sometimes of the badness of the water, the hardness of the biscuit, and the want of fruit. I was struck with their natural ignorance of relative distance: they had been ever accustomed to calculate dis tance by menzils or day's journies; and they were surprised to find it impossible to continue such reckoning. A world of water seemed to them incomprehensible; and one of thein gravely said to me" This is quite extraordinary; this country of your's is nothing but water!"

The Persians were particularly astonished that women and little boys went to sea. The Mirza, seeing some women on board the Success, exclaimed, "Is it possible! If I were to tell our women in Persia that there were women in ships, they would never believe me. To go from one town to another is considered a great undertaking amongst them; but here your women go from one end of the world to the other, and think nothing of it. If it were even known in my family that I was now in a ship, and on the great seas, there would be nothing but wailings and lamentations from morning to night."

Among the many things which struck the Persians as extraordinary on board the ship, was the business of signals. They looked very much inclined to believe that I was telling them untruths, when I said, that at two fursungs dis tance they might ask any questions from another ship, and receive an immediate answer: and that, when we should reach England, our arrival would be known in London in ten minutes, and every necessary order returned before we could get out of the ship. All these things the Mirza carefully noted down in his book, ever exclaiming, "God grant that all such things may take place in my country, too!"

When we arrived at Malta, we were, not permitted to land on account of the quarantine; 'a very mortifying prohibition to the Persians, who had no greater wish than to set foot once again on shore. I could make the Envoy, indeed, comprehend the nature of quarantine laws; but his people were not so tractable, and frequently suggested their fears to him, that he might not be allowed to land even in England. He spoke seriously to ime: "It is well that I have already seen your countrymen, and know many of their regulations; for, if any other Persian had been in my place, he would have required instantly to return back to his

own country." They were much delighted with the exterior of Malta; and particularly with the quantity of shipping in the port. On the left of the harbour there is a very fine building begun by Buonaparte, intended as a hospital. They seemed mightily astonished that so superb a building should be the habitation of the sick.

Those, indeed, who have been accustomed to live under an arbitrary government, and to see acts of despotism committed every day, look with contempt, rather than with admiration, upon the establishments of a free and liberal government; and ridicule objects by which the promoter apparently and directly gains nothing.

We talked of female dress. I asked the Envoy what effect the visit of an European woman, dressed in her own way, would produce in Persia. He replied, that "if the King were to see her, he would probably order all his harem to adopt the costume, and that every other, man would follow his example, and enforce a fashion, which is not only so much more beautiful, but so much less expensive than their own. Their wo men are clothed in brocade and gold cloth, which is soon spoilt; or, at least, which is always cast off, whenever they hear that a new cargo arrives from Russia."

I asked him if he had seen any handsome women in Constantinople: he re plied, that he had seen none so beautiful as those of Persia. "They were fair, indeed, but they wanted that carnation on their cheeks, which is called the numuck or salt of beauty; and which is the second requisite of female perfection. The first is large black eyes, with brows very much arched." A tame antelope was then playing about the cabin, close to me, when the Mirza said, "Do your. poets ever use the simile so constantly applied by ours, eyes like the stag?' The frequency of that image will prove the value we attach to the ob ject."

I desired him to tell me the principal occupations of the women in the Harem. He complied: "They sew, embroider, and spin: they make their own clothes; and my wife even used to make mine: besides that, they superintend all the domestic concerns of the house; they keep an account of the daily expenses; distribute provisions to the servants; pay their wages; settle all disputes between them; manage the concerns of the sta

ble;

ble; see that the horses have their corn; and, in short, have the care of all the disbursements of the house. The King's mother had more business than can be described. She had the controul of all her son's Harem, which might consist altogether of more than a thousand women and you may well conceive the trouble which they could give." When I suggested the difficulty of a woman transacting so many occupations, without seeing any other man than her husband, and asked how she could settle any business but that of the Harem itself? and how she could succeed even in that without seeing the men-servants? He replied, that "in the households of Persia, there is always an officer called a Nazir, with whom the wife daily arranges all that relates to the male part of the establishment, to whom she pays the wages of the others; and who is accountable to ber." As a necessary preparation for the duties which thus devolve upon them, the women of Persia learn to read and write as children, they are sent to school with the boys, and, when too old to be permitted to go unveiled, their education is finished at home by female Mollahs, who attend them for the purpose. They do not, however, like European women, learn music and dancing: these arts are taught to slaves only, who practise them for the amusement of their owners: and the wives never sing or dance, except perhaps at the wedding of a brother or sister.

The King has this right over all the women of his realm, that they must appear unveiled before him.

DESTRUCTION OF THE ARABIAN PIRATES.

The strength of the Joasmees was very considerable. The ports in their possession contained, in the middle of the year 1809, sixty-three large vessels, and eight hundred and ten of smaller sizes; together manned by near nineteen thousand men. This force was increasing; the pirates, in a fleet of fifty-five ships, of various sizes, containing altogether five thousand men, had, after a fight of two days, taken the Minerva, and murdered almost all the crew: in the next month a fleet of seventy sail of vessels, (navigated severally by numbers rising from eighty to one hundred and fifty, and two hundred, men) were cruizing about the Gulph and threatening Bushire: and the chief of Ras al Khyma, whose har bour was almost the exclusive resort of the larger vessels, had dared to demand a tribute from the British government,

that their ships might navigate the Persian Gulph in safety. Our forbearance was now exhausted, and an expedition was sent from Bombay, under Captain Wainwright, and Lieutenant-colonel Smith, of his Majesty's sea and land forces, to attack the pirates in their ports. The first object was Ras al Khyma. The armament, after a short siege, carried the place by storm, destroyed all the naval equipments, and, sparing the smaller vessels, burnt the fifty large ships which the harbour con. tained. They proceeded to the ports of the Arab pirates on the Persian coast, and completed the destruction of all their means of annoyance. They then attacked Shinass, one of their harbours on the Indian ocean. The defence of this place was most heroical; and was conducted indeed for the Joasmees, as was subse quently learnt, by a favourite and con fidential general of Saood Ibn Abdool Uzzeer, the chief of the Wababees. When on the third day of the siege, the few survivors were called upon to surrender, they replied, that they preferred death to submission; and, when the towers were falling round them, they returned upon their assailants the hand. grenades and fire-balls before they could burst. Twice Lieutenant-colonel Smith ceased firing, to endeavour to spare the unavailing effusion of their blood; till, at length, when they were assured of being protected from the fury of the troops of our ally, the Imaum of Muscat, which had co-operated with us, they surren dered to the English.

SUBLIME ANSWER OF THE CHIEF OF THE WAHABEES.

The expedition then scoured all the coast a second time, to destroy any frag ments of that pirate power, against which it was directed; and extirpated in every quarter all the means of annoyance which the Joasmees possessed. There was indeed another force of another tribe, which might eventually grow up into a formidable enemy; but this was distinctly under the protection of the Wahabee, who had invested its chief with the title of Sheik al Behr, or “Lord of the Sea;" and till it marked its hos tility to us by joining in the attacks upon our commerce, it was judged expedient not to confound it in one indiscriminate warfare; but rather to open a cominu nication with this particular chief, and through him to the Wahabee himself, advising the one to prohibit the piracies of his dependants, and requiring the

other

other to respect the flag of England. In answer, the Wahabee observed, “The cause of the hostilities carrying on between me and the members of the faith, is their having turned away from the book of the Creator, and refused to submit to their own prophet, Mahomed. It is not therefore those of another sect, against whom I wage war, nor do I interfere in their hostile operations, nor assist them against any one; whilst, under the power of the Almighty, I have risen superior to all my enemies." *** "Under these circumstances, I have deemed it necessary to advise you that I shall not approach your shores, and have interdicted the followers

of the Mahomedan faith and their vessels, from offering any molestation to your "vessels: any of your merchants, therefore, who may appear in, or wish to come to, my ports, will be in security; and any person on my part who may repair to you, ought in like manner to be in safety."

Be not therefore elated with the confla gration of a few vessels, for they are of no estimation in my opinion, in that of their owners, or of their country. IN TRUTH, WAR IS BITTER; AND A FOOL

ONLY ENGAGES IN IT.

"

BIOGRAPHICAL ANECDOTES

of a considerable Number of

In one point, however, we differ with the Author, in calling Mr. BowyɛR the most learned Printer of the last century, because we place his Biographer at least in the same rank, and think Mr. B. himself is indebted for much of his distinction to the merit of his Pupil and Partner. Perugino would have been forgotten but for his disciple Raphael, We lament our inability to extend our extracts; the work according so exactly with our taste, that we could have filled our Supplement as easily as a few pages, if we had not a paramount duty to perform to our various readers.]

THE TONSONS.

HE Tonsons were a race of book. sellers who did honour to their profession, for integrity, and by their encouragement of authors. The first notice we have been able to obtain of them is, that Jacob Tonson was the son of Jacob, a barber-surgeon in Holborn; who died in 1668, bequeathing to his sons Richard and Jolin, and to their three sisters, 100%. each, when they should attain the age of 21. Jacob was apprenticed, June 5, 1670, to Thomas Basset, bookseller; and, having been admitted a freeman of the Company of Stationers, Dec. 20, 1677, commenced business; as his brother Richard had done the year before. The first edition of "The Spanish Friar, 1681," was " printed for Richard and Jacob Tonson, at Gray's-Inn Gate, in Gray's-Inn-lane; and at the Judge's Head in Chancery-lane."

To the laudable industry of Mr. Malone the curious reader is indebted for the publication of several letters from Dryden to Jacob Tonson, and of one from Tonson to the Poet; which considerably illustrate the history of both. The first of these was in 1684, prepara

ARTISTS;

WITH A VERY COPIOUS INDEX;
BY JOHN NICHOLS, F. S. A.
In Six Volumes, price 61.

[The plan and execution of this work is so perfectly original, that we find much difficulty in assigning it to any general class of Literature. It forms a rich magazine of literary Anecdote and Biography, such as many may endeavour to imitate, but in which none can succeed like Mr. NICHOLS; because few men will ever possess his opportunities, his fidelity, and his persevering industry, in collecting materials.

* Let the people of England learn wisdom from one whom they are led to consider as a semi-barbarian!-EDIT.

lume of those "Miscellany Poems" which are equally known by the name of Dryden and of Tonson, and is written ip terms of great familiarity, with thanks for two melous." Tonson's letter is perfectly the Tradesman's-pleased with the translations of Ovid, which he had received for the Third Miscellany, but not with the price; having only 1446 lines for 30 guineas, when he expected to have had at the rate of 1518 lines for 40 guineas; adding that he had a better bargain with "Juvenal, which is reckoned of the other letters relate to the translanot so easy to translate as Ovid." Most tion of Virgil; and contain repeated acknowledgments of Tonson's kind attention. I thank you beartily," he

says,

says, "for the sherry; it was the best of the kind I ever drank."-The current coin was at that period wretchedly debased. In one letter Dryden says, "I expect forty pounds in good silver; not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to take gold; neither will I; nor stay for it above four-and-twenty hours after it is due."-Some little bickerings occasionally passed between the author and his bookseller; but they do not seem to have produced any lasting ill-will on either side. In 1698, when Dryden published his Fables, Tonson agreed to give him 2631. for 10,000 verses; and, to complete the full number of lines stipulated for, he gave the bookseller the Epistle to his Cousin, and the celebrated Music Ode." The conduct of traders in general in the 17th century," as Mr. Malone observes, "was less liberal, and their manners more rugged, than at present; and hence we find Dryden soinetimes speaking of Tonson with a degree of asperity that confirms an anecdote communicated to Dr. Johnson by Dr. King, of Oxford; to whom Lord Bolingbroke related, that one day, when he visited Dryden, they beard, as they were conversing, another person entering the house. This,' said Dryden, is Tonson: you will take care not to depart before he goes away: for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and, if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue.' On another occasion, Tonson having refused to advance him a sum of money for a work on which he was employed, he sent a second messenger to the bookseller, with a very satirical triplet; adding, "Tell the dog, that he who wrote these lines, can write more.' These descriptive verses, which had the desired effect, by some means got abroad in manuscript; and, not long after Dryden's death, were inserted in Faction Displayed,' a satirical poem, supposed to have been written by William Shippen, which, from its virulent abuse of the opposite party, was extremely popular among the Tories."

The Kit-cat club, which consisted of the most distinguished wits and statesmen among the Whigs, was remarkable for the strictest zeal towards the House of Hanover. They met at a house in Shirelane; and took their title from the name of Christopher Cat, a pastry-cook, who excelled in making mutton-pies, which

3

were regularly part of the entertain

ment

"Immortal made, as Kit-cat by his pies.”

Jacob Tonson, however plain in his appearance, of which the above satirical description may be supposed to have been a caricature, was certainly a worthy man, and was not only respected as an honest and opulent trader, but, after Dryden's death, lived in familiar intimacy with some of the most considerable persons of the early part of the last century. John Dunton says, "He was himself a very good judge of persons and authors: and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion of another, so there is none who does it with more severe exactness, or with less partiality; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody," He used to say, that "Dryden was jealous of rivals."

Speaking of Tonson's "Miscellany Poems," in a letter dated May 20, 1709, Mr. Pope says, "I shall be satisfied if I can lose my time agreeably this way, without losing my reputation. I can be content with a bare saving game, without being thought an eminent hand (with which little Jacob has graciously dignified his adventurers and volunteers in poetry). Jacob creates Poets, as Kings do Knights; not for their honour, but for their money. Certainly he ought to be esteemed a worker of miracles, who is grown rich bypoetry." Mr. Wycherley, in reply, with an indecent allusion to Scripture, observes, "You will make Jacob's ladder raise you to immortality.”—Again, in a letter to Steele, Pope says, “I should myself be much better pleased, if I were told, you called me your little friend, than if you complimented me with the title of a great genius, or an eminent hand, as Jacob does all his writers."-By his suc cess in trade, Mr. Tonson had acquired a sufficient sum to purchase an estate near Ledbury, in Herefordshire. In the year 1703 he went to Holland, for the purpose of procuring paper and getting engravings made for the splendid edi tion of Cæsar's Commentaries, which be published, under the care of Dr. Clarke, in 1712: perhaps the most magnificent work that has been issued from the English press. Before he went abroad, he had acquired a villa at Barn-elms, in Sur rey, about six miles from London; which he adorned with the portraits of the Kitcat club, painted by Kneller, on canvas

somewhat

рог

somewhat larger than a three quarters, and less than a half, length: a size which has ever since been denominated a Kitcat from this circumstance. The room where these portraits were originally intended to be hung (in which the club often dined), not being sufficiently lofty for half-length pictures, that circumstance is said to have been the occasion of a shorter canvas being used, which is now denominated a Kit-cat, and is sufficiently long to admit a hand. The canvas for a Kit-cat is 36 inches long, and 28 wide. A splendid volume under the title of "The Kit-cat Club, done from the original Paintings of Sir Godfrey Kneller by Mr. Faber, sold by J. Tonson in the Strand, and T. Faber at the Golden Head in Bloomsbury-square," was pub. lished in 1735; containing an engraved title-page and dedication; and 43 traits, beginning with Sir Godfrey Kneller, and ending with Mr. Tonson's; who is represented in a gown and cap, holding in his right hand a volume lettered "Paradise Lost." Faber began the plates, which are all dated in 1732; and the volume is dedicated to the Duke of Somerset; "to whose liberality the Collection of Prints owed its very being, in setting the example to the other members of the Kit-cat club of honouring Mr. Tonson with these portraits;" and "ever eminently distinguished y that noble principle, for the support of which that Association was known to have been formed, the love of their country and its constitutional liberties." It appears from the will of the younger Jacob Tonson, which was made August 16, and proved Dec. 6, 1735, that he was then, by the grant and assignment of his uncle, entitled to this Collection of Pictures, after his uncle's death; and that the testator had not long before erected a new room at Barn-elms, in which the Kit-cat portraits were then hung. In 1719 Mr. Tonson made an excursion to Paris, where he spent several months, and was fortunate enough to gain a considerable sum by adventuring in the Mississipi scheme. In consequence of his attachment to the Whigs, he obtained in 1719-20, probably by the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle and Secretary Cragge, a grant to himself and his nephew, Jacob Tonson, junior (who was the son of his elder brother, Richard), of the office of Stationer, Bookbinder, Bookseller, and Printer, to some of the principal public Boards and great Offices, for the term of forty years; and not long MONTHLY Mac. No. 236.

who was

afterwards (1722), he assigned and made over the whole benefit of this grant to the nephew; who, in 1733, obtained from Sir Robert Walpole, a farther grant of the same employment for forty years more, to commence at the expiration of the former term: a very lucrative appointinent, which was enjoyed by the Tonson family, or their assigns, till the month of January 1800. From about the year 1720, the elder Tonson seems to have transferred his business to his ne phew; and lived principally on his estate in Herefordshire, till 1736, when he died, probably about eighty years old. From his will, which was made Dec. 2, 1735, and proved April 9, 1736, it appears that he had estates in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. On his death-bed he is reported to have said, "I wish I had the world to begin again," and, having been asked-why he expressed such a wish, he replied, " because then I should have died worth a hundred thousand pounds; whereas now I die worth only eighty thousand pounds:" but the circumstances in which he died, and the situation of his family, render this anecdote extremely improbable, and worthy of little credit. Only four months before, his nephew had died; and even he, of whom perhaps this story was originally told, had no occasion to wish for rejuveniscence, to obtain the sum which is here stated as the completion of human felicity; for, according to the printed accounts of that period, he was, at the time of his death, worth an hundred thousand pounds. His will, which filled 27 pages, and was all written by himself, shows him not only to have abounded in wealth, but to have been a prudent, just, and worthy man. Ile is therefore very unlikely to have expressed any such wish as that above mentioned. After having devised his estates in Here fordshire, Gloucestershire, and Worcestershire, and bequeathed no less a sum than 34,000l. to his three daughters and his younger son Samuel, and disposed of his patent; he mentions his uncle, old Jacob Tonson, to whom he leaves fifty guineas for mourning; but, knowing his love of quiet and retirement, he says, he would not burthen him with the office of executor of his will. He, however, recommends his family to his uncle's care, and exhorts all bis children to remember their duty to their superiors and their inferiors; tenderly adding " And so God bless you all!" This is not the language of a man whose heart was inordinately set on gain. 4 K

It