Yet if health do not sweeten the blast with her bloom, Farewell to the few I have left with regret, May they sometimes recal, what I cannot forget, When they 've ask'd me the manners, the mind, or the mien Of some bard I had known, or some chief I had seen, I told them each luminous trait that I knew, Shall recur to their car, they'll recal me the same I have been to them now, young, unthoughtful, and blest, Ere hope had deceived me or sorrow depress'd! mind But, DOUGLAS! while thus I endear to Not a tract of the line, not a barbarous shore, That I could not with patience, with pleasure explore! But see-the bent top-sails are ready to swell— To the boat-I am with thee-Columbia, farewell! TO LADY H▬▬▬ ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS. Tunnebrige est à la même distance de Londres que Fontainebleau l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beau et de galant dans l'un et dans l'autre sexe s'y rassemble au temps des eaux. La compagnie, etc. etc.--See Memoires de Grammont, seconde part, chap. ii. TUNBRIDGE-WELLS, August, 1805. WHEN Grammont graced these happy springs, And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles, The merriest wight of all the kings Like us, by day they rode, they walk'd, The only different trait is this, That woman then, if man beset her, Was rather given to saying « yes,» Because, as yet, she knew no better! Each night they held a coterie, And husbands not the least alarm'd! They call'd up all their school-day pranks, As-« Why are husbands like the Mint?» Is just to set the name and print Why is a garden's wilder'd maze Like a young widow, fresh and fair?» Because it wants some hand to raise The weeds, which «have no business there!» And thus they miss'd and thus they hit, 'T was one of those facetious nights The snowy hand that wears it now. All this I'll prove, and then to you, Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical, Long may your ancient inmates give Let no pedantic fools be there, For ever be those fops abolish'd, With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, Heaven knows! not half so polish'd. But still receive the mild, the gay, ΤΟ NEVER mind how the pedagogue proses, Old Cloe, whose withering kisses Have long set the loves at defiance, Now, done with the science of blisses, May fly to the blisses of science! Young Sappho, for want of employments, But for you to be buried in books- Astronomy finds in your eye Better light than she studies above, In Ethics-t is you that can check, In a minute, their doubts and their quarrels ; Oh! show but that mole on your neck, And it will soon put an end to their morals. Your Arithmetic only can trip When to kiss and to count you endeavour; But eloquence glows on your lip When you swear that you'll love me for ever. Thus you see what a brilliant alliance A course of more exquisite science And, oh!-if a fellow like me May confer a diploma of hearts, With my lip thus I seal your degree, My divine little Mistress of Arts! EXTRACT FROM THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS, » Instead of wise encomiastics ↑ Mamurra, a dogmatic philosopher, who never doubted about any thing, except who was his father. . Nulla de re unquam præterquam de patre dubitavit.In vit. He was very learned—« Là dedans (that is, in his head when it was opened) le Punique heurte le Persan, l'Hébreu choque l'Arabique, pour ne point parler de la mauvaise intelligence du Latin avec le Grec, etc.-See l'Histoire de Montmaur, tom. ii. page 91. * Bombastus was one of the names of that great scholar and quack Paracelsus, Philippus Bombastus latet sub splendido tegmine Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi, says Stadelius de circumforanea Literatorum vanitate.—He used to fight the devil every night with a broad-sword, to the no small terror of his pupil Oporinus, who has recorded the circumstance. (See Orosis. Vit. apud Christian, Gryph. Vit. Select. quorundam Eruditissimorum, etc.) Paracelsus had but a poor opinion of Galen. My very beard (says he in his Paragrænum) has more learning in it than either Galen or Avicenna.. The angel who scolded St Jerom for reading Cicero, as GRATIAN tells the story, in his concordantia discordantium Canonum, and says that for this reason bishops were not allowed to read the Classies. Episcopas Gentilium libros non legat.-Distinct. 37. But Gratian is notorious for lying-besides, angels have got no tongues, as the illustrious pupil of Pantenus assures us: Ουχί ως ημιν τα ώτα, ούτως εκείνοις ή γλωττα· ουδ' αν οργανα τις δων porn aggod015.—CLEN. ALEXAND. Stromat. Now, how an angel CHRYSOST. Homil. in Epist. ad Hebræos. could scold without a tongue, I shall leave the angelic Mrs — to ΤΙ ΚΑΚΟΝ Ο ΓΕΛΩΣ; BUT, whither have these gentle ones, I promised that I would give the remainder of this poem, but, as my critics do not seem to relish the sublime learning which it contains, they shall have no more of it. With a view, however, to the edification of these gentlemen, I have prevailed on an industrious friend of mine, who has read a great number of unnecessary books, to illuminate the extract with a little of his precious erudition. When scarce there happen'd any frolics A cold and loveless son of Lucifer, Who woman scorn'd, nor knew the use of her, grow a great scholastic mannikin, Or any doctor of the rabble is! He chatter'd more than ever Jew did, Were one-and-seventy fools to him! Zeal so strong for gamma, delta, That, all for Greek and learning's glory,4 From whence your scholars, when they want 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 Curiosités inouies, chap. 1. He says he thinks this story of the sea-monster carries little show of probability with it.» 2 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. 3 The following compliment was paid to Laurentius Valla, upon his accurate knowledge of the Latin language: Nunc postquam manes defunctus Valla petivin 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 he works which be criticises. 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 hum in Greek. Master Joachim (says be) 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 literæ possunt intelligi et legi.. (Vide Nov. Libror. Rarior. Collection. Fasciculi IV.)—Scipio Carteromachus scems 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 Rhodomanuus cannot be sufficiently admired, when he exhorts his countrymen, per gloriam Christi, per salutem patriæ, 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 further eulogium on his tomb than Here lieth a Greek Lexicographer, In logies, he was quite Ho Panu! Were view'd as dangerous innovations. He taught this maid his esoterica, But, as for all your warbling Delias, He own'd he thought them much surpass'd Who still contrived, by dint of throttle, Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he, 'O HANY.—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 θέμις εςιν in hac regione μενεντι ROSSARD, 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 CowLET'S Antiperistais. 2 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 frem a curious Epigram which MENCARNIVS gives in a note upon his Essays de Charlataneria Eruditorum. In the Nuptia Peripatetice of Cairan BARLEUS, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony. CRAMBE's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinas Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the Nuptia Peripatetice of Baa LEUS. Or Glass-Breaker.-Monorius bas given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. De vitreo caypho fracie, a etc. Wherein he show'd the reason why, In point of science astronomical, He thought the aberrating rays Were by the Doctors looked, in common, on, 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), Yet instantly the modest brain Our doctor thus with «stuff'd sufficiency » 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. These fragments form hut a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the insidents 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 Richmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Federalists. What Mr Weld says of the continual necessity of balancing or Allading to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, notwith-trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in standing the inversion of the image upon the retina, a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sensorium. 3 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 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, 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 be) 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. 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. As would make the shy curcuma »4 blush; sistrata of ARISTOPHANES, v. 458. 2 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. Alluding to a collection of poems, called La Puce de grands-jours de Poitiers They were all written upon a flea, which Stephen Pasquier found on the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches, one morning during the grands-jeurs of Pontiers. Lask pardon of the learned Cathere's memory, for my vulgar alteration of her most respectable name 4 Curcama, cold and six- DEAWAY I'll send you some Dionea Muscipula, This « ludicrous, lobed, carnivorous, kind of—» A Think of a vegetable being «carnivorous!»> I'll treat you too, like Liancourt 2 (Nor thou be risible), With all the views, so striking and romantic, And now, to tell you the There was a quaker, who room for twenty took, That lips, so ready for a lover, But, like a rose beside the church-yard-stone, There was a student of the college, too, Much more about the riches of his head, If his what d'ye call her?- 1.Observed I kewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionea Muscipula -BARTRAM's Travels in North America. For bis description of this carnivorous vegetable, see Introduction, p. 13 2 This philosophical Duke, describing the view from Mr Jefferson's house, says, The Atlantie might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible,»-See his Travels. 3 Polygnotus was the first painter, says Pliny, who showed the teeth in his portraits. He would scarcely, I think, have been tempted to sarb an innovation in America. 4 The Marquis de CHASTELLOY, 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 I saw in America, gave me but a melancholy idea of republican seats of learning. That costempt 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 demagogões than politicians; and as every thing that distinguishes from the mult tude is supposed to be invidious and unpopular, the levelling cystem is applied to education, and has had all the effect which its partisans could desire, by producing a most extensive equality of ignorance. The Abbé Raymat, 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 de m were he alive to know the morals of the young students at Wilhamburgh! But when he wrote, his countrymen had not yet introdus eẺ the detonam deos speinentein. into America. |