ance of such superiority shall be lost. Italy must be shaken from
her deepest foundation, and England made a scene of general ruin, when
Shakespear and Ariosto shall be forgotten, and their names confounded
among deedless nobility, and worthless wasters of treasure, long ago
passed from hand to hand, perhaps from the dwellers in one continent to
the inhabitants of another. It has been equally the fate of these two
heroes of modern literature, that they have pleased their countrymen
more than foreigners; but is that any diminution of their merit? or
should it serve as a reason for making disgraceful comparisons between
Ariosto and Virgil, whom he scorned to imitate? A dead language is like
common ground;--all have a right to pasture, and all a claim to give or
to withhold admiration. Virgil is the old original trough at the corner
of the road, where every passer-by pays, drinks, and goes on his journey
well refreshed. But the clear spring in the meadow sure, though private
property, and lately dug, deserves attention: and confers delight not
only on the actual master of the ground, but on all his visitants who
can climb the style, and lift the silver cup to their lips which hangs
by the fountain-side.

I am glad, however, to be gone from a place where they are thinking less
of all these worthies just at present, than of a circumstance which
cannot redound to their honour, as it might have happened to any other
town, and could do great good to none: no less than the happy arrival of
Joseph, and Leopold, and Maximilian of Austria, on the thirtieth of May
1775; and this wonderful event have they recorded in a pompous
inscription upon a stone set at the inn door. But princes can make
poets, and scatter felicity with little exertion on their own parts.

At Tuillemont, an English gentleman once told me he had the misfortune
to sleep one night where all the people's heads were full of the
Emperor, who had dined there the day before; and some _wise_ fellow of
the place wrote these lines under his picture:

Ingreditur magnus magno de Caesare Caesar,
Thenas, sub signo Cervi, sua prandia sumit.

He immediately set down this distich under them:

Our poor little town has no little to brag,
The Emperor was here, and he dined at the Stag.

The people of the inn concluding that this must be a high-strained
compliment, it produced him many thanks from all, and a better breakfast
than he would otherwise have obtained