[page 38:]

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UNDER the head of Random Thoughts, Odds and Ends, Stray Leaves, Scraps, Brevities, and a variety of similar titles, we occasionally meet, in periodicals and elsewhere, with papers of rich interest and value — the result, in some cases, of much thought, and more research, expended, however, at a manifest disadvantage, if we regard merely the estimate which the public are willing to set upon such articles. It sometimes occurs that in papers of this nature may be found a collective mass of general, but more usually of classical erudition, which if dexterously besprinkled over a proper surface of narrative, would be sufficient to make the fortunes of one or two hundred ordinary novelists in these our good days, when all heroes and heroines are necessarily men and women of “extensive acquirements.” But, for the most part, these “Brevities,” etc., are either piecemeal cullings at second hand, from a variety of sources hidden or supposed to be hidden, or more audacious pilferings from those vast storehouses of brief facts, memoranda, and opinions in general literature, which are so abundant in all the principal libraries of Germany and France. Of the former species, the Koran of Lawrence Sterne is, at the same time, one of the most consummately impudent and silly; and it may well be doubted whether a single paragraph of any merit in the whole of it may not be found, nearly verbatim, in the works of some one of his [page 39:] immediate cotemporaries. If the Lacon of Mr. Colton is any better, its superiority consists altogether in a deeper ingenuity in disguising his stolen wares, and in that prescriptive right of the strongest which, time out of mind, has decided upon calling every Napoleon a conqueror, and every Dick Turpin a thief. Seneca; Machiavelli;(1) Balzac, the author of “La Manière de bien Penser”; Bielfeld, the German, who wrote, in French, “Les Premiers Traits de L’Erudition Universelle”; Rochefoucault; Bacon; Bolingbroke; and especially Burdon, of “Materials for Thinking” memory, possess, among them, indisputable claims to the ownership of nearly everything worth owning in the book.

Of the latter species of theft, we see frequent specimens in the continental magazines of Europe, and occasionally meet with them even in the lower class of periodicals in Great Britain. These specimens are usually extracts, by wholesale, from such works as the “Bibliothèque des Memorabilia Literaria,” the “Recueil des Bonnes Pensées,” the “Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses,” the “Literary Memoir” of Sallengré, the “Mélanges Littéraires” of Suard and André, or the “Pièces Intéressantes et peu Connues” of La Place. D’Israeli's “Curiosities of Literature,” “Literary Character,” and “Calamities of Authors,” have, of late years, proved exceedingly convenient to some little American pilferers in this line, but are now becoming too generally known to allow much hope of [page 40:] their good things being any longer appropriated with impunity.

Such collections, as those of which we have been speaking, are usually entertaining in themselves, and for the most part, we relish everything about them save their pretensions to originality. In offering, ourselves, something of the kind to the readers of the Messenger, we wish to be understood as disclaiming in a great degree every such pretension. Most of the following article is not(1) original, and will be readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader — some portions of it may have been written down in the words, or nearly in the words, of the primitive authorities. The whole is taken from a confused mass of marginal notes, and entries in a common-place-book. No certain arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogeneous a farrago it would have been an endless task to methodize. We have chosen the heading Pinakidia, or Tablets, as one sufficiently comprehensive. It was used, for a somewhat similar purpose, by Dionysius of Harlicarnassus.

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The whole of Bulwer's elaborate argument on the immortality of the soul, which he has put into the mouth of the “Ambitious Student,” may be confuted through the author's omission of one particular point in his summary of the attributes of Deity — a point which we cannot believe omitted altogether through accident. A single link is deficient in the chain — but the chain is worthless without it. No man doubts [page 41:] the immortality of the soul — yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms. We would refer our readers to the argument here mentioned.

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a line in one Mr. Idiorne's poem, “The Progress of Refinement,” is pronounced by the American author of a book entitled “Ante-Diluvian Antiquities,” “the very best alliteration in all poetry.”

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The Turkish Spy is the original of many similar works — among the best of which are Montesquieu's Persian Letters, and the British Spy of our own Wirt. It was written undoubtedly by John Paul Marana, an Italian, in Italian, but probably was first published in French. Dr. Johnson, who saw only an English translation, supposed it an English work. Marana died in 1693.

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is a much admired line in Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming — but the identical line is to be found in the poems of the American Freneau.

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Corneille's celebrated Moi of Medea is borrowed from Seneca. Racine, in Phædra, has stolen nearly the whole scene of the declaration of love from the same puerile writer.

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The peculiar zodiac of the comets is comprised in these verses of Cassini: —

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Speaking of the usual representation of the banquet-scene in “Macbeth,” Von Raumer, the German historian, mentions a shadowy figure thrown by optical means into the chair of Banquo, and producing intense effect upon the audience. Enslen, a German optician, conceived this idea, and accomplished it without difficulty.

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A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen, was excited during the reign of Frederic II, by the imagined virulence of a book entitled “The Three Impostors.” It was attributed to Pierre des Vignes, chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political fables. The work in question, however, which was squabbled about, abused, defended, and familiarly quoted by all parties, is well proved never to have existed.

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The word Τυχη, or Fortune, does not appear once in the whole Iliad.

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The “Lamentations” of Jeremiah are written, with the exception of the last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times successively.

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The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in Diodorus Siculus.

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Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the sexual system of Linnæus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained [page 43:] that comets appeared after a certain revolution, and Æcetes contended for the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the half-serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.

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Cicero makes finis masculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum finem. — Cicero. Quae finis standi? Haec finis Priami facorum. — Virgil.

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Dante left a poem in three languages — Latin, Provençal, and Italian. Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.

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Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled Των εις εαυτον — Of the things which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary.

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Lipsius, in his treatise “De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright beam of the cross was a fixture at the place of execution, whither the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross.

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The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the Septuagint the word [page 44:] is κεδρον, darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar, black, and not κεδρων, of cedars.

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Seneca says that Appian, a grammarian of the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, Μηνιν, the Μη of which signifies 48, the number of books in both poems. Seneca, however, adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui multa vult scire.”

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The tale in Plato's “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve's being made from Adam's rib.

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Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies: —

which may be thus translated,

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Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this incription

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Hèdelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum — à la manière des chansons du Pontneuf. [page 45:]

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The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam entitled “The Hopes of Israel.” It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the Jews in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account by Montesini of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the Cordilleras.

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The word assassin is derived, according to Hyle, from Hassa, to kill. Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association — some from the Jewish Essenes- [[—]] Lemoine from a word meaning “herbage”; De Sacy and Hammer from “hashish,” the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the assassins made a singular use.

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“Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur” was a law of the twelve tables.

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The origin of the phrase “corporal oath” is to be found in the ancient usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, the corporale or cloth which covered the consecrated articles.

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Montgomery in his lectures on Literature (!) has the following — “Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and gems, and filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales, as from the trinkets of a toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?” What man of genius but must answer “Not I.”

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The Abbé de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two significant words, viz: bienfaisance, and the diminutive la gloriole.

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There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland by the name of the Ranz des Vaches. Every [page 46:] canton has its own song varying in words, notes, and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.

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is neither in Virgil nor Ovid, as often supposed, but in the “Alexandrics” of Philip Gualtier, a French poet of the thirteenth century.

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Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurilli who invented the character of Scaramouch, are these verses,

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A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Pætus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans.

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In Cary's “Dante” is the following passage

Gray has also

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Marmontel in the “Encyclopédie” declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading — therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest names in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand [page 47:] dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies — many of a high order.

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A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.” Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.

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Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.”

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The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the “Paradise Lost,” had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.

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Campbell's line

is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has

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In Hudibras are these lines —

Young in his “Love of Fame” has the following

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Goldsmith's celebrated lines

are stolen from Young; who has

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The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil

is thus grossly mistranslated,

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There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.

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Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences “Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare,” and ends “Si haec ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor.”

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The “Courtier” of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The “Noctes Atticae” of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.

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These lines were written over the closet door of M. Ménard: —

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Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIII.th's book by which the latter acquired the title of “Defender of the Faith,” calls the monarch very unceremoniously “a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.”

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The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David's Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS.

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is a line in Cowley's famous description of the Creation.

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It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis — that Sheba was a kingdom in the southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called Sabæans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and queen,

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Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the ballad called Hosier's Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus.

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The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such letters as J or V. The word is properly Iah — Uah — compounded of Iah Essence and Uah [page 50:] Existing. Its full meaning is the self-existing essence of all things.

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The “Song of Solomon” throwing aside the heading of the chapters, which is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book, contain even the name of the Deity.

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In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the Latin inscription “Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor.”

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The word translated “slanderers” in I Timothy iii, 2, and that translated “false accusers” in Titus ii, 3, are “female devils” in the original Greek of the New Testament.

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The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps Jehovah) which conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity but once.

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“The slipper of Cinderella,” says the editor of the new edition of Warton [[“]]finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope.” Cinderella is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of the incidents. It is popular among the Welch — also among the Poles — in Hesse and Schwerin. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen, in his Froachmäuseler, speaks of it as the tale of the despised Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola. [page 51:]

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Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted with the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same.

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Servius on Virgil's AEneid speaks of a bearded Venus.The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the Mother of the Gods.

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In Suidas is a letter fiom Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion), to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.”

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The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses, is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria.)

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The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.

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So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to

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The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone were the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.

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André Chénier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation,

At this instant André Chénier was interrupted by the officials of the guillotine.

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Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick's life, said to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several entire passages purloined from his own writings.

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An extract from the “Mystery of St. Denis” is in the “Bibliothèque du Théâtre Français, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768.” In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom. [page 53:]

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The idea of

was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's

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In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy “The Deliverance of the Children of Israel,” one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself.

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Darwin is indebted for a great part of his “Great Poem” to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled “Connubia Florum.”

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Mr. Bryant, in his learned “Mythology,” says that although the Pagan fables are not believed, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities.

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The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.

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Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ is said to have prophesied that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1). It amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun.

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The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The [page 54:] “Masoretical punctuation” which professes to supply the vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and other writers.

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James Montgomery thinks proper to style M’Pherson's Ossian, a collection “of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs.”

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The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:

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is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein a person is personified.

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It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.

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Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua.

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“Statua Stature” was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV., begun [page 55:] by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also,

and another,

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Bochart derives Elysium from the Phœnician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek ’Hλυσιον. Circe from the Phœnician Kirkar, to corrupt — Siren, from the Phœnician Sir, to sing — Scylla, from the Phœnician Scol, destruction — Charybdis from the Phœnician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.

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Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been “the forbidden.” It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.

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The following quaint sentence is found in Saint Evremond. “I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus.”

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The standard of Judas Maccabaeus displayed the words “Mi camoca baelim Jehovah” — Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the Gods? This being afterwards intimated by the first letter of each word, in the manner of the S. P. Q. R., gave rise to the surname Maccabeaus — for the initials in Hebrew form “Maccabi.”

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Josephus, with Saint Paul and others, supposed man to be compounded of body, soul, and spirit. The [page 56:] distinction between soul and spirit is an essential point in ancient philosophy.

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Lord Lyttleton acknowledged the authorship of two dialogues, in the first of which the personages were the Savior and Socrates, in the second, king David and Cæsar Borgia.

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Dante gives the name of sonnet to his little canzone or ode beginning

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The learned Ménage has this epitaph on Sannazarius —

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The two reprehensible lines in Pope's Eloisa,

are to be found in the original letters of Eloisa — at least the thought.

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Mercier, in “L’an deux mille quatre cents quarante,” seriously maintains the doctrines of the Metempsychosis, and I. D’Israeli says there is no system so simple, and so little repugnant to the understanding.

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Boileau is mistaken in saying that Petrarch, ‘qui est regardé conmme le père du sonnet,’ borrowed it from the French or Provençal writers. The Italian [page 57:] sonnet can be traced back as far as the year 1200. Petrarch was not born until 1304.

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One of the best epigrams affixed to the statue of Pasquin was the following upon Paul III,

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Milton in Paradise Lost, has this passage,

Gray, in his Ode to Adversity, has

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Gray tells us that the image of his bard, where

was taken from a picture by Raphael: yet the beard of Hudibras is also likened to a meteor,

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The lines

are not to be found, as is thought, in Hudibras. Butler's verses ran thus;

The former are in a volume of Poems’ by Sir John Mennes, reign of Charles II. The original idea is in Demosthenes. ανηρ ο φευγων και παλιν μαχησεται

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“Semel insanivimus omnes” is not from Horace but from Mantuanus, an Italian. In a work entitled “De honesto amore” is this line,

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Dryden in ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ has these lines,

Pope, in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, has

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Tickell's lines

are evidently borrowed from those of Boileau,

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The expressions [[expression]] ‘nemorumque noctem’ occurring in one of Gray's Latin odes, has been repeatedly found fault with — yet Virgil has ‘media nimborum in nocte.’

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Selden observes of Henry VIII., that he was a king with a pope in his belly.

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In the ‘Nubes’ of Aristophanes, there are several Greek verses in rhyme. [page 59:]

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Of the ten tragedies which are attributed to Seneca, (the only Roman tragedies extant,) nine are on Greek subjects.

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Ariosto says of one of his heroes, that, in the heat of combat, not perceiving that he was a dead man, he continued to fight valiantly, dead as he was.

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The author of ‘La Manière de bien Penser’ speaks of a French divine who, to prove that young persons sometimes die before old ones, cited the text, ‘Praecucurrit citius Petro Johannes et venit primus ad monumentunm.’

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There is no passage among all the writings of antiquity more sublime than these lines of Silius Italicus. The words are addressed to a young man of Capua, who proposed to assassinate Hannibal at a banquet.

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These lines of Tasso are a curious specimen of literary robbery — being made up entirely of passages from Lucan and Sulspicius. Lucan says of Troy

and Sulspicius, in a letter to Cicero, says of Megara, Ægina, Corinth, &c. — “Hem! nos homunculi indignamur si quis nostrum interiit, quorulm vita brevior esse debet, cum uno loco tot oppidorum cadavera projecta jaceant.”

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The epigrams of the Greek Anthology are characterized more by naïveté than point. They are for the most part insipid.

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Longinus calls pompous and inflated thoughts “reveries of Jupiter” — insomnia Jovis.

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The “Satyre Ménippée” of the French is, in prose, the exact counterpart of Hudibras in rhyme.

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An epigram upon the subject of François (de Bassompiere being released from the Bastille upon the death of Richlieu, is a strange mixture of lofty thought and puerile conceit.

The line, “France, je sors de ma prison,” is the anagram of François de Bassompiere.

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A French writer of celebrity dedicated a book to Richelieu in terms of the most blasphemous flattery. But being disappointed in his expectations, he suppressed all his praises in a second edition, and rededicated his volume “à Jésus Christ.”

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The following inscription intended for the Louvre, possesses both simplicity and dignity: [page 61:]

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Under a fine painting of St. Bruno in solitude, some Italian wrote these words, “Egli è vivo, e parlerebbe se non osservasse la regola del silenzio.” Malherbe has taken the hint in his epigram upon a picture of Saint Catherine.

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A fine sample of galimatias is to be found in an epigram of Miguel de Cervantes:

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Quintillian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who was wont to say to his scholars, “This is excellent — I do not understand it myself.”

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An Italian metaphysician, to disprove that greatness of mind is proportioned to the size of the skull, argues thus: “Non sano, che la mente è il centro del capo; ed il centro non cresce per la grandezza del circolo.”

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A horse is often seen on ancient sepulchral monuments. Caylus quotes a passage from Passeri, “de animia transvectione,” implying that the horse designates the passage of the soul to Elysium.

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A remarkable instance of concord of sound and sense is to be seen in the following stanza by M. Anton Flaminius:

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Voltaire's ignorance of antiquity is laughable. In his Essay on Tragedy, prefixed to Brutus, he actually boasts of having introduced the Roman senate on the stage in red mantles. “The Greeks,” as he asserts, “font paraître leurs acteurs (tragic) sur des espèces d’échasses, le visage couvert d’un masque qui exprime la douleur d’un côté et la joye de l’autre!” The only circumstance upon which he could possibly have founded such an accusation is, that in the new comedy masks were worn with one eyebrow drawn up and the other down, to denote a busy-body or inquisitive medler.

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Several ancient tragedies, viz: Eumenides, Philoctetes, and Œdipus et Colonos, besides many pieces of Euripides, have a happy and enlivening termination.

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The only historical tragedies by Grecian authors were The Capture of Miletus by Phrynicus and the Persians of Æschylus.

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The foundation of all the erroneous opinions on the subject of the old Greek comedy (Voltaire's opinion particularly) may be found in the comparison between Aristophanes and Menander, in Plutarch.

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Schlegel says justly, that Harlequin and Pulcinello descend in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans. On Greek vases are seen also dresses like theirs — long breeches and waistcoats with arms, articles worn by neither Greeks nor Romans except upon the stage. At present Zanni is one of the names of Harlequin, and Sannio in the Latin farces was a buffoon who had a shaven head, and a dress patched together of all colors. [page 63:]

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In Racine's Bérénice Antiochus says to the queen:

and to give a direct proof of his intention, recites immediately no less than fifty verses in a breath.

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In Voltaire's scruples about unity of place he has committed a thousand blunders. In the Mort de César the scene is in the Capitol, but the people seem not to know their precise situation. On one occasion Cæsar exclaims, “Courons au Capitole!”

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Denis de Sallo's “Journal des Sçavans,” in 1665 may be considered as the origin of Literary Journals or Reviews.

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was Le Sage's epitaph.

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These lines although extremely French are forcible,

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On Cardinal Richelieu, Benserade made the following epitaph:

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The Jesuits called Crébillon ‘Puer ingeniosus, sed insignis nebulo.’ [page 64:]

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Dr. E. Young published “A true Estimate of Human Life, part I,” dedicated to Queen Anne, and describing the shades of existence. The second part, however, which should have contained the lights, never appeared.

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The “Batrachomyomachia,” is nothing more than a burlesque poem, much in the manner of Aristophanes, and doubtfully attributed to Homer. Philip Melancthon however, wrote a commentary to prove the poet's object was to excite a hatred for tumults and sedition. Pierre La Seine going a step farther, thinks the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and drinking.

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“Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur,” is not Seneca's, as generally supposed.

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The heathen poets are mentioned three times in the New Testament. Aratus in the seventeenth chapter of Acts — Menander in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians — also Epimenides.

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was a line written during the pontificate of Alexander VI. Sextus Tarquinius provoked by his tyranny the expulsion of the kings of Rome. Urban VI. began the great schism of the West. Alexander VI. astonished the world by the enormity of his crimes, and Pius VI did not falsify the saying.

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A letter was once addressed from Rome “Alla sua Excellenza Seromfidevi,” in London. It caused much perplexity at the Post-office and British Museum, and [page 65:] after foiling the acumen of a minister of state, was found to be intended for Sir Humphrey Davy.

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The vulgar Christian era is the invention of Dionysius Exiguus.

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The book of Judith was originally written in Chaldee, and thence translated into Latin by St. Jerome. There are several particulars in our English version which are not to be found in St. Jerome, and which seem to be those readings which he professes to omit as vicious corruptions.

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The proverb, “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” which is found in Corinthians, is a quotation, intended as such from Euripides.

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Varro reckons three epochs: the first from the beginning of the world to the first flood, which he calls uncertain; the second from the flood to the first Olympiad, fabulous; the third from the first Olympiad to his own time, historical.

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Politian, the poet and scholar, was an admirer of Alessandra Scala, and addressed to her this extempore:

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In the Latin version of Herodotus, the lowest of the towers forming the temple of Belus, is said to be a furlong thick and a furlong high; and some writers [page 66:] concluding each of the eight to be as high, make the whole one mile in height. In the Greek text, however, the lowest tower is merely said to be a furlong through — nothing is said of its height. Strabo makes the temple a furlong altogether in altitude.

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Jacobus Hugo was of opinion that by the Harpies Homer intended the Dutch; by Euenis, John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther; and by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general.

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“Impune quae libet, facere id est esse regem,” is a definition of a king to be found in Sallust.

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The first collection of the Iliad was by Pisistratus, or some of the Pisistratidæ. There were, after this, innumerable editions — but Aristarchus in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer, B. C. 150, published from a collection of all the copies then existing, a new edition, the text of which has finally prevailed.

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Some one after the manner of Santeuil, composed the following quatrain for the gates of the market to be erected on the site of the famous Jacobin Club at Paris,

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A version of the Psalms was published in 1642 by William Slatyer, of which this is a specimen:

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At the bottom of an obelisk which Pius VI. was erecting at great expense near the entrance of the Quirinal Palace in 1783, while the people were suffering for bread, were found written these words,

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Constantine Koliades wrote a book to prove that Homer and Ulysses were one and the same — but Joshua Barnes attributes the authorship of the Iliad to Solomon.

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In xviii. 192, of the Iliad, Achilles says none of the armor of the chieftains will fit him except the shield of Ajax: how then did his own armor fit Patroclus?

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Empedocles professed the system of four elements, and added thereto two principles which he called ‘principium amicitime’ and ‘principium contentionis.’ What are these but attraction and repulsion?

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The Germans have epic poems composed in metre of sixteen and seventeen syllables.

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In the reign of Edward VI. Dr. Christopher Tye turned the Acts of the Apostles into rhyme. They begin thus,

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The Count Bielfeld's definition of poetry is’ L’art d’exprimer les pensées par la fiction.’ The German [page 68:] terms Dichtkunst, the art of fiction, and Dichten to feign, which are used for Poetry, and to make verses, are in full accordance with his definition.

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The following Vaudeville is one of the drollest of its kind:

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On ancient monuments are often found the letters A. E. R. A. meaning Annus erat Regni Augusti. The ignorance of copyists may probably have formed of these letters the single word AERA. Would it not be a better derivation than the Latin AES?

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The work of John Albert Fabricius, the Hamburg professor, entitled Bibliotheca Graeca, in which his sole object is to render an account of the Greek authors extant, occupies fourteen thick volumes in quarto.

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The usual derivation of the word Metaphysics is not to be sustained. Meta physicam is tortured into meaning super physicam, and the science is supposed to take its name from its superiority to physics. The truth is, that Aristotle's treatise on Morals is next in succession to his Book of Physics, and this order he considers the rational order of study. His Ethics consequently commence with the words Μετα τα φυσικα &c., from which the word Metaphysics. [page 69:]

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The commentators upon Mr. Beckford's Vathek say that the locusts derive their name from having been so called by the first English settlers in America. The word comes evidently from loco usto, the havoc they made wherever they passed leaving the appearance of a place desolated by fire.

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M. Patru was convinced that in all his prose writings no sentence or part of a sentence could be found so cadenced as to form a verse. A friend, however immediately pointed out to him the words in his ‘Plaidoyers’

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Despreaux speaking of the cæsura in French versification, asserts,

M. Despréaux seems to have forgotten that hemistich is a composite Greek word signifying a demi-line, and that consequently his own admired verses have no meaning at all.

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Every one is acquainted with the excellent commencement of the Annals of Tacitus. From this, principally he has acquired his reputation for concision. It is singular that no notice has ever been taken of the extreme prolixity of their conclusion.

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There is a dissertation upon Hebrew, or Samaritan medals by Père Soucier, in which he proves the existence [page 70:] of Hebrew money struck by the Jews upon the model of the coins current before the captivity. All the Hebrew medals, however, bearing a head of Moses or of Christ, are manifestly forgeries.

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There is a book by a Jesuit, Père Labbe, entitled La Bibliothèque des Bibliothèques. It is a catalogue of all authors in all nations who have written catalogues of books.

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Albert, in his Hebrew Dictionary, pretends to discover in each word, in its root, in its letters, and in the manner of pronouncing them, the reason of its signification. Leescher in his treatise De causis Linguae Hebreæ, carries the matter even farther.

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Lucretius, lib. V, 93, 96, has the words,

Ovid the lines,

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In Judges is this expression, ‘And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter.’ The phrase ‘to smite hip and thigh’ arises from these words. No meaning, however, can be attached to them as they stand — but the original will admit of a different signification, viz: ‘He smote them with his leg on the thigh,’ and alludes to the wrestling matches which were common in the east. In this sense the phrase exactly answers to the ‘crus femori impingere,’ and the σκελιζειν or αποσκλιζειν of the ancients. [page 71:]

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It is a remarkable fact, that during the whole period of the middle ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing.

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The silver shekel of the Hebrews has on its face the rod of Aaron, with the inscription, Jeruschalaim Hakkedoucha, Jerusalem the Holy, and on the reverse a cup, with the words, Chekel Ischraei, money of Israel.

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The Masoretical punctuation is a kind of critique upon the Hebrew text invented by the Jewish teachers to prevent its alteration. The first original being lost, recourse was had to the Masora as an infallible method of fixing the text. The verses, words, and even letters are there counted, and all their variations recorded.

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Among the Hebrew text of the Old Testament are mingled a few passages of Chaldaic. All the characters as we have them now, are properly speaking Chaldaic.

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A version of the Psalms in 1564, by Archbishop Parker, has the following —

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A part of the 137th Psalm runs thus: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my [page 72:] mouth,’ which has been thus paraphrased in a version of the Psalms,

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 39:]

1.  It is remarkable that much of what Colton has stolen from Machiavelli, was previously stolen by Machiavelli from Plutarch. A Ms. book of the “Apophthegms of the Ancients,” by this latter writer, having fallen into Machiavelli's hands, he put them nearly all into the mouth of his hero, Castrucio Castricani. [[— Poe's note.]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 40:]

1.  Mr. G. E. Woodberry first called attention to the misprint by which, the not being left out, Poe was made to say that most of his article was “original” instead of “not original.” — Life, p. 96. [[— ED.]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 43:]

1.  Corrected by Scartazzini's Dante. — ED.