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country was once in existence), from which they

can be recovered.

"The earth hath bubbles, as the water hath,

And these are of them.

Whither have they vanish'd?"

"Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted
As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd!"

Taken as a whole, the Ejuxrian world presented a complete analogon to the world of fact, so far as it was known to Hartley, complete in all its parts; furnishing a theatre and scene of action, with dramatis persona, and suitable machinery, in which, day after day, for the space of long years, he went on evolving the complicated drama of existence. There were many nations, continental and insular, each with its separate history, civil, ecclesiastical, and literary, its forms of religion and government, and specific national character. In Portfomandra,* the analogon of England, as I now discern, though the correspondence was free and poetical, not in the nature of a fac-simile, nor, as in Gulliver's

* Portfomandra, an island, of an oblong form, something like Candia, lay to the north-west over against Flametia, of which Loco was the capital. Cassu lay before. Cracaw, I believe, was central. Maza, I know not where. Vox et præterea nihil. The great dramatist Claferion was a Flametian.

Both Christianity and Mahometanism had found their way into the country. There was a story of ancient settlers to account for the latter, and of a Latin Bible found on the seashore out of which the former was promulgated. But these links were by far the weakest part of the contrivance—the

Travels, of an intentional disguise-I believe it to have been a work of the imagination rather than an ingenious fancy-in Portfomandra, more especially, the tissue was woven with wonderful minuteness, and, as I believe, with uniform consistency. The names of generals and statesmen were "familiar to my ears as household words." I witnessed the jar of faction, and had to trace the course of sedition. I lived to see changes of government, a great progress of public opinion and a new order of things!

When at length a sense of unreality was forced upon him, and he felt himself obliged to account for his knowledge of, and connection with, this distant land, he had a story (borrowed from the Arabian Nights) of a great bird, by which he was transported to and fro. But he recurred to these explanations with great reluctance, and got rid of them as quickly as possible. Once I asked him how it came that his absence on these occasions was not observed:-but he was angry and mortified, and I never repeated the experiment. In truth, I was willingly beguiled. His usual mode of introducing the subject was-"Derwent," calling

only part, indeed, which could be said to be contrived. It did not occur to him at first that the names of persons and places ought in every case to be original; and when this was pointed out to him, he altered the spelling and pronunciation so as to remove the objection. Thus Fitzharding became Fizzardin.

years

me by my name (for these disclosures in latter were made to me alone), "I have had letters and papers from Ejuxria." Then came his budget of news, with appropriate reflections, his words flowing on in an exhaustless stream, and his countenance bearing witness to the inspiration-shall I call it ?-by which he was agitated. Nothing could exceed the seriousness of his manner, and doubtless of his feelings. He was, I am persuaded, utterly unconscious of invention: and if the early age in which this power was exercised be remarkable, the late period to which it was continued was not less so. I have reason to believe that he continued the habit mentally, from time to time, after he left school, and of course had no longer a confidant; in this, as in many other ways, continuing a child.

Scarcely less curious, and perhaps even more characteristic of my brother's strangely constituted mind, was another visionary habit of his earlier boyhood, of which, however, I should find it more difficult to convey an adequate notion. Whatever he had seen in London-theatres, tower, laboratory, or chemistry-house, as he called it; whatever struck his fancy in reading,-armies, ships, battles by sea and land, news, negociations, alliances, diplomacy— he thought to reproduce in little in his own playground, though in fact he had not a particle of

VOL. I.

d

mechanic ingenuity, and took the whole process for granted. This, it will be said, is a common instinct and trick of childhood*-but in the scale of his projects, the extravagance of his inventions, and the power by which he imposed upon himself and his associates, as if the whole would really be brought to pass, of which the smallest portion was never actually commenced, I have neither seen nor heard of anything like it. These were his "future plans," as he called them—an ominous name. But enough of these oddities, wilding buds-of hope, shall we say, or fear?-unless some determined

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See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
A wedding or a festival,

A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,

And unto this he frames his song:

Then will he fit his tongue

To dialogues of business, love, and strife;

But it will not be long

Ere this be thrown aside,

And with new joy and pride

The little Actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humourous stage,'
With all the Persons down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage:
As if his whole vocation

Were endless imitation."

child-fancier think it worth while to cast his eye over the note at the bottom of the

*

page.*

Looking to the event, it might seem that this phantasmagoria, however extraordinary, indicated a latent weakness in his mind. But the defect was moral, and brought out by the force of circumstance. The ends which he proposed to himself in after-life were such as he might have reached, if not easily, yet successfully, for they were not more than commensurate with his powers: but he overlooked the process to contemplate the result, and lived in a perpetual prospective-in "future plans."

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* A spot of waste ground was appropriated to his use. This was divided into kingdoms, and subdivided into provinces, each of the former being assigned to one of his playmates. A canal was to run through the whole, upon which ships were to be built. A tower and armoury, a theatre and chemistry-house," (under which mines were expected to be formed,) were to be built, and considered common property. War was to be declared and battles fought between the sovereign powers. Besides the automatic actors alluded to in a previous note, he had a scheme for training cats and even rats for various offices and labours, civil and military. What he craved was reality-to do the thing he dreamed, or to dream of doing it, and for this purpose he must begin with something real, something of his own. Any hint the slightest symbol-was enough to connect the world of imagination with the world of fact. If I mistake not, this whimsical narrative is not without psychological interest, even in an educational point of view. But how he talked and how his hearers, one of them a play-fellow from the town, the Sancho Panza of our Don Quixote, listened and believed!

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