AUTHORS are sometimes extremely careless in expressing themselves; others pique themselves on a quaintness or an oddity, more honoured in the breach than in the observance. However, we do not pretend to carp or cavil in the following article; our office being merely to exhibit the extremely odd way in which some people think and write, (and great ones too among them,) but who, perhaps, have been caught napping. Let us view some of these eccentricities, not with the green magnifying glasses of criticism, but with those of a student, who goes to the theatre by way of relaxation, determined to be pleased. The display might have been increased from our common-place book; for the present, however, these will serve to mark a great variety in modes of expression.

It is scarcely credible, that the tasteful Addison should use the word authenticalness for authenticity.

In the Aix la Chapelle Guide is a verbose description of the several paintings, among which is the "natural looks of poor souls in purgatory."

The Rev. John Boraston, condoling with Sir N. Herbert on the loss of his father, says, The blessedness of our dear deceased relations is handkerchief enough to dry our eyes."

Anne Boleyn's mode of expressing herself was truly astonishing. When on the scaffold she was pleased to say, "I pray God save the king, (Henry VIII.) and send him long to reign over you; for a gentler, nor a more merci ful, prince was there never, and to me he was ever a good, a gentle, and sove. reign lord." This is a tolerable good character of a king, who in his power spared no man, and in his lust spared no woman, and from the hips of one who was then on the scaffold, probably dying innocent, because that Blue-Beard wasted to marry another, Jane Seymoor, which he did the next day.'

Dr. Clarke, in his Travels, has this very suspicious metaphor: he says,

"Jerusalem now occupies one eminence alone, viz. that of Moriah, where the temple stood of old, and where, like a phoenix that hath arisen from the ashes of its parent, the famous mosque of Omar is now situated." Does not this sound a little unorthodox ?—that a Ma hometan mosque could arise out of the ruins of the temple of Jehovah, aз a phoenix is fancied to arise out of the ashes of its parent?

Urban Chevreau, a French historian, tells us, "When I was young, I remember attending a sermon, preached by a prelate, who was celebrated at court for the greatness of his talents. It was on the feast of Mary Magdalen. The bishop having enlarged much on the repentance of Mary, observed that her tears had opened to her the way to heaven; and that she had travelled by water to a place, where few other persons had gone by land."

Calvin's (the reformer) mode of expression was rather coarse. Luther had, in one of his writings, called him a declaimer; and Calvin, to justify himself from such a title, breaks out"Your whole school is nothing but a stinking stye of pigs. Dog! do you understand me? Do you understand me, madman? Do you understand me, you great beast ?"

once

Dryden, the great poet, was caught napping; for, in his play of the "Conquest of Grenada," he makes Almanzor say to Boabdelin, king of Grenada,

"Obey'd as sovereign by thy subjects be;

But know that I alone am king of me."

This mode of expression was well retorted upon him by Col. Heylen, the nephew of Dr. Heylen, the cosmographer. Not long after the publication of his book, the doctor had the misfortune to lose his way upon a large common, which created an innocent laugh against him, as a minute geographer. Mr.Dryden, falling into the colonel's company at a coffee-house, rallied him upon the

circumstance which had happened to his uncle, and asked where it was that he lost himself? Sir, (said the colonel, who did not relish the question from such a cynick,) I cannot answer you exactly; but I recollect that it was somewhere in the kingdom of ME!" Mr. Dryden, whose irritability of temper is well known, took his hat and walked off.

Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Living and Dying, p. 73, says, " Virgins must contend for a singular modesty; whose first part must be, an ignorance in the distinction of sexes."

Mr. Evelyn wrote a book, called "Fumifugium," and in it inveighs against our using coal instead of wood for fuel, deforming our noblest buildings, and bringing on consumptions. His mode of expression is remarkable: "The City of London (says he) resembles rather the face of Mount Etna, the court of Vulcan, Stromboli, or the suburbs of hell, than an assembly of rational creatures, and the imperial seat of our incomparable monarch."

The Rev. Mr. Fawkes, in the year 1739, being at that time curate of Doncaster, thought fit to preach a sermon on the erection of an organ in the church. After having wound up his imagination to the highest pitch in praise of churchmusic, he adds, addressing himself to the organ, But, O what!-O what!— what shall I call thee by? thou divine box of sounds!"

In the south aisle of the church at Tuxford, beneath a flowery arch, is a very rude relief of St. Lawrence placed on the gridiron. By him is a fellow with a bellows, blowing the fire; and the executioner going to turn him. The zealous Fox, in his Martyrology, has this very thought, and makes the martyr say, in the midst of his sufferings, This side is now roasted; turn me, O tyrant great!

In the Gentleman's Magazine, vol 86 p. 596, is the following extraordinary piece of information: " By the Jewish law as to adultery, the woman was put to death as well as the man, so that the parties could neither of them marry again."

Dr. Jortin, speaking of those sectarians who rely too much upon the efficacy of works of supererogation; and of the other side, who go to a contrary extreme, consider good works as a bugbear, and hate the very sound of the words; punningly adds, Some writers of this sort contracted such a superstitious dread of relying on good works, that they would not even make a good book, or employ the carnal weapon of human

Dr. Johnson, in his pamphlet, Taxation no tyranny,' had a passage no way soothing to the Americans; it was this; That the colonists could with no solidity argue, from their not having been taxed while in their infancy, that they should not now be taxed: We do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he is an ox.' Being a ministerial pamphlet, however, one of the state secretaries put his pen across this passage.

The same author, in his Dictionary, gave us this definition of net-work:

any thing reticulated, or decussated, with interstices at equal distances between the intersections."

KILLED OFF! was an expression once unhappily made use of in the British senate, by some cold-blooded metaphysician; but to shew how easily military men are reconciled to the thing itself, Mr. Labaume has given us an anecdote of the campaign against Russia by Buonaparte. It appears that, towards the extreme right, the Russians

had a redoubt, which, by its destructive fire, spread consternation through the French line. After a sanguinary combat of about an hour, this redoubt was carried, with the loss of twelve hundred men, who remained dead in the entrenchments: and, next day, when Napoleon was reviewing the sixty-first regiment, which had suffered the greatest loss, he asked the colonel what had become of one of his batalions?" Sire! (replied he,) It is in the redoubt!"

Newton, (Bishop of Bristol,) speaking of his marriage, said, it was the wisest thing he ever did in his life, and that she was the most proper wife for him in the world; indeed, (he adds,) She more than answered his warmest wishes.

Counsellor Phillips, in his Recollections of Curran, says, "There is attached to it, (Dublin College,) amongst other advantages, a most magnificent library, of which the regulations were so rigid, and the public hours so few, that it had become, to the externs particularly, almost entirely useless."

Dr. Donne, speaking of the Bible, quaintly says, "Sentences in Scripture, like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and strength; but, being plucked out one by one, serve only for springes and snares."

Dr. Harrington wrote a song, be giuning-“Ah! how Sophia ?" which unquestionably sounds exactly like a bouse a fire.

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We often hear this expression-High words passed between them;" but the parties using them being of the most vulgar and illiterate description, they must have been low words in a high tone.

Nothing can exceed the strange mode of expression adopted by the Quakers, though a sect ever to be admired. They call churches, steeple-houses, tho' they are presumed to know what they are; coaches are leathern conveniences; they clip and disfigure the king's English into most ungrammatical postures, theeing and thouing us with all the stiffness of unyielding buckram. Still this quaintness of expression used by the Quakers was not always so quiet, peaceable, and orderly, as now. One of this class, a primitive enthusiast, whose

name was Fisher, indulged himself in the succeeding flow of vituperation at Dr. Owen. The doctor was thus addressed by friend Fisher;-"Thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter; thou hedge-hog and grinning dog; thou bastard, that tumbled out of the mouth of the Babylonish bawd; thou mole; thou tinker; thou lizard; thou bell of no metal, but the tone of a kettle; thou wheel-barrow; thou whirlpool; thou whirligig: O thou firebrand; thou adder and scorpion ; thou louse; thou cow-dung; thou mooncalf; thou ragged tatterdemalion; thou Judas: thou livest in philosophy and logic; which are of the devil!"

Count Rumford gives us, in the following extract, the useful hint of eating a hot hasty-pudding by gradual advances, circumventing the outwork, and storming the parapet. These are his words-" The hasty pudding being spread out equally on a plate while hot, an excavation is made in the middle of it with a spoon, into which excavation a piece of butter, as large as a nutmeg, is put, and upon it a spoonful of brown sugar, &c.; the butter, being soon heated by the heat of the pudding, mixes with the sugar, and forms a sauce, which, being confined in the excavation, occupies the middle of the plate.” Thus far for the array :- -Now for the battle. "Dip each spoonful in the same, before it is carried to the mouth, care being had, in taking it up, to begin on the outside, and near the brim of the plate, and to approach the centre by gradual advances, in order not to demolish too soon the excavation, which forms the reservoir of the sauce." This, gentle reader, is the philosophy of hasty-pudding, or rather of eating it.

Dr. Sharp, of Hart-Hall, Oxford, had a ridiculous manner of prefacing every thing he said with the words I say. An under-graduate having, as the doctor was informed, mimicked him in this peculiarity, he sent for him, to give him a jobation, which be thus began: "I say they say you say—I say-I say;"-when, finding the ridiculous combination in which his speech was involved, he concluded by bidding the young satirist be gone to his room.

Sylvester, dscribing the Lord's coming to judgment, expresses it thus:

Mercy and justice, marching cheek by joule,
Shall his divine triumphant chariot roll.

Mr. Southey says, "Three people passed us with wens, and I puzzled myself in vainly attempting to account for the connection between wens and mountains." The same writer demonstrates the stupidity of mankind."Every body (says he) now believes in the merit of Paradise Lost, as they believe in their creed; and, in ninety and nine instances out of a hundred, with as little comprehension of the mysteries of the one as of the other!"

Sir John Sinclair, in his Code of Health, thus expresses himself about pork :-"Pork is a savoury food; and, as this animal is of no use to man when alive, it is therefore properly designed for food; and besides, from its loathsome appearance, it is killed without reluctance." The same author is so kind as to make an apology for the unsightliness of the human stomach. "The stomach (says he) is far from recommending itself by any elegance of appearance; on the contrary, it is gen

DRUHY LANE, JULY 28.

erally considered an unsightly membranous pouch; but the delicacy of its texture, the consideration of its extraordinary powers, and the importance of its functions to the health and existence of the human frame, must create a salutary reluctance to hazard any practice by which it can be injured."

The gentle Doctor South could, in argumentative allusion, use such a term as, "hell and damnation proof;" which is going as far as a point could be urged.

Honest old angling-loving Isaac Walton must not be forgotten. He thus instructs his piscatory pupils to handle a frog:"Put your book into his mouth, which you may easily do from the middle of April till August, and then the frog's mouth grows up, and be continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained -none but He, whose name is Wonderful, knows how. I say, put your hook through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then, with a fine needle and silk, sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stick, to the arming-wire of your hook; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him.”

On Monday Mr. Kean, whose squabbles with American managers have been as much protruded on the public as if they afforded grounds for another American war, re-appeared at Drury-lane as Richard III. The house was crowded, and his reception was as tumultuary as "i'the olden times." His performance was also in the known style Unintelligible drawls, great effects, electrifying passages, and, as a whole, wanting truth and consistency. After the play there was a speech of pure egotism, Mr. Kean seeming to fancy himself not only the greatest actor that ever "fretted his hour upon the stage," but as having having some connection with Garrick and Shakspeare, and being a sort of representative of England to the United States. All this is inconceivably ridiculous; but when the tragedy is done, the million look for a farce.

THE ROMAN BRIDGE IN HOLLAND.

Croningen.-The Roman bridge, which was discovered in Holland, in 1818, is now wholly cleared from the turf with which it was surrounded. It is three miles long, and 12 feet broad. It was laid by the fifteenth cohort of Germanicus, over the marshes, in

PIGEON FLYING.