sideration in the same paper; and the council which ensues winds up the matter with spirit and pleasantry, a lady being for the nonce a member of the parliament; for, in preparing this "Series of Readings and Discourse thereon," Bacon's monition has been duly heeded, to vary and intermingle speech of the present occasion with arguments; tales with reasons; asking of questions with telling of opinions; and jest with earnest. Accordingly, the interlocutors are heard
From trivial theme to general argument
Passing, as accident or fancy leads,
Or courtesy prescribes.[1]
Large space is given to the discussion of topics pertaining to statesmanship and official life: as Improvement of the Condition of the Rural Poor, Government, and Slavery. These are handled with a singular combination of worldly sagacity and unworldly elevation of sentiment. Ellesmere's lambent wit and skin-deep satire, together with Milverton’s contemplative wisdom and Dunsford’s gentle humanity, make up a fine synthesis. Many a weighty as well as neat aphorism might be culled from their debates. There is, indeed, a conscious air of superiority in this work, an indifference to popular verdicts, which may offend some persons; but then it is so clear that the writer is a superior man, and that his dicta are no superficial truisms, but the experto crede convictions of reflective genius, that one feels he has a right to the length of his tether, and that it is likely to be wiser and more profitable to examine him with respect than to judge him in haste. And after all, an author can afford to be a little ironical, not to say cynical, about popularity, when he himself is labelled as popular, and has received carte blanche to unbosom himself even of perilous stuff. Something equivalent to a third series of "Friends in Council" appeared in 1851, under the title "Companions of my Solitude." The thirteen sections into which it is divided, deal with topics similar to those so agreeably discussed by that congress of choice spirits—matters social, political, literary, philosophical—and in the same effective style, the same picturesque language, the same illustrative power. By the "companions of his solitude," the author means his reveries—those thoughts which insist upon being with him as spiritual companions, and resolutely visit him in his solitary hours at home and abroad. They are the creations of his own brain, which, in spite of the filial love and respect they owe him, do eagerly, exclusively, anxiously intrude on his attention; and which he therefore resolves to describe, that so he may have more mastery over them, and that they may cease, he says, to haunt him as vague faces and half-fashioned resemblances—and may assume the form of distinct pictures, which he can give away or hang up in his room, turning them, if he pleases, with their faces to the wall. Many are the aspects these reveries take. Sometimes he describes them as formed of nebulous stuff, coming together with some method and set purpose, in the shape of a heavy cloud—when they will do for an essay or moral discourse; at other times he compares them to those sportive, disconnected forms of vapour which are streaked across the heavens, now like a feather, now like the outline of a camel, doubtless obeying some law and with some design, but such
- ↑ Wordsworth's "Excursion."
