of angling, have been favourite recreations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a rod and line in his hand; a strange characteristic for the author of "Natural Theology." Sir Henry Wotton called angling "idle time not idly spent:" we may suppose that his meditations and his amusements were carried on at the same moment.

The amusements of the great Daguesseau, chancellor of France, consisted in an interchange of studies: his relaxations were all the varieties of literature. "Le changement de l'étude est mon seul delassement," said this great man; and Thomas observes, "that in the age of the passions, his only passion was study."

Seneca has observed on amusements proper for literary men, in regard to robust exercises, that these are a folly, an indecency to see a man of letters exult in the strength of his arm, or the breadth of his back! Such amusements diminish the activity of the mind. Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, as too much food blunts the finer faculties; but elsewhere he allows his philosopher an occasional slight inebriation; an amusement which was very prevalent among our poets formerly, when they exclaimed,

Fetch me Ben Jonson's scull, and fill't with sack,
Rich as the same he drank, when the whole pack

Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree
It was no sin to be as drunk as he!

Seneca concludes admirably, "whatever be the amusements you choose, return not slowly from those of the body to the mind; exercise the latter night and day. The mind is nourished at a cheap rate; neither cold nor heat, nor age itself can interrupt this exercise; give therefore all your cares to a possession which ameliorates even in its old age!"

An ingenious writer has observed, that “ a garden just accommodates itself to the perambulations of a scholar, who would perhaps rather wish his walks abridged than extended." There is a good characteristic account of the mode in which the literati take exercise in Pope's letters. "I, like a poor squirrel, am continually in motion indeed, but it is about a cage of three foot; my little excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two before his own door, but minds his business all the while." A turn or two in a garden will often very happily close a fine period, mature an unripened thought, and raise up fresh associations, when the mind like the body becomes rigid by preserving the same posture. Buffon often quitted the apartment he studied in, which was placed in the midst of his garden, for a walk in it ; Evelyn loved" books and a garden.”

PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.

WITH the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place the portraits of authors before their works. Martial's 186th epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, concerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and which had his portrait prefixed to it. The volume and the characters must have been diminutive.

very

"Quam brevis immensum cepit membrana Maronem!

66

Ipsius Vultus prima tabella gerit."

Martial is not the only writer who takes notice of the ancients prefixing portraits to the works of authors. Seneca, in his ninth chapter on the Tranquillity of the Soul, complains of many of the luxurious great, who, like so many of our own collectors, possessed libraries as they did their estates and equipages. "It is melancholy to observe how the portraits of men of genius, and the works of their divine intelligence, are used only as the luxury and the ornaments of walls."

Pliny has nearly the same observation, Lib. xxxv. cap. 2. He remarks, that the custom was rather modern in his time; and attributes to Asinius Pollio the honour of having introduced it into

Rome.

"In consecrating a library with the portraits of our illustrious authors, he has formed, if I may so express myself, a republic of the intellectual powers of men." To the richness of booktreasures, Asinius Pollio had associated a new source of pleasure, in placing the statues of their authors amidst them, inspiring the minds of the spectators even by their eyes.

A taste for collecting portraits, or busts, was warmly pursued in the happier periods of Rome e; for the celebrated Atticus, in a work he published of illustrious Romans, made it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of those great men; and the learned Varro, in his biography of Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their true features and their physiognomy, in some manner, aliquo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, it is Varro who secured their immortality, and has so multiplied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle that every day becomes more

varied and interesting, as new heroes appear, and as works of this kind are spread abroad.

But as printing was unknown to the ancients (though stamping an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they possessed the art of printing without being aware of it) how were these portraits of Varro so easily propagated? If copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and their diffusion must have been very confined and slow; perhaps they were outlines. This passage of Pliny excites curiosity, which it may be difficult to satisfy.

Amongst the various advantages which attend a collection of the portraits of illustrious characters, Oldys observes, that they not only serve as matters of entertainment and curiosity, and preserve the different modes or habits of the fashions of the time, but become of infinite importance, by settling our floating ideas upon the true features of famous persons; they fix the chronological particulars of their birth, age, death, sometimes with short characters of them, besides the names of painter, designer, and engraver. It is thus a single print, by the hand of a skilful artist, may become a varied banquet. To this Granger adds, that in a collection of engraved portraits, the contents of many galleries are reduced into the narrow com