the very day of Dr. Lambe's murder, his own portrait in the Councilchamber was seen to have fallen out of its frame; a circumstance as awful, in that age of omens, as the portrait that walked from its frame in the Castle of Otranto, but perhaps more easily accounted for.'

• About this time a libel was taken down from a post in Colemanstreet by a constable, and carried to the Lord Mayor, who ordered it to be delivered to none but his Majesty. Of this libel the manuscript letter contains the following particulars :

"Who rules the Kingdom? The King.

Who rules the King? The Duke.

Who rules the Duke? The Devil."

"Let the Duke look to it; for they intend shortly to use him worse than they did the Doctor; and if things be not shortly reformed they will work a reformation themselves."

The only advice the offended King suggested, was, to set a double watch every night!'

It is a great descent from Dukes and Kings, but we must make room for a short extract from the article respecting our old friend Robinson Crusoe. This picture of self-education, selfinquiry, self-happiness,' remarks Mr. D'Israeli, is scarcely a fiction, although it includes all the magic of romance; and it is not a mere narrative of truth, since it displays all the forcible genius of one of the most original minds our literature can • boast.'

The reception which this extraordinary production has met with, is somewhat singular. In the author's life-time it was considered as a mere idle romance; after his death, it was supposed to have been pillaged from the papers of Alexander Selkirk, in disparagement alike of De Foe's honour and his genius. The adventures of Selkirk were first published in the year 1712, in the Voyages of Woodes Rogers, and Edward Cooke, by whom he was found on the desert island of Juan Fernandez. This interesting narrative is given entire in Captain Burney's fourth volume of "Voyages of Discovery to the South Sea," and it is also to be found in the Encycopledia Britannica.

The year after this account was published, Selkirk and his adven. tures attracted the notice of Steele, who was not likely to pass unobserved a man and a story so strange and so new. In his paper of "The Englishman," Dec. 1713, he communicates further particulars of Selkirk. Steele became acquainted with him: he says, that " he should discern that he had been much separated from company, from his aspect and gesture. There was a strong but cheerful seriousness in his looks, and a certain disregard to the ordinary things about him, as if he had been sunk in thought. The man frequently bewailed his return to the world, which could not, he said, with all its enjoyments, restore him to the tranquility of his solitude." Steele adds another curious change in this wild man, which occurred some time after he had seen him." Though I had frequently conversed with him, after

a few month's absence, he met me in the street, and though he spoke. to me, I could not recollect that I had seen him. Familiar converse in this town had taken off the loneliness of his aspect, and quite altered the air of his face." De Foe could not fail of being struck by these interesting particulars of the character of Selkirk; but probably it was another observation of Steele, which threw the germ of Robinson Cru soe into the mind of De Foe. "It was matter of great curiosity to hear him, as he was a man of sense, give an account of the different resolutions in his own mind in that long solitude."

Even the personage Friday is not a mere coinage of the brain: a Mosquito Indian described by Dampier was the pro"totype.'-Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719, seven years after the publication of Selkirk's adventures. Selkirk, therefore, could obviously have no claims on De Foe.

'He had only supplied the man of genius with that which lies open to all; and which no one had, or perhaps could have converted into the wonderful story we possess, but De Foe himself. Had De Foe not written Robinson Crusoe, the name and story of Selkirk had been passed over like others of the same sort; yet Selkirk has the merit of having detailed his own history, in a manner so interesting as to have attracted the notice of Steele, and to have inspired the genius of De Foe. After this. the originality of Robinson Crusoe will no longer be suspected, and the idle tale which Dr. Beattie has repeated, of Selkirk having supplied the materials of his story to De Foe, from which our Author borrowed his work, and published for his own profit, will be finally put to rest.'

There is an article curious enough, on that race of singular mendicants known by the name of Tom o' Bedlams. These poor creatures were roving lunatics, who were, in fact, out-door pensioners of Bedlam, sent about to live as well as they could with the pittance granted them by the Hospital.' This is the assumed character of Edgar in King Lear, and the fact accounts for the number of mad songs which are to be found in our ancient poetry. Bishop Percy has preserved no fewer than six in his "Reliques." Mr. D'Israeli presents to us one from a very scarce collection, which, when read with a reference to the personated character, will appear worthy of preservation for its fantastic humour. We extract a few verses.

We must now take leave of this amusing volume, and ingratitude to the compiler, we wish to part with him in good humour. We cannot, however, but express our regret that his irreligious prejudices should so often have triumphed over his candour and his better judgement and that he should ever have thought it expedient to testify his attachment to literature and the arts, by caJumuiating those whom he is pleased to consider as their natural enemies. We confess we are Puritanical enough to object against his very motto, as carrying with it the air of libertinism; but

Mr. D'Israeli is far enough indeed from being a rigid moralist; he is evidently, to use his own expression, a 6 man of sen'sation,' whose law is impulse, and whose God is the world. Art. XII. Modern Greece. A Poem, 8vo. pp. 67. London, 1817. THIS is not to be passed over among the neatly sewed and well covered pamphlets, that are every now and then put forth under the protection of the Albemarle-street publisher. It is the production of a man of genuine talent and feeling. The subject is not new: we anticipate the train of thought inevitably suggested to the mind of the poet. Lord Byron has in a few powerful stanzas told us the whole tale of Modern Greece, and laid the exanimate corpse of its fallen grandeur before us. All that a subsequent writer could do, was to pronounce the oraison funébre, relying upon the eloquence of verse to impart a sustained interest to the simple and obvious reflections appropriate to the theme. The present poem, is in fact, nothing more than a single and familiar thought newly set to a richly ornamental harmony. It extends to a hundred and one stanzas, unrelieved by incident, a continuous stream of descriptive poetry. The effect of this upon the reader, as a whole, will depend upon how long his mind can hold breath; but we shall have no difficulty in extracting passages of impressive beauty.

Chateaubriand mentions the emigration of the natives of the Morea to different parts of Asia, and even to the woods of Florida. Vain hope!' he exclaims, the exile finds pachas and cadis in the sands of Jordan and in the deserts of Palmyra.' The Author has turned this thought to a good advantage.

Lo! to the scenes of fiction's wildest tales,
Her own bright East, thy son, Morea! flies,
To seek repose midst rich, romantic vales,
Whose incense mounts to Asia's vivid skies,
There shall he rest?-Alas! his hopes in vain
Guide to the sun-clad regions of the palm,
Peace dwells not now on oriental plain,
Though earth is fruitfulness, and air is balm,
And the sad wanderer finds but lawless foes,
Where patriarchs reign'd of old, in pastoral repose.

But thou, fair world! whose fresh unsullied charms
Welcomed Columbus from the western wave,
Wilt thou receive the wanderer to thine arms,
The lost descendant of the immortal brave?
Amidst the wild magnificence of shades
That o'er thy floods their twilight-grandeur cast,
In the green depth of thine untrodden glades,
Shall he not rear his bower of peace at last?

Yes! thou hast many a lone, majestic scene,

Shrined in primæval woods, were despot ne'er hath been.
There, by some lake, whose blue expansive breast
Bright from afar, an inland ocean, gleams,
Girt with vast solitudes, profusely drest

In tints like those that float o'er poet's dreams;
Or where some flood from pine-clad mountain pours
Its might of waters, glittering in their foam,
Midst the rich verdure of its wooded shores,
The exiled Greek-hath fix'd his sylvan home:
So deeply lone, that round the wild retreat

Scarce have the paths been trod by Indian huntsman's feet.
The forests are around him in their pride,

The

green savannas, and the mighty waves;

And isles of flowers, bright-floating o'er the tide,
That images the fairy worlds it laves,

And stillness, and luxuriance-o'er his head
The ancient cedars wave their peopled bowers,
On high the palms their graceful foliage spread,
Cinctured with roses the magnolia towers,

And from those green arcades a thousand tones

Wake with each breeze, whose voice through Nature's temple

moans.

And there, no traces, left by brighter days,

For glory lost may wake a sigh of grief,

Some grassy mound perchance may meet his gaze,

The lone memorial of an Indian chief.

There man not yet hath marked the boundless plain
With marble records of his fame and power;

The forest is his everlasting fane,

The palm his monument, the rock his tower.
Th' eternal torrent, and the giant tree,

Remind him but that they, like him, are wildly free.
But doth the exile's heart serenely there

In sunshine dwell?-Ah! when was exile blest?
When did bright scenes, clear heavens, or summer-air,
Chase from his soul the fever of unrest?

-There is a heart-sick weariness of mood,
That like slow poison wastes the vital glow,
And shrines itself in mental solitude,

An uncomplaining and a nameless woe,

That coldly smiles midst pleasure's brightest ray,
As the chill glacier's peak reflects the flush of day.
Such grief is theirs, who, fixed on foreign shore,
Sigh for the spirit of their native gales,
As pines the seaman, midst the ocean's roar,
For the green earth, with all its woods and vales,
Thus feels thy child, whose memory dwells with thee,
Loved Greece! all sunk and blighted as thou art :