a very good effect: the search after the philosopher's stone has preserved chemistry; and the following astrology so much in former ages, has been the cause of astronomy's being so much advanced in ours. Sir Isaac Newton himself has owned that he began with studying judicial astrology, and that it was his pursuit of that idle and vain study, which led him into the beauties of, and love for, astronomy. Dr. C.

When I asked Sir Isaac Newton, how the study of the mathematics flourished in England? he said, "not so much as it has done here, but more than it does in any other country."-Dr. C.

Mr. Locke spent a good part of his first years at the university in reading romances, from his aversion to the disputative way then in fashion there. He told Coste so, and gave that reason for it to him.-Dr. C.

[Coste gave Cocchi Mr. Locke's physical common-place book; which seemed (by what I could see of it), more valuable for being in Mr. Locke's hand, than for the matter contained in it.-Spence.]

I must own, that to my taste, Corregio is the best of all our painters. His pieces are less pictures, than those of Raphael himself. Dr. C.

ness.

Tasso's madness, some think, was only a pretended madHe was caught making too free with a Princess of the Duke of Ferrara's family, in which he lived. To save her honour and himself, he from that time (say they), began to play his melancholy tricks. There is a passage in his Aminta which may allude to this; it is in the end of the first act, and is spoken by Tirsi, under which character Tasso meant himself.-Dr. C.

G

In all the disputes between the Tuscan literati, whether Tasso or Ariosto be the better poet, the debate always runs on the outside. Those numerous pieces are entirely taken up in speaking of the style and colour of the poetry, and the writers of them seem never to have thought anything of the plan or composition. Ariosto's poem is like the richer kind of Harlequin's habit, made up of pieces of the very best silks, and of the liveliest colours. The parts of it are many of them more beautiful than those in Tasso's poem, but the whole in Tasso is, without comparison, more of a piece and better made.-Dr. C. [The word richer was added on Dr. C.'s saying the simile was too low for Ariosto. He added, your Spenser has taken much from him.-Spence.

The first four hundred years of the Roman History are supposed to have been fabulous by Senator Buonarotti, and he gives several good reasons for his opinion. He suspects that Rome, in particular, was built by the Greeks; as Tarentum, Naples, and several other cities in Italy were.-Dr. C.

Among all our poets we have not any good love-poet. They all follow Petrarca, and his is not a good love for poetry. Some of Ariosto's rhymes are the best this way, he having formed himself on the ancients, and on Tibullus in particular.- Dr. C.

Menzini is generally considered as our best satirist, and Ariosto as the next. I don't speak of my own taste, for I like Ariosto better than the other. Menzini is more like Juvenal, and Ariosto more like Horace.-Dr. C.

The Spaniards were at the top of their poetry, under the reigns of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. They imitated the Italian poets, and would fain set up Garcilasso

della Vega for their Petrarch. Their poetry is generally bad, and even Lope de Vega's is wretched stuff.*-Gonzalo Perez's translation of the Odyssey is very good.-Dr. C.

If you look for a right good poet amongst us, 'tis what you must look for in vain.-Dr. C.

If a lady applies to learning among us, and arrives to any eminence in it, she is admitted to her degrees as well as the men. Antonia Maria Bassi was lately made a doctoress at Bologna: and a famous Venetian lady was some time since admitted to the doctorate at Padua.-Dr. C.

Galen's Book, de Consuetudine, has never been published, except in a barbarous Latin translation, drawn off

This sweeping censure of Spanish poetry is too flippant to pass entirely unnoticed.-Though Spain may not boast of any poet like Dante, Ariosto, or Tasso; yet is she not deficient in such as may rank with any of the minor Rimatori of Italy.—Neither is there much arrogance in comparing Garcilasso della Vega to Pe trarca. I know not, indeed, whether it is not doing the Tuscan "Imp of Fame" much honour. The Spaniards can boast of lyric and pastoral poets, though not in number equal, yet in sterling merit superior, to those of Italy. It may be sufficient to mention Manrique, Boscan, Mendoza, Luis de Leon, Francisco de la Torre, Villegas, Gongora, (though spoiled by Italian concetti,) Quevedo, the two Argensolas, Castillejo, and Francisco de Rioja. - The climax of this foolish censure of what he probably did not understand, is Cocchi's praise of that insipid and tasteless paraphrase of the Odyssey, the Ulyssea of Gonzalo Perez.-But hear what the judicious Schlegel says of the language of this contemned poetry. "The Spanish language is less soft than the Italian, on account of the guttural sounds, and the frequent termination with consonants; but its tones are, if possible, more full, proceed still more from the breast, and fill the ear with a pure metallic resonance. It had not yet altogether lost the rough strength and cordiality of the Goths, when oriental intermixtures gave it a wonderful degree of sublimity, and elevated a poetry, intoxicated as it were with aromatic vapours, far above all the scruples of the sober west."-Editor.

from an old Arabic one: and that so bad, that it was suspected of never having come from any piece that really was Galen's. The Greek original, or at least a great part of it, is in the Laurentian library, where there are also five or six other Greek physicians which I have transcribed.*— Dr. C.

There are three thousand manuscript books in the Laurentian library (including a few printed books equivalent to manuscripts), and in many of them, the works of several authors are bound up together; which they call Catenas. -If you take them singly, there are about ten thousand. -There is no other library so well stocked in three of the best sorts; physical, mathematical, and poetical, manuscripts. Dr. C.

The paraphrases written in the margin of Theodore Gaza's Homer, in the Laurentian library, have been often of particular service to me, when I have been at a loss to fix the meaning of any passage in that poet.—Dr. C.

Operas were at first set on foot by a set of gentlemen, who acted, not for money, but for their own diversion. There was about thirty of them.-When they first came to be acted for money, there was one of the actresses who had one hundred and twenty crowns for acting one season. This was then looked upon as such a vast reward for a singer, that she got the name of La Cento-vinti by it.Signor Crudeli, of Florence.

The good taste for medals continued from the time of Augustus to Adrian's; that for building to Septimius Severus.-Baron Stosch, at Florence.

The figure of the famous Pasquin, when entire, was the

* Some of these were subsequently published by Cocchi.— Editor.

same with that by the Ponte Vecchio at Florence.-Maffei, in his collection of statues, No. 42, gives that figure, and calls it Ajax supported by his brother. Poor Pasquin was like to have been confined in the capitol, by the same Pope who sent Marforio thither: but the marquis, to whom he belonged, prevented it. His descendant is still obliged to pay a certain fine, if any scandal be found fixed to him.Ficoroni and Cocchi.

Marchetti's translation of Lucretius, in blank verse, is the best translation in our language.-Le Sette Giornate. or Creation, of Tasso, is in blank verse too, and is much esteemed by the best judges; but not generally read, because without rhyme.-Crudeli.

What the monk said of Virgil's Æneid," that it would make an excellent poem if it were only put into rhyme;" is just as if a Frenchman should say of a beauty, "Oh, what a fine woman that would be, if she was but painted!"—C.

Camillo Querno was sometimes a dealer in monkish verses. -When he was at the table of Leo the Tenth, one day, some time after dinner, the pontiff said to him, "How comes it about, Querno, that Bacchus, who was the old inspirer of poets, cannot inspire you?"-Querno immediately answered him in the following couplet:

"In cratere meo, Thetis est conjuncta Lyæo:

Est Dea juncta Deo; Sed Dea major eo."-C.

When Doctor Garth had been for a good while in a bad state of health, he sent one day for a physician with whom he was particularly intimate, and conjured him by their friendship, and by everything that was most sacred (if there was anything more sacred), to tell him sincerely, whether he thought he should be ever able to get rid of his illness