VIRESCIT VULNERE VIRTUS. For injur'd Virtue, trampled on, revives; More beauteous seems, and by oppression thrives! WEIGHT OF REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS. On the 10th of August, 1778, the American officers at West Point were weighed, with the following result: Only three of the eleven weighed less than two hundred pounds a result which does not confirm the Abbé Raynal's theory of the deterioration of mankind in America. THE "PERCY ANECDOTES." The Percy Anecdotes, published in forty-four parts, in as many months, commencing in 1820, were compiled by "Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery of Mont Benger." So said the title-pages, but the names and the locality were supposé. Reuben Percy was Mr. Thomas Byerley, who died in 1824: he was the brother of Sir John Byerley, and the first editor of the Mirror, commenced by John Limbird in 1822. Sholto Percy was Mr. Joseph Clinton Robertson, who died in 1852: he was the projector of the Mechanics' Magazine, which he edited from its commencement to his death. The name of the collection of Anecdotes was not taken from the popularity of the Percy Reliques, but from the Percy Coffee-house in Rath bone Place, where Byerley and Robertson were accustomed to meet to talk over their joint work. The idea was, however, claimed by my clever master and friend, Sir Richard Phillips, who stoutly maintained that it originated in a suggestion made by him to Dr. Tilloch and Mr. Mayne, to cut the anecdotes from the many years' files of the Star newspaper, of which Dr. Tilloch was then editor, and Mr. Byerley assistant editor; and to the latter overhearing the suggestion, Sir Richard contested, might the Percy Anecdotes be traced. I have not the means of ascertaining whether Sir Richard's claim is correct; and I should be equally sorry to reflect upon his statement as upon that of Mr. Byerley, my predecessor in the editorship of the Mirror. The Percy Anecdotes were among the best compilations of their day: their publisher, Mr. Thomas Boys, of Ludgate Hill, realized a large sum by the work; and no inconsiderable portion of their success must be referred to Mr. Boys's excellent taste in their production the portrait illustrations, mostly engraved by Fry, were admirable. JOHN TIMBS. MONKISH VERSE. The merit of this fine specimen will be seen to be in its being at once acrostic, mesostic, and telestic. Inter cuncta micans Expellit tenebras Sic cæcas removet Vivificansque simul Solem justitiæ Igniti sidera cœlI E toto Phoebus ut orbE; Vero præcordia motV, The following translation preserves the acrostic and mesostic, though not the telestic form of the original: In glory rising see the sun, Illustrious orb of day, Upon the deaden'd heart: "SPEECH GIVEN TO MAN TO CONCEAL HIS THOUGHTS." 275 SWIFT AND ADDISON. The biographer and the critic, down to the pamphleteer and the lecturer, have united in painting St. Patrick's immortal Dean in the blackest colors. To their (for the most part) unmerited scandal and reproach thus heaped upon his memory (as little in accordance with truth as with Christian charity) we oppose the following brief but emphatic testimony on the bright side of the question, of the virtuous, the accomplished Addison :— To Dr. Jonathan Swift, The Most Agreeable Companion, The Truest Friend, and the Greatest Genius of his Age, This Book is presented by his most Humble Servant the Authour. The above inscription, in the autograph of Addison, is on the fly-leaf of his Remarks on several Parts of Italy, &c., 8vo. 1705. "SPEECH GIVEN TO MAN TO CONCEAL HIS THOUGHTS." This remarkable saying, like most good things of that kind, has been repeated by so many distinguished writers, that it is impossible to trace it to any one in particular, in the precise form in which it is now popularly received. I shall quote, in succession, all those who appear to have expressed it in words of the same or a nearly similar import. I cannot help thinking that the first place should be assigned to Jeremy Taylor, as he must have had the sentiment clearly in view in the following sentence: There is in mankind an universal contract implied in all their intercourses; and words being instituted to declare the mind, and for no other end, he that hears me speak hath a right in justice to be done him, that, as far as I can, what I speak be true; for else he by words does not know your mind, and then as good and better not speak at all. Next we have David Lloyd, who in his State Worthies, thus remarks of Sir Roger Ascham : 276 (( SPEECH GIVEN TO MAN TO CONCEAL HIS THOUGHTS." None is more able for, yet none more averse to, that circumlocution and contrivance where with some men shadow their main drift and purpose. Speech was made to open man to man, and not to hide him; to promote commerce, and not betray it. Dr. South, Lloyd's contemporary, but who survived him more than twenty years, expresses the sentiment in nearly the same words: In short, this seems to be the true inward judgment of all our politick sages, that speech was givin to the ordinary sort of men, whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it. The next writer in whom this thought occurs is Butler, the author of Hudibras. In one of his prose essays on the "Modern Politician," he says: He (the modern politician) believes a man's words and his meanings should never agree together: for he that says what he thinks lays himself open to be expounded by the most ignorant; and he who does not make his words rather serve to conceal than discover the sense of his heart, deserves to have it pulled out, like a traitor's, and shown publicly to the rabble. In Gulliver's Travels (1727), Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, the minister, Gulliver says, "applies his words to all uses except to the indication of his mind." Young has the thought in the following couplet on the duplicity of courts:— When Nature's end of language is declin'd, And men talk only to conceal their mind. From Young it passed to Voltaire, who, in the dialogue entitled "Le Chapon et la Poularde," makes the former say of the treachery of men :- Ils n'emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées. Goldsmith about the same time, in his paper in The Bee, produces it in the well known words: Men who know the world, hold that the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants, as to conceal them. Then comes Talleyrand, who is reported to have said : La parole n'a été donnée à l'homme que pour déguiser sa pensée. The latest writer who adopts this remark without acknowledg ment is, I believe, Lord Holland. In his Life of Lope de Vega he says of certain Spanish writers, promoters of the cultismo style: Those authors do not avail themselves of the invention of letters for the purpose of conveying, but of concealing, their ideas. From these passages it will be seen that the germ of the thought occurs in Jeremy Taylor; that Lloyd and South improved upon it; that Butler, Young, and Goldsmith repeated it; that Voltaire translated it into French; that Talleyrand echoed Voltaire's words; and that it has now become so familiar an expression that any one may quote it, as Lord Holland has done, without being at the trouble of giving his authority. PLUM-PUDDING. Southey, in his Omniana, vol. i. p. 7, quotes the following receipt for English plum-pudding, as given by the Chevalier d'Arvieux, who in 1658 made a voyage in an English forty-gun ship:- Leur pudding était détestable. C'est un composé de biscuit pilé, ou de farine, de lard, de raisins de Corinthe, de sel, et de poivre, dont on fait une pâte, qu'on enveloppe dans une serviette, et que l'on fait cuire dans le pot avec du bouillon de la viande; on la tire de la serviette, et on la met dans un plat, et on rappe dessus du vieux fromage, qui lui donne une odeur insupportable. Sans ce fromage la chose en elle-même n'est pas absolument mauvaise. WILLIAM COWPER. In the midsummer holidays of 1799, being on a visit to an old and opulent family of the name of Deverell, in Dereham, Norfolk, I was taken to the house of an ancient lady (a member |