cried, "Come, buy my gingerbread, and I will give you a dram." It is true he gave his dram, but made you pay sixpence for a gingerbread nut: so the famous Dr. Leo cures his patients gratis, and only charges half-a-crown for his box of salve.

SIR,

To the Author of the Olla Podrida.

I HEREWITH send you a short history of myself. I did once keep a theme shop in an university, which shall be nameless, where I served undergraduates, with exercises of every kind, having men under me whom I employed in the different branches of the trade. These were not your handicraftsmen, your starvelings, and your nick-bottoms; but, as I may say, they were eruditi togati homines, learned meu, men of the gown. To each I allotted their different departments; here were your translators, your declamation-spinners, and your weavers of Lentepigram. By the labours of these gentry, whom I paid by the piece, I got a decent livelihood; but as I thought my talents considerably improved by ha-bitual commerce with books and bookish men, I resolved to shake off all encumbrance, and seek a place where I might give play to my abilities, and obtain a share of reputation as well as a livelinood. It is now about a twelvemoth since, that, in conformity to this resolution, I opened a neat and convenient shop, not far from the bottom of the Haymarket, where I deal out to customers of all sorts, whatever they may want in the literary way, at the lowest prices.

I have by me, in the poetic line, every thing that can be named, from an acrostic to an epic poem. I have sun-risings and sun-settings for all persons, places, and seasons. Not like Mr. Bickerstaff's, confined to this or that condition: but I have the milk-maid's sun-rise, the cobbler's sun-rise, the politician's sun-rise, the poet's or common sun-rise, with proper sun-sets to match them. I have storms for seamen, and storms for landsmen; not to mention a few hail storms, squalls of wind, &c. &c. I have similes from Arcadia for pastoral writers; metaphors for people of quality, in Joe Miller's true sense of the word, such as you never met-afore; and a bundle of tropes unsorted, consisting of metonomy, aposiopesis, synecdoche, &c. for epic poets and sonneteers. I have a fine soliloquy, supposed to have been uttered by Nahum Tate upon his death-bed: it is not in a strain of rant, but so tender-it would do your heart good to hear how my shop-boy does roar when I read it to him,

In the way of prose, I have jokes for disbanded statesmen, elegantly-turned compliments suited to all occasions, and panegyrics applicable to all people, provided they are high in the world; an essay on the baneful effects of intemperance and charcoal; a loose parcel of sentences for mottos; a few knowing phrases to be used at races; with a file of conundrums to make the ladies laugh-the latter are well adapted to the mouth of any gentleman who has a remarkable good set of teeth. Of the graver kind, I have two sermons, which smack pretty well of the high church; a two-shilling pamphlet upon the rise and fall of the tucker:

this is in black letter, and treats of an invention

of our ancestors, which has been unhappily lost. I have looked in Pancirolus, and all the books of that sort, and can find no mention of it; it is, therefore, a considerable curiosity.

I have speeches suited to members of parliament in all trying situations; whether they are about to consult their constituents through the medium of a hogshead of claret, or to descant upon an infringement of the game laws: some pithy sarcasms upon country members, who have been often ridiculed, but never properly handled; an essay on matrimony; and an elaborate treatise on the use and abuse of the parenthesis in modern composition. Who knows, Mr. - but I may be able to

serve you one of these days, when you have been idle, or are put to it for a joke? say nothing, but there is nobody I would sooner oblige. I will send you some specimens of the different works I have mentioned; and shall hope, at least, to meet with your approbation, if not your custom.

MONRO.

I am, sir, yours, &c.

POLUMATHES.

No. IV.

SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1787.

Deferar in vicum vendentem thus et odores,
Et piper, et quidquid chartis amicitur ineptis.
Horace.

Perhaps in the same open basket laid,
Down to the street together be convey'd ;

Where pepper, odours, frankincense are sold,
And all small wares in wretched rhymes unroll❜d.

Francis.

It is melancholy to reflect on the unhappy circumstances which have frequently attended the deaths of authors. If we turn over the pages of literary history, we shall find, that although many have enjoyed the gratification of hearing their own praises, and some have even basked in the sunshine of opu> lent patronage, yet their deaths have been often obscure, and sometimes disastrous. Cicero fell a victim to party-rage; Sidney expired in the field of battle; Crichton fell by assassination; and Otway perished by famine.

The fate of books is oftentimes similar to that of authors. The flattery of dedications, and the testimony of friends, are frequently interposed in vain to force them into popularity and applause. It is not the fashion of the present day to indulge the hangman with the amusement of committing books to the flames; yet they are in many instances condemned to a more inglorious destiny. The grocer,

the chemist, and the tallow-chandler, with "ruthless and unhallowed hands," tear whole libraries in pieces, and feel as little compunction on the occasion, as the Thracian ladies did when they dismembered Orpheus. The leaves are distributed among their customers with sundry articles of trade that have little connection with classical fragments, whilst the tradesman, like the Sibyl, cares not a farthing what becomes of them.

Nunquam deinde cavo volitantia prendere saxo,
Nec revocare situs, aut jungere carmina curat.

Virgil.

I was led into this train of thought by receiving a pound of sugar from my neighbour Tim Teartitle, the grocer, wrapped up in a sheet of letter press. Tim deals so largely in books, that he has many more than are sufficient for his own use, with which he very bountifully obliges the literati in foreign parts. I remember, just before the American war broke out, my curiosity was excited to know what a large hogshead, which stood at his door, contained. I found, on close examination, that it was filled with old pamphlets, most of them on subjects of liberty, nonconformity, and whiggism, which Tim was going to ship off for a Yankee shop-keeper in New-England. Whatever sage politicians may have said to the contrary, it is not at all to be doubted, that the importation of this cargo spread the wild-fire of rebellion among the Bostonians, and was the sole cause of the late bloody and expensive war. Although my neighbour Tim is no scholar by profession, yet it is astonishing what a progress he has made in books: he has