little of the sinister bend) from the Plumers of Hertfordshire. So tradition gave him out; and certain family features not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine old whig still living, who has represented the county in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George the Second's days, and was the same who was summoned before the House of Commons about a business of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. You may read of it in Johnson's Life of Cave. Cave came off cleverly in that business. It is certain our Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumor. He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pretensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang gloriously.

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, child-like, pastoral M―; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, who proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a man to be ungrateful. Thy sire was old surly M, the unapproachable churchwarden of

Bishopsgate. He knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, gentle offspring of blustering winter:-only unfortunate in thy ending, which should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like.

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must be mine in private : - already I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent; else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and bought litigations? - and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen-with what deliberation would he wet a wafer!

But it is time to close-night's wheels are rattling fast over me it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery.

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while peradventure the very names, which I have summoned up before thee, are fantastic insubstantial-like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece:

Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. Their importance is from the past.

OXFORD IN THE VACATION.

CASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not,) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet methinks I hear

you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia?

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the self-same collegevotary of the desk a notched and cropt scrivener one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill.

a

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is my humour, my fancy in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation (and none better than

such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his

beloved studies) to while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place

and then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your books

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not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays -so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and cyphers, frisks and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpetground of a midnight dissertation. It feels its promotion

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So that

you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity of Elia is very little, if at all, compromised in the condescension.

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many commodities incidental to the life of a public office, I would be thought blind to certain flaws, which a cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-awaywith altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons, the red-letter days, now become, to all intents and

purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul, and Stephen, and Barnabas

Andrew and John, men famous in old times

we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token, in the old Basket Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture- holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred: -only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better Fude with Simon-clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy-day between them as an economy unworthy of the dispensation.

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life" far off their coming shone." I was as good as an almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint's-day falls out next week, or the week after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long stand