brother or sister, and accustom it to come at a call and be fed. Less cost of money than was expended upon Cleopatra's barge, would have sufficed to have trained crocodiles to draw it. The testicles of the crocodile are greatly valued in some parts of India for their strong musky odour. 60. Small Wit. "Many there are (says an old writer that will lose their friend rather than their jest, or their quibble, pun, punnet or pundigrion, fifteen of which will not make up one single jest." Is there any commentator who can explain the punnet and pundigrion, or must they be enumerated in the next work which shall be written De rebus deperditis? The recovery of this lost species of the small currency of wit, would be of signal advantage to our modern dramatists. What was the clench, another favourite figure of wit in old times; but which was going out of fashion in the days of the pundigrion? • Clenches and quibbles are now out of date,' is a line of Flecknoe's. Children find, if they endeavour it, Sir William Davenant. The quip seems to be another lost spe cies, and we now hear of no quirks but those of pettyfogging lawyers. 61. Grapes in Madagascar. The grape was believed to be poisonous in Madagascar till the French taught the natives to eat it. Can this have been a mere prejudice, or was the opinion introduced by some of their Moorish visitors, who thought prejudice a better security against the abuse of the than prohibition would be. * Dellon, t. 1. c. 9. grape 62. Richard Flecknoe. Flecknoe has these excellent lines ad drest to a miser. Money's like muck, that's profitable while What was the cause of Dryden's enmity to this poor author? so far from having provoked it, Flecknoe has even written an epigram in his praise: this tribute, and his religion (for he was a Catholic) it might have been thought, would have saved him. Perhaps Dryden was offended at his invectives against the obscenity of the stage, feeling himself more notorious, if not more culpable than any of his rivals, for this scandalous and unpardonable offence. Flecknoe is by no means the despicable writer that we might suppose him to be from the nich in which his mighty enemy has placed him. These stanzas are well turned in their way. TO LILY, DRAWING THE COUNTESS OF CASTELMAIN'S PICTURE. Stay, daring man, and ne'er presume to draw Nor e'er were known by any painter yet. 'Till from all beauties thou extracts the grace, And from the sun the beams that gild the skies, Never presume to draw her beauteous face, Nor paint the radiant brightness of her eyes, In vain the whilst thou dost thy labour take, Yet be'n't discouraged, since whoe'er do see't, Much more than others, tho' than her's much less. So those bold giants who would scale the sky, Than those who never strove to climb at all. Comfort thee then, and think it no disgrace Her too great excellence and no want of thine. He seems to have imitated the manner of his friend Davenant's versification in these lines: but he has likewise followed the evil fashion just then introduced, of degrading our written language by the use of colloquial contractions. Be the other merits of his verses what they may, he has this rare merit (if the little volume of his epigrams which I possess may be considered as a sample of his other works) that he is never in the slightest degree an immoral writer himself, and that he expresses a due abhorrence of the mischievous and disgraceful writings of his contemporaries. This is from his divine epigrams. Do good with pain, the pleasure in't you find, |