"At least a full third part of the collection is myne, what from the Tower records, where I spent four months about it, and from Sir Thos. Cotton's Library, out of which all that it had was gathered by me, and from a multitude of other places." P. 284.

This connection with Spelman and Dodsworth was not the only benefit of Dugdale's London journey. He wisely sought for acquaintance with other birds of the same feather as himself; and one Lilly an armes-painter and pedigree maker of great merit, introduced him to Sir Christopher (afterwards Lord) Hatton. This nobleman obtained for him access to the King's Remembrancer's Office, and the Tower, and the office of "a Pursuivant at Armes." His old country friend, Mr. Roper, introduced him to Sir Thos. Cotton's library and the Chapter-house. The lodging in the Heralds Office, with the benefit of the stipend and fees, enabled him to spend the greatest part of his time in London, and augment his Collections from the records. Sir Christopher Hatton foreseeing that the Parliament of 1640, composed of all the political rogues of the country, and of other rogues also, (viz. broken attornies or such like, see p. 445,) would subvert the Established Religion, profane the Churches, and destroy the Monuments, induced Mr. Dugdale to take with him an armes painter to copy the epitaphs and sketch the monuments in St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, &c. &c.

Here we shall pause to remark how eligible it would be in our judgment for noblemen and gentlemen who have monuments of their families, to have handsome limnings made of them, in the Heralds' Office style, upon velJum, for presents to the Heralds College, where they might be bound up in volumes.

Dugdale in 1642 left London to

attend the King at Oxford. His Historical and Archæological habits were not for a moment suspended. He interleaved a series of Almanacks, and commenced a Diary in 1643, which he continued to the last week of his life. It contains many curious things, and among them one, which shows Dugdale to have had considerable pretensions to humour and anecdote:

"Sir John Dugdale left a small volume of his own writing, still preserved at Merevale, with the title of Some short stories of Sir William Dugdale's, in substance and as neere his words as can be remembered,'

from which the following merry tale' is transcribed. Of a Scot's Presbyter's trans-, gression.''One Patrick Gilespie, a Reverend Kirk Presbyter, falling unwarily into the fou' sin of adultrie, to the great scandall of his function, raised (by the noise of it) so generall a dissatisfaction among the brethren, that nothing less than a general convention could appease them, to keepe a solemne day for seeking the Lord (as their terme was), to know of him, wherefore he suffered this holy brother to fall under the power of Satan. And that a speedy solution might be given them, each of them by turne vigorously wrestled with God till (as they pretended) he had solved their ques tion; viz. that this fall of their preacher was not for any fault of his owne, but for the sins of his parish laid upon him. Whereupon the convention gave judgment that the parish should be fyned, for public satisfaction, as was accordingly done." Pp. 59, 60.

Concerning the King's execution, the diary has the following article:

"1649, Jan. 30. The King beheaded at the gate of Whitehall.

"In consultaco'n. To have had ye K. hat taken off, and his head held up by two men, at his tryall. To have put on him his

robes and crowne. His head was throwne downe by him yt tooke it up; bruis'd the face. His haire cut of. Souldiers dipt their swords in his blood. Base language uppon his dead body." P. 96.

The miseries of Civil war are (says Mr. Hamper) forcibly depicted in the following short sentence:

"1653, March 18. We first began to watch our corne every night." P. 99.

In

P. . 106 we have another of Dugdale's short stories:

"One Mr. F. D. of Shustoke, a physition of a very sinicall temper, otherwise good Churchman, had a wife who was the sister of St Peter Wentworth, Knight of the Bath, and nominated for one of King

52

It is plain that our ancestors thought making people merry' an essential part of piety. Funeral feasts are on this account directed to be made in several wills. Dugdale found the following lines upon a grave stone in . Prestbury Church, co. Chester: "Those goods I had whilst I did live, Unto foure monkes I freely give, To eate and drinke, and make good cheere, And keepe my obit once a yeere." P. 112. Our ancestors thought that posterity would not remember them if they did not brush up their memories, and this they thought a good dinner once a year would be sure to do. The French have a proverb, that the most painful of all truths is that of being forgotten after death. But our ancestors did not philosophically regard fame; no more than Pizarro, who says, "that his bones would not rattle in the tomb with the praise of posterity." They thought, that certain pains were to be undergone in purgatory. As Dugdale says of the first prospect of the Civil

War, "there was great affrightment at it," and they concluded that the periodical recurrence of the aforesaid good dinner might make the eaters think of paters and aves by way of saying grace. It was a bubble; but philosophers know that the bubbles of modern æras, even on religious subjects, are just as rife, because the form only is varied. There are thousands who now believe in religious errors as gross as that of purgatory.

Of the successive heraldic honours of Dugdale we shall not speak. Dealer and chapmanship is the vogue

[July,

of the day, and certainly dying worth money is an indubitable token of a prudent life. But we remember, that every thing at Carthage was venal; and that Hannibal and the country was lost in consequence.

Our love of money we assure our readers is, however, unabating and sincere; and we hope that we shall not be set down with any Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who does not worship the golden images of our English Nebuchadnezzars, if, notwithstanding, we venture to regard olden times with delight; if we see in Heralds the only remaining representatives, in their studies and principles, of those romantic days. They remind tabards, of the heroes of Froissart, us, when attired in their gorgeous the fine apostrophe of Mr. Dallaway: "sterling old Englishmen ;" and of

"In surveying this proud monument of feudal splendour and magnificence [Berkeley Castle], the very genius of chivalry seems to present himself amidst the ve→ nerable remains, with a sternness and ma→ jesty of air and feature, which shew what he once has been, and a mixture of disdain for the degenerate posterity that rob→ bed him of his honours. Amidst such a scene the manly exercises of Knighthood recur to the imagination in their full pomp and solemnity, while every patriot feeling beats at the remembrance of the generous virtues which were nursed in those schools of fortitude, honour, courtesy, and wit, the

mansions of our ancient nobility."

Such is the imaginary character of the Genius of Chivalry, and such is the real one of SIR WILLIAM DUGDALE. Showy in his equipage, furniture, mansion, and table, as may be the purse - proud genius of money, we know that many of his votaries would turn out Quakers in war, and Jews in peace, and would never risk their noddles for our liberties, nor a sábre-cut for our independence. But before the mind's-eye of Dugdale, a race of men, ambitious of glory and victory, were constantly processioning, arrayed in the grandest distinction of our national honour, the blue ribband; for HE, GARTER KING OF ARMS, saw in them not only the royal posterity of Banquo in endless line, but a Romanminded race of patriotic heroes, who set an illustrious example to their country of invincible valour, and disinterested public principle. Too humble, far too humble, is our eulogy;

and we shall only add, in his own

manner,

Orate pro anima Gulielmi Dugdale, not to pray that anima out of purgatory, but to implore that it may be a worshipped and canonized patron saint, as the Saint George of English Antiquaries.

4. A Song to David. By the late Christopher Smart, M.A. Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and Translator of Horace. 16mo. pp. 55.

IN 1763 Smart published a Song to David, in which there are some passages of more majestic animation than in any of his former pieces; and others in which the expression is mean, and the sentiments unworthy the poet or the subject. These inequalities will not, however, surprise the reader, when he is told that this piece was composed by him during his confinement, when he was debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and was obliged to indent his lines with the end of a key upon the

wainscot.

Thus Mr. Chalmers. The poem was conceived by Mr. Anderson and the Quarterly Reviewers to be utterly lost; it is here republished, and exactly answers the character given by Mr. Chalmers. It is singularly antithetical; upon the whole very grand. Milton might not have disdained the following stanzas concerning the Psalmist :

"Strong-in the Lord, who could defy Satan, and all his powers, that lie In sempiternal night,

And hell, and horror, and despair
Were as the lion and the bear,
To his undaunted might.

"Constant-in love to God, THE TRUTH,
Age, manhood, infancy, and youth—
To Jonathan his friend
Constant beyond the verge of death;
And Ziba and Mephebosheth

His endless fame attend.

"Pleasant and various as the year;
Man, soul, and angel, without peer,
Priest, champion, sage, and boy;
In armour, or in ephod clad,
His pomp, his piety was glad,
Majestic was his joy.'

MR. M'NICOLL is a profound argumentator, and his work requires study. Upon some points we differ from him; e.g. he says, "It is not only above my reason, but perfectly at variance with it, that God should the fact of creation makes the conmake something out of nothing; yet sistency of the proposition absolutely certain." P. 25.

Now we affirm, that what we understand by the word nothing, i.e. the utter negation of all being, never did exist or could exist, for, under the admission of it, there must have been a space where God was not (if so, was not infinite and omnipresent). God never created something out of nothing, for every thing must be, and whatever is must be something, not nothing. The following argument is ingenious:

"If matter be divisible, in infinitum, then an inch of surface contains an infinite number of parts. Yet in an instant, I can pass my finger over the whole of them. But the motion over each of these parts, must require some point of time.

Therefore an infinity of such points, that is, an eternity, may be included in a moment." P. 26.

there exists infinite divisibility? for, if How can there be nothing, where it can arrive at nothing, it is not infinite, because it has a termination.

6. Ellis's Letters on English History.

(Continued from Part i. p. 518.) HENRY the Seventh, our attorney King, with his usual parsimony, gave to his son Henry a theological education, because, Arthur being heir to the throne, he destined that second son for the See of Canterbury, ultimately perhaps for a Cardinalate and the Papal Throne. That Henry in one or all of these situations would have been tyrannical in support of popery, may reasonably be inferred from his disposition; and that there would have been no Reformation if Arthur had lived, seems equally probable. In what manner Providence acted under the circumstances stated, is therefore an interesting contemplation. It made of an intended Pope the greatest enemy of that dignity which it ever experienced. Mr. Ellis observes:

"The theological part of Henry's education was no doubt serviceable to him in the changes of a later period; but the reader