He bids his battered flesh lie gently down Amongst his native rubbish; whilst the spirit Breathes and flies upward, an undoubted guest Of the third heaven, the unruinable sky.

Thither, when fate has brought our willing souls,
No matter whether 'twas a sharp disease,

Or a sharp sword that help'd the travellers on,
And pushed us to our home. Bear up, my friend,
Serenely, and break through the stormy brine
With steady prow; know, we shall once arrive
At the fair haven of eternal bliss,

To which we ever steer; whether as kings
Of wide command we've spread the spacious sea
With a broad painted fleet, or rowed along
In a thin cock-boat with a little oar.

Dr Watts breathing forth threatenings and slaughter against the enemies of his king and country is a pleasing spectacle. In an 'answer to an infamous satyr called "Advice to a Painter" against King William III. of glorious memory,' the good doctor thus blazes forth:

Why smoke the skies not? Why no thunders roll?
Nor kindling lightnings blast his guilty soul?
Audacious wretch! to stab a monarch's fame,
And fire his subjects with a rebel-flame;
To call the painter to his black designs,
To draw our guardian's face in hellish lines:
Painter, beware! the monarch can be shown
Under no shape but angel's, or his own,
Gabriel or William, on the British throne.

O could my thought but grasp the vast design,
And words with infinite ideas join,

I'd rouse Apelles from his iron sleep,

And bid him trace the warrior o'er the deep:
Trace him, Apelles, o'er the Belgian plain;
Fierce, how he climbs the mountains of the slain,
Scattering just vengeance through the red campaign.
Then dash the canvas with a flying stroke,
Till it be lost in clouds of fire and smoke,

And say, 'Twas thus the conqueror through the squadrons broke.

Mark him again emerging from the cloud,

Far from his troops; there like a rock he stood His country's single barrier in a sea of blood.

Whilst alone

He wards the fate of nations, and provokes his own :
But heaven secures its champion; o'er the field
Paint hovering angels; though they fly conceal'd,
Each intercepts a death, and wears it on his shield.

Watts in defence of his own choice of subjects, and in exhortation of other poets (in the preface to the Hora), shows a command of swinging rhythmical prose:

Besides, we may fetch a further answer to Monsieur Boileau's objection from other poets of his own country. What a noble use have Racine and Corneille made of Christian subjects in some of their best tragedies! What a variety of divine scenes are displayed, and pious passions awakened, in those poems! The martyrdom of Polyeucte, how doth it reign over our love and pity, and at the same time animate our zeal and devotion! May I here be permitted the liberty to return my thanks

to that fair and ingenious hand that directed me to such entertainments in a foreign language, which I had long wished for, and sought in vain in our own. Yet I must confess, that the Davideis, and the two Arthurs, have so far answered Boileau's objection, in English, as that the obstacles of attempting Christian poesy are broken down, and the vain pretence of its being impracticable is experimentally confuted.

It is true indeed, the Christian mysteries have not such need of gay trappings as beautified, or rather composed, the heathen superstition. But this still makes for the greater ease and surer success of the poet. The wonders of our religion, in a plain narration and a simple dress, have a native grandeur, a dignity, and a beauty in them, though they do not utterly disdain all methods of ornament. The book of the Revelation seems to be a prophecy in the form of an opera or a dramatic poem, where divine art illustrates the subject with many charming glories; but still it must be acknowledged that the naked themes of Christianity have something brighter and bolder in them, something more surprising and celestial, than all the adventures of gods and heroes, all the dazzling images of false lustre that form and garnish a heathen song: here the very argument would give wonderful aids to the muse, and the heavenly theme would so relieve a dull hour and a languishing genius, that when the muse nods, the sense would burn and sparkle upon the reader, and keep him feelingly awake.

With how much less toil and expense might a Dryden, an Otway, a Congreve, or a Dennis furnish out a Christian poem than a modern play! There is nothing among all the ancient fables or later romances that have two such extremes united in them as the eternal God becoming an infant of days; the possessor of the palace of Heaven laid to sleep in a manger; the holy Jesus, who knew no sin, bearing the sins of men in his body on the tree; agonies of sorrow loading the soul of him who was God over all, blessed for ever; and the sovereign of life stretching his arms on a cross, bleeding and expiring: The heaven and the hell in our divinity are infinitely more delightful and dreadful than the childish figments of a dog with three heads, the buckets of the Belides, the Furies with snaky hairs, or all the flowery stories of Elysium. And if we survey the one as themes divinely true, and the other as a medley of fooleries which we can never believe, the advantage for touching the springs of passion will fall infinitely on the side of the Christian poet; our wonder and our love, our pity, delight, and sorrow, with the long train of hopes and fears, must needs be under the command of an harmonious pen, whose every line makes a part of the reader's faith, and is the very life or death of his soul.

If the trifling and incredible tales that furnish out a tragedy are so armed by wit and fancy as to become sovereign of the rational powers, to triumph over all the affections, and manage our smiles and our tears at pleasure; how wondrous a conquest might be obtained over a wild world, and reduce it, at least, to sobriety, if the same happy talent were employed in dressing the scenes of religion in their proper figures of majesty, sweetness, and terror! The wonders of creating power, of redeeming love, and renewing grace, ought not to be thus impiously neglected by those whom Heaven has endued with a gift so proper to adorn and cultivate them; an art whose sweet insinuations might almost convey piety in

resisting nature, and melt the hardest souls to the love of virtue. The affairs of this life, with their reference to a life to come, would shine bright in a dramatic description; nor is there any need of any reason why we should always borrow the plan or history from the ancient Jews or primitive martyrs, though several of these would furnish out noble materials for this sort of poesy: but modern scenes would be better understood by most readers, and the application would be much more easy. The anguish of inward guilt; the secret stings and racks and scourges of conscience; the sweet retiring hours and seraphical joys of devotion; the victory of a resolved soul over a thousand temptations; the inimitable love and passion of a dying God; the awful glories of the last tribunal; the grand decisive sentence, from which there is no appeal; and the consequent transports or horrors of the two eternal worlds: these things may be variously disposed, and form many poems. How might such performances, under a divine blessing, call back the dying piety of the nation to life and beauty? This would make religion appear like itself, and confound the blasphemies of a profligate world, ignorant of pious pleasures.

But we have reason to fear that the tuneful men of our day have not raised their ambition to so divine a pitch; I should rejoice to see more of this celestial fire kindling within them; for the flashes that break out in some present and past writings betray an infernal source. This the incomparable Mr Cowley, in the latter end of his preface, and the ingenious Sir Richard Blackmore, in the beginning of his, have so pathetically described and lamented, that I rather refer the reader to mourn with them, than detain and tire him here. These gentlemen in their large and laboured works of poesy have given the world happy examples of what they wish and encourage in prose; the one in a rich variety of thought and fancy, the other in all the shining colours of profuse and florid diction.

If shorter sonnets were composed on sublime subjects, such as the Psalms of David and the holy transports interspersed in the other sacred writings, or such as the moral odes of Horace and the ancient lyricks, I persuade myself that the Christian preacher would find abundant aid from the poet in his design to diffuse virtue and allure souls to God. If the heart were first inflamed from Heaven, and the muse were not left alone to form the devotion and pursue a cold scent, but only called-in as an assistant to the worship, then the song would end where the inspiration ceases; the whole composure would be of a piece, all meridian light and meridian fervour; and the same pious flame would be propagated and kept glowing in the heart of him that reads. Some of the shorter odes of the two poets now mentioned, and a few of the Rev. Mr Norris's Essays in verse, are convincing instances of the success of this proposal.

It is my opinion, also, that the free and unconfined numbers of Pindar or the noble measures of Milton without rhyme would best maintain the dignity of the theme as well as give a loose to the devout soul, nor check the raptures of her faith and love. Though in my feeble attempts of this kind I have too often fettered my thoughts in the narrow metre of our Psalm-translators; I have contracted and cramped the sense, or rendered it obscure and feeble, by the too speedy and regular returns of rhyme.

The large and laboured works of poesy' above described are Cowley's Davideis (see Vol. I. p. 643) and Blackmore's two poems on Arthur (see Vol. II. p. 107). For Mr Norris, see below at page 259. There are Lives of Watts by Dr Gibbons, Dr Johnson, Southey, Milner, and E. Paxton Hood (1875). Since 1753 there have been more than half-a-dozen collective editions of his works; that of 1824 was in 6 vols. 4to.

Charles Leslie (1650-1722), author in 1698 of the famous Short and Easy Method with the Deists, was born in Dublin, the sixth son of John Leslie (1571-1671), the centenarian Bishop of Raphoe and Clogher, who was of Aberdeenshire family. Educated at Enniskillen and Trinity College, Dublin, Charles Leslie studied law in London, but in 1680 took orders. As chancellor of the cathedral of Connor, he distinguished himself by several disputations with Catholic divines, and by the boldness with which he opposed the pro-papal designs of King James. Nevertheless at the Revolution he adopted a decisive tone of Jacobitism, from which he never swerved through life. Removing to London, he was chiefly engaged for several years in writing controversial works against Quakers, Socinians, and deists, of which, however, none now remembered except the little treatise above named, and his Gallienus Redivivus (1695), a chief authority for the Massacre of Glencoe. He also wrote many occasional tracts in behalf of the House of Stuart. In 1711 he repaired to St Germains, and in 1713 to Bar-le-Duc. The Chevalier allowed him to have a chapel fitted up for the English service, and was even expected to lend a favourable ear to his arguments against popery; but in 1721 Leslie returned to Ireland in disgust, and soon after died at his house of Glaslough in County Monaghan. His works (7 vols. 1832) place their author high amongst controversial writers.

are

John Potter (c. 1674–1747) contributed little to English literature, but as a very eminent English classical scholar deserves a brief record. Born at Wakefield, and educated at University College, Oxford, he became professor of divinity at Oxford in 1708, Bishop of Oxford in 1715, and in 1737 Archbishop of Canterbury. He published, besides notes on Plutarch and St Basil, the Archæologia Græca, or Antiquities of Greece (1698), which was practically the standard work till after the middle of the nineteenth century; also editions of Lycophron (1697) and Clemens Alexandrinus (1715); and in English, a Discourse on Church Government, and other theological treatises, several of them against Hoadly, who complimented Potter as being his most formidable antagonist.

James Bramston (c. 1694-1744) wrote two satirical poems, much admired in their day and included in Dodsley's Collection: The Art of Politics, described as 'in imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry' (1729), and The Man of Taste (1733), 'occasioned by Pope's Epistle on that Subject.' He also produced an imitation of Philips's Splendid Shilling, called The Crooked Sixpence. In 1708

Bramston was admitted at Westminster School; in 1713 he was elected to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1723-25 he became vicar of Lurgashall and Harting in Sussex. His two principal poems are good essays in the style of Pope's and Young's satires. The following is the conclusion of his Art of Politics :

Parliamenteering is a sort of itch,

That will too oft unwary knights bewitch.
Two good estates Sir Harry Clodpole spent ;
Sate thrice, but spoke not once, in Parliament.
Two good estates are gone-who 'll take his word?
Oh, should his uncle die, he 'll spend a third;
He'd buy a house his happiness to crown,
Within a mile of some good borough-town;
Tag-rag and bobtail to Sir Harry's run,

Men that have votes, and women that have none;
Sons, daughters, grandsons with his Honour dine;
He keeps a publick-house without a sign.
Cobblers and smiths extol th' ensuing choice,
And drunken tailors boast their right of voice.
Dearly the free-born neighbourhood is bought,
They never leave him while he's worth a groat;
So leeches stick, nor quit the bleeding wound,
Till off they drop with skinfuls to the ground.
His Man of Taste is ironically made thus to ex-
patiate on his likes and dislikes:

Swift's whims and jokes for my resentment call,
For he displeases me that pleases all.
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.
To him as nature when he ceased to see,

Milton's an universal blank to me.
Confirmed and settled by the nation's voice,
Rhyme is the poet's pride and people's choice,
Always upheld by national support,

Of market, university, and court:

Thomson, write blank; but know that for that reason,
These lines shall live when thine are out of season.

Rhyme binds and beautifies the poet's lays,
As London ladies owe their shape to stays.

In the same poem he parodies:

Musick has charms to soothe a savage beast,
And therefore proper at a sheriff's feast.
And many of the couplets are sprightly:
To give is wrong, but it is wronger still,
On any terms to pay a tradesman's bill.

I'll please the maids of honour if I can ;
Without black velvet britches, what is man?

at

Oxford and Cambridge are not worth one farthing, Compared to Haymarket and Convent-garden. This is true taste, and whoso likes it not Is blockhead, coxcomb, puppy, fool, and sot. Laurence Echard (c. 1670-1730), born Barsham rectory in Suffolk, and bred at Christ's, Cambridge, held a succession of Lincolnshire and Suffolk livings, and died Archdeacon of Stow. Of nearly a score of publications, educational, classical, geographical, and historical, the most important was his History of England (1707-20) from the Romans to William and Mary, which was the

standard work thenceforward till it was superseded by Rapin's. The 'historic method' has long since banished some of the elements which in Echard's day were available for enlivening the records of the past. After the battle of Worcester 'Cromwell in his letter to the Parliament tells them,' says Echard, 'that the dimensions of this Mercy were above his thoughts, and that it was a Crowning Mercy.' There was, however, another side to the story, Echard thought, and adds accordingly this tale of

Cromwell and the Devil.

But others accounted it an infernal judgment; concerning which we have a strange story in the last part of the History of Independency, which the author says he received from a person of quality, viz. 'It was believ'd, and that not without some good cause, that Cromwell the same morning that he defeated the King's army at Worcester, had conference personally with the devil, with whom he made a contract, that to have his will then, and in all things else for seven years from that day, he should, at the expiration of the said years, have him at his command, to do at his pleasure, both with his soul and body.' This is also related in other printed books; but we have receiv'd a more full account never yet publish'd, which is here inserted as a thing more wonderful than probable, and therefore more for the diversion than satisfaction of the reader. It is a relation or narrative of a valiant officer call'd Lindsey, an intimate friend of Cromwell's, the first captain of his regiment, and therefore commonly called Colonel Lindsey; which is to this effect. On the third of September in the morning, Cromwell took this officer to a wood side not far from the army, and bid him alight, and follow him into that wood, and to take particular notice of what he saw and heard. After they had both alighted, and secur'd their horses, and walk'd some small way into the wood, Lindsey began to turn pale, and to be seiz'd with horror from some unknown cause: upon which Cromwell ask'd him how he did, or how he felt himself. He answer'd, that he was in such a trembling and consternation, that he never felt the like in all the conflicts and battels he had been engag'd in; but whether it proceeded from the gloominess of the place, or the temperament of his body, he knew not. How now, said Cromwell, what, troubled with vapours? come forwards, man! They had not gone above twenty yards, before Lindsey on a sudden stood still, and cry'd out, by all that's good, he was seiz'd with such unaccountable terror and astonishment, that it was impossible for him to stir one step further. Upon which Cromwell call'd him faint-hearted fool, and bid him stand there and observe, or be witness; and then advancing to some distance from him, he met with a grave elderly man with a roll of parchment in his hand, who deliver'd it to Cromwell, who eagerly perus'd it. Lindsey, a little recover'd from his fear, heard several loud words be tween them particularly Cromwell said, this is but for seven years; I was to have had it for one and twenty, and it must and shall be so. The other told him posi tively, it could not be for above seven; upon which Cromwell cry'd with great fierceness it should however be for fourteen years. But the other peremptorily declar'd it could not possibly be for any longer time; and if he would not take it so, there were others who

would accept of it. Upon which Cromwell at last took the parchment, and returning to Lindsey with great joy in his countenance, he cry'd, now, Lindsey, the battel is our own! I long to be engag'd. Returning out of the wood, they rode to the army, Cromwell with a resolution to engage as soon as possible, and the other with a design of leaving the army as soon. After the first charge Lindsey deserted his post, and rode away with all possible speed, day and night, till he came into the county of Norfolk, to the house of an intimate friend, one Mr Thorowgood, minister of the parish of

Cromwell as soon as he miss'd him, sent all ways after him, with a promise of a great reward to any that should bring him alive or dead.' Thus far the narrative of Lindsey himself; but something further is to be remember'd, to compleat and confirm the story.

When Mr Thorowgood saw his friend Lindsey come into his yard, his horse and himself just tired, in a sort of a maze, said, How now, Colonel! we hear there is like to be a battel shortly; what, fled from your colours? A battel! said the other; yes there has been a battel, and I am sure the King is beaten; but if ever I strike a stroak for Cromwell again, may I perish eternally: For I am sure he has made a league with the devil, and the devil will have him in due time. Then desiring his protection from Cromwell's inquisitors, he went in and related to him the whole story, and all the circumstances, concluding with these remarkable words, that Cromwell would certainly dye that day seven years that the battel was fought. The strangeness of the relation caus'd Mr Thorowgood to order his son John, then about twelve years of age, to write it in full length in his commonplace book, and to take it from Lindsey's own mouth. This common-place book, and likewise the same story written in other books, I am assured is still preserv'd in the family of the Thorowgoods. But how far Lindsey is to be believ'd, and how far the story is to be accounted incredible, is left to the reader's faith and judgment, and not to any determination of our own.

Simon Ockley (1678-1720), orientalist and historian, was born at Exeter of good Norfolk stock, studied at Queen's College, Cambridge, and as vicar of the small living of Swavesey in the county of Cambridge earned repute as the most eminent Arabist in England-insomuch that in 1711 he was made professor of Arabic at Cambridge. Most of his short life was spent in dire poverty; and in the debtors' prison of Cambridge he actually found a leisure for finishing his opus magnum denied him amidst the worries of his vicarage.

He translated a number of Arabic books and Italian and other treatises about the East. But the one work for which he is remembered is his Conquest of Syria, Persia, and Egypt by the Saracens (3 vols. 1708-57), commonly called 'The History of the Saracens.' It was mainly based on an Arabic manuscript now not regarded as quite a sound authority. But unlike his predecessor Pocock, Ockley wrote in English, and made his subject interesting to educated men generally. Gibbon obviously had Ockley's history constantly at hand, and speaks of the author as 'a learned and spirited interpreter of Arabic authorities,' and as 'an original in every sense, who

had opened his eyes.' The Life of Mohammed usually prefixed was not from his own pen, but was added by Dr Long, Master of Pembroke College, to the third volume, published long after Ockley's death. In Ockley's work nothing is more relevant to the history of literature than the traditional story of the burning of the Alexandrian Library at the conquest of Egypt in 641 by Amrou ('Amr ibn elAsi), General of the Caliph Omar; Egypt having till then been held for the Eastern Emperor Heraclius by the Coptic governor Mokaukas (Mukowkis). Some have denied that any such destruction as Ockley records took place; the general opinion is, that in the seventh century the library was in a very dilapidated condition, and that the Arabs only completed what neglect and Christian fanaticism had already well-nigh accomplished. No doubt Ockley's authorities absurdly exaggerated the extent of the destruction in the account they give and he repeats of

The Burning of the Alexandrian Library.

The inhabitants of Alexandria were then polled, and upon this the whole of Egypt followed the fortune and example of its metropolis, and the inhabitants compounded for their lives, fortunes, and free exercise of their religion, at the price of two ducats a head yearly. This head-money was to be paid by all without distinction, except in the case of a man holding land, farms, or vineyards, for in such cases he paid proportionably to the yearly value of what he held. This tax brought in a most prodigious revenue to the caliph. After the Saracens were once arrived to this pitch, it is no wonder if they went further, for what would not such a revenue do in such hands? For they knew very well how to husband their money, being at that time sumptuous in nothing but their places of public worship. Their diet was plain and simple. Upon their tables appeared neither wine nor any of those dainties, the products of modern luxury, which pall the stomach and enfeeble the constitution. Their chief drink was water; their food principally milk, rice, or the fruits of the earth.

The Arabians had as yet applied themselves to no manner of learning, nor the study of anything but their vernacular poetry, which, long before Mohammed's time, they understood very well after their way, and prided themselves upon. They were altogether ignorant of the sciences, and of every language but their own. Amrou, however, though no scholar, was a man of quick parts and of good capacity, and one who in the intervals of business was more delighted with the conversation of the learned, and with rational and philosophical discourses, than it is usual for men of his education to be. There was at that time in Alexandria one John, sirnamed 'The grammarian,' an Alexandrian by birth, of the sect of the Jacobites, and was the same that afterwards denied the Trinity, and being admonished by the bishops of Egypt to renounce his erroneous opinions, he was, upon his refusal, excommunicated. He was, however, a man eminent for learning, and Amrou was greatly pleased with his conversation; not only taking delight in frequently hearing him discourse on several sciences, but also occasionally asking him questions. This person, perceiving the great respect shown him by Amrou, ventured one day to petition him for the books

in the Alexandrian Library, telling him 'That he perceived he had taken an account of all things which he thought valuable in the city, and sealed up all the repositories and treasuries, but had taken no notice of the books; that, if they would have been any way useful to him, he would not have been so bold as to ask for them, but since they were not, he desired he might have them.' Amrou told him, 'That he had asked a thing which was altogether out of his power to grant, and that he could by no means dispose of the books without first asking the caliph's leave. However,' he said, 'he would write, and see what might be done in the matter.' Accordingly he performed his promise, and having given a due character of the abilities of this learned man, and acquainted Omar with his petition, the caliph returned this answer, 'What is contained in these books you mention is either agreeable to what is written in the book of God (meaning the Koran) or it is not: if it be, then the Koran is sufficient without them; if otherwise, it is fit they should be destroyed.' Amrou, in obedience to the caliph's command, distributed the books throughout all the city, amongst those that kept warm baths (of which there was at that time no fewer than four thousand in Alexandria), to heat the baths with. And notwithstanding the great havoc that must needs be made of them at this rate, yet the number of books which the diligence of former princes had collected was so great, that it was six months before they were consumed. A loss never to be made up to the learned world!

Joseph Addison

was born on 1st May 1672 at Milston, Amesbury (Wilts), where his father, the Rev. Lancelot Addison (1632-1703), afterwards Dean of Lichfield, was rector. His mother was Jane, daughter of Dr Nathaniel Gulston and sister of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol. He passed from Amesbury School to Salisbury School; thereafter, in 1683, to the Grammar-School of Lichfield, whither the family had removed on his father's appointment to the Deanery; and, later, to Charterhouse, where his future friend, Richard Steele, was a pupil. In 1687 he was admitted a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford; but in 1689 his success with some Latin verses (Inauguratio Regis Gulielmi) procured his election to a demyship at Magdalen College. He took his Master's degree in 1693, and five years later obtained a Fellowship at his college.

In his undergraduate efforts Addison confined himself to Latin: in verse, in the Inauguratio, already referred to, and the Gratulatio pro exoptato serenissimi Regis Gulielmi ex Hibernia reditu (1690); and in prose, in a short dissertation, De Insignioribus Romanorum Poetis (1692), which was frequently reprinted together with a continuation translated by one of Curll's hacks from the English of an ingenious Major Pack. These pieces, and his contributions of occasional verse to the two volumes of Musa Anglicana (1691, 1699), are interesting solely as formative evidence of Addison's political bias and literary method. We cannot share the enthusiasm of his contemporaries for the Pax Gulielmi (1697), which the judicial

'Rag' Smith held to be 'the best poem since the Eneid,' but we can admit its elegance, as we may concede the humour of the Machine Gesticulantes (à propos of Powell's famous puppet-show) or the devotional spirit of the Resurrectio. In this Latin miscellany we have a forecast, as complete as juvenile wit will allow, of the later faculty and graces of Mr Spectator.

Mox fundamenta futurae

Substravit pictor tabulae.

-Resurrectio, II. 9–10.

Addison's first English poem was a short piece To Mr Dryden (2nd June 1693), which secured the favour of the poet, and through him, or Congreve, or both, an introduction to the Whig leaders Somers and Montagu, and to the bookseller Jacob Tonson. Dryden thought so highly of Addison's translation of the Fourth Georgic that he referred to it in his critical Postscript to the Reader (after his Bees, my latter swarm is scarcely worth the hiving'), and he honoured his young friend by printing his Essay on the Georgics (1693) as an introduction to his own translation of Virgil. Addison continued to reside at Oxford, and appears to have been preparing to take holy orders; but he was dissuaded from this intention by his political friends, who had discovered in him a useful literary ally in the conflict of parties. He commended himself further to Somers and Montagu by his praise of the latter in a verse Account of the Greatest English Poets (1694), and by his dedication to the former of A Poem to His Majesty (1695); and by their united influence he obtained, in 1699, a pension of three hundred pounds a year for purposes of travel and general preparation in public affairs.

His Grand Tour-which included France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Holland, and extended over four years-was not the conventional escapade of the 'gentlemen that were just come wild out of their country' (Letter to Stanyan, Blois, February 1700). In Dr Johnson's phrase, 'he proceeded in his journey to Italy, which he surveyed with the eyes of a poet.' And the good Abbé Philippeaux at Blois admitted, with implied astonishment, that during his year at Blois his friend had had no amour, and added, 'I think I should have known it if he had had any.' Incidental references in his Letters show that he was making some historical inquiries about treaties and other matters, but his stronger likings lay in scholarly associations with the places which he visited, or in the æsthetic problems which their variety suggested. From Geneva he addressed his Letter from Italy (February 1702) to Montagu, now Lord Halifax-a prelude, in his happiest verse, to the more elaborate prose Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, which he prepared in 1705 from notes made during his tour. In these, as well as in the Dialogues on Medals, which he wrote during his visit to Vienna (1702), he shows his predisposition to that amiable reflection which characterises the more perfect