Hoc fibi pulchra fuum ferre Proferpina munus. Inftituit

Obferve how beautifully the poet fhadows forth the difficulties that attend this delicate gift! how nicely it lies concealed!

Latet arbore opaca,

Aureus et foliis, et lento vimine ramus.

Hunc tegit omnis

Lucus, et obfcuris claudunt convallibus umbra.

The propriety of its being facred to the female character!

Junoni Infernæ dictus facer

But the beauty and confiftency of the allegory are peculiarly ftriking, when the hero is directed in his fearch by the doves of Venus. Who does not fee that foftnefs and complaifancy of manners, the ground of pleafing address, and agreeable flattery, depictured in those doves?

Maternus agnofcit aves, lætufque precatur,
Efte duces

But Venus herself is to affift on this occafion.
Softnefs and complaifance, without elegance

B

and beauty, will not rightly attain to this perfuafive compliment. It must be

rite repertum,

and therefore the goddefs of elegance and beauty is invoked;

-Tuque, O, dubiis, ne defice, rebus,
Diva Parens

There is not in any part of Virgil's works, perhaps not in all antiquity, a more beautiful or better-wrought allegory than this.

But has it not its ufe too, as well as its beauty? Has not the poet left us an instructive leffon in what manner we are to deal with difficult men in difficult times? If Pluto, or the wife of Pluto, is to be appeafed, and rendered acceffible by this golden branch, I should have but an indifferent opinion of that man's discretion who would not go in quest of it.

For my own part, whenever I am called upon ́to attend her Elysian majefty, I will not fail to carry this along with me, and then, though I may have written forty panegyrics on Cromwell, I fhall have no occafion to be afraid of Minos,

WERE it poffible to prevent gallantry

from running into the spirit of intrigue, nothing certainly could be more agreeable; but the two ideas are hardly to be separated before that period of life which you and I have attained. Nothing, indeed, can be more inoffensive than the gallantry of our years. It is the harmless offspring of memory and fancy, amufing itself with the fhadows of pleasures that are paft. Let gay youth, and graver age count this ridiculous; if we find the tadium vita in any degree have a right to indulge it. The recollection of former enjoyments is all that age has to fubfift upon. To treat with courtlinefs, and contemplate with pleasure, fuch objects as once afforded us delight, is the religion of nature 'Tis a facrifice of gratitude"Tis a

diverted by it, we

whether by these attachments we may not lengthen as well as lighten life.

Waller, qui ne fent rein des maux de la vieillesse,
Dant la vivacité fait honte a jeunes gens,
S'attache à la beauté pour vivre plus long temps,
Et ce qu'on nommeroit dans un autre foibleffe
Eft en ce rare efprit une fage tendresse,
Qui le fait refifter a l'injure des ans,

Your friend Rymer has given a better turn to these lines:

Vain gallants, look on Waller and despair,
He, only he, may boaft the grand receipt ;
Of fourfcore years he never feels the weight;
Still in his element when with the fair;
There gay and fresh, drinks in the rofie air:

There happy, he enjoys his leifure hours,
Nor thinks of winter whilft amidst the flowers.

The gallantry of the present times feems to be of a genius very different from that which prevailed in our better days. It is fallen back into the original brabarism of nature. The affair of poor Shrewsbury is a fhocking inftance of this. There is nothing extraordinary

in the duel between him and the duke of Buckingham; though it was expected that his well known indifference about lady Shrewsbury's commerce with his grace, would have faved him from the folly of thinking his honour concerned in the affair: but in the conduct of that bold and abandoned woman, there was fomething that forbids one to think of her without deteftation You have been informed, that, during the engagement, fhe held the duke's horfes in the habit of a page. I have lately been told that she had pistols concealed, and that she had pledged her honour to shoot both Shrewsbury and herself, if the husband should prove victorious. It was a weakness and want of honour in the duke to expose his antagonift to so unfair, and fo contemptible a death; but it was still greater weakness to be capable of loving a woman, who wanted the characteristics of her fex, tenderness and delicacy. The genius of bold and vulgar prostitution! What a depraved Spirit! what a groveling foul must he have, who can mix his paffions with any thing fo odious! A masculine woman is my immortal averfion! Masculine in