the season by the of christmas books � a kind of literary representing to the debts to the an of value for the most part bearing the stamp of their origin in the of the writer s rather than in the of his genius they suggest by their feeble the of a void brain after the more important of the expired year indeed we should as little think of taking these as examples of the the of letters merits of their authors as we should think of measuring the valuable services of mr the or mr bell the dust by the copy of verses they leave at our doors as a of the expected annual � with which they may fairly be for their worth no less than their ultimate purport upon this and upon some little peculiarities of style in the review such as a passage in which the learned critic compared the author s attempts to the after the pearl of truth whose lustre is in the display of the mr replied in the preface to a second edition of the little book published a few days later and entitled an essay on thunder and small beer the style of the times which was generally attributed to the late mr samuel afforded too tempting a subject for the pen of the author of vanity fair to be passed over the easy humour with which he exposed the affectation of superiority in his critic the style and droll logic of his whom he the not to the awful of house square but to the s man trying to and roar like his awful employer afforded the town through the newspapers which copied the essay an amount of amusement not often derived from an author s defence of himself from adverse criticism the essay was remembered long after when work after work of mr was severely died in the same paper and the recollection of it gave a shadow of support to the theory by which some persons on the recent occasion of mr s death endeavoured to explain the fact that the notice in the and the account of his funeral were more than those of any other journal while the times alone of all the daily papers omitted to a leading article on the subject of the great loss which had been sustained by the world of letters in mr appeared in an entirely new character but one which subsequently proved so to him that to this cause even more than the labours of his pen must be attributed the mm of letter that easy fortune which he had accumulated before he died in may of that year he commenced a series of lectures on the english the subjects were swift and prior gay and pope and and and the lectures were delivered at s the price of admission was high and his audience was numerous and of the most select kind it was not composed of that sort of people who crowd to pick up information in the shape of facts with which they have been previously but those who knowing the eminence of the wished to hear his opinion on a subject of national interest one of the two great of the present age was about to utter his sentiments on the of the age now terminated and the occasion was sufficient to create an interest which not even the attractive power of the great exhibition then open could check the newspapers complained slightly of the low key in which the spoke from which cause many of his best points were sometimes lost to the more distant of his in other respects says the we cannot too highly praise the style of his delivery from and he relied for his effect too on the matter which he uttered and it was singular to see how the isolated pictures which by a few magic touches descended into the hearts of his hearers among the most conspicuous of the literary ladies at this gathering was miss the of jane she had never before the author of vanity fair though the second edition of her own celebrated novel was to him by her with the assurance that she regarded him as the social of his day � as the very master of that working corps who would restore to the state of things mrs tells us that when the lecture was over the descended from the platform and making his way towards her frankly asked her for her opinion this adds miss she mentioned to me not many days afterwards adding remarks almost identical with those which subsequently read in where a similar action on the part of m paul and the of letters is related the remarks of this singular woman upon mr and his writings and her accounts of her with him are curious they will be found scattered about mrs popular biography of the magazine will not have forgotten mr s affectionate and sketch of her which appears some years later in that the course was perfectly successful and the lectures subsequently rank among the most beautiful writings they were delivered again soon afterwards in some of the provincial cities including a droll anecdote was related at this period in the newspapers in connection with these provincial appearances previously to delivering them in scotland the himself of addressing them to the rising youth of our two great of the national mind and it was necessary before appearing at oxford to obtain the license of the authorities � a very arrangement of course the duke of was the who if applied to would have the understood at once the man and his business the duke lives in the broad atmosphere of the every day world and a copy of the papers is on a shelf at castle but his dignity at oxford on whom the modest waited knew less about such trifles as vanity fair and pray 