in a word, they put all the indignity possible upon him. When he was turned out of the school, he came up to the very school-door, and insulted them all; and thus he continued to behave to the last, till the vacancy came, and the new Schoolmaster took possession, and then it was his turn. The Schoolmaster did not make him Captain of the Ordinary Classes, which some think had been a more suitable situation for one of his temper, but made him head of those selected boys, whom he employed for the greatest trust, viz. to keep, receive, and direct the common cash of the school." This office was abolished in 1819.

John Barber, who delivered a Latia oration over the corpse of Dr. South, in the College Hall, 1716.

"In the mean time the School was a meer Bedlam: books and business seemed all laid aside: every mean scholar, that had scarce entered into the verges of Philosophy, was over head and ears in politics, and attached to his party. The forms were all up in arms against one another; as the Heads or Captains guided them, they fell into the warmest disputes imaginable; nay, sometimes they were so hot that they were ready to throw their books at one another's heads.

"In the very crisis of this feud, and just as they were all going mad, being, as it may be said, just got out of the government of themselves, comes the Schoolmaster on shore, and making no stay, he went directly to the School. He found by the noise, there was no room for words, persuasions, expositions” (impositions were better suited to the case) "&c. wherefore with an awful frown upon his brow, and holding up his rod in his hand, he enters the school, and being just within the door, looked sternly round him, not speaking a word. The boys no sooner saw the master and the rod, but they all sat down as quiet and still, as if nothing had happened at all; not a word was spoken, not the least noise heard, all was perfectly calm and quiet in a moment; the Master went peaceably up to his Chair of Instruction, and laid down his rod; the Scholars fell very lovingly to their books, and have been very good boys ever since." Dr. Freind was then Head-Master of Westminster: quere, whether a son of his was Usher there? as it appears

(p. 6.) that "be made his only son Usher of the School."

The title of the second Tract runs thus, "The Opera of 11 Pensero o, a performance both Vocal and Instrumental, as it is acled with authority at the Royal Theatres of Eton and Westminster. The principal parts by Mr. Twigg-Him, Mr. Monitor, Miss Birch, and others," no date, but not connected with the publication abovementioned, and probably printed about 1760, as appears by the "Vivat Rex."

This performance has had a longer run than any thing yet exhibited on the Stage, as it has always been acted for the benefit (though not the entertainment) of several juvenile societies.

"The Rod is a subject both interesting and important, if properly handled."

"To this the greatest men in Church and State (if they have honesty enough to acknowledge old friends) must allow themselves greatly indebted.”

The argument is by no means illwritten; but the Drama itself is a blank, probably out of respect to the scene supposed to be exhibited, and the whole concludes with the following animated lines, set to music by Mr. John Hilton:

"Birch and green Holly;
Birch and green Holly;
If thou be'st beaten, boy,
Thank thine own folly."

Any information serving to throw light on these curious pamphlets will greatly oblige yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

WESTMONASTERIENSIS.

May 13.

Tress is to project a new mode

THE object of my present ad

of Licensing Innkeepers and others, whereby the present inequality prac tised in imposing the duty, namely, by the rates, might be proceeded on with greater advantage to the revenue, and on a more equitable footing to the holders of licences themselves.

The plan which I would propose is this: instead of looking to the rates as to the land-mark from whence your regulations of the duty are to be drawn, a method by enforcing which you subject the poor Victualler or Innkeeper, who scarcely sells a bottle of wine per day, to the same bur

den (nay, in many cases to a greater) than the Proprietor of a Tavern, who perhaps retails an 100 doz. in a less period of time), a weight which presses manifestly much heavier upon the less wealthy individual. I would make the consumption the standard from which the tax should be equitably measured, and the gauge of the excise officer would always be a sure and ready guide to the quantity consumed in spirits. Another evil which might be avoided in regard more particularly to liquors, is the loss which the poorer members of the fraternity experience from their more wealthy brothers, who, having an infinitely larger sale, perhaps as one gallon to a pipe, and feeling but the same draw. back, are enabled to vend their commodity at a much lower price, to the utter ruin of their less fortunate competitors; this unfair gain by monopoly might thus be destroyed, as they would then be obliged to keep up their price to enable them to pay their just quota of duty, at the same time that they would feel no other inconvenience themselves than the loss of what might have been gained by the unjust practice of monopoly.

Before I dismiss the subject from your notice, Mr. Urban, I would direct your attention to an abuse of the Licensing System, in daily, and I may almost say open violation at houses with which the Metropolis is now thronged (excellent institutions in their proper bounds) established under the specious pretence of coffeehouses; but whose more profitable branch consists in the private sale of liquors, but vended with caution, and to them only who have for some time frequented the house. Of these circumstances I am credibly informed, and every disinterested person must perceive how replete with ruin such institutions (I mean when thus abused) are to the fair trader and the publick at large. J. A. G.

The Ring is silver, but so very well gilt, that it is only upon accurate examination that you perceive that it is not gold; the hoop of it is looped, and at the juncture of each loop there is a rose or some flower; but the most remarkable part is the figure of an angel, in the place of a seal. Instead of a seal there is an angel with spread wings and holding a book or tablet or heart in his hands, exactly such a figure as we see placed as an ornament at the spring of the arches of Gothic roofs: this figure of the angel is soldered on to the Ring in a very clumsy way: in all other respects the workmanship is good.-Burien was a collegiate church, founded by Athelstan. At the Norman Conquest there were secular Canons here, and in the reign of Edward I. a Dean and three Prebends. We know that the ring formed a particular part of the form of investiture of Bishops in wedding them to their spouse the Church. Did Deans or Prebends affect the same ornament? If any of your Readers can give any reasonable conjecture of the use, the age, &c. of the Ring, which I have described, and which I should imagine to have belonged to some of the religious officers of this antient Deanery, it will confer a favour on

Mr. URBAN,

UNUS EX OMNIBUS.

June 21. HE readiness with which some

Tree remarks of mine have been received, leads me once more to trouble you upon a subject which I most earnestly wish may be taken up by some abler hand.-I mean, the present state of the English Language, which, from a variety of causes, is becoming so unlike what it once was, that, in a few years, it is to be feared that Shakspeare and Milton, nay, even Dryden and Pope, will need a glossary as much as Chaucer, or any of the writers of elder time. Nor is this change by any means for the better-the immense influx of words derived from the Latin and Greek has no other effect than that of puzzling the mere reader, and sending him perpetually to search his Dictionary for the meaning; and every attempt at a foreign style of construction increases the evil to which we may add that both are offences against good taste, very displeasing to all who have in

any

any degree studied our earlier and best authors.

It should be considered, Sir, that the larger portion of the people of this country are, and must be, to a certain extent, unlearned; that is to say, but little, if at all acquainted with the dead languages: yet these are the people mainly concerned in whatever is written or spoken. These are the people addressed from the Pulpit-in our Courts of Law, the Jury is selected, for the most part, from these; and all books on general subjects must be intended for their perusal, or the author would rarely be a gainer by his works:-surely, then, it is folly to cultivate a style unintelligible to two-thirds of our countrymen. If the spread of sectarianismi has been, as many think, owing to the discourses of the Clergy being above the capacity of the greater part of their hearers; and if, as has also been asserted, and once been seen, dislike to the government of the Church leads to a no less distaste towards that of the State which supports it, what was at first only a matter of taste, becomes one of serious import: but that I leave others to consider. My object at present is solely to call back the attention of my countrymen to the models from which they are perhaps insensibly deviating; in order that, as every thing seems now guided by fashion, some fashionable author may at last be led to set the example of writing the good old Anglo-Saxon dialect of Shakspeare, Atterbury, and Addison, instead of the Græco-La'ino-Francojargon which is now so widely adopted, and which is beginning to bar. barize our oral as well as our writ ten language. It is evident that words newly coined from the Latin or Greek can only be used with propriety by those who understand their derivation: but the tradesman and the farmer love not to be outdone, and delight to show their more deeply learned neighbours that they too scorn to use a word of one syllable when they can command one of three or four and frequently, in their eagerness for a high sounding phrase, drag these unlucky" long-tailed words" into a sense very wide of that which they originally bore;— till, at last, even well-educated people yield to common usage; and a fresh

barbarism is introduced. For some time when a shopman told us that this article was equally as good with another, we smiled at his bad English ;-but now, alas, for the decline of good grammar! equally as good finds its way into print, and no reviewer enters his protest against it: the same thing may be observed of several other phrases, which I have

not room to notice here.

I know not by what rules the writers of that period, which has been justly termed our Augustan age, formed their style; but I am much inclined to think that by carefully rejecting every word of foreign derivation, where there was an English one which would answer the purpose as well, much would be done towards attaining the easy grace of those authors. In Mr. Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, towards the end of vol. 11. there is a short analysis of the style of many of our most admired writers; which clearly shows how large a proportion of our old mother dialect finds its place in the language of Addison, Swift, and others, whose purity of diction has been generally acknowledged. the same mode of analysis be pursued with our modern writers, and it will be found that the words of Latin and Greek derivation trebled, and in some instances, quadrupled: but has our language been benefited by this? The universal voice which calls that our Augustan age, must be allowed to give a contrary decision, and justify my first assertion that good taste and good English are alike violated by this needless introduction of foreign terms.

Let

are

I have accused the Reviewers of being remiss in suffering barbarisms to pass them unnoticed: the following passages from a work * mentioned with considerable praise in the Monthly Review for March, may serve to show that this accusation is not ill founded :

"Superstition, racked by her own mental terrors, and hurling around her the fire-brands of bigoted zeal, and savage intolerance, derives her strength from views of the Divine nature, partial and ob scure. Civil tyranny, whether arrayed in the imperial purple, or waving the banners of popular power, owes its origin

chiefly to the blind passions," &c.

* Maltby's Sermons.