our fine old English
ballads, and always spoke with the most provoking contempt of Dr.
Percy's fondness for them.

Of all the great original works which appeared during his time,
Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little
or no merit in _Tom Jones_, in _Gulliver's Travels_, or in _Tristram
Shandy_. To Thomson's _Castle of Indolence_ he vouchsafed only a line of
cold commendation--of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed
on _The Creation_ of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray
was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The
contempt which he felt for Macpherson was, indeed, just; but it was, we
suspect, just by by chance. He criticized Pope's epitaphs excellently.
But his observations on Shakspeare's plays, and Milton's poems, seem to
us as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom we
take to have been the worst critic that ever lived.

* * * * *

GIBBON'S HOUSE, AT LAUSANNE

The house of Gibbon, in which he completed his "Decline and Fall," is
in the lower part of the town of Lausanne, behind the church of St.
Francis, and on the right of the road leading down to Ouchy. Both the
house and the garden have been much changed. The wall of the Hotel
Gibbon occupies the site of his summer-house, and the _berceau_ walk has
been destroyed to make room for the garden of the hotel; but the terrace
looking over the lake, and a few acacias, remain.

Gibbon's record of the completion of his great labour is very impressive.
"It was on the day, or rather the night, of the 27th of June, 1787,
between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last line of
the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen,
I took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which
commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The
air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was
reflected from the waves, and all nature was silent."

At a little inn at Morges, about two miles distant from Lausanne, Lord
Byron wrote the _Prisoner of Chillon_, in the short space of _two days_,
during which he was detained here by bad weather, June 1816: "thus
adding one more deathless association to the already immortalized
localities of the Lake."

* * * * *

ORIGIN OF "BOZ." (DICKENS.)

A fellow passenger with Mr. Dickens in