father, a respectable manufacturer of ropes, as a halter-maker. He also made a mock of Gabriel's meat, which seems to have been altogether of a rude and inexpensive character. He fed, says the facetious Nash, on trotters, sheep's porknells, and buttered roots, in an hexameter meditation. The generous disposition of the delicateworded Smollett disdained not to satirize Akenside in his description of the dinner after the ancients in Peregrine Pickle. Some amiable critic-the poet-priest Milman, or Southey, or Barrow-cut up Keats in the Quarterly. The results were untoward, if Shelley was not mistaken in this matter. If, however, with Byron, we think

""Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article,"

and attribute the death of the author of Endymion to consumption rather than criticism, we may yet regard the Review as contributing in no very great degree to his comfort. Pope, who placed Theobald at the head of his Dunciad for the sole crime of having revised Shakespeare more happily than himself, when attacked in his turn by Cibber, used to say, These things are my diversion." But we all remember how Richardson one day, observing Pope's features writhing with anguish on the perusal of a sarcastic pamplilet of his antagonist, devoutly prayed to be preserved from such diversion as had been on that occasion the lot of Pope.

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The flaying of the Phrygian piper Marsyas by Apollo is perhaps but a figure to represent the scathing effects of the scorn of the superior player on the nervous sensibility of Marsyas, overcome, in open day, in sight of all the Dryad maids of Nysa. But this is the action not only of literary but of human nature. The potter is not remarkable for his good will to his brother potter, nor the carpenter to his brother carpenter: as little the scribe to his brother scribe. Men of letters, as in other professions, reciprocally make -willingly on the one side, unwillingly on the other-each other's misery. Sometimes one writer of a little reputation introduces, with many kind and complimentary observations, another of less to an editor or publisher of discernment. In the course of time the introduced, by his superior sagacity, outshines the introducer. The introducer does not thereupon always embrace the introduced with the congratulations of sincere delight upon his well-merited success; he is not invariably pleased with the praises of his friend and protégé. The unhappy introduced having written a good book, and justified the kind observations of the introducer, innocentl supposes that the links of their amity will become stronger. This is far from being the usual result. Cases have been known in which such a work has turned the milk of friendship into gall, changed the amiable intercourse of affectionate letters into libels teeming with virulent invective, and made out of a boon compan

ion an enemy for life. The writer, solely on account of his success, is surprised to find the man of his own house-his own familiar friend-lifting up his heel against him. The smell of his good fame drives that other to distraction, as a cat, according to Plutarch, is driven mad by the smell of ointments. He is accused by his former benefactor of the basest ingratitude. He might have broken the aged neck of his benefactor's father and welcome, but his present offense is unpardonable. His meat is seasoned with the reproaches of his associate. He bears it all for a while in silence; but even the literary worm will turn at last. For a time he takes no notice till the nipping taunts of his famous work-like currents of cold air, or the tedious buzzings of an idle gnat—have grown into personal calumny, touching himself or his blameless ancestors -then he turns. Then a mighty contest commences-such a fight as was once fought between Dryden and Elkanah Settle, or between Theobald and Pope, or between Addison and Dennis-fights, formerly fashionable, which have long been relegated by literary men as productive of dishonor both to their profession and themselves. Then it little avails either party to have learned faithfully the ingenuous arts. They become ferocious, and their manners are the reverse of soft. The amiable Milton calls his antagonist Salmasius many hard names, such as runagate and superlative fool, harebrained blunderbuss and senseless bawler, cuckoo and dunghill cock. Salmasius, with equal urbanity, speaks of Milton as a homuncule, a fanatical robber, and an impure beast; holds his continued existence as a direct fraud on the hangman, and deems his execrable life ought to have ended long ago in boiling oil or burning pitch.

The controversy on "Free Will" has been the occasion of no little free speech. Erasmus wrote some bitter things about Luther in his Hyperaspistes, or Defender of Free Will. Luther thereon felt himself necessitated to say that Erasmus, of Rotterdam, was the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth; "whatever I pray," he says in the Table Talk, "I pray for a curse upon Erasmus. Neither his holy life nor doctrine could protect Athanasius from being accused by Arius as a traitor and a poisoner, a sorcerer and a homicide. The early Christian writers concur in abusing each other like a pack of thieves. Pretty samples of ecclesiastical snarling may be collected from the works of Calvin. The quarrels of Jonson and Decker, Hobbes and Wallis, Swift and Steele, Warburton and Edwards, have been carefully collated by the industry of Isaac Disraeli. Pope said that Bentley made Horace dull and humbled Milton, and Bentley called Pope a portentous cub. Of such a nature were the amenities of language between the living; nor has the leonine tooth of literary censure been idle with regard to the dead. The learned crow is not without supremo difficulty detached from his selected carcass. That he never spared

asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence is not the worst thing said of Milton by Dr. Johnson, and the being whom Boswell regarded with awful reverence becomes little of a hero to Macaulay, while Walpole represents him as an odious and mean character, with a nature arrogant and overbearing, and with manners sordid, supercilious, and brutal ! Cornhill Magazine.

ROMANCE OF LITERARY DISCOVERY.

SWIFT is said to have amused himself in one of his cynical moods in drawing up an elaborate catalogue of things which ought to have succeeded. Should any one in our day be inclined to draw up a list of books which ought to be written, but of which our libraries contain at present no trace, he ought undoubtedly to give a foremost place to a history of literary discoveries. Such a volume would assuredly be one of the most entertaining books in the world. It would be a perfect Odyssey of curious incidents. It would show us perhaps more than anything what an important part that power which in our ignorance we call Chance, has played as well in literature as in history; on what a frail thread fame hangs, how narrow the space between oblivion and a splendid immortality. Pascal has observed that if Cleopatra's nose had been an inch longer the history of the world would in all probability have been completely changed. This no one would hesitate to pronounce an exaggeration. But it would be no exaggeration to say that had the texture of a bit of parchment been porous, the greatest critic of antiquity would have been a mere name; had a mouse been a little more hungry, one of the most precious of Cicero's treatises would have been as irretrievably lost to us as the odes of Alcæus or the comedies of Menander.

There is one singular circumstance connected with the history of literary discovery, and it is this. Though many of these discoveries have been to all appearance the result of mere accident, occurring suddenly and unexpectedly, the majority of them, and those which are by far the most important, have been made just at the critical moment, been made at a time when further delay would have rendered them impossible. Had Poggio and those accomplished enthusiasts who surrounded him been born a few years later, we should in all probability have had to mourn the extinction of the Latin classics. Had Percy not applied himself to his researches at the time he did, many of the most precious of our old ballads would have vanished into oblivion. Had Malone confined himself to the study of the law, English poetry must inevitably have lost some of the masterpieces of the Elizabethan drama. We ought therefore to be doubly grateful, grateful to these indefatiga

ble scholars who grudged neither time, money nor health in their arduous task, grateful also to Providence for the timely appearance of these our common benefactors. "To be great oneself," says Mr. Ruskin, "is but to add one great man to the world, whereas to exhibit the greatness of twelve other men is to enrich the world with twelve great men." And to whom could this praise apply more appropriately than to those who have not only exhibited the greatness but even preserved the being of men of genius ?

A

First among romantic discoveries will come the curious story which Strabo tells about the preservation of Aristotle's works—a story which, in spite of its intrinsic improbability, is corroborated by Plutarch, Athenæus and Suidas. When the Prince of Philosophers died, he bequeathed his manuscripts to his disciple Theophrastus. Thence they passed into the hands of one Neleus. About the time they came into the possession of Neleus, the emissaries of the Attali-a very powerful family-were scouring Asia in search of manuscripts, and Neleus trembled for his treasure. Accordingly, he hid it in a cellar, and, dying soon afterwards, forgot to inform his friends of what he had done with the papers. For two centuries the precious documents remained in their subterranean prison. At last Apellicon--the famous book-collector of Teos-found them out. Damp, moths and worms had worked their will upon them-and in many places the text was illegible; but Apellicon, in ecstasy at his discovery, had them at once copied out, and hence the preservation of writings which have had more influence on the human mind than any other writings in existence. still stranger story is the history of a work which has had no little influence on the romantic literature of Europe-the "History of the Trojan War," purporting to have been translated from the Greek of Eupraxis, who had in his turn translated it from the Phonician. The preface to this book informs us that in the reign of Nero an earthquake took place in Crete, and that the effect of it was, among other things, to burst open the tomb of Dietys, one of the heroes who had fought in the Trojan war. Shortly after the shock, some peasants happened to be passing by the tomb, and, perceiving a gap, had the curiosity to peep in. They saw, to their great surprise, a chest, which they at once conveyed to their master Eupraxis. On opening it he found that it contained a manuscript, and that this manuscript was none other than a history of the War of Ilium, penned by one who had taken part in it. This story has usually been held to be an impudent fiction manufactured for the purpose of passing off an equally impudent forgery, that it is, in short, to be classed with Geoffrey of Monmouth's story of Gualtier's "discovery of the ancient Cimbric volume in Brittany," with Chatterton's "discovery" of Rowley's poems in the steeple of St. Mary Ratcliffe's, and with Ireland's discovery of " Vortigern." However this may be, the story was held to be true for many cen

turies, and there are no means for positively refuting it. Let us turn now to undisputed facts. In a dark and filthy dungeon—“ a place which was not even a fit residence for a condemned criminal" -Poggio found, begrimed with dirt, and rotting with damp, the priceless work of Quintilian. Groping about in the same noisome cavern he rescued also the three first, and part of the fourth, books of the "Argonautica" of Valerius Flaccus, one of the most vigorous and pleasing of the minor Latin poets, as well as the valuable Commentaries" of Pedianus on Cicero. Many of Cicero's orations were discovered under similar circumstances, lurking in out-of-theway corners, and becoming as each month rolled by more and more corroded and soiled. The oration for Cæcina, for example, he found in a monastery at Langres; the poem of Silius Italicus, and the grand and glorious masterpiece of Lucretius, in another monastery. Many other classics, among them Plautus, Tacitus, Manilius, Petronius, Arbiter, Calpurnius were stumbled upon in the monasteries of Germany, and it is difficult to peruse the rapturous exclamations in which the discoverers announce their good fortune without feeling, even at this distance of time, something of the enthusiasm which stirred so mightily their hearts. Propertius, the prince of the Latin elegiac poets, had a narrow escape indeed. The manuscript and there is reason to believe the only manuscript that contained his poems-was found stained, squalid, and crumpled under the casks in a wine cellar. The whole story may be read in the "Geniales Dies," a pleasant collection of gossip and antiquarianism written by a Neapolitan lawyer in the fifteenth century, named Alexander ab Alexandro. In Westphalia a monk came accidentally upon the histories of Tacitus, and to this happy chance we are indebted for one of the most priceless volumes of antiquity, a work which has had more influence on modern prose literature than any single book in the world. Miserable was the plight in which the best poems of Statius-the "Sylvæ"- -were found, tattered, distorted and scarcely legible. The most interesting treatise which Cicero has bequeathed to us was discovered amid a heap of refuse ́and rubbish near Milan, by a Bishop of Lodi, early in the fifteenth century; and the only valuable manuscript of Dioscorides was, when found in a similar state, "so thoroughly riddled with insects," writes Lambecius, "that one would have scarcely stooped to pick it up in the streets had one seen it lying there." Had the insects been able to enjoy a heartier meal, the "botany of the ancients" would have been almost a blank to us. Livy-or, rather, vhat remains of him (for out of one hundred and forty-two books • have, alas, only thirty-five) was picked up piecemeal. Thus rt of the fourth decade was found in the cathedral church of St. Martin at Mayence; another portion, containing books forty-one to forty-four, in an out-of-the-way corner in Switzerland, while part of book ninety-one was found lurking under the writing of another