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of fire; and, during his residence with Mr. Robinson, kept a rope-ladder in his bed-room, which (p. 189) he would frequently put suddenly out of his window, and descend. At one time, he used to practise himself daily in running up and down this ladder, carrying a small box, or trunk, which contained his five ma nuscript volumes, and was always placed on his window, ready for any emergency. As the hour of repeating this experiment was twelve at noon, spectators frequently assembled to witness his dexterity, which was not excelled by any metropolitan lamp-lighter.

He made great use of a bilbao-catch,* or ivory cup and spike, to which a ball was suspended. Every man, said he one day, (p. 141) has some great object which he wishes to accomplish, and why

should not I have mine? I will choose such a one as no mortal being ever yet chose, and which no one less than the gods would ever think of attempting. I will get a bilbao-catch, and I will catch the ball on the spiked end, six hundred and sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six times." This object he at length accomplished; he usually caught

the ball about two hundred times run

ning, and then laid it aside; his reckoning was kept with nuts, one of which represented a hundred.

Fransham was averse to dogs, and fond of cats. The latter years of his life (p. 149) were cheered by the habitual attention and weekly hospitality of Mr. W. Stark, to whose library I have been indebted for the use of several of Fransham's books, but whose modesty had concealed from me that they were the gifts of gratitude.

Many other minute particulars might be added to the account formerly given: these have struck the as the omissions most to be regretted. For the extracts from Frausham's writings, your readers are referred to the work of Mr. Saint.

Bayle, in his Dictionary, observes, that the consistent student of Spinoza would become a polytheist; he had anticipated a form of mind, which the course of nature was to realise in Fransham. Among the scholastic philosophers, occurs the name of Alexander Epicureus, whose opinions are thus described by Albertus (Phys. Tract. 3, 13): Alexander

*Mr. Saint hesitates between spelling bilver-catch, or bilbo-catch; the invention is said to have come hither from Bilbao, in Spain, and thence to have its name.

Epicureus dixit, deum esse materia omnia essentialiter esse deum: et deum appellavit aliquando Jovem quando Apollinem, et aliquando Pall et formas esse peplum Palladis, et i Jovis; et neminem sapientum, aieba plenum revelare posse ea quæ lateban peplo Palladis, et sub veste Jopis. I separate personification of the pow nature, and in the classification of under the names of pagan diviniti great analogy may be traced with march of Fransham's mind.

At a meeting of the United F a Norwich society distinguished bot science and beneficence, a biogra relation was read in remembranc Fransham.

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fected limbs, then use a soft brush infused with train oil, and give the limbs so cleansed a good dressing. Renew this three or four times in the course of a month, always selecting a dry day and

warm sun.

You will find the tree renovate, the insects destroyed, and the cracks in the bark fill up and adhere to the wood; for at the same time that the viscous oil is noxious to the insects, it is nourishing to the bark and limbs of the tree, penetrates the cracks which engenders the insects, and, aided by the heat of the sun, effectually destroys them.

In addition to this remedy, were large cankered places are found in the tree, cut them clean out, and fill the chasm with Foresyth's composition.

Should Mr. Collett find my suggestions useful, I will thank him, for my satisfaction and the public good, to gratify, through your medium, W. W.

Clapton, Jan. 10th, 1812. N.B. Under every tree so treated, sweep clean up whatever may have fallen in a heap, then cover it with damp leaves, hay, &c. and, after sprinkling it with brimstone, set it on fire to consume by degrees, stirring it occasionally.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

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the liberty to give it as my opinion that the Gansaws, or Gangaws, which he supposes to be instruments formerly used for flying, were nothing more than the "Ganzas," or Geese, of Domingo Gonsales, with which, he asserts (in the true strain of Baron Munchausen,) that he made a voyage to the moon. This book 1 remember to have read, with delight, at that age when the renowned adven tures of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant killer were our principal literary treats; the book I believe is now scarce. The exclamation quoted by your correspondent might be taken for a burlesque on the following: "O! that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away and be at rest!" But the date of the dialogues, from which it is taken, corresponds with the time in which aerial excursions were arduously wished for and attempted; and, though success was reserved for a future age, it was said that the art of flying would at some time be so familiar that it would become as common to hear a man ask for his wings as it was to hear him call for his boots. That great genius, Dr. Wilkins,

who died 1672, projected "the Art of Flying," and maintained the possibility of a voyage to the moon: to which the dutchess of Newcastle made this objec tion: Doctor, where am I to find a place for baiting at, in the way up to that planet? Madam, said he, of all the people in the world I never expected that ques tion from you, who have built so many castles in the air, that you may lie every night at one of your own.

From that time to the present it ap pears the bold experimentalists had never wholly lost their hopes of success, And I well remember, that my father once put into my hands, as a curiosity worth preserving, an old almanack by Moore, in which was foretold the year when a man would be seen to raise himself into the clouds; and certain it was, that at that time Lunardi's ascension in his balloon had confirmed the prognostic!

And the ultimate success of this extraordinary and astonishing art should be recollected by those who are disposed to ridicule every bold speculation, or to obstruct the career of science. Lambeth Marsh, J. M. FLINDALL. Dec. 10, 1811.

For the Monthly Magazine.

CRITICAL REMARKS on SHAKESPEARE.
HAMLET.-Act I. Sc. 1.

[Enter Bernardo and Francisco, twa
centinels.]

HESE two centinels, as they are Tcalled, were no doubt designed by the poet for officers on guard, and of distinction, as appears from their intimacy with Horatio and Marcellus, who might indeed with equal propriety' be styled centinels themselves, for Bernardo calls them "the rivals of his watch." The phase therefore which gave so much offence to M. Voltaire, "Not a mouse stirring," ought not to have been defended by Lord Kames, on the ground of the meanness or vulgarity of the speaker. Nevertheless it would certainly be no improvement of this easy and familiar opening dialogue to substitute any thing equivalent to the critic's pompous "Mais tout dort, et l'armée, et les vents, et Neptune."

"By rivals of the watch," Sir Thomas Hanmer says, "are meant those who were to watch on the next adjoining ground. Rivals, in the original sense of the word, being," he observes, "proprie tors of neighbouring lands parted only by a brook." Shakespeare, however, had

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"Hamlet perhaps alludes," says Dr. Johnson, "to the proverb, 'out of heaven's blessing into the warm sun."" I perceive no such allusion. Hamlet means only to give a slight and contemptuous reply to the question put to him by the king, "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" And the accidental circumstance of the sun then shining upon Hamlet, as we are necessarily led to suppose, furnishes him with this evasive answer; and it is the only notice he deigns to take of the king throughout the whole scene; the first speech, which is much in the same spirit, being spoken aside.

Ham. What, looked he frowningly? Hor. A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. Ibid, Sc. 2. Nevertheless Horatio's first impression seems to have been different.

So frown'd he once when in an angry parle He smote the sleaded Polaque on the ice.

What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff,
That beetles o'er its base into the sea;
The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive into every brain,
That looks so many fathom to the sea,
And hears it roar beneath..

Ibid, Se. 4.

By toys, in this terrific description, are meant the sudden suggestions of caprice, whims or freaks. So Friar Lawrence, when he delivers the fatal phial to Juliet, tells her "this shall free thee, if no inconstant toy abate thy valour." The idea of the poet is well illustrated by a passage in Montagne, who relates that, when he had, with great danger and difficulty, climbed to the summit of one of the Alps, standing at the brink of the preci

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There is certainly some difficulty in ascertaining the precise idea of the poet respecting the character of Polonius. Dr. Warburton styles him "a weak pedant minister of state;" and the general tenor of his conduct and conversation prove this idea to be just. Yet the admonitions which he gives to his son, and the instructions to his servant, are excellent, and some of his occasional observations are those of a man of sense and knowledge. How is this paradox to be reconciled? Dr. Warburton thinks "all that is valuable in the conversation of Polonius to have been borrowed from books and delivered from imperfect recollection. In the dialogue with Reynaldo, his memory does indeed suddenly fail him in the midst of his harangue: but this cannot go far in removing the difficulty. Dr. Johnson offers a more general solution in supposing Polonius to have been originally a man of good understanding and extensive observation, but that his faculties are impaired by age, and that the idea of dotage encroaching upon wisdom will solve all the phenomena of the character of Polonius." But the conclusions of this great critic do not, I think, afford that satisfaction which we require on this point. The character of Polonius is that of a man radically weak, vain, and self-confident. The dotage or the folly of Polonius does not encroach upon wisdom, for this supposition would make wisdom the basis of the character, But the difficulty arises from the encroachment of wisdom upon folly; a degree of wisdom absolutely imcompatible with the predominance of intellectual imbecility. I fear we must after all admit some incongruity in the delineation of this highly colored dramatic portrait. Possibly Shakespeare, from the accession of new ideas, deviated in some degree from his original design, and declined the task of altering what he had already been at the trouble to write, when he meant to give more respectability to the part.

Ham. "The play I remember pleased not the million, 'twas caviare to the general; but it was as I received it, and others whose judgments in such matters cried in the top of mine, an excellent play, well digested in the scenes, set

down

down with as much modesty as cunning. I remember one said there was no salt in the lines to make the matter savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might indite the author of affection, but called it an honest method as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more handsome than fine."-Ibid, ib,

Dr. Johnson proposes to read, "But I called it an honest method, &c." This I think clearly erroneous. The critic who said there was no salt in the lines, &c. was not one of the million, but of those whose judgments Hamlet preferred to his own. This man of discernment acknowledged that there was no high-seasoned ribaldry in this piece to gratify the taste of the vulgar, nor no fashionable jargon to convict the author of affection, that is, affectation or false refinement. But he pronounced it "an honest method as wholesome as sweet, and by very much

Act IV. Sc. 7.

play-house copies, there can be no doubt but that much of the trash now to be found in them was surreptitiously introduced. Richard Tarleton, the famous comedian, as we are informed by Stowe, was particularly admired for "a wondrous plentiful, pleasant, extemporal, wit." STOWE, p. 697. edit. 1615. Nature is fine in love, and, where 'tis fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves. Laertes expresses his wonder that a young maid's wits should be as mortal as low, he aims at something like a solution an old man's life. In the lines that fol of this difficulty, by observing, "that nasometimes carries love or affection to a ture is fine in love," &c. that is, nature degree of exquisite refinement or sensi bility: and where that is the case it com monly gives some precious mark or evi

dence of its love. Thus Ophelia has sacrificed her reason as a proof or pledge of the ardor of her affeetion. Such seems to be the meaning of this obscure passage, which perhaps, also, agreeably to the conjecture of Dr. Warburton, Tokens." may involve in it an allusion to "Love

1st Clown. Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully seeks her own salvation?

more handsome than fine," that is, a method consonant to propriety, as instructive as it was pleasing, and characterised much more by simple elegance than meretricious embellishment. Dr. Warburton, in his long note, or rather dissertation, on this passage, has, amid many eccentricities, sufficiently proved, in opposition to Dryden and Pope, that the praises of Hamlet are by no means ironical, but very serious, and, as he thinks, very just. But, as to this last point, the world will, I imagine, continue The to think with Dryden and Pope. It has been conjectured, not without probability, that "the gentle Shakespeare" took this method of consoling some friend who had made an unsuccessful attempt in

the drama.

Act III. Se. 2.-"Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some ne cessary question of the play be then to be considered; that's villainous, and shews a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."

It appears that the practice which so strongly and justly excited the indignation of Shakespeare was a very common one, and, as none of Shakespeare's plays were printed under his own inspection, or probably from any other than the

So, in Twelfth Night, Malvolio is styled "an affectioned ass." And, in Love's Labour Lost, Nathaniel tells the Pedant, "that his reasons have been witty without affection."

2d

Clown. I tell thee she is, therefore make crowner hath sat on her and finds it her grave straight,

Christian burial.

Make her grave immediately, is the first and most obvious sense of this phrase. Thus in Act III. Sc. 4, of this play, Polo nius says, of Hamlet, "He will come straight." But Dr. Johnson is of opinion that it means, "Make her grave from east to west, in a line parallel to the church. This interpretation receives considerable countenance from a passage in Cymbeline, Act IV. Sc. 2, where Gui❤ derius says, at the obsequies of Fidele, "Nay, Cadwal, we must lay his head to the east-my father hath a reason for it.”

The tragedy of Hamlet is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare; the excellencies of it are nume rous and striking; yet few of his plays lie more open to critical animadversion, The three first acts are confessedly not inferior to the noblest productions of his Muse; but in relation to the two last acts we may justly exclaim, "O what a falling off is there!" Yet, amidst the radical absurdities of the conduct and manage ment of the fable, we meet with many passages,

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passages, and even entire scenes, exqui sitely beautiful. "Of the feigned mad. ness of Hamlet there appears, as Dr. Johnson has observed, "no adequate cause his treatment of Ophelia is useless and wanton cruelty. After he has convicted the king, he makes no proper attempt to punish him. And though,, at the awful injunction of his father's ghost, he undertakes in the most solemn manner to avenge his murder, he yet fails to keep his word; and the death of the king at last springs from the desire of avenging his own and not his father's quarrel. The assassination of Polonius, the consequent distraction and untimely end of Ophelia, the sanguinary sacrifice of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the unconscious instruments of the king's sinister purposes, the villainous treachery of Laertes, so opposite to our previous ideas of his character; the shocking behaviour of Hamlet at the grave of Ophelia, and the incidental circumstances attending her obsequies, including the far-famed scene of the grave-diggers; all these things are either grossly improbable or still more grossly offensive. Yet such is the magic of genius, that, while our judgmeut condemns, our feelings are deeply interested, and our admiration power. fully excited. The behaviour of Hamlet has been palliated by some, on the ground of his being represented as really disordered in his intellects. But nothing more seems intended by the poet than the portrait of a mind of extreme sensibility, incited by grief, indignation, resentment, and the ungoverned tempest of the passions, to the most wild and unjustifiable excesses. The moral is plain. In the prosecution of the most laudable ends the choice of the means ought to be strictly and uniformly attended to; and, in the words of Beaumont and Fletcher, as quoted by Mr. Steevens, in his judicious concluding remarks on this play:

Although his justice were as white as truth,

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"Fifteenth century the family of Brewse, who came in with the conque to follow his fortunes, resided here the 13 and 14th century. Brewse's Pedigree, H Also 2 vols. Manning raldry Office. Manning's History of Surry. Bookham."

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazin SIR,

I

AM induced, through your excelle publication, to draw the attention its readers to an institution, but a fe years formed, for the reformation criminals. The benefit the country ha already derived from it will, I trust, b deemed a sufficient excuse for my in truding it on their notice, as well as strong inducement to those who hav not given it their support, to do i readily.

This establishment, called the "Refug for the Destitute," was instituted in the year 1804, by a most respectable clergy man and magistrate, the Reverend Ed ward Whittaker, for the purpose of af fording an opportunity of reformation to

His way was crooked to it-that condemns the criminal, and relief to the distressed,

him."

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

N pulling down the south wing of this

by receiving within its walls, persons discharged from penal confinement, and others, who from loss of character cannot procure an honest maintenance, though willing to do so. necessity of such

Ivery ancient mansion, formerly inhas an institution had been long felt by the

bited by the family of the Brewse, who followed the fortune of the Conqueror from Normandy, some silver money was found; the pieces very thin, otherwise in fine prescrvation. King Phillip and Mary, commonly called Bloody Queen

1

considerate part of mankind, but none has ever been established, except the present, which, though wisely planned, might have failed, like many wise and benevolent schemes, had not the zealous founder met with others, whose perse

verance,

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