agree with me in some points, but that where we differ your criticism conflictingly labours against your own argument; for when, nearly in the last sentence, you say, he, POPE, glows with passion in the Eloisa, and displays a LOFTY feeling, much ABOVE that of the SATIRIST and man of the world, in his Prologue to Cato, and his Epistle to Lord OXFORD;' what is that but to say, that glowing passions and lofty feelings are much ABOVE those which distinguish the SATIRIST and man of the world!!'

fence. It would delight us to meet with Mr Bowles again on some more important occasion. He has written tic poetry in our language—and though some of the most beautiful and pathehe has, of late years, rather retired from the world, that world has not forgotten him, but, on the contrary, he is remembered by many thousand hearts with admiration and love. He is, without doubt, an English classic

and Rogers are still coming forward with unimpaired power or elegance, why he too, who we believe is a younger man than either of them, should not rouse himself to some new labours in which it is quite impossible that he should be otherwise than completely successful.

WE imagine it will be allowed by all Scottish men of letters who read this little book, that its author has conferred a considerable service on his country by publishing it; and yet we are not prepared to say that we find in the book any very important addition to the sum of what had before been known and said concerning its very remarkable subject. If we except a single curious enough document discovered last year by Mr Hibbert of Clapham, we do not think there is any thing in this life, of which former memoirs of Crichton have not contained some hints. But the merit of Mr Tytler consists in his having thrown together, in a regular form, all the scattered materials of information concerning Crichton, which, till now, had been afloat in the world-in other words, in his having presented his country with a compact and elegant view of all the facts, arguments, and speculations, with which the name of this wonderful person had ever been connected. The former biographers were all either too credulous, or too sceptical, or too superficial, or too hasty. Mr Tytler has examined his subject in the proper spirit of rational veneration, as well as of sobriety and calmness he has examined it with

much patience, and apparently to the very bottom-and he has embodied the results of his studies in a memoir which is extremely interesting and beautiful in every respect, and shews, altogether, that its author has inherited a full measure, both of that taste for elegant research, and that talent for elegant writing, which distinguished his father the late amiable and accomplished Lord Woodhouselee.

Henceforth, we shall never be troubled with any of that silly levity which has made so many of our second and third rate critics and collectors attempt, to throw discredit on the surpassing powers and achievements of this prince of precocious genius. For the honour of our nature, (for as to our country, that is but a small matter indeed in regard to such a person as this) it will now be a thing denied by no one, that there did exist a being so exquisitely entitled to go down to all posterity by the name of THE ADMIRABLE-a man, who, having run through all the career of competition, and placed himself by one voice at the head of all his contemporaries, whether in respect to the accomplishments of mind or body, died at the age of twenty-two,—and left behind him, in the unanimous admiration of all that ever saw him, a

monument of glory, only less grand (although after all not less lasting,) than he might have left behind him in the history of letters and of arms, had Heaven allotted him such a length of life as is usually bestowed on the less wonderful specimens of the race to which he belonged. It would seem, indeed, as if the untimely destiny which cut off Crichton, had been one of the very darkest of all the inexplicable mysteries of Providence."Chrichtonum Superi voluere ostendere mundo tantum :

Non mundo hunc hi voluere dare."

It is not necessary for us to go into the details of the incidents of Crichton's life, as they now have been set forth by Mr Tytler. It is better to quote one or two passages from his disquisition on the authorities from which these details have been gathered-they will be sufficient to satisfy our readers that our commendation has not been misplaced. The two chief contemporary authorities for the miraculous history of Crichton, are the celebrated Aldus Manutius, his personal friend; and a greater man still, Joseph Scaliger, who travelled in Italy within a very few years of his melancholy death. Of the evidence of the former, Mr Tytler says very justly.

"It is at once of the most unexceptionable,

and the most conclusive nature. This author does not transcribe what he only heard from other persons, or had read in other books, regarding events which had passed before his own time. He was a contemporary, an intimate friend of Crichton's, and an eyewitness of those public disputations which he records. Tu vero me non solum auctorem consiliorum, sed spectatorem pugnarum mirificarum, habuisti.' He accordingly describes, with the most pointed mi

nuteness, the different scenes in which Crichton exhibited his talents; he dwells upon the various powers, which, in the different branches of philosophy, in the use of many different languages, and in his facility in poetical composition, he had exhibited before men who were Aldus's own contemporaries, some of whom must have been Crichton's literary rivals, and all of whom were ready to contradict his statement, had it been unsupported by fact. He records the illustrious descent of Crichton, the

estates possessed, and the authority enjoyed by his father, the extreme beauty of his countenance and person, his excellence in all manly and martial exercises, his exact age, the eminent preceptors to whom his education was intrusted, his arrival at Venice, and the verses which he presented upon that occasion. Nor is he contented with

the testimony of his own individual admiration. In the dedication of his Lælius to Lorenzo Massa, who then held one of the highest offices in the Venetian Republic, he congratulates this eminent man upon his juvenem ;" and he subjoins an ode which intimacy with Crichton, "divinum plane had been addressed by the young scholar to the Venetian secretary. Lastly, in a pathetic dedication of the Timæus of Cicero to the memory of Crichton, he records the year of his death, the violence by which it was occasioned, and the universal regret which accompanied it."

The evidence in the Scaligerana is thus treated.

"There is one other testimony, which, as it proceeds from a contemporary author of distinguished celebrity, who affirms that his information was obtained in Italy, ought not to be passed over;-I allude to an account of Crichton, preserved by Joseph Scaliger. I have heard,' says the author,

⚫ when I was in Italy, of one Crichton, a Scotchman, who had only reached the age of twenty-one, when he was killed by the command of the Duke of Mantua, who knew twelve different languages,--had studied scibili, and replied to his antagonists in verse. the fathers and the poets,-disputed de omni He was a man of very wonderful genius; more worthy of admiration than of esteem. He had something of the coxcomb about him, and only wanted a little common sense. It is remarkable that princes are apt to take an affection for geniuses of this stamp, but very rarely for truly learned

men.

This passage, from the Scaligerana, is valuable in may points of view. Scaliprobability, from those who had been witger obtained his information in Italy, in all nesses of the genius of Crichton; and the marks of truth and impartiality. Crichton, whole sentence bears strongly upon it the he tells us, was a little of a coxcomb,' a his eminent talents, and a failing exceedcircumstance by no means inconsistent with ingly natural in a young man possessed of such uncommon powers of mind and beauty of person, who had been tried by that miration, too, not of a limited circle of severest of all ordeals-admiration; the adfriends, or of an insulated university, but of a whole people; and what is perhaps still more difficult to bear, who had listened to the praises of the sweetest tongues, and been exposed to the radiance of the fairest eyes in Italy; yet, after touching upon his failings, Scaliger does justice to his genius.

He was a man of stupendous powers." not say that this encomium comes with inC'estoit ingenium prodigiosum; and I need finite force, when we take into account the sarcastic matter with which it is accompanied."

The following elegant passage sums up the last of Mr Tytler's dissertations, which is chiefly occupied with

after the Scotobrigants (by Seneca, in his satyrs, called Scutobrigantes,) by a Doric dialect, for Scotobrigantes, from Brigansa, a town in Galicia, now called Compostella, which the Scots, of old, both built and inhabited: he likewise giveth them the epithet of Cærulei, because (in my opinion) the most of the inhabitants there, were accustomed, even then, to the wearing of blue caps, after the Scotogalli, (of whom our Scots-Irish language is termed Galick, as they from Galicia) and lastly, after those that had the surname of Scot, without any other designation. He gave in marriage to Lutork goxgros, the captain-general of all his forces, because of his dexterity, both in the Macedonian and Romish discipline of war, his own sister Benedita; for which cause, the river upon whose bank the promise was made, hath ever since been called Urquhart, and the valley or glen (as they term it there) where the marriage was consummated, Glen-Urquhart, or Glenurchi, and that in honour of the Odocharties, Ochonchars, Clanrurie, Scotobrigants, Clanmolinespick, and Esormon, who were all of them Lutork's predecessors, and surnamed Urquharts. This Lutork, besides his own ancient inheritance from Cromarty to castle Urquhart, inclusive, and several other lands, successively derived to him from Nomostor, took possession then of the Thanedom of Lochaber, with many other territories of a large extent. On Benedita he begot Machemos."

He sums up his pedigree thus :-
The said Sir THOMAS is,
By line. By succession.

From Adam the

From Noah the

134

144

From Esormon the

128

138

From Molin the

108

114

From Rodrigo the

100

From Alypos the

91

From Vocompos the 30

94

31

His account of Crichton is written throughout with the same unbridled license of imagination exhibited in this more than Allantonian pedigree. We would very fain quote the whole of it, but must confine ourselves to a single passage which has been very often quoted already, viz. the account of the death of the admirable youth. He has already told us that Crichton was spending the night in company with an Italian lady, who fell in love with him on occasion of some public displays of his genius-and the whole scene in the lady's house is described with the most pictorial minuteness-beginning from the moment he entered into her apartment,

"Where nothing tending to the pleasure of all the senses was wanting: the weather being a little chill and coldish, they on a blew velvet couch sate by one another, towards a char-coal fire burning in a silver brasero, whilst in the next room adjacent thereto, a pretty little round table of cedarwood was a covering for the supping of them two together: the cates prepared for them, and a week before that time bespoke, were of the choisest dainties, and most delicious junkets, that all the territories of Italy were able to afford; and that deservedly; for all the Romane empire could not produce a completer paire to taste them." And so on to the minute when they were disturbed by the noise of the young prince of Mantua and his drunken companions at the door-" the clapper up again, they rap with a flap, till a threefold clap makes the sound to rebound."

"The admirable and ever-renowned Crichtoun, who at the prince's first manning of the court taking the alarm, step'd from the shrine of Venus to the oracle of Pallas armata; and by the help of the waiting gentlewoman, having apparelled himself with a paludumental vesture, after the antic fashion of the illustrious Romans, both for that he minded not to make himself then known, that to walk then in such like disguise was the anniversary custome of all that country, and that all both gentlemen and others standing in that court, were in their mascaradal garments; with his sword in his hand, like a messenger from the gods, came down to relieve the page from the post whereat he stood sentry; and when (as the light of the minor planets appears not before the glorious rays of Titan) he had obscured the irradiancy of Pomponacio with his more effulgent presence, and that under pretext of turning him to the page to desire him to stand behind him, as he did, he had exposed the full view of his left side (so far as the light of torches could make it perceivable) to the lookers on, who being all in cuerpo carrying swords in their hands instead of cloaks about them, imagined really, by the badge or cognizance they saw near his heart, that he was one of my ladies. chief domestic servants: he addressed his discourse to the prince, and the nine gentlemen that were with him; neither of all whereof, as they were accoutred, was he able, (either by the light of the tapers, or that of the moon, which was then but in the first week of its waxing, it being the Tuesday next to the first new moon that followed the purification day) to discern in for that he perceived by their unstedfast any manner of way what they were: and postures, that the influence of the grape had made them subjects to Bacchus, and that their extranean-like demeanour towards him (not without some amazement) did manifest his certainty of their not knowing him;