although he partially believes her in the right, has still a shadow of doubt upon the subject, and has thought it better to make public his own version of the matter, with a view of letting every body decide for himself.

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We must regard Sheppard Lee," upon the whole, as a very clever, and not altogether unoriginal, jeu d'esprit. Its incidents are well conceived, and related with force, brevity, and a species of directness which is invaluable in certain cases of narration while in others it should be avoided. The language is exceedingly unaffected and (what we regard as high praise) exceedingly well adapted to the varying subjects. Some fault may be found with the conception of the metempsychosis which is the basis of the narrative. There are two general methods of telling stories such as this. One of these methods is that adopted by the author of Sheppard Lee. He conceives his hero endowed with some idiosyncracy beyond the common lot of human nature, and thus introduces him to a series of adventure which, under ordinary circumstances, could occur only to a plurality of persons. The chief source of interest in each narrative is, or should be, the contrasting of these varied events, in their influence upon a character unchanging — except as changed by the events themselves. This fruitful field of interest, however, is neglected in the novel before us, where the hero, very awkwardly, partially loses, and partially does not lose, his identity, at each transmigration. The sole object here in the various metempsychoses seem to be, merely the depicting of seven different conditions of existence, and the enforcement of the very doubtful moral that every person should remain contented with his own. But it is clear that both these points could have been more forcibly shown, without any reference

to a confused and jarring system of transmigration, by the mere narrations of seven different individuals. All deviations, especially wide ones, from nature, should be justified to the author by some specific object— the object, in the present case, might have been found, as above-mentioned, in the opportunity afforded of depicting widely-different conditions of existence actuating one individual.

A second peculiarity of the species of novel to which Sheppard Lee belongs, and a peculiarity which is not rejected by the author, is the treating the whole narrative in a jocular manner throughout (inasmuch as to say "I know I am writing nonsense, but then you must excuse me for the very reason that I know it ") or the solution of the various absurdities by means of a dream, or something similar. The latter method is adopted in the present instance

and the idea is managed with unusual ingenuity. Still having read through the whole book, and having been worried to death with incongruities (allowing such to exist) until the concluding page, it is certainly little indemnification for our sufferings to learn that, in truth, the whole matter was a dream, and that we were very wrong in being worried about it all. The damage is done, and the apology does not remedy the grievance. For this and other reasons, we are led to prefer, in this kind of writing, the second general method to which we have alluded. It consists in a variety of points principally in avoiding, as may easily be done, that directness of expression which we have noticed in Sheppard Lee, and thus leaving much to the imagination in writing as if the author were firmly impressed with the truth, yet astonished at the immensity, of the wonders he relates, and for which, professedly, he neither claims nor antici

pates credence in minuteness of detail, especially upon points which have no immediate bearing upon the general story - this minuteness not being at variance with indirectness of expression-in short, by making use of the infinity of arts which give verisimilitude to a narration and by leaving the result as a wonder not to be accounted for. It will be found that bizarreries thus conducted, are usually far more effective than those otherwise managed. The attention of the author, who does not depend upon explaining away his incredibilities, is directed to giving them the character and the luminousness of truth, and thus are brought about, unwittingly, some of the most vivid creations of human intellect. The reader, too, readily perceives and falls in with the writer's humor, and suffers himself to be borne on thereby. On the other hand what difficulty, or inconvenience, or danger can there be in leaving us uninformed of the important facts that a certain hero did not actually discover the elixir vitae, could not really make himself invisible, and was not either a ghost in good earnest, or a bonâ fide Wandering Jew?

LITERARY REMAINS OF THE LATE WILLIAM Hazlitt, WITH A NOTICE OF HIS LIFE BY HIS SON, AND THOUGHTS ON HIS GENIUS AND WRITINGS, BY E. L. BULWER, M.P. AND MR. SERGEANT TALFOURD, M.P. NEW YORK: SAUNDERS AND OTLEY.

[Southern Literary Messenger, September, 1836.]

THERE is a piquancy in the personal character and literary reputation of Hazlitt, which will cause this book to be sought with avidity by all who read. And the volume will fully repay a perusal. It embraces a Biographical Sketch of Mr. H. by his son; "Some Thoughts on his Genius," by Bulwer; « Thoughts on his Intellectual Character, by Sergeant Talfourd; a few words of high compliment contained in a Letter to Southey from Charles Lamb; A Sonnet, by Sheridan Knowles, on Bewick's portrait of the deceased; six other sonnets to his memory, by "A Lady; and twenty-two Essays by Hazlitt himself, and constituting his Literary Remains." The volume is embellished with a fine head of the Essayist, engraved by Marr, from a drawing by Bewick. William Hazlitt, upon his decease in 1830, was 52 years old. He was the youngest son of the Reverend William Hazlitt, a dissenting minister of the Unitarian persuasion. At the age of nine he was sent to a dayschool in Wern, and some of his letters soon after this period evince a singular thirst for knowledge in one so young. At thirteen his first literary effort was made, in the shape of an epistle to the Shrewsbury Chronicle." This epistle is signed in Greek capitals Eliason,

and is a decently written defence of Priestley, or rather an expression of indignation at some outrages offered to the Doctor at Birmingham. It speaks of little, however, but the school-boy. At fifteen, he was entered as a student at the Unitarian College, Hackney, with a view to his education as a dissenting minister, and here his mind first received a bias towards philosophical speculation. Several short essays were written at this time but are lost. Some letters to his father, however, which are printed in the present volume, give no evidence of more than a very ordinary ability. At seventeen, he left College (having abandoned all idea of the Ministry (and devoted himself to the study of painting as a profession-prosecuting his metaphysical reading at spare moments. At eighteen, he commenced the first rough sketch of a treatise "On the Principles of Human Action." At twenty, accident brought him acquainted with Coleridge, whose writings and conversation had, as might be expected, great influence upon his subsequent modes of thought. At twenty-four, during the short peace of Amiens, he visited Paris with the view of studying the works of art in the Louvre. Some letters to his father written at this period, are given in the volume before us. They relate principally to the progress of his own studies in art, and are not in any manner remarkable. After spending a year in Paris he returned to London, abandoned, in despair, the pencil for the pen, and took up his abode temporarily, with his brother John, in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. His treatise "On the Principles of Human Action," a work upon which he seems to have greatly prided himself, (perhaps from early associations) was now completed, after eight years of excessive labor. He was not, however, suc