In logics, he was quite Ho Panu!!
knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,

That though you were the learned Stagyrite,
At once upon the hip he had you right!
Sometimes indeed his speculations
Were view'd as dangerous innovations.

As thus the Doctor's house did harbour a
Sweet blooming girl, whose name was Barbara:
Oft, when his heart was in a merry key,
He taught this maid his esoterica,
And sometimes, as a cure for hectics,
Would lecture her in dialectics.
How far their zeal let him and her go
Before they came to sealing Ergo,
Or how they placed the medius terminus,
Our chronicles do not determine us;
But so it was-by some confusion
In this their logical prælusion,
The Doctor wholly spoil'd, they say,
The figure of young Barbara;
And thus, by many a snare sophistic,
And enthymeme paralogistic,
Beguil'd a maid, who could not give,
To save her life, a negative.3
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that among the spheres,
(Which most of all, as he averr'd it,

He dearly lov'd, 'cause no one heard it,)
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,
And find, by Euclid's corollaria,
The ratios of a jig or aria.

But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orpheuses, and Saint Cecilias,

He own'd he thought them much surpass'd
By that redoubted Hyaloclast

Who still contriv'd by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a bottle!
Likewise to show his mighty knowledge, he,
On things unknown in physiology,
Wrote many a chapter to divert us,
Like that great little man Albertus,
Wherein he show'd the reason why,
When children first are heard to cry,

10 HANY. The introduction of this language into English poetry has a good effect, and ought to be more universally adopted. A word or two of Greek in a stanza would serve as a ballast to the most "light o' love" verses. Ausonius, among the ancients, may serve as a model:

Ου γαρ μοι θεμις εστιν in hac regione μενοντι Αξιον ab nostris επιδενια esse καμηνας. Rosnard, the French poet, has enriched his sonnets and odes with many an exquisite morsel from the Lexicon. His Chère Entelechie, in addressing his mistress, is admirable, and can be only matched by Cowley's Antiperistasis.

2 The first figure of simple syllogisms, to which Barbara belongs, together with Celarent, Darii, and Ferio.

3 Because the three propositions in the mood of Barbara are universal affirmatives.-The poet borrowed this equivoque upon Barbara from a curious Epigram which Menckenius gives in a note upon his Essays de Charlataneria Eruditorum. In the Nuptia Peripatetica of Caspar Barlæus, the reader will find some facetious applications of the terms of logic to matrimony. Crambe's Treatise on Syllogisms, in Martinus Scriblerus, is borrowed chiefly from the Nuptia Peripatetice of Barlous.

4 Or, Glass-Breaker.-Morhofius has given an account of this extraordinary man, in a work published 1682. "De vitreo esypho fracto," ete.

If boy the baby chance to be,
He cries OA!-if girl, OE!
These are, says he, exceeding fair hints
Respecting their first sinful parents;
"Oh Eve!" exclaimeth little madam,
While little master cries, "O Adam!"
In point of science astronomical,
It seem'd to him extremely comical,
That, once a year, the frolic sun
Should call at Virgo's house for fun,
And stop a month and blaze around her,
Yet leave her Virgo, as he found her!
But, 'twas in Optics and Dioptricks,
Our dæmon play'd his first and top tricks :
He held that sunshine passes quicker
Through wine than any other liquor;
That glasses are the best utensils
To catch the eyes bewilder'd pencils;
And though he saw no great objection
To steady light and pure reflection,
He thought the aberrating rays,
Which play about a bumper's blaze,
Were by the Doctors look'd, in common, on,
As a more rare and rich phenomenon!
He wisely said that the sensorium

Is for the eyes a great emporium,

To which those noted picture stealers

Send all they can, and meet with dealers.

In many an optical proceeding

The brain, he said, show'd great good breeding;

For instance, when we ogle women,

(A trick which Barbara tutor'd him in,)
Although the dears are apt to get in a
Strange position on the retina,

Yet instantly the modest brain
Doth set them on their legs again !2
Our doctor thus with "stuff'd sufficiency"
Of all omnigenous omnisciency,
Began (as who would not begin
That had, like him, so much within ?)
To let it out in books of all sorts,
Folios, quartos, large and small sorts;
Poems, so very deep and sensible,
That they were quite incomprehensible,"
Prose, which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,

1 This is translated almost literally from a passage in Albertus de Secretis, etc.-I have not the book by me, or I would transcribe the words.

2 Alluding to that habitual act of the judgment, by which, notwithstanding the inversion of the image upon the retina, sorium. a correct impression of the object is conveyed to the sen

3 Under this description, I believe," the Devil among the Scholars" may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secretary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which neither they nor himself could interpret. See the Eloge Historique de M. de Leibnitz, l'Europe Savante.-People of all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find Cicero thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion "ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo." Lib. 2. Epist. 4. And we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read Aristotle's Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them.-Nicolas Mossa in Pit Avicen.

The tatter'd rags of every vest,

In which the Greeks and Romans drest,
And o'er her figure, swoln and antic,
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those, who saw the fits she had,
Declar'd unhappy prose was mad!
Epics he wrote, and scores of rebusses,
All as neat as old Turnebus's;

Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 't were tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow me;

Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,
No-nor the hoary Trismegistus,

(Whose writings all, thank Heaven! have miss'd us,)
Ere fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

As this great "porcus literarum!"

*

FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL.'

TO G. M. ESQ.

FROM FREDERICKSBURGH, VIRGINIA,2 JUNE 2D.

DEAR George! though every bone is aching,
After the shaking

I've had this week, over ruts and ridges,3
And bridges,

Made of a few uneasy planks,4

In open ranks,

Like old women's teeth, all loosely thrown
Over rivers of mud, whose names alone
Would make the knees of stoutest man knock,

Rappahannock,

Occoquan-the heavens may harbour us!
Who ever heard of names so barbarous ?

1 These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it too allusive and too personal for publication.

2 Having remained about a week at New-York, where I saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake, (the only things that particularly awakened my attention,) I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr. Wickham, one of their celebrated legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do honour to the most cultivated societies.

Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is an other very distinguished ornament of Richmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at Dresent unpopular party, the Federalists.

Worse than M***'s Latin,

Or the smooth codicil

To a witch's will, where she brings her cat in!
I treat my goddess ill,

(My muse I mean) to make her speak 'em ;
Like the Verbum Græcum,

Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides,'

Words that ought only be said upon holidays,
When one has nothing else to do.

But, dearest George, though every bone is aching
After this shaking,

And trying to regain the socket,

From which the stage thought fit to rock it,

I fancy I shall sleep the better

For having scrawl'd a kind of letter

To you.

It seems to me like "George, good-night!"
Though far the spot I date it from;

To which I fancy, while I write,

Your answer back-“Good night t'ye Tom "

But do not think that I shall turn all
Sorts of quiddities,
And insipidities,
Into my journal;

That I shall tell you the different prices
Of eating, drinking, and such other vices,
To "contumace your appetite's acidities!"2
No, no; the Muse too delicate bodied is
For such commodities!

Neither suppose, like fellow of college, she
Can talk of conchology,
Or meteorology;

Or, that a nymph, who wild as comet errs,
Can discuss barometers,

Farming tools, statistic histories,
Geography, law, or such like mysteries,
For which she does'nt care thee skips of
Prettiest fle, that e'er the lips of
Catharine Roache look'd smiling upon,
When bards of France all, one by one,
Declar'd that never did hand approach
Such flea as was caught upon Catharine Roache!"

*

Sentiment, George, I'll talk when I've got any,
And botany-

Oh! Linnæus has made such a prig o'me,
Cases I'll find of such polygamy
Under every bush,

"4 blush;

3 What Mr. Weld says of the continual necessity of As would make the "shy curcuma' balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. "The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side, then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds! Now gentlemen, to the right upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. Now gentlemen, to the left;' and so on."-Weld's Travels, Letter iii.

1 Σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανοπώλιδες. From the Ly sistrata of Aristophanes, v. 458.

4 Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety: and, as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet (as Sale tells us) was at some peis to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely.

2 This phrase is taken verbatim from an account of an ex pedition to Drummond's Pond, by one of those many Americans who profess to think that the English language, as it has been hitherto written, is deficient in what they call republican energy. One of the savans of Washington is far advanced in the construction of a new language for the United States, which is supposed to be a mixture of Hebrew and Mikmak.

3 Alluding to a collection of poems, called "La Puce des grands-jours de Poitiers." They were all written upon a flea, which Stephen Pasquier found on the bosom of the famous Catharine des Roaches, one morning during the grands-jours of Poitiers. I ask pardon of the learned Catharine's memory, for my vulgar alteration of her most respectable name.

4" Curcuma, cold and shy."-Darwin.

1 "Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionaa Muscipula."-Bartram's Travels in North America. For his description of this "carniverous vegetable," see Introduction, p. 13.

2 This philosophical Duke, describing the view from Mr. Jefferson's house, says, "the Atlantic might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible." See his Travels.

The evening now grew dark and still;
The whip-poor-will

Sung pensively on every tree;

And straight I fell into a reverie
Upon that man of gallantry and pith,
Captain Smith.'

And very strange it seem'd to me,
That, after having kiss'd so grand a
Dame as Lady Trabigzanda,

By any chance he

Could take a fancy

To a nymph, with such a copper front as
Pocahuntas!

And now, as through the gloom so dark,
The fire-flies scatter'd many a fiery spark,
To one that glitter'd on the quaker's bonnet,
I wrote a sonnet.2

And

two lines more had just completed it; But, at the moment I repeated it,

Our stage,

(Which good Brissot with brains so critical
And sage,

Calleth the true "machine political,”)3
With all its load of uncles, scholars, nieces,
Together jumbled,

Tumbled

Into a rut and fell to pieces!

Good night!-my bed must be,
By this time, warm enough for me,
Because I find old Ephraim Steady,
And Miss his niece are there already!
Some cavillers

Object to sleep with fellow-travellers;
But

*

*

Saints protect the pretty quaker,
Heaven forbid that I should wake her!

liamsburgh! But when he wrote, his countrymen had no: yet introduced the "doctrinam deos spernentem" into Ame rica.

3 Polygnotus was the first painter, says Pliny, who show ed the teeth in his portraits. He would scarcely, I think," Yet my comfort is, that heretofore honourable and vertuhave been tempted to such an innovation in America.

1 John Smith, a famous traveller, and by far the most was indebted to the interesting young Pocahuntas, daughter enterprising of the first settlers in Virginia. How much he colony. In the dedication of his own work to the Dutchess of King Powhatan, may be seen in all the histories of this of Richmond, he thus enumerates his bonnes fortunes: ous ladies, and comparable but among themselves, have When I overcame offered me rescue and protection in my greatest dangers. Even in forraine parts I have felt reliefe from that sex. The In the utmost of my beauteous lady Trabigzanda, when I was a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable lady Callamata supplyed my necessities. extremities, that blessed Pocahuntas, the great King's daughter of Virginia oft saved my life."

Davis, in his whimsical Travels through America, has manufactured into a kind of romance the loves of Mr. Rolfe 2 For the Sonnet, see page 121. with this "opaci maxima mundi," Pocahuntas.

4 The Marquis de Chastellux, in his wise letter to Mr. Madison, Professor of Philosophy in the College of William and Mary at Williamsburgh, dwells with much earnestness on the attention which should be paid to dancing. See his Travels. This college, the only one in the state of Virginia, and the first which I saw in America, gave me but a melaneboly idea of republican seats of learning. That contempt for the elegancies of education, which the American democrats affect, is no where more grossly conspicuous than in Virginia: the young men, who look for advancement, study rather to be demagogues than politicians; and as every thing 3" The American stages are the true political carriages." that distinguishes from the multitude is supposed to be invidious and unpopular, the levelling system is applied to In one of the letters of Clavière, prefixed to education, and has had all the effect which its partizans could-Brissot's Travels, Letter 6th.-There is nothing more desire, by producing a most extensive equality of ignorance. amusing than the philosophical singeries of these French The Abbé Raynal, in his prophetic admonitions to the Ame-travellers. ricans, directing their attention very strongly to learned es- those of Brissot, upon their plan for establishing a republie "When the youth of a country are seen of philosophers in some part of the western world, he intablishments, says, depraved, the nation is on the decline." I know not what treats Brissot to be particular in choosing a place where the Abbé Raynal would pronounce of this nation now, were there are no musquitoes:" forsooth, ne quid respublica detri he alive to know the morals of the young students at Wil-menti caperet!