Herodotus; yet not in his character of an early Historian, but as the first writer of a system of the metrical art, "of metre, of ryme, and of cadence." We smile when Hector, in Shakspeare, quotes Aristotle; but Gower gravely informs his reader that Ulysses was a clerke, accomplished with a knowledge of all the sciences, a great rhetorician and magician; that he learned Rhetoric of Tully, Magic of Zoroaster, Astronomy of Ptolomy, Philosophy of Plato, Divination of the Prophet Daniel, Proverbial Instruction of Solomon, Botany of Macer, and Medicine of Hippocrates. And in the seventh book of the Poem, Aristotle, or the philosophre, is introduced reciting to his scholar, Alexander the Great, a disputation between a Jew and a Pagan, who meet between Cairo and Babylon, concerning their respective religions: the end of this story is to shew the cunning, cruelty, and ingratitude of the Jew, which are, at last, deservedly punished. But I believe Gower's apology must be, that he took this narrative from some Christian Legend, which was feigned for a religious purpose, at the expense of all probability and propriety. Among the Astrological writers he reckons Noah, Abraham, and Moses; but he is not sure that Abraham was an author, having never seen any of that Patriarch's Works; and he prefers Trismegistus to Moses. Cabalistical tracts were, however, extant, not only under the names of Abraham, Noah, and Moses, but of Adam, Abel, and Enoch. He mentions with particular regard Ptolomy's Almagest, the grand source of all the superstitious notions propagated by the Arabian Philosophers concerning the science of divination by the Stars. These infatuations seem to have completed their triumph over human credulity in Gower's age, who, probably, was an ingenious adept in these false and frivolous speculations of this admired species of study. His account of the progress of the Latin language is exceedingly curious. He supposes that it was invented by the old Tuscan Prophetess, Carmens; that it was reduced to method by the grammarians Aristarchus, Donatus, and Didymus; adorned with the flowers of eloquence and rhetoric by Tully; then enriched by translations from the Chaldæan, Arabic, and Greek languages, more especially by the version of the Hebrew Bible into Latin, by Saint Jerome (in the fourth century); and that at length, after the labours of many celebrated writers, it received its final consummation in Ovid, the Poet of lovers. At the mention of Ovid's name, the Poet, with the dexterity and address of a true master of transition, seizes the critical moment of bringing back the dialogue to its proper argument-Love. WARTON. ADDISON'S DESCRIPTION OF THE 66 "ILIAD" AND ADDISON Contrasts the "Iliad" and "Eneid" by the different aspects of grand and of beautiful scenery." The reading of the Iliad,'"-says he, "is like travelling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained with a thousand savage prospects of the deserts, wide and uncultivated marshes, huge forests, misshapen rocks and precipices. On the contrary, theÆneid' is like a well-ordered garden, where it is impossible to find any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single spot, that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower." In another place, when comparing those poets, who are indebted, principally, to their own resources and genius, with those who have been formed by rules, and whose natural parts are chastened by critical precepts, Addison elegantly says, "the genius in both authors may be equally great, but shews itself after a different manner. In the first, it is like a rich soil, in a happy climate, that produces a whole wilderness of plants, rising in a thousand beautiful landscapes, without any certain order and regularity. In the other, it is the same rich soil, under the same happy climate, that has been laid out in walks and parterres, and cut into shape and beauty, by the skill of the gardener. It is not out of place here to add, that Father Brumio, speaking of the three great dramatic writers of Greece,-Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, says the first, as the inventor and father of Tragedy, is like a torrent rolling impetuously over rocks, forests, and precipices; the second resembles a canal, which flows gently through delicious gardens; and the third may be compared to a river that does not follow its course in a continual line, but loves to turn and wind its silver wave through flowery meads and rural scenes." PETRARCH'S PRECISION. THIS celebrated Italian Poet is wonderfully accurate and precise about his Laura. These are his own words :—“ Laura, illustrious by the virtues she possessed, and celebrated, during many years, by my verses, appeared to my eyes, for the first time, on the 6th day of April, in the year 1327, at Avignon, in the Church of Saint Clare, at six o'clock in the morning. I was then in my early youth. In the same town, on the same day, and at the same hour, in the year 1348, this light, this sun, withdrew from the world." METASTASIO. METASTASIO was a successful author, for he lived to see the seventieth edition of his works. Being a character so singular, we cannot avoid extracting a notice of him from Mrs. Piozzi, who seems to have had it from the best authorities, viz. from the family in which he lived, the Mesdemoiselles de Martinas, at Vienna, at least sixty-five years. "Metastasio's peculiarities were these: that |