to give some idea of his personal appearance and deportment in company.

In his complexion the clear red upon the cheek indicated a hectic propensity, but with his brown hair, lively dark eyes, and well-proportioned features, gave an acute and interesting turn of expression to his whole countenance. He was of middle stature, of a frame rather thin than strong built, but muscular and active, and well fitted for all those athletic exertions, in which he delighted to be accounted a master. For he was no less anxious to be esteemed a man eminent for learning and literary talent, than to be held a fearless player at single-stick, a formidable boxer, and a distinguished adept at leaping, running, walking, climbing, and all exercises which depend on animal spirits and muscular exertion. Feats of this nature he used to detail with such liveliness as sometimes led his audience to charge him with exaggeration; but, unlike the athletic in Esop's apologue, he was always ready to attempt the repetition of his great leap at Rhodes, were it at the peril of breaking his neck on the spot. And certainly in many cases his spirit and energy carried him through enterprises, which his friends considered as most rashly undertaken. An instance occurred on board of ship in India, where two gentlemen, by way of ridiculing Leyden's pretensions to agility, offered him a bet of sixty gold mohrs that he could not go aloft. Our bard instantly betook himself to the shrouds, and, at all the risk incident to a landsman, who first attempts such an ascent, successfully scaled the

maintop. There it was intended to subject him to a usual practical sea-joke, by seizing him up, i. e. tying him, till he should redeem himself by paying a fine. But the spirit of Leyden dictated desperate resistance, and, finding he was likely to be overpowered, he flung himself from the top, and seizing a rope, precipitated himself on deck by letting it slide rapidly through his grasp. In this operation he lost the skin of both hands, but of course won his wager. But when he observed his friends look grave at the expensive turn which their jest had taken, he tore and flung into the sea the order for the money which they had given him, and contented himself with the triumph which his spirit and agility had gained. This little anecdote may illustrate his character in more respects than one.

In society, John Leyden's first appearance had something that revolted the fastidious and alarmed the delicate. He was a bold and uncompromising disputant, and neither subdued his tone, nor mollified the form of his argument, out of deference to the rank, age, or even sex, of those with whom he was maintaining it. His voice, which was naturally loud and harsh, was on such occasions exaggerated into what he himself used to call his sawtones, which were not very pleasant to the ear of strangers. His manner was animated, his movements abrupt, and the gestures with which he enforced his arguments rather forcible than elegant; so that, altogether, his first appearance was somewhat appalling to persons of low animal spirits, or shy and reserved habits, as well as to all who expected much reverence in society on account of the

adventitious circumstances of rank or station. Besides, his spirits were generally at top-flood, and entirely occupied with what had last arrested his attention; and thus his own feats, or his own studies, were his topic more frequently than is consistent with the order of good company, in which every person has a right to expect his share of conversation. He was indeed too much bent on attaining personal distinction in society to choose nicely the mode of acquiring it. For example, in the course of a large evening party, crowded with fashionable people, to many of whom Leyden was an absolute stranger, silence being imposed for the purpose of a song, one of his friends, with great astonishment, and some horror, heard Leyden, who could not sing a note, scream forth a verse or two of some Border ditty, with all the dissonance of an Indian war-whoop. In their way home, his friend ventured to remonstrate with him on this extraordinary exhibition, to which his defence was, "Dash it, man, they would have thought I was afraid to sing before them." In short, his egotism, his bold assumption in society, his affectation of neglecting many of its forms as trifles beneath his notice, circumstances which often excited against his first appearance an undue and disproportionate prejudice, were entirely founded upon the resolution to support his independence, and to assert that character formed between the lettered scholar, and the wild rude Borderer, the counterpart, as it were, of Anacharsis, the philosophic Scythian, which, from his infancy, he was ambitious of maintaining.

His humble origin was with him rather a subject

of honest pride than of false shame, and he was internally not unwilling that his deportment should to a certain degree partake of the simplicity of the ranks from which he had raised himself by his talents, to bear a share in the first society. He boasted in retaining these marks of his birth, as the Persian tribe, when raised to the rank of kings and conquerors, still displayed as their banner the leathern apron of the smith who founded their dynasty. He bore, however, with great good-humour all decent raillery on his rough manners, and was often ready to promote such pleasantry by his own example. When a lady of rank and fashion one evening insisted upon his dancing, he wrote next morning a lively poetical epistle to her in the character of a dancing bear. This was his usual mode of escaping or apologizing for any bevue which his high spirits and heedless habits might lead him to commit, and several very pretty copies of complimentary verses were a sort of peace-offerings for trivial encroachments upon the ceremonial of society.

Having thus marked strongly the defects of his manner, and the prejudice which they sometimes excited, we crave credit from the public, while we record the real virtues and merits by which they were atoned a thousand-fold. Leyden's apparent harshness of address covered a fund of real affection to his friends, and kindness to all with whom he mingled, unwearied in their service, and watchful to oblige them. To gratify the slightest wish of

1 See the Scots Magazine for August, 1802.

a friend, he would engage at once in the most toilsome and difficult researches, and when perhaps that friend had forgotten he ever intimated such a wish, Leyden came to pour down before him the fullest information on the subject which had excited his attention. And his temper was in reality, and notwithstanding an affectation of roughness, as gentle as it was generous. No one felt more deeply for the distress of those he loved. No one exhibited more disinterested pleasure in their success. In dispute, he never lost temper; and if he despised the outworks of ceremony, he never trespassed upon the essentials of good-breeding, and was himself the first to feel hurt and distressed if he conceived that he had, by any rash or hasty expression, injured the feelings of the most inconsiderable member of the company. In all the rough play of his argument too, he was strictly goodhumoured, and was the first to laugh, if, as must happen occasionally to those who talk much, and upon every subject, some disputant of less extensive but more accurate information, contrived to arrest him in his very pitch of pride, by a home fact or incontrovertible argument. And when his high and independent spirit, his firm and steady principles of religion and virtue, his constant goodhumour, the extent and variety of his erudition, and the liveliness of his conversation, were considered, they must have been fastidious indeed who were not reconciled to the foibles or peculiarities of his tone and manner.

Many of those whose genius has raised them to distinction have fallen into the fatal error of regard