Above all, know that there are some pins which you should rarely unfasten!

We are incessantly told that we must be born poets. Yes, in the same manner that we must be born musicians, orators, or mechanics: that is, with the dispositions neces

my hands; I outstripped every one in running; and I could grasp a staff so firmly, that not any two of the strongest men could wrest it from my hands. I was a very skilful swimmer; and I knew how to dive for shell-fish to the bottom of the deepest creek or river."

Horace.

Bishop Huet.

The good and ingenuous French bishop, Huet, recollected in his old age the loves and gallantries of his youth, with a mingled penitence and self-complacency, the expression of which is not unamusing:

"I went too much," says he, "into the gay company of men, and much more into that of women; thinking that, to obtain a character for politeness, it was necessary to please the fair sex. I omitted none of those attentions by which it is supposed that their favour is to be won. I kept my person fresh and neat, wore fashionable clothes, was indefatigable in my assiduities towards those whom I admired, often addressed them in amatory verses, and whispered many a tender thing in their ears. One copy of love-verses which I then wrote is now universally read, and is not over delicate."

How admirably the character of the old Frenchman here breaks out! From an old officer this would have been nothing surprising: being from an aged bishop, it bespeaks in him a lightness of spirit not naturally allied to episcopal gravity.

The following is also an ungenu ous display of French vanity by the same worthy Huet:

"I was," says he, “ an indifferent dancer indeed; but then I exceeded all my young companions in fencing and riding: I could leap over any height to which I was able to reach

Dyonysius brought me your little volume. I took it in good part, and did not complain of its brevity. However, you seem to be afraid lest your scroll should be of a larger size than your person: but your stature is so low, your bulk makes amends for it: you might sit and write in a bushel. Your packet was exactly like your own belly, thick and short.

Envy.

Envy is a personage frequently introduced by the poets, and we have several descriptions of her, all indeed formed on the same model, and copied from each other. The first of these is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, book ii, where she is employed like a Fury by Minerva, to infect the mind of Aglauros. The description is partly natural, partly emblematical. She is represented as dwelling in a cave seated in a cold dark valley. She is found chewing the flesh of vipers, which may be interpreted feeding on malignant thoughts. Her gait is sluggish, her countenance pale, her body lean; she looks askance; her breast is suffused with gall, and her tongue flows with poison. She never smiles, but at mischief; she is sleepless through anxiety; she pines at the view of prosperity, and suffers as much as she inflicts. This is little more than the natural description of an envious person, the bodily effects of which corroding passion are almost literally to envenom the juices, and causes a superabundance of acrid gall. It is a stroke of nature,

too, when she is represented as sighing deeply at the view of Minerva's beauty and splendor, and scarcely forbearing to weep as she passes over the flourishing and opulent city of Athens. Her thorny staff allegorically expresses the pains of mind produced by envious affections. The blight and desolation which fall on the subjacent earth, over which she takes her flight, denote the baleful effects of this passion.

"She takes her staff, with thorny wreaths begirt,

And, veil'd in murky clouds, where'er she goes Beats down the ripening corn, the verdant fields

Withers, and every flowery summit

crops;

And, 'mid subjacent people, houses, towns,

Breathes foul contagion."

Her mode of infecting the unhappy Aglauros is by stroking her breast with her envenomed hands, and enfixing her hooked thorns.

There are two descriptions of Envy in "The Fairy Queen;" both of them loathsome and disgusting, and, though manifestly imitated from that of Ovid, less distinct and consistent as allegories. The only additional circumstance worth re

marking is, that the garment of Envy is painted full of eyes, an emblem, no doubt, of the sharp-sightedness of envious persons in discerning the faults of their neighbours.

Cowley, in his "Davideis," gives a portrait of Envy, drawn with much strength, and with some novelty :

The following advertisement is copied, verbatim et literatim, from one of the Philadelphia daily prints:

Nimrod Maxwell, proprietor of the celebrated Sulphur Spring, in Adams county, Pennsylvania, takes leave, on the approach of the season for bathing and drinking this highly medicinal water, to inform his for this and the neighbouring states, mer friends, and the inhabitants of who may be in quest of health or pleasure, that he is prepared to gratify them in both. His house is in all res

pects in an improved state, his rooms freshly embellished and furnished with the best beds, and his cellars

replenished with a variety of the choicest liquors. He promises a plentiful and luxuriant table, embellished by the best of cooks, and has been at the expense of sinking in the solid rock, and replenishing with abundance of ice, a cave, for the refreshment of his Spring guests. He will have obliging waiters, and plenty of them, together with music for the entertainment of such as delight in that exquisite treat. The house on the south side

of the bridge is occupied by Mr. Robert Long, who kept it formerly, and who has fitted it in the best manner for the accommodation of boarders. N. Maxwell, in this age of puffing, has chosen to content

himself with this plain and modest notice, begging his readers to believe that he means to perform even more than he has promised. June 17, 1807.

This modest Nimrod, who, at the same time that he takes leave of his friends, promises them, should they pay him a visit, such an exquisite sensual and intellectual treat, and who has thus contrived to combine pleasure with health, is certainly highly deserving of public patronage. I would recommend his advertisement to the notice of all loungers and valetudinarians, and earnestly exhort them to fly for a while the sickly vapours of the crowded city, and breathe the pure and bracing air of the mountains, in the delightful retreat offered them by the worthy Mr. Maxwell.

THE endowments of his mind were recommended by the graces of his form. Mankind are so subject to the fascination of externals, that the effects of the most elevated genius and virtue are greatly obstructed by personal disadvantages.Worth, covered by deformity, gains upon us but by slow approaches, and must not expect to be generally well received, till the world is convinced of its reality by repeated experience. But to him in whom nature hath united amiable qualities and great talents with personal elegance, we are immediately prepared to pay homage. While the eye surveys, the mind wishes to esteem and to admire.

Waller's person was handsome and graceful. That delicacy of soul which produces instinctive propriety, gave him an easy manner, which

was improved and finished by a polite education, and by a familiar intercourse with the great. The symmetry of his features was dignified with a manly aspect; and his eye was animated with sentiment and poetry.

His elocution, like his verse, was musical and flowing. In the senate, indeed, it often assumed a vigorous and majestic tone, which, it must be owned, is not a leading characteristic of his numbers.

He was so happily formed for society, that his company was sought for by those who detested his principles and his conduct. He must have had very engaging qualities, who kept up an intimacy with people of two prejudiced and exaspe rated parties; and who had the countenance of kings of very different tempers and characters. He was a favourite with the persons of either sex of the times in which he lived, who were most distinguished for their rank and for their genius. The mention of a Morley, a St. Evremond, a Dorset, a Clarendon, and a Falkland, with whom he spent many of his social hours, excludes a formal eulogium on his companionable talents. Let it suffice, therefore, to observe, that his conversation was chastised by politeness, enriched by learning, and brightened by wit.

The warmth of his fancy, and the gaiety of his disposition, were strictly regulated by temperance and decorum. Like most men of a fine imagination, he was a devotee to the fair sex; but his gallantry was not vitiated with debauchery; nor were his hours of relaxation and mirth prostituted to profaneness and infidelity. Irreligion and intemperance had not infected all ranks in Waller's time as they are now; but he had as much merit in avoiding the contagion of a profligate court, with which he had such familiar intercourse, as we can ascribe to an individual of the present age, who mixes much with the world, and yet continues proof against its licentiousness. He rebuked the impi

ous wit of the libertine, even before a king who was destitute of religion and principle; and who enjoyed a jest upon that sacred truth, which it was his duty to defend and to maintain.

But his virtue was more theoretic than practical. It was of a delicate and tender make; formed for the quiet of the poetical shade, and the ease of society; not hardy and confirmed enough for a conflict with popular commotions. His beha viour on his trial was hypocritical, unmanly, and abject; yet the alarming occasion of it, on which but few would have acquitted themselves with a determined fortitude, extenuates it in some measure to candour and humanity; though he who had effectually reduced the discipline of philosophy to practice, would rather have suffered death, than purchased life with the ignominy which it cost Waller. But let us recollect, that Providence is very rarely lavish of its extraordinary gifts to one man. Let us not condemn him with untempered severity, because he was not a prodigy which the world hath seldom seen: because his character comprised not the poet, the orator, and the hero.

That he greatly improved our language and versification, and that his works gave a new æra to English poetry, was allowed by his contemporaries: nor has it ever been disputed by good critics. Dryden tells us he had heard Waller say, "that he owed the harmony of his numbers to Fairfax's translation of the Godfrey of Buloigne." Whoever reads that translation, and compares it with our author's poetry, will see in how rude a state English verse was when Waller began to write, and what advantage it received from him. Perhaps more elegant language, and more harmonious numbers than his, would be expected even from a middling poet in this age of refinement: but such a writer would be as much inferior to Waller in absolute merit, as it is more difficult to attain new, than to copy past excellence, as it is ea

A

sier to imitate than to invent. voyage to the West-Indies, first atchieved by Columbus, and the calculations of Newton, are now often made by the modern mariner and mathematician: but who refuses admiration to the inventor of fluctions, and to the discoverer of America?

Ease, gallantry, and wit, are the principal constituents of his poetry; though he is frequently plaintive with tenderness, and serious with dignity: but impartiality must acknowledge, that his muse seldom reaches the sublime. She is characterised by the softer graces, not by grandeur and majesty. It is her province to draw sportive or elegiac notes from the lyre; not to sound the trumpet and inflame the soul.

now

Hitherto we have remarked our author's beauties; we must mention his faults. Undistinguished praise is as weak as it is unjust; it neither does credit to the encomiast, nor to the person commended.

Grammatical inaccuracies are not unfrequent in Waller. The literary amusement of the gentleman was not sufficiently tempered with the care and circumspection of the author. He sometimes prefers a point more brilliant than acute to a manly and forcible sentiment; and sometimes violates the simplicity of nature for the conceit of antithesis. In his fondness of simile he is apt to lose the merit of a good, by the addition of a bad one; in which he sacrifices truth and propriety to sound and splendour. These faults, how ever, we must, in a great measure, impute to the rudeness of the age, with which greater poets than Waller complied; partly from negligence or the immediate influence of example, and partly from necessity.

Waller's works will always hold a considerable rank in English poetry. His great abilities as a statesman and an orator are indisputable; and his moral character will be viewed with lenity by those whose minds are actuated by humanity, and who are properly acquainted

with their own failings; who consider the violence of the times in which he lived, and who are accustomed to think before they decide.

For the Literary Magazine.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

Mr. Thomas Pemberton.

HE descended from ancestors mentioned in Prince's Chronology, in the year 1632, among the freemen and first settlers of Massachusetts, and members of the first congregational church in Boston.

He was born November 8th, 1728. He had the advantage of a good school education; and was very desirous of going to college, but his parents were not able to gratify his youthful ambition. He was, therefore brought up in the mercantile line.

From early life he was fond of books, and was so particularly critical in his researches into the history of former times, as to gain the character of an antiquarian. He possessed an extensive knowledge of historic facts; and was never better entertained, than when investigating and recording the interesting particulars of the first settlement and early history of Massachusetts. His manuscript" Memoranda, Historical and Biographical," make about fifteen volumes. They are evidence of his diligence, and of his attachment to literary pursuits.

He was one of the first and most useful members of the Massachusetts historical society; an institution more honourable than honoured; and his contributions make more than a ninth part of their publications. He also furnished some articles to the "Massachusetts Magazine," when it had a name and a praise among the discerning, and several to the early numbers of the "Weekly Magazine," a work that now shines with Emerald splendor.

His friends solicited him to publish a volume of American Annals, but his natural diffidence prevented him from complying.

He had prepared a "Massachusetts Chronology of the 18th century." containing the notable events of every year, biographical notices of eminent men, topographical delineations, accounts of the settlements of towns and the ordination of ministers, particulars of the weather, prevalent diseases, &c., comprised in five manuscript volumes. The latter part of his life was diligently employed in giving the last finishing to this favourite work. Had he been spared longer, it might have been published. By his will it is now to enrich the archieves of the historical society.

He was a man of artless manners. In conversation he was facetious, inquisitive, entertaining, and instruc tive. He lived a bachelor, in literary solitude; devoting regularly each day till 3 o'clock in the afternoon to his studies, and the remainder to visiting his friends. He was correct and steady in his religious principles, and was distinguished for his simplicity and godly sincerity. A humble competence sufficed him till about two years before his death, when, by the demise of a relation, he inherited what he considered as affluence. The whole income of the wealth he thus obtained, he conscientiously devoted to well-bestowed charity; and, having no near relations, left the principal in legacies which do honour to his benevolence. He died July the 5th, 1807, after a short illness.

Uriah Tracey.

Departed this life at the city of Washington, on the 19th July, in the 54th year of his age, Uriah Tracey, a senator of the United States, from the state of Connecticut; and on the following day he was interred with the honours due to his station and character as a statesman, and to his rank as a major-general; his