THE MISCELLANY. We We present our readers with a second number of our Miscellany. are glad that they (i. e. that many of them) approve the plan. It is something like an imperium in imperio, perhaps, at first sight; only its policy does not jar with the general interests of our wider kingdom of learning. On the contrary, it will enable us to give a variety to our Magazine, by relieving the long essays and more profound disquisitions, by brief, rare, sparkling facts and fancies. We shall thus do a service to ourselves, and afford our more indolent wits an opportunity of sending to us their short compositions (sudden thoughts, or single conceits), which are too diminutive for regular essays, and yet are too good to be lost. Our wish is to offer to our friends (in the apothecary's phrase) an agreeable mixture-where the salt of wit, the acid of satire, the volatile of the imagination, the graceful, the sweet, the liquid flow of melodious rhyme (the true aurum potabile) may meet without neutralizing each other. This seems all very ambitious, at first sight; but we nevertheless hope to accomplish our end. Our first paper this month is a letter from Professor Hill, who has kindly enabled us to give the Public the name and a few particulars of the author of a very clever poem called the Connubia Florum. This poem was probably the origin of Darwin's celebrated Botanic Garden, and, par consequence, of the Loves of the Triangles, and of Miss Porden's mineral amours. To the Editor of the London Magazine. Sir-The intent of this address to you being to do justice to departed merit; to give to the public the true name of the writer of an ingenious Latin poem, the Connubia Florum, which has hitherto appeared under the disguised signature of Demetrius de la Croix; and to verify a fact, before the evidence of it, which now solely of all that live on earth rests with me, shall become extinct; this motive I hope may gain it a place among your valuable collections. When I was formerly Professor of Botany in the University of Dublin, I had prepared matter for a re-publication of this poem; but desisted when I found my lucubrations superseded by the edition published by Sir Richard Clayton in the year 1791. I was led to this intention by its intrinsic merit (which I think might probably have attracted the notice of Dr. Darwin, and suggested the design of his Botanic Garden), by its relation to the science which I then taught, and because it was the work of an Irishman. This latter is a circumstance of which the public have never been informed; for who could discover DERMUID M'ENCROE in the Helleno-Gallic disguise of Demetrius de la Croix? My knowledge on this point is not received from rumour, but from the personal testimony of Dr. Lionel Jenkins, a learned and judicious physician, who resided for many years in this city, and died about 35 years ago, at a very advanced period of life. With him, a man of the purest integrity, I was well acquainted. He and M'Encroe studied physic together at Paris; and Dr. Jenkins has shown me several letters of his subscribed with his name D. M'Encroe; and containing philosophical and botanical inquiries, and critical remarks on some topics of polite literature. The life of a man engaged in philosophical pursuits cannot be marked by many conspicuous events: but, from the irrefragable testimony of Dr. Jenkins, and of many passages in those letters, it appears, above all doubt, that Dr. M'Encroe was a native of the South of Ireland; that he acquired his school education in the county of Clare or Kerry, where the Latin is almost a vernacular language; and that he passed many years in France, whence I am not informed of his having ever returned to his native home. His friend Jenkins always spoke of him with affectionate remenibrance, and represented him as a man of fine talents and amiable moral character. The poem was printed at Paris in 1727. A copy was given to me by Dr. Jenkins, to whom the author sent it, with a letter, which I have read, requesting his opinion of it. There is not, most probably, any person now living, besides myself, who can with equal certitude and truth attest these anecdotes concerning M'Encroe. The attention with which this poem has been regarded, is the strongest evidence of its worth. I would fain, therefore, indulge a hope, that Sir Richard Clayton may be influenced by this disclosure to reiterate his edition, and to vindicate his country's right to the author of so ingenious a performance. His manes claim that justice from his editor. E. HILL, Reg. Prof. of Physic. Trin. Col. Dublin. Dublin, Dec. 5, 1822. THE FETE-Dieu. 1. By six o'clock all Paris was awake, By seven her population all in motion, 2. And really 'tis a pretty sight to see 3. Perhaps you'd better not; but that's all taste; And some lay most upon the air or dress; 4. But this is a digression: eight o'clock Proclaim'd aloud from every tower and steeple, That Notre Dame, St. Sulpice, and St. Roch, Were sending forth their priests among the people, Loaded with blessings, ready to bestow them On all to whom the morning air might blow them. 5. First, floating banners, moving onward, told A pretty substitute in rose-leaves found, 6. Then cavaliers, dress'd out in all their orders, Looking less humble than perhaps they might; And priests, with crimson robes and golden borders, Their precious charge supported, left and right; And in the rear, which would the most engross you, Devoutly walk'd the Duchesses* and Monsieur. • Berri and Angoulême. 7. Alas! alas! there came a sad mishap; Who could have guess'd,-the sky so clear at seven ?— A flash of lightning, and a thunder clap, Raised all the eyes of devotees to heaven; But two or three drops of rain might well excuse 8. The rain in torrents pour'd, the flowing street For straw and silks was surely far from right; 9. The frankincense and blessings were bestowed THE CHOICE OF A GRAVE. In Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead, Mary Stuart meets Rizzio, and by way of reconciling him to the violence he had suffered, says to him, "I have honoured thy memory so far as to place thee in the tomb of the Kings of Scotland." "How," says the musician, " my body entombed among the Scottish Kings?" "Nothing more true," replies the queen. "And I," says Rizzio, "I have been so little sensible of that good fortune, that, believe me, this is the first notice I ever had of it." I have no sympathy with that feeling, which is now-a-days so much in fashion, for picking out snug spots to be buried in. What is the meaning of such fancies? No man thinks H. H. or says, that it will be agreeable to his dead body to be resolved into dust under a willow, or with flowers above it. No-it is, that while alive he has pleasure in such anticipations for his coxcomical clay. I do not understand it-there is no quid pro quo in the business to my apprehension. It will not do to reason upon of course; but I can't feel about it. I am to blame, I dare say-but I' can only laugh at such under-ground whims. "A good place" in the church-yard!-the boxes!-a front row! but why? No, I cannot understand it: I cannot feel particular on such a subject: any part for me, as a plain man says of a partridge. ON DEDICATIONS. It is not an easy thing to write a good dedication. An inscription seems to me preferable to an address; and the shorter it is the better. The latter mode almost necessarily implies a flattery; or it speaks a humbling of the spirit which nothing can justify but surpassing merit in the person addressed. It is, "Oh! king, live for ever, in these my lines. Let us go hand in hand to immortality, and cheat the bitter malice of the grave." Now this to an unknown patron would amount to the ludicrous; but to Milton, or Shakspeare, or Apollo, such dedication were good: -it is like a votive offering of the first fruits of genius,-like laurels laid upon the altar of a god. And yet I would not deprive men either of their privileges. If they wish to consecrate a poem to their mistress, or to perpetuate a friendship, let them do it; but be it done modestly, discreetly, wisely. A dedication to a lady is graceful; or it may be apt, as to a friend-if he be worthy of it; or to the public-if the author have reason to be grateful; or to a parent-if he owe him respect; or to an enemy-if he owe him an ill turn; or to a creditor-for obvious reasons; or it may even be to the "reader" (that something be tween a friend and the public); or to any body, in short, whom circumstances shall point out, by which a man can either give or receive pleasure, profit, or distinction. Methinks my good-nature here has almost hurt my argument. I have allowed so many exceptions, that the rule or order which 1 set up is in a manner repealed. The exceptio probat regulam," will scarcely help me. What I mean to say, however, is-that inscriptions are better than addresses, and that short dedications are better than long ones. I do not object to the usual tokens of friendship or love; but I war with those gratuitous pieces of flattery which disgraced the pages of the last century. How much better is Keats's (poor Keats! anλeto kaλos Adwvis). How much better is his dedication of Endymion. It is Inscribed to the memory of Thomas Chatterton. I own I like this. It is simple and unaffected. It is fine to compliment the dead thus. No one can accuse us of flattery, or fear, or base selflove. We have nothing to gain or lose. There is no rivalry between us and the grave: there is nothing to be wrung from it,-no applause, no requital. We have only (but that is enough) the honest approbation of our own spirit. Dryden, who was one of the bitterest of satirists, was fulsome in his dedications. One can scarcely help thinking that he often purposely overcharged his battery of praise. Swift's dedication to "Prince Posterity" is good; and one would not moreover quarrel with an author who thus speculates on contingencies.Paley's dedication of his Natural Theology appears to me to be written simply and to the purpose: and Mr. Shelley's dedication of The Cenci is graceful and full of pathos. But the most striking thing of the sort, which I remember at present, is the opening of Machiavelli's dedication (of his Prince') to Lorenzo, the son of Pietro de Medicis. He says: "They that desire to ingratiate themselves with a prince, commonly use to offer themselves to his view with things that he takes most pleasure and delight in. Whereupon, we see that they are many times presented with horses and arms, cloth of gold, precious stones, and such like ornaments, worthy of their greatness. Having then a mind to offer myself to your Magnificence, with some testimonies of my service to you, I found nothing in my whole inventory that I think better of, or more worthy esteem, than the knowledge of great men's actions." And these he accordingly offers to his patron. DICATUS. Lately died at Strasburgh, in the 31st year of his age, the celebrated Italian philosopher POPOLINO. He had been employed on certain poisonous and other pungent experiments, for the benefit of the red Indians and the civilized inhabitants of Antiqua Scotia. His preparations were generally in the shape of a powder (for the sake of its bearing landcarriage), and on applying some of what he conceived to be No. 37 to his nostrils, he fell down and expired in a moment. The world will long have cause to lament the premature decease of this great philosopher and sage. A few particulars of his early life have escaped; and as we believe that they are not generally known in England, we shall lay them before our readers. Pietro Pinto Popolino was born in the neighbourhood of Peschiera, in the north of Italy, in the midst of the cold weather of 1791. His father claimed (and he insisted) on being descended in a right line from the famous Gasco Mendez, formerly one of the self-elected Dukes of Trieste. When very young, scarcely exceeding the tender age of eleven years, young Popolino, it is said, used to sing the verses of Catullus in an extraordinary way, and to accompany them with his violin. It was confidently expected that he would become a shining ornament in the musical circles. One day, however, he became acquainted with two travellers from North Britain, who were regaling themselves with a 'haggis,' or rather an olla podrida, (the landlord was a Spaniard,) and some pickled herrings, in the "public" at Peschiera. These gentlemen took great quantities of snuff, which seemed to enable them to argue with infinite vivacity. Young Popolino begged a pinch, and sneezed. He begged another, and sneezed again. This seemed to him very extraordinary. Begging a third pinch, he put it carefully in a small piece of whity-brown paper, and took it home, with a determination to ascertain what its peculiar virtues were. This trifling incident it was which turned this genius into the road of practical philosophy. A few years afterwards |