His countrymen, who had perfecuted him fo violently in his lifetime, ftruck a medal in honour of him after his death, in which he is ftiled the "Oracle of Delft, the Phoenix of his Country." It may be feen in the "Hiftoire Médallique de la Hollande," and verifies what Horace faid long ago,

Urit enim fulgore fuo, qui prægravat artes
Infra fe pofitas: extinctus amabitur idem.

The man whose life wife Nature has defign'd
To teach, to humanize, to fway his kind,
Burns by his flame too vivid and too bright,
And dazzles by excess of splendid light.
Yet when the hero feeks the grave's fad ftate
The vain and changing people, wife too late,
O'er his pale corpfe the fruitlefs honours pour,
Their friend, their faviour, and their guide deplore
And each fad impotence of grief betray,
To reallumine the Promethean clay,

IT

LOPE DE VEGA.

T is faid in the Hiftory of the Life of this Writer, that no lefs than 1800 Comedies, the production of his pen, have been actually represented on the Spanish ftage. His Autos Sacramentales (a kind of facred drama) exceed 400; befides which there is a Collection of his Poems of various kinds in 21 vols. 4to.

It is also faid, in the History of his Life, that there was no public fuccefs on which he did not compofe a panegyric; no marriage of distinction without an epithalamium of his writing, or child whofe nativity he did not celebrate; not a prince died on whom he did not write an elegy; there was no faint for whom he did not produce a hymn; no public holiday that he did not diftinguifh; no literary difpute at which he did not affist either as fecretary or prefident. He faid of himself, that he wrote five fheets per day, which, reckoning by the time he lived, has been calculated to amount to 133,225 fheets. He fometimes compofed a comedy in two days which it would have been difficult for another man to have even copied in the fame time. At Toledo he once wrote five comedies in fifteen days, reading them as he proceeded in a private house to Jofeph de Valdeviefo.

Juan Perez de Montalvan relates, that a comedy being wanted for the Carnival at Madrid, Lope and he united to compoie one as faft as they could.-Lope took the first act, and Montalvan the fecond, which they wrote in two days; and the third act they divided, taking eight fheets each. Montalvan, feeing that the other wrote fafter than he could, fays he rofe at two in the morning and

having finished his part at eleven, he went to look for Lope, whom he found in the garden looking at an orange-tree that was frozen; and on enquiring what progrefs he had made in the verses, Lope replied, "At five I began to write, and finifhed the comedy an hour ago; fince which I have breakfafted, written 150 other verses, and watered the garden, and am now pretty well tired." He then read to Montalvan the eight fheets and the 150 verses.

IN

SIR THOMAS MORE.

N how different a manner do Princes appreciate the merit of their fervants!-When that honour to human nature, Sir Thomas More, was beheaded by his cruel and ungrateful Sovereign, Charles the Fifth told Sir Thomas Ellyot, " If I had been master of such a servant, of whofe doings ourselves have had these many years no fmall experience, we would rather have loft the best citie of our dominions than have loft fuch a worthie Counsellor."-Sir Thomas More, who well knew the difpofition of Henry the Eighth, faid one day to his fon Mr. Roper, who had complimented him upon feeing the King walk with his arm about his neck, "I thanke our Lorde, I find his Grace a very good lorde indeed, and I do believe he doth as fingularly favour me as any fubject within this realme. Howbeit, fon Roper, I may tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof; for if my heade would winne him a castle in France, it fhould not fayle to go."

MR. ROPER'S life of his venerable father is one of the few pieces of genuine biography that we have in the language, and must be perufed with great pleafure by thofe who love ancient times, ancient manners, and ancient virtues. Of Sir Thomas More's difinterestedness and integrity in his office of Chancellor, Mr. Roper gives this inftance :-That after the refignation of it "he was not able fufficiently to finde meate, drink, fuell, apparel, and fuch other neceffary charges; and that after his debts payed he had not I know (his chaine excepted) in gold and filver left him the value of one hundred pounds."

Mr. Roper thus defcribes Sir Thomas More. "He was a man of fingular worth and of a cleare unspotted confcience, as witneffeth Erafmus, more pure and white than the whiteft fnow, and of fuch an angelical wit as England, he fayth, never had the like before nor never fhall again. Univerfally as well in the lawes of our realme (a ftudie in effect able to occupy the whole lyfe of a man) as in all other sciences right well studied, he was in his days accounted a man worthie famous memory."

DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT.

HE Author of the celebrated Maxims was not a man of learn

Ting, fays Segrais, but he was a man of extreme good fenfe,

and had a perfect knowledge of the world.

“This,” adds he,

put him upon making reflections, and upon reducing into aphorifms what he had been able to discover in the heart of man, with which he was most intimately acquainted." M. de la Rochefoucault was fo accurate in the compofition of his little book, that as he finished a Maxim, he used to fend it to his friends for their opinion upon it. Segrais fays, that fome of his Maxims were altered thirty times. The Maxim, "that it fhews a wretched poverty of mind to have but one fort of understanding," took its rife from Boileau and Racine, who were extremely ignorant of every thing except poetry and literature. M. de la Rochefoucault," fays Segrais, "would have made a better Governor for the Dauphin, Louis the Fourteenth's only fon, than the Duke of Montaufier;" M. de la Rochefoucault being a man of great fweetness of temper, extremely infinuating in his addrefs, and exceedingly agreeable in converfation. M. de la Rochefoucault could never belong to the French Academy. He could never procure courage enough to deliver to the Academy the fpeech that it was neceffary to make in order to be admitted into that body.

CARDINAL DE RETZ.

ENAULT applies this paffage in Tacitus to this celebrated

H Demagogue!" Non tam præmiis periculorum, quàm ipfis

:

periculis, lætus pro certis et olim partis, nova ambigua ancipitia malebat." The fagacious Richelieu early discovered the difpofition of De Retz, and according to Segrais, though he was of an ancient and an illustrious family, never intended to give him a business of any value or confequence. In very early life De Retz wrote the "History of the Confpiracy of Fiefqui against the Ariftocracy of Genoa," in which he took the part of the Confpirator. De Retz feems by nature to have had all the qualities requifite to become a favourite with the people. Brave, generous, eloquent, full of refources, and fettered by no principle, he dazzled the multitude of Paris, who feem ever to have been more taken with affections of eclat and of enterprize, than all the efforts of modest and humble virtue.

The Cardinal, on feeing one day a carbine levelled at him by fome one he did not know, had the prefence of mind to cry out, "If your father, Sir, were now feeing what you were about!" This fpeech immediately difarmed the fury of the affaffin. De Retz feems nearly to have made an ample compenfation for the follies and irregularities of his youth by the honest confeffion he made of

them in his Memoirs. He appears in them to have been a man of great talents, and of good natural difpofition, perverted by vanity, and the defire of that diftinction, which, if not acquired by honeft means, difgraces inftead of dignifying those who are fo unfortunate as to poffefs it. Had the Cardinal directed his great powers of mind in endeavours to unite, instead of efforts to divide his unhappy and distracted country, he would have endeared himself most effectually to his countrymen, and would have deferved the praises of pofterity, by exhibiting an example that too rarely occurs, of a politician facrificing his refentment to the good of the State.

The Memoirs of this celebrated Perfonage written by himself, are extremely fcanty and imperfect: they give no account either of the early or of the latter part of his life. The Cardinal entrusted the manufcript to fome nuns of a convent near Comerci in Lorraine, who garbled them. James the Second, however, told the last Duke of Ormond, that he had seen a perfect copy of them, which was lent to him by Madame Caumartin. Joli, his fecretary, defcribes him in his retreat at Comerci in no very favourable manner; as idling away his time, or hunting, going to puppet-fhows, now and then pretending to adminifter juftice amongst his tenants, writing a page or two of his own life in folio, and fettling fome points in the genealogy of his family; that of Gondi. The Cardinal's reply to Joli's remonftrances to him on this fubject was a curious one: "I know all this as well as you do, but I don't think you will get any one else to believe what you fay of me." An opinion fo highly advantageous to the Cardinal's talents and character had gone out into the world, that the people of France could not bring themfelves to think ill of one who had been a very popular demagogue amongst them. On the day in which he was permitted to have an audience of Louis the Fourteenth at Verfailles, the court was extremely full, and the highest expectations were formed of the manners and appearance of the Cardinal: when however they faw an hump-back'd, bow-legg'd, decrepid old man, who perhaps did not feel much elevated with his fituation, their expectations were fadly difappointed; and particularly fo, when his Sovereign merely faid to him, "Your Eminence is grown very grey fince I laft faw you." To this the Cardinal replied, "Any perfon, Sire, who has the miffortune to be in difgrace with your Majefty, will very readily be come fo."

St. Evremont has preferved an anecdote of the Cardinal's noblenefs and liberality during his retreat at Comerci. As he was riding out on horse-back, he was furrounded by fome Spanish soldiers that were in the neighbourhood. The officer however, on being told his name, ordered him to be released, and difmounting from his horfe, made an apology for the behaviour of his foldiers. The Cardinal, taking a valuable diamond ring from his finger, presented it to the officer, faying, "Pray, Sir, at least permit me to render your little excurfion not entirely ufelefs to you." De Retz refigued the

I

Archbishopric of Paris, and procured in exchange for it the rich. Abbey of St. Denis. He lived long enough to pay all his debts, and divert his time between Paris and St. Denis: at the latter place he died at a very advanced age, and in the ftrongest sentiments of piety and devotion. He is occafionally mentioned in Madame de Sevigné's Letters, as a man of great talents for converfation, and much afflicted with the head-ach. He had the honesty to say of himself, "Mankind fuppofed me extremely enterprizing and dauntlefs when I was young, and I was much more fo than they could poffibly imagine;" and this may be readily acknowledged, from an anfwer which he made to fome one who reproached him, when he was young, with owing a great deal of money. "Why, man," replied he, "Cæfar, at my age, owed fix times as much as I do." No one knew better how to manage and cajole the multitude than Cardinal de Retz did, yet he complains that they left him at the Angelus' bell to go to dinner. One of his maxims respecting the affembling of that many-headed monfter fhould be diligently confidered both by the Leaders of Parties and by the Governors of Kingdoms: "Quiconque affemble le peuple, l' émeut-Whoever brings the people together, puts them in a ftate of commotion."

TH

JOHN LOCKE.

HIS great philofopher is burried in the church-yard of a small village in Effex, called Oates. The infcription on his tombftone that is appended to the side of the church, is nearly obliterated. An urn has been lately erected to his memory in the gardens of Mrs. More's very elegant cottage near Wrington, in Somersetshire, with this infcription:

"This Urn,

facred to the memory

of John Locke,

a native of this village,

was prefented to Mrs. Hannah More

by Mrs. Montague."

It is much to be wished that the gratitude of a lady to her inftructor fhould be imitated upon a larger fcale by a great nation whose envied fyftem of government he analyfed with the fame accuracy and fagacity with which he unravelled the intricacies of the human intellect, and that it should honour his memory with a magnificent memorial in one of its public repofitories of the illuftrious dead,

Mr. Locke's celebrated "Treatife on the Reasonableness of Christianity" is well known. It is, perhaps, known only to few that he wrote fome letters to his pupil Lord Shaftesbury on the Evidences of Chriftianity. They are ftill in MS. Two gentlemen,