Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their pupils the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, being constantly at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented most of these wonderful adventures, Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voragine, Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the lives of the saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries; and, awakening from the dust these manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before them these voluminous absurdities. The people received these pious fictions with all imaginable simplicity, and as the book is adorned with a number of cuts, these miracles were perfectly intelligible to their eyes. Tillemont, Fleury, Baillet, Launoi and Bollandus, cleared away much of the rubbish; the enviable title of Golden Legend, by which James de Voragine called his work, has been dis puted; iron or lead might more aptly express the character of this folio. When the world began to be more critical in their reading, the monks gave a graver turn to their narratives; and became penurious of their absurdities. The faithful Catholic contends, that the line of tradition has been preserved unbroken; notwithstanding that the originals were lost in the general wreck of literature from the barbarians, or came down in a most imperfect state. Baronius has give the lives of many apocryphal saints; for instance, of a saint Xinoris whom he calls a martyr of Antioch; but it appears that Baronius having read in Chrysostom this word, which signifies a couple or pair, he mistook it for the name of a saint, and contrived to give the most authentic biography of a saint who never existed! The Catholics confess this sort of blunder is not uncommon, but then it is only fools who laugh! As a specimen of the happier inventions, one is given, embellished by the dictions of Gibbon Among the insipid legends of ecclesiastical history, I am tempted to distinguish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers; whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. When the Emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven notable youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern on the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolins, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice. The light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber as they thought of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger; and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth, if we may still employ that appellation, could no longer recog nize the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichas and his friends had escaped from the rage of a Pagan ty rant. The bishop of Ephesus, the clergy, the magistrates, the people, and, it is said, the Emperor Theodosius himself, hastened to visit the cavern of the Seven Sleepers, who bestowed their benediction, related their story and at the same instant peaceably expired. This popular tale Mahomet learned when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria; and he has introduced it, as a divine revelation, into the Koran. The same story has been adopted and adorned, by the nations from Bengal to Africa, who profess the Mahometan religion. The too curious reader may perhaps require other spe cimens of the more unlucky inventions of this Golden Legend; as characteristic of a certain class of minds, the philosopher will not contemn these grotesque fictions. These monks imagined that holiness was often proportioned to a saint's filthiness. St Ignatius, say they, delighted to appear abroad with old dirty shoes; he never used a comb, but let his hair clot; and religiously abstained from paring his nails. One saint attained to such piety as to have near three hundred patches on his breeches ; which, after his death, were hung up in public as an incentive to imitation. St Francis discovered by certain experience, that the devils were frightened away by such kind of breeches, but were animated by clean clothing to tempt and seduce the wearers; and one of their heroes declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this they tell a story which may not be very agreeable to fastidious delicacy. Brother Juniper was a gentleman perfectly pious on this principle; indeed so great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared he could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery, provided the wind was at the due point. Once, when the blessed Juniper, for he was no saint, was a guest, his host, proud of the honour of entertaining so pious a personage, the intimate friend of St Francis, provided an excellent bed, and the finest sheets. Brother Juniper abhorred such luxury. And this too evidently appeared after his sudden departure in the morning unknown to his kind host. The great Juniper did this, says his biographer, having told us what he did, not so much from his habitual inclinations for which he was so justly celebrated, as from his excessive piety, and as much as he could to mortify worldly pride, and to show how a true saint despised clean sheets. In the life of St Francis we find, among other grotesque miracles, that he preached a sermon in a desert, but he soon collected an immense audience. The birds shrilly warbled to every sentence, and stretched out their necks, opened their beaks, and when he finished, dispersed with a holy rapture into four companies, to report his sermon to all the birds in the universe. A grasshopper remained a week with St Francis during the absence of the Virgin Mary, and pittered on his head. He grew so companionable with a nightingale, that when a nest of swallows began to babble, he hushed them by desiring them not to tittletattle of their sister, the nightingale. Attacked by a wolf, with only the sign manual of the cross, he held a long dialogue with his rabid assailant, till the wolf, meek as a lapdog, stretched his paws in the hands of the saint, followed him through towns, and became half a Christian. This same St Francis had such a detestation of the good things of this world, that he would never suffer his followers to touch money. A friar having placed in a window some money collected at the altar, he desired him to take it in his mouth, and throw it on the dung of an ass! St Philip Nerius was such a lover of poverty, that he fre quently prayed that God would bring him to that state as to stand in need of a penny, and find nobody that would give him one! But Saint Macaire was so shocked at having killed a louse, that he endured seven years of penitence among the thorns and briars of a forest. A circumstance which seems to have reached Moliere, who gives this stroke to the character of his Tartuffe : Il s'impute a peché la moindre bagatelle; I give a miraculous incident respecting two pious maidens. The night of the Nativity of Christ, after the first mass, they both retired into a solitary spot of their nunnery till the second mass was rung. One asked the other, Why do you want two cushions, when I have only one? . LITERATURE. The other replied, 'I would place it between us, for the were alarmed at their absence, for no one could give any Such is one of these miracles of the Golden Legend,' which a wicked wit might comment on, and see nothing extraordinary in the whole story. The two nuns might be missing between the Nativities, and be found at the last with a child seated between them. They might not choose to account either for their absence or their childthe only touch of miracle is, that they asseverated, they saw no child-that I confess is a little (child) too much. The lives of the saints by Alban Butler is a learned work, and the most sensible history of these legends; Ribadenaira's lives of the saints exhibit more of the legendary spirit, for wanting judgment and not faith, he is more voluminous in his details, and more ridiculous in his narratives. THE PORT ROYAL SOCIETY. his studious hours, resorted to the cultivation of fruit-trees; In the solitude of Port-Royal Racine received his educa- Anne de Bourbon, a princess of the blood royal, erected The envy and the fears of the Jesuits, and their rancour Every lover of letters has heard of this learned society, which, says Gibbon, contributed so much to establish in France a taste for just reasoning, simplicity of style, and philosophical method. Their Logic, or the Art of Think-mels. The police, under Jesuitic influence, at length scizing,' for its lucid, accurate, and diversified matter, is still an admirable work; notwithstanding the writers at that time had to emancipate themselves from the barbarism of the scholastic logic with cautious boldness. It was the conjoint labour of Arnauld and Nicolle. Europe has benefited by the labours of these learned men: but not many have attended to the origin and dissolution of this literary society. In the year 1637, Le Maitre, a celebrated advocate. resigned the bar, and the honour of being Counseiller d'Etat, which his uncommon merit had obtained him, though then only twenty-eight years of age. His brother, De Sericourt, who had followed the military profession, quitted it at the same time. Consecrating themselves to the service of God, they retired into a small house near the Port-Royal of Paris, where they were joined by their brothers De Sacy, De St Elme, and De Valmont. Arnauld, one of their most illustrious associates, was induced to enter into the Jansenist controversy, and then it was they encountered the powerful persecution of the Jesuits. Constrained to remove from that spot, they fixed their residence at a few leagues from Paris, and called it Port-Royal des Champs. With these illustrious recluses many distinguished persons now retired, who had given up their parks and houses to be appropriated to their schools; and this community was called the Society of Port-Royal. Here were no rules, no vows, no constitution, and no cells formed. Prayer and study, and manual labour were their only occupations. They applied themselves to the education of youth, and raised up little academies in the neighbourhood, where the members of the Port-Royal, the most illustrious names of literary France, presided. None considered his birth entitled him to any exemption from their public offices, relieving the poor and attending on the sick, and employing themselves in their farms and gardens; they were carpenters, ploughmen, gardeners, and vinedressers, &c, as if they had practised nothing else; they studied physic, and surgery, and law; in truth, it seems that from religious motives, these learned men attempted to form a community of primitive Christianity. The Duchess of Longueville, once a political chief, sacrificed her ambition on the altar of Port-Royal, enlarged the tnonastic inclosure with spacious gardens and orchards, built a noble house, and often retreated to its seclusion. The learned D'Andilly, the translator of Josephus, after ed on the plates in the cabinet of the fair artist. How An interesting anecdote is related of Arnauld on the occasion of the dissolution of this society. The dispersion of these great men, and their young scholars, was lamented The excellent by every one but their enemies. Many persons of the highest rank participated in their sorrows. Arnauld, in that moment, was as closely pursued as if he had been a felon. It was then the Duchess of Longueville concealed Arnauld in an obscure lodging, who assumed the dress of a layman, wearing a sword and full-bottomed wig. Arnauld was attacked by a fever, and in the course of conversation with a physician, Arnauld inquired after news. They talk of a new book of the Port-Royal,' replied the doctor, 'attributed to Arnauld or to Sacy; but I do not believe it to come from Sacy; he does not write so well.' 'How, Sir!' exclaimed the philosopher, forgetting his sword and wig; believe me, my nephew writes better than I do.' The physician eyed his patient with amazement-he hastened to the Duchess, and told her, 'The malady of the gentleman you sent me to is not very serious, provided you do not suffer him to see any one, and insist on his holding his tongue. The Duchess, alarmed, immediately had Arnauld conveyed to her palace. She gave him an apart ment, concealed him in her chamber, and persisted to attend him herself. Ask,' she said, what you wan the servant, but it shall be myself who shall brig you.' How honourable is it to the female character, the similar events their sensibility is not greater than th titude! But the Duchess of Longueville sal model of human fortitude, which marty His remarkable reply to Nicolle, when rom place to place, can never be forgotten: Arnauld wished Nicolle to assist him in a new work, when the latter observed, We are now old, is it not time to rest?" 'Rest!' returned Arnauld, have we not all eternity to rest in " The whole of the Arnauld family were the most extraordinary instance of that hereditary character which s continued through certain families: here it was a subame, and, perhaps singular union of learning with religion. The Arnaulds, Sacy, Pascal, Tillemont, with other illustrious names, to whom literary Europe will owe perpetual obligations, combined the life of the monastery with that of the library. THE PROGRESS OF OLD AGE IN NEW STUDIES. Of the pleasures derivable from the cultivation of the arts, sciences, and literature, time will not abate the growing passion; for old men still cherish an affection and feel a youthful enthusiasm in those pursuits, when all others have ceased to interest. Dr Reid, to his last day, retained a most active curiosity in his various studies, and particularly in the revolutions of modern chemistry. In advanced life we may resume our former studies with a new pleasure and in old age we may enjoy them with the same relish with which more useful students commence. Professor Dugald Stewart tells us that Adam Smith observed to him that of all the amusements of old age, the most grateful and soothing is a renewal of acquaintance with the favourite studies and favourite authors of youth-a remark, which in his own case seemed to be more particularly exemplified while he was reperusing, with the enthusiasm of a student, the tragic poets of ancient Greece. I heard him repeat the observation more than once while Sophocles and Euripides lay open on his table.' Socrates learned to play on musical instruments in his old age; Cato, at eighty thought proper to learn Greek; and Plutarch, almost as late in life, Latin. Theophrastus began his admirable work on the Characters of Men at the extreme age of ninety. He only terminated his literary labours by his death, Peter Ronsard, one of the fathers of French poetry, applied himself late to study. His acute genius, and ardent application, rivalled those portic models which he admired; and Boccaccio was thirty-five years of age when he commenced his studies in polite literature. The great Arnauld retained the vigour of his genius, and the command of his pen, to his last day; and at the age of eighty-two was still the great Arnauld, Sir Henry Spelman neglected the sciences in his youth, but cultivated them at fifty years of age, and produced good front. His early years were chiefly passed in farming, which greatly diverted him from his studies; but a remarkabl disapposamen respecting a contested estate,disgusted him with these rustic occupations; resolved to atfach himself to regular studies, and literary society, he sold his farms, and became the most learned antiquary and lawver. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were the composition of his latest years; they were begun in his fifty-fourth year, and finished in his sixty-first. Ludovico Monaldesco, at the extraordinary age of 115, wrote the memoirs of his times, a singular exertion, noticed by Voltaire, who himself is one of the most remarkable instances of the progress of age in new studies. The most delightful of auto-biographers for artists, is that of Benvenuto Cellini; a work of great originality, which, was not begun till the clock of his age had struck fifty-eight.' Kornhert began at forty to learn the Latin and Greek anguages, of which he became a master; several students, who afterwards distinguished themselves, have commenced as late in life their literary pursuits. Ogilby, the transla tor of Homer and Virgil, knew little of Latin or Greek till he was past fifty; and Franklin's philosophical pursuits began when he had nearly reached his fiftieth year. Accorso, a great lawyer, oeing asked why he began the study of the law so late, answered, that indeed he began it late, but should therefore master it the sooner. Dryden's complete works form the largest body of poetry from the pen of one writer in the English language; yet he gave no public testimony of poetical abilities ull his twenty-seventh year. In his sixty-eighth year he proposed to translate the whole Iliad; and the most pleasing productions were written in his old age. Michael Angelo preserved his creative genius even in extreme old age; there is a device said to be invented by him of an old man represented in a go-cart, with an hourglass upon it; the inscription Ancora impara !—YET I AM LEARNING! We have a literary curiosity in a favourite treatise with Erasmus and men of letters of that period, De Ratione Studii, by Joachim Sterck, otherwise Fortius de Rhingelberg. The enthusiasm of the writer often carries him to the verge of ridicule; but something must be granted to his peculiar situation and feelings; for Baillet tells us that his method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practi cal knowledge and hard experience; at a late period of life he commenced his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more perpendicular mode of ascending His work Mr Knox compares to the sound of a trumpet. the hill of science than by its usual circuitous windings for his writing verses in his old age, by showing how many Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology poets amused themselves notwithstanding their gray hairs, and wrote sonnets or epigrams at ninety. La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, lo credo ch'io faro Sonnetto venti cinque anni, o trenta, poi che io saro morto. I think I may make some sonnets twenty-five, or perhaps thirty years after I shall be dead! Peteau tells us that he wrote verses to solace the evils of old agePetavius ger Cantabat veteris quærens solatia morbi. Malherbe declares the honours of genius were his, yet young Je les posseday jeune, et les possede encers Maynard moralises on this subject, En cheveux blancs il me faut donc aller SPANISH POETRY. play an extravagant imagination, which is by no means Pere Bouhours observes, that the Spanish poets dis. little taste or judgment. destitute of esprit-shall we say wit? but which evinces Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley-trivia. points, monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evident that the Spanish poets imported this taste from the time of Merino in Italy; but the warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have blown canian forge. the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vul Lopes de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says That the sea joyfully advances to gather her tears; and that, having enclosed them in shells, it converts them into pearls.' 'Y el mar como imbidioso A tierra por las lagrimas salia, Y alegre de cogerlas Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas.' Villegas addresses a stream- Thou who runnest over sands of gold, with feet of silver,' more elegant than our Shakspeare's Thy silver skin laced with thy golden blood.' Villegas monstrously exclaims, Touch my breast, if you doubt the power of Lydia's eyes-you will find it turned to ashes.' Again- Thou art so great that thou canst only imitate thyself with thy own greatness; much like our 'None but himself can be his parallel.' Gongora, whom the Spaniards once greatly admired, and distinguished by the epithet of The Wonderful, is full of these points and conceits. He imagines that a nightingale, who enchantingly varied her notes, and sang in different manners, had a hundred thousand other nightingales in her breast which alternately sang through her throat Con diferencia tal, con gracia tanta, Que teine otros cien mil dentro del pecho Que alterna su dolor por su garganta.' I do not seek in men what they have of evil, that I may censure; I only discover what they have ridiculous, that I Of a young and beautiful lady he says, that she has but may be amused. I feel a pleasure in detecting their fola few years of life, but many ages of beauty. Muchos siglos de hermosura En pocos anos de edad. Many ages of beauty is a false thought, for beauty becomes not more beautiful from its age; it would be only a superannuated beauty. A face of two or three ages old could have but few charms. In one of his odes he addresses the River of Madrid by the title of the Duke of Streams and the Viscount of Rivers. 'Manganares, Manganares, Os que en todo el aguatismo, Estois Duque de Arroyos, Y Visconde de los Rios.' He did not venture to call it a Spanish grandee, for, in fact, it is but a shallow and dirty stream; and as Quevedo wittily informs us, Manganares is reduced, during the summer season, to the melancholy condition of the wicked rich man, who asks for water in the depths of hell.' Concerning this river a pleasant witicism is recorded. Though so small, this stream in the time of a flood can spread itself over the neighbouring fields; for this reason Philip the Second built a bridge eleven hundred feet long! -A Spaniard passing it one day, when it was perfectly dry, observing this superb bridge, archly remarked, That it would be proper that the bridge should be sold to purchase water.-Es menester, vender la puente por comprar The portrait of St Evremond, delineated by his own hand, will not be unacceptable to many readers. This writer possessed delicacy and wit, and has written well, but with great inequality. His poetry is insipid, and his prose abounds with points; the antithesis was his favourite figure, and its prodigality fatigues. The comparisons he forms between some of the illustrious ancients will interest from their ingenuity. In his day it was a literary fashion for writers to give their own portraits; a fashion that seems to have passed over into our country, for Farquhar has drawn his own character in a letter to a lady. Others of our writers have given these self-miniatures. Such painters are, no doubt, great flatterers, and it is rather their ingenuity, than their truth, which we admire in these cabinet pictures. 'I am a philosopher, as far removed from superstition as from impiety; a voluptuary, who has not less abhorrence of debauchery than inclination for pleasure; a man, who has never known want or abundance. I occupy that sta tion of life which is contemned by those who possess every thing envied by those who have nothing, and only relished by those who make their felicity consist in the exercise of their reason. Young, I hated dissipation; convinced that a man must possess wealth to provide for the comforts of a long life. Old, I disliked economy; as I believe that we need not greatly dread want, when we have but a short time to be miserable. I am satisfied with what nature has done for me, nor do I repine at fortune. lies; I should feel a greater in communicating my discoveries did not my prudence restrain me. Life is too short, according to my ideas, to read all kinds of books, and to load our memories with an endless number of things at the cost of our judgment. I do not attach myself to the observations of scientific men to acquire science; but to the most rational that I may strengthen my reason. Some.. times, I seek for more delicate minds, that my taste may imbibe their delicacy; sometimes for the gayer, that I may enrich my genius with their gavety; and, although I constantly read, I make it less my occupation than my pleasure. In religion, and in friendship, I have only to paint myself such as I am-in friendship more tender than a philosopher; and in religion as constant and sincere as a youth who has more simplicity than experience. My piety is composed more of justice and charity than of penitence. I rest my confidence on God, and hope every thing from his benevolence. In the bosom of providence I find my repose, and my felicity.' MEN OF GENIUS DEFICIENT IN CONVERSATION. The student who may, perhaps, shine a luminary of learning and of genius, in the pages of his volume, is found, not rarely, to lie obscured beneath a heavy cloud in colloquial discourse. If you love the man of letters seek him in the privacies of his study. It is in the hour of confidence and tranquillity his genius shall elicit a ray of intelligence, more fervid than the labours of polished composition. The great Peter Corneille, whose genius resembled that of our Shakspeare, and who has so forcibly expressed the sublime sentiments of the hero, had nothing in his exterior that indicated his genius; on the contrary, his conversation was so insipid that it never failed of wearving. Nature who had lavished on him the gifts of genius, had forgotten to blend with them her more ordinary ones. did not even speak correctly that language of which he was such a master. He When his friends represented to him how much more he might please by not disdaining to correct these trivial errors, he would smile and say I am not the less Peter Corneille! Descartes, whose habits were formed in solitude and meditation, was silent in mixed company; and Thomas described his mind by saying that he had received his intellectual wealth from nature in solid bars, but not in current coin; cr as Addison expressed the same idea, by comparing himself to a banker who possessed the wealth of his friends at home, though he carried none of it in his pocket, or as that judicious moralist Nicolle, one of the Port-Royal Society, who said of a scintillant wit- He conquers me in the drawing-room, but he surrenders to me at discretion on the staircase.' Such may say with Themistocles, when asked to play on a lute, I cannot fiddle, but I can make a little village a great city.' The deficiencies of Addison in conversation are well known. He preserved a rigid silence amongst strangers; but if he was silent, it was the silence of meditation. How often at that moment, he laboured at some future Speciator! Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe. The cynical Mandeville compared Addison, after having passed an evening in his company, to a silent parson in a tie-wig.' It is no shame for an Addison to receive the censures of a Mandeville; he has only to blush when he calls down those of a Pope. Virgil was heavy in conversation, and resembled more an ordinary man than an enchanting poet. La Fontaine, says La Bruyere, appeared coarse, heavy, and stupid; he could not speak or describe what he had just seen; but when he wrote he was the model of poetry. It is very easy, said a humourous observer on La Fontaine, to be a man of wit or a fool; but to be both, and that too in the extreme degree, is indeed admirable, and only to be found in him. This observation applies to that fine natural genius Goldsmith. Chaucer was more facetious in his tales than in his conversation, and the Countess of Pembroke used to rally him by saving that his silence was more agreeable to her than his conversation. Isocrates, celebrated for his beautiful oratorical compo sitions, was of so timid a disposition that he never ventured to speak in public. He compared himself to the whet stone which will not cut, but enables other things to do this; for his productions served as models to other orators. Vaucanson was said to be as much a machine as any he had made. Dryden said of himself,- My conversation is slow and dull, iny humour saturnine and reserved. In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company, or make repartees. VIDA. What a consolation for an aged parent to see his child, by the efforts of his own merits, attain from the humblest ob-curity to distinguished eminence! What a transport for the inan of sensibility to return to the obscure dwelling of his parent, and to embrace him, adorned with public hoPoor Vida was deprived of this satisfaction; but he is placed higher in our esteem by the present anecdote than even by that classic composition, which rivals the Art of Poetry of his great master. nours. Jerome Vula, after having long served two Popes, at length actained to the episcopacy. Arrayed in the robes of his new dignity he prepared to visit his aged parents, and felicited himself with the raptures which the old couple would feel in embracing their son as their bishop. When he arrived at their village, he learnt that it was but a few days since they were no more! His sensibilities were exquisitely pained. The muse, elegantly querulous, dictated some elegiac verse; and in the sweetest pathos deplored the death and the disappointment of his parents. THE SCUDERIES. Bien heureux Sendery, dont la fertile plume Peut tout les mois sans peine enfanter un volume. Boileau has written this couplet on the Scuderies, the brother and sister, both famous in their day for composing romances, which they sometimes extended to ten or twelve volumes. It was the favourite literature of that period, as novels are now. Our nobility not unfrequently condescended to translate these voluminous compositions. The diminutive size of our modern novels is undoubtedly an improvement; but in resembling the size of primers, it were to be wished that their contents had also resembled their inoffensive pages. Our great grandmothers were incommoded with overgrown folios: and, instead of finishing the eventful history of two lovers at one or two sittings, it was sometimes six months, including Sundays, before they could get quit of their Clelias, their Cyrus's, and Parthenissas. Mademoiselle Scudery, Menage informs us, had composed ninety volumes! She had even finished another romance, which she would not give to the public, whose taste, she perceived, no more relished this kind of works. She was that unfortunate author who lives to more than ninety years of age; and consequently outlive their immortality. She had her panegyrists in her day: Menage observes, What a pleasing description has Mademoiselle Scudery made in her Cyrus, of the little court at Rambouillet! Å thousand things in the romances of this learned lady render them inestimable. She has drawn from the ancients their happiest passages, and has even improved upon them; like the prince in the fable, whatever she touches, becomes gold. We may read her works with great profit, if we possess a correct taste, and love instruction. Those who censure their length, only show the littleness of their judgment; as if Homer and Virgil were to be despised, because many of their books are filled with episodes and incidents that necessarily retard the conclusion. It does not require much penetration to observe that Cyrus and Clelia are a species of the epic poem. The epic must embrace a number of events to suspend the course of the narrative; which only taking in a part of the life of the bero, would terminate too soon to display the skill of the poet. Without this artifice, the charm of uniting the greater part of the episodes to the principal subject of the romance would be lost. Mademoiselle de Scudery has so well treated them, and so aptly introduced a variety of beautiful passages, that nothing in this kind is comparable 1 .er productions. Some expressions, and certain turns, have become somewhat obsolete, all the rest will last for ever, and outlive the criticisms they have undergone.' Menage has here certainly uttered a false prophecy. The curious only look over her romances. They contain doubtless many beautiful inventions the misfortune is, that time and patience are rare requisites for the enjoyment of these Iliads in prose. The misfortune of her having written too abundantly has occasioned an unjust contempt,' says a French critic. 'We confess there are many heavy and tedious passages in her voluminous romances; but if we consider that in the Clelia and the Artemene are to be found inimitable delicate touches, and many splendid parts which would do honour to some of our living writers, we must acknowledge that the great defects of all her works arise from her not writing in an age when taste had reached the acmé of cultivation. Such is her erudition that the French place her next to the celebrated Madame Dacier. Her works, containing many secret intrigues of the court and city, her readers must have keenly relished on their early publication.' Her Artamenes, or the Great Cyrus, and principally her Clelia, are representations of what then passed at the court of France. The Map of the Kingdom of Tenderness, in Clelia, appeared, at the time, as the happiest invention. This once celebrated map is an allegory which distinguishes the different kinds of tenderness, which are reduced to esteem, gratitude, and inclination. The map represents three rivers, which have these three names, and on which are situated three towns called Tenderness: Tenderness on Inclination; Tenderness on Esteem: and Tenderness on Gratitude. Pleasing Attentions, or Petit Soins, is a village very beautifully situated. Mademoiselle de Scudery was extremely proud of this little allegorical map; and had a terrible controversy with another writer about its originality. George Scudery, her brother and inferior in genius, had a striking singularity of charactor:-he was one of the most complete votaries to the universal divinity of Vanity. With a heated imagination, entirely destitute of judgment, his military character was continually exhibiting itself by that peaceful instrument the pen, so that he exhibits a most amusing contrast of ardent feelings in a cool situation; not liberally endowed with genius, but abounding with its semblance in the fire of eccentric gasconade; no man has pourtrayed his own character with a bolder colouring than himself in his numerous prefaces and addresses; surrounded by a thousand self-illusions of the most sublime class, every thing that related to himself had an Homeric grandeur of conception. In an epistle to the Duke of Montmorency, he says, 'I will learn to write with my left hand, that my right hand may more nobly be devoted to your service; and alluding to his pen, (plume,) declares, he comes from a family who never used one, but to stick in their hats.' When ho solicits small favours from the great, he assures them that princes must not think him importunate, and that his writings are merely inspired by his own individual interest; no! he exclaims, I am studious only of your glory, while I am careless of my own fortune.' And indeed, to do him but justice, he acted up to those romantic feelings. After he had published his epic of Alaric, Christina of Sweden proposed to honour him with a chain of gold of the value of five hundred pounds, provided he would expunge from his epic the eulogiums he had bestowed on the Count of Gar die, whom she had disgraced. The epical soul of Scudery magnanimously scorned the bribe, and replied, that 'if the chain of gold should be as weighty as that chain mentioned in the history of the Incas, I will never destroy any altar on which I have sacrificed!' Proud of his boasted nobility and erratic life, he thus addresses the reader: You will lightly pass over any faults in my work, if you reflect that I have employed the greater part of my life in seeing the finest parts of Europe, and that I have passed more days in the camp than in the li brary. I have used more matches to light my musket than to light my candles; I know better how to arrange columns in the field than those on paper; and to square battalions better than to round periods.' In his first publi cation, he began his literary career perfectly in character, by a challenge to his critics! He is the author of sixteen plays, chiefly heroic tragedies; children who all bear the features of their father. He first introduced in his 'L'Amour Tyrannique' a strict observance of the Aristotelian unities of time and place; and the necessity and advantages of this regulation are urged, which only shows that Aristotle goes but little to the composition of a pathetic tragedy. In his last drama, 'Arminius,' he extravagantly scatters his panegyrics on its fifteen predecessors; but of the present one he has the |