423

BUCKINGHAM'S POLITICAL COQUETRY WITH THE PURITANS 443

SIR EDWARD COKE'S EXCEPTIONS AGAINST THE HIGH SHERIFF'S OATH 446

SECRET HISTORY OF CHARLES THE FIRST AND HIS FIRST PARLIAMENTS 448

THE RUMP 482

LIFE AND HABITS OF A LITERARY ANTIQUARY--OLDYS AND HIS
MANUSCRIPTS 493

INDEX 513

CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.

LOCAL DESCRIPTIONS.

Nothing is more idle, and, what is less to be forgiven in a writer, more
tedious, than minute and lengthened descriptions of localities; where it
is very doubtful whether the writers themselves had formed any tolerable
notion of the place they describe,--it is certain their readers never
can! These descriptive passages, in which writers of imagination so
frequently indulge, are usually a glittering confusion of unconnected
things; circumstances recollected from others, or observed by themselves
at different times; the finest are thrust in together. If a scene from
nature, it is possible that all the seasons of the year may be jumbled
together; or if a castle or an apartment, its magnitude or its
minuteness may equally bewilder. Yet we find, even in works of
celebrity, whole pages of these general or these particular descriptive
sketches, which leave nothing behind but noun substantives propped up by
random epithets. The old writers were quite delighted to fill up their
voluminous pages with what was a great saving of sense and thinking. In
the _Alaric_ of Scudery sixteen pages, containing nearly five hundred
verses, describe a palace, commencing at the _facade_, and at length
finishing with the garden; but his description, we may say, was much
better described by Boileau, whose good taste felt the absurdity of this
"abondance sterile," in overloading a work with useless details,

Un auteur, quelquefois, trop plein de son objet,
Jamais sans l'epuiser n'abandonne un sujet.
S'il rencontre un palais il m'en depeint la face,
Il me promene apres de terrasae en terrasse.
Ici s'offre un perron, la regne un corridor;
La ce balcon s'enferme en un balustre d'or;
Il compte les plafonds, les ronds, et les ovales--
Je saute vingt feuillets pour en trouver la fin;
Et je me sauve a peine au travers du jardin!

And then he adds so excellent a canon of criticis