very name' [he says]

savors of laughter,' as being, 'in fact, a very happy fellow.' In the first place, Tickell would have been likly to 'square' at Mr. Gilfillan for that liberty taken with his name; or might even, in Falstaff's language, have tried to 'tickle his catastrophe.' It is a ticklish thing to lark with honest men's names. But, secondly, which Tickell? For there are two at the least in the field of English literature: and if one of them was 'very happy,' the chances are, according to D. Bernoulli and De Moivre, that the other was particularly miserable. The first Tickell, who may be described as Addison's Tickell, never tickled anything, that I know of, except Addison's vanity. But Tickell the second, who came into working order about fifty years later, was really a very pleasant fellow. In the time of Burke he diverted the whole nation by his poem of Anticipation,' in which he anticipated and dramatically rehearsed the course of a whole Parliamentary debate, (on the king's speech,) which did not take place till a week or two afterwards. Such a mimicry was easy enough: but that did not prevent its fidelity and characteristic truth from delighting the political world.

NOTE 4. Page 84.

For the same reason, I refrain from noticing the pretensions of Savage. Mr. Gilfillan gives us to understand, that not from want of room, but of time, he does not (which else he could) prove him to be the man he pretended to be. For my own part, I believe Savage to have been the vilest of swindlers; and in these days, under the surveillance of an active police, he would have lost the chance which he earned of being hanged, by having long previously been transported to the Plantations. How can Mr. Gilfillan allow himself, in a case of this nature, to speak of 'universal impression' (if it had really existed) as any separate ground of credibility for Savage's tale? When the public have no access at all to sound means of judging, what matters it in which direction their 'impression' lies, or how many thousands swell the

belief, for which not one of all these thousands has anything like a reason to offer?

NOTE 5. Page 88.

'A folly.' We English limit the application of this term to buildings: but the idea might as fitly be illustrated in other objects. For instance, the famous galley presented to one of the Ptolemies, which offered the luxurious accommodations of capital cities, but required a little army of four thousand men to row it, whilst its draught of water was too great to allow of its often approaching the shore; this was 'a folly' in our English sense. So again was the Macedonian phalanx: the Roman legion could form upon any ground: it was a true working tool. But the phalanx was too fine and showy for use. It required for its manœuvring a sort of opera stage, or a select bowling-green, such as few fields of battle offered.

NOTE 6. Page 88.

I had written the 'Empress Catherine;' but, on second thoughts, it occurred to me that the 'mighty freak' was, in fact, due to the Empress Elizabeth. There is, however, a freak connected with ice, not quite so mighty,' but quite as autocratic, and even more feminine in its caprice, which belongs exclusively to the Empress Catherine. A lady had engaged the affections of some young noblemen, who was regarded favorably by the imperial eye. No pretext offered itself for interdicting the marriage; but, by way of freezing it a little at the outset, the Czarina coupled with her permission this condition that the wedding night should be passed by the young couple on a mattress of her gift. The mattress turned out to be a block of ice, elegantly cut, by the court upholsterer, into the likeness of a well-stuffed Parisian matOne pities the poor bride, whilst it is difficult to avoid laughing in the midst of one's sympathy. But it is to be hoped that no ukase was issued against spreading seven Turkey carpets, by way of under-blankets, over this amiable nuptial present. Amongst others who have noticed the story, is Captain Colville Frankland, of the navy.

tress.

NOTE 7. Page 92.

Bergmann, the German traveller, in his account of his long rambles and residence amongst the Kalmucks, makes us acquainted with the delirious vanity which possesses these demi-savages. Their notion is, that excellence of every kind, perfection in the least things as in the greatest, is briefly expressed by calling it Kalmuckish. Accordingly, their hideous language, and their vast national poem, [doubtless equally hideous,] they hold to be the immediate gifts of inspiration : and for this I honor them, as each generation learns both from the lips of their mothers. This great poem, by the way, measures (if I remember) seventeen English miles in length; but the most learned man amongst them, in fact a monster of erudition, never read farther than the eighth mile-stone. What he could repeat by heart was little more than a mile and a half; and, indeed, that was found too much for the choleric part of his audience. Even the Kalmuck face, which to us foolish Europeans looks so unnecessarily flat and ogre-like, these honest Tartars have ascertained to be the pure classical model of human beauty,—which, in fact, it is, upon the principle of those people who hold that the chief use of a face is to frighten one's enemy.

7

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.*

THIS book accomplishes a retribution which the world has waited for through seventy and odd years. Welcome at any rate by its purpose, it is trebly welcome by its execution, to all hearts that linger indulgently over the frailties of a national favorite once wickedly exaggerated to all hearts that brood indignantly over the powers of that favorite once maliciously undervalued.

A man of original genius, shown to us as revolving through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two separate theatres of interest: one in his personal career; the other in his works and his intellectual development. Both unfold together: and each borrows a secondary interest from the other: the life from the recollection of the works the works from the joy and sorrow of the life. There have, indeed, been authors whose great creations, severely preconceived in a region of thought transcendent to all impulses of earth, would have been pretty nearly what they are under any possible changes in the

* The Life and Adventures of Goldsmith, by John Forster.