appearance; as this would doubtless have been the most interesting, we cannot but agree with Mr. Steevens, who says "it is much to he Jamented that Maunsell did not proceed to his third collection." Further extracts from the work are unnecessary.

"The Choise of Change: Containing the Triplicitie of Diuinitie, Philosophie, and Poetrie, Short for Memorie, Profitable for Knowledge, and Necessarie for Maners: Whereby the Learned may be confirmed, the Ignorant instructed, and all Men generally recreated. Newly sel foorth by S. R. Gent. and Student in the Vniversitie of Cambridge. Tria sunt omnia. Al London Printed by Roger Warde, dwelling neere Holburne Conduite, at the figure of the Talbot. An. Dom. 1585."

4to. vl. 1. not paged, but containing pp. 91, black letter.

Although it is impossible to state with any degree of certainty who was the author of this curious and entertaining volume, we have a strong suspicion that it was written by Doctor Simon Robson, who in the year 1598 was made dean of Bristol: he died in 1617.

It is dedicated to Sir Henry Herbert, Sir Philip Sidney, and Robert Sidney, to whom "S. R. wisheth increase of vertuous qualities in the mind, of the gifts of the body, and goodes of Fortune;" this is followed by a short address

"To the Reader.

1. He that knoweth not that he ought to know, is a brute beast among men.

2. He that knoweth no more then he hath need of, is a man among brute beasts.

3. He that knoweth all that may bee knowen, is a God among

men.

1. Read willingly.

2. Correct friendly.

3. Judge indifferently."

"The Triplicitie of Diuinitie, Philosophie, and Poetrie," consist each of two hundreths, and each hundreth contains 100 instances.' A few extracts will explain the author's plan and execution.

"He that will live in quiet, must frame himself to three thingsTo hear, see, and say nothing.

"The philosopher Aristotle believed but three things-That which he touched with his hand; That which he saw with his eyes; That which he could comprehend in argument.

"Three things which cause a man to keep his friends-If he give much; If he ask little; If he take nothing.

"Three things necessary in a flatterer-An impudent face; A stedfast colour; A changing voice.

"Trust not three things-Dog's teeth; Horse's feet; Women's protestations.

The spelling is here modernized.

"Three

"Three things are uncertain and unconstant-The favour of princes; The love of women; The shining of the sun in April.

"There are three very strong things-Gold, for there is no place invincible wherein an ass laden with gold, may enter; Love, becausé it provoketh us to adventure our goods, life, renown, and all; Labour, because it overcommeth all things."

The whole ends with "Deo trino et uni sit laus, honor et gloria. Amen."

1.' Amadigi di M. Bernardo Tasso.

When Tasso the father was at Ghent, 1544, the chief persons of Charles the Fifth's court, and especially D. Luis de Avila and D. Francisco de Toledo exhorted him to write a poem upon Amadis of Gaul; that delightful story they thought would become still more delightful, if varied with new episodes, and told in sweet verse. Bernardo caught at the subject, and set himself to the work with wonderful pleasure, and the ardour of his whole heart. His first intention was to write in versi sciolti; for rhymes he thought were unequal to the grandeur and dignity of heroic narrative; but Ariosto's poem was in the hands of every one, and Avila and his own patron Sanseverino pressed him so strongly to adopt the octave stanza, that he yielded to their arguments. In another essential point Bernardo differed from the prevailing taste of his time; he wished to observe the rules of Aristotle in his story, and not, as was the custom of all his country poets, to branch it out into as many heads as the Hydra, and as many arms as those of Briareus! With this intent, therefore, he selected a part of the romance, and began to write La Disperazione d'Amadigi, The despair of Amadis, intending to conclude with the battle between Lisuarte and King Cildadan, when Amadis, having previously teen reconciled to Oriana, discovers himself in the moment of victory. No master of the art, says his greater son, could have formed a better or more beautiful design.

This part of the Romance which Bernardo had selected, begins with the 41st chapter of the first book, and ends with the sixteenth of the second. He had woven into it as much of the preceding history as was necessary to be known, and such of the after parts as it was desirable to introduce. When, however, he came to read these cantos at the court of Salerno, he perceived that when he began, the chamber was unusually full, and that before he had done, it was nearly empty: from this he concluded, that the unity of action was in its nature not delightful; knowing that he had perfectly observed all the rules of art. It will be readily suspected that there was a more obvious cause of failure in his own poetry; this, however, was not VOL. I. the

Y

It is better to use the Italian term than to call it blank verse, from which the versi sciolti essentially differ. Some remarks upon this metre will be offered hereafter, in an account of the Italia Liberata of Trissino.

+ In the English translation from p. 36 to 255, vol. 2.

the case. Strange as it may appear, the desultory and capricious manner of Ariosto had fascinated the Italians; they attributed that pleasure, which his exquisite poetry gave them, to his irregular method-if that may be called method which has none-and were so accustomed to pantomimic changes of scene, and those flea-skips of story, as to be incapable of listening to a regular narrative; just as the prevalence of essays, reviews, magazines, and miscellanies has almost incapacitated the present public from enjoying or understanding any work which requires continuous attention. They prest him to change his plan, and gratify their craving for frequent novelty, by following the fashionable model; the prince laid his commands upon him to the same effect, and Bernardo, as his son says, that he might not lose the name of a good courtier, no longer attempted to retain by force that of the best poet, and obeyed,

Ma col cor mesto e con turbato ciglio.

But with reluctant heart and troubled brow.

Thus re-modelled, the Amadigi was received with applause, and its success in its altered state, proved that its former failure was attributable, not to the dulness of the poet, but to the vitiated taste of the people.

It is a formidable task to analize a poem which is more than a fourth part larger than the Faery Queen, consisting of 100 cantos. But it is interesting to see with what success Bernardo Tasso, whom his son pronounced to be a great and excellent poet, has converted into poetry that exquisite Romance, which the same high authority has declared in the judgment of many, and especially in his own, to be the most beautiful of its kind, and the most perfect in variety of incident, in manners, and in truth of character.

(To be continued.)

MEMOIRS OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.

Memoir of the Rev. Thomas Wakefield.

THOMAS WAKEFIELD, B.A. who died on the 26th of the last November at Richmond in Surrey, of which parish he had been the minister during thirty years, was one of those distinguished characters, for whom the cause of virtue and the honour of man solicit a place in the records of the human kind. His life, indeed, in its uniform and silent lapse, presented no striking incidents to arrest the common eye, or to give interest to the pages of the biographer. But if it did not resemble the torrent, which astonishes us with

its cataracts, or the comet, which alarms us with its eccentric and ominous glare; it was like the sun, which vivifies all beneath its beams, or the pure and quiet stream, which, diffusing verdure over the vale, refects from its even and lucid surface an unbroken image of heaven.

Of the five sons of the Reverend George Wakefield, M. A. and Vicar of Kingston upon Thames, Thomas, who was the second, was born on the 21st of December, 1752, in the town of Nottingham, where his father, before his removal to Kingston, was first the curate of St. Mary's, and subsequently the rector of St. Nicholas.

Being originally intended for some business connected with trade, it was late before the subject of our notices, in consequence of his maturer preference, was educated for the learned profession of the church. From a school in Kingston he was removed to Cambridge, where he was entered as fellow-commoner at Jesus College on the 24th of January, 1774. Here he proceeded to the degree+ of B. A. and here he qualified himself, by a considerable proficiency in classical and theological knowledge, for the honourable discharge of the ministerial office. To this he was called in 1775, when he was ordained deacon by Dr. John Thomas, the bishop of Winchester; by whom, on the first of the succeeding January, he was admitted to the order of priests, and was licensed, on the nomination of his father, by whose resignation the vacancy was made, to the perpetual curacy of Richmond.

On the 11th of December 1777, he married Mrs. Morson, a widow lady, who, with a competent fortune, brought to the object of her choice, virtues congenial with his own; and with whom he lived in uninterrupted harmony during the remaining twenty-nine years of his life. Their union was childless, and she survives with no other memorial of her admirable husband than that which is indelibly written on her heart.

With the preferment of Richmond, which he had thus quietly and without the incurrence of obligation obtained, his conduct discovered that all his desires of fortune and of rank were completely satisfied. Favoured

George, Thomas, Gilbert, Francis and Samuel, Of these the first, fourth, and fifth, stil survive.

+ In 1779.

East Moulsey, Thames Ditton, Petersham, Richmond and Kew were all attached, under the name of chapelries, to the vicarage of Kingston, and were entered in the Liber Regis, as comprehended within that extended parish. By an act of parliament passed in 1769, at the instance of Mr. Harding, the patron, who afterwards sold the advowson to King's College, Cambridge, a new distribution was made of this multiplex benefice; and Richmond and Kingston, Kew and Petersham, E. Moulscy, and T. Ditton, being respectively consolidated, were formed into three distinct vicarages. But the rights of the existing vicar of Kingston being saved, by an especial clause in the act, Mr. George Wakefield was enabled to nominate his sen to the church of Richmond. Mr. George Wakefield survived this event itttle more than a month; for he died on the 10th of February, 1776. This nomination was litigated by Mr. Harding, but fortunately for the parish of Richmond, without effect.

Favoured with the opportunity and the means of conciliating the patronage of the great, he studiously declined it; and, while the greater number of his clerical brethren were wearying themselves with the chace of promotion, and were, not infrequently, prostituting their dignity among the vassals and the sycophants of the powerful, he remained a calm and a pitying spectator of their idle or unworthy toil. He was fond of being espoused to one church: he found within his own parish all the requisites of his virtuous enjoyment: he loved to dwell among his own people," and to read the story of his worth in the countenance with which he had been long acquainted and the smile of which his beneficence had kindled: he was delighted to see the child, whose parents he had cherished, advancing to prosperous maturity, and acknowledging in him the common friend of successive generations. Contented with these gratifications, he beheld the superiorities of human rank without a wish for their attainment. His honourable pride was satisfied with the assertion of independence; and his elevated ambition aimed at nothing lower than the approbation of his own heart, and the merciful acceptance of his God. Many men have assumed to be governed solely by the same high principles of action: but in Thomas Wakefield their vital predominancy was discovered, not by his professions, for in profession he was no trafficker, but by the whole tenor of his life. He was, at all times, dressed to meet the eye of his Maker, and he could not be surprised under an aspect different from that which he presented to the world. In the recesses of his family and encircled by his parish, he was invariably the same, -erect, humane, just, pious; and the more you were admitted into the sanctuary of his bosom, the more you were compelled to admire the purity of his thought, the excellence and the genuine sublimity of his motives. The mean and the malignant passions never threw even a transient shade over his mind; and they had either never existed in him, as attached to his first human inheritance, or they had been wholly extirpated by his own sedulous cultivation. To the disturbance of jealousy, envy, and malice, he was so wholly a stranger as to be surprised when he witnessed it in others. He was conscious of no rivals; for the good were engaged in the same cause with himself, and the bad, however distinguished by the accidents of rank or fortune, talents or learning, were the objects of his compassion. He felt that he was without enemies, for the virtuous were his friends, and the vicious were too degraded to be regarded as his foes. He was above dissimulation, for he had nothing but his bounties to conceal ; and the more he was unveiled, the more certain he was of being loved. Artifice and fraud were instruments which he abhorred, and he was removed from every temptation to employ them; for his purposes turned naturally to the day, and flourished in their own element of light.

So free was he from any taint of avarice, that he beheld, with unaffected wonder, the rage of accumulation which prevailed among the multitude