Whichever side I take, says Philander, I am like to have a great party against me. Those who have formed their relish on old coins, will by no means allow of such an innovation; on the contrary, your men of wit will be apt to look on it as an improvement on ancient medals. You will oblige us, however, to let us know what kind of rules you would have observed in the choice of your quotations, since you seem to lay a stress on their being chosen with art. You must know then, says Eugenius, I do not think it enough that a quotation tells us plain matter of fact, unless it has some other accidental ornaments to set it off. Indeed, if a great action, that seldom happens in the course of human affairs, is exactly described in the passage of an old poet, it gives the reader a very agreeable surprise, and may therefore deserve a place on a medal.

Again, if there is more than a single circumstance of the action specified in the quotation, it pleases a man to see an old exploit copied out as it were by a modern, and running parallel with it in several of its particulars.

In the next place, when the quotation is not only apt, but has in it a term of wit 'or satire, it is still the better qualified for a medal, as it has a double capacity of pleasing.

But there is no inscription fitter for a medal, in my opinion, than a quotation that, besides its aptness, has something in it lofty and sublime: for such a one strikes in with the natural greatness of the soul, and produces a high idea of the person or action it celebrates, which is one of the principal designs of a medal.

It is certainly very pleasant, says Eugenius, to see a verse of an old poet, revolting, as it were, from its original sense, and siding with a modern subject. But then it ought to do it willingly of its own accord, without being forced to it by any change in the words, or the punctuation: for, when this happens, it is no longer the verse of an ancient poet, but of him that has converted it to his own use.

You have, I believe, by this time exhausted your subject, says Philander; and I think the criticisms you

have made on the poetical quotations that we so often meet with in our modern medals, may be very well applied to the mottoes of books, and other inscriptions of the same nature. But before we quit the legends of medals, I cannot but take notice of a kind of wit that flourishes very much on many of the modern, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in which they were coined. As to mention to you another of Gustavus Adolphus. CHRISTVS DVX ERGO TRIVMPHVS. If you take the pains to pick out the figures from the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will find the amount of 1627, the year in which the medal was coined; for, do not you observe some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and top it over their fellows? these you must consider in a double capacity, as letters or as cyphers. Your laborious German wits will turn you over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. You would fancy, perhaps, they were searching after an apt classical term, but, instead of that, they are looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D, în it. When, therefore, you see any of these inscriptions, you are not so much to look in them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord. There are foreign universities where this kind of wit is so much in vogue, that as you praise a man in England for being an excellent philosopher or poet, it is an ordinary character among them to be a great chronogrammatist. These are, probably, says Cynthio, some of those mild provinces of acrostic land, that Mr. Dryden has assigned to his anagrams, wings, and altars. We have now done, I We have now done, I suppose, with the legend of a medal. I think you promised us in the next place to speak of the figures.

As we had a great deal of talk on this part of a coin, replied Philander, in our discourse on the usefulness of ancient medals, I shall only just touch on the chief heads wherein the ancient and the modern differ. In the first place, the Romans always appear in the proper dress of their country, insomuch that you see the little variations of the mode in the drapery of the medal.

They would have thought it ridiculous to have drawn an emperor of Rome in a Grecian cloak or a Phrygian mitre. On the contrary, our modern medals are full of togas and tunicas, trabeas, and paludamentums, with a multitude of the like antiquated garments, that have not been in fashion these thousand years. You see very often a king of England or France dressed up like a Julius Cæsar. One would think they had a mind to pass themselves upon posterity for Roman emperors. The same observation may run through several customs and religions, that appear in our ancient and modern coins. Nothing is more usual than to see allusions to Roman customs and ceremonies on the medals of our own nation. Nay, very often they carry the figure of a heathen god. If posterity takes its notions of us from our medals, they must fancy one of our kings paid a great devotion to Minerva, that another was a professed worshipper of Apollo, or at best, that our whole religion was a mixture of Paganism and Christianity. Had the old Romans been guilty of the same extravagance, there would have been so great a confusion in their antiquities, that their coins would not have had half the uses we now find in them. ought to look on medals as so many monuments consigned over to eternity, that may possibly last when all other memorials of the same age are worn out or lost. They are a kind of present that those who are actually in being make over to such as lie hid in the depths of futurity. Were they only designed to instruct the three or four succeeding generations, they are in no great danger of being misunderstood: but as they may pass into the hands of a posterity, that lie many removes from us, and are like to act their part in the world, when its governments, manners, and religions, may be quite altered; we ought to take a particular care not to make any false reports in them, or to charge them with any devices that may look doubtful or unintelligible.

We

I have lately seen, says Eugenius, a medallic history of the present king of France. One might expect, methinks, to see the medals of that nation in the highest VOL. I. 2 G

perfection, when there is a society pensioned and set apart on purpose for the designing of them.

We will examine them, if you please, says Philander, in the light that our foregoing observations have set them but on this condition, that you do not look on the faults I find in them any more than my own private opinion. In the first place then, I think it is impossible to learn from the French medals either the religion, custom, or habits of the French nation. You see on some of them the cross of our Saviour, and on others Hercules's club. In one you have an angel, and in another a Mercury. I fancy, says Cynthio, posterity would be as much puzzled on the religion of Louis le Grand, were they to learn it from his medals, as we are at present on that of Constantine the Great. It is certain, says Philander, there is the same mixture of Christian and Pagan in their coins; nor is there a less confusion in their customs. For example, what relation is there between the figure of a bull and the planting of a French colony in America? The Romans made use of this type in allusion to one of their own customs at the sending out of a colony. But for the French, a ram, a hog, or an elephant would have been every whit as significant an emblem. Then can any thing be more unnatural than to see a king of France dressed like an emperor of Rome, with his arms stripped up to his elbows, a laurel on his head, and a chlamys over his shoulders? I fancy, says Eugenius, the society of medalists would give you their reasons for what they have done. You yourself allow the legend to be Latin, and why may not the customs and ornaments be of the same country as the language? especially since they are all of them so universally understood by the learned. I own to you, says Philander, if they only design to deliver down to posterity the several parts of their great monarch's history, it is no matter for the other circumstances of a medal; but I fancy it would be as great a pleasure and instruction for future ages, to see the dresses and customs of their ancestors, as their buildings and victories. Besides, I do not think they bave always

chosen a proper occasion for a medal. There is one struck, for example, on the English failing in their attempts on Dunkirk: when in the last reign they endeavoured to blow up a fort, and bombard the town. What have the French here done to boast of? A medal, however, you have with this inscription, DVNKIRKA ILLESA. Not to cavil at the two K's in Dunkirka, or the impropriety of the word Illesa, the whole medal, in my opinion, tends not so much to the honour of the French as of the English.

I could mention a few other faults, or at least what I take for such. But at the same time must be forced to allow, that this series of medals is the most perfect of any among the moderns in the beauty of the work, the aptness of the device, and the propriety of the legend. In these and other particulars, the French medals come nearer the ancients than those of any other country, as indeed it is to this nation we are indebted for the best lights that have been given to the whole science in general.

I must not here forget to mention the medallic history of the popes, where there are many coins of an excellent workmanship, as I think they have none of those faults that I have spoken of in the preceding set. They are always Roman-catholic in the device and in the legend, which are both of them many times taken out of the Holy Scriptures, and therefore not unsuitable to the character of the prince they represent. Thus when Innocent XI. lay under terrible apprehensions of the French king, he put out a coin, that on the reverse of it had a ship tossed on the waves to represent the church. Before it, was the figure of our Saviour walking on the waters, and St. Peter ready to sink at his feet. The inscription, if I remember, was in Latin. Help Lord, or else I perish." This puts me in mind, says Cynthio, of a pasquinade, that at the same time was fixed up at Rome. Ad Galli cantum Petrus flet. But