lines, which are more according to the au
thor,-

Nor ask I life, nor fought with that design:
As I had used my fortune, use thou thine.
From the Preface to the Translation of
Virgil's Eneid.

SAMUEL PEPYS,

Tasso tells us in his letters that Sperone Speroni, a great Italian wit, who was his contemperary, observed of Virgil and Tully, that the Latin orator endeavoured to imitate the copiousness of Homer, the Greek poet; and that the Latin poet made it his business to reach the conciseness of Demosthenes, the Greek orator. Virgil, therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and leaving so much to be imagined by the reader, can never be translated as he ought in any Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of modern tongue. To make him copious is to Charles II. and James II., born 1632, died alter his character; and to translate him line for line is impossible; because the Latin 1703, left a valuable chronicle of his times, a portion of which appeared under the title is naturally a more succinct language than of Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., compris either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its ing his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered monosyllables, is far the most compendious short-hand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and by the Rev. John Smith from the Original of them. Virgil is much the closest of any a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter has Edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke, Lond., more feet than the English heroic.... He 1825, 2 vols. royal 4to; and other editions. who excels all other poets in his own lan- But the only correct edition is the followguage, were it possible to do him right, musting: The Diary and Correspondence of Samappear above them in our tongue, which, as my Lord Roscommon justly observes, approaches nearest to the Roman in its majesty; nearest, indeed, but with a vast interval betwixt them. There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his (I must once again say) is never to be copied ; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation. The turns of his verse, his breakings, his propriety, his numbers, and his gravity, I have as far imitated as the poverty of our language and the hastiness of my performance would allow. I may seem sometimes to have varied from his sense; but I think the greatest variations may be fairly deduced from him; and where I leave his commentators, it may be I understand him better; at least, I writ without consulting them in many places. But two particular lines in "Mezentius and Lausus" I cannot so easily excuse. They are, in deed, remotely allied to Virgil's sense; but they are too like the trifling tenderness of Ovid, and were printed before I had considered them enough to alter them. The first of them I have forgotten, and cannot easily retrieve, because the copy is at the press. The second is this,

When Lausus died, I was already slain.

This appears pretty enough at first sight; but I am convinced, for many reasons, that the expression is too bold. That Virgil would not have said it, though Ovid would. The reader may pardon it, if he please, for the freeness of the confession; and instead of that, and the former, admit these two

uel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S., from his MS. Cypher in the Pepysian Library, with a Life and Notes by Richard, Lord Braybrooke; deciphered with Additional Notes by the Rev. Mynors Bright, M.A., President and Senior Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Bickers and Son, 1875, 6 vols. med. 8vo, containing about one-third fresh and unpublished matter.

for minute information concerning ancient man"If quitting the broad path of history, we seek ners and customs, the progress of arts and sciences, and the various branches of antiquity, we have never seen so rich a mine as the volumes before us. The variety of Pepys's tastes and pursuits led him into almost every department of life."-SIR WALTER SCOTT: (London) Quarterly Rev., xxxiii. 308.

"Of very great interest and curiosity."-LORD JEFFREY: Edin. Rev., xliii. 26.

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON IN 1665. September 20th. To Lambeth. But, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets! and, which is worse than all, the duke showed us the number of the plague this week, brought in the last night from the Lord Mayor; that it is increased about 600 more than the last, which is quite contrary to our hopes and expectations, from the coldness of the late season. For the whole general number is 8297, and of them the plague 7165; which is more in the whole by above 50 than the biggest bill yet: which is very grievous on us all.

October 16th. I walked to the Tower; but, Lord! how empty the streets are and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores; and so many sad

stories overheard as I walk, everybody talking of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that. And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead; but that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week: God send it!

29th. In the streets did overtake and almost run upon two women crying and carrying a man's coffin between them; I suppose the husband of one of them, which, methinks, is a sad thing.

November 27th. I into London, it being dark night, by a hackney-coach; the first I have durst to go in many a day, and with great pain now for fear. But it being unsafe to go by water in the dark and frosty cold, and unable, being weary with my morning walk, to go on foot, this was my only way. Few people yet in the streets, nor shops open, here and there twenty in a place almost though not above five or six o'clock at night.

30th. Great joy we have this week in the weekly bill, it being come to 544 in all, and but 333 of the plague, so that we are encouraged to get to London as soon as we

can.

January 5th. I with my Lord Brouncker and Mrs. Williams, by coach with four horses to London, to my Lord's house in Covent Garden. But, Lord! what staring to see a nobleman's coach come to town; and porters everywhere bow to us; and such begging of beggars! And delightful it is to see the town full of people again; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut; but yet the town is full compared with what it used to be; I mean the city end; for Covent Garden and Westminster are yet very empty of people, no court nor gentry being there.

13th. Home with his lordship to Mrs. Williams's in Covent Garden, to dinner (the first time I ever was there), and there met Captain Coke: and pretty merry, though not perfectly so, because of the fear that there is of a great increase again of the plague this week.

people have been buried of the plague. I
was much troubled at it, and do not think
to go through it again a good while.
Diary.

JOHN LOCKE,

the Human Understanding, Lond., 1690, the famous author of An Essay concerning fol., and of other works,-philosophical, theological, political, etc., was born 1632, and died 1704. The last, being the 12th, collective edition of his Works was published, Lond., 1824, 9 vols. 8vo. Philosophical Works, with a Preliminary Essay and Notes by J. A. St. John, Lond., 1843, 8vo, and again 1854, 2 vols. 8vo.

"His phraseology, though in general careless acteristical unity and raciness of style which demonand unpolished, has always the merit of that charstrate that, while he was writing, he conceived himself to be drawing only from his own resources. With respect to his style, it may be further observed that it resembles that of a well

educated and well-informed man of the world,

rather than that of a recluse student who had made an object of the art of composition. . . . It may be presumed to have contributed its share towards his great object of turning the thoughts of his contemporaries to logical and metaphysical inquiries."-DUGALD STEWART: First Prelim. Dissert. to Encyc. Brit., 7th ed., i. 104.

"Locke and [Adam] Smith chose an easy, clear, and free, but somewhat loose and verbose, style,more concise in Locke, more elegant in Smith,in both exempt from pedantry, but not void of ambiguity and repetition."-SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH: Works, Lond., 1854, i. 309.

CAUSE OF WEAKNESS IN MEN'S UNDER

STANDING.

There is, it is visible, great variety in men's understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between some men in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master; and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily attain unto. Amongst men of equal education there is a great inequality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of Athens, produce men 22d. The first meeting of Gresham Col- of several abilities in the same kind. Though lege since the plague. Dr. Goddard did fill this be so, yet I imagine most men come very us with talk in defence of his and his fellow-short of what they might attain unto in their physicians going out of town in the plague time; saying that their particular patients were most gone out of town, and they left at liberty; and a great deal more, &c.

30th. This is the first time that I have been in the church since I left London for the plague, and it frighted me indeed to go through the church more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyards, where

several degrees by a neglect of their understandings. A few rules of logic are thought sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the highest improvement; whereas I think there are a great many natural defects in the understanding capable of amendment which are overlooked and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive that men are guilty of a great many faults in the exercise and improvement of this faculty of the

enough on what is before it, to look into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post through a country may be able, from the transient

in it without perceiving how; and this is attributed solely to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never car-view, to tell in general how the parts lie, ries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster-hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court.

To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference so observable in men's understandings and parts does not arise so much from the natural faculties as acquired habits? He would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past fifty. And he will not have much better success who shall endeavour at that age to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a coherent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists.

This being so, that defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, who if you reason with them about matters of religion appear perfectly stupid.

INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN STUDY. The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after knowledge, if not warily regulated, is often a hindrance to it. It still presses into farther discoveries and new objects, and catches at the variety of knowledge, and therefore often stays not long

and may be able to give some loose description of here a mountain and there a plain, here a morass and there a river; woodland in one part and savannahs in another. Such superficial ideas and observations as these he may collect in galloping over it; but the more useful observations of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and properties, must necessarily escape him; and it is seldom men ever discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasures and jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labour and thought, and close contemplation, and not leave it until it has mastered the difficulty and got possession of truth. But here care must be taken to avoid the other extreme: a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries of science in every trivial question or scruple that he may raise. He that will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way, is as unlikely to return enriched and laden with jewels as the other that travelled full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes; and those that enlarge our view, and give light towards further and useful discoveries, should not be neglected, though they stop our course, and spend most of our time in a fixed attention.

There is another haste that does often and will mislead the mind, if it be left to itself and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it skip over one to get speedily to another part of knowledge), but also eager to enlarge its views by running too fast into general observations and conclusions, without a due examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies, not realities; such theories, built upon narrow foundations, stand but weakly, and if they fall not themselves, are at least very hardly to be supported against the assaults of opposition. And thus men, being too hasty to erect to themselves general notions and ill-grounded theories, find themselves deceived in their stock of knowledge, when they come to examine their hastily assumed maxims themselves, or to have them attacked