your Jove has severe pains and fire-flames in | probably, the common Editor of a Daily News

paper. Consider his leading-articles; what they treat of, how passably they are done. Straw that has been thrashed a hundred times without wheat; ephemeral sound of a sound; such portent of the hour as all men have seen a hundred times turn out inane; how a man, with merely human faculty, buckles himself nightly with new vigour and interest to this thrashed straw, nightly thrashes it anew, nightly gets up new thunder about it; and so goes on thrashing and thundering for a considerable series of years; this is a fact remaining still to be accounted for, in human physiology. The vitality of man is great.

the head, out of which an armed Pallas is struggling! As for manufacture, that is a different matter, and may become easy or not easy, according as it is taken up. Yet of manufacture, too, the general truth is that, given the manufacturer, it will be worthy in direct proportion to the pains bestowed upon it; and worthless always, or nearly so, with no pains. Cease, therefore, O ready-writer, to brag openly of thy rapidity and facility; to thee (if thou be in the manufacturing line) it is a benefit, an increase of wages; but to me it is sheer loss, worsening of my pennyworth: why wilt thou brag of it to me? Write easily, by steam if thou canst contrive it, and canst sell it; but Or shall we say, Scott, among the many hide it like virtue! "Easy writing," said Sheri- things he carried towards their ultimatum and dan, "is sometimes d- -d hard reading." crisis, carried this of ready-writing too, that so Sometimes; and always it is sure to be rather all men might better see what was in it? It useless reading, which indeed (to a creature is a valuable consummation. Not without of few years and much work) may be reckon- results;-results, at some of which Scott as a ed the hardest of all. Tory politician would have greatly shuddered. Scott's productive facility amazed every- For if once Printing have grown to be as Talk, body; and set Captain Hall, for one, upon a then DEMOCRACY (if we look into the roots of very strange method of accounting for it with- things) is not a bugbear and probability, but out miracle;-for which see his "journal," a certainty, and event as good as come! above quoted from. The Captain, on count-"Inevitable seems it me." But leaving this, ing line for line, found that he himself had sure enough the triumph of ready-writing apwritten in that journal of his almost as much pears to be even now; everywhere the readyas Scott, at odd hours in a given number of writer is found bragging strangely of his readidays; "and as for the invention," says he, "itness. In a late translated "Don Carlos," one is known that this costs Scott nothing, but of the most indifferent translations ever done comes to him of its own accord." Conveni- with any sign of ability, a hitherto unknown ent indeed!-But for us too Scott's rapidity is individual is found assuring his reader, "The great, is a proof and consequence of the solid reader will possibly think it an excuse, when health of the man, bodily and spiritual; great, I assure him that the whole piece was combut unmiraculous; not greater than that of pleted within the space of ten weeks, that is to many others besides Captain Hall. Admire say, between the sixth of January and the it, yet with measure. For observe always, eighteenth of March of this year, (inclusive of there are two conditions in work: let me fix a fortnight's interruption from over exertion ;) the quality, and you shall fix the quantity! that I often translated twenty pages a-day, and Any man may get through work rapidly who that the fifth act was the work of five days." easily satisfies himself about it. Print the talk O hitherto unknown individual, what is it to of any man, there will be a thick octavo me what time it was the work of, whether five volume daily; make his writing three times days or five decades of years? The only as good as his talk, there will be the third part question is, How hast thou done it?-So, of a volume daily, which still is good work. however, it stands: the genius of Extempore To write with never such rapidity in a pass- irresistibly lording it, advancing on us like able manner is indicative, not of a man's ge- ocean-tides, like Noah's deluges-of ditchnius, but of his habits; it will prove his sound-water! The prospect seems one of the laness of nervous system, his practicability of mentablest. To have all Literature swum mind, and in fine, that he has the knack of away from us in watery Extempore, and a his trade. In the most flattering view, ra- spiritual time of Noah supervene? That pidity will betoken health of mind: much also, surely is an awful reflection, worthy of dysperhaps most of all, will depend on health of peptic Matthew Bramble in a London fog! body. Doubt it not, a faculty of easy writing Be of comfort, O splenetic Matthew; it is not is attainable by man! The human genius, Literature they are swimming away; it is once fairly set in this direction, will carry it only Book-publishing and Book-selling. Was far. William Cobbett, one of the healthiest there not a Literature before Printing or Faust of men, was a greater improviser even than of Mentz, and yet men wrote extempore? Nay, Walter Scott: his writing, considered as to before Writing or Cadmus of Thebes, and yet quality and quantity, of Rural Rides, Registers, men spoke extempore? Literature is the Grammars, Sermons, Peter Porcupines, His- Thought of thinking Souls; this, by the blesstories of Reformation, ever-fresh denounce- ing of God, can in no generation be swam ments of Potatoes and Papermoney,-seems away, but remains with us to the end. to us still more wonderful. Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not on what

Scott's career, of writing impromptu novels motive-principle; he flowed on for ever, a to buy farms with, was not of a kind to termi

mighty tide of ditch-water; and even died flowing, with the pen in his hand. But indeed the most unaccountable ready-writer of all is,

nate voluntarily, but to accelerate itself more

"Don Carlos," a Dramatic Poem, from the German

of Schiller, Mannheim and London, 1837.

horse that once laughed at the shaking of the spear, how is he doomed to toil himself dead, dragging ignoble wheels! Scott's descent was like that of a spent projectile; rapid, straight down ;-perhaps mercifully so. It is a tragedy, as all life is; one proof more that Fortune stands on a restless globe; that Ambition, literary, warlike, politic, pecuniary, never yet profited any man.

Our last extract shall be from Volume Sixth; a very tragical one. Tragical, yet still beauti ful; waste Ruin's havoc borrowing a kind of sacredness from a yet sterner visitation, that of Death! Scott has withdrawn into a solitary lodging-house in Edinburgh, to do daily the day's work there; and had to leave his wife at Abbotsford in the last stage of disease. He went away silently; looked silently at the sleeping face he scarcely hoped ever to see again. We quote from a Diary he had begun to keep in those months, on hint from Byron's Ravenna Journal: copious sections of it render this sixth volume more interesting than any of the former ones:It

and more; and one sees not to what wise goal | commend, will utter no word of blame; this it could, in any case, have led him. Book-one word only, Wo is me! The noble warseller Constable's bankruptcy was not the ruin of Scott; his ruin was that ambition, and even false ambition, had laid hold of him; that his way of life was not wise. Whither could it lead? Where could it stop? New farms there remained ever to be bought, while new novels could pay for them. More and more success but gave more and more appetite, more and more audacity. The impromptu writing must have waxed even thinner; declined faster and faster into the questionable category, into the condemnable, into the general condemned. Already there existed, in secret, everywhere a considerable opposition party; witnesses of the Waverley miracles, but unable to believe in them, forced silently to protest against them. Such opposition party was in the sure case to grow; and even, with the impromptu process ever going on, ever waxing thinner, to draw the world over to it. Silent protest must at length come to words; harsh truths, backed by harsher facts of a world-popularity overwrought and worn out, behoved to have been spoken;-such as can be spoken now without reluctance when they can pain the brave man's heart no more. Who knows? Perhaps it was better ordered to be all otherwise. Otherwise, at any rate, it was. One day the Constable mountain, which seemed to stand strong like the other rock mountains, gave suddenly, as the ice-bergs do, a loud-sounding crack; suddenly, with huge clangor, shivered itself into ice-dust; and sank, carrying much along with it. In one day Scott's high-heaped money-wages became fairy-money and nonentity; in one day the rich man and lord of land saw himself penniless, landless, a bankrupt among creditors.

"Abbotsford, May 11, (1826.)—

withers my heart to think of it, and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence and counsel from that ear, to which all might be safely confided. But in her present lethargic state, what would my attendance have availed?

and Anne has promised close and constant intelligence. I must dine with James Ballantyne to-day en famille. I cannot help it; but would rather be at home and alone. However, I can go out too. I will not yield to the barren sense of hopelessness which struggles to invade me."

"Edinburgh,-Mrs. Brown's lodgings, North St. David Street-May 12.-I passed a pleasant day with kind J. B., which was a great relief from the black dog, which would have worried me at home. He was quite alone.

Market about with one.' Were I at ease in mind, I think the body is very well cared for. Only one other lodger in the house, a Mr. Shandy-a clergyman; and, despite his name, said to be a quiet one.'

It was a hard trial. He met it proudly, bravely,—like a brave proud man of the world. Perhaps there had been a prouder way still; to have owned honestly that he was unsuccessful then, all bankrupt, broken, in the world's "Well, here I am in Arden. And I may say good's and repute; and to have turned else- with Touchstone, When I was in a better whither for some refuge. Refuge did lie else- place;' I must, when there is occasion, draw where; but it was not Scott's course, or fash- to my own Baillie Nicol Jarvie's consolation ion of mind, to seek it there. To say, Hither--One cannot carry the comforts of the Sautto I have been all in the wrong, and this my fame and pride, now broken, was an empty delusion and spell of accursed witchcraft! It was difficult for flesh and blood! He said, I will retrieve myself, and make my point good yet, or die for it. Silently, like a proud strong man, he girt himself to the Hercules' task, of removing rubbish-mountains, since that was it; of paying large ransoms by what he could still write and sell. In his declining years too; misfortune is doubly and trebly unfortunate that befalls us then. Scott fell to his Hercules' task like a very man, and went on with it unweariedly; with a noble cheerfulness, while his lifestrings were cracking, he grappled with it, and wrestled with it, years long, in deathgrips, strength to strength;-and it proved the stronger; and his life and heart did crack and break: the cordage of a most strong heart! Abbotsford, May 16.-She died at nine in Over these last writings of Scott, his Napoleons, the morning, after being very ill for two days Demonologies, Scotch Histories, and the rest, criti--easy at last. I arrived here late last night. cism, finding still much to wonder at, much to Anne is worn out, and has had hysterics, which

"May 14.—A fair good-morrow to you, Mr. Sun, who are shining so brightly on these dull walls. Methinks you look as if you were looking as bright on the banks of the Tweed; but look where you will, Sir Sun, you look upon sorrow and suffering.-Hogg was here yesterday in danger, from having obtained an accommodation of £100 from James Ballantyne, which he is now obliged to repay. I am unable to help the poor fellow, being obliged to borrow myself."

May 15.-Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at Abbotsford."

VARNHAGEN VON ENSE'S MEMOIRS."

[LONDON AND WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1838.]

at them afterwards, we hope, will be possible. | been a student of literature, an author, a stuBut the third work, that of Varnhagen himself, dent of medicine, a soldier, a secretary, a is the one we must chiefly depend on here; the diplomatist. A man withal of modest, affecfour volumes of " Memoirs and Miscellanies;" tionate nature; courteous and yet truthful; lively pieces; which can be safely recom- of quick apprehension, precise in utterance; mended as altogether pleasant reading to of just, extensive, occasionally of deep and every one. They are "Miscellaneous Writ- fine insight,-this is a man qualified beyond ings," as their title indicates; in part col- most to write memoirs. We should call him lected and reprinted out of periodicals, or one of the best memoir-writers we have met wherever they lay scattered; in part sent forth with; decidedly the best we know of in these now for the first time. There are criticisms, days. For clearness, grace of method, easy notices literary or didactic; always of a praise- comprehensibility, he is worthy to be ranked worthy sort, generally of small extent. There among the French, who have a natural turn are narrations; there is a long personal nar- for memoir-writing; and in respect of honesty, rative, as it might be called, of service in the valourous gentleness, and simplicity of heart, "Liberation War," of 1814, wherein Varnha- his character is German, not French. gen did duty, as a volunteer officer, in Tettenborn's corps, among the Cossacks: this is the longest piece, by no means the best. There is farther a curious narrative of Lafayette's escape (brief escape with recapture) from the Prison of Olmütz. Then also there is a curious biography of Doctor Bollmann, the brave young Hanoverian, who aided Lafayette in that adventure. Then other biographies not so curious; on the whole, there are many biographies: Biography, we might say, is the staple article; an article in which Varnhagen has long been known to excel. Lastly, as basis for the whole, there are presented, fitfully, now here, now there, and with long intervals, considerable sections of Autobiography;-not confessions, indeed, or questionable work of the Rousseau sort, but discreet reminiscences, personal and other, of a man who having looked on much, may be sure of willing audience in reporting it well. These are the four volumes written by Varnhagen von Ense; those are the five edited by him. We shall regard his autobiographic memorials as a general substratum, upholding and uniting into a certain coherence the multifarious contents of these publications: it is Varnhagen von Ense's passage through life; this is what it yielded him; these are the things and persons he took note of, and had to do with, in travelling thus far.

Beyond ascertaining for ourselves what manner of eyesight and way of judgment this our memoir-writer has, it is not necessary to insist much on Varnhagen's qualities or literary character here. He seems to us a man peculiarly fitted, both by natural endowment and by position and opportunity, for writing memoirs. In the space of half a century that he has lived in this world, his course has been what we might call erratic in a high degree from the student's garret in Halle or Tübingen to the Tuileries hall of audience and the Wagram battle-field, from Chamisso the poet to Napoleon the Emperor, his path has intersected all manner of paths of men. He has a fine intellectual gift; and what is the foundation of that and of all, an honest, sympathizing, manfully patient, manfully courageous heart. His way of life, too erratic we should fear for happiness or ease, and singularly checkered by vicissitude, has had this considerable advantage, if no other, that it has trained him, and could not but train him, to a certain Catholicism of mind. He has

Such a man, conducting us in the spirit of cheerful friendliness, along his course of life, and delineating what he has found most memorable in it, produces one of the pleasantest books. Brave old Germany, in this and the other living phasis, now here, now there, from Rhineland to the East-sea, from Hamburg and Berlin to Deutsch-Wagram and the Marchfield, paints itself in the colours of reality; with notable persons, with notable events For consider withal in what a time this man's life has lain: in the thick of European things, while the Nineteenth Century was opening itself. Amid convulsions and revolutions, outward and inward,-with Napoleons, Goethes, Fichtes; while prodigies and battle-thunder shook the world, and, "amid the glare of conflagrations, and the noise of falling towns and kingdoms," a new era of thought was also evolving itself: one of the wonderfullest times! On the whole, if men like Varnhagen were to be met with, why have we not innumerable Memoirs? Alas, it is because the men like Varnhagen are not to be met with; men with the clear eye and the open heart. Without such qualities, memoir-writers are but a nuisance; which so often as they show themselves, a judicious world is obliged to sweep into the cesspool, with loudest possible prohi bition of the like. If a man is not open-minded, if he is ignorant, perverse, egoistic, splenetic; on the whole, if he is false and stupid, how shall he write memoirs ?—

From Varnhagen's young years, especially from his college years, we could extract many a lively little sketch, of figures partially known to the reader; of Chamisso, La Motte Fouqué, Raumer, and other the like; of Platonic Schleiermacher, sharp, crabbed, shrunken, with his wire-drawn logic, his sarcasms, his sly malicious ways; of Homeric Wolf, with his biting wit, with his grim earnestness and inextinguishable Homeric laugh, the irascible great-hearted man. Or of La Fontaine, the sentimental novelist, over whose rose-coloured moral-sublime what fair eye has not wept? Varnhagen found him "in a pleasant house near the Saale-gate" of Halle, with an ugly good-tempered wife, with a pretty niece, which latter he would not allow to read a word of his romance stuff, but "kept it locked from her like poison;" a man jovial as Boniface, swol len out on booksellers' profit, church, preferments, and fat things, "to the size of a hogs