that the volumes which treat of spirit and spiritual things in general possess least of the immortal essence, and grovel very near the bounds of inert matter. Besides these general exceptions, we must exclude from the number of the living dead all the works which have not undergone the probation or purgatory of a century, after which term we may suppose them re-animated.

What a sublime field of contemplation is a library, according to this system of bibliology! How splendid to be surrounded by poets, orators, and statesmen! The occupants of the shelves seem ready to leap into life, and engage in another" battle of the books." Each volume seems to assume a characteristic physiognomy: Johnson's Dictionary looks ponderous and dogmatical, and wants only a wig to be the very essence of the Doctor: Byron (for we must, in some cases, break through the rule of a century's probation,) arrayed in russia, displays a misanthropic chocolate-coloured visage, varied and relieved by gay and brilliant gilding; while Scott, unbound and interminable, appears in the morning negligé of a novel. Behold, dusty and neglected, my old academic friends—a folio Cicero, with a fine parchment forehead, which Wordsworth would apostrophize as

An open brow of undisturbed humanity—

a Homer, defaced by deal desks and school fingers, appears stone-blind, like the bard of old, and a little treatise of logic is lost between two thick volumes of physics and mathematics. There, too, are the sheepskin bindings of the law, that seem to exclaim Baa with the Village Lawyer,—a few odd tracts of divinity, intractable enough,-with Boerhaave and Cheyne, bilious old fellows, grievously afflicted with worms.

Books, however, like men, must obey the fashion, and follow the progress of the world; which intermingling

more, the older it becomes, destroys at length all singularity and characteristic appearance. There is now no knowing a treatise on metaphysics or political economy from a tale by a young lady; or an Encyclopædia from a volume of light poems in the ottava rima. Bon mots are published in large volumes, and the Philosophical Dictionary in sheets. Formerly a library that was arranged with the big books at bottom, and the little ones at top, was conveniently and appropriately classed; while now such an order would create a strange higgledy-piggledy. Belzoni would beat all the old stagers out of the field. Chambers's Dictionary itself—that stout oblong veteran-is nothing to the gigantic illustrations of the Egyptian tombs. This publication puts me in mind of the wooden horse in the Iliad, that could not be got into the city without knocking down part of the walls, and of which all the world, men, women, and children talked so much,-perplexed to discover what the deuce could be in the inside of such a monster. But I have received so much pleasure from the work, that I should be sorry to be the Laocoon that would fling the spear.

We were comparing books with men: the former have an advantage, which the latter have not, viz., of carrying their visages in their pockets, or under their

arms:

men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders

for such and so placed do we consider what are called frontispieces. For instance, there is the frosty face of the " Expedition to the North Pole," which, by-the-by, is not a truth-telling visage-embellished with mackerel clouds, which phenomena the text of the volumes denies to exist in northern climes. There is also Salame, one of the most genteel-looking Mussulmen that ever

wore a beard-a pleasing introductory interpreter to his volume. There is Mr. Udé, prefacing his own "Cookery-book," well-frilled and frizzled, displaying at once

beef à la Psyche, and curls à la braise.

There is Schah somebody, monarch of Persia, in lithography-by-the-by, those lithographic faces want sadly a little soap and water.-There is Byron, in Hone's shop-window, turning with a pepper and mustard frown from "Poems on his domestic circumstances ;"-Mr. Hunt before his own Memoirs, " quarum pars magna fuit," with divers other worthies of renown.

The wigged frontispieces of the last century have an awful sombreness and sameness about them, the curl of the nose is almost the only difference between the respective personages and certainly the first revolting step to be got over in the works of Locke, or Boyle, or Shaftesbury, is the stiff visage in the opening page:

With praises of the author penn'd

B' himself, or wit-ensuring friend.

The most comfortable face that ever presided over a title-page, is certainly that of Lord Clarendon; he seems seated on the woolsack, potent and responsible. The mustachios of those days would lead us to expect treatises on "blunderbusses, drums, and thunder." No such thing; those bitter fellows are as mild as mother's milk upon paper, and calmly lay down their pros and cons with that tranquil energy, which they have so happily stamped upon the English language. The churchmen in their black skull-caps look also prodigiously grim, and do not belie their title of the church militant. John Knox looks a far more formidable fellow than old Noll himself, and if Hugh Peters had horns, he might well be mistaken for his arch-enemy, the devil. These spirits, according to our doctrine, must have a spiteful

time of it in modern libraries. Ludlow and the Eikon

Basiliké, cheek by jowl.

bing shoulders together. Puritan preachments.

Milton and Salmasius rub

Hudibras among a heap of Parliamentary Diaries by the

side of Royal Proclamations. I wonder if the cavaliers and roundheads agree no better in calf and parchment, than they did in buff jerkin and cuirass.

But to drop this idle system-spinning, and adopt the experimental mode of proceeding recommended by one Bacon; let us choose yon musty-looking little old hunks of a duodecimo, and discover if there be any truth in our biblio-physiognomical foresight. Old it is for certain, and crabbed withal;-it looks stupid and yet shrewdcompact and yet clumsy-an example of ingenuity thrown away. Let us examine farther-no frontispiece-a titlepage of flourishing type, and in red letters we behold "Argall's Accedens of Armory." Truly we applaud our sagacity; we guessed it to be heraldry, or something thereabouts. Let us probe the old volume for a sample of its contents, as the gauger's auger does a barrel of butter:

"The Herehaught being somewhat moved, sayde: I neither asked you for this cote, shepecote, or hoghiscote, but my meaning was to have seene your coate of armes.— Armes, quod he, I would have good leggs, for myne armes are indifferent."

The facetious herald at arms tempts us to try another specimen-we have hit upon a most truly curious one:

"Far likewise under al these ther are ix movable spheres, severally, unto whome for their continuall armonye, the poetes compare one of the nyne muses with their appropried people. As Calliope dwels in the hiest and swiftest sphere, where she remaineth goddes of the heraulds or herehaughtes. In the second fixed starry

sphere is Vrania, the goddess of astrologiens. Polimnia inhabiteth the sphere of Sage Saturne, and is goddess of the depe-witted philosophers. Terpsichore, who dwelleth in the sphere of Jupiter, is goddess of all gladness made with instruments of low, softe, and swete sounde. Clio remaineth in the sphere of Mars, as goddess of the historiographers, and of suche, as with steely strokes have stablished stout stomakes. Melpomene, whose being is in the sonne sphere, is goddess of tragical writers. Erato, that dwelleth in the sphere of Venus, is the goddess of all solace. Euterpe resteth in the sphere of Mercury, and is goddess of loude noysed instruments, as trumpets that geve warning of peace and warre. Thalia occupieth the sphere of the moone, and is counted the goddess of all gode dities, as songes and sonnets*"

Ye gods, what a classification! Heraldry first among the Muses, and Poetry last. Of all the solemnities that ever were solemnized in this solemn world, solemn impudence is certainly the most amusing.

R.

BON MOTS AND EPIGRAMS

BY CELEBRATED MODERN CHARACTERS.

No. II.

"Ego auditor tantum."-JUVENAL Sat. i. 1.

THE gate into St. James's Park, near Mr. Canning's house at Spring-Gardens, had been taken down, and a

"The Accedens of Armory, imprinted at London in Flete-streete within Temple-barre at the signe of the Hande and Starre by Rich. Cottyle. Anno 1572." It is one of the most curious and most scarce volumes ever an antiquarian dived into.