Of the literary productions of Budgell, the contributions to the Spectator and Guardian are the most valuable. In the eight volumes of the former, thirty-seven papers have been ascribed to him; in the latter but two. Of those distinguished by an X, the signature with which, it is said, he was accustomed to mark his linen, there are twenty-nine in the first seven volumes of the Spectator. To the numbers usually allotted to him in the eighth volume, I have added four on the authority of Dr. Bisset's edition; and the whole of his share in the two works, with the exception of a letter in N° 539, signed Eustace, will be comprehended in the following enumeration. Spectator, Nos. 67, 77, 116, 150, 161, 175, 197, 217, 277, 283, 301, 307, 313, 319, 325, 331, 337, 341, 347, 353, 359, 365, 373, 379, 385, 389, 395, 401, 506, 564, 573, 581, 591, 599, 602, 605, 628-Guardian, Nos. 25 and 31. The style of Budgell is, in many of these essays, a very happy imitation of the Addisonian manner; if it possess not all the mellowness and sweetness of his original, it is neat, unaffected, and clear; and, in general, more correct and rounded than the diction of Steele. The assertion of Dr. Johnson, however, should not here be forgotten; who declared, that " Addison wrote Budgell's papers, at least mended them so much, that he made them almost his own *." Yet the Doctor's authority, it must be recollected, is merely that of tradition; nor is it likely that Addison would take such elaborate trouble with these papers, or that Budgell would submit to a castigation so complete as to warrant the imputation. To have entered with perfect accuracy into the conception and keeping of a character so original as that of Sir Roger de Coverley, is the still greater merit of Budgell. In this respect he is certainly superior to Steele; and his description of the Hunt in N° 116, in which the knight makes so delightful and appropriate a figure, is a picture that one would not exchange for volumes of mediocrity. The humour and wit of Budgell appear to advantage in several of his communications; especially in his observations on Beards †, on Country Wakes; in his relation of Will Honeycomb's Amours §, and in his detail of the effects of the Month of May on female chastity. On this last subject he has copied the graceful composition and sly humour of Addison with peculiar felicity; and his admonitions to the fair sex, * Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. iii. p. 44, 8vo. third ed. + Spectator, No 331. Ibid. N° 161, § Ibid. N° 359. Ibid. Nos. 365 and 395, during this soft and seductive season, combine such a mixture of pleasing imagery, moral precept, and ludicrous association, as to render the essays which convey them some of the most interesting in the Spectator. They recal forcibly to my recollection some lines of exquisite beauty and feeling, which the amiable Thomson, on a similar topic, addresses to his lovely country women. Flush'd by the spirit of the genial year, Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom Spring, ver. 960 to 980. In the invention and combination of incident, under the form of vision, tale, or apologue, our He has author seems little to have indulged. introduced, however, one piece of this description in No 301 of the Spectator-The allegory of Youth, Love, and Old Age, and in which the imagery and design are evolved and finished with considerable beauty and dexterity. In his essay also on the duty of communicating our knowledge and discoveries for the benefit of mankind, he avails himself of a little wild, but very appositely illustrative tradition, relative to the sepulchre of Rosicrusius, the founder of a sect which pretended to the possession of perpetual lamps, of the perpetual motion, and the philosopher's stone; and, at the same time, refused to impart their secrets beyond the pale of their own society. It is evidently a fiction of Arabian growth, and founded on their well known propensity to alchemistry and cabalistic philosophy *. A vast number of such romantic stories, "Many writers," observes Mr. D'Israeli, in a note on this number of the Spectator, "have made mention of these wonderful lamps; and the following observation by Marville, appears to give a satisfactory reason of the nature of these flames. "It has happened, he says, frequently, that inquisitive men, examining with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which had been just opened, the fat and gross vapours, engendered by the corruption of dead bodies, kindled as the flambeau approached them, to the great astonishment of the spectators, who frequently cried out a miracle! This sud which turn upon the unexpected discovery of talismans, enchanted figures, or wonderful pieces of mechanism and art, that had been buried for ages in huge caverns or vaults, will be found current among the common people of Spain, under the title of Cujentos De Viejas, and are most undoubtedly derived from their former intimacy with the magic and science of the Moors of Gre. nada. Warton has given us a specimen of these den inflammation, although very natural, has given room to believe, that these flames proceeded from perpetual lamps, which some have thought were placed in the tombs of the ancients, and which they said were extinguished at the moment that these tombs opened, and were penetrated by the exterior air. "Carlencas observes on this subject, that the accounts of the perpetual lamps which ancient writers give, has occasioned several ingenious men to search after their composition. Licetus, who possessed more erudition than love of truth, has given two receipts for making this eternal fire, and which consist of certain minerals variously prepared; this opinion is in vogue amongst those who are pleased with the wonderful, or who only examine things superficially. More credible writers maintain, that it is possible to make lamps perpetually burning, and an oil at once inflammable and inconsumeable; but (which solves this strange problem) Boyle, assisted by several experiments which he had made on the air-pump, has found that these lights, which some tell us they have seen in opening tombs, may have proceeded from the collision of new air. This reasonable observation conciliates all, and does not compel us to deny the accounts. "I am obliged to a man of letters, for favouring me with |