utterly forgotten, and never cared to glance over. Immature he no doubt was right in pronouncing it, but it abounds in thoughtful and eloquent passages. There is in it the promise of Thorndale." "

It is not until eight years after "The Wool-Gatherer" that we find, in 1836, a little volume put forth containing two poems. They illustrate what had been the workings of the young man's heart in the intervening time. One of them, entitled "Solitude," is evidently a direct transcript from experience. Two passages will show its quality :

Oh, there is rapture in this thoughtful calm !

I see the utmost summit of the cliff,

Lone in the azure — an eternal rest!

I see the bounding waters at my feet
To and fro rushing — an eternal change!
And here am I, a spirit between both,
Poised with the mountain, with the wave afloat,
Embracing all things, finding in them all,
Their rest or motion -an eternal peace!

... Fast fills

my heart With spirit of benevolence

- that sheds

A second dawn of beauty on the world,
Brightens the sky with benison to man,
Tempers the wind with charitable thought,
Yea, in the cloudy chariot of the storm

Sees a sweet shape, close folded in soft plumes,

That prompts its thundering speed. Creeps the moist mould

No living thing so dull, but its dull joy

Shall be a joy of mine; walks not in heav'n,

With step reflected in its golden floor,
Bright form angelic, but the spirit of love
Can hither bring me of its happiness.

Fair, lone acacia, midway down the cliff,
That on thy platform, like a beauty veiled,
Stands with droopt head before the azure dome,
Thus ever stand, – thus motionless, - and I

Will share the while thy voiceless piety.
Ye pair of sea-birds, who with clanging wings
So neighbourly, have made the general air

Ye little social pair! but let me here

Still see, unseen, and love though not beloved.

Ah happy man! the fisherman at eve

Who raising high in air with outstretched arms
His laughing burden, shall with kisses snatched
From your soft lips his boisterous toil repay !

One beating heart ta' en from the hive of life,
What doth it here? What fellowship can find
With nature all-sufficient to herself?

With lightest pressure of my listless palm,
With simplest utterance in my vacant ear,
Might stir again to unaccustomed smile
My solitary features, sunk I feel

To torpid, slow, and desolate regard!

What was my crime? What horrid guilt was mine,
That I was banished here? Unhappy fool!

Beauty, melancholy, self-imprisonment, the same note runs through the whole. The other poem, "Guidone," is a drama; and in the dramatic form, the variety of characters, and the action of the story, we see, in contrast with "Solitude," the effort to break away from lonely musing, to mingle with and portray the world's life of action and passion. But the world here mirrored is a very troublous one. Upon the gentle and sensitive spirit which looks out on the fray, it is the terror, the confusion, the tragedy, which makes the deepest impression. Two distinct stories

are brought together in "Guidone," with little dramatic unity. In the one, a youth is roused from dreamy seclusion by a mutual love, which yields him an ecstasy intense but brief, and followed by complication and wreck. With this is coupled an outlaw, in whom wrong-doing has changed the calm ponderings of serene philosophy into visions of terror and emotions of despair, and who at last by an act of forgiveness regains the sense of peace and hope. Of this drama the author says that it was "written without the most remote reference to the theatre, and that it aims at exhibiting states of mind rather than individual character, and pretends to no interest of plot or story." It contains many passages which by their beauty tempt to quotation, but the strain of sadness and introspection is closely interwoven with the whole. There are phrases and thoughts that sink into the memory. The drama once begun can scarcely be laid down unfinished by any thoughtful reader. The ear and the imagination are charmed, and thought is deeply stirred. The defects of imperfect structure and of excessive melancholy are obvious. Evidently it is the outcome of a nature too deeply self-involved. The mind casts on every object the hues of its own introspection. Lover, outlaw, hermit, each is enmeshed in speculation and self-consciousness. The real earth of action and passion and struggle is seen invested in exaggerated terrors, because the spectator is too much aloof from it to share the throb and glow which to the actors make good the pains.

This of the book, — and what of the writer? His history at this period can in no way so well be inferred as from a chapter of professed fiction, written some four years after the publication of "Guidone." A reference by his wife to two incidents as autobiographical, and a multiplicity of internal evidence, show that the paper called "Wild Oats a New Species," in "Blackwood's Magazine" for June, 1840, published anonymously, was essen

tially a chapter from William Smith's own experience. Its title alludes to the intellectual vagaries in which a man may waste his youth. Its spirit is somewhat indicated in one of its sentences, referring to "the youth given over to the fascination of verse and the delusion of fame," and the self-portrayal which he may make at a later day. "Sometimes a bitter self-derision, that seeks to resent itself on early follies, sometimes a lurking tenderness for past hopes and aspirations, will quicken the pencil; and a subject contradictory in itself is not unfairly treated in this contradictious humour." Yet the satire which runs through most of the narrative can scarcely be called bitter: it is with a subtle blending of kindness and derision that the man rehearses the experience of his younger days. The words in which he introduces the teller of the story, whom he names Howard, are referred to by his wife as exactly fitting his own character.

We knew Howard, the subject of the following sketch; we knew him intimately. He was indeed of a peculiarly open and candid disposition, and at once revealed to you whatever was passing in the innermost recesses of his mind. Yet he was not social in the same degree that he was frank and confiding. When in your company he would let you see, without the least distrust or reserve, the very working of his mind, in all its strength and weakness, and in all that inconsistency of purpose and conclusion which invariably attends upon men of over-quick feelings, and which, for their own credit's sake, they may learn to conceal, but seldom in reality to overmaster or prevent, he would do this naturally, without egotism, and seemingly without designing it; but though he was thus genial and open in your company, he was not apt to seek your society. He would forget you if you suffered him.

This man, who has become a successful lawyer, meets a friend of earlier years, and in an after-dinner confab tells a story of which we give the most character

his story, passages:

istic

The wildest rake never spent his energies more wastefully than I have mine; but if the rake, when reformed, will sometimes congratulate himself on that knowledge of the world which his wildness, procured for him, I think that I, with somewhat better reason, may console myself for wasted years and miserable hours, by recalling that knowledge of the intellectual life which my own intellectual wanderings have purchased.

I think when you first knew me, I was the poet - of imagination all compact. It was not quite clear to me whether I should rise to great celebrity in my lifetime; but that I should secure a name with posterity, even now I blush at the recollection, I had no doubt whatever.

The young poet, amidst all his high and generous emotions, and he is always generous to a folly, is in many respects obnoxious to ridicule; and, what is worse, his quick sensibility makes him feel that he is so. An extreme sensitiveness, incompatible with a free and open intercourse with society, and which shrinks from that rude but wholesome rivalry which in the arena of life everywhere encounters us; this, and an intense anxiety after a species of renown the most precarious and most disputable, present to us a character which, whatever points of interest it may reveal, is surely the most uneasy and discomfortable that ever mortal was called upon to sustain. It is his aim and his nature to cultivate a delicacy of feeling and a curious refinement of expression, which, though pleasing infinitely to himself, and in certain moods, and in less measure, to others also, yet oftentimes will sound very simple, strange, or extravagant when uttered aloud, man to man, in the broad light, and amidst the stir of this busy and hard-working world. He finds, as one of the tribe has told us, -he finds his muse to be "in crowds his shame, in solitude his boast." From crowds he therefore recoils, to solitude he flies. Amidst the ordinary transactions of life, in all that men call business, he feels himself an utter stranger, nerveless, helpless, with a painful repugnance to take his share in anything that bears the appearance of struggle or collision, which is quite inexplicable to persons of robust and vigorous understandings. Lulled by the music of his verse, he loses, he foregoes all active, energetic purpose. He can only think, and feel, and write.