head. As its colour was white, he took it at first sight for a swan, and was concluding his son would be a poet; but, on nearer view, he perceived it to be speckled with black, in the form of letters, and that it was indeed a paper kite which had broke its leash by the impetuosity of the wind. His back was armed with the art military, his belly was filled with physic, his wings were the wings of Quarles and Withers, the several nodes of his voluminous tail were diversified with several branches of science, where the doctor beheld with great joy a knot of logic, a knot of metaphysics, a knot of casuistry, a knot of polemical divinity, and a knot of common law, with a lantern of Jacob Behmen. There went a report in the family that, as soon as he was born, he uttered the voice of nine several animals-he cried like a calf, bleated like a sheep, chattered like a magpie, grunted like a hog, neighed like a foal, croaked like a raven, mewed like a cat, gabbled like a goose, and brayed like an ass; and the next morning he was found playing in his bed with two owls which came down the chimney. His father was greatly rejoiced at all these signs, which betokened the variety of his eloquence and the extent of his learning; but he was more particularly pleased with the last, as it nearly resembled what happened at the birth of Homer.

The day of the christening being come, and the house filled with gossips, the levity of whose conversation suited but ill with the gravity of Dr. Cornelius, he cast about how to pass this day more agreeable to his character; that is to say, not without some profitable conference, nor wholly without observance of some ancient custom.

He remembered to have read in Theocritus, that the cradle of Hercules was a shield; and being possessed of an antique buckler, which he held as a most inestimable relic, he determined to have the infant laid therein, and in that manner brought into the study, to be shown to certain learned men of his acquaintance.

The regard he had for this shield had caused him formerly to compile a dissertation concerning it, proving from the several properties, and particularly the colour of the rust, the exact chronology thereof.

With this treatise, and a moderate supper, he proposed to entertain his guests; though he had also another design, to have their assistance in the calculation of his son's nativity.

He therefore took the buckler out of a case (in which he always kept it, lest it might contract any modern rust), and entrusted it to his housemaid, with orders that, when the company was come, she should lay the child carefully in it, covered with a mantle of blue satin.

The guests were no sooner seated but they

entered into a warm debate about the Triclinium, and the manner of Decubitus, of the ancients, which Cornelius broke off in this manner :

"This day, my friends, I propose to exhibit my son before you, a child not wholly unworthy of inspection, as he is descended from a race of virtuosi. Let the physiognomist examine his features, let the chirographists behold his palm, but, above all, let us consult for the calculation of his nativity. To this end, as the child is not vulgar, I will not present him unto you in a vulgar manner. He shall be cradled in my ancient shield, so famous through the universities of Europe. You all know how I purchased that invaluable piece of antiquity, at the great (though indeed inadequate) expense of all the plate of our family, how happily I carried it off, and how triumphantly I transported it hither, to the inexpressible grief of all Germany. Happy in every circumstance, but that it broke the heart of the great Melchior Insipidus!"

Here he stopped his speech, upon sight of the maid, who entered the room with the child; he took it in his arms, and proceeded :

:

"Behold, then, my child, but first behold the shield; behold this rust, or rather let me call it this precious ærugo; behold this beautiful varnish of time, this venerable verdure of so many ages!" In speaking these words, he slowly lifted up the mantle which covered it inch by inch; but at every inch he uncovered, his cheeks grew paler, his hand trembled, his nerves failed, till on sight of the whole the tremor became universal; the shield and the infant both dropped to the ground, and he had only strength enough to cry out, “O God! my shield, my shield!"

The truth was, the maid (extremely concerned for the reputation of her own cleanliness, and her young master's honour) had scoured it as clean as her hand-irons.

Cornelius sank back on a chair, the guests stood astonished, the infant squalled, the maid ran in, snatched it up again in her arms, flew into her mistress's room, and told what had happened. Down stairs in an instant hurried all the gossips, where they found the doctor in a trance. Hungary-water, hartshorn, and the confused noise of shrill voices, at length awakened him; when, opening his eyes, he saw the shield in the hands of the housemaid. "O woman! woman!" he cried, and snatched it violently from her; "was it to thy ignorance that this relic owes its ruin ? Where, where is the beautiful crust that covered thee so long? where those traces of time, and fingers, as it were, of antiquity? Where all those beautiful obscurities, the cause of much delightful disputation, where doubt and curiosity went hand in hand, and eternally exercised the speculations of the learned? And this the, rude touch of an

ignorant woman hath done away! The curious prominence at the belly of that figure, which some, taking for the cuspis of a sword, denominated a Roman soldier; others, accounting the insignia virilia, pronounce to be one of the Dii Termini; behold she hath cleaned it in like shameful sort, and shown to be the head of a nail. Oh, my shield! my shield! Well may I say with Horace, Non bene relicta parmula.”

The gossips, not at all inquiring into the cause of his sorrow, only asked if the child had no hurt, and cried, "Come, come, all is well; what has the woman done but her duty; a tight cleanly wench, I warrant her: what a stir a man makes about a

15

bason, that an hour ago, before her labour was bestowed upon it, a country barber would not have hung at his shop-door!" "A bason!" cried another; "no such matter; 'tis nothing but a paltry old sconce, with the nozzle broke off." The learned gentlemen, who till now had stood speechless, hereupon looking narrowly on the shield, declared their assent to this latter opinion, and desired Cornelius to be comforted; assuring him it was a sconce, and no other. But this, instead of comforting, threw the doctor into such a violent fit of passion, that he was carried off groaning and speechless to bed; where, being quite spent, he fell into a kind of slumber.

FOR ΑΝ

ANTIQUE PITCHER.

COME, old friend, sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of Old Silenus.

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.

Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's

Vineyards, sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armour

Judged by no o'er-zealous rigour,

Much this mystic throng expresses; Bacchus was the type of vigour, And Silenus of excesses.

These are ancient ethnic revels Of a faith long since forsaken;

Now the satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.

Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,—
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.

Claudius, though he sang of flagons,
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons

Never would his own replenish

Even Redi though he chaunted

Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys, Never drank the wine he vaunted In his dithyrambic sallies.

Then with water fill the pitcher,

Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen ;-
As it passes there between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus.