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"MANNERS," said good William of Wykeham,

makyth man." When, therefore, we permitted Anti-Gallus to vent his ire against the French in our pages, we are quite sure, that he by no means wished to take up the cudgels in defence of those coarse, ill-bred persons, represented by many of the old English squires of the last century, who affected to discard all politeness, under the preposterous idea that, by paying deference to the common forms of society, they were encouraging Frenchified notions, with which your true old John Bull, the genuine Englishman, can have no sympathy.

Our readers will, doubtless, have anticipated us in finding out the resemblance of this portrait to the hero of a choice song-"The Old English Gentleman." They will have pictured to themselves a portly, apoplectic-looking personage, reclining at his ease by the chimney-corner; (over his head, on one side, huge meerschaums, and on the other, piles of foxes' brushesmemorials of his achievements in the chase :)

"In doublet and trunk hose,

Quaffing a cup of good old sack,

To warm his good old nose."

The correctness of the portrait may be heightened by making him gouty and aged, yet exhibiting the ruling passions strong in death; for, undeterred by the

repeated warnings of gout, and the quick approach of age, our hero is reputed to be able, " though so very, very old," to outdrink all his pot-companions. Picture such an one to yourselves, readers, and here you have a beau ideal of a "fine old English gentleman,-one of the olden time."

We can trace a resemblance between such a person and Frederic William of Prussia, father of Frederic the Great. Not to mention that monarch's amiable qualities of cursing and caning gentlemen and ladies in the public streets, and treating his children worse than Mrs. Brownrigg did her apprentices; we may quote the summary of his character, in the words of the reviewer:*

"His own mind was uncultivated; he despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, but did not very well understand in what they differed from each other. The recreations suited to a prince were, according to him, to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer between the puffs of the pipe, to play backgammon for three-halfpence a rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot partridges by the thousand."

But there is another class of persons, men rigidly just and upright, who are ambitious of the title of a chip of the old block who think it effeminate, and beneath the dignity of scholars, to subject themselves to the prescribed rules of genteel society. Is it not a pity that the fair character of a Cato and a Johnson should have been tarnished by an ill-bred coarseness of mind, and an offensively rude temper, which vented itself even on their best and dearest friends?

* Edinb. Rev. No. 151, April, 1842, Art. "Frederic the Great."

Relating a story of Cato's indelicacy and unkindness to his most familiar comrade Munatius Plancus, and comparing his indirect advances to reconciliation, which yet were stifled by haughty reserve, and a cold air of superiority, with a similar trait in Johnson, Dr. Arnold adds:* "The natural dispositions of Cato and Johnson appear to have borne a strong resemblance to one another, and had Cato been a Christian, the likeness would have been more perfect. His character would have been far better than it was, had he been taught to struggle against his pride and coarseness of mind, instead of thinking it to his credit to divulge it.

Not all Dr. Johnson's prodigious learning, which was equalled only by his deep and active piety, could prevent him from being looked down upon in society, and in many cases only tolerated on account of his extraordinary genius. Who does not feel the truth of Soame Jenyns' epitaph for him?

"Here lies Sam. Johnson. Reader, have a care,

Tread softly, lest you wake the sleeping bear.

A Christian, and a scholar, but a brute."

How strange is it then, when these are acknowledged faults, for people to think them worthy of imitation, not because they are likely to be lauded, but because men would like to err with a Cato or a Johnson. Acting on this principle, however, they might, according to Martial, plead Cato's name as an excuse for drunkenness, and Cicero's for writing bad verses. Vices would then be turned into virtues, only because

*Roman Commonwealth, Vol. I. p. 367.

great, and otherwise good men, have been weak enough to fall into them.

And after all, what great matter for boasting is it, to be ill-bred and coarse? Were Cato and Johnson the more liked for it? The fact is, the illiterate boorishness of the last century has departed this life ; and the sooner these rough diamonds-diamonds they are, and precious diamonds too, though rough-are, to keep up the metaphor, subjected to the polish of the lapidary, the better. They will shine much brighter, and be of ten times more value than they are when rough and ungainly, and worth little more than a lump of charcoal.

Are we then advocating foppishness? By no means. We desire to enter our protest against an excess of fashion and that effeminate taste for dress, which seems to pervade too many of our youth; in short, against all who come under Moore's definition :

"A thing you know, whiskered, great-coated, and laced,
Like an hour glass, exceedingly small in the waist,
Quite a new sort of creature, unknown yet to scholars,
With heads so immoveably fixed in shirt-collars,

That seats like our music-stools soon must be found them,
To twirl, when the creatures may wish to look round them."

We would have people neither fops nor slovens; neither illiterate, nor vain of their literary acquirements; neither indelicately coarse, nor haughtily reserved. We would have all cultivate good-breeding, and an attention to the little forms of society, which, however unworthy of his notice it may seem to a scholar, is positively necessary to prevent even a Johnson from being thought a bore and a pedant.

EDITOR'S SCRAP-BOOK.

I HAVE laid my hand on an old translation from Eurip. Hecuba, vv. 905-951: I could wish that the author had been less diffuse and more literal. With this exception, the whole chorus is well turned. It may be remembered that it has been beautifully rendered into alcaics by the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, an old Etonian, who, for first-rate talents and elegant scholarship, has few equals. The following stanzas are worthy of the author:

"Sons of the Greeks! your time is come;
The towers of Ilium fall;

Arise! the trumpet sounds this night,
That summons your recall."

In Spartan virgin's loose attire
I started from my bed,
And to the chaste Diana's shrine
A wretched suppliant fled.

In vain! I saw my husband fall,
Scarce from my bosom torn;
And from my home was captive led,
O'er the wild billows borne.

Oct. 8.-The author of the above translation has favoured me with some English hexameters, turned from Homer's Odyssey, b. iii. vv. 103-114; and, I am bound to say, infinitely better than the former.

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