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and the Lives of the Saints. These I read for my amusement. One story (among many others of equal veracity) was so remarkable that I shall never forget it. There was a convent, the steeple of which was repairing, a Monk crossing the quadrangle, at that instant saw a workman fall from the scaffolding at the top. He prayed to the Virgin Mary, that the man might remain in the air, till he had a proper authority from his superior, to work a miracle, which was granted, and the man came down un

burt.

Churchill.

"Credulity, the child of Folly, Begot on cloyster'd Melancholy." Many of those stories related in the Lives of the Samts, are so preposterous and absurd, that among people of edu cation, it is become a proverbial saying, for a great liar, He lies like the Lives of the Saints. A very pretty recommendation for reading those holy impositions. These tales are firmly believed by the common people in general, so strong is higotry and the prejudice of education. But it is almost next to impossible, to eradicate errors when the mind has taken a wrong bias in youth, so firmly are these absurdities rivetted in the ideas.

There was alo upon the table a pewter tumbler, whereon several persons (who had been inhabitants of this gloomy mansion of sorrow) had scratched their names. I followed their example, by writing my name with an iron fork, with the year and day of the month I came in; I left a gap, with an intention of filling it up the day I went cut, but I was so happy at the news of my release, that I forgot that circumstance. time, which was about eleven o'clock, the keeper always came and brought me a soup, the bouilli, and a hot dish be sides; with a change of napkin.† At night, about six o'clock, I had two hot

At dinner

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tille

+ The frequent accounts I had heard of the cruelties acted in this place, and of the many who had privately been put to death, then occurred to me, and I could not help thinking, that possibly I might be poisoned. I looked attentively at my repast some time, and reasoned with myself; as I was wholly at their mercy, if they had any such intentions of destroying me, it was totally out of my power to prevent it; and if that was the case, the sooner my days were ended, the better, rather than languish out a life in misery and woe; upon which, without further hesitation,

dishes for supper, and a dessert. I was extremely well entertained by the governor, who was allowed ten livres per day by the government, to find me in necessaries; which is equal to eight shillings and nine-pence, English money. This must afford an exceeding good revenue to him, besides his appointment of two thousand five hundred pounds per annuin; for I believe the prisoners have very little appetite, from the want of air and exercise, if I may judge of others by myself. All the chambers are numbered, and the Bastile name of the prisoner, is his number in such a tower, myself being the second or third Basiniere. This preof the prisoner, unless he is willing to vents the keeper from knowing the name disclose it himself.

This turnkey has

taking the remains, which are his perthe charge of carrying their meals, and quisites. His salary is about forty pounds per annum. There are four turnkeys to the eight towers, called Liberty, Bertaudiere, Basiniere, de la Comte, du Tresor, du Chapelle, du Coin, and du Paitze. The name of Porte-Clefs, Key-Beurers, are given them on account of the monbeing five great ones to a single chamber. strous bunches of keys they carry, there is placed below, at the entrance of each At the time of meals, an armed centinel tower. In the day time, besides the five sentinels, at the different gates, there is one at the outer gate of the castle, to keep off inquisitive persons, who might stop to view the entrance, merely out of curiosity.

The keeper always staid whilst I cut my meat and took the knife with him, probably lest I might do myself a miscould easily have destroyed myself with chief. Had I any such intentions, I left; or I could have finished my days the three-pronged iron-fork, which he with my garters, against the iron bars. But, thanks to Providence, I had no idea of committing so rash an action, however desperate might then be my situation. I was innocent, and therefore endea voured to keep up my drooping spirits as much as possible, and not to wound my repose with imaginary ills.

(To be continued.)

I began my lonely repast, but not without some diffidence and reluctance; from the id:a I had formed, it was a sauce by no means pleasing to the palate.

"Impatience does become a sin, to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare look us in the face." Shakespeare.

To

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine,

A

SIR,

N attempt having been lately made by a veteran learned critic, Dr. Sherwin, of Bath, to shake the firm obelisk erected by the admirers of the immortal boy Chutterton, in which he has stumbled rather ungracefully in taking his footing: allow me, through the channel of your pages, thus, early, to put the public right, as to an assertion in that pamphlet, which is a compleat misre presentation of the real situation of the much injured youth.

After an advertisement, stating with a petrifying indelicacy, that the profits of this Essay, calculated to undermine her beloved brother's fame, were originally intended to have been given to the sister of the late Thomas Chatterton! the Preface commences by telling us, that, "A splendid tribute has lately been paid by an elegant writer, (Percival, Stockdale, perhaps in his Essay on the English Poets of Eminence) to the memory and literary merits of the late Mr. T. Chatterton. Whether this circumstance will, or will not have a tendency to reduce the inconsiderable number of those who still believe in the authen ticity of the poems, attributed to Rowley, the advocates of the old bard, will now probably be convinced that they have been generally too eager in depreciating, while their opponents have been equally earnest in overrating, the abilities of that unfortunate youth.

"But the latter certainly have not been fully sensible, that, short as the young man's career was, the energies of his mind were gradually progressive; for when they consider him as having been equal to the creation of that elegant, complicated, innocent, and pleasing fabrication, which much acquirement, as well as various talent united to raise; that opinion must have been formed upon the display of genius and information, which, at a riper and later hour, was exhibited in some of his unquestionable compositions; and on the view of the subject, they seem altogether to have forgotten, or to have overlooked, the consideration of the fact, that a la ge portion of these poems was actually in the hands of several of his intimate friends, long before this period, and prior to the year 1768. I refer to this particular point of time, because then it was that this great and wonderful genius, this premature phenomenon, under the influence of a passion, which generally animates the most unfeeling, and inspires every one

with some portion of the spirit and phrenzy of poetry, opened his addresses to his mistress in these ungrammatical and hobbling numbers.

"Accept fair nymph, this token of my love, Nor look disdainful on the prostrate swain; By every sacred oath I'll constant prove, And act as worthy for to wear your chain."* From this boasting onset, from this test, which is to be considered as a rule to judge by, those who have not lately read his works, will begin to be alarmed; especially when this bold assertion is placed so gravely as a basis for our judgment, by one who, by his own confes sion, has been deeply concerned in some former attacks on the boy anonymously," and who although, by this contrivance, he has escaped the unfeeling lashes of the controvertialists, had not yet had his critical rage cooled against the ashes of defunct genius, or profited from the compleat exposure of the errors of the poet's antagonists, by the noble

minded editors of the edition of 1803;

but after ruminating above twenty-five years over their disappointed efforts, at last, in his own name, resumes this

amusing study," as he calls it, when all his opponents are dead, buried, and reduced to dust, by way of finding occupation for "a life of leisure and literary

retirement."

Yes, the lines charged in the indictment are certainly in the book, at page 90, perhaps among the worst of his early Bristol, know that every boy writes once valentines, (such as those that know then is this to prove that he wrote them, a year, or gets written for him); but how or that he wrote them in the year 1768, or that he wrote them to his mistress, remains to be considered.

A plain tale puts it all down.

In the third volume of the work, from which he quotes with so much triumph these poor verses, are some of Chatterton's letters, and among them one to a Mr. Baker, of Charles Town, South Carolina, dated March 6, 1768, on which Chatterton says to his friend Baker

"The Poems on Miss Hoyland, I wish better for her sake and your's;" under which stands a note by the editors, stating that, "the verses to Miss Hoyland relate to a lady to whom Baker paid his addresses, and that those, (consisting of a whole packet, as will be seen) to

See the new edition of Chatterton's

works, vol. 1. page 90; lines addressed to Miss Hoyland.

Miss

Miss Clark, &c. were all included in the above letter from Chatterton, to his friend, and will be found in vol. i."

In the Life of Chatterton also, is an other note by the editors, at page 17, where, after relating that soon after he left school, he corresponded with a boy, who had been his bedfellow while at Colston's, and was bound apprentice to a merchant at New York, at the bottom of the page is the following note, viz. "At the desire of his friend he wrote love verses to be transmitted to him, and exhibited as his own."

Dr. Sherwin seems also to have entirely overlooked, when producing so victoriously this one hobbling stanza, sent in 1768 to America, which he gives a certain mark, that C. was unable to write heroic verse, that it was accompanied with half a dozen more sets of love-letters; some of which, although all calculated to display that they were manufactured for the commerce they were designed to promote between the parties, yet he seemed not to have been able to debase sufficiently, as a reader of common judgment may see. The whole being enclosed in a letter to Baker, wherein he says, " my friendship is as firm as the white rock, when the black waves roar around it, and the waters burst on its hoary top; when the driving wind ploughs the sable sea, and the rising waves aspire to the clouds, turning with the ratling hail," adding, "so much for heroics; to speak in plain English, I am, and ever will be, your unalterable friend, &c."

This letter, with its bundle of loveverses, which was furnished, as Mr. Cottle, one of the editor's, says, by Mr. Calcott, might, I think, probably have been committed to his hands to forward, but never sent for want of occasion; and as it has now served for a trap for a critic, who comes, I think, himself hobbling after the race is decided, it is, I think, fortunate that it has remained; both on that account, and because it may serve as a lesson to those who blame the inaccuracies of commentators, while they must either confess they neglected to read the work they criticise, or plead guilty of wilful misrepresentation.

I shall here therefore withdraw my pen, contented with having parried with so little difficulty this learned gentleman's first back-handed blow, leaving him very willingly amid the thorny laby. rinths of verbal criticism, attempting

with toil to prove, what can never be proved, that Chatterton knew not the value of the words he used; after it has been shewn that before he was twelve years old, he had made a catalogue of hooks that he had read to the number of seventy, having in the year 1762, when he was only ten years old, acquired a taste for general reading.

We also find, he read a letter at home, written to this very Mr. Baker, (vide Mrs Newton's Letter, page 461, 3d vol.) containing a collection of all the hard words in the English language; but that not the shadow of a doubt may remain of this charge being founded on misrepresentation, since by quoting its pages, it appears that this writer must have had the last edition before him; permit me to show that, without reading the remarkable notes, the lines themselves shew that it was not Chatterton's mistress that he was talking of, for in the first copy of verses to Miss Hoyland, he says,

Far distant from Britannia's lofty isle,
What shall I find to make the genius smile?

never left England; and in the second
This could not come from C. who
Wilds of America, he adds,
set, dated 1768, after alluding to the

There gently moving through the vale,
Bending before the bustling gale,

Fell apparitions glide;
Whilst roaring rivers echo round,
The drear reverberating sound,

Runs through the mountain's side.
Concluding thus:

When wilt thou own a flame as pure,
As that seraphic souls endure,
And make thy Baker blest.

After this, shall we be told that these lines were written by Chatterton to the mistress of his soul? That love could not inspire him? and that even under this impression, hobbling and ungrammatical were his numbers, by way of grand proof that he could never have been the author of Ella?

If I may seem too warm in the eyes of the public, or even of Dr. Sherwin, in any expressions that may have naturally occurred in this correction of an error, that might at any rate have been dangerous to the reputation of the unhappy poet, let it be attributed to a sentiment that I can never divest myself of-that men of great talents should be treated by the world as always living, and that he who would not defend their urns, would

never have deserved their friendship, had they been his contemporaries. Culver-street, Bristol, Your's, &c. April 10, 1809. G. CUMBERLAND.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

N medals you will find, not only the naines of several princes unknown in history, but many of their exploits and events; the epochas of cities and governmer's; the different habits of every age and country; their deities and their respective temples, sacrifices, and altars.

In them you will meet with the names of an infinite number of cities which no longer exist, or are altered; of provinces, and for what they were peculiarly noted; and their genius and occupations; and of harbours, mountains and rivers; and, sometimes, their situation.

Thus these coins, anciently no more than the instruments of commerce, and the symbols of the first wants of mankind, being stamped only with an ox or a sheep, have come to be the depositaries of what was most singular, and of the most distinguished actions of nations. Hence, so many great men, especially those who were attached to history and the sciences, have often made them a part of their studies. From these coins it is, that Varro and Atticus took many of their heads and other decorations, for the trophy which they erected to virtue and patriotism. It is well known, that the Romans no sooner began to cultivate literature, than, convinced of the utility of medals, they were extremely curious in making collections of them. Certainly that of Augustus must have been immense, since Suetonius says, that in the Saturnalia he used to present his friends, not only with coins of all prices and different expressions, or of the ancient kings, but also with foreign pieces which had never been current in the Empire; by foreign, I suppose, are meant all that were neither Greek nor Latin, but being struck in civilized nations, conveyed some historical knowledge. This abuse appears to have been excessive, for Seneca says, "that they were more frequently amassed as ornaments of saloons, than as helps to learning; and sometimes from a worse motive than splendour, a ridiculous ostentation, with which the rich are infatunted, of being lavish in every thing." In another place he exposes the taste in vogue that in

the midst of vice and ignorance, a library is become as indispensable an accompa niment of a great house, as offices, baths, and bagnios." However, from their ac knowledged utility, their convection with the study of antiquity, the noble purposes to which learned men have applied them, and the number of events and chronological chasms which they have illustrated and supplied, they still retain their value in the republic of let

ters.

With respect to Inscriptions, they are of such use to history, that none who have excelled in it, ever supposed it unnecessary to consult them. No monu ments whatever can come in competition with them for antiquity. They were known even before barks of trees were used for writing. Stone and metals appear to have been the only substances for writing in those times, when the elements of the sciences, or the history of the world were engraved, by the first learned men, on the columns mentioned by Josephus. This custom is also proved by those inscriptions fastened to columns, which, Porphyry (De Abst. Anim.) tells us, were preserved with so much care by the Cretans; and what puts the antiquity of these pieces out of all doubt is, that they describe the sacrifices of the Corybantes, and are quoted by Porphyry to prove, by the most ancient monuments, that the first sacrifices consisted only of the fruits of the earth, without any bleeding victims. But although Pliny asserts, that the first writing was on palin-leaves, and afterwards on the rind of certain trees, that this custom was subsequent to that we have mentioned is unquestionable; and, besides, the materials of which the first books were composed, is all he speaks of, "Euhemerus, according to Lactantius, had made a history of Jupiter, and the other fictitious gods, wholly taken from the religious inscriptions which were to be found in the most ancient temples, and chiefly in that of Jupiter Triphylins, where au inscription on a golden pillar testified, that it had been set up by the god himself." Porphyry, as cited by Theodoret, in his second discourse against the Greeks, says the same thing of Sanchoniathon-" he collected his ancient history from the records of all the cities, and the monuments in temples, which from the usage of those times could be no other than inscriptions." And Pliny himself, in his 9th book, re lates, that the Babylonian astrologers used bricks to perpetuate their observa

tions. "Among the Babylonians (says he) are to be found planetary observations, made 720 years ago, cut out on bricks." This was undoubtedly owing to a difficulty, or rather ignorance, of writing, which made it necessary to use solid bodies to keep the invention of arts and sciences, that they might not be effaced by barbarism, and a more enlightened posterity deprived of their use.

This, custom, Sir, appears to have been of long continuance; for, in Porphyry, we find Arimnestus, the son of Pythagoras, offering in the temple of Juno a brass plate, containing a scheme of the sciences. "Arimnestus (says Malchus) on his return home, set up in the temple of Juno, a brass table as a gift to posterity it was two yards in diameter, with this introduction: Arimnestus, the son of Pythagoras offered me to the deity of this temple, as the fruits of his wakeful nights, which were well compensated by the pleasure of an acquaintance with the sciences." Simus, the musician, having conveyed it away, assumed to himself a rule taken from it, and passed it upon the world as his own. The sciences exhibited were seven in number: but Sinus, cutting off that part which contained one, occasioned the loss of all the others.

By this it appears, how long the great men of antiquity continued without any other means of acquiring those astonish ing lights which they diffused over the world. Pythagoras and Plato are supposed to have learned philosophy only from.the inscriptions engraven in Egypt on the columns of Mercury: this was likewise their method for the improvement of others. . An Italian writer, in his Chronicles of Calabria, tells us, that "M. Aurelius kept, among his favourite curiosities, a stone which Pythagoras had placed over the door of his school, on which was this sentence, engraven by the philosopher's own hand: "He, who knows not what he should know, is a brute among brutes; and he who knows no more, is but a man among brutes; but he is a god among men, who knows all he can know."-Even our inventive age has not a more effectual preservative against the injuries of Time, or any surer way of rendering the unines of our heroes the admiration of posterity. It is what Annibal did in a temple of Juno, in the province where he spent the summer af. ter the battle of Canne: "He dedicated (says Livy) an altar, with a long detail of his achievements, engraven in

Punic and Greek." This instance, by the way, may corroborate the opinion, that all inscriptions, relative to the fame of great men, should be in the common language of the country where they are placed. This Annibal adopted, and no man was ever more found of honour and reputation. The two languages he employed in his eulogium were certainly the most general of any. The Punic, unques tionably, had the preference in this inscription, as the language of those upon whom all his greatness depended; and when be added the language which was. then the most universal, he was equally actuated by ambition and policy, by causing his enemies to repeat his praises, and recording to his descendants the su periority of Carthaginian valour.

The inscriptions which are likewise to be met with in Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Polyænus, Krantzius, Olaus Magnus, &c. the manner in which they are introduced, and the authorities drawn from them, are sufficient proofs that this was the primitive way of conveying instruction, or perpetuating glorious actions. This is more particularly confirmed in a dialogue of Plato, called Hyp parchus, where it is said, that the son of Pisistratus, of the same name, ordered a system of agriculture to be carved on pillars, for the instruction of husbandmen. The universality of this practice likewise appears from this expression of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, in his funeral oration on his brother, where, speaking of his learning, he says, "the East and West are so many columns whereby it is made public;" so that it is not a groundless conjecture, that the archives of cities and empires, for a long time, consisted only of such memorials; I mean stones, marble and brass pillars, plates of copper, lead, and other metals. "Afterwards (says Pliny), public monuments and inscriptions on sheets of lead came in use and in the Maccabees we find, that the treaty of alliance of the Jews with the Romans was written on plates of brass, which they sent to Jerusalem, that the Jews might always have before their eyes a memorial of the contract between them." It is probable, that the Lacede monian records were of similar materials. Tacitus ailudes to the same practice among the Messenians, where he relates the disputes between them and the Spartans, concerning a temple of Diana "The Messenians," says he, “produced the ancient division of Peloponnesus,

made

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