When scarce there happen'd any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,

A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,

Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her, A branch of Dagon's family (Which Dagon, whether He or She,

Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referr'd to Scaliger et cæteris),
Finding that, in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic mannikin,
A doctor, quite as learn'd and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,
Lully, Hales irrefragabilis,

Or doctor of the rabble is!
any

In languages, 3 the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babel sots;
He chatter'd more than ever Jew did,
Sanhedrim and Priest included;
Priest and holy Sanhedrim
Were one-and-seventy fools to him!
But chief the learned demon felt a
Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,

That, all for Greek and learning's glory, 4
He nightly tippled Græco more,⚫
And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends,

From whence your sholars, when they want tick,
Say, to be At-tick 's to be on tick!

1 SCALIGER, de Emendat. Tempor.-Dagon was thought by others to be a certain sea-monster, who came every day out of the Red Sea to teach the Syrians husbandry.-See JACQUES GAFFAREL'S CKriosités inouies, chap. 1. He says he thinks this story of the seamonster carries little show of probability with it.»

I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boethius attributed to Thomas Aquinas be really the work of this angelic Doctor. There are some bold assertions hazarded in it for instance, he says that Plato kept school in a town called Academia, and that Alcibiades was a very beautiful woman whom some of Aristotle's pupils fell in love with: Alcibiades mulier fuit pulcherrima, quam videntes quidam discipuli Aristotelis, etc.--See FREYTAG. Adparat. Litterar. art. 86. tom. 1.

The following compliment was paid to Laurentius Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language:

Nupe postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit,

Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui.

Since Val arrived in Pluto's shade,

His nouns and pronouns all so pat in,

Pluto himself would be afraid

To ask even what 's o'clock in Latin!

These lines may be found in the Auctorum Censio of DU VERDIER (page 29), an excellent critic, if he could have either felt or understood any one of the works which he criticises.

4 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet he vulgar enough to laugh at Camerarius for writing to him in Greek. - Master Joachim (says he) has sent me some dates and some raisins, and has also written me two letters in Greek. As soon as I am recovered, I shall answer them in Turkish, that he too may have the pleasure of reading what he does not understand. Græca sunt, legi non possunt is the ignorant speech attributed to Accursius, but very unjustly-far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy juris-consult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. Possess. expressly says, Græcæ litera possunt intelligi et legi. (Vide Nor, Libror. Rarior. Collection. Fasciculi IV.)-Scipio Carteromachus seems to think that there is no salvation out of the pale of Greek literature: Via prima salutis Graia pandetur ab urbe. And the zeal of Laurentius Rhodomannus cannot be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, per gloriam Christi, per salutem patria, per reipublicæ decus et emolumentum, to study the Greek language. Nor must we forget Phavorinus, the excellent Bishop of Nocera, who, careless of all the usual commendations of a Christian, required no farther eulogium on his tomb than « Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer.

In logics, he was quite Ho Panu!!
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,
That though you were the learned Stagyrite,
At once upon the hip he had you right!
Sometimes indeed his speculations
Were view'd as dangerous innovations.
As thus-the Doctor's house did harbour a
Sweet blooming girl, whose name was Barbara :
Oft, when his heart was in a merry key,

He taught this maid his esoterica,
And sometimes, as a cure for hectics,
Would lecture her in dialectics.
How far their zeal let him and her go
Before they came to sealing Ergo,

Or how they placed the medius terminus,
Our chronicles do not determine us;
But so it was-by some confusion
In this their logical prælusion,
The Doctor wholly spoil'd, they say,
The figure of young Barbara
And thus, by many a snare sophistic,
And enthymene paralogistic,
Beguiled a maid, who could not give,
To save her life, a negative. 3
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that amongst the spheres
(Which most of all, as he averr'd it,
He dearly loved, cause no one heard it),
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,
And find, by Euclid's corollaria,
The ratios of a jig or aria.

But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias,

He own'd he thought them much surpass'd
By that redoubted Hyaloclast, 4

Who still contrived, by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a bottle!

Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he,
On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
Like that great little man Albertus,

O Пay. The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek in a stanza would serve as ballast to the most light o' loves verses. AusONIUS, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εςιν in hac regione μένοντι
Αξιον ab nostris επιδευτα esse καμήναις.

RONSARD, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His Chère Entelechie. in addressing his mistress, is admirable, and can be only matched by CoWLEY's Antiperistasis.

The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara belongs, together with Celarent, Darii, and Ferio.

3 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives.-The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which MENCSENIUS gives in a note upon his Essays de Charlataneria Eruditor m. In the Neptie Peripatetica of CASPAR BARLEUS, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony. CRAMBE's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinus Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the Nuptia Peripatetica of BARLEUS.

4 Or Glass-Breaker.-Monnorius has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. De vitreo crypho fracto, etc.

Wherein he show'd the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,
If boy the baby chance to be,
He cries OA!-if girl, OE !—
They are, says he, exceeding fair hints
Respecting their first sinful parents;
Oh Eve! exclaimeth little madam,
While little master cries « Oh Adam !» 1

In point of science astronomical,
It seemed to him extremely comical
That, once a year, the frolic sun
Should call at Virgo's house for fun,

And stop a month and blaze around her,
Yet leave her Virgo, as he found her!
But't was in Optics and Dioptrics,
Our demon play'd his first and top tricks:
He held that sunshine passes quicker
Through wine than any other liquor;
That glasses are the best utensils
To catch the eye's bewilder'd pencils;
And, though he saw no great objection
To steady light and pure reflection,
He thought the aberrating rays
Which play about a bumper's blaze,

Were by the Doctors looked, in common, on,
As a more rare and rich phenomenon!
He wisely said that the sensorium

Is for the eyes a great emporium,
To which these noted picture stealers

Send all they can and meet with dealers.
In many an optical proceeding,

The brain, he said, show'd great good-breeding;
For instance, when we ogle women
(A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in),
Although the dears are apt to get in a
Strange position on the retina,
Yet instantly the modest brain
Doth set them on their legs again! ❜

Our doctor thus with stuff'd sufficiency,
Of all omnigenous omnisciency,
Began (as who would not begin
That had, like him, so much within ?)
To let it out in books of all sorts,
Folios, quartos, large and small sorts;
Poems, so very deep and sensible,
That they were quite incomprehensible; 3
Prose which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,

This is translated almost literally from a passage in Albertus de Secretis, etc.-I have not the book by me, or I would transcribe the words.

Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, notwithstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium.

1 Under this description, I believe, « the Devil among the Scholarss may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which neither they nor himself could interpret. See the Eloge Historique de M. DE LEIBNITZ, l'Europe Savante. People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find CICERO thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion, ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo. -Lib. 2, epist. 4. And we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read ARISTOTLE'S Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them.-NICOLAS Mossa in Vit. Avicen.

The tatter'd rags of every vest,
In which the Greeks and Romans dress'd,
And o'er her figure, swoln and antic,
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those who saw the fits she had,
Declared unhappy Prose was mad!
Epics he wrote and scores of rebusses,

All as neat as old Turnebus's;

Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 't were tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow me ;

Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No-nor the hoary Trismegistus

(Whose writings all, thank Heaven! have miss'd us), E'er fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

As this great porcus literarum!

FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL.'
TO G. M. ESQ.

FROM FREDERICKSBURGH, VIRGINIA, JUNE 2.
DEAR George! though every bone is aching,
After the shaking

I've had this week, over ruts and ridges,3
And bridges

Made of a few uneasy planks, 4

In open ranks,

Like old women's teeth, all loosely thrown
Over rivers of mud, whose names alone
Would make the knees of stoutest man knock,

Rappahannock,

Occoquan-the Heavens may harbour us! Who ever heard of names so barbarous !

These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it too allusive and too personal for publication.

Having remained about a week at New York, where I saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake (the only things that particularly awakened my attention), I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, Richmond, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr Wickham, one of their celebrated legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do honour to the most cultivated societies. Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Ri. hmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Federalists. 3 What Mr Weld says of the continual necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side, then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds! Now, gentlemen, to the right; upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. Now, gentlemen, to the left; and so on."-WELD's Travels, letter 3.

4 Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety and, as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet (as Sale tells us) was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of Paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely.

John Smith, a famous traveller, and by far the most enterprising of the first settlers in Virginia. How much he was indebted to the interesting young Pocahuntas, daughter of King Powhatan, may be seen in all the histories of this colony. In the Dedication of his own work to the Duchess of Richmond, he thus enumerates his bonnes fortunes:- Yet my comfort is, that heretofore honourable and vertuous Ladies, and comparable but among themselves, have offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers. Even in forraine parts I have felt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Trabigzanda, when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When I overcame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable Lady Callamata supplyed my necessities. In the ut

most of my extremities, that blessed Pokahuntas, the great King's

daughter of Virginia, oft saved my life."

DAVIS, in his whimsical Travels through America, has manufactured into a kind of romance the loves of Mr Rolfe with this opaci maxima mundi, Pocahontas.

For the Sonnet, see page 94.

The American stages are the true political carriage.»-BRISSOT's Trave's, letter 6th.-There is nothing more amusing than the philosophical singeries of these French travellers. In one of the letters of Clavière, pr fixed to those of Brissot, upon their plan for establishing a republic of philosophers in some part of the western world, he intreats Brissot to be particular in chusing a place where there are no musquitoes: forsooth, ne quid respublica detrimenti caperet!

SONG.

I NE'ER on that lip for a minute have gazed,
But a thousand temptations beset me,
And I've thought, as the dear little rubies
you raised,
How delicious 't would be-if you'd let me!

Then be not so angry for what I have done,

Nor say that you 've sworn to forget me; They were buds of temptation too pouting to shun, And I thought that—you could not but let me!

When your lip with a whisper came close to my cheek,
Oh think how bewitching it met me!

And, plain as the eye of a Venus could speak,
Your eye seem'd to say-you would let me !

Then forgive the transgression, and bid me remain,
For, in truth, if I go, you ll regret me;
Or, oh!-let me try the transgression again,
And I'll do all you wish-will you let me ?

Among the West-Indian French at Norfolk, there are some very interesting St Domingo girls, who, in the day, sell millinery, etc., and at night assemble in little cotillon parties, where they dance away the remembrance of their unfortunate country, and forget the miseries which les amis des noirs have brought upon them.