men were the usual objects of the suppressed indignation of the people in those days; but the knights and feudal lords have not always escaped from the 'curses not loud but deep,' of their satirica! pencils. As the Reformation, or rather the Revolution, was hastening, this custom become so general, that in one of the dialogues of Erasmus, where two Franciscans are entertained by their host, it appears that such satirical exhibitions were hung up as common furniture in the apartments of inns. The facetious genius of Erasmus either invents or describes one which he had seen of an ape in the habit of a Franciscan sitting by a sick man's bed, dispensing timents of the populace, as were these Saturnalia, had been nearly lost for us, had not some notions been preserved by Lucian; for we glean but sparingly from the solemn pages of the historian, except in the remarkable instance which Suetonius has preserved of the arch-mime who followed the body of the Emperor Vespasian at his funeral. This officer, as well as a similar one, who accompanied the general to whom they granted a triumph, and who was allowed the unrestrained licentiousness of his tongue, were both the organs of popular feeling, and studied to gratify the rabble, who were their real masters. On this occasion the arch-mime, representing both the exterior personage and the character of Vespasian, accord-ghostly counsel, holding up a crucifix in one hand, while ing to custom, inquired the expense of the funeral? He was answered, 'ten millions of sesterces! In allusion to the love of money which characterized the emperor, his mock representative exclaimed, Give me the money, and, if you will, throw my body into the Tiber! All these mock offices and festivals among the ancients, I consider as organs of the suppressed opinions and feelings of the populace, who were allowed no other, and had not the means of the printing ages to leave any permanent records. At a later period, before the discovery of the art, which multiplies, with such facility, libels or panegyrics; when the people could not speak freely against those rapacious clergy, who sheared the fleece and cared not for the sheep, many a secret of popular indignation was confided not to books (for they could not read) but to pictures and sculptures, which are books which the people can always read. The sculptors and illuminators of those times, no doubt shared in common the popular feelings, and boldly trusted to the paintings or the carvings which met the eyes of their luxurious and indolent masters their satirical Inventions. As far back as in 1300, we find in Wolfius* the description of a picture of this kind, in a MS. of Esop's Fables, found in the Abbey of Fulda, among other emblems of the corrupt lives of the churchmen. The present was a wolf, large as life, wearing a monkish cowl, with a shaven crown, preaching to a flock of sheep, with these words of the apostle in a label from his mouth,'God is my witness how I long for you all in my bowels! And underneath was inscribed,- This hooded wolf is the hypocrite of whom it is said in the Gospel, "Beware of false prophets !"' Such exhibitions were often introduced into articles of furniture. A cushion was found in an old abbey, in which was worked a fox preaching to geese, each goose holding in his bill his praying beads! In the stone wall, and on the columns of the great church at Strasburg was once viewed a number of wolves, bears, foxes, and other mischievous animals carrying holy-water, crucifixes, and tapers; and others more indelicate. These, probably as old as the year 1300, were engraven in 1617, by a protestant; and were not destroyed till 1685, by the pious rage of the catholics, who seemed at length to have rightly construed these silent lampoons; and in their turn broke to pieces the protestant images as the others had done the papistical dolls. The carved seats and stalls in our own cathedrals exhibit subjects, not only strange and satirical, but even indecent. At the time they built churches they satirized the ministers; a curious instance how the feelings of the people struggle to find a vent. It is conjectured that rival orders satirized each other, and that some of the carvings are caricatures of certain monks. The margins of illuminated manuscripts frequently contain ingenious caricatures, or satirical allegories. In a magnificent chronicle of Froissart I observed several. A wolf, as usual, in a monk's frock and cowl, stretching his paw to bless a cock, bending its head submissively to the wolf; or a fox with a crosier, dropping beads, which a cock is picking up; to satirize the blind devotion of the bigots; perhaps the figure of the cock alluded to our Gallic neighbours. A cat in the habit of a nun, holding a platter in its paws to a mouse approaching to lick it; alluding to the allurements of the abbesses to draw young women into their convents; while sometimes I have seen a sow in an abbess's veil, mounted on stilts; the sex marked by the sow's dugs. A pope sometimes appears to be thrust by devils into a caldron; and cardinals are seen roasting on spits! These ornaments must have been generally executed by monks themselves; but these more ingenious mem bers of the ecclesiastical order appear to have sympathized with the people, like the curates in our church, and envied the pampered abbot and the purple bishop. ChurchLect. Mem. I, ad. an. 1300. with the other he is filching a purse out of the sick man's pocket. Such are the straws' by which we may always observe from what corner the wind rises! Mr Dibdin has recently informed us, that Geyler, whom he calls the herald of the Reformation,' preceding Luther by twelve years, had a stone chair or pulpit in the cathedral at Strasburg, from which he delivered his lectures, or rather rolled the thunders of his anathemas against the monks. This stone pulpit was constructed under his own superintendence, and is covered with very indecent figures of monks and nuns, expressly designed by him to expose their prof ligate manners. We see Geyler doing what for centuries had been done! In the curious folios of Sauval, the Stowe of France, there is a copious chapter entitled Heretiques, leurs atten tats.' In this enumeration of their attempts to give vent to their suppressed indignation, it is very remarkable, that preceding the time of Lather, the minds of many were per fectly Lutheran respecting the idolatrous worship of the Roman church; and what I now notice would have rightly entered into that significant Historia Reformationis ante Reformationem, which was formerly projected by continental writers. Luther did not consign the pope's decretals to the flames till 1520-this was the first open act of reforination and insurrection, for hitherto he had submitted to the court of Rome. Yet in 1490, thirty years preceding this great event, I find a priest burnt for having snatched the host in derision from the hands of another celebrating mass. Twelve years afterwards, 1502, a student repeated the same deed, trampling on it; and in 1523 the resolute death of Anne de Bourg, a counsellor in the parliament of Paris, to use the expression of Sauval, corrupted the world." It is evident that the Huguenots were fast on the increase. From that period I find continued accounts which prove that the Huguenots of France, like the Puritans of England, were most resolute iconoclasts. They struck off the heads of Virgins and little Jesuses, or blunted their daggers by chipping the wooden saints, which were then fixed at the corners of streets. Every morning discovered the scandalous treatment they had undergone in the night. Then their images were painted on the walls, but these were heretically scratched and disfigured; and, since the saints could not defend themselves, a royal edict was published in their favour, commanding that all holy painings in the streets should not be allowed short of ten feet from the ground! They entered churches at night, tearing up or breaking down the prians, the benitoires, the crucifixes, the colossal ecce-homos, which they did not always succeed in dislodging for want of time or tools. Amidst these battles with wooden adversaries, we may smile at the frequent solemn processions instituted to ward off the vengeance of the parish saint; the wooden was expiated by a silver image, secured by iron bars, and attended by the king and the nobility, carrying the new saint, with prayers that he would protect himself from the heretics! In the early period of the Reformation, an instance occurs of the art of concealing what we wish only the few should comprehend, at the same time that we are addres sing the public. Curious collectors are acquainted, with The Olivetan Bible: this was the first translation published by the protestants, and there seems no doubt that Calvin was the chief, if not the only translator; but at that moment not choosing to become responsible for this new version, he made use of the name of an obscure relative, Robert Pierre Olivetan. Calvin, however, prefixed a Latin preface, remarkable for delivering positions very op posite to those tremendous doctrines of absolute predestination, which in his theological despotism he afterwards assumed. De Bure describes this first protestant Bible not only as rare, but when found as usually imperfect, 总 uch soiled, and dog-eared, as the well-read first edition Shakspeare, by the perpetual use of the multitude. But a curious fact has escaped the detection both of De Bure and Beloe; at the end of the volume are found ten Serses, which, in a concealed manner, authenticate the ranslation; and which no one, unless initiated into the secret, could possibly suspect. The verses are not poetical, but I give the first sentence: Lecture entends si verité adresse Viens donc ouyr instament sa promesse &c. The first letter of every word of these ten verses form a perfect distich, containing information important to those to whom the Olivetan Bible was addressed. Lee Vaudois, peuple evangelique An anagram had been too inartificial a contrivance to have answered the purpose of concealing from the world sat large this secret. There is an adroitness in the invention of the initial letters of all the words through these ten verses. They contained a communication necessary to authenticate the version, but which at the same time,could not be suspected by any person not instructed with the secret. When the art of medal-engraving was revived in Europe, the spirit, we are now noticing, took possession of those less perishable and more circulating vehicles. Satiric medals were almost unknown to the ancient mint, notwithstanding those of the Saturnalia, and a few which hear miserable puns on the unlucky names of some consuls. Medals illustrate history, and history reflects light on medals; but we should not place such unreserved confidence on medals, as their advocates who are warm in their favourite study. It has been asserted, that medals are more authentic memorials than history itself; but a medal is not less susceptible of the bad passions than a pamphlet or an epigram. Ambition has its vanity, and engraves a dubious victory; and Flattery will practise its art, and deceive us in gold! A calumny or a fiction on metal may be more durable than on a fugitive page; and a libel has a better chance of being preserved, when the artist is skilful, than simple truths when miserably executed. Medals of this class are numerous, and were the precursors of those political satires exhibited in caricature prints. There is a large collection of wooden cuts about the time of Calvin, where the Romish religion is represented by the most grotesque forms which the ridicule of the early Reformers could event. More than a thousand figures attest the exuberant satire of the designers. This work is equally rare and costly.* Satires of this species commenced in the freedom of the Reformation; for we find a medal of Luther in a monk's habit, satirically bearing for its reverse Catharine de Bora, the nun whom this monk married; the first step of his personal reformation! Nor can we be certain that Catharine was not more concerned in that great revolution than appears in the voluminous lives we have of the great reformer. However, the reformers were as great sticklers for medals as the 'papelins.' Of Pope John VIII, an effeminate voluptuary, we have a medal with his portrait, inscribed Pope Joan! and another of Innocent X, dressed as a woman holding a spindle; the reverse, his famous mistress, Donna Olympia, dressed as a Pope, with the tiara on her head, and the keys of St Peter in her hands! When, in the reign of Mary, England was groaning under Spanish influence, and no remonstrance could reach the throne, the queen's person and government were made ridiculous to the people's eyes, by prints or pictures, representing her majesty naked, meagre, withered, and wrinkled, with every aggravated circumstance of deformity that could disgrace a female figure, seated in a regal chair; a crown on her head, surrounded with M. R. and A. in capitals, accompanied by small letters; Maria Regina Anglia! a number of Spaniards were sucking her to skin and bone, and a specification was added of the money, rings, jewels, and other presents with which she had secretly gratified her husband Philip.' It is said that the queen suspected some of her own council of this invention, who alone were privy to these transactions. It is, however, in this manner that the voice, which is suppressed by authority, e mes at length in another shape to the eye. *Mr Douce possesses a portion of this very curious collection: for a complete one, De Bure asked about twenty pounds. + Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, p. 69. The age of Elizabeth, when the Roman pontiff and all his adherents were odious to the people, produced a remarkable caricature, an ingenious invention-a gorgon's head! A church bell forms the helmet; the ornaments, instead of the feathers, are a wolf's head in a mitre devouring a lamb, an ass's head with spectacles reading, a goose holding a rosary; the face is made out with a fish for the nose, a chalice and water for the eye, and other priestly ornaments for the shoulder and breast, on which rolls of parchment pardons hang.* A famous Bishop of Munster, Bernard de Galen, who, in his charitable violence for converting protestants, got himself into such celebrity that he appears to have served as an excellent sign-post to the inns in Germany, was the true church militant and his figure was exhibited according to the popular fancy. His head was half mitre ana half helmet; a crosier in one hand and a sabre in the other; half a rochet and half a cuirass: he was made performing mass as a dragoon on horseback, and giving out the charge when he ought the Ite, missa est! He was called the converter! and the Bishop of Munster' became popular as a sign-post in German towns; for the people like fighting men, though they should even fight against them selves. It is rather curious to observe of this new species o satire, so easily distributed among the people, and so directly addressed to their understandings, that it was made the vehicle of national feeling. Ministers of state condescended to invent the devices. Lord Orford says, that caricatures on cards were the invention of George Townshend in the affair of Byng, which was soon followed by a pack. I am informed of an ancient pack of cards which has caricatures of all the Parliamentarian Generals, which might be not unusefully shuffled by a writer of secret history. We may be surprised to find the grave Sully prac tising this artifice on several occasions. In the civil wars of France the Duke of Savoy had taken by surprise Saluces, and struck a medal; on the reverse a centaur appears shooting with a bow and arrow, with the legend Opportune! But when Henry the Fourth had reconquered the town, he published another, on which Hercules appears killing the centaur, with the word Opportunius. The great minister was the author of this retort! A medal of the Dutch ambassador at the court of France, Van Beuninghen, whom the French represent as a haughty burgomaster, but who had the vivacity of a Frenchman, and the haughtiness of a Spaniard, as Voltaire characterizes him, is said to have been the occasion of the Dutch war in 1672; but wars will be hardly made for an idle medal. Medals may, however, indicate a preparatory war. Louis the Fourteenth was so often compared to the sun at its meridian, that some of his creatures may have imagined that, like the sun, he could dart into any part of Europe as he willed, and be as cheerfully received. The Dutch minister, whose christian name was Joshua, however, had a medal struck of Joshua stopping the sun in his course, inferring that this miracle was operated by his little republic. The medal itself is engraven in Van Loon's voluminous Histoire Medallique du Pays Bas, and in Marchand's Dictionnaire Historique, who labours to prove against twenty authors that the Dutch ambassador was not the inventor; it was not, however, unworthy of him, and it conveyed to the world the high feeling of her power which Holland had then assumed. Two years after the noise about this medal, the republic paid dear for the device; but thirty years afterwards this very burgomaster compelled to receive the mediation of the Dutch Joshua concluded a glorious peace, and France and Spain were with the French sun.* In these vehicles of national satire, it is odd that the phlegmatic Dutch, more than any other nation, and from the earliest period of their republic, should have indulged freely, if not licentiously. It was a republican humour. Their taste was usually gross. We owe to them, even in the reign of Elizabeth, a severe medal on Leicester, who having retired in disgust from the government of their provinces, struck a medal with his bust, reverse, a dog and sheep, Non gregem, sed ingratos invitus desero: on which the angry juvenile states struck another, repreThis ancient carricature, so descriptive of the popular feelings, is tolerably given in Malcom's History of "Caricaturing,' plate ii, fig. 1. The history of this medal is useful in more than one respect; and may be found in Prosper Marchand. senting an ape and young ones, reverse, Leicester near a fire, Fugiens fumum, incidit in ignem.' Another medal, with an excellent portrait of Cromwell, was struck by the Dutch. The protector, crowned with aurels, is on his knees, laying his head in the lap of the commonwealth, but loosely exhibiting himself to the French and Spanish ambassadors with gross indecency: the Frenchman, covered with a fleurs de lis, is pushing aside the grave Don, and disputes with him the precedence-Retire toy; l'honneur appartient au roy mon maitre, Louis le Grand, Van Loon is very right in denouncing this same medal, so grossly flattering to the English, as most detestable and indelicate! But why does Van Loon envy us this lumpish invention? why does the Dutchman quarrel with his own cheese? The honour of the medal we claim, but the invention belongs to his country. The Dutch went on, commenting in this manner on English affairs, from reign to reign. Charles the Second declared war against them in 1672 for a malicious medal, though the States-General offered to break the die by purchasing it of the workman for one thousand ducats; but it served for a pretext for a Dutch war, which Charles cared more about than the mala bestia of his exergue. Charles also complained of a scandalous picture which the brothers De Witt had in their house, representing a naval battle with the English. Charles the Second seems to have been more sensible to this sort of national satire than we might have expected in a professed wit; a race, however, who are not the most patient in having their own sauce returned to their lips. The king employed Evelyn to write a history of the Dutch war, and enjoined him to make it a little keen, for the Hollanders had very unhandsomely abused him in their pictures, books, and libels.' The Dutch continued their career of conveving their national feeling on English affairs more triumphantly when their stadtholder ascended an English throne. The birth of the Pretender is represented by the chest which Minerva gave to the daughters of Cecrops to keep, and which, opened, discovered an infant with a serpent's tail: Infan temque vident apporectumque draconem; the chest perhaps alluding to the removes of the warming-pan: and in another, James and a Jesuit flying in terror, the king throwing away a crown and sceptre, and the Jesuit carrying a child, Ite, missa est, the words applied from the mass. But in these contests of national feeling, while the grandeur of Louis the Fourteenth did not allow of these Indicrous and satirical exhibitions; and while the political idolatry which his forty academicians paid to him, exhausted itself in the splendid fictions of a series of famous medals, amounting to nearly four hundred; it appears that we were not without our reprisals: for I find Prosper Marchand, who writes as a Hollander, censuring his own country for having at length adulated the grand monarch by a com plimentary medal. He says, The English cannot be re- Hesperidum regem devicit virgo; negatur, An age fertile in satirical prints was the eventful era of for he has introduced a caricature print in the solemn folio of the trial of Charles the First. Of the happiest of these political prints is one by Taylor the water-poet, not included in his folio, but prefixed to his Mad fashions, odd fashions or the emblems of these distracted times." It is the figure of a man whose eyes have left their sockets, and whose legs have usurped the place of lus arme; a horse on his hind legs is drawing a cart; a church is inverted; fish fly in the air; a candle burns with the flame downwards and the mouse and rabbit are pursuing the cat and the fox! The animosities of national hatreds have been a fertile source of these vehicles of popular feeling-which discover themselves in severe or grotesque caricatures. The French and the Spaniards mutually exhibited one another under the most extravagant figures. The political caricatures of the French, in the seventeenth century, are numerous. The badauds of Paris amused themselves for their losses, by giving an emetic to a Spaniard, to make him render up all the towns his victories had obtained; seven or eight Spaniards are seen seated around a large turnip, with their frizzled mustachios, their hats en pot a buerre; their long rapiers, with their pummels down to their feet, and their points up to their shoulders; their ruffs stiffened by many rows, and pieces of garlic stuck in their girdles. The Dutch were exhibited in as great variety as the uniformity of frogs would allow. We have largely participated in the vindictive spirit, which these grotesque emblems keep up among the people; they mark the secret feelings of national pride. The Greeks despised foreigners, and considered them only as fit to be slaves;* the ancient Jews, inflated with a false idea of their small territory, would be masters of the world: the Italians placed a line of demarcation for genius and taste, and marked it by their mountains. The Spaniards once imagined that the conferences of God with Moses on Mount Sinai were in the Spanish language. If a Japanese becomes the friend of a foreigner, he is considered as com mitting treason to his emperor; and rejected as a false brother in a country which we are told is figuratively called Tenka, or the kingdom under the Heavens. John Bullism is not peculiar to Englishmen and patriotism is a noble virtue, when it secures our independence without depriving us of our humanity. The civil wars of the league in France, and those in England under Charles the First, bear the tnost striking resemblance; and in examining the revolutionary scenes exhibited by the graver in the famous satire Menippés, we discover the foreign artist revelling in the caricature of his ludicrous and severe exhibition; and in that other revolu tionary period of La Fronde, there was a mania for political songs; the curious have formed them into collections; and we, not only have the Rump songs' of Charles the First's times, but have repeated this kind of evidence of the public feeling at many subsequent periods. Carica tures and political songs might with us furnish a new sort of history; and perhaps would preserve some truths, and describe some particular events, not to be found in more grave authorities. AUTOGRAPHS.t The art of judging of the characters of persons by their writing can only have any reality, when the pen, acting without constraint, may become an instrument guided by, and indicative of the natural dispositions. But regulated as the pen is now too often by a mechanical process, which the present race of writing-masters seem to have contrived for their own convenience, a whole school exhi bits a similar hand-writing; the pupils are forced in their automatic motions, as if acted on by the pressure of a steam-engine; a bevy of beauties will now write such fac similes of each other, that in a heap of letters presented to the most sharp-sighted lover, to select that of his mistress -though like Bassanio among the caskets, his happiness should be risked on the choice-he would despair of fixing on the right one, all appearing to have come from the * A passage may be found in Aristotle's politics, vol. I, c. 3. -7; where Aristotle advises Alexander to govern the Greeks like his subjects, and the barbarians like slaves; or that the one he was to consider as companions, and the other as creatures of an inferior race. + A small volume which I met with at Paris, entitled 'L'Art de juger du Caractere des Hommes sur leurs Ecritures,' is cu rious for its illustrations, consisting of twenty-four plates, exhibiting fac-etmdes of the writing of eminent and other per. sons, correctly taken from the original autographs. rolling-press. Even brothers of different tempers been taught by the same master to give the same to their letters, the same regularity to their line, and s made our hand-writings as monotonous as are our racters in the present habits of society. The true phynomy of writing will be lost among our rising genera: it is no longer a face that we are looking on, but a utiful mask of a single pattern; and the fashionable d-writing of our young ladies is like the former tightFing of their mother's youthful days, when every one e had what was supposed to be a fine shape! Assuredly Nature would prompt every individual to have stinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar Buntenance-a voice and a manner. The flexibility of e muscles differs with every individual, and the hand ll follow the direction of the thoughts, and the emotions And the habits of the writers. The phlegmatic will poray his words, while the playful haste of the volatile will arcely sketch them; the slovenly will blot and efface and scrawl, while the neat and orderly minded will view emselves in the paper before their eyes. The merchant's lerk will not write like the lawyer or the poet. Even ations are distinguished by their writing; the vivacity and ariableness of the Frenchman, and the delicacy and supthe leness of the Italian, are perceptibly distinct from the slowness and strength of pen discoverable in the phlegmatic German, Dane, and Swede. When we are in grief, we do not write as we should in joy. The elegant and correct mind, which has acquired the fortunate habit of a fixity of attention, will write with scarcely an erasure on This the page, as Fenelon and Gray and Gibbon; while we 25 find in Pope's manuscripts the perpetual struggles of cor04rection, and the eager and rapid interlineations struck off in heat. Lavater's notion of hand-writing is by no means chimerical; nor was General Paoli fanciful, when he told Sa Mr Northcote, that he had decided on the character and dispositions of a man from his letters, and the hand-writFising. Long before the days of Lavater, Shenstone in one of his letters said, I want to see Mrs Jago's hand-writing, that I may judge of her temper.' One great truth must The however be conceded to the opponents of the physiognomy of writing; general rules only can be laid down. Yet the vital principle must be true, that the hand-writing bears an analogy to the character of the writer, as all voluntary actions are characteristic of the individual. But many causes operate to counteract or obstruct this result. I am intimately acquainted with the hand-writings of five of ur great poets. The first in early life acquired among Scottish advocates a hand-writing which cannot be distinguished from that of his ordinary brothers; the second, educated in public schools, where writing is shamefully neglected, composes his sublime or sportive verses in a school-boy's ragged scrawl, as if he had never finished his tasks with the writing master; the third writes his highly-wrought poetry in the common hand of a merchant's clerk, from early commercial avocations; the fourth has all that finished neatness, which polished his verses; while the fifth is a specimen of a full mind, not in the habit of correction or alteration; so that he appears to be printing down his thoughts, without a solitary erasure. hand-writing of the first and third poets, not indicative of The their character, we have acounted for; the others are admirable specimens of characteristic autographs. By: Oldys, in one of his curious notes, was struck by the distinctness of character in the hand-writings of several of our kings. He observed nothing farther than the mere fact, and did not extend his idea to the art of judging of the natural character by the writing. Oldys has described these hand-writings with the utmost correctness, as I have often verified. I shall add a few comments. 'Henry the Eighth wrote a strong hand, but as if he Edward the Sixth wrote a fair legible hand.' lost him. 'Queen Elizabeth writ an upright hand, like the bastard Italian.' She was indeed a most elegant caligrapher, 311 whom Roger Ascham had taught all the elegancics of the pen. The French editor of the little autographical work I fully elaborate. He accompanies it with one of the Scothave noticed has given the autograph of her name, which she usually wrote in a very large tall character, and paintish Mary, who at times wrote elegantly, though usually much the contrary. The French editor makes this obser in uneven lines; when in haste and distress of mind, in several letters during her imprisonment which I have read, vation: Who could believe that these writings are of the The one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England; the other same epoch? The first denotes asperity and ostentation; that of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these the second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. two hand-writings answers most evidently to that of their characters.' James the First writ a poor ungainly character, all awry, and not in a straight line.' James certainly wrote a slovenly scrawl, strongly indicative of that personal negligence which he carried into all the little things of life; and Buchanan, who had made him an excellent scholar, may receive the disgrace of his pupil's ugly scribble, which sprawls about his careless and inelegant letters. Charles was the first of our monarchs who intended to 'Charles the First wrote a fair open Italian hand, and have domiciliated taste in the kingdom, and it might have more correctly perhaps, than any prince we ever had.' been conjectured from this unfortunate prince, who so finely discriminated the manners of the different painters, which are in fact their hand-writings, that he would have if wrote in haste, or uneasy ull he had done.' not been insensible to the elegancies of the pen. 'Charles the Second wrote a little fair running hand, as vagabond, who had much to write, often in odd situations, the writing to have been expected from this illustrious Such was vivacity. and could never get rid of his natural restlessness, and acterised by his phlegmatic temper, as an exact detailer 'James the Second writ a large fair hand.' It is charof occurrences, and the matter-of-business genius of the writer. ting she had been taught by her master, probably without 'Queen Anu wrote a fair round hand:' that is the wriany alteration of manner naturally suggested by herself; the copying hand of a common character. This subject of autographs associates itself with what has been dignified by its professors as caligraphy, or the art of beautiful writing. As I have something curious to shall form our following article. communicate on that subject considered professionally, it THE HISTORY OF WRITING-MASTERS. Henry when very young, on the neatness and fairness of sors of caligraphy, who in this country have put forth such painful panegyrics on the art, these royal names had un questionably blazoned their pages. Not, indeed, that these penmen require any fresh inflation; for never has there been a race of professors in any art, who have exceeded in solemnity and pretensions the practitioners in this simple and mechanical craft. I must leave to more ingenious investigators of human nature, to reveal the occult cause which has operated such powerful delusions on these Vive la Plume! men, who have been generally observed to possess least intellectual ability, in proportion to the excellence they have obtained in their own art. I suspect this maniacal vanity is peculiar to the writingmasters of England; and I can only attribute the immense importance which they have conceived of their art, to the perfection to which they have carried the art of short-hand writing; an art which was always better understood, and more skilfully practised, in England, than in any other country. It will surprise some when they learn that the artists in verse and colours, poets and painters, have not raised loftier pretensions to the admiration of mankind. Writing-masters, or caligraphars, have had their engraved effigies,' with a Fame in flourishes, a pen in one hand, and a trumpet in the other; and fine verses inscribed, and their very lives written! They have compared 'The nimbly-turning of their silver quill,' to the beautiful in art, and the sublime in invention; nor is this wonderful, since they discover the art of writing, like the invention of language, in a divine original; and from the tablets of stone which the Deity himself delivered, they trace their German broad-text, or their fine runninghand. One, for the bold striking of those words, Vive la Plume,' was so sensible of the reputation that this last piece of command of hand would give the book which he thus adorned, and which his biographer acknowledges was the product of about a minute-(but then how many years of flourishing had that single minute cost him!)-that he claims the glory of an artist, observing, 'We seldom find The man of business with the artist join'd.' Another was flattered that his writing could impart immortality to the most wretched conpositions ! And any lines prove pleasing, when you write.' Sometimes the caligrapher is a sort of hero :To you, you rare commander of the quill, Whose wit and worth, deep learning, and high skill, Speak you the honour of great Tower Hill? The last line became traditionally adopted by those who were so lucky as to live in the neighbourhood of this Parnassus. But the reader must form some notion of that charm of caligraphy which has so bewitched its professors, when, 'Soft, bold, and free, your manuscripts still please.' The Pen at once joins freedom with command! 'Command Even by the gentle motion of his hand,' all the speciosa miracula of caligraphy! Thy tender strokes inimitably fine, Crown with perfection every flowing line; And to each grand performance add a grace, As curling hair adorns a beauteous face: In every page new fancies give delight, And sporting round the margin charm the sight. One Massey, a writing-master, published, in 1763, The Origin and Progress of Letters.' The great singularity of this volume is A new species of biography never attempted before in English.' This consists of the lives of English Penmen,' otherwise writing-masters! If some have foolishly enough imagined that the sedentary lives of authors are void of interest from deficient incident and interesting catastrophe, what must they think of the barren labours of those, who, in the degree they become eminent, to use their own style, in their art of 'dish, dash, long-tail fly,' the less they become interesting to the public; for what can the most skilful writing-mas ter do but wear away his life in leaning over his pupil's copy, or sometimes snatch a pen to decorate the margin, though he cannot compose the page? Montaigne has a very original notion on writing-masters: he says that some of those caligraphers, who had obtained promotion by their excellence in the art, afterwards affected to write carelessly, lest their promotion should be suspected to have been owing to such an ordinary acquisition! Massey is an enthusiast, fortunately for his subject. He considers that there are schools of writing, as well as of painting or sculpture; and expatiates with the eye of fraternal feeling on a natural genius, a tender stroke, a grand performance, a bold striking freedom, and a liveli ness in the sprigged letters, and penciled knots and fourishes; while this Vasari of writing-masters relates the controversies and the libels of many a rival pen-nibber. 'George Shelley, one of the most celebrated worthies who have made a shining figure in the commonwealth of English caligraphy, born I suppose of obscure parents, because brought up in Christ's hospital, yet under the humble blue-coat he laid the foundation of his caligraphic excellence and lasting fame, for he was elected writingmaster to the hospital.' Shelley published his 'Natural writing; but, alas! Snell, another blue-coat, transcended the other. He was a genius who would bear no brother near the throne.' I have been informed that there were jealous heart-burnings, if not bickerings, between him and Col. Ayres, another of our great reformers in the writ ing commonweal, both eminent men, yet, like our most celebrated poets, Pope and Addison, or, to carry the com parison still higher, like Cæsar and Pompey, one could bear no superior, and the other no equal. Indeed, the great Snell practised a little stratagem against Mr Shel ley, which, if writing-masters held courts-martial, this hero ought to have appeared before his brothers. In one of his works he procured a number of friends to write letters, in which Massey confesses are some satirical strokes upon Shelley,' as if he had arrogated too much to himself in his book of Natural Writing.' They find great fault with penciled knots and sprigged letters. Shelley, who was an advocate for ornaments in fine penmanship, which Snell utterly rejected, had parodied a wellknown line of Herbert's in favour of his favourite decorations: 'A Knot may take him who from letters flies, And turn delight into an exercise.' These reflectious created ill-blood, and even an open difference amongst several of the superior artists in writing. The commanding genius of Snell, had a more terrific contest when he published his Standard Rules,' pretending to have demonstrated them as Euclid would. This proved a bone of contention, and occasioned a ter rific quarrel between Mr Snell and Mr Clark. This quar rel about "Standard Rules" ran so high between them, that they could scarce forbear scurrilous language therein, and a treatment of each other unbecoming gentlemen! Both sides in this dispute had their abettors; and to say which had the most truth and reason, non nostrum est tantas componere lites; perhaps both parties might be too fond of their own schemes. They should have left them to people to choose which they liked best. A candid politi cian is our Massey, and a philosophical historian too: he winds up the whole story of this civil war by describing its result, which happened as all such great controversies have ever closed. Who now-a-days takes those Standard Rules, either one or the other, for their guide in writ ing? This is the finest lesson ever offered to the furious heads of parties, and to all their men; let them meditate on the nothingness of their 'standard rules'-by the fate of Mr Snell! for It was to be expected when once these writing-masters imagined that they were artists, that they would be infected with those plague-spots of genius, envy, detraction, and all the jalousie du metier. And such to this hour we find them! An extraordinary scene of this nature has long been exhibited in my neighbourhood, where twn doughty champions of the quill have been posting up libels in their windows respecting the inventor of a new art of writing, the Carstairian or the Lewisian? When the Gergreat man philosopher asserted that he had discovered the me |