the fame time one of the ftouteft, handsomest, best-limbed lads in all England.

Sir Hugo Fitz-Hugo is a decayed baronet of a family fo very antient, that they have long fince worn out the estate that fupported them: Sir Hugo knows his own dignity none the lefs, and keeps a little fuivelling boy, who can fcarce move under the load of worfted lace, that is plaistered down. the edges and feams of his livery: He leaves a vifiting card at your door, ftuck as full of emblems as an American paper dollar. Sir Hugo abominates a tradefman; his olfactory nerves are tortured with the scent of a grocer, or a butcher, quite across the way, and as for a tallow-chandler he can wind him to the very end of the street; these are people, whofe vifits he cannot endure: their very bills turn his ftomach upside down. Sir Hugo inveighs against modern manners as feverely as Cato would against French cookery; he notes down omiflions in punctilio as a merchant does bills for protefting; and in cold weather Sir Hugo is of fome ufe, for he fuffers no man to turn his back to the fire and fcreen it from the company who fit round: He holds it for a folecifin in goodbreeding for any man to touch a lady's hand without his glove: This as a general maxim Mifs Pen Tabby agrees to, but doubts whether there are not fome cafes when it may be waved: He anathematizes the herefy of a gentleman's fitting at the head of a lady's table, and contends that the honours of the upper difh are the unalienable rights of the miftrefs of the family: In fhort, Sir Hugo FitzHugo has more pride about him than he knows how to difpofe of, and yet cannot find in his heart to beftow one atom of it upon honefty: From the world

world be merits no other praife but that of having, lived fingle all his life, and, being the last of his family; at his decease the Fitz-lugos will be extinct.

This fociety may also boast a tenth mufe in the perfon of the celebrated Rhodope: Her talents are multifarious: poctical, biographical, epiftolary, miscellaneous : She can reafon like Socrates, difpute like Ariftotle and love like Sappho; her magnanimity equals that of Marc Antony, for when the world was at her feet, fhe facrificed it all for love, and accounted it well lost. She was a philofopher in her leading-ftrings, and had travelled geographically over the globe ere fhe could fet one foot fairly before the other: Her cradle was rocked to the Iambic measure, and fhe was lulled to fleep by finging to her an ode of Horace. Rhodope has written a book of travels full of most enchanting incidents, which fome of her admirers fay was actually sketched in the nursery, and only filled up with little temporary touches in her riper years; I know they make appeal to her file as internal evidence of what they affert about the nurfery; but though I am ready to admit that it has every infantine charm, which they difcover in it, yet I cannot go the length of thinking with them, that a mere infant could poffibly dictate any thing fo nearly approaching to the language of men and women: We all know that Goody Two-fhoes, and other amusing books, though written for children, were not written by children. Rhodope has preferved fome fingular curiofities in her mufeum: She has a bottle of coagulated foam, fomething like the congealed blood of Saint Januarius; this fhe maintains was the veritable foam of the tremendous

mendous Minotaur of Crete of immortal memory; there are fome indeed, who profess to doubt this, and affert that it is nothing more than the slaver of a noble English maftiff, which went tame about her houfe, and, though formidable to thieves and. interlopers, was ever gentle and affectionate to honest men. She has a lyre in fine prefervation, held to be the identical lyre, which Phaon played upon, when he won the heart of the amorous Sappho this alfo is made matter of dispute amongst the cognofcenti thefe will have it to be a common Italian inftrument, fuch as the ladies of that country play upon to this day; this is a point they must fettle as they can, but all agree it is a well-ftrung inftrument, and difcourfes faveet mufic. She has in her cabinet an evergreen of the cypress race, which is fuppofed to be the very individual fhrub, that led up the ball when Orpheus fiddled and the groves began a vegetable dance; and this they tell you was the origin of all country dances, now in fuch general practice. She has alfo in her poffef fion the original epiftle, which king Agenor wrote to Europa, diffuading her from her ridiculous partiality for her favourite bull, when Jupiter in the form of that animal took her off in fpite of all Agenor's remonstrances, and carried her across the fea with him upon a tour, that has immortalized her name through the most enlightened quarter of the globe: Rhodope is fo tenacious of this manufcript, that the rarely indulges the curiofity of her friends with a fight of it; fhe has written an anfwer in Europa's behalf after the manner of Ovid's epiftle, in which the makes a very ingenious defence for her heroine, and every body, who has feen the whole of the correfpondence, allows that Agenor

Agenor writes like a man, who knew little of human nature, and that Rhodope in her reply has the beit of the argument.

N' CXXXVII.

NOTHING now remains for compleating the literary annals of Greece, according to the plan I have proceeded upon in the foregoing volumes, but to give fome account of the Drama within that period of time, which commences with the death of Alexander of Macedon and concludes with that of Menander, or at most extends to a very few years beyond it, when the curtain may figuratively be faid to have dropt upon all the glories of the Athenian stage.

'This, though the laft, is yet a brilliant æra, for now flourished Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, Apollodorus, Philippides, Pofidippus; poets no lefs celebrated for the luxuriancy than for the elegance of their genius; all writers of the New Comedy; which, if it had not all the wit and fire of the old fatirical drama produced in times of greater public freedom, is generally reputed to have been far fuperior to it in delicacy, regularity and decorum. All attacks upon living characters ceased with what is properly denominated the Old Comedy; the writers of the Middle Clafs contented themfelves with venting their raillery upon the works of their dramatic predeceffors; the perfons and politics

G 5

politics of their contemporaries were fafe; whereas neither the highest station, nor the brightest talents were any fure protection from the unrestrained invectives of the comic mufe in her earliest fallies.

The poets under our present review were not however fo clofely circumfcribed, as to be afraid of indulging their talent for ridicule and fatire upon topics of a general nature; without a latitude like this comedy could hardly have exifted; but this was not all, for amongst their fragments fome are to be found, which advance fentiments and opinions fo directly in the teeth of the popular religion, that we cannot but admire at the extraordinary toleration of their pagan audiences. Juftin quotes a paffage from Menander's comedy of The Charioteer, in which an old mendicant is introduced carrying about a painted figure of the Great Mother of the Gods, after the manner of the prefent Popish Rofaries, and begging a boon as usual on thofe occafions; the perfon addreffed for his fubfcription, contemptuously replies" I "have no relish for fuch deities as stroll about with. old beggar woman from door to door, nor "for that painted cloth you have the impudence "to thrust into my prefence: Let me tell you, woman, if your Mother of the Gods was good "for any thing, the would keep to her own ftation "and take charge of none but thofe, who merit "her protection by their piety and devotion." This rebuff is of a piece with the furly answer of the cynic Antifthenes, recorded by Clemens Alexan. drinus, when, being teazed by thefe mendicants, the philofopher replied "Let the Gods provide "for their own Mother; I am not bound to "maintain her." In another fragment, quoted

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