in the genuine intonations of his native province. His friends smiled at his attire. He observed it, and joined in the laugh. "It was, he said, his ordinary working-dress, except the cap which he lately adopted, to act as a shade for his eyes when he engraved at night." They told him, they had come to see the recent specimens of his art, and particularly his Pandora. He answered that they should see that and every thing else in the house. We proceeded to the staircase, when Barry, suddenly recollecting himself, turned back and doublelocked the street-door. The necessity of this precaution seemed to bring a momentary gloom into his looks, but it passed away, and he mounted cheerfully before us. He opened the door of the backroom on the first-floor, and entered first to clear away the cobwebs before us. The place was full of engravings, sketches and casts, confusedly heaped together, and clotted with damp and dust. The latter he every now and then removed by a vigorous slap with the skirt of his coat. There were some engravings there that he valued highly. I forget the subjects, but I perfectly recollect the ardour, and the occasional delicacy and tenderness of manner with which he explained their beauties. He apologized for the disorder around him, which arose, he said, from want of space, for he could trust nothing in the front-room. The observation introduced the subject of the molestation of his premises. He spoke without much emotion of his mischievous neighbours, and detailed his fruitless efforts to counteract their schemes of annoyance, pretty much as a man would recount his defensive operations against rats or any other domestic nuisance. In the course of the conversation he explained the cause of the solitude in which he lived. While going over the plates executed by himself, he pointed out one or two that he had detected his last maid-servant in the act of purloining. He hinted that she must have been corrupted by the enemies of his fame; at all events he expelled her forthwith, and never after admitted another within his doors. Some specimens of art lay in his bed-chamber--the back-room on the secondfloor. He took us up there, but I forbear a minute description. For the honour of genius, I would forget the miserable truckle upon which a man whose powers were venerated by Edmund Burke* lay down to forget his privations and his pride.

Barry took us last to his work-shop, at the back of the house on the ground-floor. Three of his most celebrated pictures were there,— "Venus rising from the sea," "Jupiter and Juno," and his "Pandora," upon which he was then engaged. He developed the design of the last with great fervour and eloquence, for, though I have forgotten his language, I perfectly remember the enthusiasm of his tones and gestures, and the impression they made upon his visitors. I also recollect, that every now and then he threw in a warm oath to animate his discourse, more particularly when he vented his contempt, as he often did, for his contemporaries of the Academy. After a visit of two hours we departed, and I scarcely expected to meet Barry again, but it fortunately happened otherwise. In a very few days after, I became acquainted with an Irish Roman Catholic Lady, the late Mrs. S.

* See his Letters to Barry.-Barry's Works.

who resided in Portland-street. She was wealthy and hospitable, and her house was, in the worst of times, a place of refuge for many of her suffering countrymen. Thither, as one of them, Barry resorted. It was his frequent habit, after taking his late and frugal meal at a chophouse in Wardour-street, to drop in at Mrs. S's. The Abbé M'Carthy, a person of great learning and of congenial politics with Barry's, lived in her house; and in their society the poor buffeted artist was glad to postpone his return to his homeless tenement till an hour when none of his tormentors in Castle-street could be in the way to impede his entrance. From this period until his death, which took place in the following year, I saw him constantly, and, notwithstanding my inequality of years, delighted in his conversation. I was full of my classics, and my school-boy veneration for the ancients; and it was a glorious thing to me to hear him talk as he did of old Greece and Rome. His enthusiasm for the arts and literature of Greece was unbounded. It ran through his whole conversation. He had contemplated the great models of antiquity with such fervency of admiration, that from an admirer, he had become an imitator, and a rival. In simplicity and elevation of sentiment, in public spirit, in longings for renown, in contempt for all that was frivolous or base, he was (as was said of Milton) "an ancient born two thousand years after his time." I never heard him more eloquent or self-oblivious than one night that he came in rather late to his friends in Portland-street, to beg a lodging till the morning. The mischievous little imps of his neighbourhood, had forced a piece of iron into the key-hole of his hall door, so as to baffle all his efforts to gain an entrance; but after stating the circumstance, merely as an apology for his petition, he dismissed it from his thoughts, and plunged at once into the topics from which no petty casualties could long detain him, and where he never failed to find his strength and consolation.

A great interest was imparted to Barry's conversation, by his anecdotes of the eminent men with whom he had lived. He most frequently mentioned Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Burke, and Doctor Johnson. He has been charged with having been ungrateful to Burke. He was not so to his memory. His eye often filled when he named him. "But Mr. Burke, my first friend, is now gone! the peace of God be for ever with him!" This was Barry's language to the public, and in private he always preserved the same tone of pious tenderness and respect. He spoke with great reverence of Doctor Johnson, with whom I could collect that he had been a favourite. There were some points of similarity in their characters which may have endeared him to the Doctor. Barry was, incontestably, "a good hater," and, when roused, was not inferior to the Doctor in the faculty of growling down an opponent.

Barry spoke much and warmly of politics, and took no pains to conceal that he was a sturdy republican. When he alluded to the Irish events of 1798, it was as "the late civil war, which they call a Rebellion." The only instance in which I recollect the native impetuosity of his temper to have broken out, was connected with the politics of Ireland. It was at a little evening party, given expressly in his honour. Several young ladies were invited to see an Irish Lion, and the noble animal roared for them, "an 'twere any nightingale." They

were charmed with his pleasantry and his brogue. While they were ranged around him, the conversation was suddenly broken up by the entrance of a noisy bustling old gentleman, steaming with perfumes and quite gorgeously attired, the late Mr. N of Soho Square. This pink of aristocracy pirouetted through the little circle, offered his scented snuff to the ladies, and opened a running fire of frivolous compliments in a loud squeaking voice, from the annoyance of which his own ears were fortunately saved by excessive deafness. Barry eyed the antiquated beau with contempt, and was silent. But in a little time Ireland and her turbulent peasantry were mentioned. Mr. N announced himself to have been once an Irishman, tripped through the common-place doctrines of provincial policy, and summed up by exclaiming, that they should be "all hanged, every man of them hanged." This was too much for the Irish Lion, and the ladies had now a roar in earnest. Barry started from his chair, strided across to the corner where Mr. N was standing, and, arranging both hands into the form of a speaking-trumpet, bellowed in his ear, "And what, sir, should be done to those who force the Irish peasantry into these excesses." Poor Mr. N was utterly confounded by a home-question, which even to this day is perplexing the greatest statesmen, and Barry in surly triumph returned to his chair.

The late published notice of Barry, to which I have already adverted, represents him as having died in extreme poverty. There is a mistake in this. I always understood from his friends, that the profits of his works had not been exhausted at the time of his death. Besides this, his merits as an artist, and the deplorable condition of his domestic arrangements, had excited the sympathy of persons who had something more than pity to bestow. Lord Buchan took the lead in proposing a subscription. One of the Royal family, I think the Duke of Cambridge, became interested in his behalf, and visited the painter in his dilapidated mansion, an act of condescension, which Barry prized more highly than his Royal Highness's previous liberality. Many other lovers of art, among whom the painter's old friend, the late Mr. Cooper Penrose, of Cork, was conspicuous, co-operated in the generous design; and the result was a contribution of about one thousand pounds, which was sunk in an annuity for Barry's life. This recognition of his claims cheered his latter days. He determined upon quitting Castlestreet, and removing to a house sufficiently spacious for the execution of a series of epic paintings that he had long been meditating. His confidence in womankind was so far restored, that he consented to give the sex another trial, by admitting one of them under the same roof with his plates; but in the midst of these designs he was called away. He died at the house of Signor Bonomi, an Italian artist, in Titchfieldstreet. I called there almost daily during his illness, and could collect from his friend's minute details of his demeanour, that Barry's last moments were too philosophic. The circumstances of his lying in state in the midst of his own paintings at the Adelphi, and of his interment in St. Paul's, are already known to the public.

LONDON LYRICS.

The Upas in Marybone-lune.

A TREE grew in Java, whose pestilent rind
A venom distill'd of the deadliest kind;

The Dutch sent their felons its juices to draw,
And who return'd safe, pleaded pardon by law.
Face-muffled, the culprits crept into the vale,
Advancing from windward to 'scape the death-gale:
How few the reward of their victory earn'd!
For ninety-nine perish'd for one who return'd.
Britannia this Upas-tree bought of Mynheer,
Removed it through Holland, and planted it here:
'Tis now a stock plant, of the genus Wolf's bane,
And one of them blossoms in Marybone-lane.
The house that surrounds it stands first in a row,
Two doors, at right angles, swing open below;
The children of misery daily steal in,

And the poison they draw we denominate Gin.
There enter the prude, and the reprobate boy,
The mother of grief, and the daughter of joy,
The serving-maid slim, and the serving-man stout,
They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel out.
Surcharged with the venom, some walk forth erect,
Apparently baffling its deadly effect;

But, sooner or later, the reckoning arrives,
And ninety-nine perish for one who survives.

They cautious advance, with slouch'd bonnet and hat,
They enter at this door, they go out at that;
Some bear off their burthen with riotous glee,
But most sink, in sleep, at the foot of the tree.
Tax, Chancellor Van, the Batavian to thwart,
This compound of crime, at a sov'reign a quart;
Let gin fetch, per bottle, the price of Champagne,
And hew down the Upas in Marybone-lane.

An Actor's Meditations.

How well I remember, when old Drury-lane
First open'd, a child in the Thespian train,
I acted a sprite, in a sky-colour'd cloak,

And danced round the cauldron which now I invoke.
Speak, witches! an actor's nativity cast!
How long shall this stage-popularity last?

Ye laugh, jibing beldames." Ay, laugh well we may :
Popularity? Moonshine! attend to our lay.

'Tis a breath of light air from Frivolity's mouth;

It blows round the compass, East, West, North, and South; It shifts to all points; in a moment 'twill steal

From Kemble to Stephens, from Kean to O'Neill.

The actor who tugs half his life at the oar
May founder at sea or be shipwrecked on shore;
Grasp firmly the rudder; who trusts to the gale
As well in a sieve for Aleppo may sail."

Thanks, provident hags! while my circuit I run,
'Tis fit I make hay in so fleeting a sun;

Yon harlequin public may else shift the scene,
And Kean may be Kemble as Kemble was Kean.
Then let me the haven of competence reach,
And brief, but two lines, be my leave-taking speech,
Hope, Fortune, farewell; I am shelter'd from sea;
Henceforward cheat others, ye once cheated me.

The Minstrel.

There sits a man near Sadler's Wells,
Whose limb-excited peal of bells
Disuse will never moulder:
Each elbow, by a skilful twist,
Rings one, one rings from either wrist,
And one from either shoulder.

Each foot, bell-mounted, aids the din;
Each knee, with nodding bell, chimes in
Its phil-harmonic clapper.

One bell sends forth a louder note
From that round ball which tops the throat,
By bruisers called the napper.
Thus, sightless, by the river side
He tunes his lays, like him who cried
"Descend from heaven, Urania,"

But not as poor: his wiser stave
Is, like the laureat's, mere God save
The King-not Rule Britannia.
Tho' but a single tune he knows,
His gains are far exceeding those
Of pass-supported Homer:

He keeps the wolf outside the door,
And, doing that, to call him poor
Were, certes, a misnomer.

The school-boy lags astride the rail,
The milkman drops his clinking pail,
The serving-maid her pitcher,

The painter quits th' unwhiten'd fence
To greet with tributary pence
This general bewitcher.

See! where he nods his pealing brow,
Now strikes a fifth, a second now,

In regular confusion;

But, ere he finishes the strain,

Da capo goes

his pate

again,

The key-note of conclusion.

Satire, suspend your baseless wit,
The tuneful tribe may sometimes hit

On patrons bent on giving.
Here's one, at least, obscurely bred,
Who by the labour of his head

Picks up a decent living!