of selection. He passed nearly a month at Athens most agreeably, except that during part of the time he was confined to his bed by a tertian ague; but he made neither excavations nor discoveries; and Dr. Clarke has left little, in the way of description, to be done by any subsequent traveller. He took the usual rambles, explored the Theseum, the Areopagus, the Parthenon; recited the first Philippic oration upon the very Bema ' of Demosthenes,' in the ears of Athenians who understood not a word of it; traced out the foundations of the Academy, and wandered along the delightful but ungenial banks of the Cephissus; feeling all that it became him to feel as a scholar and classical antiquary on the occasion. He had the advantage of being accompanied in some of his exploratory visits by Mr. Cockerell, who, he informs us, among his other observations on the architecture of the Parthenon, had his attention directed to the entasis or swelling in the columns which Stuart has been unnecessarily reproached with having overlooked.

With a great deal of difficulty he measured them, and found by a straight line stretched from the capital to the base, that this swell at about one third of the height, equalled one inch. That in the

temple of Jupiter at Ægina equalled half an inch, which was in proportion to the other; so that he had no doubt but that there was a general rule on this point with the ancient architects. This protuberance is so delicate that it must be ascertained by measurement: the eye alone cannot perceive it. The fact had escaped Stuart and our other most accurate observers.'

Mr. Hughes joins in the general outcry against the Despoiler of the Parthenon. In visiting it, he was struck forcibly with the lamentable overthrow and ruin wantonly occasioned during its last spoliation. Shafts, capitals, and entablatures lie heaped 'together in masses capable of furnishing materials to build a palace of marble.' But spoilers more barbarous and mischievous by far than Lord Elgin, are perpetually carrying on the work of sacrilegious devastation. Never does either English or French frigate anchor in the Piræus, but Signor Lusieri has literally a shivering fit from the anticipation of what is to follow. The young midshipmen are then let loose upon the venerable 'monuments of Athens, and are seldom deterred by the religion ' of the place from indulging in the most wanton devastation of statues, cornices, and capitals, from which they carry off me'mentos of their Athenian travels.' This evil is stated to be on the increase, from the greater number of vessels that arrive at the port. It is only surprising that after all the spoliations to which the city of Minerva has been subjected, so much should remain to repay the zeal of classical pilgrims. Romans burn 'it,' remarks Mr. Hughes, Goths sack it, Venetians bombard it, Turks grind down its monuments for mortar, and coldVOL. XIV. N. S. 2 Q

'blooded connoisseurs export them as articles of commerce: still Athens is the best school in the world for an architect." But the crowning instance of ultra-Vandalic barbarism, with which no act of either Roman, Goth, Venetian, Turk, or Jew dealer can compare, is that related by our Author of the captains of two English frigates, who actually brought a tar-barrel on shore at Cape Sunium, and bedaubed the white and brilliant columns of Minerva's temple with long lists of their own names and those of their officers and boat-crews, in this in'delible material.' This is surely the ne plus ultra of JohnBullism. An Englishman would not have been content to be saved in Noah's ark, without cutting his name in the timber.

Before Mr. Hughes left Athens, his name was enrolled as a member and benefactor of a society then recently established there for promoting the general interests of literature and science, under the title of the hoov, or Lovers of the Muses; the patrons being the Archbishop, the Greek primate, and several of the principal inhabitants. Its leading object is to provide funds for the foundation of a library and museum, for printing translations of the classics and original compositions in Romaic, for enabling young men to prosecute their studies in foreign universities, and for encouraging emulation among those at home by the distribution of rewards and prizes. This is well; but it is something still better, that when Dr. Pinkerton, left the metropolis of Heathen wisdom six years after, having succeeded in establishing a Bible Society there, under the direction of a committee composed of nineteen of the most respectable men in the city, all Greeks, the way was paved for introducing the modern Greek Testament as a school book.

We must reserve for a separate article, the Author's travels in Albania, and his detailed account of the life of Ali Pasha.

Art. II. The Poetical Decameron; or Ten Conversations on English Poets and Poetry, particularly of the Reigns of Elizabeth, and James 1st. By J. Payne Collier, of the Middle Temple. Two Volumes. Small 8vo. Edinburgh. 1820.

ALTHOUGH we feel ourselves much indebted to those

pains-taking and meritorious mortals who have consumed their lives in the chace of black-letter, yet we cannot say that we greatly envy them either their acquisitions or their reputation. Their contributions, if not to literature itself, at least to the history of literature, are not, indeed, without value; but when we consider the expenditure of time and attention, the waste of zeal and perseverance, the comparative neglect of better things, by which their success has been purchased, we cannot avoid referring to the disproportion between the means and the

result. The greater number of these inquirers have, however, we believe, been dull and plodding men, who have laboured in this their vocation from something very like incapacity to attain distinction in any other. The Hearnes, the Ritsons, the Malones, have done the world some service in this way, which they would probably have failed of rendering in a higher range; but we own that we have felt somewhat of painful emotion when we have received from minds of a superior cast, the proofs of keen and intense devotedness to a course of study which has but little tendency either to invigorate or to enrich the mind. We have never taken up the acute " Essay on the learning of Shakspeare" without experiencing a sensation of regret that an intellect like Dr. Farmer's, should have so habitually busied itself in the examination of the mass of forgotten trash which furnished him with his materials; and while reading with much gratification the entertaining volumes before us, something of the same feeling has occasionally come over us.

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Mr. Collier is a man of ability, and has managed with considerable skill to extract amusement from very unamusing matter; but the amount of substantial information to be obtained from his volumes, is exceedingly slender. He has corrected several unimportant mistakes, adjusted sundry minute errors of date, and elicited various small particulars which had escaped the vigilance of preceding inquirers; but he has effected little for the enrichment of literature: so far as we have observed, no new names have been added to the records of genius; the same great individuals stand out from the multitude, while the rest remain in much the same groupes and attitudes as before. We have moreover to complain of the form in which Mr. C. has judged it expedient to communicate the result of his investigations. The interruptions and digressions of a supposed conversation, are, we admit, a convenient medium for desultory information; but, at the same time, the adoption of this plan, instead of putting an author quite at his ease, and licensing him to range at large and in all sorts of irregular directions, imposes on him the necessity of a continual self-restraint, and of a strong effort to maintain as much of order and sequence as the nature of his subject will allow. Here Mr. Collier seems to us to have failed entirely he takes up a name or a point, keeps it in hand for a short distance, loses it in pursuit of something which crosses his path, resumes it, and again dismisses it, until we feel the attempt to follow so excursive a leader, altogether unavailing. His book is very pleasant reading, but it has by no means left a strong impression on our minds or memories.

6

Three intimate friends, Bourne, Morton, and Elliot, had agreed to spend ten days or a fortnight together at Bourne's house at

Mortlake' of this trio, the first is described as profoundly versed in the old literature of England, and the second as enthusiastically devoted to the same pursuits, though with less leisure and fewer advantages; Elliot is an accomplished man of the world, recently returned from foreign travel. The 'Induction' of these volumes furnishes us with these preliminary sketches of character, and with the particulars of the conversation which took place during a pleasant sail from Westminster-bridge to the residence of Bourne. In the course of this dialogue, the commentators on Shakspeare are introduced, and, much to our satisfaction, are handled with just severity: the variorum edition of our great dramatist, is treated with merited contempt, and Steevens himself is stigmatised as a tasteless and conceited pedant. Respecting this coryphæus of annotators,' one of the interlocutors remarks:

You recollect that passage in Hamlet, as excellent in the sentiment as appropriate in the expression of it.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.—

It seems to want no remark; but what do you think is the ridiculous, the absurd, the degrading comment of Steevens upon itI think you must remember it?

As for me (said Morton) there is nothing of which I am so laudably and satisfactorily ignorant as of the notes upon Shakespeare.

I well recollect the very expressions of this paltry pretender (added Elliot): he is alluding to the trade of Shakespeare's father as a wool dealer or butcher, and to the conjecture that the poet followed the same business before he came up to London; and how do you imagine he draws an argument in favor of the supposition from the lines I just quoted? You might guess to eternity: all the ingenuity of the riddle-solvers, from Edipus down to Dame Partlett, would be of no avail. He first gives the passage, and then he adds, with solemn gravity," Dr. Farmer informs me that these words "are merely technical. A wool-man, butcher, and dealer in skewers” (and he takes care that the point shall not be lost for want of italics) lately observed to him, that his nephew, an idle lad, could only assist "in making them-he could rough hew them, but I was obliged to "shape their ends. Whoever recollects the profession of Shakespeare's father, will admit that his son might be no stranger to such a term. I have seen packages of wool pinned up with skewers !" ›

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It would be idle even to attempt an analysis of this literary melange; the first conversation, for instance, begins and ends with the poetical character of Fitz Jeffrey, and besides occasional citations from his compositions, a sort of running allusion to him is kept up by the speakers; but the body of the section is filled up by extracts from other writers and references to works and authors quite unconnected with the subject originally proposed. We make no objection to this, certainly, for we have

been much entertained by it; but for our present purpose, we find it exceedingly unmanageable. The second day is principally devoted to the writers of English blank-verse before Milton: the poetry is not very attractive, but the following piece of extravagance is, at least, amusing. We have modernized the old spelling.

ELLIOT. What black beast is that upon the title-page: is it Beelzebub or a dog?

BOURNE. Both; it is a representation of Beelzebub in the shape of a dog. I am not joking; read the title, though that does not fully explain the matter.

ELLIOT. A most fearful object! "A strange and terrible "Wonder wrought very late in the parish Church of Bungay, a town "of no great distance from the city of Norwich, namely the fourth "of this August in the year of our Lord 1577, in a great tempest of "violent rain, lightning and thunder, the like whereof hath been "seldom seen. With the appearance of an horrible shaped thing, "sensibly perceived of the people then and there assembled. Drawn "into a plain method according to the written copy, by Abraham "Fleming." This means nothing less than a supernatural appear

ance.

BOURNE. As I said, of the devil in the shape of a large black dog. In the body of the tract it is observed, "This black dog, or "devil in such likeness (God he knoweth all who worketh all) run"ning all along down the body of the Church with great swiftness and "incredible haste among the people in a visible form and shape, pass"ed between two persons, as they were kneeling upon their knees, "and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them both "at one instant clean backward, insomuch that even at the moment "where they kneeled they strangely died."

MORTON. How could Fleming become the dupe of such an absurd story?

ELLIOT. Wiser men have been quite as foolish; witness Sir Thomas Brown, one of the latest well educated believers in the existence and power of witches.

BOURNE. It would be easy to collect thousands of instances of the same weakness, down even to the days of Roger North. We are also told by Fleming, that another man received from this horrible monster" such a gripe on the back, that therewithal he was presently "drawn together and shrunk up, as it were a piece of leather scorch"ed in a hot fire," and that the wires and wheels of the clock were melted and torn to pieces, thunder and lightning continuing all the time which, in fact, is the simple explanation of the whole of this "straunge and terrible wunder.”

The third and three succeeding conversations refer principally to the early English satirists. The poetical specimens which are interspersed, are not always so striking as to tempt us to transcribe them; and those which might afford gratification to our readers,. would require more introduction and explanation than we can