As for friends, they are all in a like condition, for no one expected the siege to last so long. At my hotel need I observe that I do not pay my bill, but in hotels the guests may ring in vain now for food. I sleep on credit in a gorgeous bed, a pauper. The room is large. I wish it were smaller, for the firewood comes from trees just cut down, and it takes an hour to get the logs to light, and then they only smoulder, and emit no heat. The thermometer in my grand room, with its silken curtains, is usually at freezing point. Then my clothes. I am seedy, very seedy. When I call upon a friend the porter eyes me distrustfully. In the streets the beggars never ask me for alms; on the contrary, they eye me suspiciously when I approach them as a possible competitor. The other day I had some newspapers in my hand. An old gentleman took one from me, and paid me for it. I had read it, so I pocketed the halfpence."

We have been informed that when this touching lament was first published numbers of sympathetic letters were addressed to the office of the journal in which it appeared, the burden of all of them being, "Do not let the Besieged Resident starve." But the position of the Besieged One was in a pecuniary point of view irremediable, inasmuch as Paris (except by shells) was unapproachable, and for more than a month he had to suffer the torments of a poverty which had already, in a more or less picturesque manner, made itself felt in his garments, and threatened within no great lapse of time to inconvenience him through his food, or, rather, the absence thereof. It had already struck him that he had done wrong in eating "dog, the friend of man," nor does he seem to have devoured with conscientious relish either "the noble steed," or

"the patient ass." Some of his Parisian friends, however, took more kindly to the novel victual, and one of them showed him, with perfect equanimity, a fine cat which he was fattening for Christmas, and which (regarding Grimalkin for the occasion as a turkey) he proposed to surround with mice in lieu of sausages. This idea, by the way, of garnishing a cooked animal (as if in irony) with its favourite food is borrowed from the Russians, who serve up their ryaptchik with a sauce composed of the berries on which that partridgelike bird loves to feed. The dogs, it appears, found out at last that human beings had taken to eating them, so that "the humblest of street curs would growl when any one looked at him." Among stories illustrating the sagacity of dogs, which the Resident commends to the notice of dog-fancying editors of Christmas books, are two which, as he himself discredits them, we also decline to accept as true. One tells of a man who, having been followed a mile by a party of dogs, could not imagine to what their attentions were due, until he remembered that he had eaten a rat for breakfast. The other deals with the sensations of a man who had devoured a dog called " Fox," and who, whenever the name "Fox" was pronounced, felt an irresistible impulse to spring from his seat.

The story thus told is undoubtedly interesting, though persons of an amiable turn of mind would perhaps have preferred a greater infusion of amiable sentiment. There is a ludicrous side to all horrible things, if we choose to dwell upon it; but perhaps it is better when relieved against a background of deeper feeling.

We turn, however, from books produced by the incidents of the time, to mention some of the very interesting biographies which have recently appeared of contemporaries recently deceased. The first place is clearly due

to Mr. Forster's remarkable biography of Dickens. The popular interest in his hero is remarkably attested by the fact that the book (of which the first volume alone has been published) only appeared in November, and that by the end of the year it was in its ninth edition. That part of the interest which was due to the intrinsic merits of the book must be divided between the biographer and his subject in very unequal shares. Mr. Forster's own part, to say the truth, does not strike us as in any way above the usual standard. Perhaps Mr. Forster himself is a little too prominent, and, at any rate, he does not succeed in setting before us a very vivid portrait of Dickens. But a large part of the book consists of a fragmentary autobiography and of letters. The letters from America possess much interest in themselves, and more especially as containing much of the raw material upon which the remarkable scenes in "Martin Chuzzlewit" were afterwards founded. We think, however, that a still greater interest will be generally found in Dickens's own description of his early youth. This part of the story probably took most readers by surprise. That early observation must have supplied Dickens with much of his wonderful knowledge of struggling poverty was sufficiently obvious. It was equally plain that much of "David Copperfield" was autobiography disguised. But few readers could have guessed the degree to which an autobiographical sketch already written supplied the materials, and even the terms of expression, for a great part of his well-known novels. It is a remarkable peculiarity of the fragment now published that wherever it differs from the version of it published in "David Copperfield" it differs from it by being more wrought up. Most men having thus to deal with a chapter from their own life would have found it necessary to dress it in more vivid colours, to make the feeling more intense, to strive to excite in the reader's mind a stronger sympathy for the hero of the novel than could be created by unvarnished facts. Dickens felt no such need. Wherever the autobiography and the novel part company it is by reason of omissions or softenings down in the novel. It is worth while to compare a few passages. This is David Copperfield speaking:

"It is a matter of some surprise to me even now that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems wonderful to me that no one should have made any sign in my behalf."

This is the autobiography :

"It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me—a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally-to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar school and going to Cambridge."

Or take the sentence in which David Copperfield describes his loneliness:— "From Monday morning to Saturday night I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support of any kind, from any one that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven." And compare

with it the parallel sentences in the autobiography:-"I suppose my lodging was paid for by my father. I certainly did not pay it myself; and I certainly had no other assistance whatever (the making of my clothes, I think, excepted) from Monday morning until Saturday night. No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no support from any one that I can call to mind, so help me God!" Again, in "David Copperfield," the chapters which deal with his life at Murdstone and Grimby's are thus introduced:-"I now approach a period of my life which I can never lose the remembrance of while I remember any thing; and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times." This retains the purport of the corresponding paragraphs in the autobiography, but the details given in the latter convey a far stronger impression of the extremity of horror which the recollection always awakened in him :

"Until old Hungerford Market was pulled down, until old Hungerfordstairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude began. I never saw it. I could not endure to go near it. For many years when I came to Robert Warren's in the Strand [the rival blacking warehouse] I crossed over to the opposite side of the way to avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the blacking corks, which reminded me of what I was once. It was a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos-street. My old way home by the Borough made me cry after my eldest child could speak.”

This feeling has nothing in common with that which sometimes leads successful men to put aside from them all recollections of their less fortunate youth. On the contrary, upon every other part of his childish life Dickens seems always to have dwelt with extreme pleasure. The sense of repugnance excited by the thought of these particular incidents is strangely strong, considering that Dickens sustained no permanent injury from having undergone them. It is more like the feeling with which a man looks back to a period of poverty which cost him the life of a wife or child. There is something vindictive about his compassion for his childish self, something of that overmastering sense of injustice which many men feel when they see present wrong done to others and have no power to help them, but which few retain in regard to wrong done to themselves of which no trace has remained by them. One instance of this is his reference to his mother's wish that he should go back to the blacking warehouse after his father had quarrelled with the proprietor. "My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so the next day. My father said I should go back no more, and should go to school. I do not write resentfully or angrily, for I know how all these things have helped to make me what I am; but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back."

The impression thus produced is not altogether pleasant. Neither is it quite agreeable to discover, as appears to be the case, that Micawber was a portrait for which Dickens's father was the original. Though we feel a certain kindness for that poor old adventurer, few parents would like to be handed down to posterity in such a fashion by their affectionate offspring. Our admiration for the extraordinary ability with which he turned these early experiences to account will of course be increased, though our admiration for his personal character may not be affected in the same way. An intense sensibility, and

a marvellous power of catching at least the first aspect of things are amongst the endowments most likely to be precocious; and Dickens possessed them to the end of his life to an almost unsurpassed degree. It is enough to remark that many of the most striking scenes in "Pickwick" and "Oliver Twist," in "Dombey and Son," in "Bleak House," in "Great Expectations," and in many of his other writings, as well as in "David Copperfield," are simple reproductions of his childish experiences. Few more curious revelations of a literary kind have ever been made; and we shall content ourselves with drawing attention to them. It is scarcely to be expected that the remainder of the biography can possess equal interest; but these pages well deserve to be studied by every one who takes an interest in literature or in the psychological development of the most popular author who has ever written in the English language.

After speaking of Dickens it is not unnatural to pass to one who was a warm friend and admirer, the late Mr. Harness, whose "Literary Life" has just been published by the Rev. A. G. L'Estrange. Mr. Harness formed a connecting link between the present and the past generation of English authors. Though possessed of many of the gifts which render a man an agreeable companion and a warm friend, his claim to memory rests chiefly upon the distinguished authors with whom he formed acquaintance. The earliest of these acquaintances was with Lord Byron, who protected him at Harrow, and retained a friendship for him until the noble poet went abroad for the last time. Personally he declared he knew nothing but good of Byron, and he thought that the evil of his after-conduct was due in large measure to the unhappy circumstances in which he was placed. It is but natural that Mr. Harness should have formed an unfavourable opinion of Lady Byron," she was almost the only young, pretty, well-dressed girl we ever saw," he said, "who carried no cheerfulness along with her "—and it is well known that he treated Mrs. Stowe's scandal with contempt, declaring it to be as untrue as it was revolting. Mr. Harness, however, allows that Byron had a morbid love of a bad reputation, and many of the stories told about him are probably due to this cause.

"If I could remember," said Harness, "and were willing to repeat the various misdoings which I have from time to time heard him attribute to himself, I could fill a volume. He told me more than once that his father was insane, and killed himself. I shall never forget the manner in which he first told me this. While washing his hands, and singing a gay Neapolitan air, he stopped, looked round at me, and said, 'There always was a madness in the family.' Then, after continuing his washing and his song, as if speaking of a matter of the slightest indifference, My father cut his throat.' The contrast between the tenor of the subject and the levity of the expression was fearfully painful; it was like a stanza of 'Don Juan.' In this instance I had no doubt that the fact was as he related it; but in speaking of it only a few years since to an old lady in whom I had perfect confidence, she assured me that it was not so; that Mr. Byron, who was her cousin, had been extremely wild, but was quite sane, and had died quietly in his bed."

Mr. Harness was an ardent admirer of Shakspeare; he delighted in Jane Austin. As a child, he had known Joseph Warton, the able commentator on Pope; in his manhood he was the warm friend of Mrs. Siddons, and of Joanna Baillie; he knew Sheridan and was intimate with Rogers; he was

acquainted with Scott, Coleridge, Moore, Washington Irving, Daniel Webster, Theodore Hook, and Crabb Robinson. Though conscientious in the discharge of his clerical duties, his tastes were rather literary than theological, and he says little of his friends amongst the clergy. Here, however, is an anecdote of Dr. Phillpotts, the late Bishop of Exeter, which is characteristic in its way.

"One day his lawyers were dining with him, and he wished his wife to retire from the table early that he might discuss with them his course of action in one of those unfortunate suits in which he was so constantly involved. The lady, however, found the legal gentlemen agreeable, and notwithstanding repeated nods and winks and hints from her lord, remained immovable in her place. At length, she understood his meaning, and rose hurriedly to depart. 'What! so soon, my love?' demanded the Bishop blandly, as he opened the door for her with an obsequious bow."

We have said enough to indicate the character of the volume. It is loosely put together, and as a piece of literary workmanship must be pronounced defective; but Mr. L'Estrange writes in a kindly, genial spirit, and has probably done his best to preserve the memory of his friend. That object, however, has already been secured more effectually by the prize founded in his name at Cambridge for the study of Shaksperian literature.

From the literary life of Mr. Harness there is an easy transition to a biography recently published of some of the objects of his admiration. Mr. Fitzgerald, known as an author of a "Life of Garrick," has extended his contributions to theatrical literature, and now presents us with "An Account of the Kemble Family."

A new biography of "the Kembles" would appear to be rather a work of supererogation, seeing that the world is already provided with the very respectable Lives of John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons by James Boaden, and the Life of Mrs. Siddons by her friend the poet Campbell, to say nothing of divers minor memoirs of the same distinguished personages. Mr. Fitzgerald pleads in excuse for his undertaking the imperfections of his predecessors, and the fact that "stores of new material have come to light-theatrical memoirs, diaries, histories, recollections in profusion." Of genuine new material, however, Mr. Fitzgerald produces little, his volumes being mainly compiled from familiar publications. And he is ungenerous in dwelling on the shortcomings, literary and otherwise, of the biographers to whom he clearly stands much indebted for the substance, if not the very existence of his book. Boaden no doubt is inclined to be pompous and prosy, and Campbell, in this instance, is often affected and inflated; but Mr. Fitzgerald's own style of writing is far from admirable, and he is by no means entitled to plume himself upon his accuracy. Perhaps the best apology for the new production consists in the established conviction that the public will not read old books, or cannot conveniently get them to read. For in some sort the modern system of bookmaking is, to quote Dr. Johnson, "generated by the corruption of" our circulating libraries. In any case readers anxious for information about the Kemble family and the state of the stage in their period will find much interesting and curious matter in Mr. Fitzgerald's book. It is a compilation and not a very adroit one; rather a scrap-book, indeed, well supplied with cuttings from such authors as Scott, Lamb, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, &c. In order to help fill his pages the author has even pressed Sheridan into his service, describing