ivory hand! How would the claret blush on a rosy lip!" But these eternal blazons must not be?" and men must continue their prose style of fighting,—leaving the ladies to conquer with tenderness and tea.

For the present we shall pause.But Mr. Egan's book is still so full of pearls, that we shall dive again, and present such jewels as we may happen to find, to our readers. There is a delightful account of Street Walk

"

er, a celebrated fighting dog, whom we have had the honour of seeing in his glorious retirement under a tap in St. Giles's, full of scars and nearly blind, but noble yet, and heavy with sombre pride. He looks like an old lion, and his awful jaw still, though toothless, seems full of power and confidence:-But we must not go into the description of him now. He will, however, take the lead, as he has always done, in our next selection.

MR. EBERT, AND MR. DIBDIN. To the Editor of the London Magazine. Stockton-upon-Tees, July 5, 1820. Mr. Editor-I was surprised and a little amused by the account, in your last number, of the forthcoming "New Bibliographical Work of Mr. Ebert of Dresden. At first sight, it should seem, that that account was published in order to throw 'discredit, however obliquely, upon the bibliographical labours of our countryman Mr. Dibdin; but I am persuaded that your Journal is influenced by principles more liberal and enlightened, than those which could instigate such a proceeding. However, it so happens, that I am in possession not only of the whole of Mr. Ebert's criticism upon the Decame ron, (Parts I. II. published at Leipsic, in the year 1819, by Brockhaus see page 226, &c.) but that I mean, in the leisure of retirement, to make a literal version of it into our own language, to be encadred by notes, marginal and foot. In short, Mr. Editor, it is my intention to publish this elaborate piece of criticism, with notes, which, as Mr. Dibdin somewhere expresses it, in the work criticised, will be considered both " "pungent and palateable." My name will be concealed from the public, as it is from yourself; and I choose to call myself ONE OF THE FANCY.

respect, and with the most marked admiration of Mr. Dibdin's labours; for he begins by observing that the Decameron "is so rich in the most interesting information, that were all preface and digression rejected, it would be extremely difficult to compose a review of it within the limits of one article. The whole disposition of the work (adds he) announces so thoroughly the literary spirit which prevails in England, that there it must be necessarily received with the most unqualified approbation and have a most decided influence." Nor is there any thing throughout his review to weaken the force or subvert the truth of this preliminary observation.

;

From the communication in your Journal, it is admitted, that, "till the appearance of the Bibliotheca Spenceriana, and the Bibliographical Decameron, we possessed no works in the department of bibliography, which could for a moment be put in competition with those compiled by the French and Germans." But had Mr. Ebert forgotten Maittaire ?—for we claim him as our own. I can excuse his omission of the name of Mr. Beloe-for that gentleman appears to have always described books with his eyes shut, or his judgment paralysed: A word or two, however, before but the name of Bowyer-and still the appearance of this my translation. more those of Oldys, Ames, and HerThe Dresden or the Leipsic critic bert, should not have been forgotten. (which you please) is not a man to It appears from the article in your be laughed at, or kicked at, with im-Journal-which is well borne out by punity and he seems indeed to have the review in my possession-that the same notion of our bibliographical Mr. Ebert has the folly, if not temecountryman. He commences, he car-rity, to say, that "to a German more ries' on, and he concludes, his elabo- particularly, who possesses a Freyrate performance, with the highest tag, Baumgarten, Masch, Heineken,

Ebert might have known that there are "twenty-five copies printed upon large paper, of a folio size.". Thus you see, Sir, Mr. Ebert himself has something yet to learn, and something to correct.

Of the general tone and temper of Mr. Ebert's criticism upon the Bibliographical Decameron, it may be fairly observed, that the German reviewer speaks entirely as a straightforward, plodding, bibliographer.... exclusively attached to signatures and catch-words, titles and colophons: that there must be a vast fund of information in Mr. D.'s book, wholly strange to his feelings, and foreign to his pursuits. The object with the English bibliographer, has been, to unite taste with research, and literature with bibliography. The introductory portion-the opening of the third day-the management of the History of Printing in the fourth

the history of Art, as displayed in illuminated MSS. of which the first day is composed--the history of BookSales, and the personal history of Collectors-forming the ninth and tenth Days, are all points beyond the feeling, or the interest of the Head Librarian of the Dresden Public Library.

At the same time, when Mr. Ebert comes to grapple with our English bibliographer upon firm ground-respecting the history of Printing in the sixteenth century-he evidently displays some muscular strength and power. Yet he could never have managed the biographies of Plantin and Oporinus as Mr. D. has contrived to manage them. I am purposely silent respecting the copper-plates of the Decameron. They speak for themselves. I must now, Sir, make my bow, and wish you and the public adieu; till I again come forward as ONE OF THE FANCY.

LIVING AUTHORS.
No. III.

GODWIN-CHIEFLY AS A WRITER OF NOVELS..

Some minds find their chief pleasure in variety: others in completeness: others again in intensity. Mr. Godwin's is of the latter class. He regards the passions as divided and determinate powers, and he puts them in action, as they try the ordnance at Woolwich, not from a desire to forward any certain plan of general operations, but to essay and strain their own strength, the energy of their resistance, and of their violence. For the harmony of union he seems to have little feeling: to the softening and reacting springs of conduct; the modifying impulses; the preserving, and redeeming guards and checks; in short, to all that lessens dead weight, and breaks collision in the moral machinery of the world, he is almost insensible. He delights in simple principles, and undivided forces. His instinct is that of the bloodhound: he will follow on one track with wonderful vigour, and a perseverance that may be termed remorseless; but except for the single scent which has excited him to the chase, he has neither observation nor sensibility. Admiring,

therefore, as we do, the genius of this author, we nevertheless think him'a painful writer: we rise with the heartache from his works. The motto to his Mandeville is suitable enough for all his novels: " and the waters of that fountain were bitter; and they said, let the name of it be called Marah." We can conceive nothing more truly appalling than a world peopled with his characters, and proceeding on his system. His personages stand out as severe or sorrowful alto relievos from the surface of society: his moral tendencies have all the enthusiasm of passion, with all the blindness and inevitability of a property of matter. He never balances these: no cloud, "instinct with fire and nitre," ever comes to give "rebuff" to the fall of his characters: "plumb down they drop," under the influence of their chief quality, which acts as irremissibly as gravitation in a stone,--growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength.-There is something,-to us at least,—very distressing in contemplating this sort of spectacle: we seem to be witnessing

a struggling wretch carried down the from such things, as the metal takes rapids towards the fatal cataract. The one from the die with which it is struck, course of the adventures in Mr. God--passively and permanently-never win's novels produces a sensation si- afterwards to be obliterated, and almilar to that which is felt when, stoop- ways to bear one current acceptation. ing down to the proper level, the eye This is subjecting spiritual existence is cast along the inclined plain of the to the laws which govern dead matriver ponderously rushing to the pre- ter, but without bestowing on it the cipice of Terni. The banks of this necessary and corresponding privilege river are high on each side, so that of insensibility. The human creature the water is closely imprisoned in its hangs in one certain direction like a bed, along which, with a murmur, as plummet; but he is endowed with if of despair, it comes rushing down, the susceptibility that only ought to -rapidly, but not so quick as to daz- attend volition, or a destiny held in zle or elude observation, yet suffici- higher hands, for unknown but imently so to make both the soul and portant ultimate purposes. The dissight of the spectator giddy. In that heartening and afflicting effect of the stream there is the finest and most works in question, on the mind of the formidable image of irrevocable doom: reader, is particularly to be traced, -one step into its current would put we think, to this degrading position salvation out of the reach of all the in which human nature is generally arms and all the prayers of a world placed in them: the chief characters assembled to attempt a rescue. Along seem labouring under incurable disits surface might a man be hurried,— eases; their actions have all the unhis strength full, and his senses clear, controulable unwilled violence of spas-with the blue sky, and the fair modic muscular agitations; their sufsun over his head, and the bushes, ferings appear the agonies of a disthe flowers, and the trees hanging turbed dreamer, who feels acutely, quietly near him, but without a re- but who cannot be held a real agent mnant of hope left in his heart--cast- in the scenes in which his mind is ing a wistful and straining look at the busying itself, or amidst the events unconscious animal grazing in safety the idea of which causes drops of close by, or the astonished peasant, sweat to gather on his brow. or the shrieking friend, while approximating destruction roars for him from below.

The current of the fortunes of Mandeville, Caleb Williams, Fleetwood, and, in a less degree, St. Leon, seems in each instance to have the same hopeless, fixed, irresistible tendency. The man is lost in the stream: that is to say, he does not appear to have a man's resources against a certain bias, which, though proceeding from his nature, is at once contrary to his will, his interests, and his reason. In the works just named, the impelling power cannot with propriety be termed Fate or Destiny; for these words suppose a superior and external influence,-something directing and controuling the actions of the man, and their results, according to the views and purposes of an over-ruling intelligence. But our author lodges his fatal principle within the nature of the man himself; deriving it sometimes from the circumstance of a sevenmonth's birth, and sometimes even from a gloomily situated mansion. His characters receive an impression

We must, therefore, characterize Mr. Godwin's works, as morbid:--they are far however from being sickly :distempered, diseased, or deformed, would rather be the word we should apply to them. There is no affectation apparent about them; no cant; no exaggeration of expression beyond the feeling or the situation which the author wishes to realize. He analyzes human nature with consummate skill; and having given it up to the mastery of one of its elements, he conducts the experiment with admirable address, and displays the results with prodigious vigour. Imagine a man in whom one of the bodily organs should monopolize the place and functions of all the others-life at the same time continuing with unchecked vivacity: whose spleen, for instance, should occupy the regions, and discharge the offices of his heart and brain, or whose bile should circulate in his veins, as well as continue to be secreted in his liver. His existence, becoming modified in conformity to the natural tendency of the usurping principle, would afford as fair a spe