to take a lively interest in the tastes and pursuits of the age, while it saves the journalist from some ridiculous blunders. We often see the mind of a reviewer half a century remote from the work reviewed. A fine feeling of the various manners of writers, with a style, adapted to fix the attention of the indolent, and to win the untractable, should be his study; but Candour is the brightest gem of criticism! He ought not to throw every thing into the crucible, nor should he suffer the whole to pass as if he trembled to touch it. Lampoons, and satires, in time will lose their effect, as well as panegyrics. He must learn to resist the seductions of his own pen; the pretensions of composing a treatise on the subject, rather than on the book he criticises, proud of insinuating that he gives in a dozen pages, what the author himself has not been able to perform in his volumes. Should he gain confidence by a popular delusion and by unworthy conduct, he may chance to be mortified by the pardon or the chastisement of insulted genius. The most noble criticism is that, in which the critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author.

RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.

OUR ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation. Many, we know, have perished: many we possess are but fragments; and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has given us some, not of the highest value; which, however, have proved very useful, serving as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional prejudice.

One reason, writes the learned compiler of L'Esprit des Croisades, why we have lost a great number of ancient authors, was the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the papyrus. The ignorance of that age could find no substitute; they knew no other expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously defaced pages once imagined to have been immortal! The most elegant compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus "hide their diminished heads" to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers;

these were preferred, because their volume being the greatest, it most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or Horace; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal, Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have accused them. Not long ago at Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the lines of a parchment but half effaced, on which they had substituted a book of the Bible; and the recent discovery of Cicero de republica shows the fate of ancient manuscripts.

That, however, the monks had not in high veneration the profane authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign; when a monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw-because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog! In this manner they expressed an itching for those dogs, Virgil or Horace!

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There have been ages when for the possession of a manuscript, some would transfer an estate; or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the мs. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, to make a copy, from the library of the faculty of Paris, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile at an anterior period, when a countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies, for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of wheat and rye.

In these times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn: a student of Pavia, who was reduced by his debaucheries, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked, and the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humble industry, which often produced a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, much of which has descended to us, their adventures of manuscripthunting are very amusing, and their raptures, their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their censures, are all immoderate and excessive. The acquisition of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as the discovery of an author little known, or not known at all. "Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I intreat you, my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity was greater than his purse. But even among the learned,