sermons; Mr. Dudley Warner, who compares the mild and genial humor of Washington Irving to the acrid vigor of Swift; and Mr. Howells, who, perhaps in pity for our sense of loss, would fain persuade us that we could no longer endure either the "mannerisms" of Dickens or the "confidential attitude" of Thackeray, were we happy enough to see these great men still in our midst.
Imagine, ye who can, the fiery Hazlitt's wrath, if he but knew that in punishment for his youthful admiration of the Nouvelle Héloïse a close resemblance has been traced by friendly hands between himself and its author. Think of Lord Byron's feelings, if he could hear Mr. Swinburne saying that it was greatly to his—Byron's—credit that he knew himself for a third-rate poet! Even though it be the only thing to his credit that Swinburne has so far discovered, one doubts whether it would greatly mollify his lordship, or reconcile him to being classed as a "Bernesque poet," and the companion of those two widely different creatures, Southey and Offenbach. Perhaps, indeed, his lively sense of humor would derive a more positive gratification from
