and causes them to moralise as philosophers. The great cardinal might have had, says the speaker,

"A palace or a colledge, for his grave!
Yet here he lies interred, as if all

Of him to be remembered were his fall.

If thou art thus neglected, what shall we

Hope after death, who are but shreds of thee?"

At Nottingham, they cross the Trent, pray to St. Andrew as they ride into the town, and observe that the people, singularly enough, “dwell not in howses, but are earth't in holes." At Warwick, they encounter Sir Fulk Greville (not yet Lord Brooke) and the Rev. Samuel Burton, archdeacon of Chichester. And so onward, twisting and turning, to Newark, approached through pleasant green fields, where "nature was wanton." There are many humorous, and not a few really fine, passages in this poem. Corbet is severe on the innkeeping fraternity generally, but especially on the hostesses; an ugly hostess, he fancies, is bad enough; but a handsome one still worse, because she steals both your heart and your purse, and "every welcome from her adds an item." There is an interesting description of a visit to Bosworth Field,-interesting because, through it, we learn the name of the actor who originally played Richard III., and ascertain, almost beyond doubt, that this actor "starred" the character about the provinces. The traveller is describing mine host, a man "full of ale and history," who has jogged out to the battle-field with his guests:

"He could tell

The inch where Richmond rose, where Richard fell,
Besides what of his knowledge he could say,

He had authentic notice from the play;

Which I might guess by 's mustering up the ghosts
And policies not incident to hosts;

But chiefly by that one perspicuous thing,

When he mistook a player for a king;

For when he would have saide, King Richard died,
And called, A horse! a horse!-he Burbage cried.”

Burbage, it will be remembered, was a fellow-actor of Shakspere. The Iter Boreale evinces some poetry and immense humour; it is, like the journey it describes, random, idle, and full of the pleasure of the moment. It is really pleasant to think of those four hard-worked Doctors, leaving the gray quadrangle, mirthfully trudging on foot along quiet country roads, accepting adventures as they turned up with a zest, and moralising on ground hallowed by the immortalising hands of Poetry and History, "accompanied," like Overbury's sweet Milkmaid, “with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones." At this rough season when I write, and when melancholy, born of rain or fog, settles in the spleen, it makes me long for the summer again; that you and I, gentle reader, may leave the city behind us, put into our pocket a copy of Thomson's Seasons, and wander as we list among green lanes, over stiles, up green hills, and into honest ale-houses. I do not mention the

Seasons unadvisedly; and the reader who has not taken the trouble to see beauty in that book will thank me in due time, if he takes the hint and reads "Summer" with a real English summer-landscape before him. That is the only way to understand Thomson. Adopt my method in any of the four seasons compare the printed description with the true picture, and you will go to the other extreme, and idolise. I shall not regret this digression, if it converts one lover of nature to the Thomsonian faith, of which I myself am an earnest disciple.

There is a great deal of good writing to be found among Corbet's miscellaneous poems. Perhaps the best is the "Proper New Ballad intituled the Faëryes Farewell," in which the departure of the good neighbours is bewailed in a fitting strain of poetry:

"Farewell rewards and Faeries,

Good housewives now may say,

For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they.

And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maides were wont to do,

Yet who of late for cleanliness

Found sixpence in her shoe?

*

It was a just and christian deed
To pinch such black and blue-

Oh! how the Commonwealth doth neede
Such justices as you!"

Peace to thy manes, Corbet; and may no worse man ever write Oxford or Norwich after his Christian name! You had the true Christian heart, albeit you were no Mawworm; and you wrote excellent verses. You tasted once or twice of the wine of our fathers, in that sly cellar of yours; but I demand for you a more fitting epitaph than that you yourself wrote on John Dawson, Butler of Christ Church:

"A watery verse

Will serve the turn to cast upon his hearse.
If any cannot weepe among us heare,
Take off a cup, and so squeeze out a tear-
Weep, O ye BARRELS!"

R. W. B.

Broad awake.

DOCTORS and quacks of every age, from Paracelsus down to the most popular physicians of the present day; medical books of every kind, from terrifying Buchan down to the friendly and suggestive pamphlets in which "What to eat, drink, and avoid," is so kindly pointed out to us, concur in reprehending the custom of supper-eating, and advise us not to fill the stomach before retiring to rest. I do not think that, in the present day, this caution is much needed; the grand era of supper-eating is gone by; that glorious comfortable meal, over which Coleridge dogmatised, and Hazlitt criticised, and Lamb stuttered forth his crackling puns or half-childish, half-worldly, always benevolent, wisdom, is no longer tolerated; degenerating into a medical students' orgie, consequent upon a vingt-un party, and followed by hot potations, doleful sentimental melodies, and far more doleful comic songs, it has gradually evaporated; and if medical science were right in its denunciation, medical science can now plume itself in having lost one of its implacable foes.

In justice to this custom, now fallen into desuetude, I am bound to say that I do not think many of us suffered from its practice. The heavy stertorous sleep, the prolonged waking, accomplished with difficulty at an hour protracted far beyond the usual time, and distinguished by a peculiar sensation of the last baked potato in the throat, and a thoroughly connoisseur-like flavour of the whisky, were bad enough in their day; but they were nothing like so injurious in their tendency, so objectionable and so unconquerable as the hopeless wakefulness, the broad, staring selfassertion, the bright unsoothable self-possession, which I have now learned to look upon as nightly visitants-now, in these later days, when I am fully conscious of the possession of a liver, and when nothing but the thinnest claret forms my sleeping draught.

At this dead season, which with me is about four in the morning, I wake up, to a certain degree refreshed and painfully lively; my body has been tolerably rested, while my mind seems ready to go through any amount of exertion. Turn the pillow, close the eyes, stretch out the limbs in a new position,-all in vain! my mind has been aroused, and is not going to let me off so easily; she now sees her way to a nice quiet communion with me, undisturbed by the thousand business worries which absorb me so completely in the day-time; and in order that there may be no chance of my attention wandering, she turns my thoughts into a comprehensive channel, and sets me pondering upon certain great hopes and fears connected with my past, my present, and my future life.

I begin with my present, and start with wondering whether I shall ever get that novel finished upon which I have been engaged any time during the last six years. For a man who lives, to a certain extent, by

his pen, and only has opportunities of plying that pen in the intervals of other business, the completion of a novel is a very difficult matter. While the grass grows, the steed starves; and while the poor author, tolerably fagged by his law, or his ledger, or his diplomacy, is weaving the intricate woof of his plot, or consuming weeks in the elaboration of his character-sketching, the children's shoes are wearing out, mamma's milliner's bill is coming in, and the entire household is eating away for dear life. The necessity for ready money leads to the production of work which does not take long to produce, and which is paid for on completion; and hence the ordinary working author devotes himself to the composition of "pot-boilers," as they are irreverently called, i. e. of those essays and tales which form the staple of our periodicals, and the longprojected and oft-thought-of novel is laid aside for brighter days. My novel, at least as much of him as is complete (I am making him piecemeal, as Frankenstein did his monster), lives between two sheets of cartridge-paper in the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk. He seldom sees daylight, save in the autumn, when I go away to the sea; and then I invariably take him with me, with the full determination of bringing him home completed. He has been to half the seabords of England, but his treatment is always the same: he lies unnoticed at the bottom of the portmanteaut till the end of the first week, then he is brought out and laid on a table opposite the window; then I work at him desperately for an hour until, coming to a stand-still, I look up for inspiration, and then the sight of the sea and the sky and the sun goads me to fling up my pen and run out, and the novel is returned into the portmanteau and brought back to town.

Broad awake, I make several notable plans about this great work of fiction; determine to take him in hand at such and such a time, to devote certain hours on certain days to his whole use and benefit; and then I begin to think of him as achieved and published, and to wonder what kind of reception he will meet with, what the reviewers will say, and how many copies Mr. Mudie will take. And then I wonder how I began to write at all, and am astonished to recall how long I have been at it, and marvel whether it will last, and whether my poor fancy and descriptive powers-poor enough, Heaven knows, and in all sincerity little enough thought of by myself-will yet serve me in fighting the battle of life in the work-a-day world; or whether the reading public will soon tire of my style, or of me as an exponent of it, and finding some more promising aspirant to their favours, leave me and my essays unread and disregarded. Ne sutor, &c.; and every man working at literature will find plenty of matter for mental cud-chewing in thinking over his pursuance of his own profession. There can be but few of us without conscience-prickings for sins both of commission and omission,-how many hasty judgments recorded, how many criticisms slightly warped, and tinged (not designedly, certainly, but still tinged) with your personal like or dislike of the person under notice. It is easy enough to

repeat the parrot-cry, "This should not be !" Despite the constant attacks made upon them (always by members of their own body, mind), I firmly believe that the newspaper critics of the English press-whether literary, artistic, or dramatic-are no venal hirelings, but conscientious men, and, as the world goes, to the full as truth-telling as their compeers in any other walk of life. That it is impossible to be as open as they could wish, I allow; the very fabric and composition of society does not permit it. How can you, who are perfectly well known to be the literary reviewer for the Daily Beacon, print your opinion that Jones's new novel is dull and silly, when you daily brush shoulders with Jones at your club? or, how can you boldly assert that neither by education nor personal appearance is Roscius fitted for Hamlet, when you are certain to meet him next day at your mutual friend Mecænas's table? What can you do? You hint that Jones's book might be more lively, and that Roscius's performance is not entirely satisfactory: and who does more? So long as writers, actors, and critics form links of the same social chain, you must not be surprised at each being as lenient as possible to his fellows.

of

Broader awake than ever (for I find this a very fertile theme for reflection, and go through several special instances which, as newspaper reports say, "possess no general interest"), I shoot off at a tangent, and my thoughts wander back to the first attempt ever made at composition, and it and all its belongings come vividly before me. It was a set of verses, begun, I am ashamed to say, while apparently listening to a very dull sermon, and finished with much bodily torture, involving the slapping my forehead and the biting of my nails. When finished and written out in the boldest of hands, I sent it to the editor of a Magazine, then in existence, but long since defunct, who had formerly been acquainted with our family. At the end of a week I received an answer from him couched in highly complimentary terms, and enclosing a proof of my effusion. On the corner of the proof was pinned a small printed ticket requesting that it might be returned as soon as possible to the printer's. I determined that the injunction should be obeyed. I read the proof quickly, made an elaborate alteration in the position of a comma, and then, though the printing-office was less than half a mile distant, started off there at once in a cab. I gave the proof to the foreman with my own hands, and then retired, with a slight feeling that people would probably point me out to each other in the street. Then I began to hunt the newspapers for advertisements of the Magazine. Three months passed and my verses had not appeared. I wrote an humble but remonstrative letter to my friend the editor; he replied with a general reference to circumstances over which he had no control, but reiterated his promise of giving me a speedy appearance. Three more months elapsed, and I wrote again; the editor's reply was, I think, to the effect that he declined to be worried. Then six months passed; and by this time, having perpetrated more lucubrations, and found several issues for my muse, I wrote a very dignified epistle to the editor, and begged him to consider