works of ivory, gold, silver, and other valuable materials. 86. Lord Charles Cavendish, F.R.S. brother to the Duke of Devonshire and uncle to the above Mrs. C. A gentleman of extensive knowledge in the sciences, and died 1780. Very old, 80, or upwards. 87. Her Grace Margaret Duchess of Portland, daughter to the Earl of Oxford, the great collector of books; died in August 1785, in her 70th year. She died of a complaint in her bowels. Her collections were sold, in thirty-eight days sale, on Monday the 24th of April 1786, and a catalogue in 4to. of it printed, price 5s. The natural history made by Mr. George Humphrey, and formed or corrected by the Rev. Mr. Lightfoot, her Grace's chaplain. Her heir and executors were her four children; the Duke; Lord George Bentinck; Lady Viscountess Weymouth; and the Countess of Stamford. The whole sale came to (not quite) 10,0001. 88. Dr. John Coakley Letisom. 89. Richard Kaye, F. R. S. Mus. Brit. Curator, D. D. &c. &c. 90. Rev. Mr. Thomas Matthews, a scientific and curious collector of natural history, especially of shells and native fossils; as gems, crystalli zations, and ores. Formerly of Faringdon in Berkshire. Most of his curious collections were sold at public auction at Greenwood's rooms, in Leicester-square, in 1785, under Mr. Martyns, trustee; and Mr. G. Humphrey, catalogue-maker. 91. Andrew Coltee Ducarel, LL.D. - of Doctors Commons, an indefatigable Antiquary. The sale of his li brary at Leigh's, for eight days, produced 9877. 18. 92. Sir Ashton Lever, knt. created so by George III. His library, sold by Leigh, produced 4347. 15s. his Holophusicon Museum at Leicester House was proved in 1783, before a Committee of the House of Commons, to be of the value of 53,000!. It was made afterwards in 1784 a lottery of, and the prize fell to Mr. Parkinson, who removed it from Leicester-square to Albion-place; and first opened as an exhibition Dec. 3, 1787, at 2s. 6d. a person. Last Thursday, 31 January 1788, died in Lancashire, Sir Ashton Lever, collector of the Museum, which, while his property, bore his name, and a monument of his name it will be to all posterity. He died while sitting on the bed of jus tice with his brother magistrates. 93. George Keate, esq. F. R. S. and F. S. A. barrister-at-law, also a good poet and painter. 94. Martyn Fonnereau, esq. 95. Mr. Peter Woulfe, F. R. S. 96. Philip Rashleigh, esq. M. P. for Fowey, Looe. Seat, Menabilly, Cornwall. 97. Samuel Ewer, esq. 98. Counsellor Thomas Griffin, of Lincoln's Inn, son to the Admiral of that name. His seat is at Hadnock, near Monmouth. Thick-set man, with extreme remarkable swelled legs, caused by an illness many years ago. A very intelligent and scientific collector of fossils, shells, &c. 99. Hon. Charles Francis Greville, F.R.S. brother to the Earl of Warwick. 100. Moses Harris, a famous entomologist, and miniature painter. 101. Daniel Charles Solander, M. D. 102. George Scolt, esq. LL. D. F. R.S. and A.S. F. a great Antiquary, not only of charters, leases, records, &c. but of matters or malerials of antiquity, such as coins, abbey seals, Roman lamps, and Etruscan ware; warlike instruments, as swords, daggers, pistols, helmets, savs, &c. other antient instruments; regalia watches, monuments, or sarcophagi, basalia, bronzes, idols, apparel, pictures, portraits, miniatures, and prints, and a numerous collection it was; some trivialities, as usual in such Antiquarian collections. The reserved part of the collection (so expressed in the catalogue) was sold by Mr. Gerard, in Litchfield-street, Soho, on Thursday and Friday, 4 and 5 July, 1782. He was, as well as I can guest, between 60 and 70, and died about a year before the sale, a widower with no children; lived some years in Crown-court, Westminster, but retired to his seat at Woolston Hall, in Essex, about 1768. A very humane and friendly gentleman, and communicative. He was nephew to the ce lebrated naturalist Dr. Derham, and published Mr. Ray's remains in 8vo. Mr. Scott was an Oxonian. 103. Henry Seymer, esq. of Handford, near Blandford, in Dorsetshire. See an account of this gentleman, his family, his collections, &c. Collectanea, vol. XII. p. 345 & seq. died about Christmas 1784, aged, I He imagine, 1812.] Literati, &c.-Cicero's "Old Age and Friendship." 517 imagine, about 70 or 74. His collections were sold at Hutchins's auction room, King-street, Covent-garden, in twelve days sale, Feb. 8-21, 1786. 104. Mr. Robert Chambers, a mason, who painted arms, flowers, fruits, Hebrew, and other characters on marbles; see my paper to Royal Society (not printed). A very curious person he was, a Gloucestershire man, and about 74 when he died. He painted or stained on marble several roses, exquisitely well, for me; and the blazoned arms of the present Duke of Norfolk on a marble slab for his Grace. 105. Mr. Henry Smeathman died on Saturday evening, 1st July 1786, of a (putrid) fever, at his lodgings No. 14, Cannon-street, just on his setting out for Africa, on a contract with Government. Mr. Drury informs me he was in his 42d year. 106. Friday, Feb. 1788, died at his house in Leicester-square,in a very advanced age, the celebrated James Stuart, esq. commonly distinguished by the appellation of Athenian Stuart: I am sorry to add that he has left the second volume of his Antiquities of Athens unfinished, though part of the work is printed, and many of the fine engravings actually executed; the loss the publick suffers, it is feared, will be irreparable. 107. Jac. Barettius, a very skil ful botanist, published "Descriptio et Icones variarum Plantarum per Galliam, Hispaniam, et Italiam observatarum, Paris, 1715, folio." *** In these Anecdotes the nature of the collections under some of the names is not mentioned, but this is a defect we cannot remedy.-In No. 4, p. 205, under Dubois, for Úraido, r. Waldo. upon their head. Had I taken a sufficient time to re-peruse what I have written, I might have confirmed some interpretations, and have given a greater degree of probability to some conjectures; I should possibly have qualified some assertions, which are too general; I should have made very considerable additions to the critical and the explanatory notes; I should have adopted a different arrangement of the work, and have endeavoured to adapt it better to the use of the Student, and to render it more worthy of the attention of the Scholar. Your Correspondent has well observed, that "the Latin language has not the attention paid to it which it so justly deserves:" I have long observed the fact; and it has been, and will continue to be, my humble endeavour to rouse the attention of the learned to this department of classical education; while they will find, on this very account, that the consideration of this tongue presents a greater field for the display of originality, aud a wider scope for the exercise of ingenuity; they may be assured that it will also enable them to open ampler stores of erudition; for I will venture to say that the Greek tongue is much better known than the Latin, and that the Greek authors are much better understood than the Latin. If my publication arrive at a second edition, I shall most gladly avail myself of some of the hints, which your Correspondent has thrown out for my consideration; and, in the mean time, I beg his leave to make some remarks upon a few of his strictures, in the same spirit of freedom with which he has written them. In the 441st page he asks,why I did not give some quotations from other authors, to prove the truth of my assertion, about onus gravius Aetna? I really should have been obliged to him to point out the sources, whence I might have derived them: none occurred to me at the time, and I have met with none since: it is to no purpose to cite instances of the phrase (I have, however, cited the only one which I have ever seen); what I wanted to discover was the origin of the phrase: I am not aware that I have been anticipated in my conjecture; but every commentator knows how unconsciously he often falls into the con discoveries of others. The liberal The instances cited in page 442, against my assertion, that scandere cannot govern an accusative case of itself, which is supported by examples, where the preposition is added, no more prove the opposite point, than the citation of examples of this phrase-he departed this life-would prove that the preposition from is not here understood. 66 Your Correspondent, in the same page, smiles at my remark that pæni tet is one of the verbs absurdly called impersonals, and says that he sees not the least absurdity in its being called impersonal:" he will, however, please to recollect that pœnitcre is used with a nominative in the older writers, as i could abundantly prove, if I had the proper books; and the same may be said of many other, of rather all the supposed impersonals: I am prepared to contend that in the phrases tonat, pluit, &c. there is a nominative understood, and it is well known that Zeug us sometimes occurs in the Greek writers; but I shall, upon this subject, say much at another opportunity. Your Correspondent says, in page 442, that Palairet's name appears much too often in my notes: as I intend my little work to lay the foundation for a new and a philosophical method of teaching a more radical knowledge of the Latin language than is taught at present, I wish to direct the attention of the Student to the ellipses of the Latin language, which I have myself diligently studied, and in which the great difficulty of learning the dead languages appears, to me at least, to consist: a profound knowledge of ellipses will render superfluous to the memory a thousand rules, which are delivered to his pupils by every mas ter of a school: fortunately, at least in some respects, I was not, as your Correspondent seems to know (page 442), educated at one of our great public schools; and hence I have had the fewer grammatical prejudices to combat upon such points, and my mind has been more open to admit the most satisfactory hypotheses, for which I have been obliged to search myself through a great diversity of publications, and which I have been sometimes obliged to invent for my self. With respect to Alliteration, I conceived that I had adduced a sufficient number of instances: your Correspondent has, in page 443, greatly swelled the list, and the Reviewer of my book in the British Critic for April 1812, has cited many additional examples. I beg leave to refer both these Reviewers to a long and curious chapter 1812.] Mr. Barker's Answer to Strictures on his "Cicero." 519 I am well aware of the respect which and the delight and consolation of de- chapter upon this subject in Harris's With respect to the conjecture of pilum for pilam, which your Correspondent, in p. 445, has unointed with the vials of his wrath, I still maintain that, as the exercises, which are mentioned both before this ill-fated pilum, and after it, are military, which I will more fully prove on another occasion; it is at the least highly probable that it means some military exercise. A writer in the British Neptune, who has assailed the propriety of this conjecture in more decorous language, has been well answered, by the person who has reviewed my publication, in the Ninth Number of the Classical Journal, to which I refer your Correspondent, as these remarks have been already protracted to too great a length. As to the passage cited in p. 446, from the 7th chapter of the Essay on Friendship, your Correspondent facetiously speaks of "my usual mania for innovation," which is, I believe, so excessive, that, in the course of the whole of my notes, I have attempted it about six I perusing what I have written upon this chapter, I do not think that he will find himself justified in applying to it the word nonsense: if it is nonsense, I must confess that I prefer it to his own; etiam is even, but how does your Correspondent get at his nay? I once more thank your Correspondent for the honourable mention which he has been pleased to make of my little work in many of his notes, and assure him that I have written these remarks upon his strictures with the most perfect good-humour, and in the same manly spirit of freedom, with which he wrote himself. EDMUND HENRY BARKER. Mr. URBAN, OB June 1. BSERVING in p. 227, an inquiry concerning the retreat of Dying Birds, I beg leave to state the following observations: In one of my walks a few years ago, I was led by curiosity to look into a hole in the trunk of a decayed holly tree, where I observed a red-breast, which, to all appearance, had only been dead a few days. I could find no external marks of violence upon it, and its plumage was perfectly composed, consequently I shall not scruple to infer that it had died a natural death. This, in one instance, confirms the opinion of Johannes, that birds, sensible of their approaching dissolution, retire into holes or cavities, which are not immediately within our observation; an opinion which, I have no doubt, might be still more confirmed, were we more strictly to examine such retired places. Though the increase of the smaller tribe of birds would, in some measure, cause instances of the above kind to be more frequently met with, yet we must remember to what a multitude of enemies a small bird is obnoxious. Eagles, hawks, owls, cats, weasels, mice, &c. &c. are continually preying upon them; so that the reason why they are so seldom found dead may be easily accounted for, from the devastation committed among them. The query concerning the disappearance of Flies is, in my opinion, not difficult to answer. Whoever has, in the middle of the first fine day in Spring, directed his walk near wails or trees covered with ivy, will see numbers of those insects emerging from their winter's abode. Large numbers of them are also found in ricks of hay and corn, when moved in the middle of winter, an assertion which any husbandman can confirm. The question concerning the Migra tion of Swallows has frequently been discussed in your columus, and the opinions of your Correspondents have been various concerning it; yet the mystery has never, in my opinion, been sufficiently removed. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, D—L M―s. March 14. the subject of the Hebrew O`Points much has been written by learned men both for and against their antiquity. At present, I believe, it is generally allowed, that they are not original parts of the language, but were invented by the Jews of Tiberias in the beginning of the 6th century. No scholar, therefore, is obliged to read the text according to this punctuation; but he is at liberty to depart from it, if he can make better sense of a passage by so doing. And this is a liberty, which the best Translators have availed themselves of, sometimes with the happiest effect. But does it then follow, that the Masoretic system of pointing is of no value at all, and unworthy the attention of the critick in Hebrew literature? By no means; though there are perhaps those, who would justify their total neglect, nay ignorance, of it, upon such a groundless reason. Thus the young Hebræan is startled at the difficulty of obtaining a knowledge of the language through the medium of a grammar with Points, and therefore adopts the easier method of learning it without them. Hence he contracts a prejudice against them, which disposes him to disregard them as useless, and not worthy the waste of time and labour necessary to understand them. But is this the truth? Do they not afford a most excellent interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures; and have they not contributed greatly to the purity of the text? Let me then recommend the study of the Masoretic punctuation, especially to the young Hebræan; not that I think it a matter of the least consequence whether he read the Bible with or without Points, but I would have him able to do both; for otherwise he cannot pretend to a perfect knowledge of the language. W. W. Yours, &c. Mr. |