dead!-but is there nothing behind --no motive for all these attacks made by Master Pananti, (who boasts of never being personal, p. 371,) on poor Buonaiuti? It appears at p. 356, that il Signor Taylor created him a poet, and put him over the head of Doctor Filippo Pananti da Mugello ! Applause. "Bravo, da capo, oh bello, benedetto, Oh charming, very good, encor, encor." P. 203. One stanza more, and we have done with Pananti's poetry. He turns Dun. re Seguo quindici dì torno e ritorno, Possibil che quel dì mai non s' incontri? Is in bed, is engaged, l'altro giorno, Is out, not in town, is in the country, Ma il peggio è quando seppero il mio nome, P. 248. A fine, though unintentional, improvement on Ariosto: "Come Ha si tosto in obblio messo il mio nome? Orl. Fur. c. xxv. st. 20. Basta. Catalani is spelled Catilina for the sake of quoting from Cicero---Quousque tandem abutêre, Catilina, patientiâ nostrâ? The learned Doctor Pananti also cites "Cantabit vacuus," which is admirably descriptive of his own singing, and our only objection is to his giving the words to Horace, when they belong to Juvenal. The Romanzo Poetice is made up of cantos on "Mother Goos," the "invisibil girl," and the squabbles of Messrs. TAYLOR, WATERS, D'EGVILLE, &c. Two volumes, 800 pages. What the notes furnish that is likely to amuse the reader, we shall translate. [To be continued.] Letters from an Irish Student in England to his Father in Ireland. 2 Vols. 12mo. Cradock and Joy. 1809. ENGLAND is become so completely a nation of readers, that we have now books for all places and for all seasons. "We live in a printing age, wherein there is no man either so vainely, or factiously, or filthily disposed, but there are crept out of all sorts, onauthorized authors to fill and fit his humor-in a word, scarce a cat can looke out of a gutter, but outstarts a halfepenny chronicler." Martin Marsixtus, 1592. One little volume comes recommended to us as a good post-chaise companion; another is modestly ambitious only of a seat in our parlour-window; and the author of a third will think himself quite content if he can gain a quarterof-an-hour's hearing, in the interval of your waiting for the sound of the dinner-bell. We have also books for our watering-place consumption; and after having purchased a light summer-hat at one shop, we may step into the next, and buy a light summerbook. To such a pitch is this carried, that it will shortly be as attractive a recommendation to a book, as it is to any other commodity, to say that it will stand the test of all seasons and climates. Last summer the public were amused with the makebelieve Letters from England of a fictitious Spaniard; and this year we may hear what an Irishman says of us, who for aught we know is made of the same straw. The Spaniard manufactured a much better book, however, than the Irishman; but all we mean to protest against is the book-making spirit, which is the parent of all these literary wares. Our ancestors, 66 good easy men," thought that books were penned, and they often said so in their title-pages; "Penned by Master Nokes;" or if a compilation, "Newly penned by Master Styles." Now-a-days the scissars is quite as common an appurtenance to an author's (we mean to a book-manufacturer's) writing-desk, as the pen; and there is more good sense in the example in the Latin grammar, "Scribo calamo, I write with a pen," than good people would think. If we go on at this rate of book-making, to say that such and such a book is well or ill cut, is almost all the praise or censure a reviewer can have to bestow: if he has a mind to be complimentary, he may say the book proceeds from the polished scissars of Mr. This, or if abusive, he may talk of the rusty shears of Mr. That. Farther he cannot go. The volumes before us are in truth a complete catchpenny. There is so little uniformity in them, that we have great doubts whether they are not the production of more scissars than one. The proprietors of these writing-machines should have been more careful than they have been, in one instance in the present work, that the instrument of A should not cut what had been already E EVOL. VI.* supplied by that of B. In the 26th and 27th pages of vol. i. we have: "The lower orders in England, I am well informed, exhibit but little of those animated and naturally eloquent expressions, which distinguish our countrymen (the Irish), unless they are exasperated:-I heard two women of the town quarrelling - last night, and one said to the other, whose complexion and features were singularly rubicund and frightful, Your face is a blaze of horror; you look like God's revenge against murder." In the 195th and 196th pages of the second volume, the same anecdote is introduced with rather more pomp, and with an agree able variation of circumstance: it is there thought worthy of a separate title:" Anecdote." This story we believe to be in Joe Miller, where we dare say it is related with still other circumstances. Perhaps as our author is a law-student, he thought it best to declare this anecdote in two counts. However unitarian the author may have been, we have no hesitation in saying that these volumes were never written in "Letters from an Irish Student in England to his Father in Ireland." The letters do not affect to have dates, and letter xx. shall give you as news, something that happened many months before a circumstance only incidentally mentioned in letter x. For instance, the last general election "much amused" the author "lately," in letter xxxvii. whilst he talks of Alexander Davison's being in Newgate in letter xxxii. Book-makers should guard against these little anachronisms. If these letters really are an Irishman's, he knows little of his country, and if a student's, little of law. What right has a professedly superficial writer to bounce out with the following dictum? "There is something more honest and intellectual in the Irish, than in the English assumption of this right of adjudication; for, as the Irish do not judge hastily, they are not often wrong, and very seldom renounce an opinion. On the contrary, the English mob is very rash, and never firm in its decision." Vol. I. p. 99. The Irish never blunder! oh, no! And when our author is talking of the misnomers in announcement, of which English servants are guilty, like every body else who is not inspired with, instead of hearing perhaps quickly whispered, a long name, he exclaims:- "How different in Ireland, where the servants fasten upon a stranger's name with uncommon facility and accuracy!" Vol. ii. p. 238. The Irish student makes a very hasty and prejudiced estimate of the talents of the English bar: "The British bar is crowded with votaries for practice and distinction, hundreds of whom, in all probability, will never even have the felicity of making a half-guinea motion. Upon the whole, I am much disappointed in the talent I expected to find. The best of the English pleaders (he means barristers) would suffer by a comparison with Curran (whose elevation to the Rolls of Ireland I shall for many reasons regret), M'Nally, and others whom I could name in our own country (of our own country, whom I could name.)” Vol. ii. p. 71. This is the conclusion: the following is a sample of his premises : "Sir Vicary Gibbs, the Attorney-general, ranks next to Mr. Garrow as a pleader, (a student should know better what a pleader is,) whose superior he is by many thought, in profound legal knowledge." Vol. ii. p. 69. A student should also know, not to rank Clement's Inn as one of the Inns of Court. The of the anecdotes in these volumes is of a very inaverage ferior and trite quality. The commonest books and newspapers. have been pillaged for them. The original remark of the work is of about the following pitch : "Sir Francis Bacon, afterwards Lord Verulam, presented so many blemishes in his character, so much to admire, and so much to pity and condemn, that we cannot help exclaiming, Poor human nature!' Vol. i. p. 69. The original anecdote of the volumes does not fout the ori ginal remark: "My poor uncle carried his prejudices against the members of the profession I have adopted, too far; for he often used to say to me, after recapitulating a long Chancery suit, in which he had been engaged, after which he had been most terribly fleeced by his solicitor, the story of which said Chancery suit he told me a thousand times, Avoid a lawyer, William, as you would the Devil.' On the contrary, I think the conversation of an able lawyer, in general, very entertaining and en lightened, provided there is not another lawyer in company." Vol. i. p. 70. Some of the second-hand anecdote of the volumes cannot fail to be better; and we shall avail ourselves of a scrap or two, as some relief to our reader's patience. "A few mornings since, a man who had accumulated a genteel independence by keeping cows and selling milk, was found murdered, by some persons unknown, in one of the fields in the vicinity of town, near the road leading to Hampstead. The public curiosity was instantly excited. Crowds flocked to the place where the crime had been committed, not to see the body, for that was removed to the neighbouring house, immediately after it had been discovered; but to view the spot where it had been found, and upon which a small hole had been dug, to point it out more accurately to the eye. "This spot became so much the subject of curiosity, that two or three gin-and-gingerbread merchants erected booths there, and got so much custom from the crowds of persons who flocked to it, that two more of the same fraternity were induced to erect two rival booths, at a little distance from the others, where they dug another hole, and declared that that was the real genuine spot where the poor man was shot, and that the other was all an imposition upon the public." Vol. i. p. 148. "A brother-student told me, that some years since, at the assizes at Exeter, when a celebrated trial for a rape was coming on, the Court was uncommonly crowded with women, many of them very well dressd,and apparently genteel. The judge requested them to withdraw, P which the majority of them retired; but some, in spite of every remonstrance of the tip-staff, persisted in remaining; upon which Sir Vicary (then Mr.) Gibbs got up, and said, My Lord, we may as well proceed, as all the modest women have left the Court.' This well-ap plied remark had its desired effect, and female curiosity sunk [sank] under it, by the complete removal of every female from the Court, except the unfortunate one, who remained to tell the awkward story of the loss of her virginity." Vol. i. p. 209. We very much doubt the truth of the following statement: FASHIONABLE THIEVES. By the bye, it is a fact well known, that some of these fashionable ladies, and of title too, are so much under the dominion of infatuation at the sight of a piece of valuable lace, that they cannot resist clandestinely removing it, whilst the observation of the female attendant at the time, is diverted by her attentions to other customers. To such an extent is this sort of depredation carried, that, at one celebrated milli |