there are some of that brood left behind at these periods), or stray Master of Arts (to most of them she is better known than their dinner bell), with whom she may confer upon any curious topic of literature. I have seen these shy gownsmen, who truly set but a very slight value upon female conversation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length of Maudlin Grove, and warily glide off into another walk,-true monks as they are, and urgently neglecting the delicacies of her polished converse for their own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness; Within-doors her principal diversion is music, vocal and instrumental, in both which she is no mean professor. Her voice is wonderfully fine; but till I got used to it, I confess it staggered me. It is, for all the world, like that of a piping bullfinch; while, from her size and stature, you would expect notes to drown the deep organ. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through the composition; so that her time, to a common air or ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth, running the primary circuit of the tune and still revolving upon its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new and surprising. The spacious apartment of her outwark frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportionate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habitation usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her humours and occupations are eminently feminine. She sighs, being six foot high. She languisheth,-being two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon the delicate muslin,- her fingers being capable of moulding a Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her glass daintily, her capacity being that of a tun of Heidelberg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of her's, whose solidity need not fear the black ox's pressure. Softest and largest of thy sex, adieu! By what parting attribute may I salute thee, last and best of the Titanesses,-Ögress, fed with milk instead of blood; not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's stately structures,-Oxford, who, in its deadest time of vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, having thee to fill it.

NUGE CRITICE.

ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."

As long as I can remember the play of "The Tempest," one passage in it has always set me upon wondering. It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain I strove to find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish infinite, hopeless curiosity.

It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of Sycorax from Argier, adds

For one thing that she did
They would not take her life,

How have I pondered over this when a boy! How have I longed for some authentic memoir of the witch to clear up the obscurity! Was the story extant in the chronicles of Algiers? Could I get at it by some fortunate introduction to the Algerine ambassador? Was a voyage thither practicable? The Spectator, I knew, went to Grand Cairo only to measure the pyramid. Was not the object of my quest of at least as much importance? The blue-eyed hag! could she have done anything good or meritorious? Might that succubus relent? then might there be hope for the Devil. I have often admired since that none of the commentators have boggled at this passage; how they could swallow this camel,-such a tantalising piece of obscurity, such an abortion of an anecdote.

At length I think I have lighted upon a clue which may lead to show what was passing in the mind of Shakespeare when he dropped this imperfect rumour. In the "Accurate Description of Africa, by John Ogilby (folio), 1670," page 230, I find written as follows. The marginal title to the narrative is, "Charles the Fifth besieges Algier:"

"In the last place, we will briefly give an account of the Emperor Charles the Fifth when he besieged this city, and of the great loss he suffered therein.

"This prince, in the year one thousand five hundred forty-one, having embarqued upon the sea an army of twenty-two thousand men aboard eighteen galleys and an hundred tall ships, not counting the barques and shallops, and other small boats, in which he had engaged the principal of the Spanish and Italian nobility, with a good number of the Knights of Malta; he was to land on the coasts of Barbary, at a cape called Matifou. From this place unto the city of Algier, a flat shore or strand extends itself for about four leagues, the which is exceeding favourable to galleys. There he put ashore with his array, and in a few days caused a fortress to be built, which unto this day is called the castle of the Emperor.

"In the meantime the city of Algier took the alarm, having in it at that time but eight hundred Turks and six thousand Moors, poorspirited men, and unexercised in martial affairs; besides it was at that time fortified only with walls, and had no outworks: insomuch that by reason of its weakness and the great forces of the Emperor, it could not in appearance escape taking. In fine, it was attempted with such order, that the army came up to the very gates, where the Chevalier de Savignac, a Frenchman by nation, made himself remarkable above all the rest by the miracles of his valour. For having repulsed the Turks, who, having made a sally at the gate called Babason, and there desiring to enter along with them, when he saw that they shut the gate upon him, he ran his poniard into the same, and left it sticking deep therein. They next fell to battering the city by the force of cannon; which the assailants so weakened, that in that great extremity the defendants lost their courage and resolved to surrender.

"But as they were thus intending, there was a witch of the town, whom the history does not name, which went to seek out Assam Aga, that commanded within, and prayed him to make it good yet nine days longer, with assurance that within that time he should infallibly

see Algier delivered from that siege, and the whole army of the enemy dispersed, so that Christians should be as cheap as birds. In a word, the thing did happen in the manner as foretold; for upon the twentyfirst day of October, in the same year, there fell a continual rain upon the land, and so furious a storm at sea, that one might have seen ships hoisted into the clouds, and in one instant again precipitated into the bottom of the water: insomuch that that same dreadful tempest was followed with the loss of fifteen galleys and above an hundred other vessels; which was the cause why the Emperor, seeing his army wasted by the bad weather, pursued by a famine, occasioned by wrack of his ships, in which was the greatest part of his victuals and ammunition, he was constrained to raise the siege and set sail for Sicily, whither he retreated with the miserable reliques of his fleet.

“In the meantime that witch being acknowledged the deliverer of Algier, was richly remunerated, and the credit of her charms authorised. So that ever since witchcraft hath been very freely tolerated; of which the chief of the town, and even those who are esteemed to be of greatest sanctity among them, such as are the Marabous, a religious order of their sects, do for the most part make profession of it, under a goodly pretext of certain revelations which they say they have had from their prophet, Mahomet.

"And hereupon those of Algier, to palliate the shame and the reproaches that are thrown upon them for making use of a witch in the danger of this siege, do say that the loss of the forces of Charles V. was caused by a prayer of one of their Marabous, named Cidy Utica, which was at that time in great credit, not under the notion of a magician, but for a person of a holy life. Afterwards, in remembrance of their success, they have erected unto him a small mosque without the Babason gate, where he is buried, and in which they keep sundry lamps burning in honour of him: nay, they sometimes repair thither to make their sala, for a testimony of greater veneration."

Can it be doubted for a moment that the dramatist had come fresh from reading some older narrative of this deliverance of Algier by a witch, and transferred the merit of the deed to his Sycorax, exchanging only the "rich remuneration," which did not suit his purpose, to the simple pardon of her life? Ogilby wrote in 1670; but the authorities to which he refers for his account of Barbary are Johannes de Leo or Africanus, Louis Marmol, Diego de Haedo, Johannes Gramaye, Braeves, Cel. Curio, and Diego de Torres, names totally unknown to me, and to which I beg leave to refer the curious reader for his fuller satisfaction.

ORIGINAL LETTER OF JAMES THOMSON.1 From the "London Magazine," 1824. [THE following very interesting letter oblivion, or at least from neglect, by our will no doubt thank him for the deed.

1 A hoax.

has been recovered from friend Elia, and the public It is without date or super

scription in the manuscript, which (as our contributor declares) was in so "fragmentitious" a state as to perplex his transcribing faculties in the extreme. The poet's love of nature is quite evident from one part of it, and the "poetical posture of his affairs" from another. Whether regarded as elucidating the former or the latter, it is a document not a little calculated to excite the attention of the curious as well as the critical. We could ourselves write an essay full of conjectures from the grounds it affords both with respect to the author's poems and his pride. But we must take another opportunity, or leave it to his next biographer.]

DEAR SIR,-I would chide you for the slackness of your correspondence; but having blamed you wrongeously (sic in MS.) last time, 1 shall say nothing till I hear from you, which I hope will be soon.

There's a little business I would communicate to you before I come to the more entertaining part of our correspondence.

I'm going hard task) to complain, and beg your assistance. When I came up here I brought very little money with me, expecting some more upon the selling of Widehope, which was to have been sold that day my mother was buried. Now it is unsold yet, but will be disposed of as soon as can be conveniently done, though indeed it is perplexed with some difficulties. I was a long time living here at my own charges, and you know how expensive that is; this together with the furnishing of myself with clothes, linen, one thing and another, to fit me for any business of this nature here, necessarily obliged me to contract some debts. Being a stranger, it is a wonder how I got any credit; but I cannot expect it will be long sustained unless I immediately clear it. Even now, I believe it is at a crisis-my friends have no money to send me till the land is sold; and my creditors will not wait till then. You know what the consequence would be. Now the assistance I would beg of you, and which I know, if in your power, you will not refuse me, is a letter of credit on some merchant, banker, or such-like person in London, for the matter of twelve pounds, till I get money upon the selling of the land, which I am at last certain of, if you could either give it me yourself or procure it; though you owe it not to my merit, yet you owe it to your own nature, which I know so well as to say no more upon the subject ; only allow me to add, that when I first fell upon such a project (the only thing I have for it in my present circumstances), knowing the selfish inhumane temper of the generality of the world, you were the first person that offered to my thoughts, as one to whom I had the confidence to make such an address.

Now I imagine you are seized with a fine romantic kind of melancholy on the fading of the year-now I figure you wandering, philosophical and pensive, amidst brown withered groves; whilst the leaves rustle under your feet, the sun gives a fareweil parting gleam, and the birds

Stir the faint note, and but attempt to sing.

Then, again, when the heavens wear a gloomy aspect, the winds whistle and the waters spout, I see you in the well-known cleugh,

beneath the solemn arch of tall, thick, embowering trees, listening to the amusing lull of the many steep, moss-grown cascades; while deep divine Contemplation, the genius of the place, prompts each swelling, awful thought. I am sure you would not resign your place in that scene at an easy rate,-none ever enjoyed it to the height you do, and you are worthy of it. There I walk in spirit and disport in its beloved gloom. This country I am in is not very entertaining-no variety but that of woods, and these we have in abundance. But where is the living stream, the airy mountain, or the hanging rock? with twenty other things that elegantly please the lover of nature? Nature delights me in every form. I am just now painting her in her most luxurious dress; for my own amusement describing winter as it presents itself. After my first proposal of the subject

I sing of Winter and his gelid reign;
Nor let a rhyming insect of the spring
Deem it a barren theme; to me 'tis full

Of manly charms-to me who court the shade,
Whom the gay seasons suit not, and who shun

The glare of summer. Welcome, kindred gloom I

Drear awful wintry horrors, welcome all ! &c.

After this introduction, I say, which insists for a few lines further, I prosecute the purport of the following ones:

Nor can I, O departing Summer! choose
But consecrate one pitying line to you;

Sing your last tempered days and sunny balm,
That cheer the spirits and serene the soul.

Then terrible floods and high winds, that usually happen about this time of the year, and have already happened here (I wish you have not felt them too dreadfully); the first produced the enclosed lines; the last are not completed. Mr. Rickleton's poem on Winter, which I still have, first put the design into my head; in it are some masterly strokes that awakened me. Being only a present amusement, it is ten to one but I drop it whenever another fancy comes across. I believe it had been much more for your entertainment if in this letter I had cited other people instead of myself—but I must refer that till another time. If you have not seen it already, I have just now in my hands an original of Sir Alexander Brands (the crazed Scots knight of the woful countenance), you would relish. I believe it might make Mis John catch hold of his knees, which I take in him to be a degree of mirth only inferior to fall back again with an elastic spring. It is very [here a word is obliterated] printed in the "Evening Post;" so perhaps you have seen these panegyrics of our declining bard; one on the Princess's birthday; the other on his Majesty's in [obliterated] cantos: they are written in the spirit of a complicated craziness. I was lately in London a night, and in the old playhouse saw a comedy acted, called "Love makes a Man, or the Fop's Fortune," where I beheld Miller and Cibber shine to my infinite enter