being an understood thing that he had a privilege of exaggeration, without committing his abstract love of truth. The reader knows the ld blunder attributed to Goldsmith about a dish of green peas. Somebody had been applauded in company for advising his cook to take some ill-dressed peas to Hammersmith, " because that was the way to Turn'em Green;" upon which Goldsmith is said to have gone and repeated the pun at another table in this fashion: "John should take those peas, I think, to Hammersmith." "Why so, Doctor?" "Because that is the way to make 'em green.' Now our friend would give the blunder with this sort of additional dressing: "At sight of the dishes of vegetables, Goldsmith, who was at his own house, took off the covers, one after another, with great anxiety, till he found that peas were among them; upon which he rubbed his hands with an air of infinite and prospective satisfaction. 'You are fond of peas, Sir?' said one of the company. Yes, Sir,' said Goldsmith, 'particularly so:—I eat them all the year round;-I mean, Sir, every day in the season. I do not think there is anybody so fond of peas as I am.' 'Is there any particular reason, Doctor,' asked a gentleman present,' why you like peas so much, beyond the usual one of their agreeable taste?'-'No, Sir, none whatsoever :-none, I assure you' (here Goldsmith showed a great wish to impress this fact on his guests): 'I never heard any particular encomium or speech about them from any one else but they carry their own eloquence with them they are things, Sir, of infinite taste.' (Here a laugh, which put Goldsmith in additional spir. its.) But, bless me!' he exclaimed, looking narrowly into the peas:I fear they are very ill-done: they are absolutely yel. low instead of green' (here he put a strong emphasis on green); and you know, peas should be emphatically green :-greenness in a pea is a quality as essential as whiteness in a lily. The cook has quite spoilt them:-but I'll give the rogue a lecture, gentlemen, with your permission.' Goldsmith then rose and rang the bell violently for the cook, who came in ready booted and spurred. 'Ha!' exclaimed Goldsmith, 'those boots and spurs are your salvation, you knave. Do you know, Sir, what you have done?'-'No, Sir.'-' Why, you have made the peas yellow, Sir. Go instantly, and take 'em to Hammer.

smith.' To Hammersmith, Sir?' cried the man, all in astonishment, the guests being no less so please, Sir, why am I to take 'em to Hammersmith?'—' Because, Sir,' (and here Goldsmith looked round with triumphant anticipation) that is the way to render those peas green.'

There is a very humorous piece of exaggeration in Butler's Remains, a collection, by the bye, well worthy of Hudibras, and indeed of more interest to the general reader. Butler is defrauded of his fame with readers of taste who happen to be no politicians, when Hudibras is printed without this appendage. The piece we allude to is a short description of Holland:

We do not know, and perhaps it would be impossible to discover, whether Butler wrote his minor pieces before those of the great patriot Andrew Marvell, who rivalled him in wit and excelled him in poetry. Marvell, though born later, seems to have been known earlier as an author. He was certainly known publicly before him. But in the political poems of Marvell there is a ludicrous character of Holland, which might be pronounced to be either the copy or the original of Butler's, if in those antiBatavian times the Hollander had not been baited by all the wits; and were it not probable that the unwieldy monotony of his character gave rise to much the same ludicrous imagery in many of their fancies. Marvell's wit has the advantage of Butler's, not in learning or multiplicity of contrasts (for nobody ever beat him there), but in a greater variety of them, and in being able, from the more poetical turn of his mind, to bring graves and more imaginative things to wait upon his levity.

He thus opens the battery upon our amphibious neighbor:

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labor,* fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles rowl,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole :

How did they rivet with gigantic piles

Thorough the centre their new-catched miles ;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high

To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky.
Yet still his claim the injured ocean layed,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To show them what's their Mare Liberumt;
A dayly deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coyl;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest:
And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau.
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herrings, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake;
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,

Something like government among them brings;

• Dryden afterwards, of fighting for gain, in his song of Come, dare

"The Gods from above the mad labor behold.”

+ A Free Ocean.

For as with Pigmys, who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord and country's father speak;
To make a bank was a great plot of state;-
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

We can never read these and some other ludicrous verses of Marvell, even when by ourselves, without laughter.

CHAPTER XIII.

Gilbert Gilbert!

THE sole idea generally conveyed to us by historians of Thomas à Becket is that of a haughty priest, who tried to elevate the religious power above the civil. But in looking more narrowly into the accounts of him, it appears that for a considerable part of his life he was a merry layman, was a great falconer, feaster, and patron, as well as man of business; and he wore all characters with such unaffected pleasantness, that he was called the Delight of the Western World.

On a sudden, to everybody's surprise, his friend the king (Henry II.), from chancellor made him archbishop; and with equal suddenness, though retaining his affability, the new head of the English church put off all his worldly graces and pleasures (save and except a rich gown over his sackcloth, and in the midst of a gay court, became the most mortified of ascetics. Instead of hunting and hawking, he paced a solitary cloister; instead of his wine, he drank fennel-water; and in lieu of soft clothing, he indulged his back in stripes.

This phenomenon has divided the opinions of the moral critics. Some insist that Becket was religiously in earnest, and think the change natural to a man of the world, whose heart had been struck with reflection. Others see in his conduct nothing but ambition. We suspect that three parts of the truth are with the latter; and that Becket, suddenly enabled to dispute a kind of sovereignty with his prince and friend, gave way to the new temptation, just as he had done to his falconry and fine living. But the complete alteration of his way of life,-the enthusiasm which enabled him to set up so different a greatness against his former one-shows that his character partook at least of as much sincerity as would enable him to delude himself in good taste.