nature, they not only exceed her limits, but disfigure all her forms and proportions: they are faithful to neither the measure nor the pattern of her works. Their greatness is nothing but corpulency, uninformed with any principle of life and activity. We might bear a Cupid seven feet high, if he retained his accustomed beauty and sprightliness; but it is cruel to see our little favourite tumefied into a dull, unwieldy lump, a sort of anasarcous, or Daniel Lambert fairy, with no compensation for the change but in his increased dimensions and stone-weight. This style of exaggeration is frequently employed by persons of tame and unimpassioned spirits, and in their hands it is certainly a most deadening and overwhelming instrument. I know not how minds of such a temperament should deviate into such unsuitable vices; but so it is; we often see profound dulness troubled with a strange, lumbering ambition for the great and the wonderful. We do not complain of these heavy fabulists, that they strain, pervert, or obscure the truth: they convey no likelihood of it- no sign-no shadow; their uninspired exuberance falling upon you with the dead weight of sheer impossibility. There is often a perfidious solemnity and decorum in the general manner of the sort of persons 1 allude to, that adds greatly to the perplexity of their hearers. When a vivacious enthusiast bursts out into some violent description, his spirit, his look, tone, and gestures; at once alarm our watchfulness, and put us upon our guard. He has no sly and indirect means of lulling our suspicions and cheating us into belief. He may have his lies, but they are lies which wear their hearts on their sleeves. Not so with your slow, prosing hyperbolist, who with a steady eye doles out his cold extravagance and dull excess. You can come to no squares with him, yet you look at him and know not how to understand him. Nothing can be more puzzling.

This anomalous variety excepted, I have rather a kindness than otherwise for a little honest exaggeration; and every species of it, leaden or mercurial, is preferable, I am ready to maintain, to its opposite-coldblooded and penurious exactness.

The whole host of long-bow-men, light troops and heavy, are far less annoying, and, paradoxical as it may appear, less hostile to the more essential parts of truth, than the little teasing tribe-the minute, higgling worshippers of matter-of-fact. Α man who in a transport of passion gives an undue extension to any determinate quantity of time, or space, or any thing else, does not exaggerate in any ill sense; he deceives nobody except those without passion, the posts of the human race. His object is not to define a frigid reality as established by law, but to describe it according to the impression which it made, and was likely to make, upon his mind, under a particular state of excitement. He has no thought about "stubborn facts;" he makes them, and very fairly, I think, malleable to his will, and susceptible of any variations of form that his feelings require. People were cool and collected when they set about making facts; and it is very hard that a man in a fury should be bound by them. Ready-made facts will not suit him; they must be all purely his own. He is above statutes and tables, and will own no allegiance to common rules and measures. Surely he must be a very heartless person who will not admit, that an hour is not always neither more nor less than sixty minutes, and that a mile is not invariably only a mile. A matter-of-fact man has no conception of such an extravagance: he grants no indulgences; law is law with him, and he will abide by it to death. A mile, he will have it, is a mile; and the worst of it is, he has certain odious proofs and literal standards in his favour, which, backed by his oath, he will quote against a liberal adversary, till there seems nothing left for it but to own that the blockhead is correct. In vain you strive to move him from his position by appealing to his passions or his imagination, these gifts in him, (if he have them at all,) being under such certain controul, that he carries them about with him as securely and ceremoniously as his gloves and his stick. Never hope to exasperate him into a thought of apostacy from absolute Cocker, London measure, or avoirdupois. He stands out for a fact; and though it be stripped to

positive nakedness, or robbed of its living marrow, he will still cling to it-still hug his bit of barren dryness, if it be but according to book and "his bond."

I look upon these miserable fribblers as the most intolerable plagues that go about to disturb the ease, cordiality, and trusting freedom, of familiar conversation. One of these, among a company of lively men, is as bad as the "Six Acts." There is no speaking before him; he lies in wait for every trivial lapse, and is ready to arrest on the spot every unimportant misnomer of time, or place, or person. He will stop a good anecdote, just before its finest moment, to ask for its credentials; and cut off the dénouement of a pathetic tale to question its parish. To pun in his presence would be as bad as to deny his existence: he and equivoque (the name is enough) could never be brought together but to fight. The humour of the thing too is, that these poor starvelings, with their bigoted strictness and peddling precision, set themselves up for lovers of truth. But the truth is not in them, nor for them. A little niggardly truth, perhaps, a crumb of certainty, they may pick up; but of truth, in its entire spirit-of "the whole truth," they have no notion. They will discriminate between John and Thomas, and authenticate a day of the month with fatal accuracy, and, to secure such points, will let the whole interest of a story, catastrophe and all, pass by them, "like the wind which they regard not." All that is warm, fluent, and animating in discourse, is husk and chaff to them, if there be not something that they can swear to: when the joke is complete, and the laugh has gone round, "Now," they will say, steadying themselves in their chairs, and collecting their powers, "let us come to particulars." With all their professed antipathy to exaggeration, they are themselves exaggerators of the most contemptible description-those who attach extravagant importance to trifles, and busy themselves to demonstrate circumstances that are not worth a thought. There is something noble at least in the error of a man who exaggerates only what is in itself great and exalted; but he that would measure a

hair, or weigh a feather, is guilty of an hyperbole (if so generous a term is not too good for him) that admits of no excuse. These scrupulists— these baters down, are themselves far more remote from truth generally than those whom they are so pleased to charge with incorrectness. A man overpowered with thirst says, that he could drink the Thames dry-and I believe him-that is, I very distinctly apprehend that he is excessively thirsty. A matter-of-fact man would receive such an assertion as an insult, and would take upon himself to prove, if he could keep from passion, that it was, from the nature of things, an absolute falsehood. He would lay down the maximum of a possible draught, and the way would be clear before him. He has no allowance for the natural language of an eager appetite; but summons up his soul, with all its experience, to justify the capacity of a quart pot. A lover about to be separated for a few weeks from his mistress affirms that he shall not see her again for ages-and he is perfectly rightor what man of spirit would condescend to fall in love? Who shall put definite limits to the duration of a week, a day, or an hour, spent in the absence or the presence of a mistress? The lover, with his weeks a century long, tells you pretty plainly that he is desperately impatient-tells you the truth, I contend, in contempt of any little huckster in matter-of-fact, who would compute the ardours of a lover with the same beggarly exactness with which he would measure a yard of tape, or compare the dates of a butcher's

bill.

I was walking once in company with two persons, one of whom was a fine, precipitate, ad libitum fellow, warm of heart, and hasty of tongue; the other, a simple, direct man, who looked at things in their just proportions, and was nice even to the smallest fractions in all his affirmations. Briefly, I was with an enthusiast and a matter-of-fact man. The former was miserable, and had every reason to be so, in regard both to his existing condition and his future prospects. He suddenly broke forth," I never expect to be in any way better off than the wretched beggar there before us." "Yes

yes," interposed his friend, more readily than was usual with him, "with prudence, you may be a degree better as long as you live." The warm man could not bear this, and he angrily retorted, "Now, dit! can you never be a little less precise? You mean, I suppose, to comfort me; yet what consolation is it to be assured, that I am and may be just a degree-after your freezing mannera strict, exemplary degree, above the lowest of my species?" The other still kept his temper, and insisted, modestly, but resolutely, "that a degree was a degree," and there the matter ended.

I would not be understood to object to precision and minuteness, when these qualities are important, or when they can be attended to without disturbance to points of higher consideration. The most subordinate circumstances and indifferent relations of great events may be interesting, in the same manner as trifles, down to a buckle, or a shirtpin, are worth notice, when connected with persons distinguished by extraordinary actions or talents. I would have all given of things that are worth giving: what is admirable cannot be too complete. I complain not of the matter-of-fact man on such grounds; but that the little parts of high matters, or of all matters, those which by their nature are alone reducible to an arithmetical certainty are the sole objects of his regard. Affecting to worship Truth, he sees her not in her full majesty; but overlooks her covering robes and flowing draperies, (to speak of something more than the naked Truth,") to fasten upon a button. He would mention no particulars of the great storm with such unqualified satisfaction as that it commenced at twenty-three minutes past four, A. M. on the 6th November, A. D. 1723. Of facts of mind and feeling he makes no account: he must have facts in a ring-fence; realities of the Almanack. He cares not to hear that a man died: he must know where he died and when he died.

Persons of this stamp make excellent lawyers: they should never travel out of Westminster-Hall. In the intricacy and darkness of the law, there is an obvious fitness in

that watchful jealousy, which would as soon see a kingdom overthrown as a name or a date abused. But a matter-of-fact man will carry the captious spirit of a legal process into his moral judgments-turn lawyer against himself-cross-question the evidence of his own heart-cheat himself, against his broadest convic tions, into a kind of accidental innocence-deliver himself from a piece of conscious roguery, because his name is not Timothy. He has always some petty flaw, or lucky difference, that will suffice, at a pinch, for a "not guilty," after the manner of the charity-boy who robbed a woman's orchard, and being asked whether that was the way in which he performed his "duty to his neighbour," replied, that the old lady lived in another parish. These people affect extreme indignation at the scandalous opinion of the world, if, in appreciating their conduct, it makes some light error in particu lars, though it may be perfectly just in its general spirit and bearing. Fame avers that Mr. Shuffle cheated the other night at cards, to the amount of thirteen shillings and sixpence-and that, therefore, he is a knave; against which decision he contends, that the sum was only twelve shillings-and that, therefore, he is an honest man. Mr. Dis universally reported to be always drunk: he is mightily out of humour, however, with so gross a charge, and makes out, clearly enough, that he was sober on part of last Thursday, and the whole of Palm Sunday. Mrs. Fis said to wear a wig, at which she is grievously offended, proving, that she wears only a frontand that even that does not cover more than three-fourths of her head. There is no defence against such slanderous imputations as these but patience: the innocent, we sec, are not safe. "I am accustomed," says Voltaire, "to bear patiently the invectives of an ill-natured world; in this respect resembling the ladies, who are often accused of having had twenty lovers, when they never exceeded three."

Matter-of-fact men, it is thought, are good servants, whose highest merit is to do as they are bidden, to be precise and punctual in the nicest circumstances of their duty. I would

not deny them what credit they may deserve; but I cannot, even in such lowly capacity, allow them unconditional praise. A master had need to be very select in his own phrases before he absolutely trusts them.Who would wish to be obeyed to the very letter in all his orders, for three days together? In the changeful bustle of this various life, a modicum of discretionary power and spontaneous action should be permitted to the humblest and most subservient agents. A punctilious menial may serve you to your heart's desire for two days, and bring you to I know not what sorrow or shame on the third, by no other crime than an unlucky obedience to your commands. You desire that your horse shall be always at the door at eleven o'clock, and that your dinner shall invariably be on the table at four; but take care, in your heedless strictness, that your horse be not found some morning perishing, according to orders, at your door, for half a dozen hours in a pelting rain; or that your mutton be not, at your special request, cooling itself to stone, while you are distinctly known to be a good hour and a half away from it.

Matter-of-fact men, again, it might be thought, would form admirable soldiers; and so they would, no doubt, as far as a formal attention to the petty detail of an imperious discipline could make them so; but such a habit would not often be found combined, I fancy, with the impetuous heroism and daring which, as Bonaparte was the first in modern times to prove, is so much more effective, as an instrument of war, than a dull system of rigorous drilling and intricate manœuvres. The Germans are matterof-fact soldiers-no troops being so remarkable, more by force of education, I believe, than of natural temperament, for their submission to an unvarying formality in all their martial movements. They do nothing extempore; nothing by accidentsurrendering themselves up, as Madame de Staël says, to "a sort of pedantic tactics,' in the place of liveliness and enterprise. They would despise defeat if "according to rule," and scarcely prize victory if in opposition to it. Methodical and predetermined in all their proceedings, you may calculate, to the divi

sion of a degree, what they can do and will do; but never expect from them one of those fine hairbrained and dazzling exploits, which are sometimes achieved by more flighty spirits, under the impulse only of a stubborn will and reckless confidence.

I remember a curious instance of military exactness in the conduct of a soldier (a German by the way) who was stationed as a sentinel on Margate Pier-head, during a nightstorm of tremendous violence, in the course of which nearly the whole pier was destroyed by an irruption of the sea, the high-street of the town undermined, and many of the houses washed down. In this dreadful night, which was made more bitter by a fall of snow and intense cold, the poor fellow stuck to his station till his life was in the most imminent danger. He was found by some seamen, who went to his relief, clinging to a post, and with great difficulty maintaining his hold against the sea which dashed over him-and which, not long after his removal, swept away the very ground on which he had stood, and made a free passage into the harbour. When he was asked how he could be such a fool as to stay there only to be drowned, he barely said, that "he had no thought of moving till he was relieved, and that it still wanted a full half-hour of the time." Had this devotedness to duty and contempt of danger been shown for any useful or generous purpose, I could have worshipped the man; but I have no great consideration for the mere steady stupidity which could hold him fast at such a moment, and at such a risk, when he had no worthier pretence than his respect for the formalities of the parade. This man, who would not stir from his useless post to save his own life, would not have stirred, I suspect, to save the whole town from destruction. And herein is the danger of trusting too freely to such minds, on the strength only of their slavish docility and literal obedience. They are very well while the road is straight, but they are lost without resource whenever they come to a turning. My affection, I confess, is for men of a warmer, more adventurous and inventive, kind, who, in spite of their occasional errors of exaggeration and precipitancy, are,