him justice. While the priests and politicians were tearing him in pieces for his atheism and arbitrary principles, Mr. Locke stole his philosophy from him; and I would fain see any one restore it to the right owner. Quote the passages one by one, show that every principle of the modern metaphysical system was contained in Hobbes, and that all that succeeding writers have done, was to deduce from Mr. Locke's imperfect concessions the very consequences, "armed all in proof," that already existed in an entire and unmutilated state in his predecessor, and you shall the next day hear Mr. Locke spoken of as the father of English philosophy as currently and confidently as if not the shadow of a doubt had ever been started on the subject. Mr. Hobbes, by the boldness and comprehensiveness of his views, had shocked the prejudices, and drawn down upon his head the enmity of his contemporaries: Mr. Locke, by going more cautiously to work, and only admitting as much at a time as the public mind would bear, prepared the way for the rest

of Mr. Hobbes's philosophy, and for a vast reputation for himself, which nothing can impugn. Stat nominis umbra. The world are too far off to distinguish names from things, and call Mr. Locke the first of English philosophers, as they call a star by a particular name, because others call it so. They also dislike to have their confidence in a great name destroyed, and fear that by displacing one of their favoured idols from its niche in the Temple of Fame, they may endanger the whole building.

N." Why I thought Hobbes stood as high as any body. I have always heard him spoken of in that light. It is not his capacity that people dispute, but they object to his character. The world will not encourage vice, for their own sakes, and they give a casting-vote in favour of virtue. Mr. Locke was a modest, conscientious inquirer after truth, and the world had sagacity to see this and to be willing to give him a hearing; the other, I conceive, was a bully, and a bad man into the bargain, and they did not want to be bullied into truth or to sanction licentiousness. This is unavoidable; for the desire of knowledge is but one principle of the mind. It was the same with Tom Paine. Nobody can deny that he was a very fine writer and a very sensible man; but he flew in the face of a whole generation, and no wonder that they were too much for him, and that his name is become a by-word with such multitudes, for no other reason than that he did not care what offence he gave them by contradicting all their most inveterate prejudices. If you insult a room full of people, you will be kicked out of it. So neither will the world at large be insulted with impunity. If you tell a whole country that they are fools and knaves, they will not return the compliment by crying you up as the pink of wisdom and honesty. Nor will those who come after be very apt to take up your quarrel. It was not so much Paine's being a republican or an unbeliever, as the manner in which he brought his opinions forward, which showed self-conceit and want of feeling, that subjected him to obloquy. People did not like the temper of the man: it falls under the article of moral virtue. There are some reputations that are great, merely because they are amiable. There is Dr. Watts: look at the encomiums passed on him by Dr. Johnson; and yet to what, according to his statement, does his merit amount? Why only to this, that he did that best which none can do well, and employed his talents uniformly for the welfare of mankind. He was a good man, and the voice of the public has given him credit for being a great one. world may be forced to do homage to great talents, but they only bow willingly to these when they are joined with benevolence and modesty; nor will they put weapons into the hands of the bold and unprincipled sophist to be turned against their own interests and wishes." I said, there was a great deal in the manner of bringing truth forward to influence its reception with the reader; for not only did we resent unwelcome novelties advanced with an insolent and dogmatical air, but we were even ready to give up our favourite opinions, when we saw them advocated in a harsh and intolerant manner by those of our own party, sooner than submit to the pretensions of blindfold presumption. If any thing could make me a bigot, it would be the arrogance of the free-thinker; if any thing could make me a slave, it would be the sordid sneering fopperies and sweeping clauses of the liberal party. Renegadoes are generally made so, not by the overtures of their ad

The

versaries, but by disgust at the want of candour and moderation in their friends. N- said, "To be sure, there was nothing more painful than to have one's own opinions disfigured or thrust down one's throat by impertinence and folly; and that once when a pedantic coxcomb was crying up Raphael to the skies, he could not help saying, "If there was nothing in Raphael but what you can see in him, we should not now have been talking of him!"

THE TWO DREAMS OF JULIAN.*

In his pride the sun went down
On the gilded waves of Seine;

And the crescent moon on tent and town
Shed her pearly light serene.

A slumbering army lay

Under hush'd Lutetia's walls,

Who had filed that morn, in arm'd array,

Through her streets of festal halls,

Where laurel hung over every door,

And flowers were scatter'd their ranks before.

There's a light in the palace bower,
Where the lone gold cresset gleams
Far beyond the midnight hour,

Though with faint and waning beams.

Why burns so late and long

The lamp in that chamber high?

Why alone, amid the slumbering throng,

Does the Cæsar wake to muse and sigh?
He has dared his fate-he has staked his all-
For his father's eagle flies in Gaul!

He had flung the purple by,

But its spell remain'd behind,
For the mien of conscious majesty
Is not with its robes resign'd:
On his pale but princely brow

The strife of his soul was shown,
By the cresset's faint and fitful glow,
While he paced his bower alone :-

:

As the sage, the prince, or the subject sway'd,

His heart like a plume in the war-breeze play'd.

Long he thought on his future path,
On the perils he must brave,

On an empire's love and a tyrant's wrath,

A throne, or a traitor's grave.

The historic passages which suggested these stanzas will be found in the fourth volume of Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:" the first dream, at p. 14 (Edit. 1825); the second dream, at p. 196. The circumstances of Julian at these different periods will account for both visions in the most satisfactory manner, without having recourse to supernatural agency. Respecting the meteor, it may be regarded as one of those singular coincidences which happen to most men in the course of their lives, and which an excited imagination may easily convert into omens of fate or fortune. That the Emperor should have imagined he had seen the angry face of Mars, is completely explained by the brief note of Gibbon (p. 197), in which he quotes the authority of Ammianus, that Julian had rashly sworn never more to offer sacrifice to that God.

At length, on the regal bed
His limbs th' Augustus threw,

And woo'd, with a fever'd heart and head,
Late oblivion's welcome dew:

He slept with his purple around him furl'd,
He dreamt like the king of the Roman world!

For he seem'd, in that broken sleep,
Rome's awful Spirit to view:-

Round the form, with slow and stately sweep,
A dim phantom-eagle flew.
His voice was the voice of fate,
And eternity glass'd his eye ;-
He stood at the palace gate,

And call'd with a thrilling cry

On the name of the sleeper; whose blood ran cold To see the shade of the days of old.

"Wake, Julian!" the proud voice spake,

"Thy glory, or shame, is mine:

'Tis the Genius of Rome that calls, to wake The last of a throne-born line!

Was it all in vain I flew

The path of thy fame before,
When over the Rhine thy legions drew,
And it five times roll'd in gore?

Arise! too long the Spirit of Rome
At the Cæsar's gate demands a home!"

The beads were on his brow

As the voice fell on his ear;

But the soul that feels the hero's glow,
Will not long be chill'd by fear:

He started from his sleep,

With his hand upon his sword,

And he swore by the Roman Jove, to keep
The oath in his deep heart stored-

That, before he sheathed the sword he drew,
The Sun-bird of Old should its youth renew!

And well he kept his word,

As his Country's page can tell;

From the fields of Gaul the Imperial Bird

Wing'd a last flight wide and well;

But, alas! while the path he trod

Which his name with a proud wreath twines,

The apostate left his fathers' God

For the gods of a thousand shrines

And never had Truth a foe like him,

Under whom an Empire's faith grew dim.

-Behold him once again

On the bare Assyrian sands, Encamp'd on the midnight plain, With his brave, but broken bands:

Ah, little their leader thought,

When he left soft Antioch's bower,
That the eagle, in whose shade he fought,
Should fly from a rival's power-
That, ere twice he pass'd the Tigris wave,
He should find a red, untimely grave!

In his soil'd imperial vest,

With the march and the fight outworn, He had laid him down to rest

Till the first faint blush of morn. But scarce did his eyelids close, When the same unearthly form From his troubled soul arose,

Like the lightning from the storm ;But the purple garb it had worn before Was around the spectral shape no more.

In its place a funeral vest

Seem'd to sweep the form behind,
Of the hue which robes a father's breast
For a child to the dust consign'd:

A veil conceal'd his face,

And his brow to earth was bent,

As he seem'd, with a slow and mournful pace,
To part from the Cæsar's tent;
But the Vision gave no parting look,
Nor a word the dreadful silence broke.

From his couch the Monarch sprung;
He rush'd to the open air:-
Instant, athwart the night was flung
A meteor's awful glare!

The faces of those on watch were dyed
With a bloody light, yet pale withal-
The tents of the sleepers, far and wide,
Were involved in a sanguine pall,-
And the Emperor deem'd, among the stars,
He had seen the frown of the Roman Mars!

There are times a dream can sink

The spirits of the bold;

But the Cæsar did not shrink

From the fate thus darkly told:

He bade his trumpets sound;
He bade his eagles fly;

He moved on his own death-ground

Like a king to victory:

But the Parthian dart was aim'd too well

The King of the World in glory fell!

He fell in a nameless waste;—
But his dust could not repose

In the land where he breathed his last,
In the earth of his Empire's foes.

Where the limpid Cydnus stream

Reflects proud Tarsus near,

They have rear'd a tomb, full oft to gleamn

With the soldier's generous tear:

They have graven the marble with Julian's name—

But the noblest epitaph is FAME!

J.