vulgar thing among them, was of no less rate than jewels are with such as wear the most; we are selling this precious stone, which we have ignorantly raked out of the Roman ruins, at such a rate as the Switzers did that which they took in the baggage of Charles of Burgundy. For that Camillus had stood more firm against the ruin of Rome, than her capitol, was acknowledged; but on the other side, that he stood as firm for the patricians against the liberty of the people, was as plain: wherefore he never wanted those of the people that would die at his foot in the field, nor that would withstand him to his beard in the city. An example in which they that think Camillus had wrong, neither do themselves right nor the people of Rome; who in this signify no less than that they had a scorn of slavery beyond the fear of ruin, which is the height of magnanimity. The like might be shewn by other examples objected against this and other popular governments, as in the banishment of Aristides the Just from Athens, by the ostracism, which first was no punishment, nor ever understood for so much as a disparagement; but tended only to the security of the commonwealth, through the removal of a citizen (whose riches or power with a party was suspected) out of harm's way for the space of ten years, neither to the diminution of his estate, or honour. And next, though the virtue of Aristides might in itself be unquestioned, yet for him tunder the name of the Just, to become universal umpire of the people in all cases, even to the neglect of the legal ways and orders of the commonwealth, approached so much to the prince, that the Athenians, doing Aristides no wrong, did their government no more than right in removing him; which therefore is not so probable to have come to pass, as Plutarch presumes, through the envy of Themistocles, seeing Aristides was far more popular than Themistocles, who soon after took the same walk upon a worse occasion, The Oceana was dedicated to Oliver Cromwell, who after perusing it, said, "The gentleman would like to trepan me out of my power; but what I have got by the sword, I will not quit for a little paper shot." Harrington was the author of several other compositions, all of a political nature; but as the whole of his works have been collected in one volume 4to. by Mr. Toland, and are consequently accessible to most readers, it were needless to specify them. VOL. III. CLEIVELAND. JOHN CLEIVELAND, poet and royalist, was born in 1613, at Loughborough, in Leicestershire. In 1627, he entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, where, in 1631, he took the degree of bachelor of arts. About three years after, he was elected fellow of St. John's College, in the same university, and, in 1635, proceeded master of arts. He was both tutor and rhetoric reader in his college. On the breaking out of the civil wars, he is said to have been the first champion in verse for the royal cause, in which he exerted all his influence and interest. He was at length seized at Norwich, 1655, as " a person of great abilities,"adverse and dangerous to the reigning government, and sent prisoner to Yarmouth; but on sending a humble petition to the lord protector, he was again set at liberty. Hc after wards became member of a club of wits and royalists in London, of which Butler, the wellknown author of Hudibras, was a member. He died in 1658. Cleiveland is most remembered as a witty poet; he is mentioned, in conjunction with Donne, by Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, as being at the head of what he calls the metaphy. sical poets. His prose consists only of two or three small pieces, of which the most amusing is the character of a Diurnal-maker. A part of it will furnish an adequate specimen of his manner; it abounds in the quaintest wit, such as distinguishes his poetry. The Diurnals were news-papers of the parliament side, resembling modern court-gazettes. The Character of a Diurnal-maker. A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's Register; one whom, by the same figure that a north-country pedlar is a merchant-man, you may style an author: it is the like over-reach of language, where every thin tinder-cloaked quack is doctor; when a clumsy cobler usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator; list him a writer, and you smother Geoffrey in swabberslops; 1 the very name of dabbler oversets him; he is swal lowed up in the praise, like sir Samuel Luke in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the epithet like the little negro mounted on the elephant, just such another blot-rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach of a scribble but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin, when the flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title, as well as most of our modern noblemen, those veins of greatness, the body politic's most peccant humours, blistered into lords. He hath so raw-boned a being, that however you render him, he rubs it out, and makes rags of the expression. The silly countryman (who seeing an ape in a scarlet coat, blest his young worship, and gave his landlord joy of the hopes of his house) did not slander his compliment with worse application than he that names this shred an historian. To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; it is to view him through a perspective, and, by that gross hyperbole, to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mouse-traps. Such an historian would hardly pass muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieve full of ballads and godly beuks. He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian. The most cramped compendium that the age hath seen since all learning was torn into ends, outstrips him by the head. I have heard of |