this is the English meaning, as I remember; but no doubt all is lost, and these verses are not mine. I forget whose though:

"Here what remains of Pompey lies,
Handsome, generous, faithful, wise.
Then shouldst thou, friend, possess a bitch
In nature's noble gifts as rich;

When Death shall take her, let her have
With Pompey here one common grave;
So from their mingled dust shall rise
A race of dogs as good and wise:
Dogs who disease shall never know,
Rheumatic ache or gouty toe;
Nor feel the dire effects of tea,
Nor show decay by cachexy.

For if aright the future Fates I read,

Immortal are the dogs their pregnant dust shall breed.”

The great James Harris was no disdainer of trifles. He wrote the two comical dialogues at the end of " David Simple," an old novel composed by Dr. Collier's sister, who was dead before I knew him, in conjunction with Sally Fielding, whose brother was author of "Tom Jones," not yet obsolete. James Harris gave me his "Hermes" interleaved, that I might write my remarks on it, proving my attention to philosophical grammar, for which study I had shown him signs of capacity, I trust; but Collier would not suffer him to talk metaphysics in my hearing, unless he himself was the respondent. Oh, what conversations! What correspondences were these! never renewed after my wedding day, October 11th, 1763. Dr. Johnson was perhaps justly offended if I even appeared to recollect them, and

in my mother's presence. There was no danger. They had never fallen in Mr. Thrale's way - of course.

But you make me an egotist, and force me to remember scenes and ideas I never dreamed of communicating. The less so, because finding my fortune of late circumscribed in a manner wholly new to me, no doubt remained of all celebrity following my lost power of entertaining company, giving parties, &c.; and my heart prepared to shut itself quite up, convinced there existed not a human creature who cared one atom for poor H. L. P. now she had no longer money to be robbed of. That disinterested kindness does exist, however, my treatment here at Bath evinces daily, and in six months will come if things do but continue in their natural my restoration day. Meanwhile this odd prefatory collection of Biographical Anecdotes are at your

course

service.

It may be not unamusing to compare the foregoing account of her early life with some passages in the Conway MS.

asked me

"A lady once-'t was many years ago to lend her a book out of my library at Streatham Park. A book of entertainment,' said I, of course.' "That I don't know or rightly comprehend,' was her odd answer; I wish for an Abridgment.' 'An Abridgment of what?' 6 That,' she replied, you must tell me, my Dear; for I am no reader like you and Dr. Johnson; I only remember that the last book I read was very pretty, and my husband called it an Abridg

ment.'

ANECDOTE OF CHARLES TOWNSHEND.

31

And if I give some account of my

self here in these few little sheets prefixed to my 'Journey thro' Italy,' you must kindly accept

The Abridgment.""

(The first pages of the manuscript are occupied by an account of her family and early life, substantially the same as that in the "Autobiographical Memoirs.")

66

My heart was free, my head full of Authors, Actors, Literature in every shape; and I had a dear, dear friend, an old Dr. Collier, who said he was sixty-six years old, I remember, the day I was sixteen, and whose instructions I prized beyond all the gayeties of early life nor have I ever passed a day since we parted in which I have not recollected with gratitude the boundless obligations that I owe him. He was intimate with the famous James Harris of Salisbury, Lord Malmesbury's father, of whom you have heard how Charles. Townshend said, when he took his seat in the House of Commons, Who is this man?' to his next neighbour; 'I never saw him before.' 'Who? Why, Harris the author, that wrote one book about Grammar [so he did] and one about Virtue.' 'What does he come here for?' replies Spanish Charles; he will find neither Grammar nor Virtue here.' Well, my dear old Dr. Collier had much of both, and delighted to shake the superflux of his full mind over mine, ready to receive instruction conveyed with so much tender assiduity."

"In a few years (our Letters tell the date) Johnson

was introduced; and now I must laugh at a ridiculous Retrospection. When I was a very young wench, scarce twelve years old I trust, my notice was strongly attracted by a Mountebank in some town we were passing through. What a fine fellow!' said I; dear Papa, do ask him to dinner with us at our inn! least, Merry Andrew, because he could tell us such clever stories of his master.' My Father laughed sans intermission an hour by the dial, as Jacques once at Motley.

or at

Yet did dear Mr. Conway's fancy for H. L. P.'s conversation grow up, at first, out of something not unlike this, when, his high-polished mind and fervid imagination taking fire from the tall Beacon bearing Dr. Johnson's fame above the clouds, he thought some information might perhaps be gained by talk with the old female who so long carried coals to it. She has told all, or nearly all, she knew,

And like poor Andrew must advance,
Mean mimic of her master's dance,
But similes, like songs in love,
Describing much, too little prove.'

So now, leaving Prior's pretty verses, and leaving Dr. Johnson too, who was himself severely censured for his rough criticism on a writer who had pleased all in our Augustan age of Literature, poor H. L. P. turns egotist at eighty, and tells her own adventures."

But the octogenarian egotist (adds the editor of the "Atlantic Monthly ") has something to tell about be

"The fires of his magnificent mind were lighted by coals from ancient altars."- Mr. Justice Story on Milton.

side herself. Here is a passage of interest to the student of Shakspearian localities, and bearing on a matter in dispute from the days of Malone and Chalmers:

"For a long time, then, or I thought it such,— my fate was bound up with the old Globe Theatre, upon the Bankside, Southwark; the alley it had occupied having been purchased and thrown down by Mr. Thrale to make an opening before the windows of our dwelling-house. When it lay desolate in a black heap of rubbish, my Mother, one day, in a joke, called it the Ruins of Palmyra; and after they had laid it down in a grass-plot, Palmyra was the name it went by, I suppose, among the clerks and servants of the brewhouse; for when the Quaker Barclay bought the whole, I read that name with wonder in the Writings." "But there were really curious remains of the old Globe Playhouse, which, though hexagonal in form without, was round within, as circles contain more space than other shapes, and Bees make their cells in hexagons only because that figure best admits of junction. Before I quitted the premises, however, I learned that Tarleton, the actor of those times, was not buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, as he wished, near Massinger and Gower, but at Shoreditch Church. He was the first of the profession whose fame was high enough to have his portrait solicited for to be set up as a sign; and none but he and Garrick, I believe, ever obtained that honour. Mr. Dance's picture of our friend David lives in a copy now in Oxford St., - the character King Richard."