(On Miss Hawkins’s “Anecdotes”)

Complete.

THIS orange we mean to squeeze for the public use. Where an author is poor, this is wrong; but Miss Hawkins being upon her own acknowledgment rich (p. 125), keeping a “carriage, to the propreté of which she is not indifferent” (p. 253), and being able to give away manors worth more than £1,000 per annum (p. 140), it is most clear that her interests ought to bend to those of the public; the public being really in very low circumstances, and quite unable to buy books of luxury and anecdotage.

  Who is the author, and what is the book? The author has descended to us from the last century, and has heard little that has happened since the American war. She is the daughter of Sir John Hawkins, known to the world: first, as the historian of music; second, as the acquaintance and biographer of Dr. Johnson; third, as the object of some vulgar gossip and calumnies made current by Mr. Boswell. Her era being determined, the reader can be at no loss to deduce the rest; her chronology known, all is known. She belongs to the literati of those early ages who saw Dr. Johnson in the body, and conversed in the flesh with Goldsmith, Garrick, Bennet, Langton, Wilkes and liberty, Sir Joshua Hawkesworth, etc., etc. All of these good people she “found” (to use her own lively expression) at her father’s house: that is, upon her earliest introduction to her father’s drawing-room at Twickenham, most of them were already in possession. Amongst the “etc., etc.,” as we have classed them, were some who really ought not to have been thus slurred over, such as Bishop Percy, Tyrwhitt, Dean Tucker, and Hurd: but others absolutely pose us. For instance, does the reader know anything of one Israel Mauduit? We profess to know nothing; no, nor at all the more for his having been the author of “Considerations on the German War” (p. 7): in fact, there have been so many German wars since Mr. Mauduit’s epoch, and the public have since then been called on to “consider” so many “considerations,” that Miss Hawkins must pardon us for declaring that the illustrious Mauduit (though we remember his name in Lord Orford’s “Memoirs”) is now defunct, and that his works have followed him. Not less defunct than Mauduit is the not less illustrious Brettell. Brettell! What Brettell? What Brettell! Why, “Wonderful old Colonel Brettell of the Middlesex Militia” (p. 10), who, on my requesting him, at eighty-five years of age, to be careful in getting over a five-barred gate replied, Take care of what? Time was when I could have jumped over it. “Time was!” he says, was; but how will that satisfy posterity? What proof has the nineteenth century that he did it, or could have done it? So much for Brettell and Mauduit. But last comes one who “hight Costard”: and here we are posed indeed. Can this be Shakespeare’s Costard—everybody’s Costard—the Costard of “Love’s Labor’s Lost”? But how is that possible? says a grave and learned friend at our elbow. I will affirm it to be impossible. How can any man celebrated by Shakespeare have visited at Twickenham with Dr. Johnson? That indeed, we answer, deserves consideration: yet, if he can, where would Costard be more naturally found than at Sir John Hawkins’s house, who had himself annotated on Shakespeare, and lived in company with so many other annotators, as Percy, Tyrwhitt, Stevens, etc.? Yet again, at p. 10, and at p. 24, he is called “the learned Costard.” Now this is an objection; for Shakespeare’s Costard, the old Original Costard, is far from learned. But what of that? He had plenty of time to mend his manners, and fit himself for the company of Dr. Johnson; and at p. 80, where Miss Hawkins again affirms that his name was “always preceded by the epithet learned,” she candidly admits that “he was a feeble, ailing, emaciated man who had all the appearance of having sacrificed his health to his studies,” as well he might, if he had studied from Shakespeare’s time to Dr. Johnson’s. With all his learning, however, Costard could make nothing of a case which occurred in Sir John Hawkins’s grounds; and we confess that we can make no more of it than Costard. “In a paddock,” says Miss Hawkins, “we had an oblong piece of water supplied by a sluice. Keeping poultry, this was very convenient for ducks: on a sudden, a prodigious consternation was perceived among the ducks: they were with great difficulty persuaded to take to the water; and, when there, shuddered, grew wet, and were drowned. They were supposed diseased; others were bought at other places; but in vain! none of our ducks could swim. I remember the circumstance calling out much thought and conjecture. The learned George Costard, Dr. Morton, and the medical advisers of the neighborhood were consulted: every one had a different supposition, and I well recollect my own dissatisfaction with all I heard. It was told of course to Mr. and Mrs. Garrick. Mrs. Garrick would not give credit to it; Garrick himself was not incredulous, and after a discussion he turned to my father with his jocose impetuosity, and said, ‘There’s my wife, who will not believe the story of these ducks, and yet she believes in the eleven thousand virgins.’ Most probably the ducks were descended from that ‘which Samuel Johnson trod on,’ which, ‘if it had lived and had not died, had surely been an odd one’; its posterity therefore would be odd ones. However, Costard could make nothing of it; and to this hour the case is an unsolved problem, like the longitude of the Northwest Passage.” But enough of Costard.

  Of Lord Orford, who like Costard was a neighbor and an acquaintance of her father, Miss Hawkins gives us a very long account, no less than thirty pages (pp. 87–117) being dedicated to him on his first introduction. Amongst his eccentricities, she mentions that “he made no scruple of avowing his thorough want of taste for Don Quixote.” This was already known from the “Walpoliana,” where it may be seen that his objection was singularly disingenuous, because built on an incident (the windmill adventure), which, if it were as extravagant as it seems (though it has been palliated by the peculiar appearance of Spanish mills), is yet of no weight, because not characteristic of the work: it contradicts its general character. We shall extract her account of Lord Orford’s person and abord, his dress and his address, which is remarkably lively and picturesque, as might have been expected from the pen of a female observer, who was at that time young:—

  “His figure was, as every one knows, not merely tall, but more properly long, and slender to excess; his complexion, and particularly his hands, of a most unhealthy paleness. I speak of him before the year 1772. His eyes were remarkably bright and penetrating, very dark and lively; his voice was not strong; but his tones were extremely pleasant, and, if I may so say, highly gentlemanly. I do not remember his common gait: he always entered a room in that style of affected delicacy which fashion had then made almost natural; chapeau bras between his hands, as if he wished to compress it, or under his arm; knees bent; and feet on tiptoe, as if afraid of a wet floor. His dress in visiting was most usually (in summer when I most saw him) a lavender suit; the waistcoat embroidered with a little silver, or of white silk worked in the tambour; partridge silk stockings; and gold buckles; ruffles and frill generally lace. I remember when a child thinking him very much underdressed, if at any time, except in mourning, he wore hemmed cambric. In summer, no powder; but his wig combed straight, and showing his very smooth, pale forehead, and queued behind; in winter, powder.” What an amusing old coxcomb!

  Of Dr. Johnson we have but one anecdote; but it is very good, and good in the best way—because characteristic; being, in fact, somewhat brutal and very witty. “Miss Knight, the author of ‘Dinarbas’ and of ‘Marcus Flaminius,’ used to pay him a farewell visit on quitting England for the Continent: this lady (then a young lady) is remarkably large in person; so the old savage dismisses her with the following memorial of his good-nature:—‘Go, go, my dear; for you are too big for an island.’” As may be supposed, the Doctor is no favorite with Miss Hawkins; but she is really too hard upon our old friend, for she declares “that she never heard him say in any visit six words that could compensate for the trouble of getting to his den, and the disgust of seeing such squalidness as she saw nowhere else.” One thing at least Miss Hawkins might have learned from Dr. Johnson; and let her not suppose that we say it in ill-nature: she might have learned to weed her pages of many barbarisms of language which now disfigure them; for instance, the barbarism of “compensate for the trouble”—in the very sentence before us—instead of “compensate the trouble.”

  Dr. Farmer disappointed Miss Hawkins by “the homeliness of his external.” But surely when a man comes to that supper at which he does not eat but is eaten, we have a deeper interest in his wit, which may chance to survive him, than in his beauty, which posterity cannot possibly enjoy any more than the petits soupers which it adorned. Had the Doctor been a very Adonis, he could not have done Miss Hawkins so much service as by two of his propos which she records: One was, that on a report being mentioned, at her father’s table, of Sir Joshua Reynolds having shared the gains arising from the exhibition of his pictures with his manservant, who was fortunately called Ralph, Dr. Farmer quoted against Sir Joshua these two lines from “Hudibras”:

	“A squire he had whose name was Ralph,
	Who in the adventure went his half.”

The other was that, speaking of Dr. Parr, he said that “he seemed to have been at a feast of learning [for learning, read languages] from which he had carried off all the scraps.” Miss Hawkins does not seem to be aware that this is taken from Shakespeare: but, what is still more surprising, she declares herself “absolutely ignorant whether it be praise or censure.” All we shall say on that question is that we most seriously advise her not to ask Dr. Parr.

  Of Paul Whitehead, we are told that his wife “was so nearly idiotic, that she would call his attention in conversation to look at a cow, not as one of singular beauty, but in the words—‘Mr. Whitehead, there’s a cow.’” On this Miss Hawkins moralizes in a very eccentric way: “He took it,” says she, “most patiently, as he did all such trials of his temper.” Trials of his temper! why, was he jealous of the cow? Had he any personal animosity to the cow? Not only, however, was Paul very patient (at least under his bovine afflictions, and his “trials” in regard to horned cattle), but also Paul was very devout; of which he gave this pleasant assurance: “When I go,” said he, “into St. Paul’s, I admire it as a very fine, grand, beautiful building; and when I have contemplated its beauty, I come out: but if I go into Westminster Abbey, d—n me, I’m all devotion.” So, by his own account, Paul appears to have been a very pretty fellow; d—d patient and d—d devout.

  For practical purposes, we recommend to all physicians the following anecdote, which Sir Richard Jebb used to tell of himself. As Miss Hawkins observes, it makes even rapacity comical, and it suggests a very useful and practical hint. “He was attending a nobleman, from whom he had a right to expect a fee of five guineas; he received only three. Suspecting some trick on the part of the steward, from whom he received it, he at the next visit contrived to drop the three guineas. They were picked up, and again deposited in his hand; but he still continued to look on the carpet. His lordship asked if all the guineas were found. ‘There must be two guineas still on the carpet,’ replied Sir Richard, ‘for I have but three.’ The hint was taken as he meant.”

  But of all medical stratagems commend us to that practiced by Dr. Munckley, who had lived with Sir J. Hawkins during his bachelor days in quality of “chum”: and a chum he was, in Miss Hawkins’s words, “not at all calculated to render the chum state happy.” This Dr. Munckley, by the by, was so huge a man-mountain, that Miss Hawkins supposes the blank in the well-known epigram,

	“When —— walks the streets, the paviors cry,
	‘God bless you, sir!’ and lay their rammers by.”

to have been originally filled up with his name,—but in this she is mistaken. The epigram was written before he was born; and for about one hundred and forty years has this empty epigram, like other epigrams to be let, been occupied by a succession of big men: we believe that the original tenant was Dr. Ralph Bathurst. Munckley, however, might have been the original tenant, if it had pleased God to let him be born eighty years sooner; for he was quite as well qualified as Bathurst to draw down the blessings of paviors, and to play the part of a “three-man beetle.” Of this Miss Hawkins gives a proof which is droll enough: “accidently encountering suddenly a stout manservant in a narrow passage they literally stuck.” Each, like Horatius Codes, in the words of Seneca, solus implevit pontis angustias. One of them, it is clear, must have backed; unless, indeed, they are sticking there yet. It would be curious to ascertain which of them backed. For the dignity of science, one would hope it was not Munckley. Yet we fear he was capable of any meanness, if Miss Hawkins reports accurately his stratagems upon her father’s purse; a direct attack failing, he attacked it indirectly. But Miss Hawkins shall tell her own tale: “He was extremely rapacious, and a very bad economist; and, soon after my father’s marriage, having been foiled in his attempt to borrow money of him, he endeavored to atone to himself for this disappointment by protracting the duration of a low fever in which he attended him; making unnecessary visits, and with his hand ever open for a fee.” Was there ever such a fellow on this terraqueous globe? Sir John’s purse not yielding to a storm, he approaches by mining and sapping, under cover of a low fever. Did this Munckley really exist, or is he but the coinage of Miss Hawkins’s brain? If the reader wishes to know what became of this “great” man, we will gratify him. He was “foiled,” as we have seen, “in his attempt to borrow money” of Sir J. H.; he was also soon after “foiled” in his attempt to live. Munckley, big Munckley, being “too big for an island,” we suppose, was compelled to die; he gave up the ghost: and what seems very absurd both to us and to Miss Hawkins, he continued talking to the last, and went off in the very act of uttering a most prosaic truism, which yet happened to be false in his case; for his final words were, that it was “hard to be taken off just then, when he was beginning to get into practice.” Not at all, with such practices as his: where men enter into partnerships with low fevers, it is very fit that they should “back” out of this world as fast as possible; as fast as, in all probability, he had backed down the narrow passage before the stout manservant. So much for Munckley—big Munckley.

  It does not strike us as any “singular feature” (p. 273), in the history of Bartleman, the great singer, “that he lived to occupy the identical house in Berners Street in which his first patron resided.” Knowing the house, its pros and cons, its landlord, etc., surely it was very natural that he should avail himself of his knowledge for his own convenience. But it is a very singular fact (p. 160), that our government should, “merely for want of caution, have sent the Culloden ship of war to convoy Cardinal York from Naples.” This we suppose Miss Hawkins looks upon as ominous of some disaster; for she considers it “fortunate” that his Eminence “had sailed before it arrived.” Of this same Cardinal York, Miss Hawkins tells us further that a friend of hers having been invited to dine with him, as all Englishmen were while he kept a table, “found him, as all others did, a good-natured, almost superannuated gentleman, who had his round of civilities and jokes. He introduced some roast beef by saying that it might not be as good as that in England; ‘for,’ said he, ‘you know we are but pretenders.’” Yes, the Cardinal was a pretender; but his beef was “legitimate,” unless, indeed, his bulls pretended to be oxen.

  On the subject of the Pretender, by the way, we have (at p. 63) as fine a bon-mot as the celebrated toast of Dr. Byron, the Manchester Jacobite. “The Marchioness (the Marchioness of Tweeddale) had been Lady Frances Carteret, a daughter of the Earl of Granville, and had been brought up by her Jacobite aunt, Lady Worsley, one of the most zealous of that party. The Marchioness herself told my father that, on her aunt’s upbraiding her when a child with not attending prayers, she answered that she heard her ladyship did not pray for the king. ‘Not pray for the king?’ said Lady Worsley; ‘who says this? I will have you and those who sent you know that I do pray for the king; but I do not think it necessary to tell God Almighty who is king.’”

  This is naïveté, which becomes wit to the bystander, though simply the natural expression of the thought to him who utters it. Another instance, no less lively, is the following, mentioned at Strawberry Hill by “the sister of one of our first statesmen, now deceased.” “She had heard a boy, humored to excess, tease his mother for the remains of a favorite dish; mamma at length replied, ‘Then do take it and have done teasing me.’ He then flew into a passion, roaring out, ‘What do you give it me for? I wanted to have snatched it.’”

  The next passage we shall cite relates to a very eminent character, indeed, truly respectable, and entirely English, viz., plum pudding. The obstinate and inveterate ignorance of Frenchmen on this subject is well known. Their errors are grievous, pitiable, and matter of scorn and detestation to every enlightened mind. In civilization, in trial by jury, and many other features of social happiness, it has been affirmed that the French are two centuries behind us. We believe it. But with regard to plum pudding they are at least five centuries in arrear. In the “Omniana,” we think it is, Mr. Southey has recorded one of their insane attempts at constructing such a pudding: the monstrous abortion which on that occasion issued to the light the reader may imagine; and will be at no loss to understand that volley of “Diables,” “Sacres,” and “Morbleus,” which it called forth, when we mention that these deluded Frenchmen made cheese the basis of their infernal preparation. Now, under these circumstances of national infatuation, how admirable must have been the art of an English party, who, in the very city of Paris (that centre of darkness on this interesting subject), and in the very teeth of Frenchmen, did absolutely extort from French hands a real English plum pudding: yes, compelled a French apothecary, unknowing what he did, to produce an excellent plum pudding, and had the luxury of a hoax into the bargain. Verily the ruse was magnifique; and though it was nearly terminating in bloodshed, yet, doubtless, so superb a story would have been cheaply purchased by one or two lives. Here it follows in Miss Hawkins’s own words: “Dr. Schonberg of Reading, in the early part of his life, spent a Christmas at Paris with some English friends. They were desirous to celebrate the season in the manner of their own country, by having as one dish at their table an English plum pudding; but no cook was found equal to the task of compounding it. A clergyman of the party had indeed an old receipt book; but this did not sufficiently explain the process. Dr. Schonberg, however, supplied all that was wanting by throwing the recipe into the form of a prescription, and sending it to an apothecary to be made up. To prevent all possibility of error, he directed that it should be boiled in a cloth, and sent in the same cloth to be applied at an hour specified. At this hour it arrived, borne by the apothecary’s assistant and preceded” (sweet heavens!) “by the apothecary himself, dressed, according to the professional formality of the time, with a sword. Seeing, when he entered the apartment, instead of signs of sickness, a table well filled and surrounded by very merry faces, he perceived that he was made a party in a joke that turned on himself, and indignantly laid his hand on his sword; but an invitation to taste his own cookery appeased him, and all was well.”

  This story we pronounce altogether unique: for as, on the one hand, the art was divine by which the benefits of medical punctuality and accuracy were pressed into the service of a Christmas dinner; so, on the other hand, it is strictly and satirically probable, when told of a French apothecary; for who but a Frenchman, whose pharmacopœia still teems with the monstrous compounds of our ancestors, could have believed that such a preparation was seriously designed for a cataplasm.

  In our next extracts we come upon ground rather tender and unsafe for obstinate skeptics. We have often heard of learned doctors, from Shrewsbury, suppose, going by way of Birmingham to Oxford; and at Birmingham, under the unfortunate ambiguity of “the Oxford coach,” getting into that from Oxford, which by nightfall safely restores the astonished doctor to astonished Shrewsbury. Such a case is sad and pitiful; but what is that to the case (p. 164) of Wilkes the painter, who, being “anxious to get a likeness” of “good Dr. Foster” (the same whom Pope has honored with the couplet:—

	“Let modest Foster, if he will, excel
	Ten metropolitans in preaching well.”),

“attended his meeting one Sunday evening”; and very naturally, not being acquainted with Dr. Foster’s person, sketched a likeness of the clergyman whom he found officiating; which clergyman happened unfortunately to be—not the Doctor—but Mr. Morris, an occasional substitute of his. The mistake remained undiscovered: the sketch was elaborately copied in a regular picture; the picture was elaborately engraved in mezzotinto; and to this day the picture of one Mr. Morris “officiates” for that of the celebrated Dr. Foster. Living and dead he was Dr. Foster’s substitute. Even this, however, is a trifle to what follows: the case “of a Baronet, who must be nameless, who proposed to visit Rome, and previously to learn the language; but by some mistake or imposition engaged a German, who taught only his own language, and proceeded in the study of it vigorously for three months before he discovered his error.” With all deference to the authority of Horace Walpole, from whom the anecdote originally comes, we confess that we are staggered; and must take leave, in the stoical phrase, to “suspend”; in fact, we must consult our friends before we can contract for believing it: at present all we shall say about it is that we greatly fear the Baronet “must,” as Miss Hawkins observes, “be nameless.”

  We must also consult our friends on the propriety of believing the little incident which follows, though attributed to “a very worthy, modest young man”; for it is remarkable that of this very modest young man is recorded but one act, viz., the most impudent in the book. “He was walking in the mall of St. James’s Park, when they met two fine young women, dressed in straw hats, and, at least to appearance, unattended. His friend offered him a bet that he did not go up to one of those rustic beauties, and salute her. He accepted the bet; and in a very civil manner, and probably explaining the cause of his boldness, he thought himself sure of success, when he became aware that it was the Princess Caroline, daughter of George II., who, with one of her sisters, was taking the refreshment of a walk in complete disguise. In the utmost confusion he bowed, begged pardon, and retreated; whilst their Royal Highnesses, with great good-humor, laughed at his mistake.”

  We shall conclude our extracts with the following story, as likely to interest our fair readers:—

  “Lady Lucy Meyrick was by birth the Lady Lucy Pitt, daughter to the Earl of Londonderry, and sister to the last who bore that title. She was, of course, nearly related to all the great families of that name; and, losing her parents very early in life, was left under the guardianship of an uncle, who lived in James Street, Buckingham Gate. This house was a most singularly uncouth, dismal dwelling, in appearance very much of the Vanburgh style of building; and the very sight of it would justify almost any measure to get out of it. It excited every one’s curiosity to ask, What is this place? What can it be for? It had a front of very dark, heavy brickwork; very small windows, with sashes immensely thick. In this gay mansion, which looked against the blank window side of the large house in St. James’s Park, twenty years ago Lord Milford’s, but backwards into a market gardener’s ground, was Lady Lucy Meyrick to reside with her uncle and his daughter, a girl a little older than herself. The young ladies, who had formed a strict friendship, were kept under great restraint, which they bore as two lively girls may be supposed to have done. Their endurances soon reached the ears of two Westminster scholars of one of the Welsh families of Meyrick, who, in the true spirit of Knight-errantry, concerted with them a plan for escaping, which they carried into effect. Having gone thus far, there was nothing for the courteous knights to do but to marry the fair damsels to whom they had rendered this essential service; and for this purpose they took them to the Fleet, or to May-Fair, in both which places marriages were solemnized in the utmost privacy. Here the two couples presented themselves, a baker’s wife attending upon the ladies. Lady Lucy was then, and to the end of her life, one of the smallest women I ever saw: she was at the same time not more than fourteen years of age; and, being in the dress of a child, the person officiating objected to performing the ceremony for her. This extraordinary scrupulosity was distressing; but her ladyship met it by a lively reply—that her cousin might be married first, and then lend her her gown, which would make her look more womanly; but I suppose her right of precedence was regarded, for she used to say herself that she was at last married in the baker’s wife’s gown. Yet even now, if report be true, an obstacle intervened: the young ladies turned fickle; not, indeed, on the question ‘to be or not to be’ married, but on their choice of partners; and I was assured that they actually changed—Lady Lucy taking to herself, or acquiescing in taking, the elder brother. What their next step was to have been I know not: the ladies, who had not been missed, returned to their place of endurance; the young gentlemen to school, where they remained, keeping the secret close. When the school next broke up, they went home: and, probably, whilst waiting for courage to avow, or opportunity to disclose, or accident to betray for them the matter, a newly arrived guest fresh from London, in reply, perhaps, to the usual question—What news from town? reported an odd story of two Westminster scholars, names unknown, who had (it was said) married two girls in the neighborhood of the school. The countenances of the two lads drew suspicions upon them; and, confession being made, Lady Lucy was fetched to the house of her father-in-law. His lady, seeing her so very much of a child in appearance, said, on receiving her, in a tone of vexation—‘Why, child, what can we do with you? Such a baby as you are, what can you know?’ With equal humility and frankness Lady Lucy replied—‘It is very true, Madam, that I am very young and very ignorant; but whatever you will teach me I will learn.’ All the good lady’s prejudice was now overcome; and Lady Lucy’s conduct proved the sincerity of her submission. She lived seven years in Wales under the tuition of her mother-in-law, conforming to the manners, tempers, and prejudices of her new relations.”

  We have now “squeezed” a volume of three hundred and fifty-one pages, according to our promise: we hope Miss Hawkins will forgive us. She must also forgive us for gently blaming her diction. She says (p. 277), “I read but little English.” We thought as much; and wish she read more. The words “duple” (p. 145) and “decadence” (p. 123) point to another language than English; as to “maux” (p. 254), we know not what language it belongs to, unless it be Coptic.

  It is certainly not “too big for an island”; but it will not do for this island, and we beg it may be transported. Miss Hawkins says a worse thing, however, of the English language than that she reads it but little: “Instead of admiring my native language,” says she, “I feel fettered by it.” That may be: but her inability to use it without difficulty and constraint is the very reason why she ought not to pronounce upon its merits. We cannot allow of any person’s deciding on the value of an instrument until he has shown himself master of its powers in their whole compass. For some purposes (and these the highest), the English language is a divine instrument; no language is so for all.

  When Miss Hawkins says that she reads “little English,” the form of the expression implies that she reads a good deal of some more favored language. May we take the liberty of asking—what? It is not Welsh, we hope? nor Syriac? nor Sungskrita? We say hope, for none of these will yield her anything for her next volume: throughout the Asiatic Researches no soul has been able to unearth a Sanskrit bonmot. Is it Latin? or Greek? Perhaps both, for, besides some sprinklings of both throughout the volume, she gives us at the end several copies of Latin and Greek verses. These, she says, are her brother’s: be they whose they may, we must overhaul them. The Latin are chiefly Sapphics, the Greek chiefly Iambics; the following is a specimen of the Sapphics:—

	“One a penny, two a penny, hot cross-buns;
	If your daughters will not eat them, give them to your sons.
	But if you have none of those pretty little elves,
	You cannot do better than eat them yourselves.”

“Idem Latine redditum a Viro Clariss.”—Henrico Hawkins.

	“Asse placentam cupiasne solam?
	Asse placentas cupiasne binas?
	Ecce placentæ, teneræ, tepentes,
	Et cruce gratæ.

	“Respuant natæ? dato, quæso, natis:
	Parvulos tales tibi si negdrint
	Fata, tu tandem (superest quid ultra?)
	Sumito præsto est.”

    Our opinion of this translation is that it is worthy of the original. We hope this criticism will prove satisfactory. At the same time without offense to Mr. Hawkins, may we suggest that the baker’s man has rather the advantage in delicacy of expression and structure of verse? He has also distinguished clearly the alternative of sons and daughters, which the unfortunate ambiguity of natis has prevented Mr. Hawkins from doing. Perhaps Mr. Hawkins will consider this against a future edition. Another, viz., a single hexameter, is entitled, “De Amandâ, clavibus amissis.” Here we must confess to a single mortification, the table of “Contents” having prepared us to look for some sport; for the title is there printed (by mistake as it turns out), “de Amandâ, clavis amissis,” i.e., On Amanda, upon the loss of her cudgels; whereas it ought to have been clavibus amissis, on the loss of her keys. Shenstone used to thank God that his name was not adapted to the vile designs of the punster: perhaps some future punster may take the conceit out of him on that point by extracting a compound pun from his name combined with some other word. The next best thing, however, to having a name, or title, that is absolutely pun-proof, is the having one which yields only to Greek puns, or Carthaginian (i.e., Punic) puns. Lady Moira has that felicity, on whom Mr. Hawkins has thus punned very seriously in a Greek hexameter:—

“On the death of the Countess of Moira’s newborn infant.”

“Μοιρα καλη μ’ ετεκες μ’ ανελες μεν Μοιρα κραταιη”

    Of the Iambics we shall give one specimen:—

“Impromptu returned with my lead pencil, which I had left on his table.”

	“Βοηθος ειμι καλλιω παντ’ εξ εμου
	Ἐκ του μολιβδου ή νοησις ερχεταο”

    The thought is pretty: some little errors there certainly are, as in the contest with the baker’s man; and in this, as in all his iambics (especially in the three from the Arabic), some little hiatuses in the metre, not adapted to the fastidious race of an Athenian audience. But these little hiatuses, these “little enormities” (to borrow a phrase from the sermon of a country clergyman), will occur in the best-regulated verses. On the whole, our opinion of Mr. Hawkins, as a Greek poet, is that in seven hundred, or say seven hundred and fifty years, he may become a pretty—yes, we will say a very pretty poet: as he cannot be more than one-tenth of that age at present, we look upon his performances as singularly promising. Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem.

  To return to Miss Hawkins: there are some blunders in facts up and down her book: such, for instance, as that of supposing Sir Francis Drake to have commanded in the succession of engagements with the Spanish Armada of 1588, which is the more remarkable as her own ancestor was so distinguished a person in those engagements. But, upon the whole, her work, if weeded of some trifling tales (as what relates to the young Marquis of Tweeddale’s dress, etc.), is creditable to her talents. Her opportunities of observation have been great; she has generally made good use of them; and her tact for the ludicrous is striking and useful in a book of this kind. We hope that she will soon favor us with a second volume; and, in that case, we cannot doubt that we shall again have an orange to squeeze for the public use.