and died in Barbadoes in the midst of his favourite studies. Among the variety of his accomplishments he did not omit divinity; and he was accounted a master of metaphysics. His public life he had devoted to his country; his private he divided among his books and friends. If the verses before us are not so good as those of the old poets, they are as good in their way, are as sincere and cordial, and smack of the champaigne on his table. We like them on many accounts, for we like the panegyrist, and have an old liking for his friend :-we like the taste they express in friendship and in beauty; and we like to fancy that our good-humoured ancestors in Barbadoes enjoyed the Governor's society, and relished their wine with these identical triplets. TO MY FRIEND THE AUTHOR, DESIRING MY OPINION OF HIS POEM. t Ask me not, friend, what I approve or blame; Perhaps I know not what I like or damn; I can be pleased, and I dare own I am. I read thee over with a lover's eye; Critics and aged beaux of fancy chaste, Who ne'er had fire, or else whose fire is past, Must judge by rules what they want force to taste. I would a poet, like a mistress, try, Not by her hair, her hand, her nose, her eye; The nymph has Grafton's, Cecil's, Churchill's charms, With balm upon her lips, and raptures in her arms. Literary loves and jealousies were much the same in other ages as the present; but we hear a great deal more of the loves than the reverse; because genius survives and ignorance does not. The ancient philosophers had a delicate way of honouring their favourites, by inscribing treatises with their names. It is thought a strange thing in Xenophon that he never mentions Plato. The greater part of the miscellaneous poetry of the Greeks is lost; or we should doubtless see numerous evidences of the intercourse of their authors. The Greek poets of Sicily, Theocritus and Moschus, are affectionate in recording the merits of their contemporaries. Varius and Gallus, two eminent Roman poets, scarcely survive but in the panegyrics of their contemporaries. Dante notices his, and his predecessors. Petrarch and Boccaccio publicly honoured, as they privately loved, one another. Tasso, the greatest poet of his time, was also the greatest panegyrist; and so, as might be expected, was Ariosto. The latter has introduced a host of his friends by name, male and female, at the end of his great work, coming down to the shores of poetry to welcome him home after his voyage. There is a pleasant imitation of it by Gay, applied to Pope's conclusion of Homer. Montaigne, who had the most exalted notions of friendship, which he thought should have every thing in common, took as much zeal in the literary reputation of his friends, as in every thing else that concerned them. The wits of the time of Henry the Fourth, of Louis the Fourteenth, and of Louis the Fifteenth, -Malherbe, Racan, Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Chaulieu, La Fare, D'Alembert, Voltaire, &c., not excepting Boileau, where he was personally intimate with a brother author-all do honour in this respect to the sociality of their nation. It is the same, we believe, with the German writers; and if the Spanish winced a little under the domination of Lope de Vega, they were chivalrous in giving him perhaps more than his due. Camoens had the admiration of literary friends as poor as himself, if he had nothing else; but this was something. INDEX-making has been held to be the driest as well as lowest species of writing. We shall not dispute the humbleness of it; but since we have had to make an index ourselves,* we have discovered that the task need not be so very dry. Calling to mind indexes in general, we found them presenting us a variety of pleasant memories and contrasts. We thought of those to the Spectator, which we used to * To the original edition of the Indicator. look at so often at school, for the sake of choosing a paper to abridge. We thought of the index to the Pantheon of Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods, which we used to look at oftener. We remember how we imagined we should feel some day, if ever our name should appear in the list of Hs; as thus, Home, Howard, Hume, Huniades, . The poets would have been better, but then the names, though perhaps less unfitting, were not so flattering; as for instance, Halifax, Hammond, Harte, Hughes,. We did not like to come after Hughes. We have just been looking at the indexes to the Tatler and Spectator, and never were more forcibly struck with the feeling we formerly expressed about a man's being better pleased with other writers than with himself. Our index seemed the poorest and most second-hand thing in the world after theirs: but let any one read theirs, and then call an index a dry thing if he can. As there is a soul of goodness in things evil," so there is a soul of humour in things dry, and in things dry by profession. Lawyers know this, as well as index-makers, or they would die of sheer thirst and aridity. But as grapes, ready to burst with wine, issue out of the most stony places, like jolly fellows bringing burgundy out of a cellar; so an Index, like the Tatler's, often gives us a taste of the quintessence of his humour. For instance, "Bickerstaff, Mr. account of his ancestors, 141, How his race was improved, 142. Not in partnership with Lillie, 250, Catched writing nonsense, 47. "Dead men, who are to be so accounted, 247. Sometimes he has a stroke of pathos, as touching in its brevity as the account it refers to; as, "Love-letters between Mr. Bickerstaff and Maria, 184-186. Found in a grave, 289." Sometimes he is simply moral and graceful; as, "Tenderness and humanity inspired by the Muses, 258. No true greatness of mind without it, ibid." At another he says perhaps more than he intended; as, 66 Laura, her perfections and excellent character, 19. Despised by her husband, ibid.” The Index to Cotton's Montaigne, probably written by the translator himself, is often pithy and amusing. Thus in Volume 2d, 66 Anger is pleased with, and flatters itself, 618. "Beasts inclined to avarice, 225. "Children abandoned to the care and government of their fathers, 613. "Drunkenness, to a high and dead degree, 16. "Joy, profound, has more severity than gaiety in it. "Monsters, are not so to God, 612. "Voluptuousness of the Cynics, 418." Sometimes we meet with graver quaintnesses and eurious relations, as in the index to Sandys's Ovid: "Diana, no virgin, scoft at by Lucian, p. 55. "Dwarfes, an Italian Dwarfe carried about in a parrot's cage, p. 113. "Eccho, at Twilleries in Paris, heard to repeat a verse without failing in one syllable, p. 58. |