EDWARD WINSLOW,

Governour of Plymouth Colony, was among the most efficient and illustrious settlers of New England. In 1646, as agent for the colonies, he left this country, to which he never returned. His talents and fidelity in the despatch of publick business, recommended him to Cromwell, who appointed him the first of three commissioners to direct the operations of Penn and Venables in their famous West India expedition. He died on board the fleet, May 8, 1655. His portrait, showing a black, penetrating eye, large whiskers, and an expressive countenance, is in possession of his descendant, Dr. Josiah Winslow, who inherits the old family estate, called Careswell farm, in Marshfield, which is, we believe, the only patrimony successively occupied and regularly transmitted in the posterity of the pilgrims. Governour Hutchinson thus concludes a record of his death. "He was a gentleman of the best family of any of the Plymouth planters, his father Edward Winslow, Esq. being a person of some figure at Droughtwich, in Worcestershire. An elegy occasioned by his death has much of the spirit of Thomas Laffin's epitaph, which I remember to have read in Stepney church yard.

The eighth of May, west from Spaniola's shore
God took from us our grand commissioner,
Winslow by name, a man in chiefest trust,
Whose life was sweet, and conversation just,
Whose parts and wisdom most men's did excel,
An honour to his place as all can tell."

GRECIAN SONG.

This song was composed in honour of the restorers of liberty to Athens, after, the usurpation of Pisistratus. The original is in Athenaeus.

I will wear my sword covered with myrtle leaves as Harmodius and Aristogiton did, when they slew the tyrant, and restored the government of law. Dear Harmodius, you are not yet dead. It is said that you are now in those blessed isles, the abode of Achilles, the swift footed and the valiant son of Tydeus. I will wear my sword covered with myrtle leaves as Harmodius and Aristogiton did, when they slew the tyrant Hipparchus at the Panathenaean festival. Everlasting be your glory, dear Harmodius, dear Aristogiton, for you slew the tyrant and restored to Athens a government of law.

ADDISON AND JOHNSON COMPARED.

The merits of Addison and Johnson, as periodical writers, have been often discussed. The former, being the first author in that style, is generally placed on higher ground, insomuch that a scholar and a critick of the present age informs us, with even dogmatical decision," that it is an infallible mark of false taste to prefer the Ramblers of Johnson to the Spectators of Addison." The merits of those two great men, however, are so dissimilar, that, though adapted to promote the same ends, the exertions wear a distinct form, and so varied is genius in its operations, so versatile in its nature,

that the most exuberant chaplet may be wreathed for the one without in the least diminishing the laurels of the other. Addison was the founder of one school; Johnson of another. Addison allures, entertains, improves us; Johnson commands, astonishes, and elevates. The one addresses us as rational creatures, to whom refinement is advantageous; the other as accountable beings, to whom amendment is indispensable. The essays of the one might have proceeded from a Pagan moralist; but the exhortations of the other bespeak the christian divine. I would place Addison on the shelf with Plato, but the bust of Johnson should fill a niche with Socrates. The one endeavours to efface errour, the other to destroy sin. If I may be allowed the distinction, Addison addresses the heart, Johnson the soul, of man. Their difference of style is suited to the peculiar difference of their effort. The one has the harmony of the spheres; the other the fervour of the elements. We read a paper of Addison, admire, and read on; we peruse a sentence of Johnson, and stop to wonder. The former has Medicean symmetry; the latter Colossal immensity. Addison evinces Corinthian elegance; Johnson Dorick proportions. In the one we view the lineaments of Parnassian Apollo; in the other the features of Olympian Jove.

DUELLING.

The passion for duelling was carried so high in the reign of Louis XIII. that when acquaintances met, the usual inquiry was not as it is at present, what news do you hear? but, who fought yesterday? Perhaps it was about this time that our petty gentlemen and men of honour were called blades. The French used the word lame and bonne epée in the same sense.

ENGLISH ELECTIONS.

They have become in many cases only a miserable deception, a detestable farce. In the great cities and counties, the opposing candidates are obliged to appear for some hours every day on a stage, like mountebanks at a fair; with this difference, that they are not treated with the same respect. For in the former case they are bowing and soliciting, to be enabled to carry on their jug. gling on a different theatre; while the crowd, composed of the vil est and filthiest of the populace, are occupied in vociferating against them the foulest insults and abuse. Hearing my landlord attacked one day, by a canvassing party, to give his vote to Mr. Sheridan, which he stubbornly refused to do, I asked him, "how he could reconcile it, as he was a violent Foxite, and Mr. Sheridan was of the same side?" "No matter, we must have an opposition member." "But how? Your own party is in.....oppose yourself?" "Yes, we must always have an opposition member for Westminster." This paradoxical absurdity is in the true spirit of factious liberty.

Yet corrupt and degenerate as they have become, they serve in some degree to support the spirit of liberty, and to shew the inestimable value of the elective principle.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

COMMENTATORS.

"Must I for Shakespeare no compassion feel,
Almost eat up by commentating zeal?”

SAYS the author of "the Pursuits of Literature ;" an observation which it is to be hoped every man is prepared to despise on first acquaintance. Any one who is not willing to make his head the footstool for aspiring insolence to mount, must feel the gorge of contempt rising at such efforts to abase reputations so faithfully earned, and to which so many hours of a short and precarious existence have been devoted. Poorly indeed is a reader compensated for the time which he has dedicated to the pages of genius, if, by one sweeping sentence of condemnation like the present, he is doomed to believe that all such moments are worse than thrown away. No: so long as my mind retains a capacity to see and admire superiour splendour of intellect, so long will it dwell with rapture on the spectacle.....so long will it acknowledge its obligations to those who have lent to my understanding the assistance of theirs to point out another ray in the orb beaming from a quarter before dark and unsightly.....so long will it indulge a sensation far different from that which it entertains for those who employ their talent, or their want of it, in the construction of a poem equally unintelligible with marginal notes, or without them.

The ground work of the invective above quoted against commentators, is that they so far misconceive their duty and the appropriate functions of their office as to attempt to explain their author. It seems that these men have offended the author of the Pursuits of Literature, because they have endeavoured to explore the meaning of local passages, temporary allusions and incidental matters, which have not acquired the permanency of Shakespeare's fame, and in the vicissitudes of human life are now forgotten.

With trembling reverence to so august a personage, I am inclin ed to believe, contrary to his opinion, that to clear up such passages is the peculiar duty of the commentator. A brilliancy that dazzles on the surface, the commentator insults our understanding, if he meddles with; but surely such as require comment it is not high treason against the majesty of letters to illustrate. What if Shakespeare, in the slovenly dialect of our author, "broke jokes on the margin of his page," is the commentator to be blamed for making them intelligible? No. The offence, if any, has been committed by Shakespeare himself, who has written what requires so much labour, explication and research for posterity to understand.

The author of the Pursuits of Literature would fain reverse this rule, and have the annotator employ his pen in elucidating the meaning of those obvious passages that do better without his comments, than with them. Such kind of dashing criticisms have given the tone

to the fops and Bond street literary loungers of the day; they adopt the opinions of these men as they have none of their own, and, as it is much easier to censure, than to examine, cite an author like the present as a voucher for their calumny. The very censure on the critick's toil and industry is a direct acknowledgment that Shakespeare is unworthy of being read, or incapable of being understood if he is read. In strict propriety there ought not even an errour in punctuation, much less an intricate passage to escape the notice of the commentator.

Notwithstanding the author of the Pursuits of Literature feels, or affects to feel so much contempt for Horne Tooke, a man of such excessive humanity, that, if his own declaration may be credited, he sheds tears every time he reads a page of Johnson's dictionary; yet these loving souls both agree in one point, and that is in abusing the commentators on Shakespeare. Mr. Tooke declares that, if an edition of Shakespeare was printed without one marginal explanation, he should consider it an important acquisition to the world of letters. Yet this very gentleman, who talks so cavalierly, explains sundry passages himself, and to the entire satisfaction of his readers. This is certainly an explicit confession on his part, that Shakespeare does require comment; and combining his profession with his practice, it leads to this conclusion, that the passages which have excited so much scrutiny are not worth even an attempt at explanation. In reality neither of these authors believed what they asserted, both of them sacrificed truth and decency to the indulgence of a sarcasm; and the consequence is, what it ever will be in such cases, the sarcasm is retorted on themselves.

It is conceived that conduct of this kind ought not to be past over with casual reprobation. It is not merely a literary foible, but a moral sin, and has withal a deep stain of turpitude. Many literary men, who are cursed with imbecility of nerves, tremble at the thought of a conflict where they meet only a sneer as the reward of their utmost effort; and they finally settle down into the belief that they are as pusillanimous and mean, as superiour effrontery alone represents them to be.

That Johnson was not utterly contemptible as a writer, nay that his comments on Shakespeare may justly challenge publick respect, the author of the Pursuits of Literature will think we produce an authority next to revelation to vouch, when we cite his own words. "Dr. Johnson's comments on Shakespeare are not sullied and contaminated with minute explications of indecent passages :

"He bears no token of these sable streams,
But mounts far off among the swans of Thames."

"In whatever Dr. Johnson undertook” (and certainly that "whatever" includes his comments on Shakespeare) "it was his determined purpose to rectify the heart, to purify the passions, to give ardour to virtue and confidence to truth."

While so much benevolence is testified in a note, let us see if the poetry bears it out! The author of the Pursuits of Literature

describes Shakespeare as an animal flying with all possible speed from his hunters, by which epithet he denominates his commentators. "Hark Johnson smacks the lash; loud sounds the din; Mounted in rear see Steevens whipper in."

To leave the author no loop-hole to escape, he concludes with these lines

"Hot was the chace! I left it out of breath,

I wish'd not to be in at Shakespeare's death."

Here the explanatory note and the poem are directly opposite; Johnson is mentioned with reverence in the former, and in the latter described as one of Shakespeare's assassins.

Dr. Johnson, as well as other commentators on Shakespeare, has occasionally misconceived the author's meaning. It is unnecessary to state to the reader what Hotspur's character was, or how much it is in the nature of every man to draw similies and metaphors from his own peculiar profession, or art. Hotspur's wife reproached him with being a stranger to her bed and inquires the cause, to which the haughty warriour replies

"I care not for thee Kate; this is no world
To play with mammets and to tilt with lips.
We must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns,
And pass them current too?

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Johnson subjoins in a commentary on these two passages; first, that " mammets means "puppets;" 2dly, that "cracked crowns signifies at once cracked money, and a broken head;" that "current will apply to both;" that "as it refers to money its sense is well known;" that " as it applies to a broken head, it insinuates that a soldier's wounds entitle him to universal reception." Both of these constructions, it is believed, are palpably wrong. By what legerdemain the word mammet is made to mean puppet, we know not. Johnson does indeed define it thus in his dictionary, and cites Shakespeare as an authority; and it is not an improbable suggestion that he first committed the blunder as a commentator and afterwards sanctioned it as a lexicographer.

"To play with puppets and to tilt with lips," mars the plain and obvious beauty of the passage. Mamma is the Latin word for bosom; and the endearing appellation is still in familiar use amongst us as a substitute for mother. When therefore Hotspur full of anticipated battle, tells his wife:

"This is no world

To play with bosoms (mammets) and to tilt with lips,"

he speaks in the character of a knight, and describes connubial pleasures with singular delicacy and taste. This must be the true construction, for his lady, as before observed, inquires:

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"For what offence have I a fortnight been
A banish'd woman from my Henry's bed?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick lipp'd musing and curs'd melancholy?"

Bayley defines mammets "puppets," but Spenser uses it for bosom. VOL. VII.

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