Parliament he was not to be compared with Plunkett, Brougham, Sir William Grant, or Perceval. He possessed not the strong, eloquent and condensed power of diction, joined to the closest and severest reasoning, of Plunkett; he had neither the stores of political, literary, and economical information, the versatility, the power of vigorous invective, nor of sarcasm, of Brougham; the calm, philosophic spirit of generalisation of Grant; nor had he the dauntless daring and parliamentary pluck of Perceval. It must be admitted that he was neither an orator, nor a man of genius, nor a man of learning, apart from the specialité of his profession. He had neither passion, nor imagination of the fancy or of the heart. In what, then, lay his barristerial superiority? In his capability to play the artful dodge. His greatest skill consisted in presenting his case in the most harmonious and fair purposed aspect. If there was anything false or fraudulent, a hitch, or a blot of any kind in his cause, he kept it dexterously out of view, or hurried it trippingly over; but if the blot was on the other side, he had the eye of the lynx and the scent of the hound to detect and run down his game. He had the greatest skill in reading an affidavit, and could play the "artful dodge" in a style looking so like gentlemanly candour, that you could not find fault; and in reading an affidavit on the opposite side, he was cunning of fence.

I do not give this example as imitable, only as illustrative of Tact. Tact so employed may denote a very good lawyer, but a very indifferent man.

Those who had the pleasure of hearing Thom, the weaver poet, converse, know the Spartan felicity of expression which he commanded. His conversation was often a study in rhetoric. He told a story in the best vein of Scotch shrewdness. He was one day recounting an anecdote of Inverury, or old Aberdeen, to a coterie of listeners. The point of the story rested on a particular word spoken in fitting place. When he came to it he hesitated as though at a loss for the term. "What is

it you say under these circumstances," he asked--" not thisnor that," he remarked, as he went over three or four terms by way of trial as each was endeavouring to assist him-"Ah," he added, apparently benevolent towards the difficulty into which he had thrown them, we say - " for want of a better word. This, of course, was the word wanted-the happiest phrase the language afforded. He gained several

66

things by this finesse--he enlivened a regular narrative by an exciting digression, which increased the force and point of the climax. He created a difficulty for his auditors, for who, when suddenly asked, would be able to find a term which seemed denied to his happy resource? or finding it, would have the courage to present it to such a fastidious epithetist? and he exalted himself by suggesting what appeared out of their power, and excited an indefinite wonder at his own skill in bringing a story to so felicitous an end, by the employment of a make-shift phrase. What would he have done if he could have found the right one? was naturally thought. This was tact. It was a case analogous to that given by Dickens in one of his early papers, where the President, at an apparent loss for a word, asks, “What is that you give a man who is deprived of a salary which he has received all his life for doing nothing, or perhaps worse, for obstructing public improvement?"" Compensation !" suggests the Vice. The case was the same, except that Thom was his own Vice-President.

Those who

An instructive lesson in Tact is given in the Preface of Thomas Cooper to his "Purgatory of Suicides." know the variety of historic incidents which crowded for record in his career, wonder at the discretion with which he confines himself to the few which stand at the portal of his majestic poem, to inform you of its origin and design.

ORIGINALITY is reality.

CHAPTER VII.

ORIGINALITY.

In reference to thought it is the conception of the truth of nature, in opposition to the truth of custom.

The material of which Originality is made has been discussed in previous chapters.* Its manifestation in literature has been well illustrated by the author of "Time's Magic Lanthorn,"† in a dialogue between Bacon and Shakspeare— an extract from which is to this effect :

"Bacon. He that can make the multitude laugh and weep as you do, Mr. Shakspeare, need not fear scholars. A head naturally fertile and forgetive is worth many libraries, inasmuch as a tree is more valuable than a basket of fruit, or a good hawk better than a bag full of game, or the little purse which a fairy gave to Fortunatus, more inexhaustible than all the coffers in the treasury. More scholarship might have sharpened your judgment, but the particulars whereof a character is composed are better assembled by force of imagination than of judgment, which, although it perceive coherencies, cannot summon up materials, nor melt them into a compound with that felicity which belongs to imagination alone.

Logic of Facts, chaps. iv., v.

A series of papers that appeared in "Blackwood" some years ago.

"Shakspeare. My lord, thus far I know, that the first glimpse and conception of a character in my mind is always engendered by chance and accident. We shall suppose, for instance, that .I am sitting in a tap-room, or standing in a tennis-court. The behaviour of some one fixes my attention. I note his dress, the sound of his voice, the turn of his countenance, the drinks he calls for, his questions and retorts, the fashion of his person, and, in brief, the whole out-goings and in-comings of the man. These grounds of speculation being cherished and revolved in my fancy, it becomes straightway possessed with a swarm of conclusions and beliefs concerning the individual. In walking home, I picture out to myself what would be fitting for him to say or do upon any given occasion, and these fantasies being recalled at some after period, when I am writing a play, shape themselves into divers mannikins, who are not long of being nursed into life. Thus comes forth Shallow, and Slender, and Mercutio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

"Bacon. In truth, Mr. Shakspeare, you have observed the world so well, and so widely, that I can scarce believe you ever shut your eyes. I too, although much engrossed with other studies, am, in part, an observer of mankind. Their dispositions, and the causes of their good or bad fortune, cannot well be overlooked even by the most devoted questioner of physical nature. But note the difference of habitude. No sooner have I observed and got hold of particulars, than they are taken up by my judgment to be commented upon, and resolved into general laws. Your imagination keeps them to make pictures of. My judgment, if she find them to be comprehended under something already known by her, lets them drop and forgets them; for which reason a certain book of essays, which I am writing, will be small in bulk, but, I trust, not light in substance. Thus do men severally follow their inborn dispositions.

Shakspeare. Every word of your lordship's will be an adage to after times. For my part, I know my own place,

and aspire not after the abstruser studies: although I can give wisdom a welcome when she comes in my way. But the inborn dispositions, as your lordship has said, must not be warped from their natural bent, otherwise nothing but sterility will remain behind. A leg cannot be changed into an arm. Among stage-players, our first object is to exercise a new candidate until we discover where his vein lies."

In this mixture of observation and experiment, original information has its source. But the conventionalisms of society repress its manifestation. Jeffrey, in one of those passages marked by more than his ordinary good sense, has depicted its influence on young men :—

"In a refined and literary community," says he, "so many critics are to be satisfied, so many rivals to be encountered, and so much derision to be hazarded, that a young man is apt to be deterred from so perilous an enterprise, and led to seek distinction in some safer line of exertion. His originality is repressed, till he sinks into a paltry copyist, or aims at distinction by extravagance and affectation. In such a state of society he feels that mediocrity has no chance of distinction ; and what beginner can expect to rise at once into excellence? He imagines that mere good sense will attract no attention; and that the manner is of much more importance than the matter, in a candidate for public admiration. In his attention to the manner, the matter is apt to be neglected; and in his solicitude to please those who require elegance of diction, brilliancy of wit, or harmony of periods, he is in some danger of forgetting that strength of reason and accuracy of observation by which he first proposed to recommend himself. His attention, when extended to so many collateral objects, is no longer vigorous or collected; the stream, divided into so many channels, ceases to flow either deep or strong: he becomes an unsuccessful pretender to fine writing, and is satisfied with the frivolous praise of elegance or vivacity."

The Rev. Sidney Smith left on record his oninion of the