have been one of the preachers at court; but he had hardly ascended into the pulpit, when he was struck by the lightning of Boileau's Muse. He felt so acutely the caustic verses, that they rendered him almost incapable of literary labour; in the prime of life, he became melancholy, and shortly afterwards died insane. A modern painter, it is known, never recovered from the biting ridicule of a popular, but malignant, Wit. Cummyns, a celebrated quaker, confessed he died of an anonymous letter in a public paper, which, said he, "fastened on my heart, and threw me into this slow fever;" even the excellent Racine died of his extreme sensibility to a rebuke, and confessed that the pain, which one severe criticism inflicted, outweighed all the applause he received. The feathered arrow of an epigram, has sometimes been wet with the heart's blood of its victim. Fortune has been lost, reputation destroyed, and every charity of life extinguished, by the inhumanity of inconsiderate Wit.

CURIOSITIES

OF

LITERATURE.

LIBRARIES.

A PASSION for forming vast collections of books

has doubtless existed in all periods of human curiosity. This subject, like many others, has been investigated with that prodigal, yet frivolous, erudition, which the finer taste, and the good sense of our present writers have for ever banished.

Of LIBRARIES, the following anecdotes seem most interesting, as they mark either the affection, or the veneration, which civilized men have ever felt for these perennial repositories of their minds. The first national Library founded in Egypt seemed, as it were, to be placed under the protection of the Divinities, for their Statues magnificently adorned this Temple, dedicated at once to Religion and Literature. It was still further embellished by a well-known Inscription of perpetual beauty, and which may for ever be gratefully echoed, to the ear and heart of the Votary of Literature. On the front was engraven Animi pabulum, the nourishment of the Soul! or, according to Diodorus, Animi medicina, the medicine of the Mind!

The Egyptian Ptolemies founded the vast library of Alexandria; it was afterwards the emulative labour of rival monarchs, and its founder put a soul into the vast body he was creating, in the librarian Demetrius Phalereus, whose industrious knowledge amassed from all nations their choicest productions. Without such a librarian, a national library would be little more than a literary Chaos. It is known, how one of the Ptolemies refused supplying the famished Athenians with wheat, till they presented him with the original works of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. He returned them copies of the originals, and allowed them to retain the fifteen talents which he had pledged with them, as a princely security.

Whenever Tyrants, or Usurpers, possessed sense as well as courage, they have proved the most ardent patrons of Literature; they know it is their interest to turn aside the public mind from political speculations, and to afford their subjects, or their slaves, the inexhaustible occupations of Curiosity, and the consoling pleasures of the Imagination. It was thus that Pisistratus is said to have been among the earliest of the Greeks, who projected an immense collection of the Works of the Learned, and is believed to have been the collector of the scattered works of Homer.

The Romans, after six centuries of gradual empire, must have possessed the vast and diversified

collections of books, of the nations they conquered; among the most valued spoils of their Victories, we know that books were considered as more precious than vases of gold. Paulus Emilius, after the defeat of Perseus King of Macedon, brought to Rome a great number of Mss., which he had amassed in Greece, and distributed among his sons, or presented to the Roman people. Sylla followed his example: after the siege of Athens, he discovered an entire library in the temple of Apollo, which having carried to Rome, he seems to have been the founder of the first Roman public library. After the taking of Carthage, the Roman senate rewarded the family of Regulus with the books found in that city. A library was a national gift, and the most honourable they could bestow. From the intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks, the passion for forming libraries rapidly increased, and individuals began to pride themselves on their private collections.

Of many illustrious Romans, their magnificent

taste in their Libraries has been recorded. Asinius Pollio, Crassus, Cæsar, and Cicero, have, among others, been celebrated for their literary splendors. Lucullus, whose incredible opulence exhausted itself on more than imperial luxuries, more honourably distinguished itself by the vast collections of Books, and the happy use he made of them by the liberal access he allowed the learned. It was a