Gentleman's Magazine, Or, Trader's Monthly Intelligencer

Registrar-General's Returns of Mortality in the Metropolis-Markets, 447;

Embellished with a Plate of the ROMAN TESSELLATED PAVEMENT FOUND AT CIREN-
CESTER; and Wood-Engravings of celebrated GLASS VASES, &c.

MINOR CORRESPONDENCE.

The death of the Bishop of Norwich, and the consequent succession of a new Bishop as last on the list, we can no longer say on the Bench, as he is without an immediate seat in the House of Peers, (pursuant to the extraordinary stipulation of the act creating the see of Manchester,) brings to the test an apocryphal privilege said to be attached to that particular see. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Bishop of Norwich was required by royal authority to change his estates for those of the neighbouring abbey of St. Benet Hulme, the abbat of which was formerly mitred, and consequently sat in parliament: and it is a popular saying in that country that the Bishop of Norwich is the only remaining Abbat sitting in Parliament by virtue of his land-barony of the abbey of Hulme, rather than as Bishop of Norwich. If we are not mistaken, we heard this peculiarity of tenure claimed by the late amiable Bishop himself.

It may, think, be met by various opposing arguments, one of which of course would be that all abbeys and their attendant privileges ceased at the dissolution; another, that dignities by tenure of lands no longer exist in England; and the assumed peerage of Bishops in right of their temporalitles-another article of popular belief, might also be disputed, else their right of peerage would be as indefeasible as that of the lay peers, and could not be either abrogated or suspended by anything short of an act of attainder. To us, we must confess, the Abbacy of St. Benet Hulme has always appeared to be one of those visionary boasts, which, like the supposed tenure of the Earldom of Arundel by possession of the castle, have a peculiar mystical charm from raising their heads into the clouds of antiquity, but which, if actually claimed, would not be found to be the exceptions to the general rule which they have been supposed. How

ever, as we have remarked, the opportunity for testing the mitred Abbacy of Hulme, if anything more than imaginary, may now be taken,-unless, indeed, it should disappear by the occurrence of another vacancy on the Episcopal Bench before the next Session of Parliament.

W. B. D. inquires whether now exist, and if so, where are to be found, those private lists kept by Sir Robert Walpole, of the London citizens suspected of favouring the Pretender's cause, and most of whom were supposed to be under the evil eye of Jonathan Wild.

We have received from our Correspondent on Irish history, Mr. D'ALTON, an interesting memoir on the history, statistics, and natural resources of Conne

mara, a vast district in the west of Ireland, about to be sold at the end of this month (October). It shall appear in our November Magazine.

In reply to PHILURBAN's inquiry (p. 226) respecting the legitimacy of the birth of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewyas, A. J. S. P. begs to inform him that in an old MS. genealogy of a Welsh family, in the possession of the writer, which was compiled by Sir William Segar in the year 1619, Sir Richard is there set down as "baseborne sonne " of "William Earl of Pembrook," and in all genealogies of the family of Herbert which the writer has seen, he is universally considered to have been illegitimate. PHILURBAN asserts that the arms on Sir Richard's tomb in Abergavenny Church "bear no mark of illegitimacy;" but if they do not now, they certainly have done so, and that at a very recent period, for Mr. Coxe, in his History of Monmouthshire, which was published in 1801, thus speaks of the tomb (vol. i. p. 189): "The richest monument in the church is that of Sir Richard Herbert of Ewias, son of William first Earl of Pembroke, and ancestor of the Earls of Pembroke and Caernarvon, It is placed in a recess of the south wall; the effigies is recumbent, with uplifted hands, habited in a coat of mail; the head uncovered reposes on a helmet, and the feet rest on a lion. Above are the Herbert arms, per pale azure and gules, three lions rampant argent, A BATTOON OVER, impaled with Azure, three boar's heads between eight cross crosslets argent, the arms of his wife Margaret, who was the daughter of Sir Matthew Cradock, knight of Swansey, Glamorganshire." Mr. Coxe's testimony as to the existence of the battoon over the arms affords a most conclusive proof as to the illegitimacy of Sir Richard Herbert ; and when to this it is added that Mr. Burke, in the genealogical account in his Peerage of the Earldom of Pembroke, and which account was doubtless furnished by the family, also speaks of him as illegitimate, PHILURBAN's inquiry may be considered fully satisfied.

ERRATA.-P. 298, for Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt, read Mr. Llewellyn of Plymouth; p. 300, for the Rev. Mr. Marsden of Nantwich, read Mardon of London; p. 320, line 35, for Solicitor to the Customs, read Solicitor to the Ordnance.

The Chester Mystery Plays were not edited by Mr. Sharp of Coventry, as we inadvertently stated in p. 300. Mr. Markland first drew attention to them by his Roxburghe volume in 1818. Mr. Sharp followed with his volume on the Coventry Mysteries in 1825.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

A Journal of Summer Time in the Country. By the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, 1849.

THERE is much to commend in this little volume, in the variety as well as choice of books that are referred to and characterised, in the pleasing landscapes that are drawn from nature, illustrated by the poetical feeling of the author, adorned by a kind of romantic richness of imagination, and sanctified by a pure and religious spirit. The pages are full of glowing emanations of fancy, of delicate and elegant descriptions, and of sentiments that may be read with pleasure and approbation; Mr. Willmott is in every thought and act a poet. He reads Spenser through the ruby lights and gorgeous radiance of King's Chapel gothic windows; and Shakspere's pages are only to be perused by the emerald rays which dart from a starry circle of glowworms on the mossy and verdant banks of his picturesque residence. We know few female hearts that could resist this: and we doubt not, if it was generally known throughout the country where he resides, but that he might have the unlimited choice of the brightest eyes that "rain influence" in those regions. We however unfortunately have hearts of somewhat sterner stuff; and sometimes think that the poetic affluence of Mr. Willmott's mind may have been in excess, so as to obscure some other qualities, necessary or useful to those who wish to gain success to their writings, by securing the confidence of their readers. One must not accustom one's eyes to gaze too long on the golden visions, the roseate hues, and the beautiful shadows of fairy-land, so as to forget the more genial influences, the substantial claims, and the absolute realities of the life around us. Mr. Willmott writes with ease and fluency, and clothes his ideas in a rich garb of variegated colours, but in his "flashes of highborn fancies" he is apt to be wanting in accuracy and correctness both of reasoning and reference; and this is the main blemish of his work. His quotations are incorrect in many, perhaps most, instances, and seem to be made from the fallible resources of memory: his arguments too are apt to wander away from the line in which they commenced their course; and not seldom there is a vagueness in his language that puts us to some trouble in discovering the meaning; while sometimes we find a quaintness and conceit in the turn of expression, and a fanciful dallying with his subject, that, compared to other and better passages in his book, is like the glittering of artificial fires, rather than the pure sunshine of nature. In fact, he seems more delighted to muse in the deep recesses, and wander in the sunny glades, of poetic regions, than to tread the dim and opaque surface of real humanity. His soaring pinions are always spread for flight and his eye is bent sunward. No doubt he will not much approve the manner in which we are going to circumscribe his aëry evolutions, dispute his bold decisions, and point out to him a safer and better course to follow; yet we can assure him that our intentions are faithful and friendly, and we may address him in the words and in the spirit of Cardan, "Non contradicendi aut contendendi ambitione motus, sed com

muni omnibus studiosis jure excitatus, ea protuli coram te maximo omnium consensu literarum dictatore judicanda. Spero, haud committes ut vel animi nostri candorem negligas, vel contemnas consilium." To the reader, should he complain, as perhaps he may, of a kind of abruptness and elliptic brevity in the treatment of the various topics, and of our passing, as it were per saltum, from one author and one volume to another, we must tell him that particular criticism is by far the most useful and valuable; that it was the criticism most esteemed and practised among the ancients from Aristotle to Dionysius; and that our object has been also to treat every subject with as much brevity as was consistent with the proper exposition of our purpose: and so we take leave in words which once before have been applied on a similar occasion,

Καιρὸν εἰ φθεξαιο, πολλῶν

Πείρατα συντανύσαις
Ἐν βραχεῖ, μείων ἔπεται
Μῶμος ἀνθρώπων.*

Our first quotation is as follows:

P. 4.-"Gray confessed that his reading wandered from Pausanias to Pindar, mixing Aristotle and Ovid like bread and cheese."

This is not so correctly given as it should be. The words of Gray were as follows:-"I have read Pausanias and Athenæus all through, and Eschylus again. I am now in Pindar and Lysias, for I take verse and prose together, like bread and cheese." He says nothing of Aristotle or Ovid, as in Mr. Willmott's version; also Mr. Willmott's term applied to Gray's reading of wandering is far from accurate. He always read on plan and principle, as is made evident by his published letters, and his note-books and journals in manuscript. We have read and transcribed portions of the latter, and can witness that they exhibit the unremitting care, exactness, and diligence of the scholar, the verbal critic, and the antiquary, and all his note-books are as beautifully and correctly written as if intended for the press. In the latter part of his life, when he was afflicted and enfeebled by various complaints, he confined his studies chiefly to antiquities and natural history; then the exactness and beauty of his writing was impaired, and his sight was failing, some time previous to his death. We confer a particular favour on Mr. Willmott by extracting a small specimen of one of these journals, purposely avoiding those which are too full of Greek quotation and criticism to be generally interesting.

MANUSCRIPT OF GRAY THE POET.

Xenophontis Opera. Cyropædia, ed. Hutchinson.

P. 21.“ Hutchinson seems not to know the meaning of the word Tapos, which is, greens raw or dressed, roots, pickles, &c. whatever is served up to be eat not alone, but with meat or fish-side dishes."

P. 25.-"Kрarip, a large vase in which they mixed the wine and water. The cyathus' was a small cup with which they measured it out of the crater, and poured it into the piaλn, out of which they drank."

P. 54.-"Custom of Persia and Medea for relations to kiss one another at parting and meeting again."

P. 59. He makes all along the Persians a sort of free nation,

*Vide Pindar, Pyth. 1, v. 57.

governed by a limited monarch and a senate of old men,-but not the Medes."

P. 66.-" This conversation of Cyrus and Cambyses on the art of commanding, under its plainness and simplicity, conveys the truest and deepest good sense, which appears the stronger every time it is read. Scipio Africanus thought it admirable."

P. 188.—“ This death of the Armenian prince's preceptor is a manifest allusion to the death of Socrates, which it is strange nobody has observed." P. 190.—“ There is no where a more natural or delicate expression of tenderness than this answer of Tigranes' wife."

P. 229.-" This is very noble. The reflection of Cyrus on the vanity of supposing that sudden exhortations can raise the spirits of men to true valour who have never become accustomed by education and the laws of their country to the practice of it."

P. 232.-" Διοσκούροις παῖανα, &c. Hutchinson in vain will have it that Xenophon in this work has exactly observed the Persian manners. In this place he would prove that they worshipped the 'Dioscuri,' which, if any, were doubtless gods proper to the Greeks. All he grounds himself on is an emendation of his own on Hesychius, who says, Aevas. Toùs ἀκακούς θεους οἳ Μάλοι. He reads roùs àvakovs, &c. very arbitrarily. It is well known that the Persians had two opposite principles-one of good the other of evil-and probably the inferior deities were divided between them. Besides, I have read that the Deies are still (in some oriental languages) a name for certain genii they believe in. It is clear to me that the Persian education, the conversation of Cyrus, his military precepts and discipline, &c. are plain copies of the Spartans, the favourite people of Xenophon, and this is the fault of this fine work-that it has too much of the Greek air."

P. 250.-" Persians of old, as now, were ashamed to be seen going anywhere on foot."

P. 420.-" Cyrus invented the chariot armed with scythes."

P. 509.-" Possibly there really was such a monument near Sardis, which Xenophon had seen, when he was with the younger Cyrus; and the story of Panthea and Abradatus is likely to be founded on the tradition of the country."

P. 509.—“ ΣKηTтоνxo, officers of the palace or seraglio; eunuchs and others in the Eastern courts; so called from the badge of their places, a sceptre or rod they bore."

P. 512.—“ Oɩ 'etiкaιρúοi, used here and all along by the chief men, commanding officers," &c.

P. 541." Here begins Cyrus's transition from a popular general to a great monarch; from the manners of the Greeks to that of the Eastern princes."

P. 634.-" King,-not arbitrary in Persiâ propriâ,' even in Xenophon's time; Persian commanders of garrisons, and of the troops quartered in any country (see Economica, p. 482-3), independent of the satrap or viceroy," &c. &c.

Αθηναίων Πολίτεια.—The great part of this is rather a severe satire on the Athenian constitution than an explanation of it.

P. 404.-" Zvvoíria; a house let out in different apartments to lodgers." "Great licence of slaves at Athens:―will not be struck by their master -will not give the way to a citizen-may grow rich and purchase their

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