but an author can hope to undertake satisfactorily. The crude thought, hastily conceived and hurriedly committed to paper, can only receive due correction from the mind that conceives it; and with this belief we have been compelled to throw aside, though with many scruples, numerous passages, comprising the germ of many a fine conception and brilliant design, which, under his hands, might have attained all the growth and beauty, which they undoubtedly promised.

It was while Maynard was a member of the senior class of the South Carolina College, that a Dramatic corps under the direction of Mr. De Camp, for some years after, the Manager, established a Theatre in Columbia; at that period something of a novelty to its citizens. To a student, and a profound admirer of the muses, this was an event of highest interest; and the offer of a prize, by the Manager, for a poetical address adapted to the opening of the new temple, immediately instigated our young author-then in his seventeenth year-to undertake the performance. He did so, and succeeded. The address was chosen by a committee of high character, and was spoken, we believe, with considerable effect. We are not informed as to the number of competitors, but presume, that, as is usual on these occasions, they were neither few in number, nor deficient in industry and talent. The successful poem, which will be found in our poetical department, is not a fair specimen of the abilities of the writer. The hacknied character of the theme and occasion, the difficulty of saying any thing new on such a subject, and the extreme youth of its author, were all so many obstacles in the way of a performance, the memory of which might be lasting. The address, therefore, is rather that of a gentleman, to whom the Belles Lettres were a taste and a pastime, than of a poet. The images and ideas employed, are, of necessity, common place; and such as are unavoidably suggested

by the subject. Many of them appear elsewhere, and in the old writers; and the chief merit, therefore, of the article "in question, is the graceful and flowing versification, and a few, somewhat novel, combinations of ideas and images, pecu liar to the theme. The structure of the verse is perfectly unexceptionable, and with, perhaps, a solitary exception, uncommonly easy and harmonious. In its members, however, it is incoherent, and, if we may so speak, inconsecutive. The song wanders from one topic to another before each is exhausted; and we find the former recurred to, before we have well made our way into and through that, to which, in like manner, we had been previously hurried. But this is a venial error, and incident to all juvenile performances. The wonder is, that, in a production of such length, and of a character so ambitious, the defects and exuberances should be so few and unimportant,

To this single achievement, however, the labours of our author, while at College, do not appear to have been limited; and, although we are not advised of any other performance, strictly of a public or popular character, from his pen, beyond an occasional display before the Clariosophic Society, and other associations of which he was a member, his attainments and reputation seem rapidly to have been progressing. His correspondence, at this period-which, from its personal and domestic character, we are not at liberty to make use of-bears strong testimony to the manliness and originality of his mind, and its einployments. His propensity to philosophical inquiry and criticism—the close and scrupulous self-examination which, in these habits, his mind continually underwent, seemed to prepare him, naturally as it were, to digress, with the most perfect freedom and success, even in the most familiar compositions, to opinions as lofty and comprehensive, as the arguments by which they

were sustained, were novel and ingenious. In this way, eve ry class of letters, the analytical and nice, not less than the graceful and imaginative, became subservient to his requisi tion; and, we see him, at fits, starting with grace and sweetness, and not so abruptly as to offend, from the grave discussion of a metaphysical or moral problem to the most airy regions of fiction and romance; even as the bird, suddenly leaping from the spray upon which he has brooded with something of human abstraction, whirls lofty into the sunshine, making the groves ring with the music of a spirit, in whom harmony itself can find no imperfection.

In December, of the year 1830, Mr. Richardson graduated, taking a third honor. It has been suggested, as the reader will remember, by the friend to whom we have been in debted for various and valuable notes upon the early life of our subject, that he might have taken a first honor,,but for his indifference to the distinction. We know not to what causes his failure so to do, must be attributed; for, though having few doubts on the subject of his capacity, we are yet unwilling to believe, that one, whose bosom we well knew to be filled with an ambition not less soaring than honorable, and to whom a well-won laurel was no mean temptation, could entertain any such feeling of indifference. There may have been some morbid prompter-some antagonistic principle, turbidly troubling the waters of his spirit at this period, and preventing or neutralizing aim and exertion. The poetical mood--that fierce and restless fever of the mind-may have found its enthusiasm straightened or rebuked, by some controlling and vexing circumstances in his college career at this period, of which we are unaware; but, we confess, we are not free to recognize the validity of the reason thus furnished by our friend. The thesis, submitted by him on graduating, was a paper devoted to his favorite

Popic, and one, which, of late years, has been of absorbing interest-the Classical Education. Of this performance we have briefly spoken in a preceding passage. Its success appears to have been peculiar, and to have confirmed those anticipations of his future eminence, which his previous performances had already sufficiently awakened. With a spirit worthy of his theme, he took ground against the modern heresies of opinion, which, by the free use of the petitio principii, have declared against its utility. He combatted with much success the notion, that, because of the independence of such aids and auxiliars, which a few guiding and great minds, at different periods of time, have exhibited, they are to be considered unnecessary in all other cases; and, though in a wandering and immethodical manner, he appears to have taken in and occupied, with considerable force, the entire ground of the question. The Classical Education,the literature and the arts, refined and polite, of the ancients, upon which he had, while yet a youth, pondered with a large and comprehensive spirit—furnished topics of thought and attraction, upon which the growing and ardent mind, such as belonged to Maynard, might well dilate and be eloquent; and from all accounts, on this occasion, he was particularly 80. From the faculty of the college, he was honored with high encomiums; and their decision, in the distribution of the honors, which awarded him none higher than that which he received, was, we are told, warmly and not without some show of justice, dissented from by many of his fellow collegiates. It is to be regretted that the original draft of this performance is not attainable. A mere skeleton, and that too of the most unsatisfactory and fragmentary description, has been preserved in this volume, chiefly drawn from the columns of a newspaper, where it underwent partial publication. As it appears, we are at a loss to recognize,

from the description given, the glowing strain which is said to have distinguished the college exercise. It is stript of many of those aids and ornaments which gave it a free flow upon the ear of the auditory; and, in the less pretending formi of the essay-though sufficiently obnoxious still to the reprehensions of a severe taste-it has been deprived, by a more eritical spirit than that in which it had been conceived, of much of that glow and glitter, which probably won for it most of the applause by which it appears to have been greeted upon its delivery. In its present shape, it is strangely unsatisfactory. The argument is entirely incomplete-the transitions from one to another of its premises and details, too hurried to admit of full, or even partial justice to any one of them; and all that we can now perceive of merit, in what has been left us, of a performance confessedly highly popu lar at the time of its inception, is a graceful and flowing diction, and a rather profuse, but not unpleasing, freedom of illustration and ornament.

Having now quitted college, he proposed to himself the study of the law, and leisurely, at intervals, from this period, until his life took a new, and perhaps, not an uncongenial direction, he employed himself in the acquisition of the elementary principles of that noble science. Such a pursuit, admirably accorded with the acute and logical turn of his mind, and there is little doubt,-considering, in connection with this characteristic, another, not less so, in the free and extreme facility, which, at his age, he possessed, of language and composition—that, had he lived, and chosen to pursue the profession, his success, as an advocate, must have been decided. Currently with this study, he employed himself in the education of two younger brothers, by which exercise he still further refreshed and strengthened his own college acquisitions; and in this manner was passed, not unprofita