when Shakspeare was just arrived, and the boy sent from school to him, a head of one of the Colleges (who was pretty well acquainted with the affairs of the family) met the child running home, and asked him whither he was going in so much haste? The boy said, "To my Godfather Shakspeare.”- "The child! (says the old gentleman,) why are you so superfluous? have you not learned yet that you should not use the name of God in vain?"

- Pope, in Spence's Anecdotes.

SORTES VIRGILIANE.

IN the time of the late civil wars, King Charles I. was at leisure for a little diversion. A motion was made to go to the Sortes Virgiliana; that is, take a Virgil, and either with the finger, or sticking a pin, or the like, upon any verses, at a venture, and the verses touched shall declare his destiny that toucheth, which sometimes makes sport, and at other times is significant, or not, as the gamesters choose to apply. The King laid his finger on the place towards the latter end of the fourth Eneid, which contains Dido's curse to Eneas:

"At bello audacis populi vexatus et armis,
Finibus extorris, complexu avulsus Iüli,

Auxilium imploret, videatque indigna suorum
Funera; nec quum se sub leges pacis iniquæ
Tradiderit, regno aut optatâ luce fruatur,

Sed cadat ante diem, mediâque inhumatus arenâ !"

This made the sport end in vexation, as much as it began in merriment: the King read the fate which followed him in too many particulars, as time discovered. He was then, and afterwards, vexed with the conquering arms of his subjects; he would have been glad to have escaped with banishment; he was torn from his son, the Prince; he saw the deaths of most of his friends; he would gladly have made peace (at the Isle of Wight) upon hard terms; he neither enjoyed his crown nor life long, but was beheaded on a scaffold before his own door, and God knows where buried! Mr. Cowley was desired to translate the above lines into English (without being informed that the King had drawn them), which he did, as follows:

By a bold people's stubborn arms oppress'd,
Forc'd to forsake the land which he possess'd;
Torn from his dearest son, let him in vain
Beg help, and see his friends unjustly slain:
Let him to base unequal terms submit,
In hopes to save his crown, yet lose both it
And life at once: untimely let him die,
And on an open stage unburied lie!"

Lord Falkland and some others were with the

King at the time.

This anecdote is taken from the first leaf of Bishop Wilkins's Virgil, where it is written in his own hand-writing.

romance.

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PETRARCH'S LAURA.

THE arguments of Lord Woodhouslee, proving that Laura lived and died unmarried, are strictly conclusive ;-the memoirs of Petrarch, written by De Sade, being little more than a Petrarch," his Lordship observes, composed 318 sonnets, 59 canzoni, or songs, and 6 trionfi; a large volume of poetry, entirely on the subject of his passion for Laura; not to include a variety of passages in prose works, where the favourite topic is occasionally treated, and even discussed at very great length. In the whole of these works, there is not a single passage which intimates that Laura was a married woman. Is it to be conceived, that the Poet, who has exhausted language itself, in saying every thing possible of his mistress ; who mentions not only her looks, her dress, her gestures, her conversations, but her companions, her favourite walks, and her domestic occupations,

would have omitted such capital facts, as being married, and the mother of many children; married, too, as the author asserts, to a man who was jealous of her, and who used her with harshness and unkindness, on Petrarch's account?” Laura died in 1348, and was buried at Avignon. Her grave was opened by Francis the First, King of France; wherein was found a small box, containing a medal and a few verses, written by Petrarch.-On one side of the medal was impressed the figure of a woman; on the reverse the characters of M. L. M. J., signifying Madona Laura morte jacet.

The gallant and enthusiastic Monarch returned every thing into the tomb, and wrote an epitaph in honour of her memory.

PETRARCH AT VAUCLUSE.

It is impossible to describe the pleasure which Petrarch enjoyed in his hermitage at Vaucluse. He was never truly happy when away from it; he was never weary of celebrating its beauties, and never fatigued with describing them to his friends. There, as he informs us in a letter to the Bishop of Cavoillon, he went when a child; thither he returned when a youth; in manhood,

he passed there some of the choicest years of his life; and had he been capable of reflection, at so awfully sudden a period, he would have lamented, that there he was not permitted to close his mortal existence.* The manner in which he passed his time in that elegant retirement, he thus describes in a letter to one of his intimate friends." Nothing pleases me so much as my personal freedom. I rise at midnight; I go out at break of day; I study in the fields as in my closet; I think, read, and even write there. I combat idleness; I chase away sleep, indulgence, and pleasures. In the day, I run over the craggy mountains, the humid vallies, and shelter myself in the profoundest caves; sometimes I walk, attended only by my reflections, along the banks of the Sorgia, meeting with no person to distract my mind. I become every day more calm, and send my cares sometimes before; sometimes, I leave them behind me. Fond of the place I am in, every situation

* Petrarch died of an apoplexy, at Argua-He was found dead in his library, July the 18th, 1374; with one arm leaning on a book.