Elegy, which the public will, I trust, think no way inferior to the former two. There was also an interesting little Memoir subjoined to the lines on the late Mr. Hoppner, written, as it appears, by a common friend, and bearing marks of feeling and just discrimination. To the whole, I have added the Epistle to Peter Pindar, which has been long out of print. It is said that the motto to the first edition of the Baviad was, nunc in ovilia, Mox in reluctantes dracones : If Peter was one of these reluctant serpents, the Author did not threaten in vain; since this vigorous attack drove him into that obscurity from which, for the peace of society, he was destined never more to emerge. September 1st, 1810. S. TIPPER. INTRODUCTION. IN 1785, a few English of both sexes,* whom chance had jumbled together at Florence, took a fancy to while away their time in scribbling highflown panegyrics on themselves, and complimentary "canzonnettas" on two or three Italians,† who * Among whom I find the names of Mrs. Piozzi, Mr. Greathead, Mr. Merry, Mr. Parsons, &c. + Mrs. Piozzi has since published a work on what she is pleased to call BRITISH SYNONIMES: the better, I suppose, to enable these foreign gentlemen to comprehend her multifarious erudition. 66 Though no one better knows his own house" than I the vanity of this woman; yet the idea of her undertaking such a work had never entered my head; and I was thunderstruck when I first saw it announced. To execute it with any tolerable degree of success, required a rare combination of talents, among the least of which may be [x] understood too little of the language in which they were written, to be disgusted with them. In this there was not much harm; nor, indeed, much good: but, as folly is progressive, they soon wrought themselves into an opinion that the fine things were really deserved, which they mutually said and sung of each other. Thus persuaded, they were unwilling that their inimitable productions should be confined to the numbered neatness of style, acuteness of perception, and a more than common accuracy of discrimination; and Mrs. Piozzi brought to the task, a jargon long since become proverbial for its vulgarity, an utter incapability of defining a single term in the language, and just as much Latin from a child's Syntax, as sufficed to expose the ignorance which she so anxiously labours to conceal. "If such a one be fit to write on SYNONIMES, speak." Pignotti himself, laughs in his sleeve; and his countrymen, long since undeceived, prize the lady's talents at their true worth, Et centum Tales* curto centusse licentur.t * Quere Thrales? PRINTER'S DEVIL. + Thus translated by Mr. Bulmer's devil; (the young gentleman who furnished the conjectural emendation above, which is highly spoken of by the German critics :) And, for a clipt half-crown, expose to sale, little circle which produced them; they therefore transmitted them hither; and, as their friends were strictly enjoined not to shew them, they were first handed about the town with great assiduity, and then sent to the press. A short time before the period of which we speak, a knot of fantastic coxcombs, headed by one Este, had set up a daily paper called the WORLD.* It was perfectly unintelligible, and therefore much read : it was equally lavish of praise and abuse, (praise of what appeared in its own columns, and abuse of every thing that appeared elsewhere,) and as its conductors were at once ignorant and conceited, they took upon themselves to direct the taste of the town, by prefixing a short panegyric to every trifle which came before them. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that Yendas, and Laura Marias, and Tony Pasquins, have long * In this paper were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified, and audacious attacks on all private character; which the town first smiled at for their quaintness; then tolerated for their absurdity; and now- -that other papers equally wicked, and more intelligible, have ventured to imitate it,—will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty. claimed a prescriptive right to infest our periodical publications but as the Editors of them never pretended to critise their harmless productions, they were merely perused, laughed at, and forgotten. A paper, therefore, which introduced their trash with hyperbolical encomiums, and called upon the town to admire it, was an acquisition of the utmost importance to these poor people, and naturally became the grand depository of their lucubrations. At this auspicious period the first cargo of poetry arrived from Florence, and was given to the public through the medium of this favoured paper. There was a specious brilliancy in these exotics which dazzled the native grubs who had never ventured beyond a sheep, and a crook, and a rose-tree grove, with an ostentatious display of "blue hills," and "crashing torrents," and "petrifying suns!"* * Here Mr. Parsons is pleased to advance his farthing rush-light. "Crashing torrents and petrifying suns are ex"tremely ridiculous”—habes confitentem! "but they are not "to be found in the Florence Miscellany." Who said, they were? But àpropos of the Florence Miscellany. Mr. Parsons says, that I obtained a copy of it by a breach of confidence; and seems to fancy, "good easy man!" that I derived |