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that it is known to be the work of "Sir Philip Francis, who reads it? A

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political writer, and one who descends

to personalities such as disgrace Junius, "should be immaculate as a public, as "well as a private character; and Sir Philip Francis was neither. He had

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his price, and was gagged by being

sent to India. He there seduced ano"ther man's wife. It would have been

a new case for a Judge to sit in judg"ment on himself, in a Crim.-con. It

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seems that his conjugal felicity was not

great, for, when his wife died, he came "into the room where they were sit"ting up with the corpse, and said, 'Sol"der her up, solder her up!' He saw his daughter crying, and scolded her, say

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ing, An old hag-she ought to have

"died thirty years ago!' He married,

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all he hoped and prayed for was to out"live him.-But many of the newspapers " of the day are written as well as Junius. "Matthias's book, 'The Pursuits of Literature,' now almost a dead-letter, had once a great fame.

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"When Walter Scott began to write poetry, which was not at a very early age, Monk Lewis corrected his verse: "he understood little then of the me"chanical part of the art. The Fire King " in "The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor

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der,' was almost all Lewis's. One of the "ballads in that work, and, except some "of Leyden's, perhaps one of the best,

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was made from a story picked up in a

stage-coach;—I mean that of 'Will

"Jones.'

6

They boil'd Will Jones within the pot,
And not much fat had Will.'

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I hope Walter Scott did not write the "review on Christabel;' for he certainly, "in common with many of us, is indebted "to Coleridge. But for him, perhaps, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel' would never have been thought of. The line

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'Jesu Maria shield thee well!'

"is word for word from Christabel.'

"Of all the writers of the day, Walter "Scott is the least jealous: he is too "confident of his own fame to dread the

"rivalry of others. He does not think of

good writing, as the Tuscans do of fever,

“—that there is only a certain quantity of "it in the world."*

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What did you mean," said a person who was with Lord Byron, " by calling Rogers a Nestor and an Argonaut? I suppose you meant to say that his poetry was old and worn out."

Travellers in Italy should be cautious of taking bouquets of flowers from the Contadini children, as they are in the habit of placing them on the breasts of persons having malignant fevers, and think that, by communicating the disorder to another, it will be diminished in the person affected.

"You are very hard upon the dead* poet,-upon the late lamented Mr. Sa"muel Rogers, (as he has been called,)— "and upon me too, to suspect me of speaking ironically upon so serious a subject."

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"It was a very doubtful expression, however, that Nestor of little poets,""

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rejoined the other. Compliments ought never to have a double sense-a cross meaning. And you seem to be fond of

*He used to tell a story of Rogers and visiting the Catacombs at Paris together. As Rogers, who was last, was making his exit, said to him, "Why, you are not coming out, are you? Surely you are not tired of your countrymen! You don't mean to forsake them, do you ?"