The books in the lower part of the library are many of them, we will hope all, saved; but the gallery was inaccessible, from the circumstance of the fire breaking out above stairs, and close by it, and in that gallery were some of the most rare books in that curious and extensive collection. A complete series of all the romances mentioned by Don Quixotte, as composing his library, are probably in the number of the irreparable losses. The pictures are many of them, saved, but the invaluable painted glass in the anti-library must necessarily have been destroyed. Mr. Johnes was in London, in obedience to the call of the House, at the time of the accident. On receiving the intelligence he immediately hastened to his family, who had been obliged to remove to the inn at Devil's Bridge. Buoyed up with thankfulness for their providential preservations, he left town, bearing, though feeling his calamity, like a man.

With that enthusiasm which has led him to devote his life and fortune to the creation of a paradise out of a wilderness, he means still to inhabit his Eden in spite of this flaming minister, and still to divide his rural leisures between agricultural improvements and literary labours. Men in general would think it late in life to set to work a second time; but we stil! hope to see a Phoenix rise from the ashes, and to announce Monstrelet and Comines from the same press which has already produced Froissart, Joinville, and le Brocquiere. By way of sequel to Comines, and to complete the series, Mr. Johnes proposes concluding with the Memoirs of Oliver de la Marche, which are very entertaining, and furnish many curious facts. Other priva.e memoirs of those times will be interspersed, to serve as illustrations.

We have to announce to the ad mirers of fine books, that two magnificent editions of Gil Blas are in preparation, the one in the original French, the other in English, both under the superintendance of Mr.

Malkin, author of the Scenery, Antiquities, and Biography of South Wales, and several other works, who has undertaken to supply the deficiencies of the En glish edition, under the name of Smollet, by an entirely new translation. Should this be executed with spirit and fidelity, it will furnish what has so long been wanted, an appropriate English dress for the best novel which was ever written. These two editions are to be printed uniformly, in the best manner. They will be illustrated with plates, executed by the first engravers, from pictures painted by that admirable delineator of life and manners, Robert Smirke, Esq. R. A. In such hands it may be presumed that this work will rival the most elegant productions of the press, in an age when the arts of printing and engraving are carried to so great a degree of per fection.

A very interesting work, by a member of the University of Oxford, will speedily appear in three volumes, under the title of 'Oxoniana,' consisting of anecdotes and facts relative to the colleges, libraries, and establishments of Oxford; with extracts from, and accounts of, the curious unpublished manuscripts with which that university abounds; accounts of celebrated members, professors, &c. so as to comprise a history of the rise and progress of that ancient seat of learning.

Dr. Charles Fothergill is now engaged in preparing a work for the press, which can scarcely fail to excite very general interest. With a view of clearing up some doubtful points in the Zoology of Great-Britain, he last spring made a voyage to all the northern isles, comprehending the Orcades, Shetland, Fair Isle, and Fulda, and remained amongst them during the greatest part of the year, employed in the investigation of their natur al history, antiquities, state of their agriculture and fisheries, political importance, manners, customs, condition, past and present state, &c, &c.; a general and particluar ac

count of which will shortly be given to the publick, accompanied by maps and numerous engravings; containing the fullest and completest description that has yet been published of those remote and hitherto neglected regions.

Thonwaldson, a Swedish sculptor, is engaged at Rome upon a colossal statue of Liberty, for the United States of America, to be erected at Washington.

The Rev. Thomas Kidd, of Trinity College, Cambridge, proposes to publish a new edition of the Iliad and Odyssey; of which, in the Iliad, the Townleian Codex, aided by the Marcian MSS. and a faithful collation of the Harlein copies, will form the ground-work. It is intended, at present, to insert the Digamma in the text, on the authority of the great Bentley, whose unpublished papers upon the Iliad and Odyssey will, through the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge, contribute to enhance the value of this edition. The body of variations from the Vienna, Breslaw, and Moschow MSS. as published by Professors Alter & Heyne, as well as those gleaned by a reexamination of the MSS. consulted by Barnes, will be classed according to their respective merits under the text, and incorporated with an accurate collation of the first, second Aldine, first Stratzburgh, and Roman editions; the peculiarities also of the venerable document dispersed through H. Steph. Thesaurus Ling. Gr. will be specified in their proper places. The text of the Iliad, with the variations, will be given in two volumes, octavo. A supplement to the Villoisonian Scholia, from the Townleian and Harlein translations, with short notes, shall form the third volume; and a fourth volume will contain the text to the Odyssey, with various lections, to be introduced by

fac-similes of the characters and descriptions of the respective MSS. engaged in the service of the text; to which will succeed a small volume of Scholia, chiefly from MSS. with short notes, a dissertation upon the genuineness of Od. 2, a collation of the pp.of Ed.Rom. and Bas.

of Eustathius, with the omissions of the latter and application of the Digamma to the remains of Hesiod.

The Works of Sallust, translated by the late Arthur Murphy, Esq. are about to be re-published.

SWEDEN.

Some years ago, several Swedish naturalists formed a society for the purpose of giving a complete account of the Botany of their native country. Forty-six numbers of this work have already appeared, each containing a coloured engraving, of four or five plants, with their names in the principal languages of Europe, and a short and luminous description, in Swedish. The editors of this work have begun another work on the same plan, relative to the Zoology of Sweden, of which the first number has already appeared. Mr. Wertring has lately published a very curious work on Lichens; in which he gives an exact description of each species, and indicates its use in medicine and domestick œconomy, and particularly the mode of extracting colours from them, for the purpose of dying silk and wool. The plates accompanying this work, which does honour to Sweden, represents, 1st. The mosses of the class of Lichens, engraved and coloured, after nature; and 2d. the various colour which they communicate to cloth in the process of dying.

GERMANY.

The system of Gall is now ridiculed throughout Germany, and he was unable to procure an auditory at any of the places where he lately attempted to deliver lectures.

The memory of Luther never receiv ed so many honours as during the last year. Besides the grand drama, of which he is the hero, and which has been acted with prodigious success on the royal theatre at Berlin, M. Klingemann brought upon the stage of Magdeburg,a tragedy entitled 'Martin Luther.'

ERRATA. In a few impressions of the Observations on the Picture of Boston, the following errours escaped Page 292, col. 2, line 2 from bottom col. 2, 1. 16 from bot. for among r. many. for collection, read collective. Page 293, Page 294, 1. 21, for has r. have. Col. 2, 9 lines from bottom for those read these.

Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac tur-
pis Egestas,
Terribiles visu formæ ; Letumque,
Laborque;

Tum consanguineus Leti Sopor, et mala mentis

Gaudia, mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum,

Ferreique Eumenidum thalami,et Discor

dia demens, Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.

This vision, heretofore the subject of comment, may fairly be called the crux criticorum.' Names, the most eminent in English literature, have been enlisted in the contest, amongst whom bishop Warburton and Mr. Gibbon stand forth the most conspicuous. It is amusing to observe how wonderfully professional habit tinctures

Vol. IV. No. 7.

Uu

all our ideas with its own peculiar hues. Bishop Warburton made it a point of honour to find Divinity in all his studies and pursuits, and constantly resorted to imagination to supply the deficiency of fact. This diver after evangelical heart deposited with his own hands the precious substance in the shell, and then ostentatiously displayed it to the world,as a discovery of his own. Virgil contained divinity, Shakespeare likewise; and had he written comments on Don Quixotte, the helmet of Membrino would have contained divinity. As the bishop could not, with any shadow of reason, find christianity in the page of Virgil, and as religion was to be found at every hazard, he was reduced to the melancholy alternative of substituting the pagan mythology, or of abandoning his project. Mr. Gibbon, who, I shrewdly suspect, was more. solicitous to laugh at the piety of the prelate, than to detect his literary sins, espoused the other side of the question. The eloquent historian however, while he so triumphantly exposes prelatical errour, surrenders the last passage in the vision as indefensible, without a blow. "The final dismis sion of the ivory gate, where falsa ad cœlum mittant insomnia manes,' seems to dissolve the whole enchantment, and leaves the reader in a state of cold and anxious.

skepticism." The passage of which this line forms an integral part, is probably the one that has given rise to all the controversy; and Mr. Gibbon, by demolishing the bishop's edifice, and not building any himself, nor suffering that of Virgil to stand, can scarcely be ranked amongst the defenders of the bard. A very able European critick of the present day endeavours to protect the part by an alle gorical shield, and at the same time candidly admits that "no one can divine the beginning or the end of the allegory."

'Non bene relicta parmula'....... Sunt geminæ somni portæ altera fertur

quarum

Cornea, quâ veris facilis datur exitus

umbris :

Altera, candenti perfecta nitens ele

phanto;

Sed falsa ad cœlum mittant insomnia

Here, the assailants of Virgil exclaim, is an explicit declaration by the poet, that all the Elysian revelation was a falsehood! On the other hand, the defenders of the bard assert, that it never could have been the intention of the poet first to flatter his monarch, and then, with deliberate solemnity, declare the whole a falsehood to his face. This curious compliment, with so poisonous a sting in its tail, would not have appeared so lovely in the keen and suspicious eye of Augustus, and his nature as Octavius can witness, was not so mild and placid, but what the sum offered as the reward of the poet's labours would in that in stance have been the price of his head.

A commentator, who annexes to his author his own arbitrary

meanings, imputes to him sentiments and opinions which his words will not bear,and makes him responsible for blunders that he never committed. Because popular credulity recoils from the belief of ancient fables, are we warranted in thus turning them inside outwards? Ask but one plain question, what is the moral which this allegory professes to enforce? and all confess to a man, that it is beyond their comprehension to tell. We enter with Eneas the world of shadows, and are shaken by a variety of passions; yet those passions do not rally round one object. The mind from an allegory receives a double delight; first, in beholding the phantom acting with the propriety of an human being; and secondly, in its demolishment, by observing its similitude to the moral truth it was destined to represent. The laborious commentators, after all their researches confess, that this moral truth they are unable to find, and are thus reduced to the necessity of acknowledging, either that Virgil did not know how to compose an allegory, or they how to understand him, if he did. Further, there is a manifest impropriety in making real personages the objects of allegorical illustration, personages who cannot, by any possibility of construction, lose their identity for a moment. Yet this has Virgil done; in parts of this vision history itself is not more faithful in its narrative, than he is. Instead of those shadowy beings, whom allegory delights in, that dissipate on discovery, we have here solid flesh and bone to encounter, that bar all discovery whatever. The only part of this adventure of Eneas, susceptible of allegorical interpretation, is where the Sybil writes the responses of her tute

lar deity upon leaves, and has no other commentator than Eolus to expound them. The commentators of Virgil, out of reverence to their blustering deity, seem disposed to adopt his mode of explanation. Suppose that Virgil himself should for once answer his commentators; he has expressly told us, that through this ivory gate falsa ad cœlum mittant insomnia manes.' Now is it pretended that the Trojan hero, after his escape from the subterranean regions through that obnoxious pas sage, left his body behind him,and evaporated into a dream? So long as a living body assumes this liberty, the words of Virgil have no kind of application. Only allow to Eneas the fair privileges of humanity...his just quota of the flesh and bone he inherited from his parents, and he might venture to pass through the ivory gate with perfect safety to his own character and the poet's. It is cordially agreed, that if by an allegorical process he is turned into a dream, his reputation will suffer sadly in the wreck of his humanity. Some criticks, in pursuance of their laudable resolution of convicting Virgil of an egregious blunder at all events, roundly assert that the whole of this vision was designed by the poet as a dream. This is really the saturnine trifling of literary dulness. That the Trojan hero should undergo so much preparatory labour and anxiety, embark in a perilous voyage to a distant country in search of a dream, when he had only to shut his eyes to find it, is a construction abundantly refuted by a plain statement of the fact.

The misery of the modern interpretation of the ancients is an overweening anxiety to find in their pages something beyond the

plain import of their words. Shocked as they are, by the advancement of such absurd legends with all the gravity of truth, they endeavour to modernize the fables into allegories by every mode,that a tortuous ingenuity can invent. Hence every celebrated ancient is beset by a number of commenta tors, who libel him in the shape of panegyricks. The poets themselves in all human probability did not believe in the reality of those fables, with which their pa ges abound. They were men of large and extended minds, deeply versed in the researches of philo sophy, studies peculiarly hostile to the admission of such vulgar absurdities. Nevertheless, the marvellous was what they wanted, and surely those fables, rendered venerable by the long acquaintance of mankind, were better fitted' ad captandum vulgus,' than the coinage of their own brains. The populace, when they found such fables receiving the acquiescence of men, whose opinions they regarded with the infallibility of oracles, read their pages with enthusiasm; and it is not an improbable conjecture, that this very cir cumstance redeemed the pages of Homer and Virgil from the depredations of time and accident! If this be true, every admirer of ancient literature will not feel himself disposed to censure with much asperity the artifice, which the poets have adopted, for rendering the superstition of their times subsidiary to their personal benefit. It is the duty of a publick writer to understand the state of the publick mind, before he presumes to undertake its regulation. Bold and novel truths dazzle, but the blaze is intolerable to an eye unprepared by the slow and gradual advancement of the tapers.