His mother was a Protestant, and had infused into his mind her notions on points of faith with such assiduity, that, after a residence in Paris of two or three years, he fled from that city to Heidelberg, for the express purpose of enjoying in freedom his religious opinions. He arrived at that city at the age of fourteen (under the escort of some merchants who were going to Frankfort fair) with recommendatory letters to all the learned there from Isaac Casaubon, with whom he had become intimate at Paris. To oblige his father, he studied civil law under Gothofredus. But his own inclination induced him to avail himself of the permission granted him of perusing the books contained in the library of the Palatinate. To accomplish this purpose, hẻ sat up every third night, and was already pronounced by Casaubon "ad miraculum doctus." His time was employed in comparing printed editions with their MSS. and in transcribing the MSS. not hitherto printed.

He soon discovered that Maximus Planudes had been unfaithful in the office he had undertaken; and put together that collection, which, though unpublished, has ever since been known by the name of Salmasian, and constantly referred to by succeeding commentators.

Various causes prevented Salmasius from publishing his favourite work. Towards the close of life he was in great estimation among the sovereigns of Europe, and, on his return from Sweden, was unfortunately engaged to undertake the defence of the unhappy house of Stuart, which called down upon him the retaliation of Milton, with whom he was in no respect qualified to measure lances. Thus elated by the attentions of the great, and humbled in a contest with an obscure individual, his mind fluctuated between the extremes of grandeur and debasement, and seems for ever to have lost that firm serenity, that just appreciation of its own

powers, which neither aims at things beyond its grasp, nor sacrifices to a temporary repulse the pursuit in which it was formed to excel from inclination and experience.

I cannot conclude without slightly noticing the principal sources from which, (besides the Anthologia) the materials of the ensuing work have been collected. The first is Athenæus, who was an Egyptian, a native of Naucratos, and flourished in the third century. From his extraordinary powers of memory, and from the extensive learning which his works display, he has acquired and merited the title of the Grecian Varro. Of these works, which were numerous, that of the "Deipnosophists" only remains to us, and is alone sufficient to support his character and justify his pre-eminence. To us, at least, it is rendered a most invaluable treasure by the quotations it contains from celebrated works of esteemed authors, and from authors whose names alone would have survived to

us but for the fragments which it preserves. He conveys information in the most pleasing way on the most interesting subjects, the customs, manners, and opinions of the Greeks; and we are likewise indebted to him for several of the poems which the later collectors have inserted in the Anthologia.

Joannes Stobaeus was so called from the place of his birth, Stobæ, in Macedonia. His age is not precisely ascertained, but has been conjectured by Heeren, his commentator, to have been about the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries. He was also a collector of an Anthologia, but on a very different principle from any hitherto mentioned. The instruction of a favourite son was the scope of his labours; and to this we are indebted for both the collections which we have under his name, but which, in all probability, were but separate parts of the same work. They consist of extracts from the most

excellent philosophers, and moral dramatic writers of Greece. To a work containing the united wisdom of the best ages of antiquity, and the most beautiful poetry which the vigorous genius of Athens ever produced, the title of a well-arranged common-place book is perhaps now the strong. est recommendation that can be given; and to such praise are the books of Stobæus entitled. Fragments of near three hundred writers are preserved by him, of whom the greatest number have so nearly suffered their final dissolution, that no vestiges of them remain any where else, particularly those of the many comic writers of Menander's school, which (perhaps beyond any other circumstances) tend to make us regret the cruel depredations of time. I shall, in the course of my present undertaking, present a few of these in an English dress.→→→ Their serious and moral turn, united to a force and energy of expression which entitles them to a very high poetical estimation, will afford a pleasing variety from the