in the speech of Lord Chatham in reply to Walpole, which boys are taught to recite at school, that essay was to go on to show that a great part of English literature was written by very young men.  Unfortunately, on proceeding to investigate the matter carefully, it appeared that the best part of English literature, even in the range of poetry, was in fact written by men of even more than middle age.  So the essay was never finished, though a good deal of it was sketched out.  Yesterday I took out the old manuscript; and after reading a bit of it, it appeared so remarkably Vealy, that I put it with indignation into the fire.  Still I observed various facts of interest as to great things done by young men, and some by young men who never lived to be old.  Beaumont the dramatist died at twenty-nine.  Christopher Marlowe wrote “Faustus” at twenty-five, and died at thirty.  Sir Philip Sidney wrote his “Arcadia” at twenty-six.  Otway wrote “The Orphan” at twenty-eight, and “Venice Preserved” at thirty.  Thomson wrote the “Seasons” at twenty-seven.  Bishop Berkeley had devised his Ideal System at twenty-nine; and Clarke at the same age published his great work on “The Being and Attributes of God.”  Then there is Pitt, of course.  But these cases are exceptional; and besides, men at twenty-eight and thirty are not in any way to be regarded as boys.  What I wanted was proof of the great things that had been done by young fellows about two-and-twenty; and such proof was not to be found.  A man is simply a boy grown up to his best; and of course what is done by men must be better than what is done by boys.  Unless in very peculiar cases, a man at thirty will be every way superior to what he was at twenty; and at forty to what he was at thirty.  Not, indeed, physically,—­let that be granted; not always morally; but surely intellectually and aesthetically.

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Yes, my readers, we have all been Calves.  A great part of all our doings has been, what the writer, in figurative language, has described as Veal.  We have not said, written, or done very much on which we can now look back with entire approval; and we have said, written, and done a very great deal on which we cannot look back but with burning shame and confusion.  Very many things, which, when we did them, we thought remarkably good, and much better than the doings of ordinary men, we now discern, on calmly looking back, to have been extremely bad.  That time, you know, my friend, when you talked in a very fluent and animated manner after dinner at a certain house, and thought you were making a great impression on the assembled guests, most of them entire strangers, you are now fully aware that you were only making a fool of yourself.  And let this hint of one public manifestation of Vealiness suffice to suggest to each of us scores of similar cases.  But though we feel, in our secret souls, what Calves we have been, and though it is well for us that we