1831.] [ 621 ] 



MY NEW LODGINGS. 



Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb 

 The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar! 



BKATTIK. 



IT is superfluous to expatiate on the advantages of a quiet, unmolested 

 study to a reading or writing man. Splendid works of genius have 

 been conceived and born in the silence of the dungeon ; monuments of 

 learning have been reared in the still seclusion of tfre cloister ; Cervantes, 

 Raleigh, with a host of monks and fathers, are famed for the literary 

 wonders which they wrought in gloom and solitude ; but what age, or 

 what country, can produce an instance of talent developing itself in a 

 mill, or intellect attaining its full stature in a seminary for young ladies ? 

 While Tasso lay in the bedlam of Ferrara, he never added a stanza or 

 threw a single new beauty over his " Gerusalemme." Demosthenes 

 studied his godlike art in a cell under ground ; he never forged so 

 much as a single thunderbolt in his father's smithy ; and the Oracle 

 would never have pronounced Socrates " wisest of men," had he not had 

 " the olive-grove of Academe" for a retreat from the din of Xantippe's 

 tongue. There are undoubtedly sounds, and even noises, which seem 

 to harmonize with the pursuits of learning. Is the collegian disturbed 

 by his college-bell ? Quite the reverse. So long have the reading and 

 ringing, the thinking and tolling, gone on together, that, were the 

 steeple suddenly struck dumb, the most melancholy confusion might be 

 the consequence : a right line might be mistaken for a curve a logical 

 proposition for its direct converse or (which were infinitely worse) his 

 moral speculations might be so disordered that wrong might appear 

 right, and a bottle in his chambers be preferred to a lecture in the hall. 

 Then there are babbling brooks, dashing surges, whispering winds, and 

 whistling blackbirds a respectable family of noises. But what shall 

 we say of squalling children, braying donkeys, scolding wives, creaking 

 doors, snoring nurses, and rattling windows? In no department of 

 learning are these of the slightest service. Students protest against them 

 with one accord ; and doctors who never agreed on any other point- 

 agree in denouncing the squeaking of a pig under a gate 



" Poor swine ! as if its pretty heart would break !" 



as glorious John Dryden expresses it. In short, it has become a prin- 

 ciple in the republic of letters, that nothing great was ever said or sung 

 with a continual dinning in the immediate precincts of the author's 

 sanctum-sanctorum. It has been my misfortune to have had this truth 

 illustrated so remarkably in my own individual case, that, painful as 

 the recollections are, I am tempted to lay the circumstances before the 

 public in the present article. If they answer no other purpose, they 

 will serve as valuable hints to literary men in the selection of their 

 places of abode. 



About six weeks or two months back, I took up my residence, as 

 lodger, in the house of a respectable tailor. The street is immaterial ; 

 but it was in that debateable region, east of Portland-place, and north of 

 Oxford-street. This tailor, not having the fear of Malthus before his 



