if you go to that? Don't tell me of your ancients! Had not you almost killed the poor babe with a dish of demonial black broth ?"-" Lacedemonian black broth, thou would'st say, (replied Cornelius,) but I cannot allow the surfeit to have been occasioned by that diet, since it was recommended by the divine Lycurgus. No, nurse, thou must certainly have eaten some meats of ill digestion the day before, and that was the real cause of his disorder. Consider, woman, the different temperaments of different nations.* What makes the English phlegmatic and melancholy, but beef? what renders the Welsh so hot and cholerick, but cheese and leeks? The French derive their levity from their soups, frogs, and mushrooms. I would not let my son dine like an Italian, lest like an Italian he should be jealous and revengeful. The warm and solid diet of Spain may be more beneficial, as it might indue him with a profound gravity, but at the same time he might suck in with their food the intolerable vice of pride. Therefore, nurse, in short, I hold it requisite to deny you at present, not only beef, but likewise whatsoever any of those nations eat." During this speech, the nurse remained pouting and marking her plate with the knife, nor would she touch a bit during the whole dinner. This the old gentleman observing, ordered that the child, to avoid the risk of imbibing

* A fine and solid ridicule on those who assign the characters of different nations to their food and diet alone. Sir W. Temple has done this in more than one of his essays.

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3

ill-humours, should be kept from her breast all that day, and be fed with butter, mixed with honey, according to a prescription he had met with somewhere in Eustathius upon Homer. This indeed gave the child a great looseness, but he was not concerned at it, in the opinion that whatever harm it might do his body, would be amply recompensed by the improvements of his understanding. But from thenceforth he insisted every day upon a particular diet to be observed by the nurse; under which having been long uneasy, she at last parted from the family, on his ordering her for dinner the paps of a sow with pig; taking it as the highest indignity, and a direct insult upon her sex and calling.

years of young

Four Martin's life passed away in squabbles of this nature. Mrs. Scriblerus considered it was now time to instruct him in the fundamentals of religion, and to that end took no small pains in teaching him his Catechism. But Cornelius looked upon this as a tedious way of instruction, and therefore employed his head to find out more pleasing methods, the better to induce him to be fond of learning. He would frequently carry him to the puppet-show* of the creation of the world, where the child with exceeding delight gained a notion of the history of the Bible. His first rudiments in profane history were acquired by seeing of raree-shows, where

* The common puppet-shews, on religious subjects, were.certainly originally taken from, and were remains of, the old mysteries.

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nuously confesses he durst not confer with this child in Greek at eight years old,* and at fourteen he composed a tragedy in the same language, as the younger Pliny+ had done before him.

He learned the oriental languages of Erpenius, who resided some time with his father for that purpose. He had so early relish for the eastern way of writing, that even at this time he composed (in imitation of it) the Thousand and One Arabian Tales, and also the Persian Tales, which have been since translated into several languages, and lately into our own with particular elegance, by Mr. Ambrose Philips. In this work of his childhood, he was not a little assisted by the historical traditions of his nurse.

* So Montaigne says of his Latin-"George Bucanan et Mark Antoine Muret, mes précepteurs domestiques, m'ont dit souvent que j'avois ce langage en mon enfance si prest et si à mains qu'ils craignoient à m'accoster.-Somme, nous nous latinizames tant, qu'il en regorgea jusqu'à nos villages tout autour, où il y a encores, et où pris pied par l'usage, plusieurs appellations Latines d'artisans et d'outils." Warburton.

+ Plin. Epist. lib. vii.

i

CHAP. V.*

A DISSERTATION UPON PLAYTHINGS.

HERE follow the instructions of Cornelius Scriblerus concerning the plays and playthings to be used by his son Martin.

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Play was invented by the Lydians as a remedy against hunger. Sophocles says of Palamedes, that he invented dice to serve sometimes instead of a dinner. It is therefore wisely contrived by nature, that children, as they have the keenest appetites, are most addicted to plays. From the same cause, and from the unprejudiced and incorrupt simplicity of their minds, it proceeds, that the plays of the ancient children are preserved

* Whatever may be determined of other parts of these Memoirs, yet this chapter, the sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and twelfth chapters, appear to be the production of Arbuthnot, as they contain allusions to many remote and uncommon parts of learning and science, with which we cannot imagine Pope to have, been much acquainted, and which lay out of the reach and course of his reading. The rich vein of humour which, like a vein of mercury, runs through these Memoirs, is much heightened and encreased by the great variety of learning which they contain; it is a fact in literary history worth observing, and which deserves to be more attended to than I think it usually is, that the chief of those who have excelled in exquisite works of wit and humour, have at the same time been men of extensive learning. We may instance in Lucian, Cervantes, Quevedo, Rabelais, Arbuthnot, Fielding, and Butler above all; for no work in our language contains more learning than Hudibras.

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nuously confesses he durst not confer with this child in Greek at eight years old,* and at fourteen he composed a tragedy in the same language, as the younger Plinyt had done before him.

He learned the oriental languages of Erpenius, who resided some time with his father for that purpose. He had so early relish for the eastern way of writing, that even at this time he composed (in imitation of it) the Thousand and One Arabian Tales, and also the Persian Tales, which have been since translated into several languages, and lately into our own with particular elegance, by Mr. Ambrose Philips. In this work of his childhood, he was not a little assisted by the historical traditions of his nurse.

* So Montaigne says of his Latin-"George Bucanan et Mark Antoine Muret, mes précepteurs domestiques, m'ont dit souvent que j'avois ce langage en mon enfance si prest et si à mains qu'ils craignoient à m'accoster.-Somme, nous nous latinizames tant, qu'il en regorgea jusqu'à nos villages tout autour, où il y a encores, et où pris pied par l'usage, plusieurs appellations Latines d'artisans et d'outils." Warburton.