liar situation and feelings; for Baillet tells us that this
method of studying had been formed entirely from his own practical
knowledge and hard experience: at a late period of life he had commenced
his studies, and at length he imagined that he had discovered a more
perpendicular mode of ascending the hill of science than by its usual
circuitous windings. His work has been compared to the sounding of a
trumpet.

Menage, in his Anti-Baillet, has a very curious apology for writing
verses in his old age, by showing how many poets amused themselves
notwithstanding their grey hairs, and wrote sonnets or epigrams at
ninety.

La Casa, in one of his letters, humorously said, _Io credo ch'io faro
Sonnetti venti cinque anni, o trenta, pio che io saro morto_.--"I think
I may make sonnets twenty-five, or perhaps thirty years, after I shall
be dead!" Petau tells us that he wrote verses to solace the evils of old
age--

---- Petavius aeger
Cantabat veteris quaerens solatia morbi.

Malherbe declares the honours of genius were his, yet young--

Je les posseday jeune, et les possede encore
A la fin de mes jours!

SPANISH POETRY.

Pere Bouhours observes, that the Spanish poets display an extravagant
imagination, which is by no means destitute of _esprit_--shall we say
_wit_? but which evinces little taste or judgment.

Their verses are much in the style of our Cowley--trivial points,
monstrous metaphors, and quaint conceits. It is evident that the Spanish
poets imported this taste from the time of Marino in Italy; but the
warmth of the Spanish climate appears to have redoubled it, and to have
blown the kindled sparks of chimerical fancy to the heat of a Vulcanian
forge.

Lopez de Vega, in describing an afflicted shepherdess, in one of his
pastorals, who is represented weeping near the sea-side, says, "That the
sea joyfully advances to gather her tears; and that, having enclosed
them in shells, it converts them into pearls."

"Y el mar como imbidioso
A tierra por las lagrimas salia,
Y alegre de cogerlas
Las guarda en conchas, y convierte en perlas."

Villegas addresses a stream--"Thou who runnest over sands of gold, with
feet of silver," more elegant than our Shakspeare's--"Thy silver skin
laced with thy golden blood," which possibly he may not have written.
Villegas monstrously exclaims, "Touch my breast, if you doubt the power
of Lydia's eyes--you will find it tu