and overturned the coach, with him only in it, into a ditch full of water. He was almost suffocated there, and broke the glass with his hand to let in the air: but, as the coach sunk deeper in, the water gained very fast upon him, and he was taken out but just time enough to save him from being drowned.

Besides these, his perpetual application (after he set to study of himself) reduced him, in four years' time, to so bad a state of health, that, after trying physicians a good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper, and calmly sat down in a full expectation of death in a short time. Under this thought, he wrote letters to take a last farewell of some of his particular friends; and, among the rest, one to Abbé Southcote. The Abbé was extremely concerned, both for his very ill state of health and the resolution he said he had taken. He thought there might yet be hopes, and went immediately to Dr. Radcliffe, with whom he was well acquainted; told him Mr. Pope's case; got full directions from him and carried them down to Mr. Pope, in Windsor Forest. The chief thing the Doctor ordered him, was to apply less to study, and to

ride every day: the following his advice soon restored to him his health.*-SPENCE.

MINSTREL CHALLENGE.

ARNAUD DANIEL, a troubadour, highly celebrated by Dante and Petrarch, about the year 1240, made a voyage into England, where, in the court of King Henry the Third, he met a minstrel, who challenged him at difficult rhymes. The challenge was accepted, a considerable wager was laid, and the rival bards were shut up in separate chambers of the palace. King, who appears to have much interested himself in the dispute, allowed them ten days for composing, and five more for learning to sing, their respective pieces; after which, each was to exhibit his performance in the presence of his majesty.

The

The third day, the English minstrel announced that he was ready. The troubadour declared that he had not wrote a line, but that he had tried, and could not as yet put two words together. The following evening, he over-heard the minstrel practising his chanson to himself.

*This was when Mr. Pope was about seventeen, and, consequently, about the year 1705,

The next day he had the good fortune to hear the same again, and learned the air and words.

At the day appointed, they both appeared before the King. Arnaud desired to sing first, and the minstrel, in a fit of the greatest surprise and astonishment, suddenly cried out, "C'est ma chanson," (This is my song). The King said it was impossible; but the minstrel still insisted upon it, and Arnaud, being closely pressed, ingenuously told the whole affair. The King was much entertained with this adventure, and, ordering the wager to be withdrawn, loaded them both with presents. But he afterwards obliged Arnaud to give a chanson of his own composition.

VIRGIL.

THE fame of Virgil's poetry has continued, from the time of his death, to delight each succeeding age; but, that he actually passed, in the 13th century, for a conjurer of the most terrific nature, and that the most astonishing supernatural powers were ascribed to his bones, are circumstances with which comparatively few may be acquainted.

A celebrated German prelate, Conrade, Bishop

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,