shall see.

Then dazzled eyes, with pride which great ambition blindes,

Shall be unveil'd by worthy wights, whose foresight falshood finds.

The daughter of debate, that eke discord doth sowe,

Shall reape no gaine, where former rule hath taught still peace to growe.

No forreine banish'd wight shall ancre in this port;

Our realme it brooks no stranger's force, let them elsewhere resort.

Our rusty sword with rust shall first his edge employ,

To polle their toppes that seeke such change, and gape for joy.

J.G.B.

NOTES OF A READER.

QUARTERLY REVIEW. No. 87.

There have been some who equalled him in acquirements—many who have possessed sounder judgment and sounder principles; but never was there in any legislative assembly, a person whose talents were more peculiarly and perfectly adapted to the effect which he intended to produce. With all the advantages of voice and person—with all the graces of delivery—with all the charms which affability and good-nature impart to genius, he had wit at will, as well as eloquence at command. Being frank and sincere in all his political opinions, he had all that strength in his oratory which arises from sincerity, although in his political conduct the love of intrigue was one of his besetting sins. By an unhappy perversion of mind it seemed as if he would always rather have obtained his end by a crooked path than by a straight one; but his speeches had nothing of this tortuosity; there was nothing covert in them, nothing insidious—no double-dealing, no disguise. His argument went always directly to the point, and with so well-judged an aim that he was never (like Burke) above his mark—rarely, if ever, below it, or beside it. When, in the exultant consciousness of personal superiority, as well as the strength of his cause, he trampled upon his opponents, there was nothing coarse, nothing virulent, nothing contumelious, nothing ungenerous in his triumph. Whether he addressed the Liverpool electors, or the House of Commons, it was with the same ease, the same adaptation to his auditory, the same unrivalled dexterity, the same command of his subject and his hearers, and the same success. His only faults as a speaker were committed when, under the inebriating influence of popular applause, he was led away by the heat and passion of the moment. A warm friend, a placable adversary, a scholar, a man of letters, kind in his nature, affable in his manners, easy of access, playful in conversation, delightful in society—rarely have the brilliant promises of boyhood been so richly fulfilled as in Mr. Canning.

Are the most daring of all legislators, just (it has been well said) as "cockney equestrians are the most fearless of all riders." But the confidence with which they propose their theories is less surprising than the facility with which their propositions have been entertained, and their extravagant pretensions admitted. We need not marvel at the success of quackery in medicine and theology, when we look at the career of the St. John Longs in political life. From the time in which the bullion question came out of Pandora's Scotch mull, parliament has been wearied with the interminable discussions which they have raised there. Youths who were fresh from college, and men with or without education, who were "in the wane of their wits and infancy of their discretion," imbibe the radiant darkness of Jeremy Bentham, and forthwith set themselves up as the lights of their generation. No professors, even in the subtlest ages of scholastic philosophy, were ever more successful in muddying what they found clear, and perplexing what is in itself intelligible. What are wages?—this, we are told, is the most difficult and the most important of all the branches of political economy, and this, we are also told, has been obscured by ambiguities and fallacies. What is rent? What is value? Upon these questions, and such as these, which no man of sincere understanding ever proposed to himself or others, they discuss and dilate with as much ardour and to as little effect, as the old philosophers disputed upon the elements of the material creation; bringing to the discussion intellects of the same kind, though as far below them in degree as in the dignity of the subjects upon which their useless subtlety is expended. But it cannot be said of them, that they, when all is said,

for they mystify those readers who are not disgusted by such ineptitudes, perplex weak minds, and pervert vain ones. Of such discussions it may be said with the son of Sirach, that "when a man hath done, then he beginneth; and when he leaveth off, then he shall be doubtful."

Seneca reckons among the idle questions, which were unworthy of wise men, the dispute whether Homer wrote both the Iliad and Odyssey, and in what countries Ulysses wandered. Notwithstanding the "Stoic's philosophic pride," these inquiries have still an interest to minds of the highest order—such is the homage which genius extorts from the remotest countries and from the latest ages. We noticed, in an article in our last Number, the curious fact of native youths in India performing parts of Shakspeare, and thus on the shores of the Ganges countless minds are deriving delight, perhaps improvement, from the careless and unlaboured verses of the light-hearted Warwickshire deer-stealer. So, in this country, and over all the continent of Europe, which, when the songs of Homer first gladdened the halls of the chieftains on the shores of the Aegean, were vast unknown deserts, unpeopled, or wandered over by a few rude hunters; which, to the Greeks, were regions of more than Cimmerian darkness, beyond the boundaries of the living world—men of the loftiest and most powerful understanding are examining, and discussing, and disputing the most minute points which may illustrate the poetry of the blind bard; scholars are elucidating, antiquaries illustrating, philosophers reasoning upon, men of genius transfusing into their native tongues, poets honouring with despairing emulation, the whole mind of educated man feeling the transcendent power of the poet of the Iliad and Odyssey. Surely, the boasted triumph of poetry over space and time is no daring hyperbole—surely, it is little more than the boasted reality of truth.

It is indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that of any first-rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short warning, to "rhapsodize" night after night, parts which, when laid together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole Gierusalemme Liberata of Tasso; not only to recite it consecutively, but to repeat any given stanza of any given book; to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first, alternately the odd and even lines—in short, whatever the passage required, the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state, that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the