Yesterdays with Authors

present. These are my assembled guests, who dropped in years ago and stayed with me, without the form of invitation or demand on my time or thought. They are my eloquent silent partners for li

with them

ssions of sweet

emembrance of

ed of answering questions about them, or gossiping of m

many would smile and remind me of what Foote said with his characteristic sharpness of David Garrick, when he joined his

gone, and know what they bring down on their heads when they request me "to run over

had just returned from the sale of the Marquis of Hastings's effects. The Marquis, it will be remembered, went wrong, and his debts swallowed up everything. It was a wretched stormy day when the pictures were sold, and Mr. Graves secured, at very moderate prices, five original portraits. All the paintings had suffered more or less decay, and some of them, with their frames, had fallen to the floor. One of the best preserved pictures inherited by the late Marquis was a portrait of Pope, painted from life by Richardson for the Earl of Burlington, and even that had been allowed to drop out of its oaken frame. Horace Walpole says, Jonathan Richardson was undoubtedly one of the best painters of a head that had appeared in England. He was pupil of the celebrated Riley, the master of Hudson, of whom Sir Joshua took lessons

untenance such an expression of tranquillity, nay, almost of pleasure, that it is even amiable to behold it. It would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew; and it would be the greatest obligation which even that obliging art could ever bestow on a friend, if you could come and sketch it for me. I am sure, if there be no very prevale

face was plump and pretty, and that he had a very fresh complexion. Continual study ruined his constitution and changed his form, it is said. Richardson has skilfully kept out of sight the poor little decrepit figure, and gives us only the beautiful head of a man of genius. I scarcely know a face on canvas that expresses the poetical sense in a higher degree th

authors who has spoken golden words about the poet. "Let us always take into account," he say

as been written about him is untrue. No author has been more elaborately slandered on principle, or more studiously abused through envy. Smarting dullards went about for years, with an ever-ready microscope, hunting for flaws in his character that mig

livered before the University of Oxford, and read passage number seventy. Le

cause they are the two most accomplished artists, merely as such, whom I know, in literature; and because I think you will be afterwards interested in investigating how the infinite grace in the words of the one, the severity in those of the other, and the precision in those of both, arise wholly out of the moral elements of their minds,-out of the deep tenderness in V

, while one m

d, while anot

r, of the true English mind; and I think the Dunciad is the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work 'exacted' in our country. You will find, as you study Pope, that he has expressed for you, in the strictest language and within the briefest limits

s he is so intent upon us, let me gratify still further the honest pride of "the little nightingale," as they used to call him when he was

and Italian there, by reading the authors. His family, retired from trade, and Catholic, lived at this time upon an estate in the forest of Windsor. This desire of his was considered as an odd caprice, for his health from that time hardly permitted him to move about. He persisted, and accomplished his project; he learned nearly everything thus by himself, making his own choice among authors, getting the grammar quite alone, and his pleasure was to translate into verse the finest passages he met with among th

Priam transported with grief for the loss of Hector, on the point of breaking out into reproaches and invectives against the servants who surrounded him and against his sons. It would be impossible for me to re

ibility, so swift and alert, justly supposes imagination behind it. It is said that Shelley, the first time he heard the poem of 'Christabel' recited, at a certain magnificent and terrible passage, took fright and suddenly fainte

n art was the habit of Sainte-Beuve's life, and so he too will be remembered as one who has kept the best

h is prefixed the life of the author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint on the title-page of J.J. Woodward, Philadelphia, and was published in 1839. Our President wrote his own name in it, and chronicles the fact that it was presented to him "by his friend N.W. Edwards." In January, 1861, Mr. Lincol

rnest, brave,

ent, dreading p

r new soil, the

CKE

tle way of Shakespeare may well be ap

nd humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of

second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the tran