mploy his pen. Thus his genius was too often degraded to the
hackney-tasks of booksellers; while a small portion of those pensions
which were so lavishly bestowed upon ministerial dependants and placemen
would have enabled him to turn his mind to its congenial pursuits, and
probably to still further elevate the literary civilization of his
country. But if there be satisfaction in the thought that a neglect
similar to that which befell so bright a genius as his could no longer
occur in England, there is food likewise for reflection in the change
that has come over the position in which men of letters lived in those
days towards the public, and even towards each other. Let any one read
the account of the ten or a dozen authors whom Smollett describes
himself, in "Humphrey Clinker," as entertaining at dinner on
Sundays,--that being the only day upon which they could pass through the
streets without being seized by bailiffs for debt. Each character is
drawn with a distinctive minuteness that leaves us no room to doubt its
possessing a living original; yet how disgusting to suppose that such
a crew were really to be seen at the board of a brother writer! and in
what bad taste does their host describe and ridicule their squalor! That
such things were in those times cannot be doubted. Even in this century,
in the golden days of book-making, we are told how Constable and
how Ballantyne, the great publisher and the great printer of
Edinburgh,--"His Czarish Majesty," and "the Dey of All-jeers," as Scott
would call them,--delighted at their Sunday dinners to practise the
same exercises as those which Smollett relates,--how they would bring
together for their diversion Constable's "poor authors," and start
his literary drudges on an after-dinner foot-race for a new pair of
breeches, and the like! While it cannot justify the indifference with
which Shelburne treated his request, we cannot but perceive that
Smollett's contemptuous ridicule of his unfortunate or incapable
Grub-Street friends must rob him of much of the sympathy which would
otherwise accompany the ministerial neglect with which the claims of
literature were visited in his person.

* * * * *

BLOODROOT

"Hast thou loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?"

Beech-trees, stretching their arms, rugged, yet beautiful,
Here shade meadow and brook; here the gay bobolink,
High poised over his mate, pours out his melody.
H