am capable of adorning) the history of a period, which on account of the greatness of the events, and their close connection with the transactions in England deserves to be better known. But as elegance of composition, even where a writer can attain that, is but a trivial merit without historical truth and accuracy, and as the prejudices and rage of factions, both religious and political, have rendered almost every fact, in the period which I have chosen, a matter of doubt or of controversy, I have th refore taken all the pains in my power to examine the evidence on both sides with exactness. You know how copious the materia historica in this period is. Besides all the common historians and printed collections of papers, I have consulted several manuscripts which are to be found in this country. I am persuaded that there are still many manuscripts worth my seeing to be met with in England, and for that reason I propose to pass some time in London this winter. I am impatient however to know what discoveries of this kind I may expect, and what are the treasures before me and with regard to this I beg leave to consult you. "I was afraid for some time that Dr. Forbes's Collections had been lost upon his death, but I am glad to find by your Memoirs' that they are in the possession of Mr. Yorke. I see likewise that the Dépêches de Beaumont' are in the hands of the same gentleman. But I have no opportunity of consulting your 'Memoirs' at present, and I cannot remember whether the Dépêches de Fenelon' be still preserved or not. I see that Carte has made a great use of them in a very busy period from 1563 to 1576. I know the strength of Carte's prejudices so well that I dare say many things may be found there that he could not see, or would not publish. May I beg the favour of you to let me know whether Fenelon's papers be yet extant and accessible, and to give me some general idea of what Dr. Forbes's Collections contain with regard to Scotland, and whether the papers they consist of are different from those published by Haynes, Anderson, &c. I am far from desiring that you should enter into any detail, that would be troublesome to you, but some short hint of the nature of these Collections would be extremely satisfying to my curiosity, and I shall esteem it a great obligation laid upon me. "I have brought my work almost to a conclusion. If you would be so good as to suggest anything that you thought useful for me to know or to examine into I shall receive your directions with great respect and gratitude. "I am with sincere esteem, Gladsmuir, 19 Sept. 1757." "DEAR SIR, TO DR. BIRCH. "If I had not considered a letter of mere compliment as an impertinent interruption to one who is so busy as you commonly are, I would long before this have made my acknowledgments to you for the civilities which you was so good as to show me while I was in London. I had not only a proof of your obliging disposition but I reaped the good effects of it. "The papers to which I got access by your means, especially those from Lord Royston, have rendered my work more perfect than it could have otherwise been. My history is now ready for publication, and I have desired Mr. Millar to send you a large-paper copy of it in my name, which I beg you may accept as a testimony of my regard and of my gratitude. He will likewise transmit to you another copy which I must entreat you to present to my Lord Royston, with such acknowledgments of his favours toward me as are proper for me to make. I have printed a short appendix of original papers. You will observe that there are several inaccuracies in the press work. Mr. Millar grew impatient to have the book published, so that it was impossible to send down the proofs to me. I hope, however, the papers will be abundantly intelligible. I published them only to confirm my own system, about particular facts, not to obtain the character of an antiquarian. If upon perusing the book you discover any inaccuracies, either with regard to style or facts, whether of great or of small importance I will esteem it a very great favour, if you'll be so good as to communicate them to me. I shall likewise be indebted to you, if you 'll let me know what reception the book meets with among the literati of your acquaintance. I hope you will be particularly pleased with the critical dissertation at the end, which is the production of a co-partnership between me and your friend Mr. Davidson. Both Sir D. Dalrymple and he offer compliments to you. If Dean Tucker be in town this winter, I beg you would offer my compliments to him. "I am w. great regard Dr. Sir 66 Yr m. obedt & mst. o. sert ment of the present political system of Europe. I have begun to labour seriously upon my task. One of the first things requisite was to form a catalogue of books which must be consulted. As I never had access to very copious libraries, I do not pretend to any extensive knowledge of authors, but I have made a list of such as I thought most essential to the subject, and have put them down just in the order which they occurred to me, or as I found them mentioned in any book I happened to read. I beg you would be so good as to look it over, and as your erudition and knowledge of books is infinitely superior to mine, I doubt not but you'll be able to make such additions to my catalogue as may be of great use to me. I know very well and to my sorrow, how servilely historians copy from one another, and how little is to be learned from reading many books, but at the same time when one writes upon any particular period it is both necessary and decent for him to consult every book relating to it, upon which he can lay his hands. I am sufficiently master of French and Italian; but have no knowledge of the Spanish or German tongues. I flatter myself that I shall not suffer much by this, as the two former languages together with the Latin, will supply me with books in abundance. Mr. Walpole informed me some time ago that in the catalogue of Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, there is a volume of papers relating to Charles V., it is No. 295. I do not expect much from it, but it would be extremely obliging if you would take the trouble of looking into it and of informing me in general what it contains. In the catalogue I have enclosed, this mark is prefixed to all the books which I can get in this country; if you yourself, or any friend with whom you can use freedom, have any of the other books in my list, and will be so good as to send them to Mr. Millar he will forward them to me, and I shall receive them with great gratitude and return them with much punctuality. I beg leave to offer compliments to all our common friends, and particularly to Dean Tucker, if he be in town this season. I wish it were in my power to confer any return for all the trouble you have taken in my behalf "Edinburgh, 13 Dec. 1759." FROM DR. BIRCH. TO THE REV. DR. ROBERTSON, AT EDINBURGH. sulted on this occasion; and after transcribing it have delivered it to Mr. Millar; and shall now make some additions to it. "The new Histoire d'Allemagne' by father Barre, chancellor of the university of Paris, published a few years ago in several volumes in qo. is a work of very good credit, and to be perused by you; as is likewise the second edition of Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire & du Droit public d'Allemagne' just printed at Paris, and formed upon the plan of president Henault's Nouvel Abrégé chronologique de l'Histoire de France,' in which the reigns of Francis I. and Henry II. will be proper to be seen by you. "The Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Cardinal Granvelle' by father Rosper Levesque a Benedictin monk which were printed at Paris in two vols. 12° in 1753 contain some particulars relating to Charles V. But this performance is much less curious than it might have been, considering that the author had the advantage of a vast collection, above an hundred volumes of the Cardinal's original papers, at Besançon. Among these are the papers of his eminence's father who was chancellor and minister to the Emperor Charles V. "Bishop Burnet in the Summary of Affairs before the Restoration' prefixed to his ' History of his Own Time', mentions a life of Frederick Elector Palatine who first reformed the Palatinate as curiously written by Hubert Thomas Leodius. This book though a very rare one, is in my study and shall be sent to you. You will find in it many facts relating to your Emperor. The manuscript was luckily saved when the library of Heydelberg was plundered and conveyed to the Vatican after the taking of that city in 1622 and it was printed in 1624 at Francfort in 4to. The writer had been secretary and councellor to the elector. "Another book which I shall transmit to you is a valuable collection of state papers made by Mons Rivier and printed at Blois in 1665 in two vols fo. They relate to the reigns of Francis I., Henry II. and Francis II. of France. The indexes will direct you to such passages as concern the Emperor. "As Mons. Amelot de la Houssaie who was extremely conversant in modern history has in the 1st Tome of his Mémoires Historiques Politiques et Littéraires' from p. 156 to 193 treated of Charles V., I shall add that book to my parcel. "Varillas's Life of Henry II. of France should be looked into, though that historian has not at present much reputation for exactness and veracity "Dr. Fiddes in his Life of Cardinal Wolsey, has frequent occasion to introduce the Emperor his contemporary, of which Bayle in his Dictionary gives us an express article and not a short one, for "I have perused your list of books to be con- it consists of eight of his pages. Extract from a letter of Dr. Robertson, dated College of Edinburgh, Oct. 8, 1765. I have met with many interruptions in carrying on my Charles V.,' partly from bad health, and partly from the avocations arising from performing the duties of my office. But I am now within sight of land. The historical part of the work is finished and I am busy with a preliminary book in which I propose to give a view of the progress in the state of society, laws, manners, and arts, from the irruption of the barbarous nations to the beginning of the sixteenth century. This is a laborious undertaking; but I flatter myself that I shall be able to finish it in a few months. I have kept the books you was so good as to send me, and shall return them carefully as soon as my work is done." Works of literary history have been particularly subject to this mortifying check on intellectual enterprise, and human life has not yielded a sufficient portion for the communication of extensive acquirement! After years of reading and writing, the literary historian, who in his innumerable researches is critical as well as erudite, has still to arbitrate between conflicting opinions; to resolve on the doubtful, to clear up the obscure, and to grasp at remote researches :-but he dies, and leaves his favourite volumes little more than a project! Feelingly the antiquary Hearne laments this general forgetfulness of the nature of all human concerns in the mind of the antiquary, who is so busied with other times and so interested for other persons than those about him. "It is the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him." A few illustrious scholars have indeed escaped the fate reserved for most of their brothers. A long life, and the art of multiplying that life not only by an early attachment to study, but by that order and arrangement which shortens our researches, have sufficed for a MURATORI. With such a student time was a great capital, which he knew to put out at compound interest; and this Varro of the Italians, who performed an infinite number of things in the circumscribed period of ordinary life, appears not to have felt any dread of leaving his voluminous labours unfinished, but rather of wanting one to begin. This literary Alexander thought he might want a world to conquer ! Muratori was never perfectly happy unless employed in two large works at the same time, and so much dreaded the state of literary inaction, that he was incessantly importuning his friends to suggest to him objects worthy of his future composition. The flame kindled in his youth, burned clear in his old age; and it was in his senility that he produced the twelve quartos of his Annali d'Italia as an addition to his twenty nine folios of his Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, and the six OF VOLUMINOUS WORKS INCOMPLETE BY THE folios of the Antiquitates Medii Ævi! yet these DEATHS OF THE AUTHORS. In those "Dances of Death" where every profession is shown as taken by surprise in the midst of their unfinished tasks, where the cook is viewed in flight oversetting his caldron of soup, and the physician, while inspecting his patient's urinal, is himself touched by the grim visitor, one more instance of poor mortality may be added in the writers of works designed to be pursued through a long series of volumes. The French have an appropriate designation for such works, which they call ouvrages de longue haleine," and it has often happened that the haleine has closed before the work. vast edifices of history are not all which this illustrious Italian has raised for his father-land. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works has drawn an admirable character of Muratori. But such a fortunate result has rarely accompanied the labours of the literary worthies of this order. TIRABOSCHI indeed lived to complete his great national history of Italian literature; but, unhappily for us, WARTON, after feeling his way through the darker ages of our poetry, and just conducting us to a brighter region, in planning the map of the country of which he had only a Pisgah view, expires amid his volumes! Our poetical antiquary led us to the opening gates of D the paradise of our poetry, when, alas! they closed on him and on us! The most precious portion of Warton's history is but the fragment of a fragment. Life passes away in collecting materials-the marble lies in blocks-and sometimes a colonnade is erected, or even one whole side of a palace indicates the design of the architect. Count MAZZUCHELLI, early in life, formed a noble but too mighty a project, in which, however, he considerably advanced. This was an historical and critical account of the memoirs and the writings of Italian authors; he even commenced the publication in alphabetical order, but the six invaluable folios we possess, only contain the authors the initial letters of whose names are A and B ! This great literary historian had finished for the press other volumes, which the torpor of his descendants has suffered to lie in a dormant state. Rich in acquisition, and judicious in his decisions, the days of the patriotic Mazzuchelli were freely given to the most curious and elegant researches in his national literature; his correspondence is said to consist of forty volumes; with eight of literary memoirs, besides the lives of his literary contemporaries ;-but Europe has been defrauded of the hidden treasures. The history of BAILLET'S "Jugemens des Sçavans sur les Principaux Ouvrages des Auteurs," or Decisions of the Learned on the Learned, is a remarkable instance how little the calculations of writers of research serve to ascertain the period of their projected labour. Baillet passed his life in the midst of the great library of the literary family of the Lamoignons, and as an act of gratitude arranged a classified catalogue in thirty-two folio volumes; it indicated not only what any author had professedly composed on any subject, but also marked those passages relative to the subject which other writers had touched on. By means of this catalogue, the philosophical patron of Baillet at a single glance discovered the great results of human knowledge on any object of his inquiries. This catalogue, of equal novelty and curiosity, the learned came to study, and often transcribed its precious notices. Amid this world of books, the skill and labour of Baillet prompted him to collect the critical opinions of the learned, and from the experience he had acquired in the progress of his colossal catalogue, as a preliminary sketched one of the most magnificent plans of literary history. This instructive project has been preserved by Monnoye in his edition. It consists of six large divisions, with innumerable subdivisions. It is a map of the human mind, and presents a view of the magnitude and variety of literature, which few can conceive. The project was too vast for an individual; it now occupies seven quartos, yet it advanced no farther than the critics, translators, and poets, forming little more than the first, and a commencement of the second great division; to more important classes the laborious projector never reached! Another literary history is the “Bibliothèque Françoise" of GOUJET, left unfinished by his death. He had designed a classified history of French literature, but of its numerous classes he has only concluded that of the translators, and not finished the second he had commenced, of the poets. He lost himself in the obscure times of French Literature, and consumed sixteen years on his eighteen volumes! A great enterprise of the BENEDICTINES, the "Histoire Littéraire de la France," now consists of twelve large quartos, which even its successive writers have only been able to carry down to the close of the twelfth century* ! DAVID CLEMENT, a bookseller and a book-lover, designed the most extensive bibliography which had ever appeared; this history of books is not a barren nomenclature, the particulars and dissertations are sometimes curious; but the diligent life of the author only allowed him to proceed as far as the letter H! The alphabetical order which some writers have adopted, has often proved a sad memento of human life! The last edition of our own "Biographia Britannica," feeble, imperfect, and inadequate as the writers were to the task the booksellers had chosen them to execute, remains still a monument which every literary Englishman may blush to see so hopelessly interrupted. When LE GRAND D'AUSSY, whose Fabliaux are so well known, adopted, in the warmth of antiquarian imagination, the plan suggested by the Marquis de Paulmy, first sketched in the Mélanges tirés d'une grande Bibliothèque, of a pictare of the domestic life of the French people from their earliest periods, the subject broke upon him like a vision; it had novelty, amusement, and curiosity : "le sujet m'en parut neuf, riche et piquant.” He revelled amid the scenes of their architecture, the interior decorations of their houses, their changeable dress, their games, and recreations; in a word, on all the parts which were most adapted to amuse the fancy. But when he came to compose the more detailed work, the fairy scene faded in the length, the repetition, and the never-ending labour and weariness; and the three volumes which we now possess, instead of sports, dresses, and architecture, exhibit only a very curious, but not always a very amusing, account of the food of the French nation. No one has more fully poured out his vexation of spirit-he may excite a smile in those who have never experienced this toil of books and manu This work has been lately resumed. scripts, but he claims the sympathy of those who would discharge their public duties so faithfully to the public. I shall preserve a striking picture of these thousand task-works, coloured by the literary pangs of the voluminous author who is doomed never to finish his curious work : "Endowed with a courage at all proofs, with health which, till then, was unaltered, and which excess of labour has greatly changed, I devoted myself to write the lives of the learned of the sixteenth century. Renouncing all kinds of pleasure, working ten to twelve hours a-day, extracting, ceaselessly copying; after this sad life, I now wished to draw breath, turn over what I had amassed, and arrange it. I found myself possessed of many thousands of bulletins, of which the longest did not exceed many lines. At the sight of this frightful chaos, from which I was to form a regular history, I must confess that I shuddered; I felt myself for some time in a stupor and depression of spirits; and now actually that I have finished this work, I cannot endure the recollection of that moment of alarm without a feeling of involuntary terror. What a business is this, good God, of a compiler! In truth, it is too much condemned; it merits some regard. At length I regained courage; I returned to my researches: I have completed my plan, though every day I was forced to add, to correct, to change my facts as well as my ideas: SIX times has my hand recopied my work; and however fatiguing this may be, it certainly is not that tion of my task which has cost me most." por The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. WATT, may serve as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life. To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded down his last page; the son, who, during the last four years, had toiled under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours. One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that he is doing what will never benefit himself; and when he rejoices to see the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down." OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and to that repugnance to alter what is known, for that which has not been sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter half century, considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters, that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted the invention. A reader, unaccustomed to minute researches, might be surprised, had he laid before him the history of some of the most familiar domestic articles which, in their origin, incurred the ridicule of the wits, and had to pass through no short ordeal of time in the strenuous opposition of the zealots against domestic novelties. The subject requires no grave investigation; we will, therefore, only notice a few of universal use. They will sufficiently demonstrate, that however obstinately man moves in "the march of intellect," he must be overtaken by that greatest of innovators-Time itself; and that, by his eager adoption of what he had once rejected, and by the universal use of what he once deemed unuseful, he will forget, or smile at the difficulties of a former generation, who were baffled in their attempts to do what we all are now doing. FORKS are an Italian invention; and in England were so perfect a novelty in the days of Queen Bess, that Fynes Moryson, in his curious "Itinerary," relating a bargain with the patrone of a vessel which was to convey him from Venice to Constantinople, stipulated to be fed at his table, and to have "his glass or cup to drink in peculiar to himself, with his knife, spoon, and fork." This thing was so strange, that he found it necessary to describe it. It is an instrument "to hold the meat while he cuts it; for they hold it illmanners that one should touch the meat with his |