the case with Campbell. He could see nothing to admire, to pity, or to spare in Byron.

LETTER FROM THOMAS CAMPBELL TO LADY BLESSINGTON. "May 19th, 1832. Sussex Chambers, Duke Street, St. James's Square. "DEAR MADAM,-I have no engagements for a month to come, excepting for Monday and Thursday next. On Monday I have a very long-standing and particular engagement, otherwise I should break it with no scruple to accept your ladyship's invitation. How unfortunate it is for me to have been engaged. I must not be too pathetic over my misfortune, for that might seem to be saying, 'I pray you ask me some other day,' and that would be very saucy, though it would be very sincere.

"But it can not be forwardness to thank you most gratefully for speaking so kindly of my works.

"With great respect, I remain, your ladyship's obliged and faithful servant, "THOMAS CAMPBELL."

"If poets only were allowed to pronounce sentence on poets, we are afraid the public would often endeavor to apply to a higher court for a new trial, on the ground of the misdirection of the judge, or on the verdict brought against the evidence; and this will be found to be the case, even when very high powers and capabilities are found on the judgment-seat." Those very truthful words were spoken by a generous-minded and a manlythinking writer-Eliot Warburton-in relation of some disparaging remarks of Goldsmith on the odes of Gray.*

B. W. PROCTOR, Esq. (BARRY CORNWALL).

A variety of detached poems, of various merit, and many of them of the highest, constitute the claims of this most amiable and accomplished man to literary reputation. Some years ago he was appointed to the office of Commissioner of Lunatic Asylums.

A lady well acquainted with him, whose observations on some others of the celebrities of Gore House I have already quoted, thus speaks of Barry Cornwall: "One of the kindest, gentlest, and most amiable of natures; a warm, true, and indefatigable friend; an excellent family-man, and in all his rela* Memoirs of H. Walpole, &c., vol. ii., p. 150.

tions guileless and simple as a child. His writings, principally in verse, and some charming prose sketches of his, likewise partake, for the most part, of the gentle spirit of the man, with much of playfulness and phantasy; but at times they rise into a tragic force and graphic energy. Some of his descriptions, of scenes in the dark dens of London crime and vice, are very forcible and dramatic."

The English epitaph on the tomb of Lady Blessington was written by Barry Cornwall.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS FROM B. W. PROCTOR, ESQ. (BARRY CORNWALL), TO LADY BLESSINGTON.

"28th January, 1833. "Your little letters always find me grateful to them. They (little paper angels, as they are) put devils of all kinds, from blue down to black, to speedy flight."

"4th February, 1836.

"Your little notes come into my Cimmerian cell here like starlits shot from a brighter region-pretty and pleasant disturbers of the darkness about me. I imprison them (my Ariels) in a drawer, with conveyances and wills, &c., and such sublunary things, which seem very proud of their society. Yet, if your notes to me be skyey visitors, what must this my note be to you? It must, I fear, be an evil genius."

"17th April, 1836.

"I am vexed-more than I can express-at the hurry of your publishers. I do not like that a book of yours should go to press without some contribution from me; yet I am so circumstanced as literally to be unable, for some days, to do any thing that is worth your acceptance. I have tried once or twice to hammer out some verse for you, but I am generally so jaded by my day's work as to be unfit for any thing except stupid sleep. I am not visited even by a dream."

[No date.]

"So poor Miss Landon is dead! What a fate! She went to certain death. No one ever lived on that dreadful coast, except men of iron, who have been dipped and tempered in every atmosphere till nothing could touch them."

[No date.]

"I am glad to hear that you enjoy in prospect your garden. You may safely do so. Nature is a friend that never deceives us. You may depend

upon it that her roses will be genuine, and that the whisper of your trees will contain neither flattery nor slander."

"18th December, 1839.

"How is it that you continue to go on with so untiring a pen? I hope you will not continue to give up your nights to literary undertakings. Believe me (who have suffered bitterly for this imprudence), that nothing in the world of letters is worth the sacrifice of health, and strength, and animal spirits, which will certainly follow this excess of labor."

CHAPTER XIV.

JOSEPH JEKYLL, ESQ., F.R.S., L.F.S.A.

Ir is passing strange how little is to be known, a few years after their decease, of persons greatly celebrated for their wit and humor while flourishing in society, and courted and petted by the literary circles and coteries of their time. The reputation of a mere man of wit, without any concomitant claims to distinction, whether as an author, an artist, an orator, in the senate, at the bar, or in the pulpit, is of small value. There is no element of immortality in it. It is more than strange, it is truly surprising, how men of wit, genuine, exuberant, irrepressible, spirituel men, who in society eclipse all other men of letters and remarkable intelligence by the brilliancy of their conversation, the smartness of their repartees, and the extraordinary quickness of their apprehension, once they cease to throw intellectual somersaults for society to divert it, and make fun for its lords and ladies, and other celebrities, their services are forgotten, all interest in their personal concerns are lost; there is no obligation to their memories; the privileged people of fashion and literature à la mode, who thronged round them with admiration in their days of triumph, are missing when they are borne to the tomb, or cease to be funny or prosperous, or in vogue. No man of wit of his time was more talked of and admired than Jekyll. The court that was paid to him, the homage that was yielded to him, were sufficient to lead one to believe that his memory would live long after him; yet a few years had not elapsed after his decease before he was forgotten.

It would seem to be the same with great wits as with eminent vocalists and musicians: while their peculiar talent is being displayed, while the performance in which they play may last, their talent is fully appreciated; but no sooner is the exhibition over and the performance at an end, than it becomes a matter of the utmost indifference to the public whether the person to whom they owe so much enjoyment has fallen into sickness and infirmity, or is of the living or the dead. No book of Jekyll's has found its way into publicity; no writings of any value have turned up among his papers.

During the latter years of his life he was confined to his house by gout, and during that period Lady Blessington was in the habit of visiting him regularly. She enjoyed exceedingly his society and conversation, the brilliancy of which remained unimpaired by his great age and grievous bodily infirmities.

"Mr. Jekyll was the son of a captain in the Navy, and was descended from Sir Joseph Jekyll, Master of the Rolls in the reign of George the First. He was educated in Westminster school, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1777. He was called to the bar in 1778. He practiced in the Western Circuit and in the Court of King's Bench.'

He entered Parliament in 1787, on the popular interest, in opposition to the Lansdowne family. He attached himself to the Whig party, and voted with Mr. Grey in favor of Reform. So early as 1782, he made himself known to the reading public as the author of a Memoir, and the editor of the letters of "Ignatius Sancho" (in 2 vols. 8vo), the African of intellectual celebrity who corresponded with Johnson, Sterne, and Garrick. Mr. Jekyll became a fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries in 1790. But it was not his legal, literary, scientific, or antiquarian attainments which gained a reputation for Mr. Jekyll. His ready wit and talent for repartee, his cleverness for hitting off grotesque resemblances of things naturally dissimilar, of seizing on droll peculiarities, salient outlines, and odd circumstances, and making them the subject of sparkling bon-mots and sprightly epigrams, gained him, not only in society, Gentleman's Magazine, 1837, August, p. 208.

but at the bar, the character of a man of brilliant wit. He was not only witty himself, and the legitimate parent of an innumerable offspring of witticisms, but the putative father of every thing really funny and spirituelle which could not be traced to its true origin.

In 1805, Mr. Jekyll's merits as a humorist became known to the Prince of Wales. He was appointed attorney general to the prince, was made king's counsel, and also a Commissioner of Lunatics.

Mr. Jekyll held the office for many years of Treasurer of the Society of the Temple, and it was under his directions the venerable hall and celebrated church underwent very important and extensive repairs. In 1811 he published a work in 4to, entitled "Facts and Observations relating to the Temple Church, and the Monuments contained in it."

Jekyll, like Dr. Johnson, gloried in London life. He said, "If he were compelled to live in the country, he would have the approach to his house paved like the streets of London, and would have a hackney-coach to drive up and down all day long." Doctor Johnson's great dogma, "Sir, the man who is tired of London is tired of his existence," was ever held by him; and in the exuberance of his metropolitanism, he had a sort of reverential feeling even for the stones of London, which would have made the name even of M'Adam odious to him, had he lived a few years later. He agreed with his friend James Smith in most things, but in one thing he entirely concurred with him in opinion, namely, that "London is the best place in summer, and the only place in winter."

In short, he never went out of town, that, like Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, he did not "miss the roar of London."

Mr. Jekyll married, about 1803, the daughter of Colonel Hans Sloane, M.P. for Lostwithiel, and with that lady obtained a very considerable fortune.

He died the 8th of March, 1837, aged eighty-five years, at his residence in New Street, Spring Gardens.

Jekyll's wit in conversation must have been more effective than that of Sydney Smith, and Curran's more marvelously suc