sidering Richard III.; Salvini is best examined as Othello, and this is the difficulty of judging Trelawny. His admirers may claim that he excels even actors in vanity, but his enemies will admit that he yields in this respect to poets. If we identify him with the "Younger Son "-and Trelawny deliberately wrote it as the history of his life, or rather said he wrote it as such-we see him the most romantic of romantic figures, proud, daring to the utmost degree, fiery, untameable, passionate, with an unquenchable thirst for liberty, and a detestation of every form of restraint. If we are to judge him by his letters to Mary Shelley, we see him impetuous and generous it is true, but changeable, unsteady of purpose, and an inveterate poseur, now writing, "I am sick at heart with losing my friend (Byron), for still I call him so, you know; with all his weaknesses you know I loved him. I cannot live with men for years without feeling-it is weak, it is want of judgment, of philosophy-but this is my weakness. . . . No more a nameless being, I am now a Greek chieftain, willing and able to shelter and protect you;" and now, " It is well for his name, and better for Greece that Byron is dead. . . I now feel my face burn with shame that so weak and ignoble a soul could so long have influenced me. It is a degrading reflection, and ever will be. I wish he had lived a little longer that he might have witnessed how I would have soared above him here, how I would have triumphed over his mean spirit." And if we are to judge him by his doings as well as his words, we find this "Greek chieftain, who will thus continue or follow his friends to wander some other planet-for he has nearly exhausted this "—this hero, who "has not been a passive instrument of arbitrary despotism," is detained at Zante for ten months by a "villainous lawsuit, which may yet continue some months longer." And further, if we are to judge him by his second book, the "Recollections of Shelley and Byron," he appears

acute, and even hard, a stern yet subtle judge of character, and his narrative, far from bearing out what Byron is reported to have said of him, "that he could not, even to save his life, tell the truth," strikes the reader as being faithful to the smallest detail.

Trelawny, in short, was all these characters, as Kean might be Richard and yet Othello. Of Cornish blood, he united to natural English stubbornness and ruggedness an imagination and versatility that were certainly not English. It is said that from his grandmother he inherited a Spanish strain; and if this be so, much in his character is explained. High-spirited, fiery, and impulsive, he threw himself first into one part, then into another; now, "I have laid down the sword for the pen," now (three months later), "I am deeply engaged in a wild scheme which will lead me to the East, and it is firmly my belief that when I again leave Europe it will be for ever," and now (two months later), "if I thought there was a probability that I could get a seat in the reformed House of Commons I would go to England, or if there was a probability of revolution." Of course it must be remembered that in writing to so sympathetic and sentimental a woman as Mary Shelley, Trelawny would naturally wish to keep up his romantic character, but against this must be set the fact that their intimacy was of so confidential and friendly a character that he would lay bare his hopes, plans, and fears more fully to her than to anybody else. From this quickness of entering into projects, equal readiness in deserting them, and acuteness, when not moved by first enthusiasm, there seems to be two Trelawnys in the field-the one ready to imitate and follow De Ruyter, Byron, and Odysseus in turn, very anxious to play a good part, devoted to women, setting his heart on being looked on as a romantic figure, and proud of "being

ruled by impulse, and not by reason"; the other reserved, independent, and clear-sighted, setting men at their true value, with a contempt for their weaknesses, and mingling the sturdiness of an old salt with the hardheadedness of a man of the world. It is true that the former of these characters certainly appertains more to Trelawny's youth, and the latter to his old age, but throughout we find them blended he is always alternately alluding to "his wild career through life," and growing reticent, almost mysterious, about it.

The contradiction of this character, at odds with itself, is in his blood, and accordingly shows itself in his style. The style of the "Younger Son," though ungrammatical, is simple, the sentences are energetic and abrupt as those of a seaman, but his language is high-coloured, poetical, and often high-flown. His sailor's grief at the death of Zela is expressed with the delicacy of a poet. The salt of the sea, and the scent of flowers mingle in the book. Trelawny has indeed a Gascon strain in him. He is brave, so he would be thought even braver than he is; he has seen much, so he writes, "I have nearly exhausted this planet"; he has had some adventures, so he says he has. passed through others; his virtues spring much from his vices, and his vices still more from his virtues. He is passionate, so he stimulates his passions by art, and prides himself on being led astray by them. He sets up a harem in Athens, and buys a Moorish woman, as much from the desire to be singular as for pleasure. Vanity and ability are often the leading features in the character of the true adventurer; they certainly were in Trelawny's. Julius Millingen's statement that Trelawny imitated Odysseus so minutely that he ate, dressed, and even spat in his manner is obviously hearsay, if not malice, but it admirably hits off the weakness in his character. And he has other points which betray his Spanish blood. A peculiar