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Rambouillet, (Catherine de Vivonne, Dame d'Angennes, Marquis de,) married in 1600, Charles Marquis de Rambouillet, &c. She rendered herself celebrated by the protection which she afforded to letters. The house which she inhabited at Paris, known by the name of the hôtel de Rambouillet, was as it were the sanctuary whither all persons of note resorted to pay homage to her merit. She received there a crowd of visitors distinguished by their talents and their breeding; and persons of all ranks, of all ages, of each sex, and of every country, were anxious to be admitted. It was frequented as a school of virtue and of taste; virtue appeared there with all its most winning attractions; and taste was accompanied with that delicacy which gives all its value to knowlege. The hôtel de R. was a tribunal where the merit of persons and performances received final judgment. -Society was deprived of this illustrious lady, who united the qualities of the mind to those of the heart, in 1665.'

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Geoffrin, (Madame) a protectress of men of letters, was born in 1669. She employed the considerable fortune left to her by her husband in collecting around her, and in succouring, learned men and artists. To bring to notice obscure merit, to induce men in power to make amends for injustice, or to relieve misfortune, constituted her fond employment. She founded her happiness on her judgment, and derived her pleasures from her goodness. A lover of children, she was interested by the innocence and weakness of infancy," I wish (said she) that the question were put to all who are convicted of capital offences; Did you love children? I am sure that they would answer, no."-Her taste led her to prefer simplicity in all things; and she had even caused the plane to pass over the sculptured parts of her rooms. Nothing in relief was her motto.-The name of savante, which foreigners acquainted with her celebrity and connections some times gave to her, seemed to startle her; and she respectfully declined the distinction, candidly avowing that she was not worthy of it. A lively imagination inspired her with happy expressions; she compared her mind to a folded roll, which is gradually laid open; "and probably at my death," said she, "the roll shall not have been wholly unfolded."

Perhaps no person ever possessed a mind that could better accommodate itself to all situations. Struck with the palsy, and confined to her bed for more than a year, she appeared as tranquil as if she had never known any other kind of life. In this state, she employed herself in acts of beneficence; and this was the only one of her antient habits which she would have found it difficult to renounce.She closed her career at Paris in 1777. There appeared in the same year three eulogiams on her, written by d'Alembert, Thomas, and Morellet.'

We have selected the two preceding notices, because the species of female to which the subjects of them belong is little known in England; at least it has escaped our knowlege if many females of haut ton in this country admit men of letters to their private parties. If a few of these fine personages permit certain favoured literati to lose themselves in the multi

tudes

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tudes with which they are ambitious of crowding their apartments twice or thrice in the winter, they think that they do them great honor.

The present work.may prove convenient to the labouring class of literary men, as pointing out sources which may furnish the means of assisting and abridging their toil; and whence they may pillage with a fair chance of not being discovered.

ART. XIV. Inscriptionis Phenicia Oxoniensis nova Interpretatio. Austore J. D. AKERBLAD. 8vo. PP 31. Paris. Imported by De Boffe.

THE inscription which is the subject of this learned dissertation is copied from one of the Oxford Marbles, and may be found among the XXXIII Phoenician epitaphs given by Dr. Pocock, in his Description of the East (Vol. ii. p. 213); and a fac simile of the stone, on a diminished scale, exhibiting the shape and arrangement of the characters forming the inscription, is given in a copper-plate at the end of this pamphlet, together with a Phoenician alphabet. This curious morsel of antiquity has long attracted the attention and exercised the ingenuity of scholars, but they are very far from being unanimous in their reading and interpretation of it; which is indeed no matter of surprize, where so much obscurity and uncertainty prevail.

Four different modes of explic tion are presented to the reader in these pages; the first is that of the Abbé Barthelemy, which was published in the History of the Academy of Inscriptions, Tom. xxx. p 405, and which is exhibited in Hebrew characters corresponding to the Phoenician on the marble. It is as follows:

Jo.

אגם עבדאסר בן עבדססם בי חד מצבת שלם בחיי ..... נאת על משכב נחתי לעלם כלא שתת אשתי מתרת בת תאם ..... בן עבדמלך

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Je dors d'un sommeil eternel, moi Abdassar fils d'Abdssissim fils de Chad, (de la ville) de Tsabeth, Après avoir passé tranquillement ma vie, je ne suis reposé dans le tombeau pour la suite des siècles. Mathrath mon pouse, fille de Tham....fils d'Abdmelec, a apolé ce monument.'

It appeared, however, to our countryman Mr. Swinton, that the Abbé had completely misunderstood the meaning of this epitaph; and in the Philosophical Transactions, Vol. liv. p. 411, he reprobates the interpretation of it in the Abbé's memoir, and substitutes a new one of his own. Our readers will not expect us minutely to point out the variations of the two explications of these learned men; it is sufficient to 1.

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mark that they differ at the very threshold. The first word which Barthélémy read D, and apprehended to signify dormiam or dormio, I sleep, Mr. Swinton reads anae or orac, and supposes to mean onyx or marble; and he exhibits the inscription in four breaks or sections, annexing also his translation, thus:

אנך עבדאסר בן עבדססס בן חר - מצבת למב חיי כ שנאת עלס מכב - נחתי לעלם כלא

מתי לאמת - בס תרת בת תאם בן עבדמלך

Quæ latinitate donata significare ait Swintonus: Marbor Abdasari filii Abdesami fiüi Hhuri - Lapis sepulcralis Lembi (vel Lemebi) qui vixit vicenos annos sæculi doloris (id est, vita infeliciter acta) — descendunt in æternum carcerem sepulchri mortui hi Amathuntis (seu potiùs occisi hi Amathusii)-monumentum structura est domûs (vel familia) Tami filü

Abdmeleci.

With this analyis and explication of Mr. Swinton, M. AKERBLAD is as little satisfied, as Mr. Swinton was with that of the Abbé; and it is remarkable that this new interpreter differs from both his predecessors in the outset. He neither reads DJ nor understands as meaning marmor, but considers it as the same with the Hebrew word ego, which the Phoenicians after the Egyptians pronounce anoc, the final jod being omitted. After having gone word by word through the inscription, he places it, according to his hypothesis, entire before the reader, in Hebrew characters; adding occasionally a jod or a vau, which may be supposed to have been omitted in a Phoenician epitaph:

אנכי עבדאסר בן עבדססס בן חר מצבת למי בחיי יפנאת על משכב נחתי לעולם כלא שתי לאשתי עשתרת בת תאם בן עבדמלך

Quæ, nullâ habitâ ratione latinitatis, ad verbum ferè reddi pos. sunt: Ego Abedas arus filius Abedsusami filii Churi, monumentum illi quæ, me vivente, discessit à placido meo thalamo in æternum, posui, (nempe) uxori mea Astarti filie Taami filii Abedmeleci.”

M. AKERBLAD says that this inscription is written in the Hebrew dialect, or in one nearly approaching it; and that almost all the words, excepting only D, are to be found in the Hebrew bible. He observes, also, that all those inscriptions which were discovered by Pocock in the isle of Cyprus, at least those which he can understand, are in the Hebrew language; and that the Phoenician coins, the reading on which is undisputed, have on them Hebrew words. Indeed it is maintained by Bochart that, in antient times, the Phoenician and Hebrew languages were nearly the same; and the monu

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ments discussed in the work before us, but not known to him; are supposed to give force and strength to this opinion.

The three lines composing this epitaph are supposed to be in some kind of metre or rhythm.

As to the age of the inscription; M. AKERBLAD conjectures that it was executed before the taking of Cyprus by the first of the Lagides, viz. full CCC years before the Christian æra. Should any one, (says he) on account of the extreme antiquity of the language, be disposed to assign to it an earlier period by a hundred years, I shall not dispute the point with him.'

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At the end of this dissertation, is subjoined an amended explanation founded on new conjectures by the Abbe Barthélémy, contained in his Lettre à M. le Marquis Olivieri, au sujet de quelques monumens Phéniciens; Paris 1766. It is as follows:

"Moi Abdassar fils d'Abdsissem fils de Char ou de Hhour.... je me suis reposé sur le lit (ou dans le tombeau) pour la suite des siècles. (Moi) Astarte fille de Tham fils d'Abdmelec, ai posé (ce monument.")

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Having exhibited, as briefly as we were able, the substance of this pamplalet, we shall not longer detain the reader in his tadiis Pheniciis: but shall dismiss him with the address of M. AKERBLAD: Thou haft here four different interpretations; take thy choice; or, if neither pleases, give a new one of thy own. Another pamphlet by this author, on the Ægyptian inscription at Rosetta, was intended for notice in this place, but want of room obliges us to poftpone it.

ART. XV. La Veuve de Catane, i. e. The Widow of Catania. By M. CORDIER DE LAUNAY. 8vo. pp. 90. Berlin. 1803. Imported by De Boffe. Price 2s. 6d.

YOUNG widow of Catania may be A supposed to "consume with more than Etna's fire;" or, in plain English, to be desperately in love with a handsome French Emigrant, whom the storms of the Revolution had driven into Sicily but is it honourable gallantry to receive the favours of the Sicilian lady, and then to expose her frailty? Supposing this intrigue to be founded in fact, M. DE LAUNAY is open to reproof from the fair sex; and he seems indeed aware of this; for towards the end he endeavours to throw over the narrative the flimsy veil of a fairy tale. As a love story, it is of the common kind; save and except that the author makes the Sicilian widow to carry her jealousy to so wild an excess as to poison the lover's dog, and that too in a very tender moment.

Mor

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To the REMARKABLE PASSAGES in this Volume.

N. B. To find any particular Book, or Pamphlet, see the
Table of Contents, prefixed to the Volume.

A

Aristotle, character of his meta-
physics, 524.

ABBA THULLE, King of Article, definitive, arguments re-

the Pelew Islands, receives
the news of Lee Boo's death,
25.

Abbot, of Fountain's Abbey, ac-
cused of keeping six whores,

210.

Admiralty, Mr. Pitt's attack on,
repelled, 315.
Africa, climate of, particulars rel.
to, 81. Commerce of, 89.
Africans, remarks on the diseases
of, 280–284.

Aldini, Sig. his Galvanic experi-
ments, 197.

Alexander the Great forbids the
impression of his effigies on
coin, 151.
Alston Moor, historical particu-
lars of, 208.
Ambuscade frigate, mode of reco-
vering her, 67.
America, North, history of its
early colonization, 340-348.
grounds of the contest
respecting, between Great Bri-
tain and France, 347.

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view of its literature, 390.
Amiens, Treaty of, reflections on,
169.
Animation, suspended, utility of

Galvanism in cases of, 203.
Ants, mem. on their chemical na-

ture, 504.
Approaches to a house, rem. on the
mode of forming them, 238.
Architect, qualifications and duty
of, 352, 353..
Architecture, various rem. respect-
ing its principles, 349-358.
APP. REV. VOL. XLIV.

specting its use in the Greek
language, 402-407.
Austen, Lady, and Mrs. Unwin,
their differences amicably ter-
minated, 243.

Authors, American, characterized,
390.

B

Bank of England, question re-
specting its restriction of cash-
payments, 320. 437.
Bankers, among the Greeks, ac-
count of, 149.

Barthélémy, M. his explication of
the Phoenician inscription, 542

-544.

Beetles, a new species of, 502.
Behaviour, rules for, laid down
by Lord Chatham, 178.
Birth-day, Cowper's verses' on
that of a young lady, 248.
Bishop, contrasted anecdotes of
an Irish and an English Dio-
cesan, 239, note.
Blennius Saliens, descript. of that
species of fish, 256.
Blood-bounds of Cuba, descrip
tion of, 399.

Boat, double, successfully con-
structed in England, 16.
Bolingbroke, Lord, rem. on his
writings, by Lord Grenville,
180.

Bonaparte, his massacre of the
Turkish garrisons asserted,

118.

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