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 appears 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. No. 359.

Ibid. No. 161.

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,

fair!

Now from the virgin's cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth;
The shining moisture swells into her eyes
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah then, ye
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not th' infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Downcast, and low, in meek submission drest,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,
Gain on your purpos'd will. Nor in the bower
Where woodbines flaunt, and roses shed a couch,
While Evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.

Spring, ver. 960 to 980.

In the invention and combination of incident, under the form of vision, tale, or apologue, our author seems little to have indulged. He has introduced, however, one piece of this description in N° 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 dicoveries 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.

t." It has happened, he says, frequently, that inquisitive men, examining with a flambeau ancient sepulchres which had been just

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 Grenada. Warton has given us a specimen of these

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 sudden 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.

oriental wonders from the RELATION DU VOYAGE D'ESPAGNE, by Madamoiselle Danois. "Within the ancient castle of Toledo, they say, there was a vast cavern, whose entrance was strongly barricaded. It was universally believed, that if any person entered this cavern, the most fatal disasters would happen to the Spaniards. Thus it remained closely shut up and unentered for many ages. At length King Roderigo, having less credulity, but more courage and curiosity than his ancestors, commanded this formidable recess to be opened. At entering, he began to suspect the traditions of the people to be true: a terri

"I am obliged to a man of letters, for favouring me with the fob lowing observations, which throw a clearer light on the present topic. The story of the lamp of Rosicrusius, even if it ever had the slightest foundation, only owes its origin to the spirit of party, which at the time would have persuaded the world, that Rosicrusius had, at least, discovered something; but there is nothing certain in this pretty invention.

"The reason adduced by Marville is satisfactory for his day; and for the opening of sepulchres with flambeaux. But it was reserved for the modern discoveries made in natural philosophy, as well as those in chemistry, to prove that air was not only necessary for a medium to the existence of the flame, which indeed the air-pump had already shewn; but also as a constituent part of the inflammation, and without which a body, otherwise very inflammable in all its parts, cannot however burn but in its superficies, which alone is in contact with the ambient air.”

D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, vol. ii. p. 488,