came to that fine soliloquy, engrafted from the chorus in Henry the Fifth, he made wretched work of it. He destroyed the measure by running the lines into confluence, and ruined the solemnity by common-life intonation.-Seward.

188.

WHEN any person called on Scarron, he

was obliged to take a seat, and hear all the compositions which he had produced since their last meeting. When I went to see him, together with a man of letters, he made us sit down and try on, as he termed it, his new work. It was "The Comic Romance." When he saw that we smiled; "Good! it will fit," said he. He was a man of uncommon humour in conversation, even under anger and grief; for the ridiculous part of everything was immediately presented to his mind by the vivacity of his imagination, and uttered in a moment by the facility of his expression. On his marriage with Madame Maintenon, his speech, before too free and licentious on all subjects, was much restrained and amended. His "Comic Romance" was for the most part written after his marriage.-Segraisiana.

189.

You request my opinion of Cowper.

He

appears to me at once a fascinating and great poet; as a descriptive one, hardly excelled; novel and original, even in landscape painting, whose stores the luxuriant and exquisite Thomson

seemed to have exhausted; but true poetic genius, looking at the objects of nature with its own eyes, rather than through the medium of remembered description from the pen of others, will ever find her exhaustless.-Seward.

WHEN

190.

THEN the Duke of Clarence (William IV.) was a very young man, he happened to be dining at the equerries' table. Among the company was Major Price. The Duke told one of his facetious stories. "Excellent!" said Price; "I wish I could believe it." "If you say that again, Price," cried the Duke, "I'll send this claret at your head." Price did say it again. Accordingly the claret came, and it was returned. I had this from Lord St Helens, who was one of the party.— Rogers.

191.

SOME of Cowley's poetry enchants me not less

than yourself; but in general, I am soon weary of treading the intricate mazes of his wit. His ode, entitled the "Complaint," on the place at court promised to him being presented to another, is peculiarly my favourite. It has sublime imagery and beautiful allusion, with great simplicity of style, and its tender irony upon his own pursuits affects one strangely.

Johnson, whose decision is, on the whole, not unfavourable to Cowley, speaks with scorn of that

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ode; but it was his custom, even where he spoke favourably in the aggregate, to reprobate the best work of the poet he is reviewing, as if unwilling that the reader should estimate him by that just test, viz., his most beautiful composition. Thus, while he commends Lord Lyttelton, he expresses scorn of the poem his fame must live by, his Monody." And it is thus he affects to despise those lovely little tales of Prior's, so highly original, so enchanting to the fancy. It is true, nothing can be more tiresome than a poet's serious allusion to Venus, Minerva, and the rest of the Pagan personages, as companions for his mistress; but their humorous, playful, gallant, happy intermixture by Prior with common-life circumstances, in honour of his Chloe, is one of that writer's most brilliant claims to poetic distinction.—Seward.

THE

192.

HE following description of Bridget Brady by her lover, Thaddeus Ruddy, a bard who lived about the middle of the seventeenth century, is perhaps unique as a specimen of local simile:

"She's as straight as a pine on the mountain of Kilmannon, She's as fair as the lilies on the banks of the Shannon; Her breath is as sweet as the blossoms of Drumcallan, And her breasts gently swell like the waves of Lough Allan ;

Her eyes are as mild as the dews of Dunsany,

Her veins are as pure as the blue bells of Slaney;
Her words are as smooth as the pebbles of Terwinny,
And her hair flows adown like the streamlets of Finny,"

193.

A NEW star is arisen in our poetic hemisphere

with very powerful lustre ; yet I by no means think its generally red and angry beams very auspicious to human happiness or to human virtue. The name of this luminary is Cowper. His work, entitled "The Task," has many and great poetic beauties, both as to imagery, landscape, and sentiment; yet the author perpetually shows himself to be a sarcastic misanthropist. It opens, however, with a gay and enchanting genealogy of seats, from the three-legged stool of Alfred to the accomplished sofa of George the Third; but this delicious gaiety of spirit soon shuts in. Do you remember these lines in an old Scotch ballad, called the "Flowers of the Forest ?"—

"I have seen Tweed streaming,

With sunbeams bright gleaming,

Grow drumly and black as he rolls on his way."

So it is with the muse of Cowper.-Seward.

194.

AMBROSE PHILLIPS was a neat dresser, and

very vain. In a conversation between him, Congreve, Swift, and others, the discourse ran a good while upon Julius Cæsar. After many things had been said to the purpose, Ambrose asked what sort of person they supposed Cæsar was? He was answered, that, from medals, &c., it appeared that he was a small man and thin faced.

"Now, for my part," said Ambrose, "I should take him to have been of a lean make, pale complexion, extremely neat in his dress, and five feet seven inches high "—an exact description of Phillips himself. Swift, who understood good-breeding perfectly well, and would not interrupt anybody while speaking, let him go on, and, when he had quite done, said—“And I, Mr Phillips, should take him to have been a plump man, just five feet five inches high, and very neatly dressed in a black gown with pudding-sleeves."

THOSE

195.

HOSE Popes who have had children seem to have been the best Popes. Paul III. was a great character and an able politician. Æneas Sylvius, alias Pius II., had a son, of whom he speaks highly in one of his letters. Gregory XIII., who was a very excellent Pope, had a son, of whom he was very fond.

196.

THE Berkshire proverb, that the Vicar of Bray

will be Vicar of Bray still, being frequently revived in the political conduct of our great men, the following little anecdote of that conscientious vicar, comprising the original words of the proverb, may not be unacceptable to our readers :

Bray is a village near Maidenhead, in Berkshire, and the ancient vicar thereof, living under King Henry VIII., King Edward VI., Queen Mary,