Of his Beauty of Angelica,' a complete analyfis, with fpecimens fuffi, ciently copious, may foon be expect, ed in a promifed work upon Spain and Portugal. His Dragontea is very bad. It is reported, that Mr Polwhele has likewife chofen Sir Francis Drake, as the fubject of an epic poem. Sir Francis Drake was a good failor; he makes a very refpectable figure in the naval history of England; but he is but a forry hero for the poet! A privateer is only a legalized pirate, which old Fuller calls the devil's water rat, and the worst kind of fea vermin. Diogo de Soufa, in his celebrated fatire called The Journey of Diogo Camacho to Parnaffus, has made a happy allufion to the rivalry of Lope de Vega with Taffo, and his lamentable inferiority. Camacho calls on the Spanish poet to beg a letter of introduction to. Apollo. Lope replies : My father for Arcadia is departing, (Where I have been myself,) and he fhall there, Nor truft yourfelf in Paleftine unmask'd And heedlefs; for the very children fay, That, as Torquato did enrich those parts, So you have ruin'd them. His comedies are faid to delineate characters well, and faithfully to reprefent the manners of the age he lived in. This commendation they could not have obtained without, in fome degree, meriting it; and there. is a liveliness in the lighter pieces of Lope de Vega, which fhows him best qualified for fuch fubjects. He himfelf excufes his total neglect of all dramatic rules, by alledging the taste of the age, I have written better (fays he ;) but feeing what monftrous productions pleafe the women and the mob, I have locked up all my precepts, and turned Plautus and Terence out of my library.Surely it is just that, as the public pay, the public fhould be pleased," A childish and ridiculous defence, which deferves not a refutation! The burlefque pieces of this univerfal author were published by him, under the name of "The Licentiate Thome de Burguillois, perhaps, becaufe he thought them little confonant to his ecclefiaftical character; perhaps, because he was afhamed of a fpecies of poetry fo defpicable.An Ode to a Flea was printed in one of thofe works to which he affixed his name, but never avowed himself to be the author of it. The editor of the Parnaffo Efpanol, calls it a witty and ingenious compofition; it difplays, however, little ingenuity, and lefs wit. The poet tells the Flea where he goes, and what he feeds upon, and calls him a greater turk than Amurath, because he spares nobody. The Spanish poets appear to have been little envious of each other's reputation. In his Laurel de Apolo, his contemporaries; and poems of Lope de Vega has liberally praised the fame nature have been compofed by Gil Polo, Vicente Efpinel, and the great Cervantes. They fatirized each other's faults, but they họneftly allowed each other's merits; the abilities of Lope de Vega and of Gongora were acknowledged by thofe who moft ftrongly exposed the careleffnefs of the one, and the affection of the other. I have read nearly two hundred of his fonnets. As might be expected, many of them contain parts that are beautiful; none of them are per One of the characters in Lope de Vega's Arcadia. fect fect as wholes. The following is a let it be remembered, that he never fair specimen : way; To build gay fabrics in the baseless air; To link defpairing; nor regret defpair; All ill-expecting, not to hope for good; On the 25th of August 1635, died Lope de Vega, in his 73d year of his age; full of honours as of days. If not the best of poets, he was the moft fortunate; the wealth he acquired rendered him happy in life, and the ufe he made of it cheered him in death. He died honoured by the great, celebrated by the learned, and regretted by the poor. His reputation ftill flourishes in his own country; and though the impartial judgment of foreigners cannot rank his productions above mediocrity, A was excelled in industry as an author, or in liberality as a man. The following fonnet may serve to fhow in what eftimation he was held by his co-temporaries: it is by Antonio Barbofa Bacellar, written in Spanish-but a complete fpecimen of Portuguese tafte: V ANECDOTES OF PERSONS CONNECTED WITH THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. [Continued from page 442 of our laf Vol.] General Dampierre, FRIEND to equality, though in poffeffion of a large fortune; and a determined Republican, tho' the title of Count had been handed down to him by a long feries of anceftors. He prayed for the revolution, while the old government was yet in the plenitude of its power; and hailed it when it came and fwept away the privileges and the diftinétions he enjoyed. Two or three years before the convocation of the States General, he was captain in the regiment of Chartres, of which M. de Valence was Major. At that time the mouth T. Y. of the Baftile was always open to receive the perfons of rank who opened their's too freely; but, in fpite of its terrors, and of the remonfrances of their brother officers, both Dampierre and the Major were' loud in the praife of freedom, and liberal of invective against the abuses of government, not only at the regi mental mefs, but in companies more public ftill. The emigration that took place at an early part of the revolution enfured a rapid promotion to every friend of freedom, and to every man of talent, who stood faft by his co lours, lours. Dampierre, accordingly, foon rofe to the rank of major-general (maréchal de camp) and in that quality commanded the vanguard of Dumourier's army, at the battle of Gemappe. The attack of the village of that name fell to his fhare; and there it was that the action was the most defperate and deftructive. By the boldness of his attack, and by the coolness with which he formed his battalions of national guards, ander a moft furious and fleady fire from the veteran legions of Auftria, he acquired the praise of courage, and of military skill-a praise he lays claim to, in his printed Relation of the Conduct of the Vanguard, with a frankness, which would be vanity in any one but a Frenchman. "How much I wished you there," fays he, apostrophifing Sirven, his mafter of tactics," to witnefs the regularity and precision with which I reduced my columns, and formed my line, in the prefence of the enemy.' Unfeduced by the example of his old comrade, Valence, who joined Dumourier in his attempt to march to Paris, and in his fubfequent flight, Dampierre adhered firmly to the principles he profeffed; did not defpair of the Republic; and exerted himself in restoring order and confidence to the army, with a zeal and diligence that deferved, and obtain ed the chief command. He did not enjoy it long. At the battle or rather at the retreat of Famars, he adventured so near to the enemy, for the purpose of reconnoitring, that he was marked out as a diftinguished perfonage by the English gunners, and was ftruck with a cannon fhot, which carried away his thigh. He furvived it but a few hours, and breathed his last figh in wishes for the fafety of the Republic. There was fomething uncommon in the compofition of Dampierre's body and mind. His complexion was faturnine; his difpofition fanguine in the extreme: he was corpulent and heavy in his perfon; in his manner and converfation he was more lively even than Frenchmen generally are, though fubject at the fame time to mental abfences, which, even in a thoughtful Englishman, would have appeared ridiculous and strange. His principles of liberty he drew from England, and English books; and spoke and wrote our language with tolerable ease. Dampierre's fate ought to excite no regret in the bofoms of his friends, He died the death of a foldier. Had he lived to fee the reign of Robefpierre, the first reverse of fortune he might have met with, added to the original fin of noble birth, would, no doubt, have conveyed him, like a felon, to the fcaffold. Boiffy d'Anglas. The reprefentative, Boiffy d'Anglas, was of the order of the ci-devant nobleffe, and voted uniformly with that patriotic minority of the nobles, which acted in union and concert with the tiers-état. His reputation began to rife confiderably, about the time when the first National Affembly was verging to its close, in confequence of his eloquent and fpirited obfervations on Calonne's work, "On the present and future State of France," and his mafterly Reply to a Publication of the celebrated Raynal. Under the government of Robef pierre and Danton, Boiffy d'Anglas made no very prominent figure, being thrown, as it were, into the background of the tableau. Ever fince the 9th of Thermidor, however, he has had occafion to act grand and important parts. His political and economical Reports, prefented at intervals to the Convention, in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, difplay unusual vigour and boldness of conception, combined with a fuperior elegance of manner: his fentiments on the expedieney or inexpediency of restoring the Belgic Provinces to the Houfe of Auftria, unfold the deepest political views. He is generally reputed to be the prime mover and author of the exifting conftitution of 1795, infomuch that the Jacobins, who are bigotedly attached to the conftitution of 1793, do not scruple to ftyle that of 1795 the Patrician Conflitution of d'Anglas. lime and ardent genius, to maintain the first rank among polifhed focieties; a people living on the most fertile territory in Europe, poffeffing extenfive colonies, and commercial eftablishments in Afia, Africa, and America. "It is our duty, therefore, to organize for fuch a people, not the means of poverty, but plenty-not to inftruct them in the things they ought to part with, but to show them what, and in what manner, they are to cnjoy." Boiffy d'Anglas is in the 36th year of his age. General Lefebvre For fome time, a report was very current at Paris, that Boiffy, in the Committee of Legiflation, had expreffed an opinion favourable to the appointment of a perpetual President of the Executive Directory :-This circumftance rendered him for a time is reprefented by his enemies, with unpopular, drew on him the fufpicion of being a fecret Royalift, and even occafioned his being denounced in a general committee. In 1794, Boiffy publifhed a work, greatly admired for its beauty and energy, under the modeft title of "Certain Ideas on the Arts." The following paffage may ferve, in fome degree, to throw light on the philo. fophical fyftem planned and adopted in his mind ;—" We fhould be enlightened with regard to the extent of our duties, our power, our means; let us calculate the quantum of our ftrength and riches, and then confider the end which we ought to have in view. Let us ftill keep in mind, that it is not a new people that we are called to organize that it is not a few tribes dispersed here and there over uncultivated regions, without opulence, industry, luxury, great cities, and great establishments-but that it is an old nation,whofe regeneration we are ambitious to operate. It is a mass of active and enlightened individuals, to whom industry has become a want, luxury a natural paffion, and knowledge a neceffity. It is a people prompted by their fub the crime of having been born in a cottage. God knows that this must have been involuntary, at leaft, on his part! But, in imitation of Marius, when the Roman nobility boafted of the ftatues of their ancestors, he too may open his bofom, and exhibit his honeft fcars, by way of a reply. Destined for the army, Lefebvre rose to a halbert, and would have ftopped for ever, at this point in the mufter-roll, under the ancient order of things: without either patronage, friends, family, or title; without any thing but talents to back his pretenfions, he would have been worn out in the fervice, and pined away the latter part of a miferable existence (had death, famine, and fatigue spared him fo long) in a jail or an hofpital. In confequence of a revolution, wonderful in all its parts, the quondam drill-ferjeant has diftinguished him. felf confiderably, more especially on the late paffage of the Rhine. The man, who made himself a general, was oppofed by a prince, who was born one! His Highnefs had learned to dance, and, unfortunately for him, is faid to have been actually practifing * * The young prince de W. a general in the Imperial Army. practising a pas de deux, at a ball, the very moment that Lefebvre was beat ing up his quarters! The Aulic council of war would have instantly broken an untitled fubaltern, and chained him, perhaps, like poor Trenck, in a dungeon, 10 feet by 6; but exalted rank, and high blood, must be dealt differently with; his ferenity, therefore, has a jocular kind of punishment affigned him; for being known to be attached to the Pyrick measure of the ancients, he has been ordered, if we are to credit the foreign journals, to dance all the way to Vienna ! Treillard was. bred to the bar, and practifed with fome degree of reputation, in the ancient courts. He foon found, however, that the grants, and the zealots of kingly power: "Jurons, le glaive en main ! jurons a la patrie, De conferver toujours l'égalité chérie, De vivre & d'efêprer pour elle, & pour nos droits, Devonger l'univers opprimé par les rois." On their try'd fwords, a conqu'ring people swear, The rights of equal order to revere; T'enjoy, and hope the bleffings freedom brings, And vindicate mankind, opprefs'd by kings. The fame thing was actually faid and done in this country, during the last century, when, after the Execu tion of Charles I. his ftatues were pulled down, and the following infcription placed on the pedestal: Exit tyrannus, regum ultimus!" "Vera lex, recta ratio, natura con- all Europe, who owned his feelings to And yet there was not a prince in gruens," of Cicero, was not known there. Money, patronage, beautiful women, the protection of Versailles, were all played off before the Parliament of Paris, and thofe of the provinces, against a good caufe, when accompanied by poverty. Procraftination, in the first inftance, and too frequently injustice in the last, enfued; and these consequences inevitably led to another, in the shape of diffaffection, which, when arrived at a certain height, became one of the predispofing caufes to produce in that, as it will finally in all countries, a revo. lution. Treillard, like many others, fuffered himself to be carried away with the ftream, and on the last anniverfary of the execution of Louis XVI. administered, as President of the Legislative Body, the oath, for the perpetual exclufion of royalty from France, and its utter abhorrence there. The following ftanza has been oudly cenfured, both by the emiEd. Mag. Jan. 1797. be hurt by the pointed declamation of our ancestors, against the kingly office; not did a fingle fword " leap out of its scabbard" to vindicate regal dignity! Gregoire, the conftitutional bishop of Blois, is celebrated for his various and profound literature, and the urbanity of his manners: he is, in brief, allowed to be one of the most accomplished men that fit in the circle of French Legislators. The firft notices of him are traced to a village, near Nanci, in Lorrain, in which he was the care; and where, in fpite of the obfcurity of his ftation, the fame of his learning and probity had already procured him an uncommon refpect, and extenfive publicity of character. At the time of the convocation of the Etats Généraux, in 1789, Gregoire could not remain longer in retirement;-his talents and the public favour obtained for him a place in that auguft and honourable affembly. Since his début on the stage of G public |