my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O! it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise; I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O! there be players, that I have seen play-and heard others praise, and that highly-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made them, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. O reform it altogether. And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. ROBERT NICOLL. THE EDITOR. [Portion of a lecture on "The Lyric Poets of the present Century," delivered at various Literary Institutions.] ROBERT NICOLL is a name very little known this side of the Tweed-is it likely to become better known? Well, in these days of Sensational Novels, Sensational Dramas, Sensational Exhibitions, Tumblers, Jugglers, Spiritualists and Nigger Minstrels, it is somewhat doubtful-but we ought not to despair. There is a large class of young men at the present day who are studiously inclined, who attend evening classes, and who seek for their amusements in places devoid of those demoralising influences which surround so many of our places of public recreation. I don't want a youth to be a mere bookworm; I think, if he has to push his way in the world, he should know something of the crowd through which he will have to struggle-and I want him to so inform his mind that he may be able to balance his actions, and to see that there is before him a gulf, in which to plunge is debasement irretrievable. No doubt we shall always have monied fools, "fast men," "jolly dogs," as we shall have those with the inclination to imitate them, without their means—but I think there are signs of a better class growing up amongst us, the general low tone of our public amusements notwithstanding. It should never be forgotten that the caterers for the million follow and do not lead the public taste-let public taste improve and the natural result will follow, and it is to the better appreciation of literature and the arts by the rising generation, that I think we may confidently turn to effect this consummation. Robert Nicoll, as I have said, is a name little known on this side of the Tweed, but it is a name in the north— else I should not have before me his "Poems and Lyrics," Blackie and Co., London and Edinburgh, 1852. Fourth Edition. "What has Nicoll done?" asks one of my young friends. It was said of him by Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn-law rhymer, "Burns at his age had done nothing like him." If you ask me what Nicoll might have done? I think, had he been spared, he might have been a second Burns, but he died at 23! I must, however, qualify this opinion by saying that though he might have equalled Burns in pathos, he gave no indications that he would have matched him in those scenes of Scottish character, so full of rollicking fun, which Burns has given us he would not have attempted them. You will see why when I give you, as briefly as I can, some particulars of his life. Nicoll was born in Perthshire in 1814; his father, a farmer, was ruined by becoming security for a connexion by marriage, who failed and absconded. The old man had to turn field labourer on the land he had himself leased. Robert Nicoll was sent, when very young, to serve behind a storekeeper's counter in Perth. A gentleman lent him his right to the Perth Library—should there not be an available public library in every town and village of the kingdom-for may there not be there a Nicoll, a Burns, a Bloomfield, or a Clare? Well, there Nicoll first read, and then wrote, sending his rhymes to a provincial newspaper, to which he also contributed scraps of parish news. This was his first connexion with the press. When out of his apprenticeship at the Perth grocer's, he opened, with some friendly aid, a small circulating library in Dundee. This again enabled him to increase his mental store, but did not contribute much to his worldly means; however, he became a sort of magnate among the young mechanics and manufacturers of the place he wrote largely for the liberal newspapers, delivered lectures and made speeches; and, finally, published his volume of "Poems and Lyrics." He had previously attracted the attention and obtained the friendship, such as it was, of Mr. Robert Chambers, Gilfillan, the poet, and Mr. Tait, of Edinburgh, the latter gentleman being his publisher. The volume was warmly received by friends and connexions, and highly praised by the local press. The Dundee Library was then given up, and Nicoll resolved to try his fortune as a literary worker in London. Mr. Tait offered him some temporary employment in his warehouse until something turned up. What did turn up was not employment in London, but the editorship of the Leeds Times-the salary 1007. a year. The paper was at a very low ebb when Nicoll went on to it, but it rose in a few weeks, under his management, at the rate of 200 copies a week, and soon reached an impression of 3000 copies. Oh, the drudgery of a provincial paper! No organized staff of reporters and writers, each having his separate department; but one reporter at most-for even provincial editors cannot be in two places at once. And then the horror of having to write column upon column of "copy" that is of no earthly use two days after publication. I have had some few years of it in my lifetime, and I know what it is. I have been so wide awake by having to keep my eyes open for twenty-four hours at a stretch, on the day and night previous to publication, that when I have gone home in the broad daylight, I have been obliged to take opiates to obtain sleep and rest. And then the sacrifice of work. A column of advertisements taken in after hours by a greedy proprietor, and a column of your own hard work knocked out to make room for it. Robert Nicoll, on the Leeds Times, a paper of large size, had no assistant; he had to report, condense, write original articles, correct proofs, and to maintain a wide correspondence with the political connexions of the paper. And amidst all this work poetry was not neglected. "The What wonder that he broke down under it! finishing blow to his health," says his biographer, " was given by the general election when the town of Leeds was contested by Sir William Molesworth and Sir John Beckett. Into this contest the Liberal editor threw himself with his whole heart and soul. The Liberal cause triumphed in Leeds, but it left poor Nicoll in a state of utter exhaustion." He was destined to live only a few more months of patient suffering. He returned to his home, to Leith -but only to die. Mr. Tait informed Sir William Molesworth of the state of the poet's health, and must it be said ?—of his destitution. Sir William at once sent him 50l., accompanied by a letter, remarkable for delicacy and kindness. Nicoll died in his twenty-fourth year, and, as Elliott said of him, “added another yictim to the hundreds of thousands who are 'not dead but gone before,' to bear witness against the merciless." Yet Nicoll lived long enough to leave behind him about one hundred and fifty exquisite lyrics. The majority of them being written in the Scottish dialect, will probably account for his being so little known in the South. They even are more intensely Scottish than many of Burns's. But Nicoll had thoroughly conquered the English idiom. He loved his native hill and heather-clad mountains, his fondest recollections were of Scotland, and he thought and wrote in "Scotch." I fear I shall only mar it by attempting to quote one of his Scotch songs, but to justify the high place I claim. for Nicoll I must make the attempt : WE ARE BRETHREN A’. A HAPPY bit hame this auld world would be, |