your Jove has severe pains and fire-flames in | probably, the common Editor of a Daily Newspaper. 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 se goes on thrashing and thundering for a con siderable series of years; this is a fact re maining still to be accounted for, in human physiology. The vitality of man is great. sure enough the triumph of ready-writing appears to be even now; everywhere the readywriter is found bragging strangely of his readi Or shall we say, Scott, among the many things he carried towards their ultimatum and crisis, carried this of ready-writing too, that so all men might better see what was in it? It is a valuable consummation. Not without results;-results, at some of which Scott as a 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 written in that journal of his almost as much as Scott, at odd hours in a given number of days; "and as for the invention," says he, "itness. In a late translated "Don Carlos," one is known that this costs Scott nothing, but comes to him of its own accord." Convenient indeed! But for us too Scott's rapidity is great, is a proof and consequence of the solid health of the man, bodily and spiritual; great, but unmiraculous; not greater than that of many others besides Captain Hall. Admire it, yet with measure. For observe always, there are two conditions in work: let me fix the quality, and you shall fix the quantity! Any man may get through work rapidly who easily satisfies himself about it. Print the talk of any man, there will be a thick octavo volume daily; make his writing three times as good as his talk, there will be the third part of a volume daily, which still is good work. To write with never such rapidity in a passable manner is indicative, not of a man's genius, but of his habits; it will prove his soundness of nervous system, his practicability of mind, and in fine, that he has the knack of his trade. In the most flattering view, rapidity will betoken health of mind: much also, perhaps most of all, will depend on health of body. Doubt it not, a faculty of easy writing is attainable by man! The human genius, once fairly set in this direction, will carry it far. William Cobbett, one of the healthiest of men, was a greater improviser even than Walter Scott: his writing, considered as to quality and quantity, of Rural Rides, Registers, Grammars, Sermons, Peter Porcupines, Hisories of Reformation, ever-fresh denouncements 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 motive-principle; he flowed on for ever, a 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, of the most indifferent translations ever done with any sign of ability, a hitherto unknown individual is found assuring his reader, “The reader will possibly think it an excuse, when I assure him that the whole piece was com pleted within the space of ten weeks, that is to say, between the sixth of January and the eighteenth of March of this year, (inclusive of a fortnight's interruption from over exertion; that I often translated twenty pages a-day, and that the fifth act was the work of five days." O hitherto unknown individual, what is it to me what time it was the work of, whether five days or five decades of years? The only question is, How hast thou done it?-So, however, it stands: the genius of Extempore irresistibly lording it, advancing on us like ocean-tides, like Noah's deluges-of ditchwater! The prospect seems one of the lamentablest. To have all Literature swum away from us in watery Extempore, and a spiritual time of Noah supervene ? That surely is an awful reflection, worthy of dys peptic Matthew Bramble in a London fog! Be of comfort, O splenetic Matthew; it is not Literature they are swimming away; it is only Book-publishing and Book-selling. Was there not a Literature before Printing or Faust of Mentz, and yet men wrote extempore? Nay, before Writing or Cadmus of Thebes, and yet men spoke extempore? Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls; this, by the blessing of God, can in no generation be swum Scott's career, of writing impromptu novels to buy farms with, was not of a kind to termi nate voluntarily, but to accelerate itself more 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 beautiful; 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: 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 raan'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 and Anne has promised close and constant crack; suddenly, with huge clangor, shivered intelligence. I must dine with James Ballanitself into ice-dust; and sank, carrying much tyne to-day en famille. I cannot help it; but along with it. In one day Scott's high-heaped would rather be at home and alone. However, money-wages became fairy-money and non- I can go out too. I will not yield to the barren entity; in one day the rich man and lord of land saw himself penniless, landless, a bank-vade me." rupt among creditors. man, “Abbotsford, May 11, (1826.)— It 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? sense of hopelessness which struggles to in "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 Saut to 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 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 "May 15.-Received the melancholy intellistronger; and his life and heart did crack and gence that all is over at Abbotsford." 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." 66 "May 22. "May 26.-— Were an enemy coming returned on my arrival. Her broken accents Well, I am not apt to were like those of a child, the language as well shrink from that which is my duty, merely beas the tones broken, but in the most gentle cause it is painful; but I wish this funeralvoice of submission. "Poor mamma-never day over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs return again-gone for ever-a better place." | about me, as if all were unreal that men seem Then, when she came to herself, she spoke to be doing and talking.” with sense, freedom, and strength of mind, till her weakness returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger-upon my house, would I not do my best to what was it then to the father and the hus- fight, although oppressed in spirits; and shall band? For myself, I scarce know how I feel; a similar despondency prevent me from menta. sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock, some exertion? It shall not, by Heaven!" times as weak as the water that breaks on it. I am as alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet, when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family-all but poor Anne; an impoverished, an embarrassed man, deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone.Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections. "I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not my Charlotte-my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, though those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic-but that yellow mask, with pinched features, which seems to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression? I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under circumstances of extreme pain. Mine go back to a period of comparative ease. If I write long in this way, I shall write down my resolution, which I should rather write up, if I could." "Edinburgh, May 30.-Returned to town last night with Charles. This morning resume ordinary habits of rising early, working in the morning, and attending the Court.” ・ ・ “I finished correcting the proofs for the Quarterly; it is but a flimsy article, but then the circumstances were most untoward.-This has been a melancholy day-most melancholy. I am afraid poor Charles found me weeping. I do not know what other folks feel, but with me the hysterical passion that impels tears is a terrible violence-a sort of throttling sensation-then succeeded by a state of dreaming stupidity, in which I ask if my poor Charlotte can actually be dead."-Vol. vi. pp. 297, 307. This is beautiful as well as tragical. Other scenes, in that Seventh Volume, must come, which will have no beauty, but be tragical only. It is better that we are to end here. And so the curtain falls; and the strong Walter Scott is with us no more. A possession from him does remain; widely scattered; yet attainable; not inconsiderable. It can be said of him, "when he departed he took a Man's life along with him." No sounder piece of British manhood was put together in that eighteenth century of time. Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its shaggy honesty, sagacity, and goodness, when we saw it latterly on the May 18.-. Cerements of lead and of Edinburgh streets, was all worn with care, the wood already hold her; cold earth must have joy al! fled from it;-ploughed deep with laher soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not bour and sorrow. We shall never forget it; the bride of my youth, the mother of my chil- we shall never see it again. Adieu, Sir Waldren, that will be laid among the ruins of Dry-ter, pride of all Scotchmen, take our proud and burgh, which we have so often visited in gayety and pastime. No, no." 66 sad farewell. VARNHAGEN VON ENSE'S MEMOIRS.* [LONDON AND Westminster Review, 1838.] Nine volumes of Memoirs cut of THE Lady Rahel, or Rachel, surnamed Levin | many." in her maiden days, who died some five years Berlin will surely contain something for us. Samuel Johnson, or perhaps another, used ago as Madam Varnhagen von Ense, seems to be still memorable and notable, or to have be- to say, there was no man on the streets whose come more than ever so, among our German biography he would not like to be acquainted friends. The widower, long known in Berlin with. No rudest mortal walking there who and Germany for an intelligent and estimable has not seen and known experimentally someman, has here published successively, as thing, which, could he tell it, the wisest would author, or as editor and annotator, so many hear willingly from him! Nay, after all that volumes, nine in all, about her, about himself, can be said and celebrated about poetry, eloand the things that occupied and environed quence, and the higher forms of composition them. Nine volumes, properly, of German and utterance; is not the primary use of Memoirs; of letters, of miscellanies, biographi-speech itself this same, to utter memoirs, that is, cal and autobiographical; which we have read memorable experiences to our fellow-creanot without zeal and diligence, and in part tures? A fact is a fact; man is for ever the That thou, Oh my brother, with great pleasure. It seems to us that such brother of man. of our readers as take interest in things Ger- impart to me truly how it stands with thee in man, ought to be apprized of this publication; that inner man of thine, what lively images of and withal that there are in it enough of things passed thy memory has painted there; things European and universal to furnish out what hopes, what thoughts, affections, knowa few pages for readers not specially of that ledges, do now dwell there: for this and for no other object that I can see, was the gift of class. speech and of hearing bestowed on us two. I say not how thou feignest. Thy fictions, and thousand and one Arabian Nights, promulgated as fictions, what are they also at bottom but this, things that are in thee, though only images of things? But to bewilder me with falsehoods, indeed; to ray out error and darkness,-misintelligence, which means misattainment, otherwise failure and sorrow; to go about confusing worse our poor world's confusion, and, as a son of Nox and Chaos, propagate delirium on earth: not surely with this view, but with a far different one, was that miraculous tongue suspended in thy head, and set vibrating there! In a word, do not two things, veracity and memoir-writing, seem to be prescribed by Nature herself and the very constitution of man? Let us read, therefore, according to opportunity,—and, with judicious audacity, review! One may hope, Germany is no longer to any person that vacant land, of gray vapour and chimeras, which it was to most Englishmen, not many years ago. One may hope that, as readers of German have increased a hundredfold, some partial intelligence of Germany, some interest in things German, may have increased in a proportionably higher ratio. At all events, Memoirs of men, German or other, will find listeners among men. Sure enough, Berlin city, on the sandy banks of the Spree, is a living city, even as London is, on the muddy banks of Thames. Daily, with every rising of the blessed heavenly light, Berlin sends up the smoke of a hundred thousand kindled hearths, the fret and stir of five hundred thousand new-awakened human souls; -marking or defacing with such smoke-cloud, material or spiritual, the serene of our common all-embracing Heaven. One Heaven, the same for all, embraces that smoke-cloud too, Are there adopts it, absorbs it, like the rest. not dinner-parties, "æsthetic teas;" scandalmongeries, changes of ministry, police cases, literary gazettes ? The clack of tongues, the sound of hammers, mount up in that corner of the planet too, for certain centuries of time. Berlin has its royalties and diplomacies, its traffickings, travailings; literatures, sculptures, cultivated heads, male and female; and boasts itself to be "the intellectual capital of Ger 1. Rahel. Ein Buch des Andenkens für ihre Freunde. (Rabel. A Book of Memorial for her Friends.) 3 vols. Berlin, 1834. 2. Gallerie von Bildnissen aus Rahel's Umgang und Briefwechsel. (Gallery of Portraits from Rahel's Circle of Society and Correspondence.) Edited by K. A. Varnhagen von Ense. 2 vols. Leipsic, 1836. 3. Denkwürdigkeiten und vermischte Schriften. (Memoirs and Miscellaneous Writings.) By K. A. Varnhagen von Ense. 4 vols. Mannheim, 1837-38. Our nine printed volumes we called German Memoirs. They agree in this general character, but are otherwise to be distinguished into kinds, and differ very much in their worth for us. The first book on our list, entitled "Rahel," is a book of private letters; three thick volumes of Letters written by that lady: selected from her wide correspondence; with a short introduction, with here and there a short note, and that on Varnhagen's part all. Then follows, in two volumes, the work named 66 Gallery of Portraits;" consisting principally of Letters to Rahel, by various persons, mostly persons of note; to which Varnhagen, as editor, has joined some slight commentary, some short biographical sketch of each. Of thes five volumes of German Letters we will say, for the present, that they seem to be calculated for Germany, and even for some special circle there, rather than for England or us. A glance tionate nature; courteous and yet truthful; of quick apprehension, precise in utterance; of just, extensive, occasionally of deep and fine insight,-this is a man qualified beyond most to write memoirs. We should call him one of the best memoir-writers we have met with; decidedly the best we know of in these days. For clearness, grace of method, easy comprehensibility, he is worthy to be ranked among the French, who have a natural turn for memoir-writing; and in respect of honesty, valourous gentleness, and simplicity of heart, his character is German, not French. at them afterwards, we hope, will be possible. | been a student of literature, an author, a sto But 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;" lively pieces; which can be safely recommended as altogether pleasant reading to every one. They are "Miscellaneous Writings," as their title indicates; in part collected and reprinted out of periodicals, or wherever they lay scattered; in part sent forth now for the first time. There are criticisms, notices literary or didactic; always of a praiseworthy sort, generally of small extent. There are narrations; there is a long personal narrative, as it might be called, of service in the "Liberation War," of 1814, wherein Varnhagen 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, cutward and inward,-with Napoleons, Goethes, Fichtes; while prodigies and battle-thunder shook the world, and," amid the glare of conflagrations, and the noise of failing 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 probibition 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 |