Prose which had been at learning's Fair,
And bought up all the trumpery there,
The tatter'd rags of every vest,

In which the Greeks and Romans dress'd,
And o'er her figure, swoln and antic,
Scatter'd them all with airs so frantic,
That those, who saw the fits she had,
Declared unhappy Prose was mad !
Epics he wrote and scores of rebusses,
All as neat as old Turnebus's;
Eggs and altars, cyclopædias,

Grammars, prayer-books-oh! 'twere tedious,
Did I but tell the half, to follow me;
Not the scribbling bard of Ptolemy,

the Scholars" may be included. Yet Leibnitz found out the uses of incomprehensibility, when he was appointed secrctary to a society of philosophers at Nuremberg, merely for his merit in writing a cabalistical letter, one word of which neither they nor himself could interpret.—See the Éloge Historique de M. DE LEIBNITZ, l'Europe Savante. People in all ages have loved to be puzzled. We find CICERO thanking Atticus for having sent him a work of Serapion, 66 ex quo (says he) quidem ego (quod inter nos liceat dicere) millesimam partem vix intelligo."-Lib. 2. epist. 4. And we know that Avicen, the learned Arabian, read ARISTOTLE'S Metaphysics forty times over, for the supreme pleasure of being able to inform the world that he could not comprehend one syllable throughout them.-NICOLAS MOSSA in Vit. Avicen.

No-nor the hoary Trismegistus

(Whose writings all, thank Heaven! have miss'd us), E'er fill'd with lumber such a ware-room

66

As this

great porcus literarum !

FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL.*

TO G. M. ESQ.

FROM FREDERICKSBURGH, VIRGINIA, JUNE 2ND.

DEAR George! though every bone is aching,
After the shaking

*These fragments form but a small part of a ridiculous medley of prose and doggerel, into which, for my amusement, I threw some of the incidents of my journey. If it were even in a more rational form, there is yet much of it too allusive and too personal for publication.

Having remained about a week at New York, where I saw Madame Jerome Bonaparte, and felt a slight shock of an earthquake (the only things that particularly awakened my attention), I sailed again in the Boston for Norfolk, from whence I proceeded on my tour to the northward, through Williamsburgh, Richmond, etc. At Richmond there are a few men of considerable talents. Mr. Wickham, one of their celebrated legal characters, is a gentleman whose manners and mode of life would do honour to the most cultivated societies. Judge Marshall, the author of Washington's Life, is another very distinguished ornament of Richmond. These gentlemen, I must observe, are of that respectable, but at present unpopular, party, the Federalists.

I've had this week, over ruts and ridges, *

And bridges

Made of a few uneasy planks, †

In open ranks

Like old women's teeth, all loosely thrown
Over rivers of mud, whose names alone
Would make the knees of stoutest man knock,

Rappahannock,

Occoquan-the Heavens may harbour us!
Who ever heard of names so barbarous?

* What Mr. Weld says of the continual necessity of balancing or trimming the stage, in passing over some of the wretched roads in America, is by no means exaggerated. "The driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage, first at one side then at the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds! Now, gentlemen, to the right;' upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage, to balance it on that side. 'Now, gentlemen, to the left;' and so on."-WELD's Travels, letter 3.

Before the stage can pass one of these bridges, the driver is obliged to stop and arrange the loose planks, of which it is composed, in the manner that best suits his ideas of safety: and, as the planks are again disturbed by the passing of the coach, the next travellers who arrive have of course a new arrangement to make. Mahomet (as Sale tells us) was at some pains to imagine a precarious kind of bridge for the entrance of Paradise, in order to enhance the pleasures of arrival: a Virginian bridge, I think, would have answered his purpose completely.

Worse than M***'s Latin,

Or the smooth codicil

To a witch's will, where she brings her cat in! I treat my goddess ill,

(My muse I mean) to make her speak 'em ; Like the Verbum Græcum,

Spermagoraiolekitholakanopolides,

*

Words that ought only be said upon holidays,
When one has nothing else to do.

But, dearest George, though every bone is aching

After this shaking,

And trying to regain the socket,

From which the stage thought fit to rock it,
I fancy I shall sleep the better

For having scrawl'd a kind of letter

To you.

It seems to me like-" George, good-night!" Though far the spot I date it from;

To which I fancy, while I write,

You answer back-" Good-night t'ye, Tom."

* Σπερμαγοραιολεκιθολαχανοπωλιδες.-From the Lysistrata of ARISTOPHANES, V. 458.

But do not think that I shall turn all

Sorts of quiddities,

And insipidities,

Into my journal;

That I shall tell you the different prices
Of eating, drinking, and such other vices,
To" contumace your appetite's acidities :
No, no; the Muse too delicate bodied is
For such commodities!

Neither suppose, like fellow of college, she
Can talk of conchology,

Or meteorology;

Or that a nymph, who wild as comet errs,
Can discuss barometers,

Farming tools, statistic histories,

Geography, law, or such like mysteries,
For which she doesn't care three skips of
Prettiest flea, that e'er the lips of

* This phrase is taken verbatim from an account of an expedition to Drummond's Pond, by one of those many Americans who profess to think that the English language, as it has been hitherto written, is deficient in what they call republican energy. One of the savans of Washington is far advanced in the construction of a new language for the United States, which is supposed to be a mixture of Hebrew and Mikmak.