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finished a complete set of the General Councils, and is now hard at work upon the Ante-Nicene Fathers, whom he cuts up with greater expedition than Dr. Priestley himself. Perhaps more logic and metaphysics have passed through his hands than lord Monboddo ever saw. He would have been a long time in dispatching a set of French Reviews, had he not begun upon them when the price of coffee was reduced. The other day some young sparks, who belong to a celebrated academy, where every thing is taught, brought him a parcel of Latin classics. He tore off the covers with as much sang-froid as a nymph of Billingsgate strips an oyster of its shell, and bought Horace and Virgil for three-halfpence per pound. He observed, with a sapient look, "That as for your Virgilii's translation into Latin, I reckon it no better than waste paper; but if it had been Mr. Dryden's History of the Trojan Horse, I would have kept it for my own reading."

I have been told by learned men, that it is a question much debated in the universities, whether the place ought to agree with the thing placed. Now after all that serious meditation which so abstruse a point requires, I am determined to decide in the affirmative. For who cannot see the propriety, or rather (as Parson Square would say) the fitness of things, in wrapping up a cheesecake in a pastoral, sugar candy in a dedication, and gunpowder in a sermon on the 5th of November?

There never was a time when learning forced itself so much into notice as it does at present. You can no more walk a hundred yards in any street, or go into any house, without seeing some

display of it, than you can turn a corner in London without seeing a beggar, or hear a sailor talk without swearing. A man of fashion keeps up his acquaintance with his alphabet, by playing at the noble game of te-totum, or risking his fortune at an E O table. Book-stalls furnish history; the walls of houses poetry; hand-bills medicine; fire-screens geography; and clocks morality. These are the channels which convey to the porter the knowledge of the constitution, to the apprentice the art of rhyming, to members of parliament an acquaintance with our India settlements, and to the fat alderman wise sayings.

For my own part, I am not satisfied with such vulgar means of growing learned, but love to follow literature into her more secret recesses. Fortunately, chance has furnished me with the means of doing this, without being driven to the immense bore of poring over books, which would only produce the effects of a dose of opium. I have a trunk, which, like the dagger of Hudibras, may be applied to more purposes than one. It is lined with several sheets of the Royal Register, and of course contains much edifying information. During my travels, I watch my trunk with the same fond anxiety which Sancho used to feel for his beloved Dapple. On my arrival at an inn, after having studied the most curious manuscript in the house, the bill of fare, I unlock my magazine of linen and learning, and feast upon delicious scraps of characters, until more substantial food is set upon the table. When I travel in company, my associates complain of my taking an unreasonable time to equip myself. They are not aware, that frequently,

whilst they think I am fluctuating between boots and shoes, I am conjecturing what the initial letters of my fragment stand for, and that, instead of changing my linen, I am shifting from the duke of Marlborough to lord Chatham.

To those who wish not to forget all that their school-masters taught them, this sort of light reading is to be recommended. It would be no bad plan if all genteel people would furnish their trunks, portmanteaus, caravans, and band-boxes, with the beauties of some author that suits their taste. If the beau monde should be afraid of injuring their eyes by these studies, Mademoiselle Abigail, or Monsieur Valet de Chambre, had better be deputed to read trunk-lectures to them. Hoyle on Whist will answer extremely well for old ladies; Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews for boarding-school misses; Ecton's Thesaurus, or the Art of Shooting Flying, for parsons; Paterson's Book of Roads for lawyers on the circuit; and Phillidore on Chess for the gentlemen of the army.

Pedants may object, that if the above plan should become general, the works of the learned will be no longer treasured up in the libraries of the great. But let them not be alarmed; for they may be certain, that whilst books are considered by a refined age as a species of ornamental furniture, and supply the place of the classics in wood, they will not be driven from their present posts. There is, it must be confessed, great reason to be alarmed at the destruction which threatens some branches of literature. Imnumerable enemies are constantly on the watch, to annihilate insipid novels, scurrilous satires, party pamphlets, and indecent songs. If

they chance to attract the public eye for a week or two, they cannot escape that destiny which their authors were too much dazzled with their own

charming productions to foresee. As weeds by their decay fertilize the soil from which they sprung, so these flimsy and noxious publications do great service to society, by lighting a pipe, embracing a tallow-candle, or forming the basis of a mincedpie.

Q. KETT.

No. V.

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1787.

Μισω σοφιστην οστις εκ αυτῳ σοφεί

Gr. Prov.

THERE is no species of science whose utility is more generally allowed than that which is called knowledge of the world, the safeguard of the prudent, the manual of the cunning, and sometimes the instrument of virtue. It has been often remarked, that men of acknowledged abilities and great literary merits, have been in general found more deficient in this kind of knowledge than the illiterate and the vulgar. Some have ranked this acquisition so low, as to have supposed it unworthy such men's attention; others have, perhaps, erro.

neously conjectured, that it was too high for their attainment; and others again, with more shadow of reason, have ascribed their want of it to the imperfection of human nature.

Since the excellence and superiority of this attainment is acknowledged by all, it is not to be wondered at, if the acquisition of it engages the attention and pursuit of all.

It may not be improper to ascertain, as near as possible, the meaning of the term knowledge of the world, which with every different class of men has a different acceptation. With some people it means, what has been called a knavish form of understanding, abounding in tricks of low cunning, and preguant with stratagems, by which a person advances his own interest, without regard to the ruin of the unwary or the contempt of the upright. The man of trade, whom his own arts or his own industry have enriched, is sufficiently convinced, that to his knowledge of the world he is indebted for his present exemption from business, for the enjoyment of his villa, and the envy of his neighbourhood. In his great veneration for this kind of knowledge, he forgets that the same arts which expedite the acquisition of wealth, frequently supply temptations to impair honesty.

Some arrive at this knowledge, by living with an opera-singer at Paris, bringing home the name of a noted Italian ballet-master, or wearying out the attention of their yawning friends with indefinite and unsatisfactory accounts of the Escurial. To some a more easy path toward the acquiring knowledge is open: they may learn, without leaving London, with what ease the ace of spades will

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