to by Eschines. His criticisms have the decided advantage of not forestalling the works they review, but rather enhance the pleasure of the reader, by the surprise of finding so wide a disagreement between reality and representation. His family anecdotes are perfect additions to national biography; while, if he sometimes insinuates an imaginary fault in the character of his heroes, he fully makes amends by a corresponding supposition of virtues liberally conferred upon the objects of his paid panegyrics.

From this department of my natural vocation I was driven, something like Sir Francis Wronghead, by saying ay when I should have said no for, by an unlucky mistake, I sent a paragraph intended for an Opposition paper to a Court journal. It was inserted without examination, and the Minister was accused in his own demi-official gazette of a gross peculation! The hubbub was extreme; the editor was rated, and lost half his pension; the proprietor was(but that must not be told); and I was kicked out of the office, and threatened with an indictment for libel.

Being reduced very low in circumstances by this unfortunate event, my next appearance was in the character of a mute at a funeral. But the change in my fortunes rendered my rueful countenance so faithful an index of the mind, and my sorrows were so genuinely unaffected, that I soon became discontented with a station so uncongenial to my talents, and embraced the offer of a quack doctor to write the statements of his cures, and to give the last touches of pathos to the deplorable cases of incurable malady, which he had most miraculously restored to health and longevity.

The next step I took is not difficult to foresee. From lying for others I commenced liar on my own account, by stepping into my employer's shoes, pirating his nostrums, parodying his handbills, and turning Esculapius myself. I shall not tell you, the names under which I practised, for I am sure you would not believe me: suffice it to say, that by dint of impudence, threats, flattery, and a female coterie, I succeeded as well as the best of the regulars, be he who he may, and soon wormed myself into a genteel livelihood. Had I been as prudent as clever, 1 should soon have realized a handsome fortune; but ce qui vient par la flute s'en retourne par le tambour. I gave sumptuous entertainments, kept a dashing equipage, and played deep, in order to make my way in genteel life; and before I could qualify for a vote at the India House, a newer and more audacious impostor obtained possession of public credulity. I was obliged to abandon my professionmy patients having first abandoned me.

Reduced to the lowest in my hopes, and without a shilling I could call my own, I found resources in my genius which arose even from my very distress. A liar, indeed, if any one, may boast lorsque je suis bien comprimé, &c.; for if necessity be the mother of invention, a liar can never be so truly great as when his necessities are the most pressing. Thus it happened that at my utmost need, and when absolutely without a dinner, I found my way into the Rotunda at the Bank, and unhesitatingly bought ten thousand Consols for the account.'

The profession of a stockjobber was certainly made for me, or I for the profession-that, of all other trades, is the one in which "nothing is, but thinking makes it so." No one ever was more ingenious in his

fictions, nor laid them more cleverly at the door of a creditable authority, than I. No one ever played the game of brag with more confidence, swaggering away a fierce bull, at the very moment when speculating for a fall, and undoing by my subaltern agents what I affected to do myself. No one ever concealed mortification with a more smiling exterior: no one was more ingenious in letting his friends into a good thing, and taking equal advantage of their scepticism and their credulity. When really possessed of news, I have told it in a way that every one has thought it a "taste of my own quality ;" and I have let the world into the secret of fictitious intelligence, by dropping a "most confidential letter" where it was sure to be found. Regularly twice a week I contrived to be seen leaving the Foreign Office, in Downing-street, upon no better grounds than an acquaintance with the housekeeper; and I had frequent expresses from France, that contained nothing but an old Drapeau blanc, or the last new caricature.

But, not to betray all "the secrets of my prison-house," it is enough to say, that with such talents failure was difficult, and I soon became rich enough to feel the full force of Jonathan Wild's axiom," that a lie is too precious a thing to be wasted." Accordingly I began to think of establishing myself in the world, and of looking out for a wife.

Never, in the long course of my multifarious career, did I so much need the full extent of my resources as in my character of a lover. That is a part in which the honestest and the fairest dealers of us all are sure to dissemble-what then might not be expected from my talents and habits? The whole art and mystery of courtship consists in disguising vices, feigning virtues, concealing deficiencies, and counterfeiting raptures, in gross adulation, an affected oversight of female follies, a false air of forbearance and indulgence, a calm temper, and the transversion of every defect, moral and physical, in the objects of our preference, into a beauty or a perfection: always bearing in mind that this must be practised with rigour in the exact proportion in which, after the ceremony, the lady is to be treated with neglect and contempt. Is the party a porpoise? nothing is so becoming as en bon point. Is she a walking skeleton? nothing so elegant as a svelte nymph-like figure. Is she a fool? what charming simplicity! Is she a shrew? how pregnant her wit! Then the small-pox gives an interesting variety to a countenance; a nose like a knocker confers expression; bad teeth prevent an eternal senseless giggle; and a foul breath is absolutely impercep

tible!

What, however, adds to the charm and the difficulty of these practices, is the reciprocity of the contest. We are not only required to carry the war into the enemy's country, but to protect our own frontiers. The lady is often the greatest liar of the two: her interest in deception is the most urgent, and her education is not unfrequently directed to this "one thing needful;" so that it is often, in these cases, à fripon, fripon et demi; and happy is the man who is only duped in the arrangements of the settlement.

The first lady with whom I engaged was one of this class; and it is not saying a little of her to tell, that she was as great an adept in simulation and dissimulation as myself. Her devoted tenderness, her affecting sensibility, her thousand nameless attentions, so gratifying to vanity, and therefore so winning, had nearly united me to the veriest she-tiger

that ever gave battle; but the fortunate fall of a looking-glass so threw the lady off her centre, as to give me a very intelligible notice to quit; which I accepted accordingly: and backing out with the best grace I could muster, made my bow, and for that time escaped unhurt.

The next lady I addressed was, in her way, also a perfect living lie. She was of a certain age-the most uncertain, as Lord Byron justly remarks, in female biography.

I never heard nor could engage

A person yet by prayers, or bribes, or tears,
To name, define by speech, or write on page,
The period meant precisely by that word,
Which surely is exceedingly absurd.

She seldom appeared in open day without a veil, but sat at home in rooms shaded with a verandah, and farther protected from the intrusion of too much light by muslin curtains. She remained much on a sofa, and rarely ventured to cross an open space without taking somebody's arm, or at least drawing a large square shawl over her shoulders to conceal the stiffness of her movements. Her hair was black and profuse, and her teeth white and regular: both, as Martial has it, were her own; for the artists who sold them had been duly paid. Her age was eight-and-twenty-an age at which, for many years, she had pertinaciously stuck; though latterly, those who best knew her affirmed, that she began to retrograde, and become annually younger as life advanced. This affirmation, however, I was the less disposed to credit, as the party herself was observed to allude to the subject much less frequently than formerly, and therefore did not give her friends such opportunities of knowing the truth from the best source. Her air was, perhaps, too girlish and flirting for the time of life at which she chose to remain, but then it betrayed a most winning innocence. Her passion was sentiment and fine feeling, and, except in the arrangement of her marriage-articles, her notions were romantic and high-flown. I had hitherto been so closely occupied in watching the progress of my own deceits, in measuring every look, and guarding every expression of my own carriage, that I had paid comparatively but little attention to others; especially to those of the softer sex, with whom I had maintained but little intercourse. Like the "good saint," I

little knew

What the wily sex could do.

It is not, therefore, surprising, that with such an antagonist I was nearly bitten; and the "fair ruin" (to quote once more the Irish Anacreon) had nearly brought matters to an issue, when an issue which accident discovered, not "lawfully begotten," prevented our joining issue, and so put an end abruptly to the projected marriage.

It is not my present purpose to detail a long series of love-adventures: suffice it, that at length I did marry; when the truth, most involuntarily, on both parts, soon came to light. The lady had much fewer charms and many more debts than she had pretended, while my pecuniary obligations were at least ten times as many as I had ever ventured to disturb her peace of mind by alluding to. She had also concealed a long episode in her early life, not very compatible with virgin innocence; and I for my part did not mention a certain sentimental friendship I maintained with a widow, who benevolently reared

a family of helpless infants, and encouraged them, in defiance of the law's intelligible axiom, to presume that they had a father, and that I was the man.

Being thus, as Father Luke has it, "settled for life," I had a spare stock of floating dissimulation on hand, which I determined on laying out on the canvassing of a borough. Here, Sir, I could tell you much of the false promises, falsely made and falsely received, in the obtaining a seat; the false interests represented by the sitting member; the false suppositions admitted in the forms of the house; the false tergiversations of rats, and the falser steadiness of more thorough-going partizans; the false arguments used to carry a cause, and the false statements made to cover deficiencies; but "lightly tread, 'tis hallowed ground." There are certain "six acts," which must cut short the thread of my narrative. Referring you, therefore, to Major Cartwright, Lord L, and other early friends of reform, I shall content myself with remarking, that in my own case the voters were worthy of the representative and the representative of his constituents. "Practices as notorious as the sun at noon-day," gave me the right of selling what I had bought; and in this part of my life I in no respect derogated from the dramatic unity of all my actions.

My next step in mendacity was made in diplomacy. But I was so far false to the definition of an ambassador, that all my lies were not told for the good of the country. Indeed, it would not be easy to say what good was intended by the greater number of them; for few of our plans had any intelligible scope. We most frequently struck into crooked paths and by-ways for the sole purpose of avoiding the high road of honesty and fair dealing: "Politiques aux choux et aux raves," we were not unfrequently the dupes of our own art, and were often deceived by our eagerness to escape deception.

Notwithstanding the general belief that John Bull is not good in this department of state, and that, let him treat with whom he will, he generally ends, like a cully in a bad house, by being forced into a fight, and compelled to pay for the broken heads and glasses, to tip the watchman, and find bail for his good behaviour; still I should feel disposed to flatter myself with some success in this line, were I not obliged to confess, that in the modern way of doing business, more is obtained by the downright path of corruption, than by the most complicated scaffolding of ingenious fibs. It has now, indeed, become an axiom, omnibus et lippis notum et tonsoribus, that lying is only useful when you want to spin out a negotiation, but that for bringing matters to a conclusion, there's nothing like a Bank-note or a diamond snuffbox.

About this time I got (for once in my life against the grain) into another lie, quite equal to the rest-I was engaged in a duel! The affair originated in a lie; the courage with which I went out was a lie (for in reality it was sheer dread of being called a coward, and so losing the emoluments of office and the pleasures of society, that induced us to go out); the pretence on which we arranged an accommodation was a lie; the profession of regard which accompanied our reconciliation was a lie; the narrative we printed in the newspapers of the transaction was an abominable lie; and nothing was sincere in the whole business, but the satisfaction with which we left Chalk Farm in a

whole skin, and the chagrin of the by-standers that nothing worth the telling had happened to repay them the trouble of looking on.

Having thus arrived at the top of the wheel of fortune, by a natural consequence I began to decline. A series of unforeseen accidents have hurled me from prosperity. My diplomacy being rendered ineffectual by superior mendacity, I lost my place; a more promising and plausible candidate threw me out of parliament; a lie on 'Change, of which I was not in the secret, made me "a lame duck," and the false accounts of my partner put me into the Gazette. The only instance in which the Genius of falsehood has proved true to her disciple was in the lie which lost me my wife :-the poor woman happened to lie in a damp bed, and went off in a nine-day fever. I am now once more where I started in life, a little, perhaps, richer in experience, but much poorer in character. If you, Mr. Editor, will get me a few articles to write for theReview, well and good: if not, I must e'en take to writing lottery-puffs; or, if that fails like the rest, betake me to the least profitable, and, therefore most persecuted, of all lies— common mendicity. In the mean time oblige me by printing this letter; and it may meet the eye of some one who is willing to pay a good price for a good commodity, and once more set me a-going by employing the talents of your obedient humble servant,

FERDINAND MENDEZ PINTO. P.S. If you object to some parts of this narration as being commonplace, please to observe that the traits of falsehood and hypocrisy best worth relating, in my adventurous life, could not be told without subjecting your Journal to the suspicion of glancing at characters too elevated to ridicule, and too powerful to censure. I'd tell you more if I dared.

M.

SONNET.

Translated from Petrarch.

Quel vago impallidir, che 'l dolce riso.

THERE was a touching paleness on her face,
Which chased her smiles, but such sweet union made
Of pensive majesty and heavenly grace,

As if a passing cloud had veil'd her with its shade:
Then knew I how the blessed ones above

Gaze on each other in their perfect bliss,

For never yet was look of mortal love

So pure, so tender, so serene as this.

The softest glance fond woman ever sent
To him she loved, would cold and rayless be
Compared to this, which she divinely bent

Earthward, with angel sympathy, on me,
That seem'd with speechless tenderness to say—
"Who takes from me my faithful friend away?"

E.