on which he can thrive, till the time approaches when pig is to commence pork, or take a degree as bacon, and then he is fed daintily. Now it has sometimes appeared to me, that, in like manner, boys might acquire their first knowledge of Latin from authors very inferior to those which are now used in all schools; provided the matter was unexceptionable and the Latinity good; and that they should not be introduced to the standard works of antiquity till they are of an age in some degree to appreciate what they read.

Understand me, reader, as speaking doubtfully-and that, too, upon a matter of little moment; for the scholar will return in riper years to those authors which are worthy of being studied; and as for the blockhead, it signifies nothing whether the book which he consumes by thumbing it in the middle and dog-earing it at the corners, be worthy or not of a better use. Yet if the dead have any cognizance of posthumous fame, one would think it must abate somewhat of the pleasure with which Virgil and Ovid regard their earthly immortality, when they see to what base purposes their productions are applied. That their verses should be administered to boys in regular doses, as lessons or impositions, and some dim conception of their meaning whipped into the tail when it has failed to penetrate the head, cannot be just the sort of homage to their genius which they anticipated or desired.

Not from any reasonings or refinements of this kind, but from the mere accident of possessing the book, Guy put into his pupil's hands the Dialogues of Johannes Ravisius Textor. Jean Tixier, Seigneur de Ravisy, in the Nivernois, who thus Latinized his name, is a person whose works, according to Baillet's severe censure, were buried in the dust of a few petty colleges and unfrequented shops, more than a century ago. He was, however, in his day, a person of no mean station in the world of letters, having been rector of the university of Paris, at the commencement of the sixteenth century; and few, indeed, are the writers whose books have been so much used; for perhaps no other author ever contributed so largely to the manufacture of exercises, whether in prose or verse, and of sermons also. Textor may be considered as the first compiler of the Gradus ad Parnassum; and that collection of apothegms was originally formed by him, which Conrade Lycosthenes enlarged and rearranged; which the Jesuits adopted after expurgating it; and which, during many generations, served as one of the standard commonplace books for commonplace divines in this country as well as on the Continent.

But though Textor was continually working in classical literature with a patience and perseverance which nothingbut the delight he experienced in such occupations could have

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sustained, he was without a particle of classical taste. His taste was that of the age wherein he flourished, and these his dialogues are moralities in Latin verse. The designs and thoughts, which would have accorded with their language had they been written either in old French or old English, appear, when presented in Latinity, which is always that of a scholar, and largely interwoven with scraps from familiar classics, as strange as Harlequin and Pantaloon would do in heroic cos

tume.

Earth opens the first of these curious compositions with a bitter complaint for the misfortunes which it is her lot to witness. Age (tas) overhears the lamentation, and inquires the cause; and after a dialogue, in which the author makes the most liberal use of his own commonplaces, it appears that the perishable nature of all sublunary things is the cause of this mourning. Atas endeavours to persuade Terra that her grief is altogether unreasonable by such brief and cogent observations as Fata jubent, Fata volunt, Ita Diis placitum. Earth asks the name of her philosophic consoler, but upon discovering it, calls her falsa virago, and meretrix, and abuses her as being the very author of all the evils that distress her. However, tas succeeds in talking Terra into better humour, advises her to exhort man that he should not set his heart upon perishable things, and takes her leave as Homo enters. After a recognition between mother and son, Terra proceeds to warn Homo against all the ordinary pursuits of this world. To convince him of the vanity of glory she calls up in succession the ghosts of Hector, Achilles, Alexander, and Samson, who tell, their tales and admonish him that valour and renown afford no protection against Death. To exemplify the vanity of beauty, Helen, Lais, Thisbe, and Lucretia are summoned, relate in like manner their respective fortunes, and remind him that pulvis et umbra sumus. Virgil preaches to him upon the emptiness of literary fame. Xerxes tells him that there is no avail in power, Nero that there is none in tyranny, Sardanapalus that there is none in voluptuousness. But the application which Homo makes of all this, is the very reverse to what his mother intended: he infers that seeing he must die at last, live how he will, the best thing he can do is to make a merry life of it, so away he goes to dance and revel, and enjoy himself: and Terra concludes with the mournful observation that men will still pursue their bane, unmindful of their latter end.

Another of these moralities begins with three worldlings (tres mundani) ringing changes upon the pleasures of profligacy, in Textor's peculiar manner, each in regular succession saying something to the same purport in different words. As thus:

Quidnam prodesset lachrymis consumere vitam?

TERTIUS MUNDANUS.

Quidnam prodesset tantis incumbere curis?

Upon which an unpleasant personage, who has just appeared to interrupt their trialogue, observes

"Si breve tempus abit, si vita caduca recedit,

Si cadit hora, dies abeunt, perit Omne, venit Mors,
Quidnam lethiferæ Mortis meminisse nocebit ?”

It is Mors herself who asks the question. The three worldlings, however, behave as resolutely as Don Juan in the old drama; they tell Death that they are young, and rich, and active, and vigorous, and set all admonition at defiance. Death, or rather Mrs. Death, (for Mors being feminine is called læna, and meretrix, and virago,) takes all this patiently, and letting them go off in a dance, calls up Human Nature, who has been asleep meantime, and asks her how she can sleep in peace while her sons are leading a life of dissipation and debauchery. Nature very coolly replies by demanding why they should not: and Death answers, because they must go to the infernal regions for so doing. Upon this Nature, who appears to be liberally inclined, asks if it is credible that any should be obliged to go there: and Death, to convince her, calls up a soul from bale to give an account of his own sufferings. A dreadful account this Damnatus gives; and when Nature, shocked at what she hears, inquires if he is the only one who is tormented in Orcus, Damnatus assures her that hardly one in a thousand goes to heaven, but that his fellow sufferers are in number numberless; and he specifies among them kings and popes, and senators and severe schoolmasters-a class of men whom Textor seems to have held in great and proper abhorrence-as if, like poor Thomas Tusser, he had suffered under their inhuman discipline.

Horrified at this, Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors advises her to send a son of Thunder round the world, who should reprove the nations for their sins, and sow the seeds

of virtue by his preaching. Peregrinus goes upon this mission, and returns to give an account of it. Nothing can be worse than the report. As for the kings of the earth, it would be dangerous, he says, to say what they were doing. The popes suffered the ship of Peter to go wherever the winds carried it. Senators were won by intercession, or corrupted by gold. Doctors spread their nets in the temples for prey, and lawyers were dumb unless their tongues were loosened by money. Had he seen the Italians ?—Italy was full of dissensions, ripe for war, and defiled by its own infamous vice. The Spaniards ?-They were suckled by Pride. The English ?

"Gens tacitis prægnans arcanis, ardua tentans,
Edita tartareis mihi creditur esse tenebris."

In short, the missionary concludes that he has found everywhere an abundant crop of vices, and that all his endeavours to produce amendment have been like ploughing the seashore. Again afflicted Nature asks advice of Mors, and Mors recommends that she should call up Justice, and send her abroad with her scourge to repress the wicked. But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. Mors then advises her to summon Veritas-alas! unhappy Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot, and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying, and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to? Kings? They will not come. Nobles-Veritas is a hateful personage to them. Bishops, or mitred abbots ?-They have no regard for Truth. Some saint from the desert ?-Nature knows not where to find one! Poor Veritas therefore dies "unhouseled, disappointed, unannealed ;" and forthwith three demons enter rejoicing that Human Nature is left with none to help her, and that they are kings of this world. They call in their ministers, Caro, and Voluptas, and Vitium, and send them to their work among mankind. These successful missionaries return, and relate how well they have sped everywhere; and the demons being by this time hungry, after washing in due form, and many ceremonious compliments among themselves, sit down to a repast which their ministers have provided. The bill of fare was one which Beelzebub's court of aldermen might have approved. There were the brains of a fat monk-a roasted doctor of divinity who afforded great satisfaction-a king's sirloin-some broiled pope's flesh, and part of a schoolmaster; the joint is not specified, but I suppose it to have been the rump. Then came a senator's lights and a lawyer's tongue.

When they have eaten of these dainties till the distended stomach can hold no more, Virtus comes in, and seeing them send off the fragments to their Tartarean den, calls upon man

kind to bestow some sustenance upon her, for she is tormented with hunger. The demons and their ministers insult her and drive her into banishment; they tell Nature that to-morrow the great King of Orcus will come and carry her away in chains; off they go in a dance, and Nature concludes the piece by saying that what they have threatened must happen, unless Justice shall be awakened, Virtue fed, and Veritas restored to life by the sacred book.

There are several other dialogues in a similar strain of fiction. The rudest and perhaps oldest specimen of this style is to be found in Pierce Ploughman, the most polished in Calderon, the most popular in John Bunyan's Holy War, and above all in his Pilgrim's Progress. It appears from the dialogues that they were not composed for the use of youth alone as a school book, but were represented at college; and poor as they are in point of composition, the oddity of their combinations, and the wholesome honesty of their satire, were well adapted to strike young imaginations, and make an impression there which better and wiser works might have failed to leave.

A schoolmaster who had been regularly bred would have regarded such a book with scorn, and discerning at once its obvious faults, would have been incapable of perceiving anything which might compensate for them. But Guy was not educated well enough to despise a writer like old Textor. What he knew himself, he had picked up where and how he could, in byways and corners. The book was neither in any respect above his comprehension, nor below his taste; and Joseph Warton never rolled off the hexameters of Virgil or Homer, ore rotundo, with more delight, when expatiating with all the feelings of a scholar and a poet upon their beauties, to such pupils as Headly, and Russell, and Bowles, than Guy paraphrased these rude but striking allegories to his delighted Daniel.

"THIS account of Textor's Dialogues," says a critical reader, "might have done very well for the Retrospective Review, or one of the magazines, or D'Israeli's Curiosities VOL. 1.-8