60 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLtCATlONS. 



dent order. The gay, the coarse-minded, the inconsiderate, the 

 fortunate, and the callous, will vainly endeavour to appreciate the 

 feeling, intense and ardent almost to frenzy, which corrodes and 

 wastes the heart of the enthusiastic visionary. 



Some men there are who consider there is no actual deprivation 

 in life save that of health and wealth — that all else is imaginary— 

 the vapour and conceit of dreaming folly. To such beings the life 

 of Sir Egerton Brydges will be deemed a medley of vanity and 

 affectation, because they only look at the surface of things, and have 

 no idea of scrutinizing those minute shades and almost impercep- 

 tible gradations of contemplative abstraction which develope 

 thought, feeling, and character. 



Of the state of his mental perception at different periods of 

 his existence, we quote Sir Egerton Brydges's own narration : — 



** My sensitiveness from childhood was the source of the most morbid sufferings, as 

 well as of the most intense pleasures. It unfitted me for concourse with [the 

 companionship of] other boys, and took away all self-possession in society. It also 

 produced ebbs and flows in my spirits, and made me capricious and humoursome ; 

 and the opinions formed of me were most opposite — some thinking well of ray facul- 

 ties, others deeming me little above an idiot. I was so timid on entering into school, 

 and my spirits were so broken by separation from home, and the rudeness of 

 my companions, that in my first schoolboy years I never enjoyed a moment of ease 

 or cheerfulness. At Canterbury, however, I was next to C. Abbott, (afterwards 

 Lord Tenterden) the head of my form." 



******* 



" The years from 1785 to 1791 were not amongst the most dangerous, but 

 amongst the most wearisome and low-spirited of my life, and those on which I look 

 back with the most regret ; — in which my pride was most mortified, and my self- 

 complacence most disturbed. The years from twenty-two to twenty-nine ought to 

 have been the most vigorous period of life : with me it was a fall of faculties which 

 I cannot contemplate without deep debasement. I remember how I pored over 

 * Dugdale's Baronage' during that time, and transcribed pedigrees from the British 

 Museum ! The consequence was, that I sunk in the estimation of the few who knew 

 me into the character of a mere compiler. I suspect that I did so even in my own 

 estimation. I can scarcely account for the spell that broke through this superincum- 

 bence. It was a mist that broke it too ! — a walk of an October morning through 

 the thickest grey vapours I ever encountered. Then it was that the outline of the 

 tale of " Mary de Clifford" darted upon me ; and I went home and wrote the first 

 sheet, and sent it to the printer in London by that post." 



The losses in the common concerns of daily life by that abstrac- 

 tedness which books and airy visions never fail to fasten on literary 

 men, occasion the following severe philippic against his bailiff : — 



" Taking up the amusement of agriculture on a large scale, without looking into 

 my bailiff's accounts, or attending to the details of the management, I lost very 

 large sums of money by it, notwithstanding that during all that time the prices of 

 corn and stock were very high. Bailiffs and stewards are very willing to receive 

 everything and disburse nothing : when anything is to be paid they always come 

 upon the master. No receiver of money will be honest, unless he is very sharply 

 looked to : and in making up a long account, a cunning man can turn the balance 

 either way in a surprising manner, as I have lately discovered to my utter astonish- 

 ment and great loss. Within a few days of writing this passage, I have discovered 

 a fraud of this kind practised against me to the amount of £2,200, and upwards, by 

 means of calculations made by parties of whom I should not have had the least sus- 

 picion. But practised agents habitually do this, and in a course of ten or twenty 

 years may thus absorb the largest fortune. It is common for these vile agents thus 



