His faults, as he says, were "arrogance and impertinence." When not much above twenty-two years of age he made application to his superior for promotion in the public service, and informed him in a long letter that "ever since he entered the office he had been doing the work of a statesman." The application was refused, but he was not dismissed.

Later in

life he calmly claimed that "in point of intellectual range he regarded Sir James Stephen and Mr. Gladstone as belonging to the same order of minds as his

own."

At the age of thirty-six he published the volume entitled "The Statesman," in which he hoped to supply the deficiencies of Lord Bacon's " De Augmentis ; and he appears to have thought it not robbery of Bacon to accept as a valid compliment the flattery of a bishop who told him that his work showed Bacon resurrected. A small edition was published in 1836, and only exhausted in 1873. His Autobiography recently appeared, and recalls some attention to his literary works.

When he was about to publish "Philip van Artevelde" he wrote to his father, "I do unquestionably conceive that my vocation is to write plays, and that my life will give out the larger sum-total of results in proportion as it shall be devoted to this employment.' The play as a volume to read was an undoubted success, although many times too long for the stage; but his vocation, while furnishing four or five so-called plays, has failed to furnish anything called for by the

public. His mother, after his play of "Van Artevelde" had appeared, wrote to him, "I suppose you are sick of the sound of praise by this time." To which he answered, "I am not in the least sick of the sound of praise, but, on the contrary, begin to think that I can digest any quantity of it."

Sir Henry disclosed the same feeling in 1862, when, at his request, Carlyle sent him a batch of letters he had received complimentary to himself, and wrote: "I do not encourage my friends to talk to me about my own performances, except where they have objections to make. If you hit, you do not care about the subject; if you miss, praise won't mend it." "My answer was," says Sir Henry, "I do not agree with you about praise. I like it."

In a poem he wrote in 1844 he rather neatly and complacently reviews the successive stages of his career, thus:

And in the world's applausive countenance kind

I sunned myself; not fearing so to mar

That strength of heart and liberty of mind

Which comes but by hard nurture. Me, though blind,

God's mercy spared, from social snares with ease

Saved by that gracious gift, inaptitude to please."

When Wordsworth died (1850), Sir G. C. Lewis proposed that Taylor should be appointed poet-laureate, on the ground that Tennyson was "little known."

"The absence of fastidiousness," Sir Henry writes, "made me harmless in society, but there was nothing

that I knew to make me agreeable. My mind had nothing of the 'touch-and-go' movement which can alone enable a man to take a pleasant part in conversation. As to wit, I can invent it in my study, and make it spurt from the mouth of a dramatis persona; but elsewhere I have no power of producing it with any but an infelicitous effect."

B. 1802.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

D. 1876.

As is well known, Harriet Martineau held to the doctrine of annihilation. So repugnant was this idea to W. E. Forster, M. P., that he said he "would rather be damned than annihilated;" upon which Miss Martineau observed that if he once felt five minutes' damnation, he would be thankful for extinction in preference.

When the printer of her book on Political Economy was about to draw back, afraid of the venture, she said: "But I tell you this: the people want this book, and they shall have it."

It turned out as she said.

B. 1803. DOUGLAS WILLIAM JERROLD. D. 1857.

JERROLD was much elated upon the success of the first performance of his comedy of "Time works Wonders." A friend who returned with him to the door of his hotel, expressed his gratification at the

author's well-merited triumph, when Jerrold, turning round and slapping his chest with his hand, exultingly exclaimed, "Yes, and here's the little man that's done it."

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON.

B. 1804. D. 1872.

SOME men prefer to be abused rather than not to be noticed by the public. Even Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the novelist, felt hurt that he had not been (Sept. 8, 1830) reviewed in the "Edinburgh Review," and so wrote to the editor, "I think I have no pretensions to be praised by the Edinburgh,' but I think I have some to be reviewed." He refers to the large sale of his novels, and to their translation into most European languages, and adds, "So that, if they now stand at the door of the Edinburgh Review,' it is not cap in hand as a humble mendicant, but rather like a bluff creditor who answers your accusations of his impertinence by begging you to settle his bill at the first opportunity."

6

Three days after he comes to the scratch again, and says: "Now I see the whole matter. The long and short of it is, I must be attacked. God forbid I should say a word against that!" He closes by saying: "God bless you; and mind, your contributors are at full liberty to ridicule, abuse, and (allow the author of 'Paul Clifford' to employ a slang word) victimize me,

so long as you say, with a gentle shake of the head, 'Oh! he is not such a bad fellow after all.'”

Like Bulwer, Brougham desired to have his works reviewed, and wrote to the editor of the "Edinburgh' as follows: "Pray are not my 'Principia' and ‘Instinct' to be reviewed? It should be done without any praise at all, even if it deserved it; but it should really have the benefit of being made known. The Instinct' is full of original ideas and arguments. The 'Principia' is the only deep and learned commentary on the greatest and most inaccessible work of man; and yet I undertake to say it enables any one to read and follow it."

B. 1805.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI.
(Earl of Beaconsfield.)

D. 1880.

DISRAELI, the late Premier of Great Britain, presented himself as a candidate for Parliament several times before he finally succeeded in entering. On one of these occasions, about 1835, in the course of his canvass he publicly denounced Daniel O'Connell as a "bloody traitor." To this O'Connell afterwards replied, taking advantage of Disraeli's Jewish parentage, and said, for aught he knew, Disraeli might be “the true heir-at-law of the impenitent thief who died on the cross." For this Disraeli challenged the son of the Great Agitator, Morgan O'Connell, but the challenge was not accepted. The published correspondence