DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE.
By THOMAS GREEN, Esq. of Ipswich.

(Continued from vol. XII. p. 459.)

1806.-Jan. 22. Looked again into Gilpin's Essay on Prints. He exposes the perversity of the spirit of collection by instancing a connoisseur who showed as a prodigious curiosity a Wouverman without a horse in it! I have the print, I suppose from this very picture; there is no quadruped in it.-Parry called, and mentioned many tricks of Caulfield, and the purveyors to portrait collectors-himself an engraver of facsimiles.

Jan. 24. Finished D'Israeli's Defence of James the First. By brightening the fair, and lightening the dark, parts of James's character, he irresistibly produces an impression in his favour; and perhaps we may allow that, if the public consulted their own happiness in the moral judgment which they form of their rulers, this monarch would stand considerably higher than he does in the public esteem.-Read Osborne's Memoirs of Queen Elizabeth and King James. Most uncouthly written, but highly interesting from the private anecdotes and ephemerous scandal which they involve. He mentions as the custom of James's reign for the principal gentry, courtiers, and professional men, to meet in St. Paul's church at 11, and walk in the middle aisle till 12, and after dinner from 3 till 6, discoursing of business, news, &c. The story of the king's attendant, who at a banquet of Lord Carlisle's ate a pie composed of mixtures of ambergris, magisterial of pearl, and musk, till he almost poisoned his family, and like the Satyr flew from his own stench, is excellent.

Jan. 27. Queen Elizabeth's pun at Cambridge, recorded by Peck, when Dr. Humphrys, a puritanical opposer of the ecclesiastical habits, approached to kiss her hand," Mr. Doctor, that loose gown becomes you mighty well so I wonder your notions should be so narrow,"-is but poor. I have made two better in my life. 1st. Looking over some books of Reports at Raw's, Mr. Pulham, who came in, observed, "So you have law before you, Mr. Green; "-I said, "Yes, sir, and divinity too:" for Miss was standing by my side. 2nd. Admiring the prospect from Mr. Rogers's windows," But what, (said I,) Lucy, is the matter with the hilly field opposite which looks so staring white?" “Oh ! " said she, "they have disfigured it, with spreading chalk upon the surface." "Well!" said I, "if it be not picturesque, we may pronounce it at least to be sub-lime."

Jan. 28. Read, in Desenfans' Catalogue of his Paintings, the anecdote of the man who bore so wonderful a likeness to Louis XIV. that the King wished to see him; and who, upon the monarch's inquiring with a smile whether his mother did not visit the court during his father's reign, replied with exquisite naiveté, "No, sir, but my father did," is admirable. One is pleased to find that the Grand Monarque had the magnanimity to applaud this incomparable repartee. *

Jan. 30. Read Weldon's Character of James the First. The physical part of it inimitably drawn. It brings his uncouth person and manners immediately and vividly before us: his exuberant tongue, and rolling eye,

* But this "incomparable repartee" had been previously made in the well-known story of Shakspeare and Davenant.

and fulsome ogles, and habitual oscitancy,-nothing can be better in its way. It is curious to remark the contemptuous virulence with which Weldon treats Bacon, though indeed it is Bacon's achievements in literature alone which have rescued his character from the contempt of posterity.

Jan. 31. Walked by the embankment round Wherstead Lodge; beautiful bright and warm spring day; a grand battue in the Belstead woods. A wounded pheasant flew towards me, and lighted in the field, near my feet. Sad, cruel sport !-yet -'s voice predominant!

Feb. 2. Desenfans states that the estimated value of Paul Veronese's Marriage at Cana was 13,000l. (No. 133) Brower, he affirms (No. 167), when reproached with his mean birth, retorted, "I am one of God's nobility, and these," pointing to his pictures, "are my letters patent."

Feb. 3. Finished Sanderson's Aulicus Coquinaria. He says that Prince Henry, on seeing Bacon magnificently attended after his fall, exclaimed, "Well, do whatever we can, this man scorns to go out like a snuff:" commending his undaunted spirit and excellent parts; not without regret that such a man should be falling off;-this is as it should be. Where should we have been had Prince Henry lived?* His riding from Richmond to Sir Oliver Cromwell's, near Huntingdon, and arriving there by 10 A.M. is an exploit worthy our modern equestrianism.

Feb. 7. Read Sir Edward Peyton's Catastrophe of the House of Stuart, a tissue of malignant calumnies, spun from a mind completely poisoned by Puritanism. As a specimen of his judgment he maintains, "That all municipal and civil laws are no way justifiable, but as they correspond to the judicial laws of the Jews, which were set down by God to be a pattern for all to be patterned by." He states himself to have been " fifty-four years back at school at Bury." There is an excellent anecdote in a note. Lord North, on his brother being appointed Chancellor by Charles the Second, having humbly represented as his bounden though painful duty, that his brother, though perfectly well intentioned, was not qualified by his talents for so high an office; the witty monarch thanked him with great composure, and said, "he had always known that there was one fool among the brothers; and he was obliged to his lordship for showing him which it

was.'

Feb. 10. Finished in the evening a volume endeavouring to establish the identity of Sir P. Francis and Junius. The coincidences in datesin opinions-in sources of information-in temperament-in party politics -in personal feelings, and in peculiarities of expression and idiom-most particularly in reported speeches of Lord Chatham not published till twenty years afterwards from Sir P. Francis's notes, are most remarkable, and almost persuade me. Some of the heads of evidences, as is natural, are pushed considerably too far; but the result of the whole, so happily dovetailing, is unquestionably powerful. I like Sir P. Francis's expression of

* We should have been where we are now: though the struggle between popular rights and regal authority might have been delayed, and possibly carried through, without " binding Kings in chains, and nobles with links of iron." Notwithstanding the personal character of the King, perhaps no concession that could have been made, with the safety of the prerogative and the dignity of the Crown, would have satisfied the disturbed minds of those who made use of the suppression of the abuses only as a step to the violation of the rights of the Crown. After all, the charge of "insincerity" is the great charge against Charles the First: his despotic views and lofty conceptions came to him with the Crown; and when wise and politic measures were wanting, he had unfortunately Strafford, and not Cecil, at his elbow.-ED.

his latter thoughts on a reform in the representation :-"As it is, the milk throws up the cream; to aim at a perfect system is attempting to build a Grecian temple of brick-bats and rubbish." Burke said of Bacon's style, "there is no gummy flesh in it."

Feb. 15. Carried in by Mr. Reed to see his paintings. Struck instantly by St. Francis, by Guido, a three-quarters-spread with the paleness of death-a book open before him-a crucifix (producing an awkward spot of light) behind hin-an unfolded volume before; the head recliningexpression of great anguish; the hand pierced-bent backwards ;-the whole of a grand iron-gray tone. Christ expelling the Money-changers, by Dietrici: much cleverness in the subordinate detail, but too much display of contrivance in the composition, and a general stiffness and heaviness in the execution. The flesh ill coloured, and the principal figure uncouth and undignified. An exquisite Vandevelde,-clear and forcible, and the clouds grandly fleeting. Two curious Brughels; one a town on fire, with extraneous figures in the sky; the other the building of the tower of Babel. Several small pictures by Bird,-good in parts, but falling miserably short in general excellence and harmonious result to Teniers. Many express copies injure the respectability of the collection.

Feb. 16. Began Franklin's Private Correspondence, published by his Grandson. In his first letter, (a curious one,) to Whitfield, he professes nearly the same religious sentiments that I feel. In a letter to Priestley he proposes, in doubtful practical questions, setting down the reasons pro and con, in opposite columns, forming equations of them, and exterminating æquiponderant quantities on both sides,-this he calls moral or prudential algebra. The only cure against corruption in this country, he states in the same letter, is to render all places unprofitable, and the government too poor to bribe. Till this is done, he thinks we shall always be plundered, and taxed beside to pay the Philistines; but he speaks in anger. By the enormous patronage and emoluments of our great officers, he says, we stimulate two passions in nature-avarice and ambition-each separately too powerful. His ruling passion and doctrine (of œconomy) is strikingly exemplified in his argument for the immortality of the soul.

Feb. 20. Pursued Franklin's Letters. He recommends, April 15, 1787, T. Paine to the Duc de Rochefoucauld at Paris, "as an ingenious, honest man." His moral notices of his old age and infirmities are frequently very tender and beautiful. "I seem to have intruded myself," he observes, "into the company of posterity when I ought to have been a-bed and asleep ;" and in another letter from Passy,-"having finished my day's task, I am going home to go to bed." Most heretics, he observes, are virtuous. The virtue of fortitude they have by their profession; and they cannot afford to be deficient in other virtues, lest they should give advantage to their enemies. In 1789 he mentions "noticed" used as a verb as an American innovation, together with "advocate" employed in the same way. This I should hardly have suspected. In March 1766, a period of general election, he writes from England,-" In short, this whole venal nation is now at market, and will be sold for about two millions, and might be bought for half a million more by the very devil himself." Yet in May, in the same year, on occasion of the disturbances respecting Wilkes, he writes,-"Some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best Constitution and the best King any nation was ever blessed with:"-not that there is any real inconsistency here,

but the latter sentiment, I confess, I should hardly have expected so broadly stated. Franklin's letter to the Public Advertiser, giving a history of the discussions in the American colonies, is admirably well reasoned. One can hardly imagine Franklin, as he here occasionally appears, a Court intriguer. He had hopes for some time of the King personally, but at length discovered his obstinacy. In a subsequent letter he beautifully and touchingly remarks,-"The loss of friends is the tax a man pays for living long himself. I have found it a heavy one."

Feb. 23. Franklin's rage against England as the rupture and the war advances, gradually becomes extreme. He talks of our King as thirsting for blood, of which he has already drank a large draught. He threatens to make an illustrated school-book of our barbarities in America. He approves himself afterwards a most skilful negotiator. Mr. Oswald, appointed on our side to confer with him, seems but a poor creature with very good intentions. Mr. Grenville (the present Lord, I presume,) evinces considerable skill in diplomacy. Mr. Oswald mentions twice as the sure intention of our Government, if driven to extremities, to stop the dividends of our funds,—at least all sums above 1000l. Burke's solitary letter is quite characteristic. Fox's display, an engaging simplicity, but with some little awkwardness and uncouthness of expression.

March 17. Nectarines beginning to set.-Walked the first part of the day by the ruins to Bramford hill in search of violets;-plentiful on the bank;-returned by the pathway between the Whitton and Bramford roads-a —an old haunt not visited for a long time. On my return gardened for the first time this season, pruning shrubs and trimming my Cambrian grasses.*

THE CHURCHES OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW BY THE EXCHANGE, AND ST. BENET FINK, LONDON. (With a Plate.)

THE sweeping design of destroying a number of the City Churches which was meditated in the year 1834, and for the time arrested by the resolute opposition made to the measure in the instance of the first church marked out for sacrifice, St. Clement's, Eastcheap, it may be feared is at length coming into full operation, not indeed, in the open manner in which it was displayed at that period; but in an insidious, and therefore, more secure mode of procedure.

It must be evident in the case of St. Clement's Church, that the pretext of improvement set up to warrant the intended demolition, had no foundation in reality. The new street being now completed, it is plain that it would not have been encroached upon by the Church, nor has the line been at all altered by the continuance of the building. The Church remains, and the improvement has not been impeded. If a judgment can be formed

* Such notices as the above are inserted, as they serve to throw light on Mr. Green's character, through his amusements and occupations. He was ardently enamoured of the charms of nature; and not a sequestered spot of rural beauty in the neighbourhood of Ipswich escaped the observation of his regular and daily walks : from them he returned with renewed pleasure to his books, and the enjoyment of the works of art with which his house was enriched. The Cambrian grasses allude to plants which he used to bring from Wales in pots when he returned from his summer excursions, and which he carefully preserved, as reminding him of their native mountains the wild land of their birth, which it was his custom annually to frequent and explore. Mr. Green knew, what few men do, how rationally to use and enjoy a life of ease and leisure.-ED.