he knew him to be his own father. He flung himself off his horse, without regarding what became of him,-flew to those who had the care of conducting the malefactor, and begged the liberty of speaking to him; which being granted, he made himself known to him, and there passed between them all that could be expected on so mournful an occasion.—The son expressed the utmost concern that his father had not acquainted him, by letter, with his misfortune, that he might have come sooner down in order to endeavour to save him from so shameful an end, if all he had in the world could have done it; and the father answered, that he did not repent his not having done So, because as he had never any thing to give him, he should not have had any comfort in life, if prolonged by the ruin of so dutiful a child, and that he was only grieved at the disgrace which the crime he suffered for must entail on him.He told him that it was extreme poverty, and the unwillingness he had of being burthensome to him, as he had a wife and children, which had made him do that in his old age, which in his youth he should have trembled at the thoughts of; and uttered many other expressions of grief and tenderness, which drew tears from all who were near enough to hear them, till the officers of justice obliging them to break off any

further discourse, they embraced and parted; the old man was dragged to his fate, and the young one, struck with horror, fell that instant into violent convulsion fits; the people about him had charity enough to give him what assistance was in their power; and hearing that, in his intervals of reason, he desired to be carried to that inn where he had left his wife, some of them took him up and bore him on their shoulders.

"The poor woman was extremely frighted, as you may suppose, to see her husband in this condition; but on enquiring where, and in what manner they had found him, and being informed of the dreadful occasion, fell into agonies little inferior to his.-A physician was immediately sent for to them both; the wife was soon upon her legs, but the man lay a long time ill; at length, however, he recovered enough to return to London,-which was all that could be done for him; the sad success of his journey had such an effect upon him, that it turned his brain, and he died soon after in a mad-house, leaving a wife and three children, in circumstances very much impaired by the expences this misfortune had rendered unavoidable."

The same paper contains an observation not very honourable to our dramatic taste at this period, and which proves how greatly, in the

course of half a century, refinement and civilization have increased. "Even in your most elegant diversions," remarks the author, addressing the British public," a sanguinary disposition is discoverable in you; those of the theatre I mean; and for proof of this assertion, I can mention several plays, particularly those entituled The Libertine, and Titus Andronicus, both which contain only a series of the most shocking murders, from their first to their last acts, and yet seldom fail of being honoured with the most crowded audiences, and numbers frequently turned away for want of room in the house to contain them."

N° 8 of the Parrot is a valuable essay on the muse of satire and panegyric, and is written with more than the author's usual vigour.

55. THE TATLER REVIVED. Of this effort, which I believe is the last that has been made to continue the plan and title of Steele's essays, I know nothing more than that it was attempted in the year 1750, and, after a short trial, completely failed. The specimens which were brought before the public are, I understand, now no longer procurable.

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Mr. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, has remarked, that a few days before the first of his essays (The Rambler) came out, there started another competitor for fame in the same form,

under the title of "The Tatler Revived," which I believe was born but to die ;" and Johnson himself, in his first Idler, dated April 15th, 1758, has alluded both to this abortive attempt, and to the Universal and Female Spectators. "Those," says he," who attempt periodical essays seem to be often stopped in the beginning, by the difficulty of finding a proper title. Two writers since the time of the Spectator, have assumed his name, without any pretensions to lawful inheritance; an effort was once made to revive the Tatler; and the strange appellations, by which other papers have been called, shew that the authors were distressed, like the natives of America, who came to the Europeans to beg a name."

56. THE STUDENT. This is a miscellany of great merit, which was published monthly in numbers at Oxford, in the years 1750, and 1751, It rejects all politics and party discussion, but embraces a wide field in polite literature, and professes to insert nothing in its pages that had previously been published. It includes many curious documents in history and biography; several interesting experiments and observations in physics; some critical dissertations; a valuable contribution of poetry by some of the first bards of the age, among which are various pieces by Warton and Smart; many essays on ethics,

religion, and morality; and a copious seasoning of wit and humour. N° 1 is dated January 31st, 1750, and N° 9, September 16th, 1750; these, with a supplement, form the first volume in octavo; the second consists of nine more, to which are affixed the names of the nine muses, together with a tenth under the title of Apollo, which is ́dated July 3d, 1751. This work preceded the Rambler of Dr. Johnson, therefore, not quite two months; and in the first number of vol. 2d, entitled Clio, and printed in October, 1750, the following very just and handsome tribute is paid to the merits of this excellent paper, and which proves how soon its value was properly estimated. The author is writing on the subject of gratitude, and declares for himself and his associates, that "there is one gentleman from whom we should be proud to borrow, if our plan forbad it not; and, since the text is Gratitude, we beg leave to return our acknowledgments to him for the noble and rational entertainment he has given us; we mean the admirable author of the Rambler, a work that exceeds any thing of the kind ever published in this kingdom, some of the SPECTATORS excepted-if indeed they may be excepted. We own ourselves unequal to the task of com mending such a work up to its merits-where the diction is the most high-wrought imaginable, and