THE NEW PHÆDO, OR CONVERSATIONS ON THINGS HUMAN AND DIVINE, WITH ONE CONDEMNED.

I HAVE always loved the old form of Dialogue; not, indeed, so much for investigating truth, as for speaking of truths after an easy yet not uncritical or hasty fashion. More familiar than the Essay, more impressed with the attraction of individual character, the Dialogue has also the illustrious examples of old — to associate the class to which it belongs with no common-place or ignoble recollections. It may perhaps be still possible to give to the lighter and less severe philosophy, a form of expression at once dramatic and unpedantic. I have held, of late, some conversations, that do not seem to me altogether uninteresting, with a man whom I have long considered of a singular and original character. I have obtained his permission to make these conversations public. They are necessarily of a desultory character — they embrace a variety of topics — they are marked and individualized only by that poetical and half-fantastic philosophy which belongs to my friend, and that melancholy colouring which befits a picture that has Death in the background. If they should appear now too florid — now too careless — in their diction, — I can only say that they faithfully represent the tone of conversation, that in excited moments is the characteristic of the principal speaker. — Would that, while I retail the inanimate words, I could convey to the reader the aspect, the expression, the smile, the accents low and musical, that lent their meaning all its charm. As it is, they would remain altogether untold, were it not for my friend’s conviction that the seal is set upon the limit of his days, and did I not see sufficient evidence in his appearance to forbid me to hope that he can linger many months beyond the present date. To his mind, whatever be its capacities, its cultivation, its aspirings, all matured and solid offspring is forbidden. These fugitive tokens of all he acquired, or thought, or felt, are, if we read aright human probabilities, the sole testimony that he will leave behind him; not a monument, — but at least a few leaves scattered upon his grave. I feel a pain in writing the above words, but will he? — No! or he has wronged himself. He looks from the little inn of his mortality, and anticipates the long summer journey before him; he repines not to-day that he must depart to-morrow, On Saturday last, November 13th, I rode to L— ‘s habitation, which is some miles from my own home. The day was cold enough, but I found him with the windows of his room open, and feeding an old favourite in the shape of a squirrel, that had formerly been a tame companion.

L — , on arriving at his present abode, had released it; but it came from the little copse in front of the windows every day to see its former master, and to receive some proof of remembrance from his good-natured hospitality.