PATRONAGE OF POETS.

STRATONICE, Queen of Seleucus, had not one hair upon her head; yet, notwithstanding, gave six hundred crowns to a poet who had celebrated her in his verse, and sung that her hair had the tincture of the marigold. (" Caussin's Holy Court.") Very rarely do poets, to whom the use of fiction is allowed, fare so well. Stratonice must have been a woman of taste!

Never was such a patron as Madame Geoffrin to those poets who sung her praises. She was so particularly nice in her taste, that she complimented every such author with a new pair of velvet breeches as a christmas-box! It was calculated by one of her own coterie, that no less than four thousand pair of velvet breeches were worn out in the poetical service of that lady, who was resolved, at least, that the sons of Parnassus should never be sans culottes.

TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

LUIS DE LEON, a Spanish poet, has left us these lines on the real presence, which are well worthy of preservation:

"If this we see be bread, how can it last,
So constantly consum'd, yet always here ?
If this be God, then how can it appear
Bread to the eye, and seem bread to the taste?
If bread, why is it worshipp'd by the baker?
If God, can such a space a God comprise ?
If bread, how is it, it confounds the wise?
If God, how is it that we eat our Maker?
If bread, what good can such a morsel do?
If God, how is it we divide it so ?

If bread, such saving virtue could it give?

If God, how can I see and touch it thus ?

If bread, how could it come from heav'n to us?
If God, how can I look at it and live ?"

WHIG AND TORY.

JACOB TONSON, Dryden's bookseller, was a whig, while the poet was a jacobite. When Dryden had nearly completed his translation of Virgil, it was the bookseller's wish, and that of several of Dryden's friends, that the book should be dedicated to King William: this, however, the poet strenuously refused. The bookseller, however, who had as much veneration for William as Dryden had for James, finding he could not have the dedication he wished, contrived, on re-touching the plate, to have Æneas delineated with a hooked nose,

that he might resemble his favourite prince. This ingenious device of Tonson's occasioned Dryden to insert the following epigram in the next edition of his " Virgil:"

"Old Jacob, by deep judgment sway'd
To please the wise beholders,

Has plac'd old Nassau's hook-nos'd head
On poor Æneas' shoulders.

To make the parallel hold tack,
Methinks there's little lacking;

One took his father pick-a-back,
And t' other sent him packing."

DR. YOUNG.

“A LITTLE after Dr. Young had published his Universal Passion,' the Duke of Wharton made him a present of two thousand pounds for it. When a friend of the Duke's, who was surprised at the largeness of the present, cried out, on hearing it, What! two thousand pounds for a poem?' The Duke smiled, and said, 'It was the best bargain he ever made in his life, for it was fairly worth four thousand.'

"When the Doctor was deeply engaged in writing one of his tragedies, that nobleman made him a very different kind of present.

He procured a human skull, fixed a candle in it, and gave it to the Doctor, as the most proper lamp for him to write tragedy by."

SFENCE.

THE SATIRIST REWARDED.

SEWARD states, that "At one of those disgraces to good breeding and good conduct, called watering-places, in the country, a lady, a few years ago, had a daughter satirized by a miserable poetaster of the place. She came to him soon afterwards, with a horse-whip in her hand, as he was sitting at dinner at a public table, and laid it over his shoulders very handsomely. This, my good friend,' said she, 'is for the first offence; if you choose to repeat it, you may be assured, you shall have a double portion of the wholesome discipline.' The bard took to his heels as fast as he could, and quitted the place soon afterwards, leaving the innocence of the young, the beautiful, and the witty, untainted by the slander of folly and malignity."

66 THE ORDINARY OF CHRISTIAN MEN."

As the contents of this "Ordinary" seem to

us very extraordinary, we give a portion of it to the reader. The title of the book is, "Th'ordinary of Crysten men. By Wynken de Worde, 1502.-Here foloweth the ten paynes of the partye of the body that these dampned suffre in hell, (and every of them devysed in foure,) and so they ben forty paynes.”

"The first is fyre ryght cruelly brennynge,
The second is colde, so much fresynge;

The thyrde, grete cryes of dolour without ceasynge ;
The fourth smoke, the whiche may not in hell be lefte;
The fyfth, odour and stynkynge moch horryble;

The syxte, vysyon of devylles terryble;

The seventh, hungre tourmentynge cruelly;

The eygth, thyrste, the whiche tormenteth in lyke wyse;
The nynth, grete shame and confusyon;
The tenth, in all membres afflyccyon."

DOCTOR GOLDSMITH.

GOLDSMITH was always plain in his appearance; but, when a boy, and immediately after suffering severely from the small-pox, he was very ugly. When he was about seven years of age, a fiddler, who reckoned himself a wit, happened to be playing to a company at Mrs. Goldsmith's house. During a pause between