PROSPECTUS.

IN publishing the first number of The Philobiblion, a few words of preliminary statement may be neceffary, as to the peculiar aim and character of the Journal here announced.

The practical business experience of the Publishers, and their special correspondence for fome years past with Librarians, Scholars, and Amateur Book Collectors in different parts of the country, have led them to believe that an useful and important defideratum in Literature might be supplied by combining the obvious utility of a priced Monthly Catalogue of a choice felection of standard works, with a series of Literary Effays, and Critical Notices of rare, curious, and valuable books. In addition to his scheme, the Publithers/propofe to devote a portion of the pages of The PhilobibHon to a department of Notes and Queries," hoping thereby to render it an highly useful medium of voluntary communication between the students and literary men scattered throughout the country, on all topics of general intereft connected with literature; and in which liberal freedom of difcuffion will be permitted and encouraged. In accordance with this defign, the Publishers would respectfully folicit contributions to this portion of their Journal. The Philobiblion will be printed on India paper, and published monthly at $2.00 a year, invariably in advance.

All communications fhould be addreffed to the Publishers,

GEO. P. PHILES & CO.,

No. 51 NASSAU STREET, N. Y.

dolid. Philobiblon.

VII. MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

t

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17.

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2. English Platonifts. 3. Soldier's Bible. 4. Anecdote of Brunet. 5. Alliterative Poetry, 6. Tom, Moore and Andrew Marvell. 7. Hawthorne and Evangeline.

VIII. NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Suckling and Shakespeare. Voltaire and the Epiftolæ Obscurorum. The
Three Warnings. Trial of Polly Baker. Garth's Dispensary. The
Begum. An Unpublished Translation by Dryden [?]

IX. CATALOGUE.

December, 1861.

The Philobiblion.

menced and finished reading it, and ample Walpole's Ms. Notes on Bayle. plate, the coft, the dates when he comAfter more than a century and a half, evidence of careful perufal, by numerous Bayle's Dictionary is ftill the fame favorite notes in Walpole's crabbed hand-writing, with the lovers of books that it was upon containing fome curious facts and opinions, its first publication. The esteem in which evincing his knowledge, acuteness, and ill I deem them well worthy of preit was held by Johnson, Gibbon and D'Israeli, who were certainly competent judges of good reading, is well known. In Moore's Diary its various merits are pleasantly set forth by Lord Holland:

nature.

fervation.

Enough of the text is given, to enable the reader to understand Walpole's comments, which are indicated by quotation marks; the few illuftrations I have thought neceffary are included in brackets.

Vol. I. p. 67.-The Abbey of Notre-Dame

Received a note from 'Sept. 2, 1837. Lord Holland announcing that his prefent of Bayle was on its way down by the wagon. The note was accompanied by an amufing ftring of rhymes full of fun and pun, à la · Swift; and the next day's poft brought me what he calls Editio auctior et emendatior [fic] uncle."

de Livri in l'Annoi.

"It was poffeffed by Madam Sevingye's

of the fame, which I shall here transcribe: P. 314, Art. DOMITIUS AFER.-This prin

"MY DEAR MOORE,

"Neither poet nor scholar can fail

To be pleased with the critic I fend you-'tis Bayle.
At leifure or working, in fickness or hale,
One can ever find fomething to fuit one in Bayle.
Would you argue with fools who your verses affail,
Why here's logic and learning supplied you by Bayle.
Indeed, as a merchant would speak of a fale,
Of the articles afked for, I forward a Bayle.
But fhould you, in your turn, have a fancy to rail,
Let me tell you, there's store of good blackguard
in Bayle.

And although they for libel might throw you in jail,
Pray what would release you so quickly as Bayle?
Your mufe has a knack at an amorous tale,
Do you want one to verify? turn do your Bayle.
Nay, more-when at sea, in a boisterous gale,
fail,
I'll make you acknowledge there's service in Bayle:
you
For if water be filling the boat where
I'll be bound you'll cry bail, my lads,' Bayle,
A mere correfpondent may truft to the mail,
But your true man of letters relies on his Bayle.
So much knowledge in wholesale, and wit in retail.
(Tho' you've plenty already) greet kindly in Bayle.”

Horace Walpole's copy of the General Dictionary, Hiftorical and Critical (10) vols. folio, London, 1734-41, which includes the best tranflation of Bayle), is now before me. Each volume contains his book

cefs [Agrippina] was so far from fuspecting that the Emperor had occafioned the profecution against her.

"It should be, this princefs was fo convinced; or it is nonfenfe."

P. 315.-Nor were these the least evils.

"It should be tranflated, Nor were even these pleadings bad, but inferior to his former."

""

eral poems which he had composed in P. 413, Art. ALAMANNI.-Among the fevpraife of Francis I., there was a very fmart piece against the Emperor

The emperor had read the piece, and when Alamanni appeared before him, and pronounced a fine difcourfe in his praife, the emperor, who had heard him very attentively, gave him no other answer but the verfes we have related. Alamanni, without being in the least out of countenance, answered immediately,"Sire, fince your majefty has seen these verses, I will not difown them. I spoke as a poet who is permitted to use fictions and lies; but now I speak as an ambassa

5

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dor, who is obliged to tell the truth. I fame, as Alexander ab Alexandro, and the spoke then as a young spark, but now prefent inftance of fuch learned perfonages speak as an old man, &c." as have married their maids." "Something like this happened to Waller, with Charles II.; but he made a better answer." [The fuperiority of the "Panegyric on Cromwell" to the "Congratulation" to Charles II. "Poets, Sir, fucceed better in fiction than in truth."]

Vol. II. p. 95, Art. APOLODORUS, Note C. -On his cenfuring the Emperor Hadrian's plan of a Temple of Venus: citing the converfation between Apelles and Alexander.

"This is a foolish reason of Bayle, and weh wd have had a different effect on any body elfe, to disbelieve a Fact, becaufe he had found another example of it. And it is as foolish to disbelieve that two men faid a thing like one another, because the two men to whom it was faid, did not act like one another upon it."

P. 125, Art. AQUAVIVI, Note C.

Favori de Pallas, quelque nom qu'on lui donne,

Ou celui de Minerve, ou celui de Bellone. "Favorite of Pallas, if in Arms or Arts, She fills Bellona's or Minerva's parts.' P. 255, Art. ARISTOMENES. The story of his escape from the cave of criminals into which he had been thrown by the Spar

tans.

"This story has been imitated in the Arabian Nights."

P. 463, Art. AVENTINE, JOHN.-Another inftance very proper to be added to the lift of the Colletes, and a great many others who married their maids.

P. 464.-Aventine confidered that by marrying a handfome young woman, he fhould expofe his forehead to a shameful and shocking difhonor-being in his fixty-fourth year, &c.

"What stuff is all this reafoning! and how unworthy a great man, as Bayle is falfely recon'd, tho even his criticism, which was his Fort (for I do not look upon merely having read much, as any merit, at leaft it is no proof of parts), is generally wafted in adjusting immaterial Dates, fuch as whether a German profeffor died in 1502 or 1503, or in reflections on learned men getting good wives, as in the Note (A) of N. Arnoldus; and fuch impertinent trifles as that of the fame Arnoldus spending a month agreeably with Martin Gertichius his uncle by the mother's fide."

P. 558, Art. BACON.-The king gave him pofitive advice to fubmit himself to his Houfe of Peers, and that upon his princely word he would reftore him again, if they in their honors should not be fenfi ble of his merits.

"This is no improbable account of this great man's Fall, efpecially if it be confidered that K. James wept when he heard

of the Accufation. When the Earl of Somerfet, his old Favorite, whom he was facrificing to his new one, went to the Tower, this infamous King hung about his neck and wept, but the moment he was out of fight, faid, Now the De'il take thee, man; I hope never to fee thy face again. Lord Bacon's noble confeffion of his fault, which was "This is of that species of trifles wch chiefly indulgence to worthless servants, and have employed many learned men who his philofophic behaviour afterwards, look have made collections of all books whofe little like a guilty mind; and that very conTitles begin with Anti, as Anti-Machiavel, feffion might probably flow from his conor authors who have had two names the sciousness of the King's betraying him, a

flattery that feems his commoneft and great- diffoluble, for that, not being founded on eft failing, and the more from its being be- the Scripture but invented fince; It is ftill ftowed on fo worthless an object. His to be unravelled by It."

which the Eaftern nations have believed

having advised the calling this Parliament, P. 564, Art. BRACHMANS.-The filly things might be another motive of the King's giving him up to It, and they had not the virtue of their fucceffors in 1641, who would not be content with that common scapegoat of a bad King, the facrifice of his minifter."

P. 576, Art. BADIUS.—He would have produced as many children as books, if he had applied himself to one of these functions as early as to the other.

"Cibber fays in his Life that his Wife and his Mufe produced a child and a play every year for fome time."

P. 687, Art. JOSHUA BARNES.-He was rather diftinguished for the extraordinary quickness of his wit than the folidity of his judgment.

"This Epitaph was made for him; Hic jacet Jos. Barnes, felicis memoriæ, expectans Judicium.'

Vol. III. p. 205, Art. DR. THOMAS BENNET.-Each nature remaineth entire in itfelf, and retaineth the properties agreeable thereunto, without any converfion, compofition, commixtion, or confufion.

for fo many ages concerning the origin of the universe, he attributes to the divine anger, &c.

"The origin of learning in the East, and of error too. arofe from difcovering the errors of what Half our present knowledge

had before been called fo."

P. 626, Art. JORDANUS BRUNUS.

"N. B. One of the reafons for believing that Bruno was an Atheist, was his believing a Plurality of Worlds!"

P. 628.-Scioppius fays that Bruno maintained that magic is a lawful thing.

"It is plain that he did not approve of magic, tho he was fo fimple as to believe it, tho not more credible than much of what he difbelieved, by Scioppiuf's own Account of his faying Chrift and others fuffered juftly for being magicians.”

P. 689, Art. PHILIP DUKE OF Burgundy.

The people imagined he escaped, and was gone to conceal himself in an hermitage, from whence he would return after feven years.

"This fort of notion has prevailed among

"The meaning of all this nonsense is, that the two natures of Chrift are mixed without any of the properties of union." "The origin of all the controverfies about the common people in other countries, as the Trinity, arofe not from the difference about King Arthur, Don Sebastian, and the of Beliefs, but from men trying to make late K. George, who was thought to be sense of what they believed. They put fhut up in a castle in Hanover.” together to explain it a fet of words that had fixed ideas-other men finding it impoffible to believe it condemned them for Heretics if the explanation had no meaning and confequently approached nearer to orthodoxy, it produced as many controverfies and different explanations as the original enigma, and which is the more in

Vol. IV. p. 9, Art. CÆSAR.—It would be
wronging him to confider him an Epicu-
rean with regard to Providence. This
from this paffage in Salluft, &c., &c.
is liable to three objections: the first

"There is a stronger objection to this, which is, that nobody takes this for an ora