debater. His style was too essayical. But his satirical powers frequently made up for this deficiency. He could laugh from the minds of his audience the most solid conclusions, and substitute in their place his own. I am fully persuaded that this faculty, if properly managed, and had life been spared, would have made him a highly successful pleader. I have already almost implied that his essays were well received. For one of his age they were remarkable for their correctness of thought and style. I recollect one in particular. It gained him great commendation from the members. The subject was "The means of attaining a high moral standard." An anecdote which arose from this essay, will serve to illustrate its excellence. In the course of his observations he touched upon the beautics of Zenophon as a philosopher; and pictured forth his life of Cyrus as a correct model of the moral standard. This he did in so charming a manner that we all went home and read the Cyropædia with redoubled energy. I am sure my tutor at least could bear testimony to my correct recitations of the book for weeks after.

"After Maynard went to College, I knew little of him save through letters. He, however, from all that I have been enabled to collect from his fellow students, took there an elevated stand. It is believed by most of them, that he might have received the first honors of the Institution, had he not declared himself indifferent to them. As it was he was placed among its highest honored. Many of his letters are before me. They are on various subjects, and display a mind richly cultivated, if not matured. I have often had cause to admire the rapidity with which he wrote on every subject. He never corrected what he wrote, and, what is remarkable, I do not recollect ever to have detected a flagrant mistake in even his most familiar epistles.

“I could write a volume in praise of the social virtues of

our friend-but this is not the place. Suffice it to say he was generous-high minded and sincere-and seldom lost a friend where he made one."

Of the satirical powers of Maynard, as described by the friend, to whom we are indebted for the above epistle, we have little question. Much of the material which we have been compelled to exclude from this compilation, savours strongly of this characteristic; and taking a local and personal direction, particularly during the political warfare, in which it was, perhaps, his misfortune to engage, has been discarded, chiefly, for this very reason. Still, there are evidences of the talent in many of the performances here preserved; and the epigrams, which will be found at the termination of the volume, attest the evident leaning of his mind to the habit which has been ascribed to him. We would not by this, however, have it understood or supposed by the reader that he possessed that morbid and hostile malignity of temperament and thought, which is so absolutely essential to the constitution of the personal satirist. He was a creature, too gentle in his disposition—too cor.fiding, too fond and yielding, to treasure up, for a moment, the venomous discontentthe jaundiced querulousness of spirit, which finds man and society, things only of prey and pastime, and which must

*A frugment, without any of those designations which might refer it to its proper period or occasion, may be given as a specimen of this boyish satire. It is certainly no mean evidence of spirit and of poetical aptitude, if we regard the extreme youth at which he must have written it.

"When looking through the world I trace,

The discord of each human place,

The overt spleen, the lurking hate,
Which on all stations seem to wait,
I wonder-yet the cause I find,
Still planted in the human mind.
It takes its rise with earliest time

be the prime constituent in the mind and character of the habitual satirist.

In his sixteenth year (1828) he entered the Junior class of the South-Carolina College, at Columbia. Of his literary

And speeds its way through every clime.

Some sage philosopher has said,

That to the mortal eye still spread,

His fellows follies lie revealed,

While all his own are well concealed

And Rancour [Envoy] with her with'ring [jaundiced] eyes,

The merit changes to the vice.

Thus's pen with venom fraught-
A venal pen for [with] lucre bought,
Attempts to strangle at its birth,
The infant muse, inspired by mirth,
And silence nature's sweetest song
With croakings of his raven tongue.
That song of feeling's darling child
"Warbling his native wood notes wild,"
Advancing with celestial fire

From "nature up to nature's Sire,"

As erst, shall now and e'er prevail

While

-'s critic spleen shall fail.-
His verse, of hate and folly born,
Though seeking fame shall find but scorn.
'Tis Dryden says-perhaps 'twas Byron-
No matter which, the search would tire on,
That who by gentleness would soothe,
The bitter and the brainless youth,
Errs wide, as he who tries to bribe
The true—the candid critic's pride,
Who wields no prostituted pen
To hate, to party, or to men→
Whose rule of right is nature's creed,
Who gives to merit, merit's need;
Still, always eager to befriend,

The verse our nature meant to mend.

labours while at this Institution, we know comparatively little or nothing. It is more than probable that the studies and requisitions of the University, left him but little time, and afforded him few opportunities for exercises, which, whatever may be the ultimate design of education, are, in reality, irrelevant to its acquirement. Still, he must have indulged occasionally in his converse and association with the muses, for his verses seem more casy after this period, and his prose, always free and graceful, had acquired still greater freedom, and had taken on itself an air of manliness which gave an ad ded interest to the passionate flow of its general character. Associations of a like literary character with those which he enjoyed when at school in Charleston, seem here to have rather confirmed him in a habit of metaphysical disquisition; which, in time became, not less a habit than a luxury, the consequence of which unhappily appears in almost every thing which he has written. Numberless scraps of manuscript occur among his papers, containing the heads of his argument on these occasions and at these controversies; usually coupled with some brief exordium, which, while substantially proposing the question, furnished him with a text, that, by unavoidable necessity, introduced the corollary.— His research on these occasions was prodigious. All writers of whom he appears ever to have heard, who had treated of the main or any of the incidental topics, were thoroughly overhauled and examined; and the immense pile of rotes, authorities and selections, which were gathered by him in this way, and carefully preserved, would infinitely surprise the great majority of our modern and native literati. In these inquiries Maynard was indefatigable; and the 'acquisitions thus made,-the various and valuable fund of knewledge thus obtained, furnishing him at all times with ready material, and which few minds could digest with more faci

lity than his own, must have yielded him numberless advantages over his contemporaries in any future pursuit of literaturc. Our reference here has been purely to works of science and speculation to those huge tomes in which the great body of moral and metaphysical knowledge is contained, and the mere perusal of which, apart from their study and analysis, is, of itself, a monstrous, and, possibly, a meritorious labour. The industry of Maynard was not content only with this, however great, achievement. Warmly devoted to letters, the literature of the classics was at an early period of his college career, a prime object of devotion and attainment; and, while an under graduate, he delivered the oration devoted to the subject, which fully attested the success of this pursuit, and which, in the language of a critical friend, "would have done honour to the pens of Everett or Legare." "He read, (observes the same authority) the productions of Homer, Euripides and Eschylus, not so much with the feelings of a critic as a pcet. He breathed the same atmosphere with them-the mantle of their inspiration fell upon his shoulders, he caught their spirit and transfused it with uncom mon felicity into his own writings."*

This is high praise, and although not prepared to say quite as much as the authority from which we have drawn the preceding passage, we cannot scruple to believe, that there is promise-high promise in what he has left us of his mindthat such would have been his achievement, and that, this eulogy would not have been entirely unmerited in the end. The little collection here given, is one of infinite promise;-labouring too, as it does, under the several and strong disadvantages, incident to its early composition-the want of chastened elaboration, and the absence of that careful revision, which none

*From an obituary notice, contained in the "Sumter Whig”—the journai conducted by our author--then, under the control of a friend.