casual. Shakspeare, whether life or nature be his subject, shows plainly that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are complete. JOHNSON.

LINES UPON THE BURNING OF A SCHOOLE.

1.

WHAT heate of learning kindled your desire,
(Ye Muses Sonnes) to set your house on fire?
What love of learning in your brests did burne
Those sparkes of vertue into flames to turne?
Or was't some higher cause? were the hot Gods,'
Venus and Vulcan (old friends), now at odds?
If that be so, then never let the Dolt

Be prais'd for making Armes, or thunderbolt.
Let Poets pennes paint onely his disgrace,
His clubby foote, horn'd brow, and sooty face.

2.

What ere was cause, sure ill was the event,
Which justly all the Muses may lament.
But above all (for names sake) Polyphymny
Bewayle the downefall of the learned chimney.
There might you see, where without Speech or Sence,
Lay the sad ashes of an Accidence.

What number then of Nounes to wrack did goe?
As Domus, Liber, and a great sort moe.

A wofull case! No Case the flame did spare:
Each Gender in this losse had common share.

3.

There might you see the rueful Declinations,
The fifteen Pronounes, and foure Conjugations;
Some Gerunds Di, and Do were overcome,

Th' other with heate and smoake was quite strucke
Dum;

Supines lay gasping upwards voyde of Sences,

The Moodes grew mad to see imperfect Tenses; Adverbs of place were throune downe lofty stories, As Ubi, ibi, illic, intus, foris,

Conjunctions so disjoyn'd, as you would wonder..: No coupling there, but it was burnt asunder.

4.

The Præpositions knew not where to be:
Each interjection cry'd, hei! woe is me.
For the due joyning of which words againe,
A Neighbour call'd qui mihi come amaine ;
Else sure the fire had into flames them turn'd:
Now 'gan the flames the Heteroclites to cumber,
And poore Supellex lost his Plural Number;
Of Verbes there had been left scarce one in twenty,
Had there not come by chance As in præsenti.,

ARCHY'S BANQUET OF JESTS. Lond. 1636.

LETTER FROM MR. W. BOWYER TO DR. WARBURTON, BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER, 1763.

[Mr. Bowyer printed the first edition of "Warburton's Doctrine of Grace." The work sold rapidly, and a second edition was soon wanted; but Mr. Bowyer not having been entrusted with the care of it, he thought it necessary to vindicate himself from reflections that might arise on this apparent change in his Patron's sentiments. "On this subject, however," says Mr. Nichols," it is not necessary to enlarge, as I can assert, on the authority of another right reverend Prelate, that notwithstanding any little altercations which had happened, Bishop Warburton always continued to retain a sincere regard for Mr. Bowyer.” The sincerity of such regard might have been questionable, if, contrary to what Mr. Nichols also informs us, this, and other two letters of Mr. Bowyer upon the same subject, had ever been sent to the Bishop.]

MY LORD,-When I understood that you had appointed Mr. to print the Second Edition of your book on "Grace," I was tempted to cry out with your Lordship, " In what light must you stand with HONEST and CANDID men; if, when I had gone through the trouble of the first edition, the second is ordered away to another Printer, even against the recommendation of your Bookseller ?" But as the honest and candid will little trouble themselves with any difference between your lordship and me, I will appeal to the judge within your own breast,

"Pulsa dignoscere cautus

Quid solidum crepet, et picta tectoria linguæ."

Your Lordship will say, you removed your Book to another Printer, because I had printed the first edition of it very incorrectly. I answer, my Lord,

that you saw every proof-sheet yourself, and ought to share with me at least in the imputation of incorrectness. You said, indeed, at first setting out, that you would not be my corrector; but then, my lord, you should not be your own. When sheets are hurried away to an impatient author late at night by the post, the printer is precluded from reviewing them with that accuracy he otherwise should bestow upon them. In the cancelled leaves which your lordship complains of, there were no less than six faults in one page, viz. p. 151; only one of which, upon the return of the sheet, was corrected by your lordship, the others being left for me to discover; and when I had done so, I naturally cried, How, does this man seek an occasion of quarrel against me !-Prophetic I was; for, instead of receiving thanks from you for my care, I am condemned for passing over two others, jointly with your lordship, in the following terms: "Show him what an admirable corrector he is, and in a reprinted page too. He has suffered opposite, against all sense, to go for apposite; and in the note, obscuram, against all grammar, for obscuriorem." for obscuriorem." Under favour, my lord, not against sense or grammar; for I had reduced obscurem to both, by making it obscuram, which was as far as a sudden conjecture, without the copy, could go. "Theologiam invenit-ipsis Pythagoricis numeris et Heracliti notis obscuram." As for opposite comparison, I will not defend it; but a reader, not wholly inattentive, might be misled to

reflect, that comparisons which are odious (and such, my lord, you and 1 could make) must needs be opposite too. I would further observe, my lord, that this error might be the more easily pardoned, because the very same word has unluckily (or luckily, shall I say?) escaped your lordship in a work of your younger years, if the world is right in ascribing it to you. In p. 95, I find this passage: " But I chose this instance of our author's knowledge of nature, not so much for its greatness, as for its OPPOSITENESS to our subject." Critical and Philo

sophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles. Lond. 1727. In short, my lord, you have prescribed a law to me, by which no other printer will ever be bound, viz. that I should suf fer for every error of the press which you leave uncorrected. I am singled out from the flock for mudding the stream below, which your lordship drinks of at the fountain-head. But, my lord, vanity or partiality leads me to think some other motive, besides incorrectness, has carried you over to another printer. For why, of all men, to Mr.

, who, in the last book he had printed for you, viz. the Second Part of the Divine Legation, A. D. 1758, so incensed your lordship, that you declared he never should print for you another sheet? If solicitation, or the prevailing fashion of the times, have changed your mind, I blame you not. Every one is to follow his pleasure or interest, as his inclination leads him. I only beg that we