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He was a sound critic in poetry and painting; and his sketches of landscape evinced a degree of taste which, if poetry had not engrossed so much of his attention, might have rendered him no inferior artist. Our volumes are enriched with some of his most beautiful poetic effusions. We subjoin his pleasant and wholesome Advice to Landscape Painters.'

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Whate'er you wish, in landscape to excel,
LONDON is the very place to mar it,
Believe the oracles I tell,

There's very little landscape in a garret.

A rushlight winking in a bottle's neck,
Ill represents the glorious orb of morn ;
Nay, though it were a candle with a wick,
"Twould be a representative forlorn.

I think, too, that a man would be a fool,
For trees to copy legs of a joint-stool;

Or ev❜n by them to represent a stump :
As also broom sticks, which though well he'd rig
Bach with an old fox-coloured wig,

Must make a very poor autumnal clump.

You'll say 'Yet such ones oft a person sees
In many an artist's trees;

And in some paintings, we have all beheld,
Green baize hath surely sat for a green field;
Bolsters for mountains, hills, and wheaten mows;
Cats for ram goats-and curs for bulls and cows.'

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18.-SAINT PRISCA.

Prisca, a Roman lady, was early converted to Christianity; but refusing to abjure her religion, and to offer sacrifice when she was commanded, was horribly tortured, and afterwards beheaded, under the Emperor Claudius, in the year 275.

*18. 1671.-GRINLIN GIBBON.

This day,' observes Mr. Evelyn, 'I first acquainted his Majesty [Charles II] with that incomparable young man GIBBON', whom I lately met with in an obscure place by meere accident, as I was walking neere a poore solitary thatched house, in a field in our parish [Deptford], neere Says Court. I found him shut in; but looking in at the window. I perceived him carving that large cartoon or crucifix of Tintoret, a copy of which I had myselfe brought from Venice, where the original painting remaines. I asked if I might enter; he opened the door civilly to me, and I saw him about such a work as for ye curiosity of handling, drawing, and studious exactnesse, I never had before seene in all my travells. I questioned him why he worked in such an obscure and lonesome place; he told me it was that he might apply himselfe to his profession without interruption, and wondred not a little how I had found him out. I asked him if he was unwilling to be made knowne to some greate man, for that I believed it might turn to his profit; he answered he was yet but a beginner, but would not be sorry to sell off that piece: on demanding the price, he said £100. In good earnest the very frame was worth the money, there being nothing in nature so tender

Usually called Gibbons, celebrated for his exquisite carving in wood; very beautiful specimens of which may be seen in the choir, &c. of St. Paul's Cathedral, at Lord Egremont's at Petworth, at Windsor, the Duke of Norfolk's at Holm Lacey, and in the chapel of Trinity College, Oxford. He also executed the bronze statue of

James II, now in Scotland Yard.

and delicate as the flowers and festoons about it, and yet the worke was very strong; in the piece were more than 100 figures of men, &c. I found he was likewise musical, and very civil, sober, and discreete in his discourse. There was onely an old woman in the house. So desiring leave to visite him sometimes, I went away.

'Of this young artist, together with my manner of finding him out, I acquainted the King, and begged that be would give me leave to bring him and his worke to White-hall, for that I would adventure my reputation with his May that he had never seene any thing approach it, and that he would be exceedingly pleased, and employ him. The King said he would himselfe go see him. This was the first notice his Majestie ever had of Mr. Gibbon.'

In Mr. Evelyn's Diary, under the date of March 1672, we have a further notice of this inimitable artist, at once displaying the truly amiable character of the writer, and the contemptible manners of the court at that time. I caused Mr. Gibbon (he observes) to bring to Whitehall his excellent piece of carving, where being come I advertised his Majestie, who asked me where it was; I told him in Sr Richard Browne's (my father-in-law) chamber, and that if it pleased his May to appoint whither it should be brought, being large and tho' of wood heavy, I wo take care for it; No,' says the King, shew me ye way, I'll go to Sir Richard's chamber,' which he immediately did, walking along the entries after me; as far as the ewrie, till he came up into the roome where I also lay. No sooner was he entered and cast his eye on the work, but he was astonished at the curiositie of it, and having considered it a long time and discoursed with Mr. Gibbon, whom I brought to kisse his hand, he commanded it should be immediately carried to the Queenes side to shew her. It was carried up into her bed cham

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ber, where she and the King looked on and admired it againe; the King being called away left us with the Queene, believing she would have bought it, it being a crucifix; but when his May was gon, a French pedling woman, one Mad. de Boord, who used to bring peticoates and fanns, and baubles out of France to the ladys, began to find fault with severall things in the worke, which she understood no more than an asse or a monkey; so as in a kind of indignation, I caused the person who brought it to carry it back to the chamber, finding the Queene so much governed by an ignorant French woman, and this incomparable artist had his labour onely for his paines, which not a little displeased me, and he was faine to send it downe to his cottage againe : he not long after sold it for £80, tho' well worth £100 without the frame, to Sir Geo. Viner.'

In the sequel, however, it appears, that Gibbon's merit was rewarded by a place in the Board of Works, and that he was employed by Sir Christopher Wren.

20. SAINT FABIAN.

St. Fabian succeeded St. Anterus in the pontificate, in the year 236. He governed the church sixteen years, sent St. Dionysius and other preachers into Gaul, and condemned Privatus, the promoter of a new heresy in Africa, as appears from St. Cyprian. St. Fabian died a glorious martyr in the persecution of Decius in 250, as St. Cyprian and St. Jerom bear witness.

21.-SAINT AGNES

Has been always considered by the Catholics as a special patroness of purity, with the immaculate Mother of God and St. Thecla. Rome was the theatre of the triumph of St. Agnes; and Prudentius says, that her tomb was shown within sight of that city. She suffered not long after the beginning of

the persecution of Dioclesian, whose bloody edicts appeared in March in the year of our Lord 303. She was only thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death.

22.-SAINT VINCENT.

Vincent, a deacon of the church in Spain, suffered martyrdom in the Dioclesian persecution, about the year 303. A full description of the dreadful cruelties which he bore may be seen in T. T. for 1815, p. 12.

*22. 1788.-LORD BYRON BORN.

Lord Byron's childhood kept the title out of public view; but in time he began to distinguish it by his eccentricities at school and college. Some of his early years were spent in Scotland; but he received at Harrow school the chief part of his education, which he finished at the University of Cambridge.

Soon after quitting school, the noble lord manifested his ambition for a leaf of Daphne's deathless plant,' by publishing a volume of poems, under the title of Hours of Idleness;' some of these displayed considerable poetical talent', but met with very rough treatment from the EDINBURGH REVIEW: 'the poesy of this young lord,' say these literary Mohawks, belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant water.' (Vol. xi, p. 285.) This hard usage his lordship retorted by a satire,

'See T. T. for 1817, p. 6.

2' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,' since suppressed.

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