The most remarkable point of comparison between the two translators seems, after all, to be the respective size of the books. We are involuntarily reminded of an epigram designed as a retort on a satirical frontispiece to a periodical paper set on foot by the youths of Westminster school; in which The Flagellator (the name of the journal as well as we can recollect) was represented as placed in scales, and weighing down the Microcosm, an Etonian publication, now curious as the original field in which Mr. Canning fleshed his maiden quill.

What mean ye by this print so rare,
Ye wits, of Eton jealous;
But that your rivals mount in air,
And you are heavy fellows?

The translation of the two cantos (the first is, indeed, shorn of its conclusion) occupies, notes and all, only a slight pamphlet of fifty-four pages; the version of the single canto extends its dimensions to those of a pretty thick closely printed and boarded 8vo. of two hundred and thirty-two pages! The secret of this voluminous dilatation is contained in one word-prattle. First of all we are told in a preface, with very honest and tiresome candour of minuteness, how he was persuaded by one friend," discreetly to blot" such a line; and how another absolutely insisted, like the Quintilius of Horace, that he should send a particular rhyme, in a particular stanza, to the anvil; and how he was induced to take this advice, and what a singular circumstance it was, that so strange a piece of dissonance should have escaped his own sagacity of detection; and what a sad thing it would have been, if his friend had not been thus penetrating, thus honest, and thus inexorable in his hortatory decision that the said rhyme must come out. The reader may be curious to see the amended stanza, and we are the less scrupulous in gratifying his very natural curiosity, as after having been forewarned of the happy discovery and docile amendment, he will not be likely to fall into the awkward mistake which we did ourselves; and fancy that this unfortunate "bellman's rhyme" was all the while left behind!

BREECH;

Then cries, "die, brute!" (and so he does) the while

Rinaldo wipes his blade and stops his toil.

The acknowledgement for this kind turn occurs in a pompously drawling address of thanks to all at once, and to each one," who had severally, at fit and diverse seasons, bestowed upon him their contribution of critical counsel, which he takes care to specify as "good natured," and such, judging from the book, (we will not call it libellum,) now it is "pumice expolitum," we should infer it to have been. This mingled tribute of gratitude and compliment spreads through six pages. There seems to be a little more of bustling complacency and protesting humility than so very trivial an occasion demands; and we doubt whether his Lordship has formed exactly a correct estimate either of Forteguerri's importance or of his own. Passing over the introduction, which contains too much about Pope's Rape of the Lock, with a threat, happily not carried into effect, of discussing the Dunciad, and which has rather too little information on the subject of those seriocomic poems of Italy, which are in a great degree novel to the generality of English readers; we get at last to the notes, and we must, once for all, profess that we never, in the course of our multifarious intercourse with the living and dead, have been forced to sit out such a tête-à-tête of unmerciful garrulity. There are notes upon the notes, and notes on the notes upon the notes; they are ushered into their places with a sort of jaunty ceremony of indication by a hand and ruffle: his Lordship, it cannot be concealed, has taken out a patent for discoursing " de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis." He is one of those goodnaturedly narrative gentlemen, to whom a small hint will furnish many

ideas, all flying off at greater or smaller distances from the original root of the subject in hand, but with about as much natural dependency as the beautiful horse which the philosopher Godwin supposed might, by possibility, spring out of the muzzle of a musket. On the couplet of stanza 94, note 95,

That once in France unchristian war-isseen,

And Paris close besieged by heathenish

Sa-ra-cen,

we are considerately told that the "two last syllables are supernumerary:" but the note that follows, of twenty-seven pages, was evidently brought in à propos des bottes; and the rhyme was devised on purpose to introduce a dissertation on syllabic feet and systems of metreold English, French, and German; including a fairly transcribed copy of the whole of Cardinal Wolsey's speech, in order to exemplify the fact of "Shakspeare" having "in a few of his plays, particularly in Henry VIII. studied to make use of this supernumerary or eleventh syllable;" as was the common practice of every dramatic writer besides. What, indeed, a note of his Lordship may produce, is as little likely to be conjectured as the contents of the walnut in the fairy tale; which comprehended a successive involution of inconceivable articles, beginning with a bale of cambric, a hundred yards long, which might be drawn through the hoop of a gold ring, and ending with a little dog, reclined on cotton, with a rose in his ear.

In stanza 58, the couplet of the original

Ma lasciam questi, e cerchiam di Rinaldo Di cui non v'è, chi in sella stia piu saldo, is rendered

but let them for a time spur on As best them suits; we'll now go join Rinaldo,

Bold as my cousin grim, great Arcibaldo : and this is to introduce a long genealogical flourish about Archibald Douglas, distinguished in Scottish history by the different appellations of "Archibald the great Earl of Angus," and "Archibald Bell-theCat;" and to be hereafter distinguished in British annals, as of kin to the translator of Forteguerri.

The general character of these notes, so pertinently illustrative of Ricciardetto, may be defined by the term twaddling: take as an instance, note 48, stanza 19,

And all were heathens rank.

"So" (as the commentators on Shakspeare express themselves) in the popular catch written, I guess, by an Englishman,* "The first he was an Irishman, The second was a Scot; The third he was a Welshman, And all were knaves I wot."

My dear South Britons, (for you are dear to me in the aggregate, and many among you are personally so, who have survived those nearest and most dear,) forgive the petulancy of this remark; and you, ye Americans, descendants of the ancient British stock, though not always to your cis-atlantic cousins, forgive me if

partive seemed disposed to quiz your frequent

use, uncouth and unvernacular, of the verb "to guess." I own I love my native country; I cannot love the man who does not love his: I love my native shire, my native parish, the silver stream near to whose verdant banks I first drew

breath; but I also love and admire old England. What other country can boast such military and naval skill and prowess as England can in her Marlboroughs, her Nelsons, and her Wellingtons (which last happen to be Irish); such powers of intellect as she can in her Bacons, her Newtons, and her Shakspeares !

This is good: but note 83 is not much amiss.

Mine host observes his love of butter'd toast.

The fashionable English innkeepers, whose accomplished daughters learn to draw, sing, play, and speak what they

call French, and even Italian, would not reckon the love of buttered toast any great English regale, and an Italian Anglomanc sign of gentility, though it is a favourite may very well be supposed to consider it as a dainty.**

French like that of the Prioress in the

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: "And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly After the scole of Stratford at the Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe." v. 124.

The sarcasm here cannot affect many worthy individuals, whose respectable conduct in their calling, affords the traveller in England conveniencies and comforts to be met with in no other country; nor their sons and daughters, on whom many of them may have been able, from their fortunes, honourably acquired, to bestow an

education, particularly in languages, both becoming and ornamental, and often useful to persons in their situation of life.

Garrulus hunc quando consumet cunque. We have felt it to be our duty to repress so very alarming a propensity to swell a book; but though we wish Lord Glenbervie a little more facility in his verse, and a good deal more brevity as well as pertinency in his prose, we are not at all disposed to deny his claims to a very respectable

portion of gentlemanly scholarship as well as taste. We cannot, however, agree with him in his opinion (however excusable in a laudator temporis acti) as to the refinement of Pope:Pope lived in a gross age, and was a gross writer: and as to the polished Rape of the Lock, will his Lordship

undertake to read it aloud, without dropping any line or expression, to any given party of ladies?

The book is elegantly printed, but deformed by staring, disagreeable, unmeaning outlines, by the caricaturist North.

RICHARD CAMBRIDGE, the son of a Turkey merchant, descended from a family long settled in Gloucestershire, was born in London, on the fourteenth of February, 1717. His father dying soon after his birth, the care of his education devolved on his mother and his maternal uncle, Thomas Owen, Esq. a lawyer who had retired from practice to his seat in Buckinghamshire, and who, having no children of his own, adopted his nephew. At an early age he was sent to Eton, where, among his schoolfellows and associates, were Gray, West, Jacob Bryant, the Earl of Orford, and others eminent for wit or learning. Here he contracted not only a literary taste and habits of study, but that preference for the quiet amusements of a country life, which afterwards formed a part of his character. In 1734 he was removed from Eton to Oxford, and admitted a gentleman commoner of St. John's College. On the marriage of the Prince of Wales, two years after, he contributed some verses to the Congratulatory Poems from that University. A ludicrous picture, which he draws of academical festivity, betrays the future author of the Scribleriad :

In flowing robes and squared caps advance, Pallas their guide, her ever-favour'd band; As they approach they join in mystic dance, Large scrolls of paper waving in their hand; Nearer they come, I heard them sweetly

sing.

He left the University without taking a degree, and in 1737 became a member of Lincoln's Inn. In four years after he married the second daughter of George Trenchard, Esq. of Woolveton, in Dorsetshire, who was Member of Parliament for Poole, and son of Sir John Trenchard, Secretary of State to King William. Retiring to his family mansion of Whitminster, in Gloucestershire, on the banks of the Stroud, he employed himself in making that stream navigable to its junction with the Severn, in improving his buildings, and in ornamenting his grounds, which lay pleasantly in the rich vale of Berkeley. Here his happiness was interrupted by the death of one among his former playmates at Eton, whom he had most distinguished by his affection. This was Captain Berkeley, an officer, who in those happy times, when military men were not yet educated apart from scholars, had added to his other accomplishments a love of letters, and who fell in the battle of Fontenoy. This affliction discouraged him from proceeding in a poem on Society, which he had intended as a memorial of their friendship. The opening does not promise well enough to make us regret its discontinuance.

At Whitminster he had the honour of entertaining the Prince of Wales, with his consort, and their daughter the late Duchess Dowager of Brunswick, then on a visit to Lord Ba

thurst at Cirencester, The royal guests were feasted in a vessel of his own constructing, that was moored on a reach of the Severn; and the Prince gratified him by declaring, that he had often made similar attempts on the Thames, but never with equal success. To the exercise of mechanical ingenuity in improving the art of boat-building, he added uncommon skill in the use of the bow and arrow, and had assembled all the varieties of those instruments that could be procured from different countries.

He appears to have possessed, in an unusual degree, the power of suddenly ingratiating himself with those who conversed with him. A gentleman who had never before seen him, and who had reluctantly accompanied the Prince in his aquatic expedition, was so much pleased with Cambridge, as to be among the foremost to acknowledge his satisfaction; and having been introduced by William Whitehead, then tutor to the Earl of Jersey's eldest son, into the house of that nobleman, he soon became a welcome guest, and formed a lasting friendship with one of the family, who was afterwards Earl of Clarendon. In the number of his intimates he reckoned Bathurst, afterwards Chancellor, with whom an acquaintance, begun at Eton, had been continued at Lincoln's Inn; Carteret, Lyttelton, Grenville, Chesterfield, Yorke, Pitt, and Pulteney. In order to facilitate his intercourse with such associates, and perhaps in conformity with the advice of his departed friend Berkeley, who had recommended London as the proper stage for the display of his poetical talent, he was induced to pass two of his winters in the capital; but finding that the air of the town was injurious to his health, in 1751 he purchased a residence at Twickenham. He had now another opportunity of showing his taste for rural embellishment, in counteracting the effects of his predecessor's formality, in opening his lawns and grouping his trees with an art that wore the appearance of negligence. An addition to his fortune by the decease of his uncle Mr. Owen, who left him his name together with his estate, enabled him to gratify these propensities.

By

some of his powerful friends he had been urged to obtain a seat in Parliament, and addict himself to a public life; but he valued his tranquillity too highly to comply with their solicitations. A sonnet addressed to him by his friend Edwards, author of the Canons of Criticism, and which is not without elegance, tended to confirm him in his resolve..

In the year of his removal to Twickenham, the Scribleriad was published, a poem calculated to please the learned rather than the vulgar, and with respect to which he had observed the rule of the nonum prematur in annum. To The World, the periodical paper undertaken soon after by Moore, and continued for four years, he contributed twenty-one numbers. Though determined against taking an active part in public affairs, yet he showed himself to be far from indifferent to the interests of his country. Her maritime glory more peculiarly engaged his attention. Anson, Boscawen, and indeed nearly all the distinguished seamen of his day, were among his intimates or acquaintance; and he assisted some of the principal navigators in drawing up the relations which they gave to the world of their discoveries. In 1761, he was prompted by his apprehensions, that the nation was not sufficiently on her guard against the endeavours making by the French to deprive her of her possessions in the East, to publish a History of the War upon the Coast of Coromandel. The great work undertaken by Mr. Orme prevented him from pursuing the subject.

Continuing thus to pass his days in the enjoyment of domestic happiness and learned ease, surrounded by a train of menials grown grey in his service, exercising the rites of hospitality with uniform cheerfulness, and performing the duties of religion with exemplary punctuality, respected by the good and admired by the ingenious, he reached his eightythird year with little inconvenience from the usual infirmities of age. His faculties then declining, he was dismissed by a gradual exhaustion of his natural powers, and resigning his breath without a sigh on the seventeenth of September, 1802—

Having always lived in an union of the utmost tenderness with his family, he exhibited a pleasing instance of the " ruling passion strong in death." "Having passed," says his

son,

66 Ia considerable time in a sort of doze, from which it was thought he had hardly strength to revive, he awoke, and upon seeing me, feebly articulated How do the dear people do?' When I answered that they were well; with a smile upon his countenance, and an increased energy of voice, he replied, I thank God; and then reposed his head upon his pillow, and spoke no more."

He was buried at Twickenham, where, on inquiring a few years ago, I found that no monument had been raised to his memory.

He left behind a widow, a daughter, and two sons. From the narrative of his life written by one of these, the Reverend Archdeacon Cambridge, and prefixed to a handsome edition of his poems and his papers in The World, the above account has been chiefly extracted.

Chesterfield, another of the contributors to The World, inserted in it a short character of him under the name of Cantabrigiensis, introduced by an encomium on his temperance ; for he was a water-drinker.

That he was what is commonly termed a newsmonger, appears from the following laughable story, told by the late Mr. George Hardinge, the Welch Judge:

I wished upon some occasion to borrow a Martial. He told me he had no such book, except by heart. I therefore inferred, that he could not immediately detect me. Accordingly I sent him an epigram which I had made, and an English version of it, as from the original. He commended the latter, but said, that it wanted the neatness of the Roman. When I undeceived him, he laughed, and forgave me.

It originated in a whimsical fact. Mr. Cambridge had a rage for news; and living in effect at Richmond, though on the other side of the Thames, he had the command of many political reporters. As I was then in professional business at my chambers, I knew less of public news than he did; and every Saturday, in my way from Lincoln's Inn to a villa of my own near him, called upon him for the news from

Deciano salutem.

In

In his preface to the Scribleriad, which betrays great solicitude to explain and vindicate the plan of the poem, he declares that his intention is " to show the vanity and uselessness of many studies, reduce them to a less formidable appearance, and invite our youth to application, by letting them see that a less degree of it than they apprehend, judiciously directed, and a very few books indeed, well recommended, will give them all the real information which they are to expect from human science." The design was a laudable one. the poem itself we feel the want of some principal event, on the developement and issue of which the interest of the whole may turn; as in those patterns of the mock-heroic, the Secchia Rapita, the Lutrin, and the Rape of the Lock; an advantage, which these poems in some measure derive from having been founded in fact; for however trifling the incident by which the imagination of the poet may have been first excited, when once known or believed to be true, it communicates something of its own reality to all the fictions that grow out of it. The hero too is one of the dμɛvηvà кápηva; or rather is but the shadow of a shade; for he has taken the character of Martinus Scriblerus, as he found it in the Memoirs of that unsubstantial personage. The adventures indeed in which the author has engaged him, though they did not require much power of invention, are yet sufficiently ludicrous; and we join, perhaps, more willingly in the laugh,