beauty and veiling vulgarity. Flo rian has the happy talent of applying the same natural simplicity to the description of those modes of life, which, under the touch of less judicious or less fortunate pens, have swelled out absurdity and bombast. Goldsmith has entered the trodden paths of life and selected the pleasant, the simple and the elegant, adorned for the relish of every taste; Florian has risen to the regions of chivalry and fairy land, and culling the splendid, the noble and the romantick, has presented them divested of style and circumstance, that often stamp them with ridicule. Some of his romances are in a style nearer to poetry than seems practicable in our language without affectation; yet either the genius of the French tongue or the judgment of the writer has divested them of that odious quality. Perhaps his advantage may be attributed in part to the peculiar aptitude of the French language for delicate sentiments and feelings. Some of the tales in the Adventurer and Spectator have no small excellence of this kind, but we have no works in our language that can be opposed to "Guillaume Tell" and "Estelle." Our shepherds and shepherdesses degenerate into gaping moralists and snivelling lovers. "Thyrsis," says Goldsmith, ❝is one of the most insipid fellows I ever knew, and as for Corydon I do not desire his acquaintance." HORACE. No author seems to slide so easily as Horace into the dress and air of a different age and nation. By the introduction of Pope, he is perfectly at home among the nobles of the English court, and lashes them even with touches of discrimination. Boi leau has given him the flippancy of a Frenchman, and Swift the sententious brevity of a fabulist. "Omnis Aristippum decuit color." Imitation has exhausted its various forms on every part of his productions. This is a true, though perhaps not a favourable introduction to the following; what is done so often and so easily the reader may expect should be done better. Imitation of Horace. 1. XI. With no incurious hand; The corks assum'd their watchful post, You reached our native strand. Dear Joe, methinks the joy I trace, The joyful tidings past. Rich wines you drink of various names, With courtly D and noble A When cheerful guests resort; But simple cider here you find, To garnish off a friendly mind, At most a glass of port. SUBTILTY OF THE LAW. THE grave digger's argument upon the funeral obsequies of Ophelia was intended by Shakespeare to burlesque the law. One of the clowns is a great argufier, and justifies the verdict of the coroner's inquest upon the daughter of Polonius, by saying, "she drowned herself in her own de fence: it must be se offendendo,for here lies the point; if I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act, and an act hath three branches: it is, to act, to do, and to perform: argal, she drowned herself wittingly." irresistible force of this conclusion, The On this Sir John Hawkins has given us a note worth transcription. "I strongly suspect that this is a ridicule on the case of Dame Hales. It seems, her husband Sir James Hales had drowned himself in a river, and the question was, whether by this act a forfeiture of a lease from the dean and chapter of Canterbury which he was possessed of, did not accrue to the crown; an inquisition was found before the coroner, which found him felo de se. The legal and logical subtilties, arising in the course of the argument of this case gave a very fair opportunity for a sneer at crowner's quest law. A great deal of subtilty was used to ascertain whether Sir James was the agent or the patient; or, in other words whether he went to the water or the water came to him. The cause of Sir James' madness was the circumstance of his having been the Judge, who condemned Lady Jane Grey." Professor Christian in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, has quoted from Plowden part of the argument, if so it may be called, of the Chief Justice, (Sir James Dyer) which proves himself as mad as the defunct at least; "The felony, says he, is attributed to the act; which act is always done by a living man, as my brother Brown said; for he said Sir James Hales was dead; and how came he to his death? It may be answered, by drowning; and who drowned him? Sir James Hales; and when did he drown him? In his life time. So that Sir James Hales, being alive, caused Sir James Hales to die; and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. And then for this offence it is reasonable to punish the living man who committed the offence, and not the dead man. But how can he be said to be punished alive, when the punishment comes after his death? Sir, this can be done no other way but by divesting out of him, from the time of the act done in his lifetime, which was the cause of his death, the title and property of those things which he had in his lifetime." PICTURES. THE value of pictures is sometimes exaggerated by amateurs, and will be always thought to be so by those who are ignorant of the subject. Yet many a person will pass heedlessly by a painting of Raphael or Corregio, who will guard with peculiar care a mishapen piece of plate, merely because it is two or three centuries old; surely then, it is excusable to appreciate with enthusiasm an original work of some great genius whose beauties time has respected and even increased. The pleasures attendant on the possession of good paintings, when once felt, will be sought for; and it is to be hoped, that they will daily become less rare among us. biography of pictures, if it may be so termed, enhances their interest; and the perilous vicissitudes, which some of them have undergone, excite almost as much curiosity, as the dangers to which "adventurous damsels" have been exposed from their own beauty, the attacks of barbar. ous men, and the devastations of time. The Mr. Angerstein of London, has a small but precious collection of pictures, the principal of which is the Resurrection of Lazarus, by Michael Angelo, one of the most famous pictures in the world: its history was related to me by Mr. West. The Cardinal de Medicis obtained leave of the pope to have two ictures painted for him by Raphael and Michael Angelo. To the former he gave the subject of the Transfiguration. Raphael did not live to finish it entirely, but it is universally esteemed the most perfect work of art now existing, and it forms the first treasure of the gallery of the Louvre. The subject, given by the cardinal to Michael Angelo, was the Resurrection of Lazarus ; he sketched the picture, which was finished by his scholar Del Piombo. When the cardinal became pope, he made a present of it to a convent in a city of the south of France, of which he had been bishop. When the regent Duke of Orleans was forming his collection, he purchased it, and it made the chief ornament of that celebrated Gallery, which was broken up in the beginning of the French revolution, and its most valuable works carried to England, when this picture was bought by Mr. Anger stein. A very famous picture of Corregio experienced many adventures, and perished miserably. After the taking of Prague, in 1648, Gustavus Adolphus transported two pictures of Corregio, which he found in that city, to the palace at Stockholm, a Leda, and a Diana. At his death they were totally neglected, and remained so during the minority of queen Christina. They were found, after much search had been made for them, serving as blinds to the windows of the royal stables. They were restored in the best manner possible, and the queen who knew how to appreciate their merit, carried them with her to Rome. Af. ter her death, they passed into the hands of Don Olivio Odeschalchi : he preserved them with great care, but his heirs sold the greater part of his collection. These pictures were bought by the regent Duke of Orleans. At his death they passed to his son, and he with a severity, the opposite of his father's dissoluteness, ordered the picture to be cut to pieces in his presence, and particu larly burnt the head of the Leda. The remnants of this masterpiece were gathered together, and became the property of M. Pasquier. He proposed to Carlo Vanloo and Boucher to restore the head, but their modesty made them decline it. A nother painter at the time little known, named Deslyen, who had studied Corregio attentively, undertook the work and succeeded. Duchange made a very good engraving of this picture, but having grown devout towards the close of his life, he repented having engraved it, and destroyed his plate. FROM whatever it proceeds, whether from vanity or from pride, from the hope of being remembered with gratitude and tears of mingled joy and sorrow, or from a secret fear of being forgotten or recollected only with contempt or indignation; the fact is certain, and cannot be denied, that every man is anxious to leave inscribed on his tombstone such a character, as if it neither involves nor displays many eminent virtues, may at least conceal or palliate his vices. I would not willingly incur the blame arising from the suspicion of being uncharitable, but it is my full and firm belief that ma ny, whose lives were probably disgraced by paltry designs or sinister motives, are after death praised (and the marble does not, only because it cannot, blush to record the lie) for the greatest elevation of mind, and an incorruptible integrity of heart. Others, who perhaps had published acrosticks in a newspaper, or had written or selected charades and riddles for a magazine or an almanack, are immortalized in their epitaphs, as poets little inferiour in all the powers and faculties of genius, to Homer or Virgil. Many a man, whose gloomy countenance perhaps never beamed with that dawning, brightening smile, which precedes and accompanies benevolence opening into action, and discharging its full and overflowing kindness in the relief of sorrow and of want, is, when his cheek can no longer redden at such wanton violation of truth, celebrated for a liberality which knew no limits, and for a tenderness which disdained all partiality. Nay, instances there are, and I am sorry they are not a few, of those, who, when cold and mouldering into dust, have whispered from their graves, that though they lived its votaries, and died the martyrs of intemperance, their characters were mistaken. for somebody has discovered and eternized the discovery on the slab which covers these consuming bodies, that sobriety was the moving spring and directing principle of their whole conduct. I once knew, and while reading the abominable falsehood in his epitaph, I could not stifle, I did not even attempt to qualify with pity, the indignation which an open and flagrant outrage of general opinion and sentiment never fails to excite; Lonce knew a libertine and a deist, whose epitaph, written in the mere and unadulterated style of frontless panegyrick, extols the purity of his morals, and the soundness of his faith. But that epitaphs are always, without a single exception, false and undeserved, I am unwilling to believe; nay, I am persuaded that of monumental inscriptions, many are true and really due to the memory of the deceased. To exemplify the foregoing remark in its greatest latitude, perhaps the epitaph of Alexander VI. written by Sannazarius, is the happiest instance I could possibly adduce. Fortasse nescis cujus hic tumulus fiet, Titulum, quam Alexandri vides haud Magni est, sed hujus qui modo Tot regna vertit, tot duces letho dedit, Orbem rapinis, ferro, et igne funditus Timore sublato semel. There is nothing extravagant or irreverent in Pope's epitaph on Sir Isaac Newton; and to Dr. Samuel Johnson, though nothing but his name is found on the marble, which protects his ashes, it would be impossible in an epitaph to ascribe a prouder sublimity of piety and vir tue, or a wider extent of learning and genius, than he actually possessed. The excellence however of an epitaph consists not in the swell of periods, or in a certain varying and almost enchanting melody of cadence, which is sometimes heard, but in that severe, though elegant simplicity, which insensibly and irresistably connects in melancholy contemplation, the author of the ep ty to spare. One of the finest, because it is artlessly simple, of commemorative poems, though I do not find that it ever appeared as an epitaph, is Ben Jonson's Epigramme on his first son. As it is full of tenderness, and may be safely imitated as a model of this kind of writing, no apology is necessary for subjoining it entire. Farewell, thou child of my right hand. and joy ; My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy, Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate on the just day. To have so soon 'scap'd world's and And if no other misery, yet age itaph, with the subject of the in- arrant jilt, she had very little beauscription. Johnson's Latin Epitaph on Goldsmith illustrates the preceding observation, and I know not, whether, if the round robin, addressed to Johnson, and requesting that a translation into English might be inscribed on Goldsmith's tomb had attained its object, we should not feel our love for Goldsmith cool, and our reverence for Johnson diminish. It would hardly have been possible for him, who was acquainted with all the delicacies, as well as with every energy of his native tongue, to have expressed in the vernacular idiom, such tender, such vivid affection; and it is undeniable, that without appearing to flatter, he could not have bestowed such manly encomium as he has expressed and bestowed through the medium of a language, at once foreign and obsolete. And here I may be permitted to protest against that swollen and bloated kind of panegyrick, which always disgraces, instead of honouring (though such without doubt, is in every case its sincere intention) the character of departed virtue or beauty. The memory of Hector or of Helen would not be reverenced with a deeper awe, or cherished with a warmer love, if Chandler or Stuart had found the tombs of both; and if of the inscriptions which lead to the discovery, the first had extolled the son of Priam as virtuous beyond the reach or hope of imitation; and the second had represented Paris' mistress as too beautiful to fear a superiour or an equal, from such false and fulsome praise, if it exist ed, we should be strongly inclined to suspect, that Hector was no better than he should have been; and as for Helen, that though she was probably a belle in her day, yet that getting aside her reputation as an Vol. V. No. VI. 2 P Ben Jonson his best piece of poetrie, For whose sake henceforth all his vowe be such, As what he loves may never like too much. USAGES AT FRENCH TABLES. M. Delille, the French poet, being one day at dinner at Marmontel's, related something which he had been reading upon the fashions observed at table in gen teel companies. They were speaking of the multitude of little things of which a plain, honest man must not be ignorant if he would avoid being ridiculed by the world." They are innumerable, says M. Delille; and what is most provoking is that all the genius in the world is not sufficient to divine these important trifles." He added, the abbe Cosson, professor of belles lettres in the college Mazarin, was lately speaking to me dinner where he was a guest, some of a |