charge upon me." After detailing the measures of his presidency, he thus continued: "All these regulations and establishments, I have had the honor as a single member of this society, with the joint assistance of a much respected council, to bring forward; and to have seen carried into execution, during my being in the present office, of which, but for the sake of effecting these purposes, I have ever deemed myself most unworthy. But Gentlemen," added he, “* all this were little; did I not in the end endeavour, moreover, to secure effectually the continuance of these advantages, and the means of your attaining still greater. The dignity of this society, and the lustre with which (considering the usefulness and importance of the institution), it ought to appear, and indeed hath appeared in the eyes of Europe, requires, that in order to give proper life and support to the whole, there should be placed at its head a man of eminent and distinguished learning; of worth and respectability of character; of zeal and activity to promote its objects; of high and ancient dignity, capable of commanding every degree of respect, that not only the partiality of friends may wish to bestow, but to which the most prejudiced foreigners may also be compelled to yield. "It is not every age," continued Mr. King, "that affords, by means of a concurrence of such qualifications, such an ornament to a country, when most wanted; but I am most fortunate to be able, without flattery, and merely in pursuance of a conscientious discharge of my duty, to declare to you, that such a distinguish ed character is at hand; and I esteem it as fulfilling, most faithfully, the most important part of the trust reposed in me, as well as the happiest circumstance attending all my labours for the service of the society, that I am empowered to have the honor, by virtue of my once, to name and to propose to you, on the houselist, and to recommend to you for election as your future president, Lord de Ferrars." After doing justice to the services of the late Mr. Topham, who had for a time voluntarily performed the duties of secretary: and having proposed that most m deta igible antiquary, the Rev. John Brand, recently deceased, as the resident secretary, he closed his excellent speech by some admirable and truly en larged notions respecting the nature of those pursuits, which it was the object of such a society as that which he was addreffing, to cultivate and promote. During the presidency of Mr. King, an unusual number of learned and distinguished men offered themselves for admillion into the society. Some disagreements having unfortunately occurred in 1785, between him and the noble president; the name of Mr. King was in the following year left out of the house-list of council. From this time he ceased to be an attending member of the Society of Antiquaries. He was succeeded as a member of council and V. P. by Dr. Douglas, the late much to be lamented Bishop of Salisbury. In the Archeologia and in the Philosophical Transactions are many valuable and curious communications from Mr. King. He was privately interred at Beckenham in Kent, in which parish he had a country residence. In 1765, he married a daughter of William Blower, esq. of the Hythe, Leicestershire, a lady who is still living. He has left no issue. ORIGINAL POETRY: THE FEAST OF APIS. WRITTEN BY VON HALEM, AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, AND ADDRESSED TO DR. FAUST, OF BICKE BERG. TRANSLATED BY MR. RING. AN age is past, an age is past away, 'Tis Apis' feast, O! celebrate the day! "Tis the kind mother of the lowing train, Not the stern bull, demands a grateful strain. Unnumber'd blessings from our Apis flow, The source of joy, the soother of our woe: Her panacea checks the tainted breath Of dire Disease, and blunts the shafts of Death. MONTHLY MAG. No. 158. For her, who rescues thousands from the tomb, Preserving health, and beauty's roseate bloom; For her who soothes a mother's dread alarms, Lest her own darling, ravish'd from her arms, Food for the fell Minotaur should supply, And, as a victim to the monster, die. VERSES, WRITTEN IN A LADY'S GREENHOUSE. SWEET daughters of the purple spring, Lo, Marian all your wants attends; And sits amid her blooming friends. Yet ah! not long ye yield delight; Your fragrant breath must cease to flow, These leaves, alas! no longer bright, Must croud the sullen earth below. Yet she, whose kindly fostering care, And sink at last into the tomb! A tribute due to Marian's shade, "Alas! that such a mind should die, What pity such a form should fade !" As on the turf reclin'd from day to day He tends his flock, o'er flow'ry meads that stray? To what resource more sweet can sailors fly, When snows descend, and lightnings rend the sky; Compell'd though night the anxious watch to keep, As darts the vessel o'er the boundless deep And, whistling as o'er distant lands they stray, Less seems the craftsman's toil, the traveller's day, Strong for the chace to woods I bend my way; Nor friends, nor horses, wait on my command, The mystic weapon only fills my hand! Fatigued with slaughter to the shades I run, And rest protected from the scorching sun; There 'rapt in pleasing visions court repose, Cool'd by the breeze that thro' the valley blows; And rudely as I lay upon the ground, Wasting a vacant hour, I feign'd to court Come, gentle breeze, and move to please my ear, Come, gentle Aura, to the hunter dear; Haste where I lie, these spreading bought beneath, And as my truant fancy shap'd the strain, Some woodman lurking in the forest bears She faints, and hardly to her sense restor'd, A rival in an unembodied name; Yet dares to hope mistrustful of her ears, Resolv'd to shelter in the secret place, Bind the deep wound, and lave the streaming gore, And "Oh forgive me, loveliest!" I implore. Thy vows estrang'd, which once were mine She said the foolish fiction I disprove, On me she lov'd her closing eyes to rest, FROM THE PHENISSE OF EURIPIDES. [There are two passages of the Greek Tragedians, one in this Drama, and another on the very same subject in the 'ET' Onais of Eschylus, which have always struck me with peculiar force as the most lively representations of reality, afforded by the ancient models. The idea has been adopted by Sheridan, in the popular Play of Pizarro, and received the applause it deserved. Your readers will immediately recollect the scene in which a young boy mounted on a tree describes to his blind father what he sees of a battle, supposed to take place at some distance from the stage. The same effect is also produced by Homer, in the beautiful scene of Priam Helen, on the walls of Troy. This was probably the original which both schylus and Euripides had in view. I have endeavoured in the following lines to give some image of the design, but not an accurate and translation of the words of the latter poet. An old man, the preceptor of the family of Edipus, is standing on a platform before the palace, overlooking the adjacent fields and the encampment of the allied powers. Antigone descends from her apartment to join him, and a Dialogue ensues in irregular measure ] ANTIGONE. OH guardian of my early day! Stretch forth thine aged arm to be And guide my trembling feet to thee! OLD MAN. Take, Virgin, take this faithful arm! 'tis thine. Behold, fair maid, a scene that claims thy care; In martial pomp array'd (a threat'ning line) ANTIGONE. Gods! what a sight; the moving field OLD MAN. Oh not in vain has Polynices dared ANTIGONE. What beams of brass, what iron gate, OLD MAN. Be calm, my child, the city fears no wound. Be calm, and safely view th' embattled ground. ANTIGONE. Whose snow-white plume is waving there, The blazing terrors of his shield? OLD MAN. The chief from fair Mycena claims his race, ANTIGONE. -Ah, me! He owes his birth to deepest Night, Flames from his eyes, mankind to blast." OLD MAN. Tydeus the Strong, in whose undaunted breast Th' Etolian God of Battles rules confest. ANTIGONE. Is that the chief so near allied But who is that, of front severe, OLD MAN. Thine eyes, fair maid, Parthenopœus see, The huntress Atalanta's progeny. ANTIGONE. But where, oh where, my friend, is he, By Zethus' tomb, or Dirce's shore, The dim resemblance of a ghost. His manly form, his eagle-sight, Ah! alter'd have the moments been; Since last that manly form was seen On Dirce's smooth and level green! Since last that keen eye's wakeful light Repaid a sister's food caress With all a brother's tenderness. EMMELCES, 1 IT Extracts from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters. DON QUIXOTE. T seems a problem in literature, that a nation the gravest and most seriously disposed by its natural temper and the gloomy despotism of its government and religion, should have produced the most lively work that ever was written. It abounds in original humour and exquisite satire. It displays the most copious invention, the most whimsical incidents and the keenest remarks on the follies of its contemporaries. There is no book in whatever language that so eminently possesses the power of exciting laughter. The following anecdote may be recorded as an instance of it. Phillip III. being one day at a balcony of the palace at Madrid, observed a young student on the borders of the Mauzanares, with a book in his hand, who, as he read, exhibited the most violent marks of extacy and admiration, by his gestures and the repeated peals of laughter which he sent forth. Struck, with the oddity of the sight, the king turned to one of his courtiers, and said "Either that young man is out of his mind, or he is reading Don Quixote." The courtier descended for the purpose of satisfying the curiosity of the monarch, and discovered that it actually was a volume of Cervantes which the youth was perusing with such delight. TENHOVE, There is a short and very imperfect account of this ingenious man prefixed to the Memoirs of the House of Medicis, written by Dr. Maclaine the translator and annotator of Mosheim; The following account of him has been obligingly communicated, by a gentleman who knew him well, and accompanied him in his travels through Italy and Sicily. Tenhove was born in Holland of a noble family, and by his mother's side was related to Fagel, the Grand Pensionary, or first minister, of the United Provices, He was perhaps the most elegant, if not the most profound scholar of his age or country. He was so thoroughly skilled in the classics, that every ancient author was familiar to him, though he principally delighted in poetry and the belleslettres. He was so passionate an admirer of Horace, that he could repeat almost every line in that poet. He was also intimately acquainted with the modern languages of Italy, Germany, France, England. The literature of this country was in particular a favourite subject with him. Shakespear, whom he always considered the true poet of Nature, was long his peculiar study. French he both spoke and wrote with so much fluency and ease, as not to be distinguished from a native of France. It was in the langunge of that country, that he wrote his history. His very affluent fortune enabled him to travel in the most sumptuous styk, accompanied by a numerous train of friends and domestics. On his return from Sicily, he imprudently ventured to explore the antiquities of Pestum. The conse quence proved fatal to many of his party, who fell victims to the mal-ara of that d structive spot. Tenhove himself did not escape. Though not immediately fatal, the cruel disorder hung on him ever after. He lingered but a very few years after his return to Holland. As a finished scholar and an elegant writer, writer, he may perhaps rank with the best authors of the last century. He has however left little behind him. His House of Medici, by which he is best known, is an unfinished work, and consists of an undigested mass of materials, which he would have expanded into a regular narrative, had he lived. This want of method, however, is compensated by the elegance of the style, the beauty of the classical allusions, and the taste the author every where displays for the fine arts. A principal merit is in the short, but correct and pleasing accounts which he gives of the literati and virtuosi who lived during the time of the Medici, or were patronized by them. Tenhove's taste in painting and poetry was exquisite; and his love for the arts, and his veneration for the great men who made them flourish, have drawn him into digressions and detached chapters out of all bounds. In fact, the historical is the least considerable part of his work. This has compelled his translator, Sir Richard Clayton, to make several additions in the body of the work for the purpose of connecting the narrative, and to illustrate it by copious notes. Such as it is, however, this history would have had many readers and as many admirers, had it not been too near cotemporary with the elegant and classical work of Mr. Roscoe. LEIBNITZ. When a great man appears, he soon surpasses in excellence those who surround him. The thousands who compare their own insignificance with his colossal height, complain that nature should strip a whole generation to form the mind of one. But nature is just, she distributes to each individual the necessary attainments by which he is enabled to fulfil the career assigned him. To a chosen few alone she reserves the privilege of possessing uncommon talents, and of enlightening mankind by their exertions. To one she lays open the means of explaining her phenomena; to another she assigns the task of training and expounding the laws which controul Lis fellow-creatures; to a third it is given to pourtray the customs of nations, and describe the revolutions of empires: but each has generally pursued one track, and excelled only in one particular line. A man at length arose, who dared lay clann to universality, whose head combined invention with method, and who seemed born to shew in their full extent the powers of the human mind. That man was Leibnitz. Godfrey-Williani, Baron of Leibnitz, was born at Leipsic in 1646, and lost his father at a very early age. The educa tion of great men will be found in general to be more simple than that of men of ordinary capacity. To these a guide is necessary; they receive no impression but what is given them by a master; they have no bias but the commands of a tutor, while the boy of gemus requires only to be taught the first principles of art. The instinct of talent alone either leads him to the branch which nature has chalked out for him, or, like Leibuitz, he grasps at every science. This is not the place to compare him with Newton, or to enter into the merits of the metaphysical disputes which so long kept these great men divided in opinion, without lessening the esteem each felt for the other. One or two anecdotes have been selected, indicative of the man, divested of his character as a philosopher. It has long been a complaint, that men of great literary merit seldom meet with rewards proportionate to their talents. It is pleasing in some instances to find the assertion unfounded. The transcendent genius of Leibnitz early attracted and obtained the notice and patronage of sovereigns. ile was born the subject of the Duke of Hanover, afterwards George I. of England. From him he received honours and pensions, as also from the Emperor of Germany; besides many flattering offers from the court and literary societies of France. His commerce of letters was universal, and extended to the learned and the scientific of every country. Superior to the common jealousy of authorship, he entered into every literary scheme; he furnished others with ideas; ne aminated their exertions, and stimulated their endeavours. His reading was prodigious, embracing every departinent; and it was with him a common observation, that there was no book however bad, but that something useful might be extracted from it. With all this, neither pedantry nor pride formed a part of his character. He was familiar and affable with men of every description. He courted the society of women, and in their presence the philosopher was no longer seen. His temper was lively: easily roused into an ger, but soon appeased. He was of a robust constitution, and seldom incommoded with any illness, except the gout. His manner of living was singular. He always took his meals alone; and these never at stated hours, but just as it suited his appetite or his stud.es. |