of his speculations to be but a heap of rubbish, hastily left the spot. He was now some distance from Tivoli; I shall recover, thought he, all my classical feeling before I arrive there. He arrived; Horace was his companion, his pocket companion, and the very edition of it. was fascinating, for it was the one, of which the modest editor asserts, that it is such as Mæcenas would have carried in his bosom, and Horace himself would have looked at with pleasure. He entered Tivoli, antient Tibur, with the Poet's exclamation,

"Tibur Argæo positum Colono

Sit meæ sedes, utinam senectæ."

He makes the best of his way, of course, to Horace's house, and when he fancies himself at the very threshold, an impertinent tells him Horace never had any house there, that the ruins before him were of the Villa of Vobiscus. "Sic vos non vobis ædificatis," said he, and retired, to consult the Sybilline Oracles at the fountain head-before

him was the

"Domus Alduneæ resonantis, Et præceps Anio, et Tibruni lucus, et uda Mobilibus pomaria rivis."

He enters the temple of the Sybil, the Albuneæ resonantis, he fancies he hears her mysterious voice in the roar of the waters beneath him, he is breathless with delight; the beauty, the evident antiquity, and Grecian origin of the building, the oracular caverns, the awful and liv. ing sound of many waters, labouring for utterance, and bursting through them, all inspire him. The Religio loci" is upon him. This then, said he, is the Temple of the Sybil. Non, Signore, replied a Cicerone, questo e il Tempio de Tussis. No, Sir, it is the Temple of Cough. The Sybil's Temple, which had so haunted him in his dreams, as it were, and which his ambition only aspired to visit, being thus transferred to another, the poetical Sybil metamorphosed into a new

Deity of so hideous a name as Cough, was too much for him to bear; he could not pronounce her name twice, (and no wonder it should stick in his throat) he felt half the existence of his own soul annihilated, and fearing some further Metamorphosis, he returned to the inn, packed up his portmanteau, throwing away the curiosities of antiquity he had collected, went to Rome, sought no further acquaintance with Ciceroni, but, quitting the "Eternal City" for ever, made the best of his way back to England. His companion told me he tried to rouse him from this, state of insensibility to every thing around him, but in vain, He, on one occasion, thought to excite his attention, by pointing out to him Cæsar's Bridge at Rimini; but it did not answer. No, said he, I have now done with these things, Cæsar's Bridge has now no greater charm for me than Blackfriar's, not so much as London, and I care no more for all the Cæsars than for the Kings of Brentford. Have we not, he added, been half eaten up by vermin, ran the gauntlet of extortioners and robbers! and all for what? To have our finest feelings, the work of the education of years, torn to atoms, and perhaps beyond the power of patchwork to sew them together again, to make a decent covering for one's old age of clas. I admire the adsical literature. vice of the Mantuan Bard (not Virgil) who truly forewarns him who puts his foot out of his own country, (whose advice I mean for the future to follow)-of what he is to meet with.

"Pulces, et pluvios patiere tonitrua, ventos Fulmina, Corsaros et tandem mille dia

Rome, who called to the waiter to bring him "Une tasse de Caffè, et quelque chose d'Antique."

But it is high time, Mr. Editor, to leave this episode, and return to the battle of the frogs and mice, It is objected against the supposition of the poem being Homer's, that the author mentions his writing on tablets placed upon his knees, for that written characters were not known in the time of Homer, that it was simply an oral age; but who, can believe that such connected poems as the Iliad and Odyssey were so composed? Admitting that Homer does not mention written characters, this is no sufficient argument: if it be true, he was a schoolmaster; how could he teach without? The anμaya λvypa sent to Bellerophon, supposing them to be merely paintings, cannot be conclusive, for when a mau is made the bearer of his own death warrant, an hieroglyphic disguise, known perhaps only to the person to whom it is sent, is not very unlikely; nor is every king so unwise in these matters as his majesty of Denmark, who gave Hamlet such means of discovering the plot laid for him; and it is no wonder that he took the liberty of altering some particulars, though he preserved the general tenor of the dispatches of his kind uncle and father-in-law. But admitting the argument of the onpaya Avypa as far as it goes, why, Sir, there may be in the English language many poems (and long enough too) in which there is no mention made of pens, ink, and paper, and we might as well argue that those articles of stationery were unknown at the time such poems were writ ten. But I do not expect those who have taken up a contrary opinion to lay it down, upon this reasoning; this expectation would be arguing against the known pertinacity of mankind. I once asked a friend if he would be convinced in the Row leian controversy, if it should be proved that the poems were written

before Chatterton was born; but he would hardly hear me through with patience, boldly asserting to use his own words, "that would be proving nothing at all." But this pertinacity is still more conspicuous when once our opinions are unfortunately published; to retract them then is almost impossible, it is eating one's own words. When Gil Blas remonstrated with Dr. Sangrado, on the inefficacy of his system of bleeding and warm water, intimating that all the patients died, and therefore a change could not possibly be for the worse; the Doctor's only objection was, that he had published a book in favour of it. He therefore continued to offer up as usual, his daily sacrifices to a system, to which the gentry, nobility, and clergy, bowed their heads in silent submission.

I cannot, Sir, but suspect Idler of an intention to overwhelm our judgments, by the very collection of his great authorities; great names indeed, but I look upon them only as colossal figures, such as we often see got up upon some temporary triumphant occasion, which are not meant to be too nicely examined into, (but to be seen at a distance) lest it should be discovered, that they are but rags and straw, though they affect to be some very notable personages in the Heathen Mythology. Indeed, by these great names, he reminds me of one, who being addressed upon a subject on which he was not quite at home, but on which, for certain reasons, he did not wish to shew his ignorance, assuming his antagonist not to be very deep himself, silenced him at once with a feigned quotation from Jablonski, whose very name his opponent had never heard of. This was ingenious, but forewarned is fore-armed.

I do not think, Sir, he can make much of Henry Stephens having seen a MS. intituled TIгPHTO】 *

Vide London Magazine.

TOY KAPOS. Why may not this have been the name of the owner, or the transcriber of the book, for transcribers may have been as proud of their penmanship in those days, as Mr. Dibdin of his typography in our's. Nothing can be more likely than that the owner or transcriber should have put his name to his book. Has not Idler his name to most of his! I have one, now before me, thus inscribed on the first blank leaf: "Mary Fry, her book;" put this into Greek, it would be Henry Stephens' authority that she composed it. Change but the name, and it is exactly a similar case; for I look upon the following unnecessary distich by way of addition, quite a refinement of modern date and taste;

"This booke belongs to Mary Fry,

Who says it doesn't, tells a Doubtless there are very many, who think the prettily bound books entitled Pope's Homer, were entirely written and composed by that author; indeed I knew myself a connoisseur who had been much puzzled to find out the subject of a picture painted at least 300 years ago, and who gravely assured me, he had at last discovered it to be taken from Pope's Homer.

Nor do I look upon the circumstance of the statue of Homer being found with mice at his feet, as by any means a bad argument, in company with others, of his being the author of the Mice and Frogs; though on this occasion, Idler triumphantly as he thinks, calls on us all to account for the absence of Monsieur Frog, whom the sculptor would have been very injudicious to have introduced, for it is certain they could not have been there peaceably together; and to have had them fighting for the bard between his legs, like the lion and the unicorn for the crown, would have been very ridiculous, and quite destructive of that repose which it is said the ancient sculptors always

aimed at in their single figures. And besides, is not Apollo represented with his bow, with the accompaniment of the python; and Diana with her dog without the deer? And it is but fair, the preference should have been given to the " the "magnanimous Mouse," as he was certainly the master of the field. But can Idler account, in a better manner, for the presence of Mr. Mouse, than we may for the absence of Monsieur Frog?

I will not, Sir, make any further remark upon the authenticity of this masterpiece of burlesque, hoping that already every person willing to be convinced upon this point, is so; and to those who are not, I will relate (as a proof of how many grave matters in this world are still the subjects of doubt), what I have heard reported of a learned Gentleman, who wishing to obtain some celebrity for the singularity of his opinions and clearness of his judgment, declared that he should not care to have it publicly known as his opinion, that "the authenticity of Gulliver's Travels was very questionable."

How many Junius's have we seen, Mr. Editor, and every day produces a new one, and doubtless in time they will rival the Homerida themselves in number.

I doubt not, Sir, you have seen somewhere about Charing Cross an immoveable figure, incased like an heraldic King at Arms, in his shieldlike placards, to the honor of stagecoach proprietors, and accommodation to the travelling public, offering to their notice, in large letters on each placard, these “TEPOSITA,” or winged words: Expeditious travelling, swift travelling, the Fly, the Dispatch, the Telegraph; wafting the imagination, in a moment, to every city in his Majesty's dominions, and even beyond them; the true magician who "modo me Thebis modo ponit Athenis;" and I dare say, Sir, you have equally been struck with myself at the

whimsical contrast exhibited in the person of this brief abstract of 'velocity, on seeing the only visible in dications of humanity, a head peeping above, and legs (whereof one is wooden) below the huge placards, signifying a caricature and burlesque effigy of locomotion.

Why, Sir, my friend Idler has assumed an amusingly careless name, not less at variance with his activity; for when you would expect to find him at mid-day with the coverlet up to his chin, or daudling over a novel in his easy chair, with his legs dangling over another, you unexpectedly see him (though it would be difficult to follow him) busy as a bee, flying from "Bibliothéque to Bibliothéque," with an energy and agility truly astonishing. Now I mean, if I can, to advantage the world, by this active spirit of his; for well knowing his poetical talents, I would induce him to take the hint Homer has given, and favor us with "a battle of the Cranes and Pygmies;" indeed, in this undertaking he will have great advantage, for I understand that a very learned physician has given the race of pygmies, at last, a local habitation, and is actually gone out to the island of Madagascar to bring home some living specimens, and subject them anew to the torture of Craneiology in England; the British Museum will, doubtless, be shortly enriched by the possession of real specimens of the bows made of sheep's ribs, (supposed hitherto to be the mere fabrications of Rabelais) with which they pelted the cranes with cherry

stones.

A king, we are told, once pardoned one of his officers who was guilty of one act of injustice, in consequence of the many just acts he had done. I am inclined to think Idler should be pardoned upon this principle of equity; he has given us a very animated translation of the Frogs and Mice. He is perhaps unfortunate in his choice of the couplet, which is too grave for bur

lesque. Why he should have such an antipathy to the Poet Laureat's democratic beast the cat, I am at a loss to discover; or why Rodilardus should be metamorphosed into a weazel; is not the xara Spwyana Ep applicable to the cat, or does the weazel actually follow the mouse into his hole? My Lexicons tell me yaλ is Felis, and I cannot compliment my friend upon his particular felicity in making it any thing else. Mr. Mouse pretty plainly tells us, he inhabits a house by the bill of fare he exhibits, and surely a weazel is not so domestic an animal; and the aversion of cats to lakes, is a mere idle story: the Poet Laureat himself has, probably, one at this instant, purring applause to his English Hexameters on the banks of the Derwentwater.

Parnell and Cowper have foolishly preserved the Greek names, merely translating them in a prefixed Dramatis Persona; they both however seem to be "sound catchers," for they take a for

πτερνα

p, making knaw-yr-heels an eater of bacon. Could Parnell have had either ear or knowledge of quantity when he turned Quador into Physignatus? Parnell's translation is certainly very diffuse, and unlike his original. I had myself, Mr. Editor, attempted a translation, before Idler's came out, which I may one day send to you for your Magazine, not because I think it the best, for I am confident it is very inferior to his; but because differing from him in measure, there may be still room left for the variety; perhaps he is too grave, and I am too little so.

I need not say how highly I estimate this production of the great poet's, for I will not give up the point, that Homer was the author. What particular object he had in composing it is too great a difficulty to determine by conjecture; but I see no necessity for supposing he meant to burlesque his former poems. Why may he not, Sir, have com