schooner of only six four-pounders, and a crew of thirty-six men, including passengers. At length the two vessels engaged at pistolshot distance, and the combat lasted upwards of an hour. When the privateer surrendered, her loss amounted to fourteen killed and five wounded. If the immense disparity of force is taken into consideration, this is one of the most desperate defences on record, and proves that the issue of the combat would have been very doubtful, had the force been more equal. We could give dozens of similar instances of the desperate courage often displayed both by English and French privateersmen; and this is about the only redeeming trait in their character. It may, however, be safely assumed, that, as a general rule, privateers only fought when fighting became unavoidable. On rare occasions, French and English privateers fought each other, just as tigers and sharks will sometimes do, when lacking their natural prey.

The damage done to British commerceand vice versa - by French, Danish, and American privateers, was altogether incalculable; and it must also be borne in mind, that the prodigious risk of capture raised the rates of marine insurance to a ruinous degree, so that merchants whose vessels made safe runs, seldom realized remunerative returns on their invested capital; and if, on the other hand, they sent their ships to sea unin

sured, they risked total ruin, for it was about an equal chance that a ship sailing to and from many ports would be captured. It is not fair to draw a parallel between regular men-of-war and privateers, as regards making prizes of enemy's merchant ships. The mere act of capturing an enemy's merchantman is only a sort of episodical performance on the part of men-of-war, their main business being to defend the coasts of their country from hostile invasion, and to fight and subdue the ships of war belonging to the foe. The prizemoney they receive from occasional captures is only a legitimate extra reward for the services they perform to the state; while a privateer is sent forth wholly and solely to pursue and capture merchantmen, that its crew and owners may be enriched by their confiscation, the privateers neither defending their country, nor fighting its armed foes, unless reluctantly compelled to do so. These views of the question are now generally held by civilized states; and England, France, and America, the three foremost nations of the earth, seem to have tacitly arrived at the somewhat tardy conclusion, that there is hardly a hair-breadth of practical difference between privateering and piracy. Henceforward, pirates and privateersmen will alike swing from the yardarm whenever captured in pursuit of their kindred professions.

&c.,

Author of

shall I carry weight with the public? What

shall I do to be esteemed? And ever since the first barrel of ink was brewed, such problems have been solved in sundry ways, so that there is nothing foolish that has not been done-perhaps, too, that is not being done-for love of praise.

In the first place, how is an orator, philosopher, or poet, who thinks more of the ap

Genitivo,

&c., &c., &c., &c., &c.,

is not directly pointed at in any of the remarks here following. It is no new thing

get it-how is such a poor fellow to know even so much as in what direction he shall turn his face? Are the select few to be courted, or the vulgar many? Which gives the

The great Cæsar himself, says Macrobius, admired so extremely a comedian named Laberius, that he invited him, by offers of large sums, to Rome. There he put him into competition with the people's favorite, Publius Syrus. In spite of the Emperor, the people crowned their man, and the imperial patron was forced to say, "Laberius, although I like you best, Syrus has beaten you.' Louis the Fourteenth did not say a word over the first hearing of one of Molière's best comedies. The public thought he did not like it, and all the next morning nothing was to be heard but bandied criticism of it as poor stuff, and such inanity, that really, if Monsieur Molière did not make a great change in his recent manner, he would never hold his ground with men of taste. At dinner the King held his hand out to the poet and said that he had enjoyed his comedy beyond expression. In the afternoon every soul was charmed with the wit of the new play. The most discriminating general public that ever was, only accepted cordially ten or twelve out of a hundred of the works of Eschylus, and forsook him altogether for a new writer; the same public five times declared Pindar conquered by a woman who was in their eyes a tenth muse, and in his eyes a pig. In what direction then is the fame-hunter to look? The man who works out matter that is in him is in no perplexity; for him nature has made provision; but the man whose labor is but to procure something-whether fame or money-that he has not, by what arts is he to make provision for himself? He generally uses quackery, and in what degree he uses it, or of what kind it is, and to what class of minds it is addressed, must depend on taste and temperament, and upon other things.

Charles Patin, a wise man of olden time, lodged with a friend studying medicine, at Basle, and asked him one day into how many parts medicine were divided. "Into four parts," said his friend; "physiology, pathology, semiotics, and therapeutics." "Into

What might be said then, and might very likely be said now, with some show of truth concerning medicine, was and is quite as true of philology, metaphysics, oratory, statesmanship, theology, or any other branch of study.

Men parade titles that mean little, but sound large; I introduce no modern illustrations, but used they not of old to write themselves in their books archi-historiographers, king's counsellors and so forth? Did they not write themselves down members of societies having sometimes, especially in Italy, fantastical and affected names, Seraphics, Olympics, Boobies, Idlers, Somnolents, Rawmen, Parthenics, and Fantastics? They even changed their names to put more weight into their literary persons. A doctor Sansmalice signed himself Doctor Akakia; John became Jovian; Peter became Pomponius. Julius Cæsar Scaliger, one of the vainest of all learned men, claimed to be descended from a princely house, and his son Joseph so highly glorified the family in a short biographic notice, that their antagonist Scioppius-the grammatical cur he was called for uncivilness-professed to have counted up four hundred and ninety-nine lies in a work of about fifteen pages. As for Scioppus, he wrote himself Roman Patrician, Counsellor of the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Arch-Duke of Austria, the Count Palatine, and Count of Clara-Valla. Such writers were habitually styled most excellent and most admirable, though Charles the Fifth, himself addressed formally as Emperor, was no more than most noble and most excellent.

A mathematician in those times, travelling in Poland, expressed his annoyance at continual allusions to his Excellence, but was told, with some pity for his ignorance, that he need not concern himself, because the Poles assumed the excellence of everybody. Whatever titles a man could lay hold of, he claimed. A village schoolmaster, claiming due honor, in this spirit played the crier to himself, and cried, "I am the rector, the sub-rector and the choir! I am the three altogether, and am therefore all in all." Of all men who betitled themselves and each other, the old lawyers were the most accomplished quacks. One was Invincible Monarch of the Empire of Letters, another, Azo by name, was Source of the Laws, Vessel of Election, Trumpet of Truth, and God

of Lawyers. Baldus was entitled Divine Monarch Utriusque Juris, ignorant of nothing, &c. There were very many more who took or received titles as extravagant. These titles often border on profanity, and if it were not wholesome discipline to be reminded now and then of the depths sounded by human vanity and folly, I should shrink certainly from adding to this list the frontispiece of a book, not by a lawyer, in which the author is depicted at the foot of the cross with the question issuing from his mouth, "Master, lovest thou me?" The reply of the Master from the cross being written in another label, "Yes, most illustrious, most excellent and very learned Lord Segerus, Poet Laureate of his Imperial Majesty, and very worthy Rector of the University of Wittenberg; yes, I love you."

Earnestness has sometimes the force of quackery. Alain de l'Ile preached so profoundly upon incomprehensible matters that the ignorant came out in swarms to hear him. Therefore, one day, instead of delivering a sermon that he had promised on a sacred mystery, when he saw the gaping crowd about him, he came down again out of his pulpit, saying only, "You have seen Alain. And so now you may go home content." I am reminded by this anecdote of Barthius, a rather bilious philosopher, who was annoyed by the impertinence of curious intruders. One day an English traveller looked in to see him; the offended sage received him in grim silence; they sat down opposite to one another, and not a word was said until Barthius turned suddenly his back upon his visitor, and said, "Well, Sir, you have seen me pretty well in front, now look at me behind."

I have wandered into the domains of people who got more attention than they wished, instead of abiding by the learned men who wished for all the notice they could get. One way of attracting notice was the use of title-pages, calculated to arrest attention. The foppery common on title-pages in old times-never, of course, now-was obvious enough in certain respects. It was but a commonplace of the period to call a lexicon The Pearl of Pearls, to produce Flowers of every thing after the Latin Florus, and Nights of every thing after the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius. There were Theological Nights, Christian Nights, Agreeable Nights, Solitary Nights, African Nights, and so

forth.

The races of the Flowers and the Nights are not indeed even to this day extinct.

Pliny long ago ridiculed the titles of Greek books-Rags of Honey, Horns of Plenty, Muses' Meadows, in which every thing a man could wish for, "down to chickens' milk," was said to be contained. The wise men of the Revival published, in place of Horns of Plenty, Treasures and Treasuries, and they put up Steps to Parnassus, over which many a schoolboy has since stumbled. A set of maps was called after the man who took the world upon his shoulders-Atlas; and that name, being short and handy, has been commonly adopted into languages as a nounsubstantive, quite free from mythological suggestion. A book on the blood was called The Macro-micro-cosmic ocean.

Alchemists wrote books called The Art of Arts, The Work of Works, The Art of being Ignorant of Nothing, of Writing and of Knowing about Every Thing. It would need the lesson taught by such a book to understand only the titles of some others; a tract on the Rights of the King was headed, for example, in those days, The Stomachation of the Public Good. The author of a Harmony of the Gospels called it, The Triumph of Truth, on a Car drawn by the four Evangelists, escorted by the Army of Holy Fathers; and a more elaborate allegorist, a Spaniard, entitled a work on philology, in fifty chapters-Pentacontarch; or, the Captain of Fifty Soldiers: levied and maintained by Ramirez de Prado, under whose auspices the different monsters that ravaged the republic of letters are pursued even to their uttermost retreats, and to the depths of their frightful caverns, where they are attacked, fought with, and destroyed. Again, who would suppose that a book with the attractive title of The Rights of the Public was a treatise upon headache?

The desire for fame has induced others to seek it by much writing, in the belief that to be constantly before the world was to be honored by it, or, at least-and that is something to be known. There have been many men whose works contained more leaves than there were days in their lives; some being by nature prolific and industrious, others only because they were resolved to occupy the public ears. In the first class was the Spanish dramatist Lopez de Vega, whose works covered ten times as many pages as there were days in his life. In the second class it will suffice to name Joachim Fortius, who wrote of himself thus: "Either I shall

die very young, or I shall give to the world a thousand works, honestly counted, in as good Latin as I can produce. I intend to