Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 094.djvu/411

Rh Styx—a feeling which, I am sorry to say, I could not swear to be unreciprocated. I would willingly have lengthened out the evening into a small eternity; for, after overleaping all such conventional formalities as recommendation, introduction, &c., and plunging at once like an epic poet in medias res, doubts began to arise in my mind lest my finale might be similar to that of the brain-spinning poetasters of to-day, who flit across the stage for an hour, and then are lost in the gulf of oblivion for ever and aye! But, alas! all my wishes for a protraction of the evening were of no avail. Phœbus Apollo seemed to drive his thirsty steeds down the steep descent with dangerous velocity, and my short term of happiness slipped away with accelerated rapidity.

The Gräfinn rose to retire into the house with her niece, and I felt myself constrained to take my leave; which I did with a melancholy calculation of how many were the chances against my ever being so fortunate again, though somewhat revived by the benevolent urbanity of host and hostess, and exulting in the possession of a rose, which, I having chanced to express my admiration of it, had been plucked from a bush by Emilie's fingers, and bestowed upon myself.

had a passion, it is said, for playing Harlequin on the public stage; but his agility was paralysed the moment his mask was removed. Not a few authors, who have donned the mask of a pseudonym, appear to have entertained similar apprehensions as to the possible results of doffing it. Whether Florian would have perpetually broken down, had he persevered in trying the harlequinade without the vizor, we know not. But that the misgivings of sensitive authorship are, after a certain status is reached, causeless and imaginary, is evident from the records of literature in general. Junius, indeed, would have lost his power together with his nominis umbra; but Addison lost nothing by the identification of the short-faced Spectator; nor are we aware that Professor Wilson drooped when the propria persona of Christopher North was bruited abroad, or that Mr. Isaac Taylor was nonplussed by the detection of the "Author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm," or that the right hand of Mrs. Marsh lost its cunning when she was multiplied into "Two Old Men." The author of "Friends in Council" is now pretty generally known to be Mr. Arthur Helps; but the anonymous was, in his case, retained long after he had achieved a success, which rendered it, as a literary experiment, superfluous. We are not, however, of those who think it inexplicable, that when a man's venture has been recognised and applauded by "crowded houses," he should not be in a hurry to stand up in his private box, and bow and simper unutterable things in response to their most sweet voices. Restless inquirers and quidnuncs there are, who, measuring the brains of others by the metre of their own, exclaim, "Why, herein is