served, had many splendid passages which stood isolated in his work, and were quite above his genius. The beggar, or in this case the thief, was detected by mending his rags with patches of purple and gold.

In this age of manuscript, there is reason to believe, that when a man of letters accidentally obtained an unknown work, he did not make the fairest use of it, and cautiously concealed it from his contemporaries. Leonard Aretino, a distinguished scholar at the dawn of modern literature, having found a Greek manuscript of Procopius de Bello Gothico, translated it into Latin, and published the work, but concealing the author's name, it passed as his own, till another manuscript of the same work being dug out of its grave, the fraud of Aretino was apparent. Barbosa, a bishop of Ugento, in 1649, has printed among his works a treatise, which, it is said, he obtained by having perceived one of his domestics bringing in a fish rolled in a leaf of written paper, which his curiosity led him to examine. He was sufficiently interested to run out and search the fish market, till he found the manuscript out of which it had been torn. He published it under the title de Officio Episcopi. Machiavelli acted more adroitly in a similar case; a manuscript of the Apophthegms of the ancients

by Plutarch having fallen into his hands, he selected those which pleased him the best, and put them into the mouth of his hero Castrucio Castricani.

In more recent times, we might collect many curious anecdotes concerning manuscripts. Sir Robert Cotton one day at his tailor's, discovered that the man was holding in his hand, ready to cut up for measures-an original Magna Charta, with all its appendages of seals and signatures. He bought the singular curiosity for a trifle, and recovered in this manner what had long been given over for lost! This anecdote is told by Colomies, who long resided, and died in this country. An original Magna Charta is preserved in the Cottonian library; it exhibits marks of dilapidation, but whether from the invisible scythe of time, or the humble scissors of the tailor, I leave to archaiological inquiry.

Cardinal Granvelle carefully preserved all his letters; he left behind him several chests filled with a prodigious quantity, written in different languages, commented, noted, and under-lined by his own hand. These curious manuscripts, after his death, were left in a garret to the mercy of the rain and the rats. Five or six of these chests the steward sold to the grocers. It was then that a discovery was made of this treasure.

Several learned men occupied themselves in collecting as many of these literary relics as they possibly could. What were saved formed eighty thick folios. Among these original letters, are found great numbers written by almost all the crowned heads in Europe, with instructions for ambassadors, and many other state-papers.

Recently a valuable secret history by Sir George Mackenzie, the king's advocate in Scotland, has been rescued from a mass of waste paper sold to a grocer, who had the good sense to discriminate it, and communicated this curious memorial to Dr. M'Crie; the original, in the hand-writing of its author, has been desposited in the advocates' library. There is an hiatus, which contained the history of six years. This work excited inquiry after the rest of the MSS., which were found to be nothing more than the sweepings of an attorney's office.

Montaigne's journal of his travels into Italy have been but recently published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling through this province to make researches relative to its history, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, in possession of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious genera

tions of Montaigne. The prebendary, with philosophical intrepidity, stifled himself in clouds of dust, and at length drew out the original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two thirds of the work are in the hand-writing of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a servant, who served as his secretary, and who always speaks of his master in the third person. But he must have written what Montaigne dictated, as the expressions and the egotisms are all Montaigne's. The bad writing and orthography made it almost unintelligible. It proves also, says the editor, how true is Montaigne's observation, that he was very négligent in the correction of his works.

Our ancestors were great hiders of manuscripts; Dr. Dee's singular MSS. were found in the secret drawer of a chest, which had passed through many hands undiscovered; and that vast collection of state-papers of Thurloe's, the secretary of Cromwell, which formed about seventy volumes in the original manuscripts, accidentally fell out of the false ceiling of some chambers in Lincoln's-Inn.

A considerable portion of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters I discovered in the hands of an attorney. There are now many valuable manuscripts in the family papers of the descendants of celebrated persons; but posthumous publications of this kind are usually made from the most sordid

motives: discernment, and taste, would only be detrimental to the views of bulky publishers.

SKETCHES OF CRITICISM.

Ir may perhaps be some satisfaction to show the young writer, that the most celebrated ancients have been as rudely subjected to the tyranny of criticism as the moderns. Detraction has ever poured the "waters of bitterness."

It was given out, that Homer had stolen from anterior poets whatever was most remarkable in the Iliad and Odyssey. Naucrates even points out the source in the library at Memphis in a temple of Vulcan, which according to him the blind bard completely pillaged. Undoubtedly there were good poets before Homer; how absurd to conceive that a finished and elaborate poem could be the first! We have indeed accounts of anterior poets, and apparently of epics, before Homer; their names have come down to us. Ælian notices Syagrus, who composed a poem on the Siege of Troy; and Suidas the poem of Corinnus, from which it is said Homer greatly borrowed. Why did Plato so severely condemn the great bard, and imitate him?

Sophocles was brought to trial by his children