did not correct it in the text, should at least have rectified in a footnote. Nor can I conceive it possible that so accurate (not to say profound) a German scholar as Carlyle could have written of "Frederick Wilhelm's Ultimatum " (vol. ii. p. 50). I should also like to ask, what is the meaning of "a pocketful of odd” (vol. ii. p. 187); and what Foote had to do with "Jeremy Diddler" (vol. i. p. 224), or "Jeremy Diddler" with the famous, or rather infamous, Earl of Sandwich, the friend and afterwards the betrayer of John Wilkes? I always thought that "Jemmy Twitcher" was the cognomen applied to him by certain contemporary playgoers at a performance of Gay's Beggars' Opera. ("That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me, I own surprised me.")

THE

HE volumes are not furnished with an index, though, from the great variety of names, places, books, &c., mentioned, they stand sorely in need of one; and considering how emphatically Carlyle always inculcated and insisted on the necessity of an index, and what excellent indexes he invariably provided for his own books, this seems an unpardonable omission.

Na recent number of the Fall Mall Gazette the question is

that the science of bibliography attracts numerous devotees in France, and only finds a stray worshipper in this country?" The explanation of this fact is easy, and is less discomforting to our national pride than might be expected. French bibliographical works are undertaken because Englishmen, Germans, Russians, and, in fact, all European peoples read French. When a work like the Manuel du Libraire of Brunet or the Supercheries Littéraires dévoilées of Quérard appears in Paris, England subscribes largely. In the case of an English work of the same class, there are not half a dozen copies sold in France. The trade in London in French books is so large that there are half a dozen wholesale houses occupied with it. In Paris the sale of English books is limited to the Tauchnitz Series, and a few pirated reprints. So occupied with their own literature are Frenchmen, that it is impossible to awaken interest in any foreign writers, except the greatest men, concerning whom it is shameful to be ignorant. French writers on bibliography do not underrate the works of their English rivals. One of the most eminent of their number declares, à propes of the works of Dibdin, "qu'on ne peut faire de pareilles entreprises qu'en Angleterre."

IF

Fa statue worthy of Carlyle can be found, I do not see why we need let the recorded utterances of the Sage of Chelsea prevent us from erecting it on the proposed site on the Chelsea Embankment. There is no absolute need that it should be " an amorphous brazen sooterkin bred of prurient heat and darkness," to use his own words concerning a statue. If we have to concede that our utmost efforts in this line of art result inevitably in "sad sculptural solecisms," it is time we improved, and in this attempt we shall not succeed if we determine to erect no more statues. The argument

that statues in England have been reserved for monarchs and state flunkeys is valueless, inasmuch as, if the statement is true, it is time we brought about a different condition of affairs. We have no monument, it may be said, to Shakespeare. This is true. In the case of a man so great as this, modesty is pardonable. So much the world's possession has he become, that we scarcely like to assert too strongly our right to him, and we feel as if the monument to him, supposing such should ever be erected, should be raised at the world's charge, and should be open to the world's competition. That he needs not for his

honoured bones

The labour of an age in pilèd stones,

we are ready to admit with Milton. Gratitude may surely at times go in advance of a man's requirements. Were it otherwise, all tributes to the dead would be wasted. Meanwhile, as regards Carlyle, the fact that he scowled at bad statues, among other things good, bad, and indifferent at which he scowled, supplies no reason why we should not offer him a good one if we can find it.

INCE writing about book-worms I have come across Mr. Blades's useful little volume "The Enemies of Books," with which I was previously unfamiliar. In this he supplies some curious information concerning these terrible foes of the scholar and the collector. He assumes that the caterpillars and grubs which eat books are of various kinds, and states that some are "a kind of death. watch with a hard outer skin, and are dark brown ;" while another sort have "white bodies with brown spots on their heads." A third sort, I can assure him, have white bodies and hard black heads. A worm of this kind, judging from a story about Dr. Bandinel, which he tells, seems to have been seen by Mr. Blades. I will not give a list of the formidable names-Anobium, Ecophora, &c.-which he supplies. The rather comfortable assumption that a worm will not eat modern paper I must controvert. Some kinds of paper, at least, they will

eat, witness my Hunterian Club publications, concerning which I made previous outcry. It is possible that the "China clay, the bleaches, the plaster of Paris, the sulphate of barytes," and other adulterants in occasional use, may drive them from some paper, though not from that in which no such element is present. At any rate, Mr. Blades echoes my wish-or rather, as he was first afield, I have echoed his wish-that "some patient entomologist should, while there is a chance"-sanguine Mr. Blades!-take upon himself to study the habits of the creature, as Sir John Lubbock has those of the ant. In this case, however, the old advice, first catch your grub, has special significance. A weasel asleep, or a dead donkey, or any other creature ordinarily supposed to be difficult to find, is a commonplace object beside a living book-worm.

THE

HE sale by auction of an original portrait of Milton deserves to be chronicled in these pages. Added interest was communicated to the work in question from the fact that it had at one time belonged to Charles Lamb. In 1815 Lamb writes to Wordsworth, saying, "Let me in this place, for I have writ you several letters naming it, mention that my brother, who is a picture-collector, has picked up an undoubtable picture of Milton. He gave a few shillings for it, and could get no history with it but that some old lady had had it for a great many years. Its age is ascertainable from the state of the canvas, and you need only see it to be sure that it is the original of the heads in the Tonson editions with which we are all so well familiar." In a following letter he returns to the picture stating that it is "very finely painted; that it might have been done by a hand next to Vandyke's. It is the genuine Milton, and an object of quiet gaze for the half-hour at a time. Yet, though I am confident there is no better one of him, the face does not quite answer to Milton. There is a tinge of petit (or petite, how do you spell it?) querulousness about it; yet, hang it! now I remember there is not; it is calm, melancholy, and poetical." From Lamb, the picture came into the collection out of which it has now been sold. For the few shillings spent by John Lamb there has now been expended three hundred and fifty-five pounds. The present possessor is Mr. Quaritch.

A picture like this ought at once to have been secured for the National Portrait Gallery. There is but too much reason to fear that things have been left too long, and that a portrait the genuineness of which can scarcely be doubted by any one who sees it, and which is, moreover, the best we possess, will, like many other national treasures, find its way to America.

L

OOKING through Milton to see if it were possible to find any allusion to this picture, I came across curious proof how slovenly are index-makers. In the index to Milton's Works, edition the ninth, London, 1790, the word "painted" is said to occur once, viz. Paradise Lost, viii. 434. It is not to be found there or anywhere in the eighth book. This error-it should be vii. 434-is copied into Cleveland's Concordance to Milton, 1867. As an instance of carelessness in index-making, I may mention the six-volume edition of Lamb by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, 1876. This is supposed to be alphabetical, yet these five words are given in the following order-Married, Milton, Munden, Montagu, Margate. The name of Hylas is ingeniously brought under the letter M.-M. Hylas ; and Munden appears in the list in three different places.

I

SHALL neither accept nor contradict the statements concerning that admirable piece of extravagance the "Heptalogia, or The Seven against Sense," which have found their way into print. That critics reading the marvellous imitation of Mr. Swinburne's method should burst out into the ejaculation, "Aut Swinburne aut Diabolus," does not surprise me. What does surprise me is that so long time should have passed before the ejaculation was heard. It is worth while, however, to point out, leaving out all question of authorship, that the "Sonnet for a Picture" is of course a parody of the style of Mr. Dante Rossetti; that the Laureate's poem, "The Higher Pantheism," supplied the origin of "The Higher Pantheism in a Nutshell"; that James Lee's Wife, one of Mr. Browning's Dramatis Personæ, suggests "John Jones"; and that "The Person of the House" follows Mr. Coventry Patmore's "Angel in the House." "Nephelidia," otherwise "Cloudinesses," seems designed to parody some of the choruses in "Erechtheus." Against whom "The Poet and the Woodlouse" is directed I am unable, having no special sources of information, to say with certainty.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

HERE was silence between the two girls for a moment or two

THE

after Melissa had made her revelation. The dusk of evening was gathering; the air was soft; Geraldine's windows were open; the footfall of passengers echoed along the street; and the sound of the barrel-organ, which had touched Melissa's sensibility not long before, was still heard in the room, "faint from farther distance borne." Geraldine could hear distinctly the beating of Melissa's heart, as she sat close to the troubled girl. She could also hear the faint ticking of the pretty little clock that stood on the chimney-piece; and an odd whimsical fancy came into her head that the little pit-pat of the pendulum ought to represent the beating of the absent lover's heart, keeping time and tune to the throbs of Melissa's enamoured bosom. Geraldine assumed that it was an ordinary love affair, but that perhaps the youth required some little direct encouragement from the maiden. She was conscious even then, and she remembered it well afterwards, of a certain sense of relief in the knowledge that it was not Clement Hope on whom Melissa's uncontrollable affections were fixed. "She would never do for him," Geraldine thought; "she hasn't soul enough; she's too petulant; she couldn't make him happy."

Geraldine was sorry for Melissa and angry with her too. But she was not at first much alarmed by Melissa's disclosure. It did not occur to her to think who the person could be to whom Melissa had VOL. CCL. NO, 1805.

LL