LIFE AND MISCELLANIES OF LAMAN BLANCHARD.
Tan Life, with which Sir Bulwer Lytton has prefaced these Miscellanies of Laman Blanchard, is one of the most graceful, considerate, and sensible things he has done. He has rendered full justice to the fascinat- ing disposition and the other engaging personal qualities which distin- guished his friend, and put in a prominent light his pleasant thoughts, his happy turns, and his extraordinary facility of composition, without the sacrifice of critical truth or social judgment. Perhaps it is less a life than a sketch as regards Blanchard's mid-career • his various literary undertakings and mode of living being so condense as to wear the cha- racter of a literary notice rather than a biography, which should furnish full information, even at some sacrifice of breadth of effect. The Memoir has, however, this distinguishing characteristic of excellence—it is com- prehensive: it not only contains the truth as regards Blanchard, but as regards the class to which he belonged. And Lam= Blanchard was one of "that nnprosperous race called men of letters" : not the politician or the scholar, the critic, or the scientific writer, but the "author," Who composes prose or verse upon any subject, as the occasion requires, and, without much of reading or study, trusts for matter to his own brain and what observation has copied there. A century ago, Blanchard might have lived the life of Savage, Johnson, or Goldsmith, in their unlucky days, or some of those still more unfortu- nates whom Smollett has caricatured and Goldsmith has commemorated with alternate sadness and melancholy gibe. But fortune threw him upon a better age; and though he suffered privations, it was only as a youth, when any one must suffer them if cast upon the world, without friends, money, or pursuit.
He also resembled some of his class in that he "left a calling for this idle trade." His father was a painter and glazier in Southwark ; and young Blanchard was educated at St. Olave's School. At this foundation a scholar is annually elected to be sent to the University; where he is supported for one year, leaving the other two years to be supplied from his own resources. So mach was expected from young Blanchard by the Master and Trustees, that they offered to support him for a second year ; but his family were unwilling or unable to raise the means for the third ; and Larnan Blanchard was placed in a proctor's office. Here he "penned a stanza when he should engross"; and was smitten with a passion for the stage. The entire ease of his career daring part of his teens seems some- what deficient for want of evidence : but we learn, or we infer, that his master dismissed him, or he dismissed himselc or his father removed him, with a view to making him a painter and glazier; that young Blanchard eloped, and tried a stroller's life, but got sick of it in a week ; and that finally his father turned him out of doors. At this crisis of his life he contemplated suicide; and was only saved by his friend Buckstone, the actor, following him in chase, and seizing him as he approached West- minster Bridge stairs. Soon after this, he got a situation as reader in a printing-office, which would facilitate a connexion with the press ; and at twenty be married. For the remaining twenty years of his life he was continually before the public, if not by name at least in reality, as con • tributor, sub-editor, or editor, till incessant exertion, and the loss of his wife, broke down a temperament naturally sensitive, and probably, as Sir Bulwer Lytton intimates, constitutionally disposed to suicide. Apparently, a total derangement of the nervous system ensued ; making the most tri- vial things matter of agony ; and, under circumstances closely analogous to those of Romilly, he perished by his own hand, in his forty-first year.
His character has been drawn with so much delicacy and discrimination by his biographer, who had the advantage of personal knowledge, that we shall not attempt to follow him : for quotation we have not room, and indeed we had rather the reader should go to the book. A trait of Blan- chard's singleness and self-devotedness has been mentioned by Mr. Fox, in his "Lectures addressed chiefly to the Working Classes,' which we may pat on record as a memorial and specific anecdote of the man.
"Of Leman Blan.thard I would say, he has won his claim to notice here by his zealous, his attentive, his disinterested exertions, when the attempt was made to establish for the working classes a daily paper, The True Sun. Blanchard edited that paper when its finances were in such a state that its existence from day to day was the result of a struggle, and when he had almost to force his way into the office through a host of claimants, whose haste and eagerness tended to defeat their own object. At that time, Blanchard supported himself by literary labour in other ways, and rendered his gratuitous services as editor to aid in the estab- lishment of this newspaper. He did more: the stamps required for publication had to be paid for from day to day; yet with all the difficulties the paper never failed to appear. On one occasion the emergency was pressing, and Blanchard, whose services be it remembered were gratuitous, actually pawned his watch to purchase stamps for the day's impression. The paper came out at its proper time: it bore the marks of his talent and industry OR its pages, but no indication of the hard strumle by which it had won its way into the world. These are things to be re- memred of a man."
Observing that the variety and contemporary nature of this collection of Sketches from Life will prevent them from tiring the reader, as their subjects will interest him and their treatment please, we let Sir Bulwer Lytton speak, in a more general criticism on the volume. He has men- tioned the various drawbacks which beset Blanchard in his struggles with fortune, the demands upon his time, and the peculiar constitution of English society, which renders it impossible to find an office for the man of the pen • and then he proceeds.
"But when all is said—when all the drawbacks upon what he actually was are made and allowed—enough remains to justify warm eulogy, and to warrant the rational hope that he will occupy an honourable place among the writers of his age. Putting aside hisfprierical pretensions, and regarding solely what he performed, not what he promised, he unquestionably stands high amongst a class of writers in which for the last century we have not been rich—the essayists whose themes are drawn from social subjects, sporting lightly between literature and manners. And this kind of composition extremely (11'6, ult in itself, requiring intellectual combinations rarely found. The volumes prefaced by this slight Memoir deserve a place in every collection of belles lettres, and form most agreeable and charac- teristic illustrations of our manners and our age. They possess what is seldom found in light reading, the charm that comes from bequeathing pleasurable ha- pressions. They are suffused in the sweetness of the author's disposition; they shun all painful views of life, all acerbity in observation, all gall in their gentle sarcasm. Added to this, they contain not a thought, not a line, from which the most anxious went would guard his child. They may be read with safety by the most simple, and yet they contain enough of truth and character to interest the most reflective. Such works, more than many which aspire to a higher flight, and address themselves to truth with a ruder and more vigorous courtship, are calculated to enjoy a tranquil popularity, and a favoured station amongst the
i dead who survive n books."
A speaking portrait is prefixed to the life, from an original.drawn by Mr. Maclisefrom memory ; and the volumes are illustrated by a variety of wood-cuts by different artists, who contribute their• quota to impart attraction to the last memorials of a man of that happy constitution that "he made friends wherever he went."
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