sembled that of our Shakspeare, and who has so forcibly expressed the sublime sentiments of the hero, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius; on the contrary, his conversation was so insipid that it never failed of wearying. Nature, who had lavished on him the gifts of genius, had forgotten to blend with them her more ordinary ones. He did not even speak correctly that language of which he was such a master.

When his friends represented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile, and say "I am not the less Peter Corneille!" Descartes, whose habits were formed in solitude and meditation, was silent in mixed company; and Thomas describes his mind by saying that he had received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, but not in current coin; or as Addison expressed the same idea, by comparing himself to a banker who possessed the wealth of his friends at home, though he carried none of it in his pocket; or as that judicious moralist Nicolle, one of the Port-Royal Society, said of a scintillant wit"He conquers me in the drawing-room, but he surrenders to me at discretion on the staircase." Such may say with Themistocles, when asked to play on a lute," I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city."

The deficiencies of Addison in conversation are well known. He preserved a rigid silence

amongst strangers; but if he was silent, it was the silence of meditation. How often, at that moment, he laboured at some future Spectator!

Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.

The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having passed an evening in his company, to "a silent parson in a tie-wig." It is no shame for an Addison to receive the censures of a Mandeville; he has only to blush when he calls down those of a Pope.

Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an ordinary man than an enchanting poet.

La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coarse, heavy, and stupid; he could not speak or describe what he had just seen; but when he wrote he was the model of poetry.

It is very easy, said a humorous observer on La Fontaine, to be a man of wit, or a fool; but to be both, and that too in the extreme degree, is indeed admirable, and only to be found in him. This observation applies to that fine natural genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him by saying that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conversation.

Isocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical compositions, was of so timid a disposition, that he

never ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to the whetstone which will not cut, but enables other things to do this; for his productions served as models to other orators. Vaucanson was said to be as much a machine as any he had made.

Dryden says of himself,-" My conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees."

VIDA.

WHAT a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by the efforts of his own merits, attain from the humblest obscurity to distinguished eminence! What a transport for the man of sensibility to return to the obscure dwelling of his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public honours! Poor Vida was deprived of this satisfaction; but he is placed higher in our esteem by the present anecdote than even by that classic composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of his great master.

Jerome Vida, after having long served two Popes, at length attained to the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity, he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicitated himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their bishop.

When he arrived at their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since they were no more! His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. The muse, elegantly querulous, dictated some elegiac verse; and in the sweetest pathos deplored the death and the disappointment of his parents.

THE SCUDERIES.

Bien heureux SCUDERY, dont la fertile plume
Peut tous less mois sans peine enfanter un volume.

BOILEAU has written this couplet on the Scuderies, the brother and sister, both famous in their day for composing romances, which they sometimes extended to ten or twelve volumes. It was the favourite literature of that period, as novels are now. Our nobility not unfrequently condescended to translate these voluminous compositions.

The diminutive size of our modern novels is undoubtedly an improvement: but, in resembling the size of primers, it were to be wished that their contents had also resembled their inoffensive pages. Our great grandmothers were incommoded with overgrown folios; and, instead of finishing the eventful history of two lovers at one or two sittings, it was sometimes six months, including Sundays, before they could get quit of their Clelias, their Cyrus's, and Parthenissas.

Mademoiselle Scudery, Menage informs us, had

composed ninety volumes! She had even finished another romance, which she would not give the public, whose taste, she perceived, no more relished this kind of works. She was one of those unfortunate authors who ninety years of age, survive their own celebrity.

living to more than

She had her panegyrists in her day: Menage observes, "What a pleasing description has Mademoiselle Scudery made, in her Cyrus, of the little court at Rambouillet! A thousand things in the romances of this learned lady render them inestimable. She has drawn from the ancients their happiest passages, and has even improved upon them; like the prince in the fable, whatever she touches becomes gold. We may read her works with great profit, if we possess a correct taste, and love instruction. Those who censure their length only show the littleness of their judgment; as if Homer and Virgil were to be despised, because many of their books are filled with episodes and incidents that necessarily retard the conclusion. It does not require much penetration to observe, that Cyrus and Clelia are a species of the epic poem. The epic must embrace a number of events to suspend the course of the narrative; which only taking in a part of the life of the hero, would terminate too soon to display the skill of the poet. Without this artifice, the charm of uniting the greater part of the episodes to the principal subject of the romance