been taken up, without any affront to the fame of their authors, or any loss to the reader. On some such table, be it the lot of my humble miscellany to repose, in the aristocratic society. of Albums, Annuals, Books of Beauty, and so forth! The nature of my publication may be announced in a few simple words. The articles which compose it, have been arranged as they came to hand, without regard to connexion, or dates; and consist of notes made on various occasions, for a succession of years. Where almost every thing is trifling, it is scarcely necessary to observe, that the notices which occur of short passages in the works of some authors of little notoriety, refer chiefly to minute deviations from the established laws of grammatical construction, &c., and are, with great diffidence, offered by way of general lessons, to the inexperienced in the art of English composition. THE PARLOUR WINDOW. BECCARIA. THE REV. I. V., who had formerly been in the army, informed me, that when young, and quartered with his regiment at Gibraltar, he had obtained leave of absence, and travelled into Spain, and elsewhere; and that in the South of France, during his wanderings, he lighted on a little deformed man, of the name of Joveau, who undertook to teach him Italian. It happened that Joveau called upon Mr. V., and saw on his table a copy of a book, well known as the Marquess Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishments;" when he observed, that there was no such author as Beccaria; but that he himself wrote the work, and in the titlepage assigned it to the Marquess. He also stated that he had been travelling companion and secretary to the celebrated Montesquieu, who would not allow him, he said, to attend him into England, because the people there were sarcastic, and would say that Mons. M. performed his journeys with a baboon for his comrade. B GOLDSMITH. I was well acquainted with a Mr. Carroll, who was bred to the bar; and one day, in conversation, he told me the following fact. He, and some other young Irishmen, having assembled in a room at C.'s lodgings in the Temple, amused themselves by quoting, with enthusiastic admiration, various passages from a newly published poem, "The Deserted Village;" (published in 1770;) when a stranger entered, and, in a strong Irish accent, introduced himself as a fellowcountryman, desirous of their encouragement in a forthcoming work of his, then in the press. This they vociferously promised him; and afterwards tried to put his pretensions to the test; asking him, among other questions, as they repeated portions of the fine poem which had enraptured them, when he would be able to write verses like those? He smiled, and replied that he believed he could already do so, for that he was the author of the lines they were pleased to applaud. And thus the parties became acquainted with the eccentric and gifted Oliver Goldsmith. BISHOP PERCY, AND HIS CELEBRATED SONG "O, NANCY," ETC. This really fine copy of verses has long been, and is incessantly printed and published as a Scotch song; and made to begin with the words "O Nanny, wilt thou gang wi' me." This incomparable absurdity |