of Hildesheim, has transmitted this wonderful discovery to posterity, in one of his letters which he wrote about that period, in Italy, to the Provost of Hildesheim.-The neighbouring country was then, probably, much infested with serpents, for Virgil found it necessary to confine all the serpents, collected in the vicinity, in a hole, and to shut them up with an iron door. The honest Germans, who were just as credulous in those days as at present, were so firmly convinced of the truth of this tale, that, when Henry VI. ordered the gates and walls of Naples to be demolished, not one of his men would venture to meddle with this door, from the fear of the serpents being let loose, which were there confined. It was further related of Virgil, the sorcerer, that he constructed a slaughter-house, in which meat would keep sweet, during the hottest weather, for six weeks. He is, also, reported to have erected, near Vesuvius, the brass statue of a man with a bow: a peasant twanged the string, the arrow lodged in the mountain, and Vesuvius has vomited fire ever since. As all the attempts latterly made by St. Januarius to stop the crater of Vesuvius, have failed, Virgil must, conse

quently, be still much more powerful than that

saint.

The bard must also have been so irritable as to be offended by the very flies on the wall; for he is said to have placed a brass fly over one of the gates of the city; and, so long as this remained uninjured, not one of these insects durst enter Naples.

Lastly, the bishop relates, that Virgil's grave is in a neighbouring castle, wholly surrounded by the sea. No sooner was an attempt made to bring his remains into the open air, than the heavens were overcast, a tempestuous wind arose, and the billows roared. But the most incredible part of this relation is, that his eminence, the Lord Bishop of Hildesheim, who was then Chancellor to the Emperor, should assure his friend, the provost, that he had been an eyewitness to all this, and had even made various experiments on the subject himself.

CITY-POETRY.

AMONG the many striking contrasts between the manners and characters of ancient and modern life, which the annals of Poetry present,

we must not be surprised to find a mercer, a sheriff, and an alderman of London, descending from his important occupations to write verses. Robert Fabyan, who is better known as an historian than as a poet, was esteemed, not only the most facetious, but the most learned of all the mercers, sheriffs, and aldermen of his time; and no layman of that age is said to have been better skilled in the Latin language. He flourished about the year 1494.

In his Chronicle, or Concordance of Histories, from Brutus to the year 1485, it is his usual practice, at the division of the books, to insert metrical prologues, and other pieces in verse. His transitions from prose to verse, in the course of a prolix narrative, seem to be made with much sense; and, when he begins to versify, the historian disappears only by the addition of rhyme and stanza. In the first edition of his Chronicle, printed in 1516, by way of prologues to his seven books, he has given us The seven Joys of the Blessed Virgin, in English Rime; and, under the year 1325, there is a poem to the Virgin; and another on one Badby, a Lollard, under the year 1409. These are suppressed in the later editions. He has, like

wise, left a panegyric on the City of London; but "despairs of doing justice to so noble a subject for verse, even if he had the eloquence of Tully, the morality of Seneca, and the harmony of that faire lady Calliope."

As an historian, our author is the dullest of compilers; he is equally attentive to the succession of the mayors of London, and of the monarchs of England; and seems to have thought the dinners at Guildhall, and the pageantries of the City companies, more interesting transactions than our victories in France, and our struggles for public liberty at home. One of Fabyan's historical anecdotes, under the important reign of Henry the Fifth, is, that a new weather-cock was placed on the cross of St. Paul's steeple. It is said, that Cardinal Wolsey commanded many copies of this Chronicle to be committed to the flames, because it made too ample a discovery of the excessive revenues of the clergy. The earlier chapters of these childish annals faithfully record all those fabulous traditions, which generally supply the place of historic monuments, in describing the origin of a nation.-WARTON.

66

THE ORIGINALS OF EDWIN AND EMMA."

AT Bowes, in Yorkshire, a dreary village on the edge of Stanmore, lived these two young cottagers, secluded from the gay scenes of life.

Emma's sister was alive some few ten years back, and used frequently to relate to her young inquiring neighbours, with a kind of gloomy pleasure, every circumstance relating to the death of Edwin and Emma. These two early victims of love were both interred in one grave in Bowes churchyard, over which no stone is laid to commemorate their remarkable affection for each other.

Their names are recorded in the parish register with particulars. Although they moved in a humble sphere, a bard arose and handed down to posterity their history, when their real names and resting place shall probably have been forgotten. It was once in agitation to have erected a monument to their memory, by private subscription; but why not carried into effect we know not; possibly prevented by some character, who, similar to

"The father, too, a sordid man,

Who love nor pity knew,

Was all unfeeling as the clod,

From whence his riches grew."