of England-yielding sundrie sweet savours of tragicall, comicall, and moral discourses, both pleasant and profitable to the well-smelling noses of learned readers."

BUTLER'S CHARACTER OF A PLAY-WRITER.

"A PLAY-WRITER of our times is like a fanatic, that has no wit in ordinary easy things, and yet attempts the hardest task of brains in the whole world, only because, whether his play or work please or displease, he is certain to come off bet'ter than he deserves, and find some of his own latitude to applaud him, which he could never expect any other way; and is as sure to lose no reputation, because he has none to venture.

"Like gaming rooks, that never stick
To play for hundreds upon tick;
'Cause, if they chance to lose at play,
Th'ave not one half-penny to pay;
And, if they win a hundred pound,
Gain, if for sixpence they compound."

'Nothing encourages him more in his undertaking than his ignorance, for he has not wit enough to understand so much as the difficulty of what he attempts; therefore he runs on boldly like a fool-hardy wit; and fortune, that

favours fools and the bold, sometimes takes notice of him for his double capacity, and receives him into her good graces. He has one motive more, and that is the concurrent ignorant judgment of the present age, in which his sottish fopperies pass with applause, like Oliver Cromwell's oratory among fanatics of his own canting inclination. He finds it easier to write in rhyıne than prose; for the world being overcharged with romances, he finds his plots, passions, and repartees, ready-made to his hand; and if he can but turn them into rhyme, the thievery is disguised, and they pass for his own wit and invention without question; like a stolen cloak made into a coat, or dyed into another colour. Besides this, he makes no conscience of stealing any thing that lights in his way, and borrows the advice of so many to correct, enlarge, and amend, what he has ill-favouredly patched together, that it becomes like a thing drawn by council, and none of his own performance, or the son that has no certain father.

"He has very great reason to prefer verse before prose in his compositions; for rhyme is like lace, that serves excellently well to hide the

piecing and coarseness of a bad stuff, contributes mightily to the bulk, and makes the less serve by the many impertinencies it commonly requires to make way for it; for very few are endowed with abilities to bring it in on its own account. This he finds to be good husbandry, and a kind of necessary thrift; for they that have but a little, ought to make as much of it as they can. His prologue, which is commonly none of his own, is always better than his play; like a piece of cloth that's fine in the beginning, and coarse afterwards; though it has but one topic, and that's the same that is used by malefactors when they are to be tried, to except against as many of the jury as they can."

GRAY.

THE mother of Gray the Poet, to whom he was entirely indebted for the excellent education he received, appears to have been a woman of most amiable character, and one whose energy supplied to her child that deficiency, which the improvidence of his other parent would have occasioned. The following extract from a Case submitted by Mrs. Gray to her Lawyer, de

velops the disposition and habits of her husband in a light not the most favourable, while it awakens no common sympathy for herself.

“That she hath been no charge to the said Philip Gray; and, during all the said time, hath not only found herself in all manner of apparel, but also for her children to the number of twelve, and most of the furniture of his house, and paying forty pounds a-year for his shop, almost providing every thing for her son at Eton School; and now he is at Peter-House, Cambridge.

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Notwithstanding which, almost ever since he hath been married, the said Philip hath used her in the most inhuman manner, by beating, kicking, pinching, and with the vilest and most abusive language; that she hath been in the utmost fear of her life, and hath been obliged this last year to quit his bed and lie with her sister. This she was resolved to bear if possible, not to leave her shop of trade, for the sake of her son, to be able to assist him in the maintenance of him at the University, since his father won't."

To the love and courage of this mother, Gray

owed his life when a child: she ventured to do what few women are capable of doing, to open a vein with her own hand, and thus removed the paroxysm arising from a fulness of blood, to which, it is said, all her other children had fallen victims.-We need not wonder that Gray mentioned such a mother with a sigh.

SADI, AND HIS WIFE.

THIS celebrated Persian Poet and Moralist was taken prisoner by the Turks, and condemned to work at the fortifications at Tripoli. While in this deplorable state, he was redeemed by a merchant of Aleppo, who had so much regard for him as to give him his daughter in marriage, with a dowry of one hundred sequins. This lady, however, being an intolerable scold, proved the plague of his life, and gave him that unfavourable opinion of the sex, which appears occasionally in his works. During one of their altercations, she reproached him with the favours her family had conferred on him—“ Are not you the man," said she, " my father bought for ten 66 Yes," answered Sadi, pieces of gold?" (6 and he sold me again for a hundred sequins."