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

3

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

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.

1 I wish it were known with any degree of certainty whether the Commentary on Boëthius 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, &c." See Freytag Adparat. Litterar. Art. 86. Tom. 1.

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

Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivit,

Non audet Pluto verba Latina loqui.

Since Val arriv'd in Pluto's shade,

His nouns and pronouns all so pat in,
Pluto himself would be afraid

To ask e'en "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. 3 It is much to be regretted that Martin Luther, with all his talents for reforming, should yet be 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.". "Graeca sunt, legi non possunt" is the ignorant speech attributed to Accursias; but very unjustly far from asserting that Greek could not be read, that worthy jurisconsult upon the Law 6. D. de Bonor. possess, expressly says, "Graecae literae possant intelligi et legi." (Vide Nov. 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 patriae, per reipublicae 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 further eulogium on his tomb than "Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer."

--

4 0 ПIANY. — 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' love" verses. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εστιν in hac regione μενοντι

Αξιον ab nostris επιδευτα esse καμήναις.

Ronard, 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 only be matched by Cowley's "Antiperistasis."

But so it was

Or how they placed the medius terminus
Our chronicles do not determine us;
by some confusion
In this their logical praelusion,
The Doctor wholly spoil'd, they say,
The figure of young Barbara;
And thus, by many a snare sophistic,
And enthymeme paralogistic,
Beguil❜d a maid, who could not give,
To save her life, a negative 2
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 3

Who still contriv'd 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,
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!" 4

In point of science astronomical,
It seem'd 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, 'twas in Optics and Dioptrics,
Our daemon 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 look'd, 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.

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

2 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives. The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which Menckenius gives in a note upon his "Essay's de Charlataneria Eruditorum." In the "Nuptiae Peripateticae" of Caspar Barlaeus, 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 Nuptiae Peripateticae" of Barlaeus.

3 Or Glass-Breaker Morhofius has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. "De vitreo scypho fracto, &c."

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

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, 2
Prose, which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,
The tatter'd rags of every vest,

In which the Greeks and Romans drest,
And o'er her figure swoll'n and antic
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those, who saw the fits she had,
Declar'd unhappy Prose was mad!
Epics he wrote and scores of rebuses,
All as neat as old Turnebus's;
Eggs and altars, cyclopaedias
Grammars, prayer books

oh! 'twere 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 heav'n; have miss'd us),
E'er fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

As this great "porcus literarum!"

1 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. 2 Under this description, I believe "the Devil among the Scholars" may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a 80ciety 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. thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion "ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find Cicero 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 troughout them. (Nicolas Massa in Vit. Avicen.)

3 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. 4 Having remained about a week at New York, where I saw Madame Jérome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake (the only things that particularly awakened my atten tion), I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, Richmond, &c. 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 Marshal, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Richmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Fede

ralists.

5 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 WELD'S Travels, letter 3.

on.

To a witch's will, where she brings her cat in!
I treat my goddess ill,

(My muse I mean) to make her speak 'em ;
Like the Verbum Graecum,
Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides, 2

Words that ought only be said upon holidays,
When one has nothing else to do.

But, dearest George, though every bone is aching
After this shaking,

And trying to regain the socket,

From which the stage thought fit to rock it,

I fancy I shall sleep the better

For having scrawl'd a kind of letter

Or meteorology;

Or that a nymph, who wild as comet errs,
Can discuss barometers,
Farming tools, statistic histories,

Geography, law, or such like mysteries,
For which she doesn't care three skips of
Prettiest flea, that e'er the lips of
Catherine Roache look'd smiling upon,
When bards of France all, one by one,
Declared, that never did hand approach

Such a flea as was caught upon Catharine Roache!*

Sentiment, George, I'll talk, when I've got any,
And botany

Oh! Linnaeus has made such a prig o' me,
Cases I'll find of such polygamy

1 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. 2 Σπερμαγοραιολεκ θολαχανοπώλιδες. From the Lysistrata of ARISTOPHANES, 3 This phrase is taken verbatim from an account of an expedition to Drummond's Pond, by one of those many Americans who profess to think that the English language, as it has been hitherto written, is deficient in what they call republican energy. One of the savans of Washington is far advanced in the construction of a new language for the United States, which is supposed to be a mixture of Hebrew and Mikmak.

v. 458.

4 Allading to a collection of poems, called La Puce des grands-jours de Poitiers. They were all written upon a flea, which Stephen Pasquier found on the bosom of the famous Cathe rine des Roches, one morning during the grands-jours of Poitiers. I ask pardon of the learned Catherine's memory, for my vulgar alteration of her most respectable name.

Under every bush,

As would make the "shy curcuma" blush;
Vice under every name and shape,

From adulterous gardens to fields of rape!
I'll send you some Dionaea Muscipula,
And, into Bartram's book if you dip, you'll a
Pretty and florid description find of

This "ludicrous, lobed, carnivorous, kind of
The Lord deliver us!

Think of a vegetable being "carnivorous!"
And, George, be sure

I'll treat you too, like Liancourt 3
(Nor thou be risible),

With all the views, so striking and romantic,
Which one might have of the Atlantic,
If it were visible

And now, to tell you the gay variety
Of my stage society,

There was a quaker, who room for twenty took,
Pious and big as a Polyglot Pentateuch!
There was his niece too, sitting so fair by,
Like a neat testament, kept to swear by.
What pity, blooming girl!

That lips, so ready for a lover,
Should not beneath their ruby casket cover
One tooth of pearl!

But, like a rose beside the church-yard-stone,
Be doom'd to blush o'er many a mouldering bone!
There was

There was a student of the college, too,

Who said

The evening now grew dark and still;
The whip-poor-will

Sung pensively on every tree;

And strait I fell into a reverie

Upon that man of gallantry and pith,
Captain Smith.

1 "Curcuma, cold and shy.". DARWIN.

"2

2 "Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionaea Muscipula." - BARTRAM'S Travels in North America. For his description of this "carnivorous vegetable," see Introduction, p. 13. "The

3 This philosophical Duke, describing the view from Mr. Jefferson's house, says, Atlantic might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible." - See his Travels.

4 Polygnotus was the first painter, says Pliny, who showed the teeth in his portraits. He would scarcely, I think, have been tempted to such an innovation in America.

5 The Marquis CHASTELLUX, in his wise letter to Mr. Maddison, Professor of Philosophy in the College of William and Mary, at Williamsburgh, dwells with much earnestness on the attention which should be paid to dancing. See his Travels. This college, the only one in the state of Virginia, and the first which saw in America, gave me but a melancholy idea of republican seats of learning. That contempt for the elegancies of education, which the American democrats affect, is no where more grossly conspicuous than in Virginia: the young men, who look for advancement, study rather to be demagogues than politicians; and as every thing that distinguishes from the multitude is supposed to be invidious and unpopular, the levelling system is applied to education, and has had all the effect which its partizans could desire, by producing a most extensive equality of ignorance. The Abbé RAYNAL, in his prophetic admonitions to the Americans, directing their attention very strongly to learned establishments, says, "When the youth of a country are seen depraved, the nation is on the decline." I know not what the Abbé Raynal would pronounce of this nation now, were he alive to know the morals of the young students at Williamsburgh! But when he wrote, his countrymen had not yet introduced the "doctrinam deos spernentem" into America.

6 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