lion, but the unfortunate artist produced a dog. On this awkward affair one of my acquaintance wrote a copy of what we called verse; I liked it, but fancied I could compose something more to the purpose: I tried, and by the unanimous suffrage of my shop-mates was allowed to have succeeded. Notwithstanding this encouragement, I thought no more of verse, till another occurrence, as trifling as the former, furnished me with a fresh subject; and so I went on, till I had got together about a dozen of them. Certainly nothing on earth was ever so deplorable: such as they were, however, they were talked of in my little circle, and I was sometimes invited to repeat them, even out of it. I never committed a line to paper for two reasons; first, because I had no paper; and secondly—perhaps I might be excused from going further; but in truth I was afraid, for my master had already threatened me, for inadvertently hitching the name of one of his customers into a rhyme.

(To be concluded in our next.)

BIOGRAPHY—FOR THE MIRROR.

SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON.

(Continued from page 297.)

The regulations of society, and the accidents of life too often thwart the intentions of nature. Multitudes of human beings are in every age poured forth from her inexhaustible stores, with inherent powers to rise to distinction in the highest provinces of art and science, who yet are condemned by the obstructions which worldly circumstance throws in their way, to languish in obscurity—to live dejected and to die unknown. Some whose natural endowments would, under less unpropitious circumstances, qualify them to reach the summit of fame, are fettered by want of patronage and pecuniary distress, while others are cramped in their efforts by a complexional sensibility which they cannot overcome, and checked in enterprise by diffidence and timidity, the natural offspring of a refined and delicate structure.

If genius were always associated with physical force and constitutional vigour, we should have had the dignities of the world more appropriately filled than they are, and many who lord it would be found with their necks bent in humiliation.

Where mental and constitutional force are combined, and extraordinary talents are sustained by resolution, confidence, vigorous animal spirits, and the perseverance and indefatigable industry, supplied by corporal strength, the obstructions must be numerous and great that can prevent the possessor from rising. In Hodgkinson those requisites were united in an eminent degree. No adversity could crush his energies, no prosperity impair his industry. It was but a few months before his death that old Mr. Whitlock under whose management Hodgkinson had early in life played in the north of England, said to this writer, "John had as much work in him as any two players I ever knew—he's the same in that respect now, and will be the same to the end of the chapter."

Something of this the reader may have already perceived in the specimens afforded by H's boyish adventures. His forcing his way to the notice of one of the most respectable managers in England, and obtaining a footing upon the stage, when not fifteen years of age, would appear incredible if it were not so much a matter of notoriety as to be subject to demonstrative proof. Intimately as the writer thought himself acquainted with the minutest circumstances of H's first adventures at Bristol, he finds that there was one which either he had forgotten, or H. had neglected to mention to him. Though it be of no very great moment, yet as it serves to thicken the circumstances which elucidate the boy's character, it is introduced in this place. Since the publication of the last number of The Mirror, the editor received the following letter directed to "the biographer of Mr. Hodgkinson."