their kitchens, and we shall see as great a number of flies busy there in their attendance, who soon vanish when the dishes are all empty and clean; so would the former set of insects vanish from their dining-rooms, were there no longer any rich viands and wines to detain them. -Ibid. The Retort Valiant. Theano, a famous Grecian philosopher, and, as the French express it, "a sayer of good things," retorted upon an enemy who had abused him, with this sharp reproof, "We both lose our labour: you revile me, and I praise you always, and no one believes either of us." An English poet has imitated this sarcasm with his usual ease of diction: You are always speaking ill of me, M. Prior. Degrading Allusions. An author should be cautious of rendering his subject liable to these degradations. Plutarch, speaking of the ceasing of many of the oracles, imputes it to the world's being thinner peopled at that time than formerly. "The Gods," says he, "would not deign to use so many interpreters of their wills to so small an handful of people." The reader here immediately ascribes this allusion to strolling players being deterred from an exhibition of their dramatic performances, because they were afraid of having a "thin house." Heinsius. This eminent commentator has a fine reflection on entering his study: "Plerumque in quâ simul ac pedem posui, pessalum obdo foribus. Ambitionem autem, amorem, libidinem, avaritiam excludo; quorum parens est ignavia, imperitia nutrix. Et ipso æternitatis gremio, inter tot illustres animos sedem mihi sumo cum ingenti quidem animo, ut subinde me misereat, qui felicitatem hanc ignorant." "As soon as I enter my study, by shutting the door I exclude ambition, love, lust; and avarice, the offspring of idleness, and whose nurse is the want of erudition. Here, in the very bosom of eternity, I take my side amongst the illustrious souls which surround me, and compassionate the greatest nobles, to whom this pleasure is a stranger." Lycurgus and Plato. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, is said to have collected together all the works of Homer which could be found in Asia Minor, and to have introduced them into Greece. Plato, on the contrary, when he planned a commonwealth, resolved to exclude all poets from his state. The readers of poetry will rejoice in the reflection, that Lycurgus was the founder of a real commonwealth, and Plato only dreamed of his, and his wild notions subsided in theory. Ancient Mythology. The ancients, with the dexterity of self-love, erected their passions into deities. Temples to Victory, to Venus Publica, to Fortune, to Thesous, for runaway slaves, were erected in their principal cities. Some temples were free to malefactors of all kinds; so that the ancients not only sacrificed to the virtues, but built temples to sanctify their vices. Yet we shall hear a christian writer* of ancient history talk with great complacency of the elegant mythology of the ancients. -See Harwood and Adams's Greek and Roman Antiquities. Cicero. It seems singular that so great an orator, and, of course, master of so many of the figures and * Gibbon. modes of speech peculiar to poets, should fail to be himself even a moderate versifier. One line is upon record, as the production of his poetic efforts, in which a pun and a rhyme are combined, "O fortunatum natam me consule Romam." It seems he was also as indifferent a critic in poetry, when he speaks of Lucretius, and says, "Lucretius has few luminous passages which display genius, but is generally artificial.”* Sir Isaac Newton. The portrait of this great man forms a very strong exception to any rule that writers on physiognomy have laid down to distinguish a man of genius by his countenance. In a letter of Bishop Atterbury to M. Thiriot, he says, "in the whole air of his face and make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity which appears in his works. He had something rather languid in his look and manner, which did not raise any great expectation in those who did not know him." At Newnham, near Oxford, the seat of Earl Harcourt, is a picture, in which the character and air of the face exactly correspond with the Bishop's description. *See Book ii. Epist. to his Brother, 2. A Proser. "I have sometimes the company of a He seemed to be his dull faculties The author of the Picturesque, &c. 3 vols. 8vo. to illustrate the sameness and dulness of Mr. Browne's genius in landscape, compares him facetiously with a proser. seen a proser quite forlorn in man of brilliant imagination. dazzled with excess of light, totally unable to keep pace with the other's rapid ideas. I have afterwards observed the same man get close to a brother proser, and the two snails have travelled on so comfortably in their own slime, that they seemed to feel no more expression of envy or pleasure from what they had heard, than a real snail may be supposed to do at the active bounds and leaps of a stag, or of a highmettled racer."- Vol. i. page 384. French Taste in the Arts. Lord Orford, in his very amusing" Anecdotes of the Arts,"* to use a fashionable phrase, quizzes the taste of the French in painting and sculpture. Speaking of Watteau's pastoral landscapes, he says the shepherds and shepherdesses look like * Vol. iv. |