I.-DIFFICULTY OF FINDING A NAME

FOR A WORK OF THIS KIND. NEVER did gossips, when assembled to determine the name of a new-born child, whose family was full of conflicting interests, experience a difficulty half so great, as that which an author undergoes in settling the title for a periodical work. In the former case, there is generally some paramount uncle, or prodigious third cousin, who is understood to have the chief claims, and to the golden lustre of whose face the clouds of hesitation and jealousy gradually give way. But these children of the brain have no godfather at hand: and yet their single appellation is bound to comprise as many public interests, as all the Christian names of a French or a German prince. It is to be modest: it is to be expressive: it is to be new it is to be striking: it is to have something in it equally intelligible to the man of plain understanding, and surprising for the man of imagination :—in a word, it is to be impossible.

How far we have succeeded in the attainment of this happy nonentity, we leave others to judge. There is one good thing however which the hunt after a title is sure to realise ; -a great deal of despairing mirth. We were visiting a friend the other night, who can do anything for a book but give it a title; and after many grave and ineffectual attempts to furnish one for the present, the company, after the fashion of Rabelais, and with a chairshaking merriment which he himself might have joined in, fell to turning a hopeless thing

into a jest. It was like that exquisite picture of a set of laughers in Shakspeare :—

One rubbed his elbow, thus; and fleered, and swore,
A better speech was never spoke before:
Another, with his finger and his thumb,
Cried "Via! We will do't, come what will come !"
The third he capered, and cried " All goes well!"
The fourth turned on the toe, and down he fell.
With that they all did tumble on the ground,
With such a zealous laughter, so profound,
That in this spleen ridiculous, appears,
To check their laughter, passion's solemn tears.
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

Some of the names had a meaning in their absurdity, such as the Adviser, or Helps for Composing; the Cheap Reflector, or Every Man His Own Looking-Glass ;-the Retailer, or Every Man His Own Other Man's Wit ;Nonsense, To be continued. Others were laughable by the mere force of contrast, as the Crocodile, or Pleasing Companion;-Chaos, or the Agreeable Miscellany;-the Fugitive Guide; the Foot Soldier, or Flowers of Wit; -Bigotry, or the Cheerful Instructor ;-the Polite Repository of Abuse ;-Blood, being a Collection of Light Essays. Others were sheer ludicrousness and extravagance, as the Pleasing Ancestor; the Silent Companion; the Tart; the Leg of Beef, by a Layman; the Ingenious Hatband; the Boots of Bliss; the Occasional Diner; the Tooth-ache; Recollections of a Very Unpleasant Nature; Thoughts on Taking up a Pair of Snuffers; Thoughts on a Barouche-box; Thoughts on a Hill of Considerable Eminence; Meditations on a Pleasing Idea; Materials for Drinking; the Knocker, No. I.;-the Hippopotamus entered at Sta

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II. A WORD ON TRANSLATION FROM THE POETS.

INTELLIGENT men of no scholarship, on reading Horace, Theocritus, and other poets, through the medium of translation, have often wondered how those writers obtained their

glory. And they well might. The translations are no more like the original, than a walking-stick is like a flowering bough. It is the same with the versions of Euripides, of Eschylus, of Sophocles, of Petrarch, of Boileau, &c. &c., and in many respects of Homer. Perhaps we could not give the reader a more brief, yet complete specimen of the way in which bad translations are made, than by selecting a well-known passage from Shakspeare, and turning it into the common-place kind of poetry that flourished so widely among us till of late years. Take the passage, for instance, where the lovers in the Merchant of Venice seat themselves on a bank by moonlight

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III.-AUTUMNAL COMMENCEMENT OF FIRESMANTEL-PIECES-APARTMENTS FOR STUDY.

How pleasant it is to have fires again! We have not time to regret summer, when the cold fogs begin to force us upon the necessity of a new kind of warmth;-a warmth not so fine as sunshine, but, as manners go, more sociable. The English get together over their fires, as the Italians do in their summer-shade. We do not enjoy our sunshine as we ought; our climate seems to render us almost unaware that the weather is fine, when it really becomes so: but for the same reason, we make as much of our winter, as the anti-social habits that have grown upon us from other causes will allow.

And for a similar reason, the southern Euro pean is unprepared for a cold day. The houses in many parts of Italy are summer-houses, unprepared for winter; so that when a fit of cold weather comes, the dismayed inhabitant, walking and shivering about with a little brazier in his hands, presents an awkward image of insufficiency and perplexity. A few of our fogs, shutting up the sight of everything out of doors, and making the trees and the eaves of the houses drip like rain, would admonish him to get warm in good earnest. If "the web of our life" is always to be "of a mingled yarn," a good warm hearth-rug is not the worst part of the manufacture.

Here we are then again, with our fire before us, and our books on each side. What shall we do? Shall we take out a Life of somebody, or a Theocritus, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Montaigne, or Marcus Aurelius, or Moliere, or Shakspeare who includes them all? Or shall we read an engraving from Poussin or Raphael? Or shall we sit with tilted chairs, planting our wrists upon our knees, and toasting the up-turned palms of our hands, while

we discourse of manners and of man's heart

and hopes, with at least a sincerity, a good intention, and good-nature, that shall warrant what we say with the sincere, the good-intentioned, and the good-natured?

Ah-take care. You see what that oldlooking saucer is, with a handle to it? It is a venerable piece of earthenware, which may have been worth, to an Athenian, about twopence; but to an author, is worth a great deal more than ever he could-deny for it. And yet he would deny it too. It will fetch his imagination more than ever it fetched potter flows for him with the milk and honey of a or penny-maker. Its little shallow circle overthousand pleasant associations. This is one of the uses of having mantel-pieces. You may often see on no very rich mantel-piece a representative body of all the elements physical and intellectual-a shell for the sea, a stuffed bird or some feathers for the air, a curious piece of mineral for the earth, a glass of water with some flowers in it for the visible process of creation,-a cast from sculpture for the mind of man ;-and underneath all, is the bright and ever-springing fire, running up through them heavenwards, like hope through materiality. We like to have any little curiosity of the mantel-piece kind within our reach and inspection. For the same reason, we like a small study, where we are almost in contact with our books. We like to feel them about us ;-to be in the arms of our mistress Philosophy, rather than see her at a distance. To have a huge apartment for a study is like lying in the great bed at Ware, or being snug on a mile-stone upon Hounslow Heath. It is space and physical activity, not repose and concentration. It is fit only for grandeur and

ostentation,-for those who have secretaries, and are to be approached like gods in a temple. The Archbishop of Toledo, no doubt, wrote

his homilies in a room ninety feet long.

The Marquis Marialva must have been approached by Gil Blas through whole ranks of glittering authors, standing at due distance. But Ariosto, whose mind could fly out of its nest over all nature, wrote over the house he built, "parva, sed apta mihi"-small, but suited to me. However, it is to be observed, that he could not afford a larger. He was a Duodenarian, in that respect, like ourselves. We do not know how our ideas of a study might expand with our walls. Montaigne, who was Montaigne "of that ilk" and lord of a great chateau, had a study "sixteen paces in diameter, with three noble and free prospects." He congratulates himself, at the same time, on its circular figure, evidently from a feeling allied to the one in favour of smallness. "The figure of my study," says he, "is round, and has no more flat (bare) wall, than what is taken up by my table and my chairs; so that the remaining parts of the circle present me with a view of all my books at once, set upon five degrees of shelves round about me." (Cotton's Montaigne, b. 3, ch. 3.)

A great prospect we hold to be a very disputable advantage, upon the same reasoning as before; but we like to have some green boughs about our windows, and to fancy ourselves as much as possible in the country, when we are not there. Milton expressed a wish with regard to his study, extremely suitable to our present purpose. He would have the lamp in it seen; thus letting others into a share of his enjoyments, by the imagination of them.

And let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Where I may oft outwatch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes; or unsphere
The Spirit of Plato, to unfold

What world or what vast regions hold
The immortal mind, that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook.

There is a fine passionate burst of enthusiasm on the subject of a study, in Fletcher's play of the Elder Brother, Act 1, Scene 2:

Sordid and dunghill minds, composed of earth,
In that gross element fix all their happiness :
But purer spirits, purged and refined,
Shake off that clog of human frailty. Give me
Leave to enjoy myself. That place, that does
Contain my books, the best companions, is
To me a glorious court, where hourly I
Converse with the old sages and philosophers;

And sometimes for variety I confer

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels;

Calling their victories, if unjustly got,

Unto a strict account; and in my fancy,

Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then
Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
Uncertain vanities? No, be it your care

To augment a heap of wealth: it shall be mine

To increase in knowledge. Lights there, for my study.

IV.-ACONTIUS'S APPLE.

(now Zia), who at the sacrifices in honour of ACONTIUS was a youth of the island of Cea Diana fell in love with the beautiful virgin, Cydippe. Unfortunately she was so much above him in rank, that he had no hope of obtaining her hand in the usual way; but the wit of a lover helped him to an expedient. There was a law in Cea, that any oath, pronounced in the temple of Diana, was irrevocably binding. Acontius got an apple, and writing some words upon it, pitched it into Cydippe's bosom.

The words were these:

ΜΑ ΤΗΝ ΑΡΤΕΜΙΝ ΑΚΟΝΤΙΩ ΓΑΜΟΥΜΑΙ.
By Dian, I will marry Acontius.

Or as a poet has written them :

Juro tibi sanctæ per mystica sacra Dianæ,
Me tibi venturam comitem, sponsamque futuram.
I swear by holy Dian, I will be

Thy bride betrothed, and bear thee company. Cydippe read, and married herself. It is said that she was repeatedly on the eve of being married to another person; but her imagination, in the shape of the Goddess, as often threw her into a fever; and the lover, whose ardour and ingenuity had made an impression upon her, was made happy. Aristænetus in his Epistles calls the apple Kudaviov unλov, a Cretan apple, which is supposed to mean a quince; or as others think, an orange, or a citron. But the apple was, is, and must be, a true, unsophisticated apple. Nothing else would have suited. "The apples, methought," says Sir Philip Sydney of his heroine in the Arcadia, "fell down from the trees to do homage to the apples of her breast." idea seems to have originated with Theocritus (Idyl. 27, v. 50, edit. Valckenaer), from whom it was copied by the Italian writers. It makes a lovely figure in one of the most famous passages of Ariosto, where he describes the beauty of Alcina (Orlando Furioso, canto 7, st. 14)— Bianca neve è il bel collo, e 'l petto latte: Il collo è tondo, il petto colmo e largo: Due pome acerbe, e pur d'avorio fatte, Vengono e van come onda al primo margo, Quando piacevole aura il mar combatte. Her bosom is like milk, her neck like snow; A rounded neck; a bosom, where you see Two crisp young ivory apples come and go, Like waves that on the shore beat tenderly, When a sweet air is ruffling to and fro.

The

And after him, Tasso, in his fine ode on the Golden Age :

Allor tra fiori e linfe

Traean dolci carole

Gli Amoretti senz' archi e senza faci:

Sedean pastori e ninfe

Meschiando a le parole

Vezzi e susurri, ed ai susurri i baci
Strettamente tenaci.