whereas it is but a reflex illumination from lunar satellites.

An

In literature, the corresponding case is worse. author, passing (by means of translation) before a foreign people, ought de jure to find himself before a new tribunal; but de facto too often he does not. Like the opera artist, but not with the same propriety, he comes before a court that never interferes to unsettle a judgment, but only to re-affirm it. And he returns to his native country, quartering in his armorial bearings these new trophies, as though won by new trials, when, in fact, they are due to servile ratifications of old ones. When Sue or Ralzac, Dumas or George Sand, comes before an English audience, the opportunity is invariably lost for estimating the men at a new angle of sight. What is thought of Dumas in Paris? asks the London reviewer; and shapes his notice. to catch the aroma of the Parisian verdicts just then current. But exactly this is what he should prudently have shunned. He will never learn his own natural and unbiassed opinion of the book when he thus deliberately intercepts all that would have been spontaneous in his impressions, by adulterating with alien views-possibly not even sincere. And thus a new set of judges, that might usefully have modified the narrow views of the old ones, fall by mere inertia into the humble character of echoes and sounding-boards to swell the uproar of the original mob.

In this way is thrown away the opportunity, not only of applying corrections to false national tastes, but oftentimes even to the unfair accidents of luck that befall books. For it is well known to all who watch literature with vigilance, that books and authors have their fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from

those that measure their merits. Not even the caprice or the folly of the reading public is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, the whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book, and none at all for another of about equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness in men, but to the simple fact, that the one has, whilst the other has not, been brought effectually under the eyes of the public. By far the greater part of books are lost, not because they are rejected, but because they are never introduced. In any proper sense of the word, very few books are published. Technically, no doubt, they are published; which means, that for ten or twenty times they are advertised; but they are not made known to attentive ears, or to ears prepared for attention. And amongst the causes which account for this difference in the fortune of books, although there are many, we may reckon, as foremost, personal accidents of position in the authors. For instance, with us in England, it will do a bad book no ultimate service that it is written by a lord, or by a bishop, or by a privy counsellor, or by a member of Parliament; though undoubtedly it will do an instant service—it will sell an edition or so. This being the case-it being certain that no rank will reprieve a bad writer from final condemnation-the sycophantic glorifier of the public fancies his idol justified; but not so. A bad book, it is true, will not be saved by advantages of position in the author; but a book moderately good will be extravagantly aided by such advantages. "Lectures on Christianity," that happened to be respectably written and delivered, had prodigious success in my young days, because, also, they happened to be lectures of a prelate; three times the ability would not have procured them any attention, had they been the lectures of an obscure curate. Yet, on the other hand, it is

"

but justice to say, that, if written with three times less ability, lawn-sleeves would not have given them buoyancy, but, on the contrary, they would have sunk the bishop irrecoverably; whilst the curate, favoured by obscurity, would have survived for another chance. So again, and indeed more than so, as to poetry. Lord Carlisle (not of this generation, but the earl of fifty years back) wrote tolerable verses. They were better than Lord Roscommon's, which, for one hundred and fifty years, the judicious public has allowed the booksellers to incorporate, along with other rubbish of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, into the costly collections of the "British Poets." And really, if you will insist on odious comparisons, they were not much below the verses of an amiable prime minister (John Woburn) known to us all. Yet, because they wanted vital stamina, not only they fell, but in falling they caused the earl to reel much more than any commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle -viz., Lord Byron-because he brought dazzling genius and power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage in his peerage and his very ancient descent. On these double wings, he soared into a region of public interest far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic power alone. Not only all his rubbish-which in quantity is great-passed for jewels, but also what are incontestably jewels more gorgeous than the Koh-i-noor, have been, and will be, valued at a far higher rate than if they had been raised from less aristocratic mines. So fatal for mediocrity, so gracious for real power, is any adventitious distinction from birth, from station, or from accidents of brilliant notoriety. In reality, the public, our never-sufficiently-to-be-respected mother, is the most unutterable sycophant that ever the clouds dropped their rheum upon.

She is always ready for Jacobinical scoffs at a man for being a lord, if he happens to fail; she is always ready for toadying a lord, if he happens to make a hit. Ah, dear sycophantic old lady! I kiss your sycophantic hands, and wish heartily that I were a duke for your sake!

It would be a mistake to fancy that this tendency to confound real merit and its accidents of position is at all peculiar to us or to our age. Dr Sacheverell, by embarking his small capital of talent on the spring-tide of a furious political collision between the Whigs and Tories, brought back an ampler return for his little investment than ever did Wickliffe or Luther. Such was his popularity, in the heart of love and the heart of hatred, that he would have been assassinated by the Whigs, on his triumphal progresses through England, had he not been canonised by the Tories. He was a dead man, if he had not been suddenly gilt and lacquered as an idol. Neither is the case peculiar at all to England. Ronge, the ci-devant Romish priest (whose name pronounce as you would the English word wrong, supposing that it had for a second syllable the final a of "sopha❞—i. e., Wronguh), has been found a wrongheaded man by all parties-and in a venial degree is, perhaps, a stupid man; but he moves* about with more eclat by far than the ablest man in Germany. And, in days of old, the man that burned down a miracle of beauty-viz., the Temple of Ephesus-protesting, with tears in his eyes, that he had no other way of getting himself a name, has got it in spite of us all. He's booked for a ride down through all history, whether you and I like it or not Every pocket-dictionary knows that Erostratus was that scamp. So of Martin, the man that parboiled, or par

* Not at all. He did move when this was written; but that was in 1847. He is now as sedentary, or as stationary, as a milestone.

roasted, York Minster some twenty years back; that fellow will float down to posterity with the annals of the glorious cathedral: he will

"Pursue the triumph and partake the gale;"

whilst the founders and benefactors of the Minster are

practically forgotten.

These incendiaries, in short, are as well known as Ephesus or York; but not one of us can tell, without humming and hawing, who it was that rebuilt the Ephesian wonder of the world, or that repaired the timehonoured Minster. Equally in literature; not the weight of service done, or the power exerted, is sometimes considered chiefly -either of these must be very conspicuous before it will be considered at all-but the splendour, or the notoriety, or the absurdity, or even the scandalousness, of the circumstances surrounding the author.

Schlosser must have benefited in some such adventitious way before he ever could have risen to his German celebrity. What was it that raised him to his momentary distinction? Was it something very wicked that he did, or something too clever that he said? I should rather conjecture that it must have been something inconceivably absurd which he suggested. Any one of the three achievements stands good in Germany for a reputation. But, however it were that Mr Schlosser first gained his reputation, mark what now follows. On the wings of this equivocal reputation he flies abroad to Paris and London.

* Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences would be far worse for the lord than the commoner. There is, you see, a blind sort

of compensation.