courtier, having made some efforts which nearly reached the cardinal's, confessed the cardinal surpassed him. This was jumping like a politician; and by this means is said to have ingratiated himself with the minister.

The great Samuel Clarke was fond of robust exercise; and this profound logician has been found leaping over tables and chairs: once perceiving a pedantic fellow, he said, "Now we must desist, for a fool is coming in!"

What ridiculous amusements passed between Dean Swift and his friends, in Ireland, some of his prodigal editors have revealed to the public. He seems to have outlived the relish of fame, when he could level his mind to such perpetual trifles.

t

An eminent French lawyer, confined by his business to a Parisian life, amused himself with collecting from the classics all the passages which relate to a country life. The collection was published after his death.

The

Contemplative men seem to be fond of amusements which accord with their habits. thoughtful game of chess, and the tranquil delight of angling, have been favourite recreations with the studious. Paley had himself painted with a rod and line in his hand; a strange characteristic for the author of "Natural Theology." Sir Henry Wotton called angling "idle time not idly spent:" we may suppose that his medita

tions and his amusements were carried on at the same moment.

The amusements of the great Daguesseau, chancellor of France, consisted in an interchange of studies: his relaxations were all the varieties of literature. "Le changement de l'étude est mon seul delassement," said this great man; and Thomas observes, "that in the age of the passions, his only passion was study."

Seneca has observed on amusements proper for literary men, in regard to robust exercises, that these are a folly, an indecency to see a man of letters exult in the strength of his arm, or the breadth of his back! Such amusements diminish the activity of the mind. Too much fatigue exhausts the animal spirits, as too much food blunts the finer faculties: but elsewhere he allows his philosopher an occasional slight inebriation; an amusement which was very prevalent among our poets formerly, when they exclaimed,

Fetch me Ben Jonson's scull, and fill❜t with sack,
Rich as the same he drank, when the whole pack
Of jolly sisters pledged, and did agree
It was no sin to be as drunk as he!

Seneca concludes admirably, "whatever be the amusements you choose, return not slowly from those of the body to the mind; exercise the latter night and day. The mind is nourished at a cheap rate; neither cold nor heat, nor age it

self, can interrupt this exercise; give therefore all your cares to a possession which ameliorates even in its old age!"

An ingenious writer has observed, that " a garden just accommodates itself to the perambulations of a scholar, who would perhaps rather wish his walks abridged than extended." There is a good characteristic account of the mode in which the literati take exercise in Pope's letters. "I, like a poor squirrel, am continually in motion indeed, but it is but a cage of three foot; my little excursions are like those of a shopkeeper, who walks every day a mile or two before his own door, but minds his business all the while." A turn or two in a garden will often very happily close a fine period, mature an unripened thought, and raise up fresh associations, when the mind like the body becomes rigid by preserving the same posture. Buffon often quitted the apartment he studied in, which was placed in the midst of his garden, for a walk in it; Evelyn loved "books and a garden.”

PORTRAITS OF AUTHORS.

WITH the ancients, it was undoubtedly a custom to place the portraits of authors before their works. Martial's 186th epigram of his fourteenth book is a mere play on words, con

cerning a little volume containing the works of Virgil, and which had his portrait prefixed to it. The volume and the characters must have been very diminutive.

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Quam brevis immensum cepit membrana Maronem!

Ipsius Vultus prima tabella gerit.”

Martial is not the only writer who takes notice of the ancients prefixing portraits to the works of authors. Seneca, in his ninth chapter on the Tranquillity of the Soul, complains of many of the luxurious great, who, like so many of our own collectors, possessed libraries as they did their estates and equipages. "It is melancholy to observe how the portraits of men of genius, and the works of their divine intelligence, are used only as the luxury and the ornaments of walls."

Pliny has nearly the same observation, Lib. XXXV. cap. 2. He remarks, that the custom was. rather modern in his time; and attributes to Asinius Pollio the honour of having introduced it into Rome. "In consecrating a library with the portraits of our illustrious authors, he has formed, if I may so express myself, a republic of the intellectual powers of men." To the richness of book-treasures, Asinius Pollio had associated a new source of pleasure, in placing the statues of their authors amidst them, inspiring the minds of the spectators even by their eyes,

A taste for collecting portraits, or busts, was warmly pursued in the happier periods of Rome; for the celebrated Atticus, in a work he published of illustrious Romans, made it more delightful, by ornamenting it with the portraits of those great men; and the learned Varro, in his biography of Seven Hundred celebrated Men, by giving the world their true features and their physiognomy in some manner, aliquo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, it is Varro who secured their immortality, and has so multiplied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle that every day becomes more varied and interesting, as new heroes appear, and as works of this kind are spread abroad.

But as printing was unknown to the ancient (though stamping an impression was daily practised, and, in fact, they possessed the art of printing without being aware of it), how were these portraits of Varro so easily propagated? If copied with a pen, their correctness was in some danger, and their diffusion must have been very confined and slow; perhaps they were outlines. This