Poets and orators ought to be most careful of withdrawing from their business at a proper time, because they stand most in need of the warmth of imagination; yet it too frequently happens that they persist in their career till the lowest decline of age. They think the public is obliged to drink the very dregs of their pretended nectar. But if formerly the legislators limited the time wherein people might marry, (for they prohibited it to women of fifty and men of sixty years of age) and if they supposed that, after a certain age, it was time to leave off thinking of procreation, either because of the extinction, or the weakness of the faculties, every author ought, for the same reason, to set bounds to himself in the production of books, which is a kind of generation, for which every age is by no means proper. Poets should leave Apollo's service betimes. I add, that if they feel the return of any poetical fit, they should take it for a temptation of an evil genius, and put up the same prayer to the goddesses of Parnassus that one of their brethren addressed to the Goddess of Love:

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The service of the Muses is in many things like the service of the ladies; it is better to leave it too soon than too late. It is said that certain kings ordered some of their domestics to tell them every day, member such a business." If it be allowable to compare little things with great ones, old poets should have somebody to tell them every morning, "Remember your age." Horace boasts of having had such advice given him.---Arts. AFER and D'AURAT.

RHYNSAULT.

THIS story is related in an ample manner, not without some flourishes of rhetoric, by Pontus Heuterus; the substance of it is thus:-Rhynsault, a very brave captain of duke Philip the good, had obtained for a recompense of his services the government of a place. There he fell in love with his landlady, a woman of singular beauty and modesty. He talked to her of love, and swore to be secret and constant to her. She answered that her conscience would not suffer her to violate her conjugal faith, and that he ought to remember the sacred laws of hospitality, and place his inclinations on some other where he might do it lawfully. There were a great many rich maids to be found much preferable to herself for beauty; he might choose one suitable to his temper, and marry her and get children in a legitimate way. This answer serving only to augment his passion, he attacked her on another side; he offers her a large sum of money, and promises to make her go finer than any of her neighbours and relations, and to procure her husband a beneficial and honourable post. His promises making no impression, he raises another battery; he imprisons the husband on pretence of rebellion, and when the wife applied to him as the only means of saving the prisoner's life, he answered that the crime was manifest,

and that he could not avoid putting him to death, unless the mercy of the sovereign interposed. "I promise to obtain it," continues he, “provided you will immediately grant me the favour I have asked of you so often." This proposal made her blush, weep,

sigh, raised a combat between conjugal love and virtue, and struck her dumb. He takes advantage of her irresolution, and satisfies his lust. She from time to time presses him to perform his promise; he puts her off with a thousand lies, and at last causes the prisoner's head to be cut off privately, and made the wife believe she would have him delivered out of prison, on presenting the gaoler a paper which he gave her. She runs to the prison, and there found her husband had lost his life by the hands of the executioner. The sight of such an object struck her speechless, but soon after she returned to the governor and loaded him with all the reproaches that a just indignation could suggest. He makes a hundred excuses and offers to marry her, and promises her a magnificent fortune. She rejected these offers, and related the whole adventure to some relations, who advise her to wait the arrival of duke Charles, and to demand justice of him. That prince having had proof of the governor's crimes ordered him to marry the widow; she had an aversion to it which could not be surmounted without a great deal of solicitation. The marriage contract was drawn, and the wife was to inherit all the estate of her husband, if he died before her without children. The ceremony of the marriage was performed in due form, and then the duke asked the woman if she was content?" "Yes," said she. "But," replied he, "I am not so. He then sent the governor to prison, and two hours after he caused him to be beheaded in the same room where the first husband had lost his head. A copy of the sentence of death was delivered to the woman, and she was sent to see that the double crime of a

seducer did not go unpunished. She, however, fell into a melancholy which ended her days a little while after.-Art. BURGUNDY.

ROMAN WRITERS.
(Judgment on.)

PRIOLO was no great admirer of Cicero; he admired Livy and found him so inimitable, that despairing to copy his excellences, he resolved to imitate Tacitus. He was extremely fond of Seneca, and preferred Lucan to Virgil, and the tenderness of Catullus to the majesty of Horace. Rhodius his good friend and his panegyrist, wonders at the oddness of his taste. "Senecam deperibat: nescio quo malo genio M. Tullium ingentem virum, Romanæ eloquentiæ patrem, non admiratus est: cæteros ad unguem tenebat. Tit. Livium inimitabilem prædicabat, ideoque desperans, nobis posterisque Tacitum repræsentavit. Lucanum præferebat Virgilio: quis hoc credat? Et teneras Catulli amationes Horatianæ majestati." It is certain that this judgment is wrong; for a man who prefers Livy to Tacitus, should place Cicero above Seneca, and Virgil above Lucan. The eloquence and charactar of Cicero, Livy, and Virgil, are much of the same kind. Those authors do not affect to be bright; they cast without any affectation, a light which adorns the whole work; but does not dazzle the reader as those of some other writers, who instead of letting every ray pass through its proper medium, have recourse to a kind of dioptric in order to collect together an infinite number of rays to cast the greater light. It is their chief study; it was the method of Seneca, the two Plinys, and Tacitus. Lucan in like manner, toils and labours hard to express himself in an uncommon manner, and to appear great and lofty. It must be confessed that they were men of very great parts, and perhaps they would

have taken a more natural course, if they had lived in the time of Cicero, Livy, and Virgil; but they began to study when the true taste began to be depraved. It was with the Romans as it is with those who are used to drink excellent wines; their taste grows dull, nothing will serve their turn but brandy or the strongest liquors. A majestic, natural, and uniform eloquence, became insipid when people were used to it: they were for witty strokes and flights; the day-light was not sufficient for them, they wanted flashes of lightning: the French begin to be sick of the same distemper. Seneca and Tacitus complied with the common taste, they were afraid of being slighted if they should write like the authors of the golden age: however it be, their style is quite different from that of Livy. How comes it then that Priolo so much admired that historian and Seneca at the same time? How could he prefer Lucan to Virgil, and Seneca to Cicero? There is no uniformity in such a judgment, but we must not dispute about tastes; we must be contented with the matter of fact.-Art. PRIOLO.

SADDUCEES.

SADDUCEES, a sect which arose among the Jews two hundred years or thereabouts, before the birth of the Messias. It is thought that Sadok, a disciple of Antigonus Sochæus, was the founder of it. He and Baithus, who was also a disciple of the same Antigonus, put a wrong sense on the doctrine which their master taught them; they concluded that there is neither paradise nor hell, that there are neither rewards nor punishments after this life, from his exhorting them to serve God, not like mercenaries who act only in hopes of getting by it, but like those generous servants who are faithful and obedient to their masters without expecting any reward. This fine