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1818.]:

Account of Dulwich College.

Founder of Dulwich College. I am happy in being able to satisfy him on that head. It was founded by Edward Alleyn, a celebrated comedian in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, born in the parish of St. Botolph, London, Sept. 1, 1566. Such marks of private munificence more frequently proceed from vanity and ostentation, than from real piety; but this of Mr. Alleyn's has been ascribed to a very singular cause, for his Satanic highness himself has been said to be the first promoter of it.* Mr. Aubrey mentions a tradition, that Mr. Alleyn playing the part of a Demon with six others, in one of Shakspeare's plays, was in the midst of the performance surprised by an appearanceof the devil, and that this so worked upon his fancy, that he made a vow, which he fulfilled by building Dulwich College.

It may appear surprising how one of Mr. Alleyn's profession should be enabled to erect such an edifice, and to endow it liberally for the maintenance of so many persons. But it must be observed that he had a paternal fortune, which laid the foundation of his future affluence; and it may be presumed that the profits he received from acting, considering that his excellence in this art drew after him such crowds of spectators, were very great, and his being of very parsimonious habits. Besides he was not only an actor, but proprietor of a theatre called the Fortune Playhouse, near White-cross street,† and keeper of the King's wild beasts, or master of the Royal Bear-garden, which was frequented by persons of the first circles of fashion, and the profits of which are said to have amounted to 500l. per annum.

The foundation of Dulwich College was laid in 1614, under the superintendence of Inigo Jones. The building was completed in 1617, and the ground laid out in the same year; the expense being estimated at 10,000l. After the erection of the College some difficulty was experienced in obtaining a charter for settling his lands in mortmain, for he proposed to endow it with 8001. per annum, for the maintenance of 1 master, 1 warden,§ 4 fellows, three whereof were to be clergymen, and the fourth a skilful organist; six poor men and as many women, besides 12 poor boys, to be educated till of the age of 14 or 16, and then to be placed out to learn some

* Antiq. of Surrey, vol. i. p. 190.
+ Langbaine's Histrionica, 1662.
Antiq. of Surrey, vol. i. p. 190.
Both to be named Alleyn, or Allen.

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calling or trade. At length a charter was obtained bearing date June 21, 1619, calling it The College of God's Gift. Mr. Alleyn himself was the first master of his College, and so mingled his humility and charity, that he became his own pensioner, submitting to that proportion of diet and clothes which he had intended to bestow on others. He continued to reside there until his death which happened Nov. 25, 1626, in the 61st year of his age, and was buried in the chapel of his new College. He was thrice married, but left no issue. Your's, &c. A. Y. Conduit Street, June 16, 1818.

VINDICATION OF ELOISA.
MR. EDITOR,

ALTHOUGH it may admit of some doubt whether we have equalled the ancient Greeks and Romans in works of genius, there can be no dispute but that we have greatly surpassed them in true dignity and refinement of manners. This remarkable distinction is chiefly to be attributed to the greater elevation and consequence of the female sex in modern times. The women of antiquity appear to have been comparatively depressed and obscure; their importance was almost altogether confined to the domestic circle; and they seldom obtained public celebrity, except by their personal qualities. A few indeed, such as Cleopatra, Portia, and Zenobia have been distinguished by their heroic conduct; in literature, however, we can recognize only the solitary name of Sappho. But, in all the elegant and ingenious arts, innumerable modern ladies have risen into eminence; and the public and dignified intercourse of the sexes has diffused a splendour and an interest over the whole face of society unknown to ancient times. This extraordinary improvement in the condition of the female sex has been commonly ascribed to the introduction of the romantic system of chivalry; but, I think with more truth to the mild, just, and liberal maxims of christianity.Of this last supposition a striking proof occurs in the instance of the well known Eloisa, celebrated for her attachment to Abelard; of whom it may be asserted that she was among the first of distinguished modern ladies in sublimity of genius, and in all the generous virtues she has never yet been surpassed. What

For the Laws and Rules of this Institution, see Stowe's Surrey, p. 759.

She was born in the eleventh century.

6.

Vindication of Eloisa.

a superior character do even her
amours with all their irregularities pos-
sess, when compared with the loose and
trivial intrigues of the pagan world.
"The mixture of religious hope and
resignation (as Dr. Johnson remarks on
this occasion) gives an elevation and
dignity to disappointed love, which
images merely natural cannot bestow.
The gloom of a convent strikes the ima-
gination with far greater force than the
solitude of a grove."

Eloisa is principally known in this
country by Pope's poctical version of
her letters to Abelard; a work more
remarkable for extreme beauty of dic-
tion than delicacy of sentiment. It is
the practice, and indeed the duty of a
poet or a novelist, when he describes the
real incidents of life to conceal common
and vulgar circumstances, to select such
as are noble and refined, and if neces-
sary to embellish them by fictitious ad-
ditions. Pope, however, in the present
instance, has taken quite a contrary
course. Instead of elevating, he has
degraded the sentiments of his heroine.
Whatever was intellectual, moral, or
sublime, he has concealed or mentioned
slightly; his chief study was to invest the
whole in the grossest colours of imagi-
nation. He continually represents Eloisa
in her cloistered retirement as still in-
flamed with the recollection of sensual
pleasures; and supposes that the loss of
them constituted the chief cause of her
grief. Her supposed reflections on this
subject constitute a more glowing pic-
ture of dissolute feeling than is any
where else to be found. This represent-
ation is not only contrary to truth, but
may also be pronounced unnatural; for
lovers possessed of genius when they
look back with regret on their past hap-
piness, are never found to fill their ima-
gination with such circumstances. Not-
withstanding Pope's extraordinary re-
finement in poetical matters, his ideas
on the subject of love were far from be-
ing sublime. He appears to have adopt-
ed the vulgar notions of the dramatic
poets of his time; and particularly those
of his great predecessor Dryden, whom,
in this respect, he strongly resembled.
These poets not themselves possessing
any native fund of passion, found it

easiest to learn that which is the most obvious and common.

I am rather surprized that, among the many criticisms on Pope's Eloisa, I do not recollect to have observed any notice of this glaring and capital blemish. It is highly probable, however, that the great

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poet himself was secretly conscious of culpable grossness; for it is known that in his latter years this piece got out of his favour. Of this Dr. Johnson is at a loss to guess the reason; but had he taken the trouble to compare the poem with the real letters on which it is founded, he would have been able, I think, to have formed a very probable conjecture. Having lately perused the correspondence of these celebrated lovers, I was agreeably surprised to find it wholly free from the indelicate allusions which are so abundantly spread over our elegant translation. This extraordinary, I should say this criminal, deviation from truth, it will be deemed highly important to expose to view not merely for the sake of criticism, but for the sake of morality. By thus perverting and vitiating the original, Pope was the more inexcusable, as the lofty and generous ideas which there predominate, would certainly have made a better figure in poetry. Had Eloisa expressed her attachment to Abelard in warm general terms, it might have been supposed that he had misapprehended her, as every one naturally measures another's feelings by the standard of their own; but her language is too particular and definite to admit of such an apology. We must, therefore, conclude that, conscious of his own defects, he knew that he could not paint in the glowing colours of nature what he was utterly incapable to feel; on which account deliberately debased her sentiments to the level of his

own.

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It would occupy too much of your room to quote all the verses in Pope's poem in proof of this adulteration.--Your readers will easily recollect that the terms by which he describes her love are of the lowest kind, and are all figurative of mere passion. She is made to represent herself as love;""feeling a long-forgotten heat;" warm in being conscious of a "tumult kindled in her veins ;"" lost in love;" 66 dissolved in raptures of unholy joy;" devoted to the "altar of forbidden fires;"" the slave of love and man ;" "her plunging soul is drowned in seas of flame;" she is said to be raging with desireAll my loose soul unbounded springs to

thee.

I shall not pollute your pages by quoting the lines which thus begin, Still on that breast enamoured let me lie

Had there been any foundation for them in the original, a decent writer,

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even in a professed translation would have suppressed them. But they are wholly a vile addition: in Eloisa's letter there is not the smallest approach to such loose imaginations.

Nothing can be conceived more different, or indeed more directly opposite to Eloisa's than the vulgar notions commonly ascribed to her by Pope. One expression only of her's might have been misunderstood among those who are wedded to God, I serve a man;" which he thus basely interprets," the slave of love and man," which plainly means that her love was purely sexual. Had the words been ambiguous he ought, charitably, to have annexed to them the most degent sense they could bear; and he could not be ignorant that, according to the strict notions of the devoted Religieuses, every worldly attachment, even the most innocent, was deemed improper: "Remember," says Abelard, writing to her, "the least thought of any other than God is adultery." But although she adopted the language of the convent, it was not its theological dogmas, but a native sublimity of genius, and a heart penetrated with the most generous sentiments which prompted her to soar "above the vulgar flight of low desire." Of the purity of her love the whole of her letters is one continued proof; but a remarkable event in the history of her life, peculiar to herself, brought it to the test of demonstration. It is well known, that after her marriage with Abelard, he had the singular fate to be deprived of his virility by the wanton barbarity of her uncle. Referring to this circumstance in one of her letters to him, with equal spirit and modesty, she does justice to herself and places her love in the proper point of view:

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After that cruel revenge upon you, instead of observing me grow by degrees indifferent, you never received greater marks of my passion. I was young when we were separated, and (if I dare believe what you was always telling me) worthy of any gentleman's affections. If I had loved nothing in Abelard but sensual pleasure, a thousand agreeable young men might have comforted me upon the loss of him. Admire, then, my resolution in shutting myself up by your example." In another letter, with all the dignity of innocence, she expatiates in the same noble and affecting strain. "When we lived happy together you might have made it a doubt whether pleasure or affection united me more to you; but the place whence I write must

now have entirely taken away that doubt. Even here I love you as much as I did in the world. If I loved pleasures could I not have yet found means to gratify myself? I was not above two-and-twenty years old, and there were other men left though I was deprived of Abelard; and yet, did not I bury myself alive in a nunnery, and triumph over love at an age capable of enjoying it in its full latitude ?" "Again: "We may write to each other, so innocent a pleasure is not forbidden us. When you write to me you will write to your wife; marriage has made such a correspondence lawful. Let us not lose the only happiness that is left us, and the only one which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I

shall find in your writings. I shall read your most secret thoughts; I shall always carry them about me; I shall kiss them every moment. That writing may be no trouble to you, write always to me carelessly, and without study. I had rather read the dictates of the heart than of the brain. I cannot live if you do not tell me you always love me. I I am not only engaged by my vows, which might possibly be sometimes neglected, but the barbarity of an uncle is a security against any criminal desire, which tenderness, and the remembrance of our past enjoyments might inspire. There is nothing that can cause you any fear. You may see me, hear my sighs, and be a witness of all my sorrows without incurring any danger, since you can only relieve me with tears and words."--" Nothing but virtue joined to a love perfectly disengaged from the commerce of the senses could have brought me to this perpetual imprisonment. Vice never inspires any thing like this: it is too much enslaved to the body. When we love pleasures we love the living and not the dead. We leave off burning with desire for those who can no longer burn for us. my cruel uncle's notion; he measured my virtue by the frailty of my sex, and thought it was the man, not the person I loved. But he has been guilty to no purpose; I love you more than ever; and, to revenge myself of him, I will still love you with all the tenderness of my soul till the last moment of my life. If formerly my affection for you was not so pure; if in those days the mind and body shared in the pleasure of loving

This was

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Strictures on Mr. Loudon's Curvilinear Hot-Houses.

you, I have often told you, even then, I was more pleased with possessing your heart than with any other happiness, and the man was the thing I least valued in you." Such extraordinary purity and elevation of sentiment, it is likely, was either unintelligible, or incredible, to a poet who thought that " every woman was at heart a rake." Eloisa, however, will readily command the assent of all who are in any degree possessed of congenial sensibility, not less by the force of her eloquence than the soundness of her reasoning. Many similar passages might have been extracted from her letters, which, I have no doubt, would have been perused with satisfaction by your readers, not only as a proper antidote and corrective of Pope's licentious and inflammatory descriptions, and a vindication of the character of the most accomplished woman of her age, but also on account of their own intrinsic merit. But although Pope's Eloisa be reprehensible in a moral point of view, its poetical beauties are numerous. What, for instance, can be more finely conceived, or more exquisitely expressed, than the following description of the effects of melancholy on surrounding objects:

But o'er the twilight groves, and dusky

caves,

Long sounding isles,and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades every flower, and darkens every
green;

Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the

woods.

In a similar strain are the first linesIn these deep solitudes and awful cells, Where heavenly pensive Contemplation dwells,

And ever-musing Melancholy reigns, What means this tumult in a vestal's veins ? Lord Kaims has here remarked, that the language is most happily adapted to the subject; the words are long, dignified, and smooth; the motion of the verse is slow and harmonious, and may be adduced as a signal example of that rare poetical beauty of the sound being an echo to the sense. At the same time I must observe, that when I read in Eluisa's description of her gloomy habitation, of awful cells, long-sounding isles, and elsewhere of moss-grown domes, spiry turrets, awful arches, dim windows shedding a solemn light, &c. I can hardly reconcile these splendid images of gothic architectural magnificence with the mean

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erections of the Paraclete; and which,
too, in the poem itself, is said to be com-
posed

Of such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with their maker's praise.
Bedford Row,
W. N.
May 23, 1818.

STRICTURES ON MR. LOUDON'S CURVI-
LINEAR HOT-HOUSES.
Thron'd on the centre of his thin designs,
Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines.

POPE.

there is some account of the sash-bar which IN a late number of your magazine,* is to accomplish wonders in the construction of hot-houses; and as the manner in which it is written lays it fairly open to criticism, I shall take the liberty of offering the following remarks on the subject.

The speedy decomposition of wrought iron, when exposed to the steam and high temperature of a hot-house, is sufficiently well known to enable any one to judge of the durability of the material; the security that can be given by fect, and though it may be kept in totinning or painting being very imperlerable condition in a place constructed for the professed purpose of exhibition, the glass in a place where it will meet it will soon get out of repair, and break

with less attention.

The durability, however, is not of much importance; but it seems that this invention is peculiarly adapted to the building of a new kind of hot-houses, which are supposed to be vastly superior and beauty. to the old ones, both in respect to utility

The form, which Mr. Loudon so highly recommends, is a section of a sphere, and this, I believe, was first suggested by Sir G. S. Mackenzie, in the Transactions of the London Horticultural Society (vol. II. p. 171). The only advantage supposed to be gained by this new form is the admission of a greater quantity of light, for the beauty of a glass roof is wholly out of the question, of which any one may be satisfied by the inspection of a hot-house or skylight, whether it be conical, spherical, or shed-like.

The most useful light for plants is that given by the direct rays of the sun, and glass transmits the greatest quantity of those rays when they fall perpendicularly upon its surface. Hence it happens, that a spherical hot-house will receive the full effect of the sun in one New Monthly Magazine, No. 52, page

313.

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point only, and in all other parts, a quantity of rays, directly proportional to the angle of incidence, will be reflected and dispersed in the atmosphere.

Now the common hot-house receives the full effect of the sun's rays equally in every part in the middle of the day, and though the rays strike the glass obliquely when the sun is near the horizon, yet the effect is still uniform throughout the house; whereas, the spherical hothouse can never receive the full effect of the sun, nor be uniformly heated in any part of the day. Your readers may easily try the effect by holding a piece of window-glass so that the sun may shine through it and fall on white paper; when it will be found that the quantity of light thrown upon the paper will vary with the angle which the glass forms with the rays of the sun.

It may be said, that a greater proportion of the light diffused through the atmosphere will enter a spherical hothouse. Granting this-will not the same surface be exposed to the chilling effect of the night air?

It is singular that Mr. Loudon should have quoted any thing so directly opposed to the scheme of spherical hothouses as the judicious observations of Mr. Knight, whose mode of improving hot-houses is certainly much more likely to be of use than the curvilinear ones.* If a house be intended for fruit, the surface for training ought to be the largest possible, at the same time the space to be heated should be the smallest possible. In a sphere, however, it is just the reverse; for it is of all bodies that which contains the greatest space under the least superficies.

The expense of curvilinear houses will be nearly double that of houses of the common form, and of the best kind; for there are many other parts besides sashbars to consider in the erection of a curvilinear hot-house.

In respect to the beauty of hot-houses, if it had arisen wholly from association, even the most common forms ought to have appeared beautiful, being always connected with objects of the most pleasing kind; and were there no beauty of form independent of association, I do not see any reason why an useful shed should not be a beautiful one. Mr. Loudon is extremely unhappy in his quotations, even on the subject of beauty, as he ranks spheres, and Eastern domes, and globular projections, &c. among forms See Hort. Trans. vol. i, p. 99. NEW MONTHLY MAG,-No. 55,

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that are in themselves beautiful. The reader will remember that these forms are to be executed in a species of glass patch work.

As the imagination almost always requires some assistance in the conception of a new idea, no doubt many of the readers of Mr. Loudon's paper have inverted the cups and basins on the breakfast-table to represent "the sections of spherical bodies;" but this plan would give them a very imperfect idea of the matter. A hemispherical bird - cage would suit the purpose better, where the wires would represent the sash-bars; indeed, only suppose it glazed between the wires and it becomes a perfect model of a curvilinear hot-house.

Now picture to yourself an elegant mansion with a pair of immense birdcages spreading wide their bases upon the lawn at either end. Would such an assemblage be expressive of substantial grandeur, or that firm solidity which ought to characterize an Englishman's residence? Too large and uniform to be picturesque-too mean and paltry to be beautiful, even if Messrs. High Holborn, had invented a new and peculiar machine to bend each bar exactly into the form of Hogarth's line of beauty.

London, June 13, 1818.

D-T.

ANECDOTES OF COBBETT. MR. EDITOR,

of

SO many accounts of William Cobbett in America have been given to the public, not one of which can be relied upon, that I shall feel obliged by your inserting the little I know of him, for the information of both his friends and enemies. Many weeks have not elapsed since I saw him personally at New York; and as I had the honour of an introduction to him some years ago in London, in the zenith of his popularity, when the publication of the Irish Judge Fox's letters in his Register were both serving and annoying him, I expected at least that he would have noticed me when my name was announced at the table of a club in Third-street, of which he is a member. However I was deceived; the mighty man's recollection did not recognize me; and as my name no doubt reminded him of transactions he thought best to leave unknown to his American acquaintance, a slight bow was all I received in return for mine, and all that I wished from him. The newspapers either place Cobbett in VOL. X.

C

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