William Maginn is no more! The bright spirit whose wit was the delight of thousands, — whose learning was the admiration of a quarter of a century, — whose poetry could win the applause of Byron himself,—and whose guileless simplicity and modesty were the charm of all who knew him, has now some years passed the portals of death, and his place knoweth him no longer! The drama is over—the last scene of his eventful history has descended, and the picturesque little village of Walton-on-Thames now contains all that was mortal of one of the most distinguished critics and scholars of the age. He died in his forty-ninth year, August 1842, leaving a wife and family to lament their irreparable loss.

Born in July 1794, the precocity of his talents astonished all who knew him, and gave a cheering presage of his future eminence. He entered college in his tenth year, and passed through it with distinction, winning all the honours that dignify and adorn an University career. For a few years he assisted his father in conducting a large and celebrated academy in Cork; but on the first appearance of Blackwood's Magazine he quitted Ireland, and edited that journal in Edinburgh. His papers are eminently original and fine; they attracted considerable attention, and would do honour to the loftiest name in our literature.