exaggerated statement. His motto is, however, deserving of the attention of all prudent gourmands. "Masticate, denticate, chump, grind, and swallow." He recommends the immediate administration of two doses of medicine to your cook, when your dishes are not seasoned with customary skill, and proposes that this should be one of the agreements at the time of hiring. Tabella Cibaria," or the bill of fare, is a short Latin poem in good hexameters and pentameters. A waiter at a French tavern is supposed to enumerate the various dishes which he can bring to table, and the author has, with considerable ingenuity, discovered and constructed classical terms which express, with sufficient accuracy, the names of modern dishes and ingredients. But the notes are, in my opinion, the most valuable part of the volume; they are in English, and contain much useful information upon French cookery, many curious anecdotes, and many ways of making the simplest dishes become (to use the writer's own words) "extremely interesting." And now, my Readers, farewell; and if I have succeeded in opening the eyes of any mature or embryo gourmand to a sense of his real character, and induced him to bestow the energies of a rational and immortal mind, capable of all that is noble and good, where they may be most honourable to himself and useful to others, I am satisfied; and as virtue is ever its own reward, my morning labours will doubtless be repaid by an unusual appetite for dinner. UPON SEEING A PAINTING OF THE RIVER LARA. THE sun has sunk---and twilight's lonely hour Breaks the repose that breathes along the shore: ON THE WRITINGS OF QUEVEDO, FRANCISCO DE QUEVEDO, the great moral satirist of Spain, is less generally read or spoken of in our literary circles than he deserves. His own nation boasts of him as one of her intellectual glories, and has long since assigned him his place beside the two modern archpriests of philosophic laughter---Rabelais and Cervantes. He was born at Madrid in 1580 (some accounts bring him into the world ten years earlier), and died in 1645. His education was the best that his time and country could supply. He entered at an early age into the public service. When the Duke of Ossuna was viceroy of Naples, Quevedo was employed by that nobleman in several delicate commissions among the Italian states. On one occasion he went to Venice disguised as a mendicant; and as far as we can collect from the scenes of low life in some of his comic pieces, it was a character that he must have found little difficulty in supporting. The Spanish court acknowledged its sense of this and his other services, by decorating him with the cross of the military order of St. Jago. The particulars of his biography that have come down to us are extremely scanty. What is recorded of his personal character is calculated to engage our love and respect. He was learned, pious, affectionate, and incorruptible. His appearance was manly and engaging; his complexion fair, and his countenance teeming with expression. His eyes were so debilitated by continual study, that he always wore spectacles. We have seen some portraits of him prefixed to inferior Spanish editions of his works, in which we could recognise nothing of the above description but the spectacles. The most important events of his personal history were his imprisonments. When his friend the Duke of Ossuna was disgraced, Quevedo was arrested and confined for the space of three years: at the expiration of which, nothing appearing against him, he was discharged. In 1634 he was appointed secretary of state to Philip IV. The same year he married an accomplished lady of a noble family; but soon losing her, he found it necessary to exchange the vanity and bustle of a court for the consolations of religion and philosophy. He resigned his office, and retiring to the country, gave hiniself up to literature and meditation. From this retreat he was a few years after dragged on a false charge of having libelled the prime minister, the Conde D' varez; and according to the custom of the country, recommitted to a dungeon. His estate was sequestrated, his health was ruined, and his spirits, previously impaired by his domestic calamity and approaching old age, irretrievably broken. The affair, when investigated, proved to have originated in a malicious VOL. I. NO. VI. 2 s li calumny, and the victim was restored to his liberty, and to as much of his property as had survived the costs of the sequestration; but the inhuman objects of his enemies were obtained, for Quevedo was soon after carried off by the accumulated diseases of mind and body, which the severities of his imprisonment had produced or exasperated. Such, says one of his biographers, was the fate of Francisco Quevedo, the pride and the shame of the Spanish nation; a scholar and a poet worthy of universal admiration; a man of exemplary probity and fortitude, who suffered much unmerited mortification and distress from the malevolence of his countrymen, and languished in the shade of adversity and the gloom of a dungeon, while his writings were affording delight and instruction to whole nations. These facts excite deep indignation; and particularly at this moment ought to inculcate a serious reflection on the degraded state to which a country can be reduced, even though possessing men of talents, when there are not laws and a free constitution to protect them. Quevedo's faie must also touch every breast which is faithful to the cause of liberty, with an indignant recollection of that unhallowed Alliance, which at this moment is prevented only by inability from restoring to Spain the system of oppression under which that immortal genius languished as a victim. Quevedo's works are numerous, filling, as originally collected and published at Madrid, three quarto volumes. They consist of serious dissertations on religious and literary subjects, poetic effusions, and humorous productions; of the last of which alone we are enabled to speak at any length. We have seen a few of his love-sonnets, and the thoughts, as charged by one of his biographers, are disfigured by the quaint conceits and extravagances of the Italian amatory school. But we have seldom read verses in any language in direct praise of the writer's mistress, in which there has not been much more of the author than the lover. The best-conducted, and perhaps the most poetical, correspondence, that we recollect to have read of in the annals of fidelity, was that of the separated lovers who agreed to look at stated hours upon the moon; but during our present financial difficulties, we cannot venture to recommend the general adoption of this practice, lest Mr. Vansittart should be compelled to ng in a bill declaring such evasions of the post and paper illegal; and then we should have indictments under the ng "For that heretofore, to wit, on the night of between the hours of sunset and sunrise, he (or she) the said did lsely, maliciously, fraudulently, and amatorily gaze, look, and intently fix his (or her) eyes upon a certain heavenly body, sign, planet, commonly called the moon, to bri.. duties act, runni 1 wit, at with intent to injure and defraud the revenue, against the peace and statute, and so forth;" all of which, however necessary, might sorely press upon the enamoured classes of the community. The principal and most original of Quevedo's humorous efforts are his " Visions." Cuvier, the celebrated naturalist, undertakes to deduce from the smallest fragment of the skeleton of an animal whose race has become extinct, the genus, size, and other physical distinctions of the creature to which it once belonged. The same inductive process may be employed, and we suspect with almost equal success, in more general investigations; and the peculiarities of detached literary or political remnants of a former society, may enable us to infer with tolerable certainty many important particulars regarding its moral and social condition. Of this the "Visions" of Quevedo afford an illustration. Had all the historical records of the state of Spain in his time perished, the plan of this work alone would enable us to conjecture that the writer must have composed it under the restraining terrors of such an establishment as the Inquisition, and of such ministers as the Conde D'Olivarez. It is his chief satirical production; but in sitting down to expose the vices and follies of his age, he used most especial precautions that none of the extant knaves and blockheads should take the application to themselves. His cardinal maxim throughout (the converse of the old one) is, "de vivis nil nisi bonum." For fear the court or the priests should demur, he lays the venue in hell. 66 'My design, (as he says with some naïveté at the close of one of his Visions) is to discredit and discountenance the works of darkness, without scandalizing of persons; and I am certain this discourse will never be reckoned a satire, as it treats of none but the damned." The various styles of satirical productions are, in fact, excellent tests of the progress which the several states, where they have appeared, have made in freedom and civilization. In the infancy of societies, men abuse one another by word of mouth, without mercy or apprehension. When provoked, they do not spare even their chieftains. Every body remembers the contumacious invective of Thersites against the King of men; and how all that followed was the infliction of a few summary blows of a sceptre, administered by the hands of the wise Ülysses But such was the law of libel and sedition in those days. T next step is the more formal and permanent publication of cule or remonstrance, by written squibs or dramatic repre tion. The satires of the early Greek stage (the deriva the name) are examples of the latter. Their merit ▾ virulence and personality. This goes on for a whi' 2 s 2 3. .he ridi senta tive of was thei e; and as long as the ingenious author confines himself to sneers calumnies against an inoffensive neighbour, the higher orders are lavish of their applause, and heartily shake their sides in unison with the populace. But poets are complexionally indiscreet; and when at all encouraged, have a wondrous propensity to take petulant freedoms, in the way of their art, with their superiors. Upon this, however, matters are altered-and the latter, who heretofore liked a good joke of all things, soon discover, that to be laughed at themselves has a direct tendency to produce a breach of the peace. The poet is, therefore, muzzled; or if he attacks the private feelings of any eminent characters, save philosophers and demigods, he is chastised as a calumniator. Such productions as the satirical comedies of Aristophanes mark this stage. A similar progress might easily be traced in other countries. In all, the tone which wit and indignation assume is precisely regulated by the personal consequences that may befal the author; that is, by the power or the disposition of the patrons of the vices he assails, to punish him for his impertinent exposure of them. The slavish compliments to Augustus and Mæcenas, in the satires of Horace, throw as much light upon the degradation of the once haughty Rome, as the most authentic history. Quevedo's precautions to keep his person at large, took a different turn. He formally protests against entertaining any design to intermeddle with living manners; and with infinite courtesy and discretion, lays the scene of his Visions in regions with whose inhabitants the ministers of the Spanish King, and the familiars of the Inquisition, would not, for their own sakes, profess to feel any community of character or interest. He scorns to talk scandal of any who may yet live to repent and reform. The seal of damnation must be upon them before he ventures to make free with their reputation. The first stroke of Quevedo's pen sends the reader to the devil; but he accompanies us himself, and makes us feel wonderfully at home. With such a companion, if it were not for the name of the thing, one would almost as soon take a trip to H— for change of scene, as to Cheltenham or Brighton. The Visions are a sort of infernal guide. The dead of all climes and ages pass in review before us, and are made to discourse, in a most agreeable and edifying manner, upon the crimes and follies of their earthly career. The principal groups consist of physicians, attorneys, catchpoles, necromancers, buffoons, pastry-cooks, astrologers, lovers, barbers, poets, decayed beauties, devils, and duennas. The scenes and dialogues are as miscellaneous as the characters; and so must be our observations. Quevedo's descriptions are strong and unrefined, and, according to the fashion of his time, and of all ages in which taste is not generally dif |