Edward Gibbon to Mrs. Partens-Life at Lausanne.

amusing book, or play at chess, or retire to our rooms, or make visits, or go to the coffee-house. Between six and seven the assemblies begin, and I am oppressed only with their number and variety. Whist at shillings or half-crowns is the game I generally play, and I play three rubbers with pleasure. Between nine and ten we withdraw to our bread and cheese, and friendly converse, which sends us to bed at eleven; but these sober hours are too often interrupted by private or numerous suppers, which I have not the courage to resist, though I practise a laudable abstinence at the best-furnished tables. Such is the skeleton of my life; it is impossible to communicate a perfect idea of the vital and substantial parts, the characters of the men and women with whom I have very easily connected myself in looser and closer bonds, according to their inclination and my own. If I do not deceive myself, and if Deyverdun does not flatter me, I am a general favorite; and as our likings and dislikes are commonly mutual, I am equally satisfied with the freedom and elegance of manners, and (after proper allowances and exceptions) with the worthy and amiable qualities of many individuals. The autumn has been beautiful, and the winter hitherto mild, but in January we must expect some severe frost. Instead of rolling in a coach, I walk the streets, wrapped up in a fur cloak; but this exercise is wholesome, and, except an accidental fit of the gout for a few days, I never enjoyed better health. I am no longer in Pavillard's house, where I was almost starved with cold and hunger, and you may be assured that I now enjoy every benefit of comfort, plenty, and even decent luxury. You wish me happy; acknowledge that such a life is more conducive to happiness than five nights in the week passed in the House of Commons, or five mornings spent at the Custom House. Send

Sir William Jones to Lady Spencer-Visit to the Residence of Milton.

me in return a fair account of your own situation in mind and body. I am satisfied your own good sense would have reconciled you to inevitable separation; but there never was a more suitable diversion than your visit to Sheffield Place. Among the innumerable proofs of friendship I have received from that family, there are none which affect me more sensibly than their kind civilities to you. Though I am persuaded they are at least as much on your own account as on mine.

*

XXI.-VISIT TO THE RESIDENCE OF MILTON.

Sir William Jones to Lady Spencer.

September 7th, 1769.

MADAM: The necessary trouble of correcting the first sheets of my History,* prevented me to-day from paying respect to the memory of Shakspeare, by attending his jubilee. But I was resolved to do all the honor in my power to as great a poet; and I set out in the morning, in company with a friend, to visit a place where Milton spent some part of his life, and where, in all probability, he composed several of his earliest productions. It is a small village, situated on a pleasant hill, about three miles from Oxford, called Forest Hill, because it formerly lay contiguous to a forest, which has since been cut down. The poet chose this place of retirement after his first marriage, and he describes the beauties of his retreat in that fine passage of his "L'Allegro":

* His translation, from the Persian, of the Life of Nidar Shah.

Sir William Jones to Lady Spencer-Visit to the Residence of Milton.

When the ploughman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,

And the mower whets his sithe;

And ev'ry shepherd tells his tale,

Under the hawthorne in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,

Whilst the landscape round it measures

Russet lawns and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains, on whose barren breast

The lab'ring clouds do often rest;
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees,

Bosom'd high in tufted trees.

It was neither the proper season of the year nor the time of the day to hear all the rural sounds, and to see all the objects mentioned in this description; but, by a pleasing concurrence of circumstances, we were saluted, on our approach to the village, with the mower and his sithe; we saw the ploughman intent upon his labor, and the milkmaid returning from her country employment.

As we ascended the hill, the variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness and natural simplicity of the whole scene, gave us the highest pleasure. At length we reached the spot whence Milton, undoubtedly, took most of his images; it is on the top of the hill, from which there is a most extensive prospect on all sides. The distant mountains that seemed to support the

Sir William Jones to Lady Spencer-Visit to the Residence of Milton.

clouds; the villages and turrets, partly shaded with trees of the finest verdure, and partly raised above the groves that surrounded them; the dark plains and meadows of a grayish color, where the sheep were feeding at large; in short, the view of the streams and rivers, convinced us that there was not a single useless or idle word in the above-mentioned description; but that it was a most exact and lively representation of nature. Thus will this fine passage, which has always been admired for its elegance, receive an additional beauty for its exactness. After we had walked, with a kind of poetical enthusiasm, over this enchanted ground, we returned to the village.

The poet's house was close to the church; the greatest part of it has been pulled down, and what remains belongs to an adjacent farm. I am informed that several papers, in Milton's own hand, were found by the gentleman who was last in possession of the estate. The tradition of his having lived there is current among the villagers; one of them showed us a ruinous wall that made part of his chamber; and I was much pleased with another, who had forgotten the name of Milton, but recollected him by the title of "The Poet."

It must not be omitted that the groves near this village are famous for nightingales, which are so elegantly described in “Il Penseroso." Most of the cottage-windows are overgrown with sweetbriers, vines, and honeysuckles: and that Milton's habitation had the same rustic ornament, we may conclude from his description of the lark bidding him good-morrow :

Through the sweet-brier, or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine;

for it is evident that he meant a sort of honeysuckle by the

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Smith-Reminiscences of Franklin.

eglantine, though that word is commonly used for the sweetbrier, which he could not mention twice in the same couplet.

If I ever pass a month or six weeks at Oxford in the summer, I shall be inclined to hire and repair this venerable mansion, and to make a festival for a circle of friends in honor of Milton, the greatest scholar, as well as the sublimest poet, that our country ever produced. Such an honor will be less splendid, but more sincere and respectful, than all the pomp and ceremony on the banks of the Avon.

I have the honor to be, etc.,

WILLIAM JONES.

XXII.—REMINISCENCES OF FRANKLIN.

Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Smith.

PHILADELPHIA, February 19th, 1791.

DEAR SIR: I feel both the wish and the duty to communicate, in compliance with your request, whatever, within my knowledge, might render justice to the memory of our great countryman, Dr. Franklin, in whom philosophy has to deplore one of its principal luminaries extinguished. But my opportunities of knowing the interesting facts of his life have not been equal to my desire of making them known. I could, indeed, relate a number of those bon mots with which he used to charm every society, as having heard many of them. But these are not your object. Particulars of greater dignity happened not to occur during his stay of nine months, after my arrival in France.

A little before that, Argand had invented his celebrated lamp, in which the flame is spread into a hollow cylinder, and thus brought into contact with the air within as well as without.