out of a hundred in any of the learned professions in any country
of the world are ever likely to do.--_Ibid._

* * * * *

THE ETTRICK SHEPHERD.

When the Ettrick Shepherd was first heard of, he had indeed but just
learned to write, by copying the letters of a printed ballad, as he
lay watching his flock on the mountains; but thirty years or more have
passed since then, and his acquirements are now such, that the Royal
Society of Literature, in patronizing him, might be justly said to
honour a laborious and successful student, as well as a masculine and
fertile genius. We may take the liberty of adding, in this place, what
perhaps may not be known to the excellent managers of that excellent
institution, that a more worthy, modest, sober, and loyal man does not
exist in his majesty's dominions than this distinguished poet, whom some
of his waggish friends have taken up the absurd fancy of exhibiting in
print as a sort of boozing buffoon; and who is now, instead of revelling
in the license of tavern-suppers and party politics, bearing up, as he
may, against severe and unmerited misfortunes, in as dreary a solitude
as ever nursed the melancholy of a poetical temperament.--_Ibid._

* * * * *

MR. ALLAN CUNNINGHAM

Needs no testimony either to his intellectual accomplishments or his
moral worth; nor, thanks to his own virtuous diligence, does he need
any patronage. He has been fortunate enough to secure a respectable
establishment in the _studio_ of a great artist, who is not less
good than great, and would thus be sufficiently in the eye of the world,
even were his literary talents less industriously exercised than they
have hitherto been. His recent Lives of the British Painters and
Sculptors form one of the most agreeable books in the language; and it
will always remain one of the most remarkable and delightful facts in
the history of letters, that such a work--one conveying so much valuable
knowledge in a style so unaffectedly attractive--so imbued throughout,
not only with lively sensibility, amiable feelings, honesty and candour,
but mature and liberal taste, was produced by a man who, some twenty
years before, earned his daily bread as a common stone-mason in the
wilds of Nithsdale. Examples like these will plead the cause of
struggling genius, wherever it may be found, more powerfully than
all the arguments in the world.--_Ibid._

*