When the Jesuits settled the plan of education to be observed in the Collège de Clermont, the physicians were consulted on the portion of time, which the students should be allowed for sleep: they declared that five hours were a sufficient, six an abundant allowance, and seven as much as a youthful constitution would bear without injury." [Some one has facetiously said that five hours are sufficient for a man, six for a woman, seven for a child, eight for a pig.] "The College falling into decay was re-edified by Louis the XIVth, and received the appellation of the Collège de Louis le Grand. Upon this occasion, a poetical exercise alluding to it was required from the students. The city of Nola had recently given them the Collegio nel Arco, and they were in possession of the Collège de la Flêche in France. Alluding to these, a saucy boy wrote the following verses, and the Professor good-humoredly assigned him the prize: Arcum Nola dedit patribus, dedit alma Sagittam The saucy boy was afterwards the Cardinal de Polignac. It is observable that Lord Coke recommends to his students just twice as much time for prayer, and twice as much for their meals, as the Jesuits prescribed to their students." P. 62. III. LORD THURLOW AND PORSON. "Lord Thurlow is said to have remarked, 'that Burke would be remembered after Pitt and Fox were forgotten.' The meaning of Lord Thurlow is evident; but the same phrase was used by the late Mr. Porson with a happy ambiguity. When Mr. Cumberland presented his poem, entitled Calvary, to that gentleman, Your poem,' said Mr. Porson, will certainly be read, when Milton and Shakspeare are forgotten.' Mr. Porson was not profuse of compliments. Sir,' said a gentleman to him, at the dinner of the Literary Fund Society, I have the honor to present to you Mr. who recited the verses which you have just heard.' A dead silence.- Sir, I have the honor to present to you Mr. who recited the verses which you have just heard.'A second dead silence.—' Sir, I have the honor to present to you Mr. who himself composed the verses which you have just heard.' 'Sir,' said Mr. Porson, 'I am quite deaf.'”` P. 169. IV. VIRGIL. "The Reminiscent here begs leave to suggest an observation, which has frequently occurred to him in perusing the beginning of the 2d book of the Georgics, and which leads him to suspect that some verses in it have been transposed. In the three first lines of this book, Virgil proposes his subject: Hactenus arvorum cultus et sidera cœli; Nunc te, Bacche, canam, nec non sylvestria tecum The five verses following contain an invocation to Bacchus, the founder, if he may be so called, of the poet's theme : Huc pater o Lenæe! tuis hic omnia plena There he enters upon his This brings the poet to the 9th verse. subject, and treats it in a simple and didactic style till the 39th, when, quite on a sudden, and without any connexion with what precedes or follows, he apostrophises his great patron: Tuque ades, inceptumque una decurre laborem, O decus, o famæ merito pars maxima nostræ, The poet then returns to the didactic strain. "Now is there not some reason to suppose that the whole of this apostrophe is transposed, and should have immediately followed the invocation of Bacchus? Is not this more natural? Do not the verses, as they now stand, interrupt the flow of the passage? This conjecture appears to be countenanced in some measure by the beginning of the first Georgic. There, immediately after the invocation of the deities, Cæsar is apostrophised, and the didactic strain is then for the first time assumed. In the 3d Georgic also the Reminiscent suspects that the text has been tampered with. He requests his readers to peruse from the 48th to the 123d verse, and then consider whether the three last verses in the passageQuamvis sæpe fuga versos ille egerit hostes, Et patriam Epirum referat, fortesque Mycenas; be not spurious, or should not be interpolated between the 62d and 63d verses. The Reminiscent would ask to what, if they are not thus interpolated, the word quamvis can be referred ?" P. 194. V. 1 JOHN v, 7. PORSON. "Two Tracts are added to the second Part of the Hora Biblica: one, A Dissertation on a supposed general Council of Jews, held at Ageda in Germany, in 1650; the other, An historical Account of the Controversy respecting the 1 John v, 7. commonly called the Verse of the three Heavenly Witnesses. The Reminiscent believes he has shown the fabulousness of the Council, and given an impartial account of the controversy. The arguments against the authenticity of the verse are very strong; but the admission of it into the confession of faith, presented by the Catholic bishops to Hunneric, the Vandal king, is an argument of weight in its favor. The statement of it by the Reminiscent was allowed by Mr. Porson, the late learned adversary of the verse, to deserve attention he promised the writer to reply to them." P. 203. VI. CHURCH OF ST. GENEVIEVE AT PARIS; "The reader probably remembers the sans-culottic exhibitions, equally ridiculous and disgusting, of the Goddess of Reason and the uncatholicising of the Calendar. These had been foreseen: when the first stone of the magnificent Church of St. Geneviève at Paris, (not yet completed,) was laying, the following verses and translation of them were circulated : Templum augustum, ingens, regina assurgit in urbe ; Tarda nimis pietas! vanos moliris honores: Non sunt hæc cœptis tempora digna tuis. Ante Deo in summa quam templum extruxeris urbe, Paris! sur ta montagne un saint Temple s'élève; Tardive piété d'un vain zèle saisi, Paris! pour ce projet quel temps as tu choisi! Avant que pour ton Dieu ce monument s'achève, Des Temples, de tes murs aura chassé ton Dieu." P. 210. "The profound and extensive classical knowledge of the late Mr. Porson is well known: his knowledge also of algebra and geometry was respectable. He had meditated a new Edition of Diophantus, and an illustration of it by the modern discoveries. A short time before he died, he gave the Reminiscent an algebraic problem, which, though not of the highest order, is certainly curious. "Here the Reminiscent presumes to mention an observation made to him by a learned and intelligent friend, on the subject of pursuing the study of the learned languages too far. For some time after the Reminiscent quitted College, he continued smitten with the love of Greek and Roman lore. His friend remarked to him that it was a vain pursuit. You and I,' he said, are willing to think that we understand the French language as well as we do our own most gentlemen, who have received a liberal education, do the same. Yet, how little do any of us feel the beauties of French poetry? How little are we sensible of that indescribable charm of the verses of Racine, of which every Frenchman talks to us with so much rapture? Now if this be the case in respect to a language which we hear spoken every day, and the writers in which are countless, how much more must it be the case in respect to a dead language, where the writers, whom we possess, are so few? The utmost knowlege, which by the most persevering application we can obtain of the literary merit of their compositions, so far at least as respects the beauties of their style, must be very limited.' In this observation there seems to be good sense: one of an import somewhat similar, and leading to a similar conclusion, was made to the Reminiscent by Mr. Porson: The number of ancient writers,' said that gentleman, which have reached us, is so small, that we cannot be judges of the expressions, or even of the words, appropriated to any particular style. Many, suited to the general style of Livy, would not be suited to that of Tacitus: of this we necessarily are, in a great measure, insensible, and use them indiscriminately. This must be wrong: when, therefore, we write in the Latin language, our style should be most unambitious; we should carefully avoid all fine words and expressions, we should use the most obvious and most simple diction: beyond this, we should not aspire: if we cannot present a resemblance, let us not exhibit a caricature.' It was a remark of Boileau that, if the French had become a dead language, and few only of its approved writers had survived it, a poet, who wished to describe a person gathering sand on the bank of a river, might mention him, Sur la rive du fleuve amassant de l'arène, and justify the line by producing from approved authors, every word it contained. But now,' said Boileau, the most ordinary writer knows that the expressions rive du fleuve and amassant de l'arène, are insupportably bad; and would write sur le bord de la rivière, and amassant du sable."" P. 291. We may remark that Professor Porson has uniformly followed his own rule in practice; and this observation, as reported by Mr. Butler, explains to us the reason of his having adopted so simple and unornamented a style in the composition of his notes. The following epigram on the ashes of a lover preserved in CI. JI. M an hour-glass, is to be found among the epigrams of Jerome Amaltheus, who florished in the 16th century: "Perspicuo in vitro pulvis qui dividit horas, Which has been thus translated: "The dust that here divides the flight of time, The translator's comparison of the lady's eyes to a burningglass considerably quickens the reductio ad absurdum: as for fancy, it may be likened to the sailor's observation, who, when drunk, mistook a beautiful woman for a moving light-house. Definition of Alchemy. Alchemia est Ars sine Arte, Finis mendicatum ire.-Gaudentius. A conscientious Advocate wrote over his door Bonis semper patet. erased the B and added a D; it then stood Motto for a Drunkard. Vivat in æternum qui dat mihi dulce Falernum; Absit ab humano gutture potus aquæ.-Gaudentius. Conjugium, Enigma. Sunt duo, quæ duo sunt; et sunt duo quæ duo non sunt: |