It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of Sycorax from Argier, adds: For one thing that she did. 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 tantalizing 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 Shakspere 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, the Fifth besieges Algier :" Charles "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 army, 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, poor-spirited 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 Chevailer 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 twenty-first 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 authorized. 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. (The London Magazine, November, 1824.) --- [Another of Charles Lambs's ingenious hoaxes.] " [THE following very interesting letter has been recovered from oblivion, or at least from neglect, by our friend Elia, and the public will no doubt thank him for the deed. It is without date or superscription 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, I 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; whiles the leaves rustle under your feet, the sun gives a farewell 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. Eut 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; Of manly charms; to me who court the shade, 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 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 waggishly 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 entertainment. In and about London this month of September, near a hundred people have died by accident and suicide. There was one blacksmith tired of the hammer, who hung himself, and left written behind him this concise epitaph I, Joe Pope, Lived without hope, or else some epigrammatic Muse has belied him. Mr. Muir has ample fund for politics in the present posture of affairs, as you will find by the public news. I should be glad to know that great minister's frame just now. Keep it to yourself-you may whisper it too in Mis John's ear. Far otherwise is his lately mysterious brother, Mr. Tait, employed. Started a superannuated fortune and just now upon the full scent. It is comical enough to see him amongst the rubbish of his controversial divinity and politics, furbishing up his ancient rusty gallantry. Yours sincerely, Remember me to all friends, Mr. Rickle, Mis John, Br. John, &c. J. T * Mas? Letter to an Old Gentleman whose Education has be ́n Neglected. (The London Magazine, January, 1825.) To the Editor of the London Magazine. DEAR SIR, I send you a bantering "Epistle to an Old Gentleman whose Education is supposed to have been neglected." Of course, it was suggested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with most of your readers. You will do me injustice by supposing that, in the remotest degree, it was my intention to ridicule those papers. The fact is, the most serious things may give rise to an innocent burlesque; and, the more serious they are, the fitter they become for that purpose. It is not to be supposed that Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high regard for Virgil, notwithstanding he travestied that poet. Yourself can testify the deep respect I have always held for the profound learning and penetrating genius of our friend. Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than to find that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and instructive purpose. I am, dear Sir, yours and his sincerely, ELIA. MY DEAR SIR,-The question which you have done me the honour to propose to me, through the medium of our common friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall endeavour to answer with as much exactness as a limited observation and experience can warrant. You ask, or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own interesting language, asks for you,-" Whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English alphabet at first sight amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good masters, a docile and ingenuous disposition on the part of the pupil always presupposed, ---may hope to arrive, within a presumable number of years, at that degree of attainments which shall entitle the possessor to the character, which you are on so many accounts justly desirous of acquiring, of a learned man.' " This is fairly and candidly stated,-only I could wish that on one point you had been a little more explicit. In the meantime, I will take it for granted, that by a "knowledge of the alphabetic characters" you confine your meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent on the subject of the diphthongs and harder combinations. Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle of sciences, it is not here worth while to trouble you with the distinction between learning and science, which a man must be understood to have made the tour of in these days, before the world will be willing to concede to him the title which you aspire tu, I am almost disposed to reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in the negative. However, where all cannot be compassed, a great deal that is truly valuable may be accomplished. I am unwilling to throw out any remarks that should |