letter from Booth in Pope's Letters to Aaron Hill, p. 80, ed. 1751, 12mo. A play by Cibber called the Rival Queans, with the Humours of Alexander the Great, a comical tragedy, Dublin, 1729, 8vo. is of the greatest rarity, it was unknown to Reid and Jones, and is in no collection of Cibber's works. P. 9. "That most amusing of autobiographers, the Italian artist." It may not perhaps be uninteresting if we mention where a few works by this eminent artist are to be found. There is a silver bell at Strawberry Hill, and Lord Besborough has a bust of Demosthenes by him. See Dallaway : on the Arts, p. 392. See also the print of Cleopatra in B. Hollis's Life, vol. ii. 4to. A basso-relievo over the door in the Salon des Fleuves, in the Louvre at Paris, is said to be by Cellini, and a copy of the Laocoon at Florence. See D'Uklanski's Travels in Italy, vol. i. p. 74. Lady Morgan says (Italy, vol. i. p. 113, Milan), "saw in the apartments of Signor Morosi a vase and stand of the richest workmanship by Cellini, reported to be the identical bacino e boccaletto of which he speaks with such delight in his life they are of silver gilt." Templeman in his Curious Remarks, vol. ii. p. 376, has a curious extract from Cellini on carbuncles; and he mentions the advantageous manner in which Mr. Boyle speaks of Cellini. A silver tazza by this great artist is in the British Museum. In the Cabinet of Drawings at Munich is an original drawing by Cellini, presented to the Academy of Painting at Florence for their seal, with the explanation in his own writing. Consult Vasari in his Life of the sculptor Fra Giov. Agnolo Montorsoli on this subject. The late artist M. S. P. Loutherbourg possessed a curious sword, on the hilt of which a battle-piece was exquisitely sculptured in alto relievo by Cellini, and we have seen the superb helmet made for Francis the First, designed by his favourite artist Leonardi da Vinci, and executed by Cellini. Consult Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, p. 86, 4to.; Walpoliana, vol. i. p. 116; Britton's Arch. Antiq. vol. ii. p. 22; Forbes's Life of Beattie, vol. ii. p. 176. Nugent's translation of Cellini's Life was reviewed by Dr. Johnson: see his works, vol. ii. p. 194, ed. Murphy. P. 10. Mr. Milman has hardly done justice to the very entertaining and elegant autobiography of Huetius, which contains much interesting information of the scholars of the time, as Salmasius, T. Faber, Menage, &c. The expression in the title-page (Huetius de Rebus ad eum pertinentibus), has been remarked and blamed, but perhaps unjustly, for the work was posthumous, and was edited by Sallengre. See Hist. Critique des Journaux, vol. ii. p. 153. See on the work Jugleri Bibl. Hist. Lit. vol. ii. p. 1398, and Reimani Catal. Bibliotheca Suæ, t. i. pp.179-265; add Quarterly Review, No. vii. p. 103. There was not long since discovered at Caen a collection of manuscripts of Huet, containing a large correspondence with the most celebrated characters of the age of Louis XIV. Bossuet, Fenelon, Mad. Dacier, Christine, &c. and some Latin letters of his pupil the Dauphin. P. 11. Life of Whiston. As the propriety of the marriage of Bishops has been lately canvassed and questioned, we are reminded of a curious passage in these odd Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 540. “I will venture to say that Bishop Hoadly and Bishop Hare seem to have been among the first pretending to be Christian bishops, that, having children already, and being in years, have married twice, and ventured to officiate as a Christian bishop afterwards; and I verily believe that Bishop Burnet and Bishop Gooch are among the first that ever did so after they had married thrice; and Bishop Thomas, of Lincoln, the very first that has so done after he had married four times!! from the days of our Saviour to this day.... This is a piece of licentiousness, and a contradiction to the laws of the New Testament plainlyintolerable" P. II. Memoirs of M. de Marolles. On these Memoirs consult l'Esprit de Guy Patin, p. 56, and D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, old series, vol. ii. p. 82; new series, vol. i. p. 333........ We think them not quite so dull as Mr. Milman pronounces them to be. P. 12. Biography of Ant. Wood. Amid a thousand insignificant and absurd details we sometimes meet with an interesting piece of gossip, as : "The club consisted of.. and Jo. Locke of the same house (Ch. Ch.) afterwards a noted writer. This Jo. Locke was a man of a turbulent spirit, clamorous, and never contented. The club wrote and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sat at the upper end of a table, but the said Jo. Locke scorned to do it: so that while every man besides of the club were writing, he would be prating and troublesome."Again, "John Dryden the poet being at Will's Coffee House, in Covent Garden, was about eight at night soundly cudgelled by three men: the reason, as it is supposed, because he had reflected on certain persons in Absalom and Achitophel." Frequently the narrative does not rise higher than "This night old Joan began to make my bed." or, "A sturgeon, of eight feet long, was taken up at Clifton ferry. Dunch of Wittenham, Dr. Lamphire eat some of it. P. 82. Of Bayle Voltaire thus writes: "Bayle, aussi reprehensible, et aussi petit quand il traite des pointes d'histoire, et des affaires du monde, qu'il est judicieux et profond quand il manié la dialectique." See Essai sur les Mœurs, vol. v. p. 206, ed. 1785. P. 83. "His lectures on history would compose, were they given to the public, a most valuable treatise."-Gibbon is speaking of the late Sir William Scott, and Mr. Milman has added the following most interesting information respecting these lectures : "These lectures were left on the decease of Sir William Scott (Lord Stowell) in an imperfect state, with a strict injunction against their publication. By the friendly confidence of Lord Sidmouth, one of Lord Stowell's executors, I have been permitted to read these papers. From the extraordinary progress which has been recently made in the study of Grecian Antiquities, by the scholars of Germany, the lectures which relate to these subjects will be found, perhaps, not quite to rise to the level of modern knowledge; but in all, there are passages which, for originality of thought, :- masculine good sense, and exquisite felicity of language, make me regret the sentence which has passed upon them by the reserve or the diffidence of the author. One lecture, in particular, containing a more general view of society, struck me as a master-piece of composition, and as an example of English prose, peculiar indeed, and characteristic of the writer; but in purity, terseness, and a kind of sententious vigour, rarely equalled, and perhaps not surpassed, in the whole range of our literature." P. 96. On Middleton's Life of Cicero, Mr. Milman judiciously observes, "The irremediable defect of Middleton's work, which from its finished style will continue probably to occupy this favoured ground, is, that it is grounded so much on those Epistles which modern criticism rejects with unhesitating confidence." Mr. Milman has justly praised the style. "We have nothing (says Mr. W. S. Landor) in our language so classical as the life of Cicero-nothing at once so harmonious and unaffected." See Imaginary Conversations, vol. ii. p. 157. On C. Middleton's acquaintance with the work of Bellendenus, see Parr's Life by Johnstone, vol. i. p. 195. On his other plagiarisms from Otta, &c. see ditto, p. 203. See also Warton on Pope, vol. ii. p. 260, and edition of Pope, vol. iv. p. 307. Fielding, in his Joseph Andrews, has given Middleton a sly hit-"Thou hadst no hand in that dedication and preface, or those translations which thou wouldst wil : lingly have struck out of the Life of Cicero." A pamphlet was published in 1742, called "The Death of Middleton in the Life of Cicero," Svo.; also, "An Attempt towards the Eulogium of Conyers Middleton, D.D., who departed from Life July 28, 1750, by Phileleutherus Londonensis," 4to. Parr's eulogy of him in his preface to Bellendinus is handsome and just but his language is almost a cento from Cicero:-" Literæ fuerunt Middletono non vulgares hæ et quotidianæ, sed uberrimæ, et maximè exquisitæ. Fuit judicium subtile, limatumque. Teretes et religiosæ fuerunt aures. Stylus ejus ita purus ac suavis, ita salebris sine ullis profluens, quiddam et canorum habet, numeros ut videatur complecti, quales in alio quopiam præter Addisonum frustra quæsiveris. Animum fuisse ejusdem parum candidum ac sincerum, id vero fatear invitus, dolens,* coactus." : P. 102. “The sublime author of the Pensées (Pascal)," says Mr. Milman, "would have shuddered, if he could have foreseen the influence of his own works on minds like those of Voltaire and Gibbon."-On this celebrated work much might be said which would be interesting, we think, to our readers, but want of room forbids." The Lettres Provinciales," says Mr. Southey, "able as they are, and efficient beyond any other controversial writings, are worse than disingenuous and the man who could write with such unfairness might justly be suspected of dishonesty in acts as well as in words, whenever the interests of his sect or party was concerned." So writes Schlegel:-"The Lettres Provinciales have, in consequence of the wit and beauty of the language, become standard works in French literature. But if we would characterize them by their import and spirit, they form only a masterpiece of sophistry. Every one must admit that the author employed his genius in a very culpable manner, when he set the example of writing concerning religion in a tone of apparent levity and bitter sarcasm.' See Essays on Literature, vol. ii. p. 188. In an excellent article in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. X. it is said, "In the Lettres Provinciales, Pascal has dealt as unfairly with the Jesuits as if he had been trained in their school; for the doctrines and practices he exposes are charged on them as if they alone were guilty of so acting and teaching, whereas the other orders held the same opinions, and went on in the same course of action; and it is not on the Jesuits that the condemnation should fall, nor on any order, black, white, or grey, but on that Romish church, in the service of which they were all equally engaged, which adopted their legends, applauded their crimes, and encouraged them to support its cause, by any means-per fas et nefas." Consult also Benson's Hulsean Lectures, vol. i. p. 28, discourse 2. the literary merits of this work, our notes are too copious to extract on the present occasion. On P. 106. Mr. Milman quotes a passage from D. Stewart's Preface to Encyclopædia, praising M. Allamand's criticism on Locke's arguments against innate ideas. We shall take the liberty of adding that this argument has been reviewed with great learning and force by M. de Maistre in his most curious and interesting work Les Soirées de St. Petersburg. Lyons, 2 vols. 8vo. 1836. The author was the Sardinian Minister at the court of Russia. P. 111. "Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the * V. Tullii Paradoxa. Ut nihil faciat invitus, nihil dolens, nihil coactus. V. in Green's Diary of Literature, 4to. pp. 52, 56, 57, 59, 219, many of Parr's numerous loans from Cicero are detected. In this preface Novius means Lord Thurlow, and Miso-Themistocles the Duke of Richmond. Minister, and perhaps the legislator of the French monarchy."-Of this lady, the mother of Madame de Staël, much curious information might be given. She forbad her husband to bury her, and imposed on him the painful charge of keeping her corpse in a glass case. In December 1807, she had been removed to a fitter abode. Before her death, she had written, it is said, above four hundred letters, which she distributed among her friends, with an injunction to send one every month to her husband, as if coming immediately from herself in the other world. The body of Madame Necker, full dressed, and preserved in brandy, by her own request, was shown in that state to visitors for several years. The austerity of her temper and singularity of her disposition are well known. See Bakewell's Travels, vol. ii. p. 69. A volume she published, called " Melanges," we have never been able to meet with, but have heard it much praised. In the Manuscrits de M. Necker, p. 206, is a curious passage, in which he attributes the King's speech on the opening of Parliament in 1777, on the French joining the Americans, to Gibbon he says Gibbon confessed he was the author-" Je soupçonnai M. Gibbon, et c'est parceque je le lui dis dans la suite que je sus par son aveu, ce qu'il ne m'auroit pas dit de lui-même." : P. 114. To what Mr. Milman says of the work of Mons. de Beaufort we shall add a reference to Bibliotheca Parriana, p. 343, note. "This book produced a full refutation from Mr. Hooke."-On the work, see Twiss's Epitome of Niebuhr, p. 9; Quarterly Review, No. LIV. p. 280; No. LXIII. p. 67; Diary of a Lover of Literature, p. 25. P. 130. "I was introduced to Lady Hervey, the mother of the present Earl of Bristol." This, we presume, was Mary Lepell, Lady Hervey, whose Letters were published in 1821, who is celebrated in Pope's verses, and of whom we possess an elegant drawing by Richardson. There is also a small print of her, S. G. sculpsit. P. 137. "The perfect composition, the nervous language, the wellturned periods of Dr. Robertson inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps." Mr. Gibbon confines himself here to the praise of Robertson's style. What say the critics on the matter? "The reader must beware of following Robertson's Romance -his so called History of Charles the Fifth." (Europe during the Middle Ages, Lardner's Cycl. i. p. 280.)—" What Robertson," says Mr. Southey, "has said of Ant. Solis, may be applied to himself. I know no author in any language whose literary fame has risen so far above his real merits." Omniana, i. p. 141.-"The reputation of this author must rest upon his History of Scotland, if that can support it, his other works are miserably deficient." V. Southey's Brazil, vol. i. p. 639. Yet Robertson's account of private warfare during the middle ages has received high praise from Mr. Hallam: V. Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 231. We believe that Burke reviewed his America in the Annual Register. V. Ibid. "The calm philosophy, the careless, inimitable beauties of his friend and rival (Hume) often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair."-Mr. Landor informs us that "the style of our historian, Hume, is evidently taken from a French translation of Machiavelli." See Imag. Conv. vol. i, p. 275. So little curiosity was excited by Hume's history, that of the first volume, containing the reign of the Stuarts, the number sold in a year was under fifty. (See Russell's Life of Russell, vol. i. p. 45.) The following sentence (he is speaking of a conference held by Charles, &c.) was in the first edition of Hume, but left out in all the subsequent-" This self-command of Charles was united to perfect candour and sincerity; otherwise it had merited but small praise.' P. 145. "A citizen of old Rome might have smiled at the best Latinity of the Germans and Britons."-How this may be, we know not; although a modern Latin writer would hardly write, "Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit." Scheller, in his admirable work, Præceptor Styli bene Latini, Proemium, p. 12, reckons Politian, Bembo, Grævius, Gesner, Ernesti, and Ruhnken, as the best writers of Latin; he might have added Facciolati. P. 147. Mr. Milman says, "Perhaps the most extraordinary effort of composition in a foreign language, by an Englishman, is the translation of Hudibras, by Mr. Townley." Townley was an officer in the Irish brigade; he was uncle to Charles Townley who left the marbles to the Museum. The publication of the translation of Hudibras was superintended by Mons. L'Abbé Turberville Needham. Larcher also assisted in it. It is curious that when the Critical Reviewers reviewed Tytler's Essay on Translation, they would not believe in the existence of this book; it was so scarce at that time. In this translation the Epistle to Sidrophel is omitted. P. 150. "The loss of so many weary and idle hours was not compensated by any elegant pleasures; and my temper was insensibly soured by the society of our rustic officers."-Yet among these rustic officers was one who deserved a better mention. W. Mitford, the historian of Greece, was in the same militia, the South Hampshire, with Gibbon, at the same time; and he has told the writer of this note, that Gibbon first incited him to write the History of Greece: thus were our two ancient histories written by two militia officers; and the latter one, that of Greece, literally in the tent of a camp. "Hanc et Pallas amat.' P. 159. "The literary part of these histories," (Roscoe's Lives of Lorenzo de Med.) says Mr. Milman, "is executed with much elegance. The great political portion would require a firmer and more vigorous hand." An eminent critical scholar of the present day speaks in a letter penes me on this subject, "Wyttenbach's Life of Ruhnken, and Roscoe's Lives of the nursing fathers of reviving literature, I would place on the same shelf—they are very light reading on very grave subjects.' So much for the literature. As for the political portion, "It is to be regretted that the accomplished biographer of Lorenzo de Medeci should have taken no pains to inform himself of the most ordinary particulars in the constitution of Florence. Among many other errors," &c. See Hallam's Midd. Ages, v. i. p. 428. 6 P. 164. "I laid aside for some time Le Clerc's Bibliotheque Universelle to look into the Bibliotheque Choisie, which is by far the better work." M. de la Croze assisted Le Clerc in the Bibl. Universelle, but not in the Bibliotheque Choisie. He wrote the eleventh volume entirely; but the reader should be informed that it was a Mons. Cornard de la Croze, often confounded with the other scholar of the same name. See Hist. de Bayle, par Monnoye, p. 136. Niceron, Mém. Hom. Ill. p. 139. mer." P. 168. "I read Blackwell's Inquiry into the Life and Writings of HoThis book is now, I should think, seldom read, or even consulted, and yet Bishop Berkeley is supposed to have assisted the author.-See Warton's Pope, v. ii. p. 224. Blackwell in his work took many observations from the valuable book of Gravina de Poesi, particularly from the twelfth section. Blackwell's unfortunate admiration of the style and manner of Shaftesbury betrayed him into perpetual affectations. See Warton's GENT. MAG. VOL. XII. 2 X |