hibiting the incorruptible spirit under the unnatural and ludicrous figure of mortality drawn out of the corruption of the grave.

An anecdote of these monkish times has been preserved by old Gerard Leigh; and as old stories are best set off by old words, Gerard speaketh! The great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in high Almaine (Germany,) the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted the charnel of a man, which they termed-death! When that well-learned emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter, commanding to blot the skeleton out, and to paint therein the image of a fool. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary, said, "It was a good remembrance !"-Nay," quoth the emperor," as vermin that annoyeth man's body cometh unlooked for, so doth death, which here is but a fained image, and life is a certain thing, if we know to deserve it." The original mind of Maximilian the Great is characterised by this curious story of converting our emblem of death into a party-coloured fool; and such satirical allusions to the folly of those who persisted in their notion of the skeleton were not unusual with the artists of those times; we find the figure of a fool sitting with some drollery between the legs of one of these skeletons.†

This story is associated with an important fact. After they had successfully terrified the people with their charnel-house figure, a reaction in the public feelings occurred, for the skeleton was now employed as a medium to convey the most facetious, satirical, and burlesque notions of human life, Death, which had so long harassed their imaginations, suddenly changed into a theme fertile in coarse humour. The Italians were too long accustomed to the study of the beautiful to allow their pencil to sport with deformity; but the Gothic taste of the German artists, who could only copy their own homely nature, delighted to give human passious to the hideous physiognomy of a noseless skull; to put an eye of mockery or malignity into its hollow sock et, and to stretch out the gaunt anatomy into the postures of a Hogarth; and that the ludicrous might be carried to its extreme, this imaginary being, taken from the bone-house, was viewed in the action of dancing! This blending of the grotesque with the most disgusting image of mortality, is the more singular part of this history of the skeleton, and indeed of human nature itself!

po

The Dance of Death' erroneously considered as Holbein's with other similar dances, however differently treated, have one common subject which was painted in the arcades of burying-grounds, or on town-halls and in market-places. The subject is usually The Skeleton in the act of leading all ranks and conditions to the grave, personated after nature, and in the strict costume of the times. This invention opened a new field for genius; and when we can for a moment forget their luckless choice of their bony and bloodless hero, who to abuse us by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religions mummery, invented by the clergy, who in these ages of barbarous christianity always found it necessary to amuse, as well as to frighten the pulace; a circumstance well known to have occurred in so many other grotesque and licentious festivals they allowed the people. This pageant was performed in churches, in which the chief characters in society were supported in a sort of masquerade, mixing together in a general dance, in the course of which every one in his turn vanished from the scene, to show how one after the other died off. The subject was at once poetical and ethical; and the poets and painters of Germany adopting the skeleton, sent forth this chimerical Ulysses of another world to roam among the men and manners of their own. One Macaber composed a popular poem, and the old Gaulish version reformed is still printed at Troyes, in France, with the ancient blocks of wood-cuts under the title of La grande Danse Macabre des hommes et des femmes.' Merian's Todten Tans,' or the Dance of the Dead,' is a curious set of prints of a dance of death from an ancient painting, I think not entirely defaced, in a cemetery at Basle, in Switzerland. It was ordered to be painted by a council The accidence of Armorie, p. 199.

A wood-cut preserved in Mr Dibdin's Bib. Dec. 1, 35. My well-read friend Mr Douce has poured forth his curious knowledge on this subject in a dissertation prefixed to a valuable edition of Hollar's Dance of Death.'

which was held there during many years, to commemorate the mortality occasioned by a plague in 1439. The prevailing character of all these works is unquestionably grotesque and ludicrous; not, however, that genius, however barbarous, could refrain in this large subject of human life from inventing scenes often imagined with great delicacy of conception, and even great pathos! Such is the new-married couple, whom Death is leading, beating a drum, and in the rapture of the hour, the bride seems with a melancholy look, now insensible of his presence; or Death is seen issuing from the cottage of the poor widdow with her youngest child, who waves his hand sorrowfully, while the mother and the sister vainly answer; or the old man, to whom death is playing on a psaltery, seems anxious; that his withered fingers should once more touch the strings, while he is carried off in calm tranquillity. The greater part of these subjects of death are, however, ludicrous and it may be a question, whether the spectators of these dances of death did not find their mirth more excited than their religious emotions. Ignorant and terrified as the people were at the view of the skeleton, even the grossest simplicity could not fail to laugh at some of those domestic scenes and familiar persons drawn from among themselves. The skeleton, skeleton as it is in the creation of genius, gesticulates and mimics, which even its hideous skull is made to express every diversified character, and the result is hard to describe; for we are at once amused and disgusted with so much genius founded on so much barbarism.

When the artist succeeded in conveying to the eye the most ludicrous notions of death, the poets also discovered in it a fertile source of the burlesque. The curious collec tor is acquainted with many volumes where the most extraordinary topics have been combined with this subject. They made the body and the soul debate together, and ridicule the complaints of a damned soul! The greater

part of the poets of the time were always composing on the subject of Death in their humourous pieces.* Such historical records of the public mind, historians, intent on political events, have rarely noticed.

Of a work of this nature, a popular favourite was long the one entitled 'Le faut mourir et les excuses inutiles qu'on apporte a cette necessité; Le tout en vers burlesques, 1658 :' Jacques Jacques, a canon of Ambrun, was the writer, who humorously says of himself, that he gives his thoughts just as they lie on his heart, without dissimulation; for I have nothing double about me except my name! I tell thee some of the most important truths in laughing; it is for thee d'y penser tout a bon.' This little volume was procured for me with some difficulty in France; and it is considered as one of the happiest of this class of death-poems of which I know not of any in our literature.

Our canon of Ambrun, in facetious rhymes, and with the naiveté of expression which belongs to his age, and an idiomatic turn fatal to a translator, excels in pleasantry; his haughty hero condescends to hold very amusing dialogues with all classes of society, and delights to confound their excuses inutiles.' The most miserable of men, the galley-slave, the medicant, alike would escape when he appears to them. Were I not absolute over them,' Death exclaims, they would confound me with their long speeches; but I have business, and must gallop on!' His geographical rhymes are droll.

Ce que j'ai fait dans l'Affrique
Je le fais bien dans l'Amerique;
On l'appelle monde nouveau
Mais ce sont des brides à veau;
Nulle terre à moy n'est nouvelle
Je vay partout sans qu'on m'appello,
Mon bras de tout tems commanda
Dans le pays de Canada;
J'ai tenu de tout temps en bride
La Virginie et la Floride,
Et j'ai bien donné sur le bec
Aux Français du fort de Kebec.
Lorsque je veux je fais la nique
Aux Incas, aux Rois de Mexique.
Et montre aux nouveaux Grenadins
Qu'ils sont des foux et des badins.
Chacun sait bien comme je matte
Ceux du Bresil et de la Platte,
Ainsi que les Taupinembous-
En un mot, je fais voir à tout

Goujet Bib. Françoise, vol. x, 185

Que ce que nait dans la nature, Doit prendre de moy tablature !*

The perpetual employments of Death display copious invention with a facility of humour.

'Egalement je vay rengeant,
Le counseiller et le sergeant,
Le gentilhomme et le berger,
Le bourgeois at le boulanger,
Et la maistresse et la servante
Et la niepce comme la tante;
Monsieur l'abbé, monsieur son moine,
Le petit clerc et le chanoine;

Sans choix je mets dans mon butin
Maistre Claude, maistre Martin,
Dame Luce, dame Perrette, &c.

J'en prends un dans le temps qu'n pleure
A quelque autre, au contraire à l'heure
Que demisurement il rit

Je donne e coup qui le frit.

J'en prends un, pendant qu'il se love;
En se couchant l'autre j'enleve.
Je prends la malade et le sain
L'un aujourd'hui, l'autre le demain.
J'en surprends un dedans son lict
L'autre a l'estude quand il lit.
J'en surprends un le ventre plein
Je mené l'autre par le faim."
J'attrape l'un pendant qu'il prie,
Et l'autre pendant qu'il renie,
J'en saisis un au cabaret
Entre le blanc et le clairet,
L'autre qui dans son oratoire
A son Dieu rend honneur et gloire :
J'en surprends un lors qu'il se pasme
Le jour qu'il epouse sa femme,
L'autre le jour que plein du deuil
La sienne il voit dans le cercuil;
Un à pied et l'autre à cheval
Dans le jeu l'un, et l'autre au bal;
Un qui mange et l'autre qui boit,
Un qui paye et l'autre qui doit.
L'un en été lorsqu'il moissonne
L'autre en vendanges dans l'autre
L'un criant almanachs nouveaux-
Un qui demande son aumosne
L'autre dans le temps qu'il la donne.
Je prends le bon maistre Clement,
Au temps qu'il rend un lauement,
Et prends la dame Catherine
Le jour qu'elle prend medicine.'

This veil of gaiety in the old canon of Ambrun covers deeper and more philosophical thoughts than the singular mode of treating so solemn a theme. He has introduced many scenes of human life, which still interest, and he addresses the Teste à triple couronne,' as well as the 'forsat de galere,' who exclaims, Laissez moi vivre dans mes fers,' le gueu,' the bourgeois,' the 'chanoine,' the 'pauvre soldat,' the medicin,' in a word, all ranks in life are exhibited, as in the dances of death.' But our object of noticing those burlesque paintings and poems is to show, that after the monkish Goths had opened one general scene of melancholy and tribulation over Europe, and given birth to that dismal skeleton of death, which still terrifies the imagination of many, a reaction of feeling was experienced by the populace, who at length came to laugh at the gloomy spectre which had so long terrified them!

THE RIVAL BIOGRAPHERS OF HEVLIN.

Peter Heylin was one of the popular writers of his times, like Fuller and Howell, who, devoting their amusing pens to subjects which deeply interested their own busy age, will not be slighted by the curious. We have nearly outlived their divinity, but not their politics. Metaphysical absurdities are luxuriant weeds which must be cut down by the scythe of Time; but the great passions branching from the tree of life are still growing with our growth.'

There are two biographies of our Heylin, which led to a literary quarrel of an extraordinary nature; and, in the progress of its secret history, all the feelings of rival authorship were called out.

Heylin died in 1662. Dr Barnard, his son-in-law, and a scholar, communicated a sketch of the author's life to be * Tablature d'un luth, Cotgrave says, is the belly of a lute, meaning all in nature must dance to my music!'

prefixed to a posthumous folio, of which Heylin's son was the editor. This life was given by the son, but anonymously, which may not have gratified the author, the sonin-law.

Twenty years had elapsed when, in 1662, appeared The Life of Dr Peter Heylin, by George Vernon.' The writer, alluding to the prior life prefixed to the posthumous folio, asserts, that in borrowing something from Barnard, Barnard had also Excerpted passages out of my papers, the very words as well as matter, when he had them in his custody, as any reader may discern who will be at the pains of comparing the life now published with what is extant before the Keimalea Ecclesiastica; the quaint, pedantic title, after the fashion of the day, of the posthu mous folio.

This strong accusation seemed countenanced by a dedication to the son and the nephew of Heylin. Roused now into action, the indignant Barnard soon produced a more complete Life, to which he prefixed 'A necessary Vindication.' This is an unsparing castigation of Vernon, the literary pet whom the Heylins had fondled in preference to their learned relative. The long smothered family grudge, the suppressed mortifications of literary pride, after the subterraneous grumblings of twenty years, now burst out, and the volcanic particles flew about in caustic pleasantries and sharp invectives; all the lava of an author's vengeance, mortified by the choice of an inferior rival.

It appears that Vernon had been selected by the son of Heylin, in preference to his brother-in-law Dr Barnard, from some family disagreement. Barnard tells us, in describing Vernon, that No man, except himself, who was totally ignorant of the Doctor, and all the circumstances of his life, would have engaged in such a work, which was never primarily laid out for him, but by reason of some unhappy differences, as usually fall out in families; and he who loves to put his car in troubled waters, instead of closing them up hath made them wider.'

Barnard tells his story plainly. Hevlin, the son, intending to have a more elaborate life of his father prefixed to his works, Dr Barnard, from the high reverence in which he held the memory of his father-in-law, offered to contribute it. Many conferences were held, and the son intrusted him with several papers. But suddenly his caprice, more than his judgment, fancied that George Vernon was worth John Barnard, The doctor affects to describe his rejection with the most stoical indifference. He tells us, I was satisfied, and did patiently expect the coming forth of the work, not only term after term, but year after year, a very considerable time for such a tract. But at last, instead of the life, came a letter to me from a bookseller in London, who lived at the sign of the Black Boy, in Fleet Street,'

Now it seems that he who lived at the Black Boy had combined with another who lived at the Fleur de Luce, and that the Fleur de Luce had assured the Black Boy that Dr Barnard was concerned in writing the Life of Heylin, this was a strong recommendation. But lo! it appeared that one Mr Vernon, of Gloucester,' was to be the man! a gentle thin-skinned authorling, who bleated like a lamb, and who was so fearful to trip out of its shelter, that it allows the Black Boy and the Fleur de Luce to communicate its papers to any one they choose, and erase, or add, at their pleasure.

It occurred to the Black Boy, on this proposed arithmetical criticism, that the work required addition, subtraction, and division: that the fittest critic, on whose name, indeed, he had originally engaged in the work, was our Dr Barnard; and he sent the package to the doctor, who resided near Lincoln.

The doctor, it appears, had no appetite for a dish dressed by another, while he himself was in the very act of the cookery; and it was suffered to lie cold for three weeks at the carrier's.

But entreated and overcome, the good doctor at length sent to the carrier's for the life of his father-in-law. "I found it, according to the bookseller's description most lame and imperfect; ill begun, worse carried on, and abruptly concluded.' The learned doctor exercised that plenitude of power with which the Black Boy had invest ed him-he very obligingly showed the author in what a confused state his materials lay together, and how to put them in order;

'Nec facundia deseret hunc, nec lucidus ordo.' If his rejections were copious, to show his good will as

merely curious-that shadow of a shade-is not always even preserved by a dictionary-compiler in the universal charity of his alphabetical mortuary.

The history of this work is a striking instance of those imperfect beginnings, which have often closed in the most important labours. This admirable Methode' made its first meagre appearance in two volumes in 1713. It was soon reprinted at home and abroad, and translated into various languages. In 1729 it assumed the dignity of four quartos; but at this stage it encountered the vigilance of government, and the lacerating hand of a celebrated cen. seur Gros de Boze. It is said, that from a personal dislike of the author, he cancelled one hundred and fifty pages from the printed copy submitted to his censorship. He had formerly approved of the work, and had quietly passed over some of these obnoxious passages: it is certain that Gros de Boze, in a dissertation on the Janus of the ancients in this work, actually erased a high commendation of himself,* which Lenglet had, with unusual courtesy, bestowed on Gros de Buze; for as a critic he is most penurious of panegyric, and there is always a caustic flavour even in his drops of honey. This censeur either affected to disdain the commendation, or availed himself of it as a trick of policy. This was a trying situation for an author, now proud of a great work, and who himself partook more of the bull than of the lamb. He who winced at the scratch of an epithet, beheld his perfect limbs bruised by erasures and mutilated by cancels. This sort of troubles indeed was not unusual with Lenglet. He had occupied his old apartment in the Bastile so often, that at the sight of the officer who was in the habit of conducting him there, Lenglet would call for his night-cap and snuff; and finish the work he had then in hand at the Bastile, where he told Jordan, that he made his edition of Marot. He often silently restituted an epithet or a sentence which had been condemned by the censeur, at the risk of returning once more; but in the present desperate affair he took his revenge by collecting the castrations into a quarto voluuse, which was sold clandestinely. I find, by Jordan, in his voyage litteraire, who visited him, that it was his pride to read these cancels to his friends, who generally, but secretly, were of opinion that the decision of the censeur was not so wrong as the hardihood of Lenglet insisted on. All this increased the public rumour, and raised the price of the cancels. The craft and mystery of authorship was practised by Lenglet to perfection, and he often exulted, not only in the subterfuges by which he parried his censeurs, but in his bargains with his booksellers, who were equally desirous to possess, while they halffeared to enjoy, his uncertain or his perilous copyrights. When the unique copy of the Methode, in its pristine state, before it had suffered any dilapidations, made its appearance at the sale of the curious library of the censeur Gros de Boze, it provoked a Roxburgh competion, where the collectors, eagerly out-bidding each other, the price of this uncastrated copy reached to 1500 livres; an event more extraordinary in the history of French bibliography, than in our own. The curious may now find all these cancel sheets, or castrations, preserved in one of those works of literary history, to which the Germans have contributed more largely than other European nations; and I have discovered that even the erasures, or bruises, are amply furnished in another bibliographical record.†

This Methode, after several later editions, was still enlarging itself by fresh supplements; and having been translated by men of letters in Europe, by Coleti in Italy, by Mencken in Germany, and by Dr Rawlinson in Eng land, these translators have enriched their own editions by more copious articles, designed for their respective nations. The sagacity of the original writer now renovated his work by the infusions of his translators; like old son, it had its veins filled with green juices; and thus

This fact appears in the account of the minuter erasures. The castrations are in Beyeri Memoria historico-critice librorum rariorum, p. 166. The bruises are carefully noted in the Catalogue of the Duke de la Valliere, 4467. Those who are curious in such singularities will be gratified by the extraordinary opinions and results in Beyer; and which after all were purloined from a manuscript Abridgment of Universal History,' which was drawn up by Count de Boulainvilliers, and more adroitly, than delicately, inserted by Lenglet in his own work. The original manuscript exists in various copies, which were afterwards discovered. The mir uter corrections, in the Duke de la Valliere's catalogue, furnish a most enliven. ing article in the dryness of bibliography.

his old work was always undergoing the magic process of rejuvenescence.'

*

The personal character of our author was as singular as many of the uncommon topics which engaged his inqui ries; these we might conclude had originated in mere eccentricity, or were chosen at random. But Lenglet has shown no deficiency of judgment in several works of acknowledged utility; and his critical opinions, his last editor has shown, have, for the greater part, been sanctioned by the public voice. It is curious to observe how the first direction which the mind of a hardy inquirer may take, will often account for that variety of uncommon topics he delights in, and which, on a closer examination, may be found to bear an invisible connexion with some preceding inquiry. As there is an association of ideas, so in literary history there is an association of research; and a very judicious writer may thus be impelled to compose on subjects which may be deemed strange or injudicious.

This observation may be illustrated by the literary history of Lenglet du Fresnoy. He opened his career by addressing a letter and a tract to the Sorbonne, on the es traordinary affair of Maria d'Agreda, abbess of the nunnery of the Immaculate Conception in Spain, whose mystical life of the Virgin, published on the decease of the abbess, and which was received with such rapture in Spain, had just appeared at Paris, where it excited the murmurs of the pious, and the inquiries of the curious. This mystical life was declared to be founded on apparitions and revelations experienced by the abbess. Lenglet proved, or asserted, that the abbess was not the writer of this pretended life, though the manuscript existed in her hand-writing; and secondly, that the apparitions and reve lations recorded were against all the rules of apparitions and revelations which he had painfully discovered. The affair was of a delicate nature. The writer was young and incredulous; a grey-beard, more deeply versed in theology, replied, and the Sorbonists silenced "our philoso pher in embryo.

Lenglet confined these researches to his portfolio; ana so long a period as fifty-five years had elapsed before they saw the light. It was when Calmet published his Disser tations on Apparition, that the subject provoked Lenglet to return to his forsaken researches. He now published all he had formerly composed on the affair of Maria d'Agreda, and two other works; the one Traité historique et dogmatique sur les Apparitions, les Visions, et les Revelations particulieres,' in two volumes; and Recueil de Dissertations anciennes et nouvelles, sur les Apparitions, &c.' with a catalogue of authors on this subject, in four volumes. When he edited the Roman de la Rose: in compiling the glossary of this ancient poem, it led him to reprint many of the earliest French poets; to give an en larged edition of the Arrets d'Amour, that work of love and chivalry, in which his fancy was now so deeply im bedded; while the subject of Romance itself naturally led to the taste of romantic productions which appeared in L'Usage des Romans,' and its accompanying copious nomenclature of all romances and romance-writers, ancient and modern. Our vivacious Abbé had been be wildered by his delight in the works of a chemical philo sopher; and though he did not believe in the existence of apparitions, and certainly was more than a sceptic in his tory, yet it is certain that the grand œuvre' was an arti cle in his creed; it would have ruined him in experiments, if he had been rich enough to have been ruined. It al tered his health; and the most important result of his chemical studies appears to have been the invention of a syrup, in which he had great confidence; but its trial blew

bim up into a tympany, from which he was only relieved by having recourse to a drug, also of his own discovery, which, in counteracting the syrup, reduced him to an alarming state of atrophy. But the mischances of the historian do not enter into his history; and our curiosity must be still eager to open Lenglet's Histoire de la Philosophie Hermetique,' accompanied by a catalogue of the writers in this mysterious science, in two volumes; as well as his enlarged edition of the works of a great Paracelsian, Nicholas la Fevre. This philosopher was appointed by Charles the Second superintendent over the royal laboratory at St James's: he was also a member of the Royal Society, and the friend of Boyle, to whom he

* The last edition, enlarged by Drouet, is in lá volumes, but is not later than 1772. It is still an inestimable manual for the historical student, as well as his Tableues Chronologiques.

communicated the secret of infusing young blood into old veins, with a notion that he could renovate that which admits of no second creation.* Such was the origin of Du Fresnoy's active curiosity on a variety of singular topics, the germs of which may be traced to three or four of our author's principal works.

Our Abbé promised to write his own life, and his pugnacious vivacity, and hardy frankness, would have seasoned a piece of auto-biography; an amateur has, however, written it in the style which amateurs like, with all the truth he could discover, enlivened by some secret history, writing the life of Lenglet with the very spirit of Lenglet; it is a mask taken from the very features of the man, not the insipid wax-work of an hyperbolical elogemaker.t

Although Lenglet du Fresnoy commenced in early life his career as a man of letters, he was at first engaged in the great chase of political adventure; and some striking facts are recorded, which show his successful activity. Michault describes his occupations by a paraphrastical delicacy of language, which an Englishman might not have so happily composed. The minister for foreign affairs, the Marquis de Torcy, sent Lenglet to Lisle, where the court of the Elector of Cologne was then held; He had particular orders to watch that the two ministers of the elector should do nothing prejudicial to the king's affairs.' He seems, however, to have watched many other persons, and detected many other things. He discovered a captain, who agreed to open the gates of Mons to Marlborough, for 100,000 piastres; the captain was arrested on the parade, the letter of Marlborough was found in his pocket, and the traitor was broken on the wheel. Lenglet denounced a foreign general in the French service, and the event warranted the prediction. His most important discovery was that of the famous conspiracy of Prince Cellamar, one of the chimerical plots of Alberoni; to the honour of Lenglet, he would not engage in its detection, unless the minister promised that no blood should be shed. These successful incidents in the life of an honourable spy were rewarded with a moderate pension. Lenglet must have been no vulgar intriguer; he was not only perpetually confined by his very patrons when he resided at home for the freedom of his pen, but I find him early imprisoned in the citadel of Strasburgh for six months: it is said for purloining some curious books from the library of the Abbé Bignon, of which he had the care. It is certain that he knew the value of the scarcest works, and was one of those lovers of bibliography who trade at times in costly rarities. Vienna he became intimately acquainted with the poet Rousseau and Prince Eugene. The prince, however, who suspected the character of our author, long avoided him. Lenglet insinuated himself into the favour of the prince's librarian; and such was his bibliographical skill, that this acquaintance ended in Prince Eugene laying aside his political dread, and preferring the advice of Lenglet to his librarian's, to enrich his magnificent library. When the motive of Lenglet's residence at Vienna became more and more suspected, Rousseau was emploved to watch him; and not yet having quarrelled with his brother spy, he could only report that the Abbé Lenglet was every morning occupied in working on his 'Tablettes Chronologiques,' a work not worthy of alarming the government; that he spent his evenings at a violin player's married to a French woman, and returned home *The Dictionnaire Historique, 1789, in their article Nich. Le Fevre, notices the third edition of his Course of Chemis. try,' that of 1664, in two volumes; but the present one of Len. glet du Fresnoy's is more recent, 1751, enlarged into five vojumes, two of which contain his own additions. I have never met with this edition, and it is wanting at the British Museum. Le Fevre published a tract on the great cordial of Sir Walter Rawleigh, which may be curious.

At

This anonymous work of Memoires de Monsieur l'Abbé Lenglet du Fresnoy,' although the dedication is signed G. P., is written by Michault, of Dijon, as a presentation copy to Count de Vienne in my possession proves. Michault is the writer of two volumes of agreeable Melanges Historiques, et Philologiques; and the present is a very curious piece of literary history. The Dictionnaire Historique has compiled the article of Lenglet entirely from this work; but the Journal des Sçavans was too ascetic in this opinion. Etoit-ce la peine de faire un livre pour apprendre au public qu'un homme de Jeures, fut Espion, Escroc, bizarre, fougueux, cynique incapa. ble d'amitié, de decence, de soumission aux loix &c. Yet they do not deny that the bibliography of Lenglet du Fresnoy is at all deficient in curiosity.

at eleven. As soon as our historian had discovered that the poet was a brother spy and newsmonger on the side of Prince Eugene, their reciprocal civilities cooled. Lenglet now imagined that he owed his six months' retirement in the citadel of Strasburgh to the secret officiousness of Rousseau: each grew suspicious of the other's fidelity; and spies are like lovers, for their mutual jealousies settled into the most inveterate hatred. One of the most defamatory libels is Lenglet's intended dedication of his edition of Marot to Rousseau, which being forced to suppress in Holland, by order of the States-general; at Brussels, by the intervention of the Duke of Äremberg; and by every means the friends of the unfortunate Rousseau could contrive; was however many years afterwards at length subjoined by Lenglet to the first volume of his work on Romances; where an ordinary reader may wonder at its appearance unconnected with any part of the work. In this dedication or 'eloge historique' he often addresses' Mon cher Rousseau,' but the irony is not delicate, and the calumny is heavy. Rousseau lay too open to the unlicensed causticity of his accuser. The poet was then expatriated from France for a false accusation against Saurin, in attempting to fix on him those criminal couplets, which so long disturbed the peace of the literary world in France, and of which Rousseau was generally supposed to be the writer; but of which on his death-bed he solemnly protested that he was guiltless. The coup de grace is given to the poet, stretched on this rack of invective, by just ac cusations on account of those infamous epigrams, which appear in some editions of that poet's works; a lesson for a poet, if poets would be lessoned, who indulge their imagination at the cost of their happiness, and seem to invent crimes, as if they themselves were criminals.

But to return to our Lenglet. Had he composed his own life, it would have offered a sketch of political servitude and political adventure, in a man too intractable for the one, and too literary for the other. Yet to the honour of his capacity, we must observe that he might have chosen his patrons, would he have submitted to patronage. Prince Eugene at Vienna; Cardinal Passionei at Rome; or Mons. Le Blanc, the French minister, would have held him on his own terms. But Liberty and my books! was the secret ejaculation of Lenglet; and from that moment all things in life were sacrificed to a jealous spirit of independence, which broke out in his actions as well as in his writings; and a passion for study for ever crushed the worm of ambition.

He was as singular in his conversation, which, says Jordan, was extremely agreeable to a foreigner, for he delivered himself without reserve on all things, and on all persons, seasoned with secret and literary anecdotes. He refused all the conveniences offered by an opulent sister, that he might not endure the restraint of a settled dinner hour. He lived to his eightieth year, still busied, and then died by one of those grievous chances, to which aged men of letters are liable our caustic critic slumbered over some modern work, and, falling into the fire, was burnt to death. Many characteristic anecdotes of the Abbé Lenglet have been preserved in the Dictionnaire Historique, but I shall not repeat what is of easy recurrence.

THE DICTIONARY OP TREVOUX.

A learned friend, in his very agreeable Trimester, or a three months' journey in France and Swisserland,' could not pass through the small town of Trevoux without a literary association of ideas which should accompany every man of letters in his tours, abroad or at home. A mind well informed cannot travel without discovering that there are objects constantly presenting themselves, which suggest literary, historical, and moral facts. My friend writes, 'As you proceed nearer to Lyons you stop to dine at TreVoux, on the left bank of the Soane. On a sloping hill, down to the water-side, rises an amphitheatre, crowned with an ancient Gothic castle, in venerable ruin; under it is the small town of Trevoux, well known for its Journal and Dictionary, which latter is almost an encyclopædia, as there are few things of which something is not said in that most valuable compilation, and the whole was printed at Trevoux. The knowledge of this circumstance greatly enhances the delight of any visitor who has consulted the book and is acquainted with its merits; and must add much to his local pleasures.'

A work from which every man of letters may be continually deriving such varied knowledge, and which is little