Passez, passez, Madame la regente, i. e. “Go on, go on, Madame the regent."

A few nights before the catastrophe, the queen dreamed that all the jewels in her crown were changed into pearls, and that she was told pearls were significative of tears. Another night she started and cried out in her sleep, and waked the king, who asking her what was the matter? She answered, “I have had a frightful dream; but I know that dreams are mere illusions." -“I was always of the same opinion," replied Henry," however, tell me what your dream was."" I dreamed," continued she, "that you was stabbed with a knife under the short ribs."-" Thank God," rejoined the king, "it was but a dream."

I have already noted that, on the morning of the fatal day, his majesty was unusually chagrined; and he said, more than once, to those about him, "Something or other hangs very heavy on my heart." Before he went to his coach, he took leave of the queen no fewer than three times; and then, stepping into his carriage, had not passed through many streets, ere Ravaillac gave him that fatal stab, which deprived France of one of the most generous and humane sovereigns she ever had.

When Charles I. of England opened the civil war, by erecting his standard on Nottingham Castle, it was soon blown down by á high wind, and the weather continued so boisterous, that the standard could not be refixed for several days. Some years after, while the same calamitous prince was taking his trial, before what was called the High Court of Justice, the silver head fell off from his cane; nor did the head of its owner remain many days longer upon his shoulders.

At the coronation of James II. the crown, not having been properly fitted to his head, was several times likely to have fallen off, which occasioned Mr. Henry Sidney (afterwards Earl of Romney), who was standing near the coronation-chair, and who once prevented the crown from slipping, to remind the king, facetiously, "Sir, this is not the first time the Sidney family has supported the crown.". On the same day, as James was walking under the canopy of state, it broke; and the royal arms, which occupied part of a painted window in one of the London churches, fell to the pavement (without any visible cause, and the rest of the window standing entire), and were dashed to pieces.

The Prince of Orange having landed in the west, James repaired to Salisbury, in order to review a part of the army on which

he so vainly depended. Shortly after his arrival in that city, he was seized with a sudden bleeding at the nose; and a stone crown, which almost terminated the spire of the cathedral, was blown down by a sudden storm. The next day, when the review began, he was seized with a more violent bleeding of the nose than before; and it was not a little happy for this endangered nation, that a few spoonfuls of blood, spouting from the royal nostrils, were the only blood which the accomplishment of the ensuing revolution cost.

Let the reader observe that I nakedly relate the above facts, without wishing to build any theory upon them, or to deduce from them any superstitious inferences. It is, however, my own private opinion, that absolutely to cashier all omens, without distinction or exception, would be to fly in the face of ancient and modern wisdom, as well as of ancient and modern history.

A. M. T.

ANECDOTES.

DR. JOHN EGERTON, the late bishop of Durham, on coming to that see, employed one Due as his agent, to find out the true value of the estates held by lease under him, and in consequence of Due's report, greatly raised both the fines and reserved rents of his tenants; on which account the following toast was frequently drunk in and about Durham-" May the Lord take the bishop, and the devil have his Due."

THE ROYAL FAMILY.-On the first of May, 1782, when debates ran high against the influence of the crown, and the patriots insisted much on the majesty of the people, George Selwyn, happening with some friends to meet a party of chimney sweepers' boys, de- corated with gilt paper, and other ludicrous ornaments, exclaimed "I have often heard of the majesty of the peoples but never before had the pleasure of seeing any of the young princes."

IN Suffolk black puddings made in guts are called links. Once when King George II. landed at Harwich, it was so dark by the time he reached Copeluck, that lights were thought necessary: the harbinger or officer going before, enquiring of the landlady of the inn, if she had any flambeaux, or could procure any? Being answered in the negative, he asked her if she had any links? "Aye, that

I have," said she," and some as good as his Majesty, God bless him, ever eat in all his life."

DR. SHARP, of Hart Hall, Oxford, had a ridiculous manner of prefacing every thing he said with the words I say. An under graduate having, as the doctor was informed, mimicked him in this peculiarity, he sent for him, to give him a jobation, which he thus began; I say, they say, you say, I say, I say; when finding the ridiculous combination in which his speech was involved, he con·cluded by bidding him begone to his room.

DR. WILSON, a particular friend and admirer of Garrick's, was a great punster. He, one day, seeing Dr. Brocklesby coming into Batson's coffee-house, then chiefly used by physicians, addressed him by the name of Dr. Rock; to which the doctor objecting with some warmth, Wilson undertook to prove it algebraically, thus :Brock-less B-that is, Brock without the B-which it cannot be denied is Rock.

COL. BODENS, who was very fat, being accosted by a man to whom he owed money, with a how d'ye? answered, "Pretty well, I thank you; you find I hold my own.' -“Yes, Sir,” rejoined the man, " and mine too, to my sorrow."

A LADY dying, who was much given to scolding, particularly at the servants, her husband caused an achievement to be put against his house, under which was the following common motto: In Cœlo quies. The coachman asked the undertaker's apprentice the meaning of these words, and, on being informed it was there is rest in heaven, answered, "Then I'm sure mistress be'ant there."

LIEUTENANT S- being extremely ill, and almost dead for want of rest, it was thought expedient to give him an opiate. Whilst it was preparing, his disorder being at a crisis, he fell into a profound sleep. His friend and countryman, Lieutenant A—— P——, who had attended him with the most unremitting care, seeing the state he was in, shook him violently by the shoulder, exclaiming, "Arrah, my good friend, don't be after sleeping now, but wait till you have taken your sleeping stuff!"

REVIEW OF LITERATURE.

FLECTERE NON ODIUM COGIT, NON GRATIA SUADET.

MISCELLANEOUS.

[The Iliad, Odyssey, and Batrachomyomachia of Homer. Translated into English Blank Verse by the late William Cowper, Esq. Second Edition, with copious Alterations and Notes. 4 Vols. 8v0.

1802.

Ir is now, according to the most probable calculation, about eight and twenty centuries since the existence of Homer. Through this vast period of time, so marked with revolution, destruction, and every other evil incident to the lot of human affairs, the noblest productions of the Grecian bard have not only lived, but gathered, in their triumphant course, fresh and unfading laurels from each succeeding age. Writers without number, as well ancient and modern, as sacred and profane, have, in their contention how best to express their veneration for the poet, racked the most fertile invention, accumulated every epithet, and exhausted all praise. But one Zoilus has, in this great circle of years, dared to mingle his envious and vituperative breath with the joint incense of an admiring world: Infame monstrum, Lerna calumnia, Halans mephitin gutture lurido,

Ter-sycophanta, scurra cœli,

Mome Deum, jaculator audax!

JAMES DUPORT.

For us, therefore, at this hour, to attempt to add to his fame by the most laboured panegyric, would be as vain a strife as were we to endeavour to increase the light of the sun, or augment the waters of the ocean.'

Come then, expressive Silence! muse his praise!

THOMSON.

If it be too late to speak of the merits of Melesigenes, so is the moment past when his translator might, amidst the sadness of his mind and the assaults of the melancholy fiend that vexed him, have been cheered by the approbation his labours deserve, and will, we are firmly persuaded, in the end universally receive. Now he is no more! Keira Пlargonhos. At once he lies insensible of all blame, and deaf to the sweetest voice of commendation! Dead, but not to RRVOL. XIV.

be forgotten, whilst "The Task" and this his elaborate work, these monuments of his fame, survive; and survive they will, as long as genius and learning maintain aught of respect or reverence amongst mankind.

The object of our present review is not the first edition of Mr. Cowper's translation, which appeared in quarto, and has long been out of print, but the second, published in octavo, since the author's death, by “his kinsman, J. Johnson, L. L. B. Chaplain to the Bishop of Peterborough," who too diffidently observes, at the com mencement of his preface:

“I have no other pretention to the honourable name of editor, on this occasion, than as a faithful transcriber of the MS. and a diligent corrector of the press, which are, doubtless, two of the very humblest employments in that most extensive province. I have wanted the ability to attempt any thing higher, and, fortunately for the reader, I have also wanted the presumption. What, however, I can do, I will. Instead of critical remark, I will furnish him with anecdote." He then proceeds to trace the progress of the edition before us, from the beginning to the end, which is in a considerable degree interesting, and leaves us with the wish for a longer and more general narrative; a wish that will, we are told, be shortly gratified by a life of the poet, from the pen of his intimate friend Mr. Hayley.

A preface to each edition follows; the first of which very forcibly, and, we think, most justly, argues in defence of blank verse, as in all respects preferable to rhyme, in the execution of a translation of Homer.

"I have," says he, with great candour, at p. xxii. "no contest with my predecessor. None is supposeable between performers on different instruments. Mr. Pope has surmounted all difficulties, in his version of Homer, that it was possible to surmount in rhyme; but he was fettered, and his fetters were his choice."

"That he has sometimes," continues he, in the next page," altogether suppressed the sense of his author, and has not seldom intermingled his own ideas with it, is a remark which, on this occasion, nothing but necessity should have extorted from me; but we differ sometimes so widely in our matter, that unless this remark, invidious as it seems, be premised, I know not how to obviate a suspicion, on the one hand, of careless oversight, or of factitious embellishment on the other.. I have omitted nothing-I have invented nothing."

"And now," concludes this good and great, but unhappy man," I have only to regret that my pleasant work is ended. To the illustrious Greek I owe the smooth and easy flight of many thousand hours. He has been my

companion at home and abroad-in the study, in the garden, and in the field ; and no measure of success, let my labours succeed as they may, will ever compensate to me the loss of the innocent luxury that I have enjoyed as a translator of Homer."