And Weekly Review;

Forming an Analysis and General Repository of Literature, Philosophy, Science, Arts, History, the Drama, Morals, Manners, and Amusements.

This paper is published at Six o'clock every Saturday Morning; and forwarded, Weekly or Monthly, to all Parts of the United Kingdom.

No. 34.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 1820.

Review of New Books.

Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and
Men. By the Rev. Joseph Spence. Arranged with
Notes. By the late Edmund Malone, Esq. 8vo. pp.
302. London, 1820.

It is well observed in the advertisement to this work, that
'perhaps there never was a literary collection with which
the public appear to be so familiar as the present one of
Spence's Anecdotes, for, since the days of Warton and
Johnson, who were first permitted the use of this literary
curiosity, it has been frequently referred to for many in-
teresting particulars respecting some modern authors.'

Price 6d.

myself, for which I had a very great eagerness and enthui-
asm, especially for poetry; and, in a few years, I had dipped
into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin,
and Greek poets. This I did without any design but that of
pleasing myself; and got the languages by hunting after the
stories in the several poets I read, rather than read the books
to get the languages. I followed every where as my fancy
led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the woods and
fields, just as they fall in his way; and these five or six years
I still look upon as the happiest part of my life. The same.
In these rambles of mine through the poets, when I met
with a passage or story that pleased me more than ordinary, I
used to endeavour to imitate it, or translate it into English;
and this was the cause of my Imitations, published so long

after.'

gedy, and afterwards an entire one. The latter was built on
When I was very young I wrote something towards a tra-
a very moving story in the Legend of St. Genevieve. After
had got acquainted with the town, I resolved never to write
any thing for the stage, though I was solicited by some of my
friends to do so, and particularly by Betterton, who (among
other things) would have had me turn my early epic poen
into a tragedy. I had taken such strong resolutions against
did write for the stage was obliged to subject themselves to
any thing of that kind, from seeing how much every body that
the players and the town. The same.'

than I can remember.-Mr. Pope.
I began writing verses of my own invention further back

Mr, Spence was not only a man of considerable classic attainments, living on terms of intimacy with the principal literati of one of the brightest periods of English literature, but he was also a man of acute observation, whose sweetness of manner and perpetual curiosity rendered him well adapted to promote, as well as to record the many conversations he enjoyed. Mr. Spence was also particularly careful to attach, to every anecdote, the name of the gentleman who related it. In other cases, this does not appear to us at all necessary, but, as these anecdotes are rather the observations of the individuals themselves, it was here essential. The work is divided into three Ogilby's translation of Homer was one of the first large parts:-Popiana, English Poets and Prose Writers, and poems that ever Mr. Pope read; and he still spoke of the Miscellaneous articles. The notes of Mr. Malone, which pleasure it then gave him with a sort of rapture, only on reare not very numerous, are either explanatory or correc-flecting on it. It was that great edition with pictures. was then about eight years old. This led me to Sandys Ovid, which I liked extremely, and so I did a translation of a part of Statius, by some very bad hand."—The same. 'When I was about twelve, I wrote a kind of play, which I got to be acted by my schoolfellows. It was a number of speeches from the Iliad, tacked together with verses of my own. The same.

tive.

Anecdotes, if trifling in themselves, often obtain an interest when they relate to great men; yet this may be extended too far, and there are few persons who have not been disgusted with the contemptible nonsense of Boswell about our great lexicographer. In the volume before us, there is some idle gossipping about Pope; but Pope was the god of Spence's idolatry, and he has treasured up with singular care every thing that he could recollect respecting him. From this part of the work, which occupies the first seventy-eight pages, we shall quote a few passages relating to the youth and early education of the poet.

The epic poem, which I began a little after I was twelve, water scene in the first book: 'twas in the Archipelago.—The was Alcander, Prince of Rhodes; and there was an under

same.

each, and had the copy by me, till I burnt it by the advice of 'I wrote four books towards it, of about a thousand verses the Bishop of Rochester, a little before he went abroad -The

same.

"It was an

'Mr. Pope's first education was under a priest, and I think 'I endeavoured, (says he, smiling,) in this poem to collect his name was Bannister. He set out with the design of teach-all the beauties of the great epic writers into one piece: there ing him Latin and Greek together. "I was then about eight was Milton's style in one part, and Cowley's in another; here years old, had learnt to read of an old aunt, and to write by the style of Spencer imitated, and there of Statius; here Hocopying printed books. After having been under that mer and Virgil, and there Ovid and Claudian. priest about a year, I was sent to the seminary at Twyford, imitative poem then, as your other exercises were imitations and then to a school by Hyde Park Corner; and, with the of this or that story?" "Just that."-The same. two latter masters, lost what little I had got under my first. 'Mr. Pope wrote verses imitative of sounds, so early as in About twelve, I went with my father into the Forest, and this epic poem. there learned, for a few months, under a fourth priest. This was all the teaching I ever had; and, God knows, it extended a very little way."-Mr. Pope.

When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by
VOL. 1.

"Shields, helms, and swords, all jangle as they hang,
And sound formidinous with angry clang,"

was a couplet of this nature in it.—The same.

B

There were also some couplets in it, which I have since in

The following desultory anecdotes, or observations, of taken; ordered horses to be got ready instantly; and, in pulPope, relate to a later period of his life:

prised at the largeness of the present, cried out, "What! two thousand pounds for a poem ?" The Duke smiled, and said it was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for it was fairly worth four thousand.-Mr. Rawlinson.

playing a good brisk tune, and dancing to it about his study. He was extremely concerned, for he esteemed that great man highly, and thought he must be run distracted. However, at last, he ventured to rap gently at the door. The father immeWhen the Doctor was very deeply engaged in writing one diately laid down his fiddle, hurried on his gown, and came to of his tragedies, that nobleman made him a very different pre-him; and, with his usual composed pleasing look, said, “O, sent. He procured a human skull, and fixed a candle in it, and gave it to the Doctor, as the most proper lamp for him to write tragedy by.'-The same.

Sir Isaac Newton.-Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, "I don't know what I may seem to the world; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.". Ramsay.

Sir, is it you? I hope I have not made you stay; and am ready to attend you." The poor man, as they were going down, could not help mentioning his surprize at what he had heard and seen. Bourdaloue smiled and said, "Indeed, you might well be a little surprised, if you do not know any thing of my way on these occasions; but the whole of the matter was this: in thinking over the subject of the day, I found my spirits too much depressed to speak as I ought to do; so I had recourse to my usual method of music and a little motion. It has had its effect: I am quite in a proper temper, and go now with pleasure to what else I should have gone in pain.-The same.

the form of a Cannon, and that he had really attributed only

Duke of Marlborough's Avarice.—This mean passion of that great man operated very strongly in him in the very beginning of his life, and continued to the very end of it. One 'Henry IV-When Henry the Fourth, of France, was reday, as he was looking over some papers in his scrutoire with conciled to the church of Rome, it was expected that he Lord Cadogan, he opened one of the little drawers, took out should give some remarkable testimonial of his sincerity in rea green purse, and turned some broad pieces out of it, and af- turning to the true faith. He accordingly ordered a cross to ter viewing them for some time with a satisfaction, that ap- be erected at Rome, near the church of Santa Maria Magpeared very visible in his face, " Cadogan," says he, "ob- giore, with this inscription, In hoc signo vinces, on the princiserve these pieces well; they deserve to be observed. There pal part of it. This past, at first, as very catholic, till it was are just forty of them; 'tis the very first summ & very in got in observed that the part in which the inscription is put is shaped my life, and I have kept it always unbroken, from time to this day." This shows how early and how strong this to his artillery what they had taken to be addressed to Heapassion must have been upon him; as another little affair, ven.'- Ficoroni, (at Rome.) which happened in his last decline at Bath, may serve, As cunning as Old Nick, and as wicked as Old Nick, were among many others, to show how miserably it continued to originally meant of our Nicolas Machiavel; and so caine afthe end. He was playing there with Dean Jones, at picquet, terwards to be perverted to the devil.-Dr. Cocchi, at Florence. for sixpence a game. They played a good while, and the Machiavel has been generally called so wicked from duke left off when winner of one game. Some time after, he people mistaking the design of his writings. In his Prince, desired the dean to pay him his sixpence. The dean said he his design, at bottom, was to make a despotic government had no silver. The duke asked him for it over and over, and more odious. "A despotic prince," he says," at last desired that he would change a guinea to pay it him, himself, must kill such and such people." He must so; and, because he should want it to pay the chair that carried him therefore, no wise people would suffer such a prince. This home. The dean, after so much pressing, did at last get is the natural consequence: and not that Machiavel seriously change, paid the duke his sixpence, observed him a little af-advises princes to be wicked.-The same. ter he left the room, and declares that, after all the bustle that had been made for his sixpence, the Duke actually walked home to save that little expense a chair would have put him to.-Mr. Pope.'

Lord Peterborough could dictate letters to nine amanuenses together, as I was assured by a gentleman who saw him do it, when ambassador at Turin. He walked round the room, and told each in his turn what he was to write. One, perhaps, was a letter to the emperor, another to an old friend, a third to a mistress, and a fourth to a statesman, and so on: and yet he carried so many and so different connexions in his head all at the same time.-Mr. Pope.

"to secure

The best traditions concerning Machiavel say, that he was a good honest man himself in his way of living, and rather weak and ignorant in his private affairs than otherwise. His familiar letters are now in the hands of the Abbate del Riccio, at Florence; and there are several things in them that show him to have been a good sort of man. He kept the best of company, and consorted with good men.'

'Oliver Cromwell.-Cromwell was inclined to spare the king till he found there was no trust to be put in him. It is said, at least, that there was a private correspondence carried on between them for some time, Cromwell was to restore the king to his royal power, and was himself to be made Lord As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst Lieutenant of Ireland, with some other advantageous articles. he was drawing a picture, he stopped and said, “I can't do so The queen heard of this, and wrote to the king, to desire well as I should do, unless you flatter me a little: pray flatter him not to yield too much to the traitor. The king, in his me, Mr. Pope; you know I love to be flattered." answer said, she need not have any concern in her mind was once willing to try how far his vanity would carry him,on that head, for whatever agreement they might enter into, and, after considering a picture which he had just finished for he should not look upon himself as obliged to keep any pro4 good while very attentively, I said to him, in French (for hemises made so much on compulsion, whenever he had power had been talking for some time before in that language): enough to break through them. Cromwell intercepted this "On lit dans les Ecritures Saintes, que le Bon Dieu faisoit answer, and from that moment acted always uniformly to take Phomme après son image; mais je crois, s'il voudroit faire un away the king's life.-Mr. Pope. autre à present, qu'il le feroit après l'image que voila." Sir Godfrey turned round, and said, very gravely, "Vous avez raison, Monsieur Pope; par Dieu je le crois aussi.”—Mr. Pope.

Bourdaloue-When the celebrated Father Bourdaloue, who has sometimes been called the French Tillotson, was to preach on a Good Friday, and the proper officer came to attend him to church, his servants said the father was in his study, and, if he pleased, he might go up to him. In going up stairs, he heard the sound of a violin; and, as the door stood a little a-jar, saw Bourdaloue stripped into his cassock,

"The night after King Charles the First was beheaded, my Lord Southampton, and a friend of his, got leave to sit up by the body in the banquetting-house, at Whitehall. As they were sitting very melancholy there, about two o'clock in the inorning, they heard the tread of somebody coming very slowly up stairs. By and by the door opened, and a man entered, very much muffled up in his cloak, and his face quite hid in it. He approached the body, considered it very attentively for some time, and then shook his head, and sighed out the words, "Cruet necessity!" He then departed in the same slow and concealed manner as he had come in. Lord South

ampton used to say, that he could not distinguish any thing of became extinct. What few miserable remains of the former his face, but that by his voice and gait he took him to be Oli-population of the Baguio had escaped its fury, were again rever Cromwell.-The same.' stored to the regular sufferings of the place, suspended during the utmost height of the desolation.

Such are a few of the most striking anecdotes with I was among these scanty relics. I who, indifferent to which this volume abounds, and, without lengthening this life, had never stooped to avoid the shafts of death, even when article by remarks, we may observe, that the work is a they flew thickest around me: had more than once laid my pleasing one, and that if many of the articles might have finger on the livid wound they inflicted; had probed it as it been omitted as trifling, yet that is the only objection to festered, I yet remained unhurt: for, sometimes the plague them, for there is nothing of a personal or malignant na-sillanimous victim, whose blood, running cold ere it is is a magnanimous enemy, and, while it seldom spares the puture to be found in the whole collection.

Anastasius; or, Memoirs of a Greek: written at the close of the Eighteenth Century.

(Continued.)

ANASTASIUS and his master failing to cure the Visier, he called in the chief physician of the seraglio, who denounced Yacoob and Anastasius two quacks, and had then sent prisoners to the Baguio; here the plague entered, and it is difficult to conceive a more powerful description of that dreadful scourge than that given by the author:

The scourge had been expected for some time. By several of the prisoners had the frightful hag, its harbinger, been distinctly seen hovering with her bat's-wings over our drear abode, and with her hooked talons numbering one by que her intended but still unsuspecting victims. In the silence of the night she had been heard leisurely calling them by their names, knocking at their several doors, and marking with livid spots the damp walls of their cells.

་

tainted, loses the energy necessary to repel the infection when at hand, it will pass him by, who dares its utmost fury, and advances undaunted to meet its raised dart.'

Anastasius is liberated, and enters on board a vessel bound for the Greek Islands. When near Tenedos, a storm arose; to oppose the angry element, a Jew was thrown over-board, but afterwards saved by the intercession of Anastasius, who thought it a pity that a Jew's gold should be given to the sharks, and recommended that he should be taken on deck and the money squeezed out of him :

The wind by this time having sensibly abated, the proposal was approved of by the majority; the few that looked askance at me were silenced by my frowns; and the Jew, tossed into the vessel again, was extended on the deck to be

searched.

'Mordecai's vest, trowsers, and shirt were shaken out first, tacked; and, for fear of losing a single scruple of the wealth but to no purpose! His enormous leather belt was next atits weight bespoke, we purposedly spread a small ihram underneath, ere we began the dissection.

All eyes were rivited on the delicate puncture which, Nothing but the visitation of this destructive monster while two sailors held the ends of the girdle, f made in the seemed wanting to complete the horrors which surrounded middle of its bloated paunch with the point of my sabre; and me; for if even, when only stalking forth among men free to scarce was the vein opened than out rushed, with resistless fly from its approach, and to shrink from its contact, the gaunt impetuosity, such a stream, not indeed of sequins, but of paras The whole, spectre mows down whole nations like the ripe corn in the and other trash, as I thought would never cease. field, it may be imagined what havoc ensues when it is perwhen collected, might amount to two piastres! mitted to burst forth from the inmost bowels of hell, in the The sailors turned pale with disappointment. Isympa. midst of wretches close-wedged in their dungeons, or linked thised with their feelings. "Son of Satan and of the witch of together at their tasks, whom it must trample down to the Endor," exclaimed I with furious gesture, "Do you wish me last, ere it can find a vent in space. It is there that, with a to treat you like your belt, and to seek for your treasure in focus of infection ready formed, a train of miasma ready laid your bowels?" Mordecai was not put to the trouble of anon every side, though this prime minister of death strike at swering; for, on my clawing his head to give it a shake, his andom, it never misses its aim, and its progress outstrips the caul remained in my hands,-not a mere pliant.cap like other quickness of lightning or of thought, It is there that even cauls, but a positive musket-proof helmet of sequins closely those who thus far retain full possession of health, already cal-sewed in the cotton! The belt had been a mere decoy. culate the hours they still may live; that those who to-day The thought, however, striking me that, where the head was drag to their last abode their lifeless companions, to-morrow so well furnished, the heels might be worth looking into, I are laid beside them; and that those who are dying, make passed from one extremity to the other; and, lo! like the themselves pillows of the bodies not yet cold of those already dirty caul, the clumsy buskins offered a solid stratum of dead. It is there that finally we may behold the grim de- gold stroyer, in one place awaited in gloomy silence, in another encountered with fell imprecations, here implored with anxious cries, there welcomed with eager thanks, and now perhaps received with convulsive laughter and mockery, by such as, trying to drink away its terrors, totter on the brink of the grave, from drunkenness as well as from disease.

His bare person the Jew evidently considered nothing worth; for, hard as he had struggled for life while his gold remained about him, as soon as stripped of his pelf, he entreated to be dispatched at once. Another vessel, just at that moment, was hailing us not far off. It had thrown all its water-casks overboard in the storm, and wanted a supply. The before busy bee-hive of the Bagnio, therefore, soon We granted the request, on condition of sending Mordecai became a dreadful solitude. Its spacious inclosures, so lately into the bargain, as a great improvement upon the plan of teeming with tenants of every description, now began to predrowning him. He went secured in an empty barrel. I put sent a void still more frightful than its foruter fuluess. Uni-by my sequins; and the sailors lit two tapers extraordinary versal silence pervaded those endless galleries, but a few days before the Panagia. before re-echoing with the confused din of thousands of pri- Anastasius visits Cairo, and, from being an humble mesoners, fighting for an inch of ground on which to lay their nial in the service of the Bey, is made governor of a proaching heads; and nothing any longer appeared that wore a vince, and is afterwards married to the Bey's daughter; hunnan shape, except here and there some livid skeleton, the author's account of this marriage is pleasantly told, which, as if again cast up by the grave, slowly crept along the clammy walls. When, however, the dire disease had de- and gives a lively description of the ceremony; we shall, youred all that could offer food to its voracity, it gradually therefore, conclude our notice this week with extracting fell like the flame which has consumed its fuel; and, at last, it :

"Oh no! that would have been too unreasonable an addition to my good fortune."

"An ugly little monster, then? sufficient, were this earth a heaven, to convert it into a hell?-A being calculated to stamp on each endearment all the merit of martyrdom?" (To be continued.)

All things being ready for my nuptials, the ceremony be- The mysterious veil, which till then had concealed her face, gan. My bride was conducted to the bath in state, lest the form, and all from my inquisitive eye, fell at her feet, and I world should remain in ignorance of her cleanliness. Pro- saw. perly steamed, stretched out, and pumiced, she next went "What?" wonders, perhaps, the reader. "An angel of through the labours of a toilet so exquisite, that on its comple-light, sent from the highest heavens, on purpose to make my tion not one among her beauties remained nature's own! Se-earthly dwelling a paradise!" veral hours were employed in twisting her hair into the semblance of whipcord, in adding to the one hundred and fifty plaits which adhered to her own head, two hundred and fifty braids more, the produce of other scalps; and these were formed into an edifice, at once so elegant and so weighty, that she could have wished for a second head, merely for common use. Her eyebrows were only dismissed the artificer's hands, after being shaped into exact semicircles; and her Ivanhoe; a Romance. By the Author of Waverley,' eyes were not deemed to possess all their requisite powers until framed in two black cases of surmeh. Henna, the symbol of joy, which already had been most liberally bestowed upon the epistles which communicated my marriage to my patron's numerous clients, was lavished in still greater profusion on my bride's own plump and lustrous person; and made it emulate the colour which, no doubt, Isis displayed, when doomed to roam through Egypt's plains in the undignified shape of a red cow. After all these pains, taken for the sake of beauty, the lady was, on the score of modesty, wrapped up in so many veils, impervious to the eye, as scarce to escape suffocation: but the most celebrated awalis of the capital took care to inform the assistants in their epithalamiums, of the splendour of the charms and jewels which they were not allowed to see.

3 vols. 1820.
(Concluded.)

TOURNAMENTS, so frequent in the period to which this romance relates, were often attended with fatal consequences to the chivalrous adventurers who engaged in them; they were what a French monarch justly said of them, too much for jest, and too little for earnest.' Ivanhoe, in the several encounters which he had at Ashby, with the Norman Knights, got severely wounded, and is most watchfully attended and nursed by the lovely Rebecca, who had been strongly impressed with his conduct to her father. She has the wounded hero conveyed to the house where her father and herself are lodged; and the next day, when it is necessary that they should return to York, she insists on taking Ivanhoe with her, in a litter. On their way, in company with Cedric, (who is unconscious that the sick man is his son,) Rowena, and Athel"Here," said my wandering mind," am I, the youngest stane, they are surrounded by a set of bravos, headed by son of a petty Drogueman, in an island of the Archipelago; I, Brian de Bois Guilbert, and carried to the castle of at one time fallen so much beneath the level of my own des Front de Boeuf, where they are confined in dungeons. tiny as in vain to seek the situation of a menial, become the With the different scenes that occur at the castle during master of a host of slaves, the son to a bey of Egypt, and the their three days of captivity, the whole of the second governor of a province; in other words, already occupying a volume is filled. The object of their seizure and detenstation far beyond what at one time my most sanguine sion was, to force Rowena to wed the Norinan Knight, de dreams durst have promised me; and yet regarding that ele-Bracy, to subject Rebecca to an infamous connexion with vation only as a stepping stone to a station infinitely more exalted, to that of bey; nay, who knows! of Schaich-el

I do not know how, at the nuptial feast, with the prospect of all these attractions before me, and in the midst of all the bustle of the dance. all the din of music, and all the glare of the lights, I insensibly fell into a reverie, composed of at least as many gloomy as cheerful thoughts; but so it was.

belled itself!

"But, by what a series of toils and sacrifices and perils, I may be doomed to purchase these honours, who also can tell? Alas! do I not, on the very threshold of a career, strewed with as many thorns as roses, begin by yielding up my person, perhaps, to an unseemly female, and my freedom to a domestic tyrant. For well I know the condition of marrying a patron's daughter! And what labours, what snares, what treachery may be the offspring of this splendid union, may accompany every step in the road of my advancement, I know not yet. But the die is cast, and I must wait the issue of the game."

Bois Guilbert; while Front de Boeuf was only anxious to lay the rich Jew under a heavy contribution. Rebecca is confined in the summit of one of the towers of the castle, and it is here that she receives the first visit from Bois Guilbert, whom she repels with indignation, but fearing he might proceed to force, she threw open the lattice window, and in an instant darted on the very verge of the Parapet. As Bois Guilbert offered to advance, she exclaimed,

"Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the preci pice; iny body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity, upon the stones of that court yard, ere it becomes the victim of thy brutality."

'As she spoke this, she clasped her hands, and extended them towards heaven, as if imploring mercy on her soul before she made the final plunge. The templar hesitated, and a resolution, which had never yielded to pity or distress, gave way to his admiration of her fortitude. "Come down," he said, " rash girl! I swear by earth, and sea, and sky, I will offer thee no offence."

A shake prolonged by the chief of the singing damsels with the most consummate skill, through every note of the gamut, until it drew forth such a peal of taibs or bravas, as made the rooin shake, roused me from my unseasonable meditations, and brought back my mind to where sat my body. Presently, a pretty almé, inviting me to make her tambou reen resound with the clang of gold, threw my thoughts into a totally new channel. I began to feel impatient for the moment that was first to shew me the partner of my future life; and in this disposition, deemed every new diversion a new "I will not trust thee, Templar," said Rebecca; "thou annoyance. "Shall I never see the end," muttered I to my-hast taught me better how to estimate the virtues of thine self in dispair, "of these tiresome amusements!” order. The next preceptory would grant thee absolution for At last a female messenger secretly summoned me away an oath, the keeping of which concerned nought but the hofrom the noisy hall of mirth, to the silent sanctuary of Hy-nour or the dishonour of a miserable Jewish maiden." men. With awe and anxiety I passed its threshold, and was ushered into the presence of her, on whose qualities of person and of mind must depend so great a share of my future fate.

"You do me injustice," said the Templar; "I swear to you by the name which I bear-by the cross on my bosomby the sword on my side-by the ancient crest of my father