not use any remedies, but let the distemper take He was the most agreeable compa

its course.

nion I ever knew.*

SPENCE.

SCHILLER'S CHILDHOOD.

WHEN only three years old, we are told, that the celebrated author of "The Robbers" manifested an extraordinary eagerness after knowledge, great quickness of apprehension, and an incessantly active imagination. He disliked the usual sports of children; and one of his favourite amusements consisted in the contemplation of his father's little collection of pictures and profiles, consisting chiefly of oil paintings of heroes, princes, and relatives of the family. Here he would pass whole hours, steadfastly

* Garth has been censured for voluptuousness, and accused of infidelity. Being one day questioned by Addison upon his religious creed, he is said to have replied, "that he was of the religion of wise men ;" and being urged to explain himself farther, he added, "that wise men kept their own secrets." Pope says of him, in his "Farewell to London," 1715,

66 Garth, the best, good Christian he,
Although he knows it not."

gazing on one picture after another, and attempting to copy them. Among these paintings was one representing the storming of Magdeburg by Tilly, and the scenes of horror which ensued. It was the best and largest piece in the collection. Tilly, with his right hand against his side, and the look of a bloodthirsty tyrant, was seen riding through the streets. Groups of weeping females, persons of all ages running away from the infuriated soldiers, burning and falling houses, and all the scenes of woe that attended the steps of Tilly, were the subjects of this picture. Young Schiller, then about six years old, was highly interested by the many expressive faces in this delineation of the rude manners of a former age; and one day, laying sacrilegious hands on this heir-loom, which had already descended from father to son for several generations, he cut it up into as many pieces as there were figures. These he pasted upon paper, where horse and foot in mingled ranks followed their sanguinary leader, whose whole face the boy had blackened, to make him look more frightful. Then came, upon another piece of paper, a long row of men, women, and children; each man being accompanied by a woman and

a child. The aged of both sexes concluded the procession. In short, he had recomposed the whole in his own way; and, upon a third paper, he had placed the heads of children on the bodies of old men, and affixed those of young persons to the bodies of old women, while a Croat, with uplifted sword, appeared, perhaps, with the face of a modest damsel, and a plundering officer with the head of a spirited horse. In this manner, he transformed a single piece into a whole gallery, the third division of which, in particular, was not unlike some of Hogarth's caricatures. It may easily be supposed that his father, who prized this piece very highly, bestowed on him no very agreeable reward for his pains.

Not long after this, black clouds one day announced an approaching thunder-storm. Flashes of lightning began to dart through the atmosphere. Inquiry was made for the boy, but he was nowhere to be found. The tempest, meanwhile, came nearer and nearer; the thunder rolled awfully, and lightnings burst from the bosom of the murky clouds. The anxiety of the parents, on account of the child, increased with every clap. The whole family was employed in seeking him. He was at length found,

just at the moment of descending from the top of a very tall lime-tree near the house. "For God's sake," cried his father, in the greatest alarm, "where have you been?" "I only

wanted to see," replied the fearless and inquisitive boy," where all that fire came from."

HOOLE'S " TASSO."

By far the best-known translation of the "Jerusalem Delivered," of Tasso, is Mr. Hoole's. It has appeared, and still appears, in editions of all sizes; and is gathered, as a matter of course, into collections of the British Poets. The sole reason of this is, not that Mr. Hoole translated the work, but that his original was Tasso. It is the name of Tasso, solely, that has carried him on from generation to generation, like a corpse attached to the immortal spirit of the Italian, and making it dull with the burden.

The re-publication, in various quarters, of the finer translation by Fairfax, will doubtless help to detach one idea from the other; but as Mr. Hoole's version has also been often reprinted of late, and as Fairfax himself presents some difficulties in the way of popularity, a few observa

tions on the two works may not be useless in furthering the public interests of poetry.

Hoole is a singular example of the popularity which a man may obtain, by taking up a great author to translate, with whom he has nothing in common, and merely subserving to the worst taste of the times. It was lucky for this gentleman, that he had the period he wrote in, almost all to himself. There was not a single real poet surviving, except Cowper.-Gray, Armstrong, Akenside, Collins, Churchill,-every body was gone who was likely to detect him publicly; and the age, in every respect, was then in the fulness of its poetical emptiness. The French school was in its last weedy exuberance. The apprentices and their mistresses, in their pretty transparent Acrostic masks, walked forth by hundreds to meet each other in Poet's Corner in the magazines; and as nobody knew any thing about poetry, except that it had to repeat " ingenious" common-places, to rhyme upon heart, improve, love, prove, &c., and to pause, as Pope did, upon the fourth and fifth syllables, every body could write poetry, and admit it in others: Pope, whose real merits they