in the family of book-losers. I may affirm, upon a moderate calculation, that I have lent and lost in my time, and I am eight and thirty,) half-a-dozen decent sized libraries,-l mean books enough to fill so many ordinary book cases. I have never complained; and self-love, as well as gratitude, makes me love those who do not complain of me. But like other patient people, I am inclined to burst out now that I grow less strong,—now that writing puts a hectic in my

cheek. Publicity is nothing now-a-days “ between friends.” There is R. not H. R. who in return for breaking a set of my English Poets, makes a point of forgetting me, whenever he has poets in his eye; which is carrying his conscience too far. But W. H. treated me worse; for not content with losing other of said English Poets, together with my Philip Sidney (all in one volume) and divers pieces of Bacon, he vows I never lent them to him; which is “ the unkindest cut of all.” This comes of being magnanimous. It is a poor thing after all to be “pushed from a level consideration” of one's superiority in matters of provocation. But W. H. is not angry on this occasion, though he is forgetful; and in spite of his offences against me and mine (not to be done away by his good word at intervals). I pardon the irritable patriot and metaphysician, who would give his last penny to an acquaintance, and his last pulse to the good of mankind. Why did he fire up at an idle word from one of the few men, who thought and felt as deeply as himself, and who “ died daily” in the same awful cause? But I forgive him, because he forgave him; and yet I know not if I can do it for that very reason.

“ Come, my best friends, my books, and lead me on:

« 'Tis time that I'were gone." I own I borrow books with as much facility as I lend. I cannot see a work that interests me on another person's shelf, without a wish to carry it off: but, I repeat, that I have been much more sinned against than sinning in the article of non-return; and am scrupulous in the article of intention. I never had a felonious intent upon a book but once; and then I shall only say, it was under circumstances so peculiar, that I cannot but look upon the conscience that induced me to restore it, as having sacrificed the spirit of its very self to the letter; and I have a grudge against it accordingly. Some people are unwilling to lend their books. I have a special grudge against them, particularly those who accompany ther unwillingness with uneasy professions to the contrary, and smiles like Sir Fretful Plagiary. The friend who helped to spoil my notions of property, or rather to make them too good for the world

as it goes,” taught me also to undervalue my squeamishness in choosing to avail myself of the books of these gentlemen. He showed -me how it was doing good to all parties to put an ordinary face on the matter; though I know his own blushed not a little sometimes in doing it, even when the good to be done was for another. (Dear S. in all thy actions, small as well as great, how sure was the beauty of thy spirit to break forth!) I feel in truth, that even when anger inclines me to exercise this privilege of philosophy, it is more out of revenge than contempt. I fear that in allowing myself to borrow books, I sometimes make extremes meet in a very sinful manner, and do it out of a refined revenge. It is like eating a miser's beef at him.

I yield to none in my love of bookstall urbanities. I have spent as happy moments over the stalls (till the woman looked out) as any literary apprentice boy who ought to be moving onwards. But I confess my weakness in liking to see some of my favourite purchases neatly

bound. The books I like to have about me most are Spenser, Chaucer, the minor poems of Milton, the Arabian Nights, Theocritus, Plato's Republic, and such old good-natured speculations as Plutarch's Morals. For most of these I love a plain good old binding, never mind how old, provided it wears well; but my Arabian Nights may be bound in as fine and flowery a style as possible, and I should like an engraving to every dozen pages. Book-prints of all sorts, bad and good, take with me as much as when I was a child : and I think some books, such as Prior's Poems, ought always to have portraits of the authors. Prior's airy face with his cap on, is like having his company. From early association, no edition of Milton pleases me so much, as that in which there are pictures of the Devil with brute ears, dressed like a Roman General: nor of Bunyan, as the one containing the print of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the Devil whispering in Christian's ear, old Pope sitting by the way side, and

“ Vanity Fair,

With the Pilgrims suffering there." I delight in the recollection of the puzzle I used to have with the frontispiece of the Tale of a Tub, of my real horror at the sight of that crawling old man representing Avarice, at the beginning of Enfield's Speaker, the Looking Glass, or some such book; and even of the careless school-boy hats, and the prim stomachers and cottage bonnets, of such golden-age antiquities as the Village School. The oldest and most worn-out wood cut, representing King Pepin, Goody Two Shoes, or the grim Soldan, sitting with three staring blots for his eyes and mouth, his sceptre in one hand, and his other five fingers raised and spread in admiration at the feats of the Gallant. London Prentice, cannot raise in me a feeling of ingratitude or disrespect. Cooke's edition of the British Poets and Novelists came out while I was at school: for which

I never could put up with Suttaby's or Walker's publications, except in the case of such works as the Fairy Tales, which Mr. Cooke did not publish. Besides they are too cramped, thick, and mer-, cenary; and the pictures are all frontispieces. They do not come in at the proper places. It is like having one's pie before dinner. Cooke realized the old woman's beau ideal of a prayer book,-“ A little book, with a great deal of matter, and a large type:"-—for the type was really large for so small a volume. Shall I ever forget his Collins and his Gray, books at once so superbly ornamented and so inconceivably cheap? Sixpence could procure much before ; but never could it procure so much as then, or was at once so much respected, and so little cared for. His artist Kirk was the best artist, except Stothard, that ever, designed for periodical works; and I will venture to add (if his name rightly announces his country) the best artist Scotland ever produced, except Wilkie: but he unfortunately had not enough of his country in him to keep him from dying young. His designs for Milton and the Arabian Nights, his female extricated from the water in the Tales of the Genii, and his old hag issuing out of the chest of the Merchant Abadah in the same book, are before me now as vividly as they were then. He possessed elegance and the sense of the beauty in no ordinary degree; though they sometimes played a trick or so of foppery. I shall never forget the gratitude with which. I received an odd number of Akenside, value sixpence, one of the set of that poet, which a boarder distributed among three or four of us, “ with his mother's compliments.” The present might have been more lavish, but I hardly

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thought of that. I remember my number. It was the one an which
there is a picture of the poet on a sopha, with Cupid coming to him,
and the words underneath, “ Tempt me no more, insidious Love!" The
picture and the number appeared to me equally divine. I cannot help
thinking to this day, that it is right and natural in a gentleman to sit
in a stage dress, on that particular kind of sopha, though on no other,
with that exclusive hat and feathers on his head, telling Cupid to be-
gone with a tragedy air. Cowley says, that even when he was
very young boy at school, instead of his running about on holidays, and
playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them, and walk
into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion,
if he could find one of the same temper." When I was at school, I had
no fields to run into, or I should certainly have gone there; and I must
own to having played a great deal; but then I drew my sports as
much as possible out of books, playing at Trojan wars, chivalrous en-
counters with coal-staves, and even at religious mysteries. When I
was not at these games, was either reading in a corner, or walking
round the cloisters with a book under one arm, and my friend linked
with the other, or with my thoughts. It has since been my fate to real-
ize all the romantic notions I had of a friend at that time, and just as
I had embraced him in a distant country, to have him torn from me.
This it is that sprinkles the most cheerful of my speculations now with
tears, and that must obtain me the reader's pardon for a style unus-
ually chequered and egoistical. No man was a greater lover of books
than he. He was rarely to be seen, unless attending to other people's
affairs, without a volume of some sort, generally of Plato, or one of the
Greek Tragedians. Nor will those who understand the real spirit of
his scepticism, be surprised to hear that one of his companions was the
Bible. He valued it for the beauty of some of its contents, for the dig-
nity of others, and the curiosity of all; though the philosophy of Solo-
mon he thought too Epicurean, and the inconsistencies of other parts
afflicted him. His favourite part was the book of Job, which he thought
the grandest of tragedies. He projected founding one of his own upon
it; and I will undertake to say, that Job would have sat in that Tra-
gedy, with a patience and a profundity of thought worthy of the origi-
nal. Being asked on one occasion, what book he would save for him-
self, if he could save no other ?) he answered, “ The oldest book, the
Bible.” It was à monument to him of the earliest, most lasting; and
most awful aspirations of humanity. But more of this on a fitter occasion.*

* I will mention, however, in this place, that an advantage of a very cunning and vindictive nature was taken of Mr. Shelley's known regard for the Bible, to represent him as having one with him at the time he was drowned. Nothing was more probable; and it is true, that he had a book in his pocket, the remains of which, at the request of the author of this article, were buried with him: but it was the volume of Mr. Keats's poems, containing Hyperion, of which he was a great admirer. He borrowed it of me when he went away, and knowing how I valued it also, said that he would not let it quit him till he saw me again.

[To be concluded next week).

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Don Juan. Cantos VI. VII. VIII. We scarcely know of any thing more ludicrous, although of many more amusing, than a contemplation of the manner in which the yagaries of genius tend to the production of grave and fatiguing common

places from a multitude of persons who can neither understand the eccentricity, nor appreciate the source of it. It is unnecessary to remark, that if the Noble Author of Don Juan could possibly have been overwhelmed by this sort of matter, he would by this time have been buried under a heap which, to borrow the hyperbole of the brother of Ophelia, might

O'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head

Of blue Olympus.” There is happily, however, no extinguishment of soul, no annihilation of intellect, to be effected by this process at the present time of day, so that honest dulness may be allowed its' unavoidable portion of expletive with great complacency. Nay, if uttered with sincerity, and on a supposition, as Figaro says, that the good people " think that they are thinking,” their platitudes are to be endured, like a passing cloud, at which, although it afflicts us with the vapours, it is useless to repine. We are not to expect the bat to track the flash which precedes a thunder-clap, or the mole to adjust and ascertain the polarity of light.

But if the numerous class of innocent and well intentioned venters of no-meaning are to be thus tolerated, we are not aware of the existence' of any species of literary chivalry, which demands an equal degree of consideration for the rancour of disappointed venality-the affected horror of alarmed and becloaked hypocrisy—the yell of low political hostility, and the artificial hiss of the whole serpentine train of corruption—complicated monsters," who in the variety and nature of their powers, and motives of annoyance, may be figuratively compared to their prototypes in Pandemonium:

“ Scorpion, and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire,
Cerastes horn'd, Hydrus, and Elops drear,

And Dipsas."
Need we say, that nearly all those who affect to sound the tocsin
upon every sally of imagination by Lord Byron, may be classed under
one or other of the foregoing divisions ? The venality that would em-
brace the profits, while it avoided the responsibility, is known to all.men;
the hypocrisy and cant, under the name of equity, that would under-
mine property, and suffer legitimate fraud to acquire an unprincipled
and dangerous controul over the press, have been rendered equally evi-
dent. As to low political hostility, is it possible to consider any thing
more low, contemptible, abject, rancorous, crawling-and, for the ho-
nour of the country, we hope to add silly--than the wretched attack of
the Constitutional Society? And as to the anonymous creatures of
venom, they abound in every dirty pool, which stagnates and breeds
things of slime, under the sun of a corruptive influence. What is the
crime of Lord Byron with this crew-the boldness of his occasional
scepticism? Not a jot. His treatment of the good old King ?”-Pish!
-the mere adoption of a rallying point, to furnish a new experiment upon
the card--purses of old women. Mr. Charles Murray's bills run high,
and the funds of the Society low.. Is it a dangerous portion of license
and freedom in Don Juan?—How edifying this objection, considering
that the John Bull is under the especial patronage and protection of
the Church! What then is the real offence of his Lordship? How ra-
pidly told! He-a nobleman,—has burst the enthralment of rank and
station; nay more, the stronger ligatures of an aristocratical bias, and
declared for the Many against the Few. His powerful spirit has em-
braced the cause of the politically oppressed, and aided to expose
and to scourge that great piece of general social treason, the Holy Al-

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liance. This it is, which has subjected Lord Byron to the enmity and
anger by which, in certain quarters, he is so much honoured; and but.
for this, he might have written like Rochester, intrigued like Buckingham,
and acted all sorts of folly in the manner of Wharton. Nay, his expe-'
dition with Satan after the origin of evil, in the person of Cain, would
have passed from the Creator of well-fed Rectors, and bowing Deans; a
position which has been proved by much kindred matter-of-fact.
word, the yelpers are a-slip, not for what Lord Byron is, but for what
he is not. He might have been all that he is with perfect impunity,
save a liberal Lord, which agrees neither with the conservative princi-
ple of the great Holy Alliance, nor the little Constitutional Society,
with the confederate interests, nor the proprietary Oligarchy that
oppress the British system, all of which, in their several degrees, claim'
a vested right to impede the genial march of society, and make a pro-
perty of the common rights of mankind.

Having eased our mind by a little general appreciation of the common-place, the cant, and the malignity against Lord Byron, the source of which is so obvious; and protesting against any sort of intention of interfering with the just rights of sound and honest criticism,—to which, whether springing out of differences of taste, feeling, or sincere opinion, he is of course as amenable as the meanest shrub of Parnassus, we drop at once to a consideration of that poem in particular, the continuation of which has led to the present article.

Of the general characteristics of Don Juan, it would now be almost impertinent to dilate. We shall therefore spare ourselves all expatiation upon its felicitous combination of description, humour, pathos, and keen and pervading satire; the last of which, after all, we apprehend is what disturbs the moral prudery of the well-dressed mob more than those amatory scenes and glowing descriptions to which the manifestation of the said disturbance is so greatly attributed. The first canto, for instance-Are certain people quite so alarmed at the loves of Don Juan and Donna Julia, as at certain tangential strokes in the delineation of the character of the hero's grave and prudential mother, and transient glances at the infirmities and peccadilloes of good sort of people? The same story told in another manner, they would possibly regard as a moral tale ; but this air riant, and disturbance of composed masks and orderly decencies, are unbearable. Circumspection avails nothing in this case, and (contra bonos mores) the “ simulars of virtue" are in as much danger as the vicious—a frightful and comprehensive calamity. To be sure, we have heard the objection urged very speciously. We do not like to be eternally put upon the weak or wicked points of our nature; and in poetry particularly, prefer more gentle portraiture,-—" Alice Fell,” and the “Thoughts too deep for tears.” Without deciding whether some of the latter may not be found even in the stanzas of Don Juan, we utterly protest against this very convenient species of interdiction, which, we maintain, would foster every species of rancorous weed, by the mere absence of annoyance. It would require more time and space than the nature of this publication will allow, to enter into a comparison of the advantages to be derived from the exaltation of conspicuous virtue and the exposure of latent vice; but if both are good, Lord Byron is vindicated; and every body must allow that the latter is the most fruitful field. Sound divines (not being Court Chaplains) take both ways, we believe; an observation that drops from us in the pure spirit of orthodoxy.. Again: Lord Byron will take up

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