the entry of the fact in the books stood thus: "A. Gun, discharged for making a false report." The Cavaliers, during the protectorate, were accustomed in their libations to put a crumb of bread into a glass of wine, and, before they drank it, say, "God send this Crumb-well down." During the wars of the French Revolution, one Rapinat, who was sent into Switzerland to raise money, pillaged the country so unmercifully, as to compel the government to recall him; upon which the following epigram appeared at Paris: QUESTION D'ETYMOLOGIE. Un bon Suisse que l'on ruine, Ou Rapine de Rapinat? Precedence among small folk.-The observation of the Spectator, (No. 119,) that, generally speaking, "there is infinitely more to do about place and precedence in a meeting of justices' wives, than in an assembly of duchesses," is an obvious truism. Duchesses can have no disputes. Their rank is known to every one with whom they are likely to associate, and they are exempt from the confusion and perplexities of a promiscuous drawing-room. "I have known my friend Sir Roger de Coverley's dinner almost cold," adds the Spectator, "before the company could adjust the ceremonials of precedence, and be prevailed upon to sit down to table." In the "Right of Precedence," attributed to Swift, a very pleasant expedient is proposed to the lovers of precedence. "I would farther observe," says he, "for the use of those who love place without a title to it either by law or heraldry; as some have a strange oiliness of spirit which carries them upwards, and mounts them to the top of all companies, (company being often like bottled liquors, where the light and windy parts hurry to the head, and fix in froth),—I would observe, I say, that there is a secret way of taking place without sensible precedence, and, consequently, without offence. This is an useful secret, and I will publish it here, from my own practice, for the benefit of my countrymen, and the universal improvement of man and womankind. "It is this: I generally fix a sort of first meridian in my thoughts before I sit down, and instead of observing privately, as the way is, whom in company I may sit above in point of birth, age, fortune, or station, I consider only the situation of the table by the points in the compass, and the nearer I can get to the East, (which is a point of honour for many reasons,-porrecta majestas ad ortum solis,) I am so much the higher; and my good fortune is, to sit sometimes, or for the most part, due East, sometimes E. by N. seldom with greater variation; and then I do myself honour, and am blessed with invisible precedency, mystical to others; and the joke is, that by this means I take place (for place is but fancy) of many that sit above me; and while most people in company look upon me as a modest man, I know myself to be a very assuming fellow, and do often look down with contempt on some at the upper end of the table, By this craft, I at once gratify my humour, (which is pride,) and preserve my character, and am at meat as wise men would be in the world, Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores. "And to this purpose, my way is to carry a little pocketcompass in my left fob, and from that I take my measures imperceptibly, as from a watch, in the usual way of comparing time before dinner; or, if I chance to forget that, I consider the situation of the parish church, and this is my never failing regulator." LXII. AN ALDERMAN POET. THE fact appears incredible, but there was once an alderman who was a poet! This was Robert Fabian, a man born and bred in the city of London, who, after bearing many civic honours, was chosen sheriff in 1493. He wrote "two large chronicles," with introductory verses: the one being a history of England, from the landing of Brutus to the death of King Henry the Second; the other, from the first year of King Richard to the death of Henry the Seventh. "He was," saith Winstanley, quoting from an older biographer, "of a very merry disposition, and used to entertain his guests as well with good victuals as good discourse. He bent his mind much to the study of poetry, which, according to those times, passed for current." We have no doubt his dinners had a good deal to do in making people tolerate his verses, which (though as good as any of that day) are mere doggerel. Sir John Suckling, in his Contest of the poets of his time for the laurel, makes Apollo adjudge it to an alderman for the same reason: "He openly declar'd it was the best sign Of good store of wit, to have good store of wine; He put down the laurel on the alderman's head. But in the days of the witty Suckling there were good poets, and no alderman a verse-maker. Indeed, Fabian was unique. There never was another! He died in 1511, and was buried in St. Michael's church, in Cornhill. A rhymed epitaph, which was inscribed on his tomb, is bad enough to have been written by himself. Old Fuller, in his "Worthies," observes, that none have worse poetry than poets on their monuments; but whatever he may have deserved as an alderman and dinner-giver, Robert Fabian did not merit a better epitaph as a poet. LXIII. THE PUNISHMENT OF TANTALUS. WALTER SCOTT has remarked that readers do not relish that the incidents of a tale familiar to them should be altered; and that "this process of feeling is so natural, that it may be observed even in children, who cannot endure that a nursery story should be repeated to them differently from the manner in which it was first told.” (Advertisement to the uniform edition of the Waverley Novels.) Yet, in spite of this law, laid down by the most eminent story-teller that the world has hitherto seen, we cannot resist the temptation of informing some of our less learned readers, that there are two totally different accounts of the punishment of Tantalus. Every one knows the ordinary one,-A bough loaded with fruit hangs over the head of the guilty king, and a pool of water rises up to his chin; but when he attempts to taste either, it vanishes. The other mythus, which is quite as authentic, informs us that a stone is suspended over the head of Tantalus, and that his punishment consists in the everlasting fear that it will fall upon him. Homer, indeed, tells the more common story (Odyssey, book xi.); but the passage was rejected as spurious by Aristarchus, as we learn from the scholiast on Pindar. The crime of forging verses in this part of the Odyssey, has been fixed upon Onomacritus; and it appears from Herodotus, (book vii. 6,) that a person of that name was banished by Hipparchus for interpolating the oracles of Musæus. Pausanias admitted the genuineness of these verses, but his authority is certainly small in a question of this kind, as he believed in the authenticity of the Homeric hymns; and, on the other hand, the poets next to Homer in time, who naturally adopted his mythology, tell the other tale. Thus Pindar says, (Olymp. i. 91,) "The father suspended over him a mighty stone, which, always desiring to cast from his head, he wanders from joy." Archilochus, Alcæus, and Alcman, all sing the same song. Euripides gives the punishment and its cause. "Tantalus the blest, sprung, as they say, from Jove, fearing the stone above his head floats in the air, and suffers this punishment, as they tell, because, being but a man, and admitted to the table of the gods, he had an unbridled tongue, a most disgraceful fault." + * Πατηρ ὑπερκρεμασε καρτερον αυτῳ λιθον, τον αιει μενοινων κεφαλας βαλειν, ευφροσύνας αλαται. And again in Isthm. viii. 21. Επειδη του ὑπερ κεφαλας γε Τανταλου λίθον παρα τις ετρεψεν αμμι θεος . † Ο γαρ μακαριος Διος πεφυκως, ὡς λεγουσι, Τανταλος, Eurip. Orest. iv. 10. |