xpress the least concern. Can you be surprised,
therefore, that he should commence his sonnet to friendship thus:

Oh, sweetest softest thing that's friendship hight!

or that he should conceive the following address to women, by one
William Goddard, worthy of being ranked among the most beautiful
poetical efforts of the 16th century:

Stars of this earthly heaven, you whose essence
Compos'd was of man's purest quintessence,
To you, to virtuous you, I dedicate
This snaggy sprig[83]----"

[Footnote 83: From "_A Satyrical Dialogue, &c., betweene
Alexander the Great and that truelye woman-hater Diogynes_.
Imprinted in the low countryes for all such gentlewomen as
are not altogether idle nor yet well occupyed," 4to. no
date. A strange composition! full of nervous lines and
pungent satire--but not free from the grossest
licentiousness.]

"Enough," exclaimed Philemon--while Lysander paused a little, after
uttering the foregoing in a rapid and glowing manner--"enough for this
effeminate vanity in man! What other ills have you to enumerate, which
assail the region of literature?"--"I will tell you," replied
Lysander, "another, and a most lamentable evil, which perverts the
very end for which talents were given us--and it is in mistaking and
misapplying these talents. I speak with reference to the individual
himself, and not to the public. You may remember how grievously
ALFONSO bore the lot which public criticism, with one voice, adjudged
to him! This man had good natural parts, and would have abridged a
history, made an index, or analyzed a philosophical work, with great
credit to himself and advantage to the public. But he set his heart
upon eclipsing Doctors Johnson and Jamieson. He happened to know a few
etymons more correctly, and to have some little acquaintance with
black letter literature, and hence thought to give more weight to
lexicographical inquiries than had hitherto distinguished them. But
how miserably he was deceived in all his undertakings of this kind
past events have sufficiently shewn. No, my good Philemon, to be of
use to the republic of literature, let us know our situations; and let
us not fail to remember that, in the best appointed army, the serjeant
may be of equal utility with the captain.

"I will notice only one other, and a very great, failing observable in
literary men--and this is severity and self-consequence. You will find
th