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contemporary of Petrarch and Buccaccio. In the earlier part of the sixteenth century, as may be seen from the poems of Surrey and Wyatt, it had attained, in regard to both its words and its idioms, very nearly the form it still has; and the latter part of that century, and the beginning of the following, was the time of its greatest richness and glory, being that in which flourished Spenser, and Hooker, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and many others whom even their greatness has not obscured, and in which Jeremy Taylor and Milton were born and educated. Yet, after all these writers had produced their immortal works, we find not only some of our most distinguished scholars continuing to write their native tongue with an awkwardness and inaccuracy that, in a Latin composition, would have been considered disgraceful, but trace our most polite and popular authors themselves, affecting almost universally to despise their mother English as an unformed and barbarous dialect, scarcely to be used except in works of the most ephemeral description, or in addressing the vulgar who understood no other. Thus, to omit many similar evidences of the general state of feeling, Waller, the poet, who died the year before the Revolution, tells us that

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Poets, that lasting marble seek,
Must carve in Latin or in Greek."

It is delightful to contrast with this most discreditable insensibility, the enthusiastic admiration which some of our older writers express for this golden growth of our island-the best representative and picture of our national manners, intellect, heart and history. The works of Chaucer, who, Waller informs us,

"His sense can only boast,

The glory of his numbers lost,"

are, in Spenser's estimation, the "well of English un

defiled;" and Spenser was one of the most learned men, as well as greatest poets, that ever adorned the literature of any country. So, George Chapman, one of the poets of the age of Elizabeth and James, who produced in the beginning of the seventeenth century, a translation of the Iliad and Odyssey, abounding in passages of great splendour and beauty, (and which Pope acknowledges to be animated by "a daring fiery spirit, something," he is pleased to add, "like what one might imagine Homer himself would have writ before he arrived at years of discretion,") exclaims, with great fervour and sweetness of expression, in a copy of original verses which he has prefixed to that work,

"And for our tongue, that still is so impaired*
By travelling linguists, I can prove it clear
That no tongue hath the Muse's utterance heired
For verse, and that sweet music to the ear

Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this."

And then he goes on to contrast its variety, and sinewy strength, with what he deems the comparatively feeble and inexpressive monotony of both the French and Italian. Thus, too, Milton, although accomplished in all the learning of Greece and Rome, and as a writer of Latin, scarcely inferior to any other of his time, had very early the wisdom to discern that, whatever of lasting glory he might achieve, must be derived from the works he should produce, in what he calls "the mother dialect"-to the cultivation of which his thoughts appear to have been first turned by the example of the success that had attended the like enterprise, as pursued by the writers of Italy. In a prose tract, which he entitles "Reasons against prelaty," written many years before he had begun the composition of his Paradise Lost, he

That is, depreciated.

announces to us that he had formed with himself "that resolution which Ariosto followed, against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art he could unite to the adorning of his native tongue;" "that what the greatest and choicest wits," he adds, "of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I, in my proportion, with this over and above of being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these British islands as my world.” It must, however, be admitted, that the preference given upon the revival of literature to the Latin language, was a natural consequence of the paucity of readers in any particular country, and of the extensive diffusion of a language rendered general amongst the reading classes in Western Europe, in consequence of its application to the services of the church.

We have little written in his native tongue, by the Prince of MIRANDOLA; nor indeed is it from his published works that we must judge of the extent of those literary labours which he found means to undertake in the course of his short life. Yet, if ever there was a heart given up to the love of literature, it was that of Mirandola. He was born in the year 1463; and, if we may trust to the accounts handed down to us by some of his contemporaries, was even in early youth such a prodigy of learning as the world has not often seen. It has been affirmed, that, by the time he had reached his eighteenth year, he had made himself familiar with no fewer than twenty-two different languages,-a story in which, as well as the similar one which certain ancient authors tell us of the famous Mithridates, King of Pontus, who is said to have spoken twenty-four languages fluently, there must be, we can hardly doubt, a very liberal allowance of the fabulous. At the university at Bologna,

of which he was entered at the early age of fourteen, Mirandola greatly distinguished himself not only by his uncommon powers of intellect and memory, but by an industry and application almost equally rare. His future ardour and success in the pursuit of literature, up to the period of his death, was altogether in accordance with this early promise:"I have, by assiduous and intense application," he writes to one of his friends in his twenty-third year, "attained to the knowledge of the Hebrew and Chaldaic languages, and am at present struggling with the difficulties of the Arabic. Such are the achievements which I have ever thought, and still think, worthy the ambition of a nobleman." In a subsequent letter to another of his correspondents, he says, in reference to the same subject, "After having studied the Hebrew language day and night for a month, I have directed my whole attention to the Arabic and Chaldee, not doubting that in these I shall make as much progress as I have done in the Hebrew, in which I am already able to compose an epistle, not certainly so as to merit praise, but yet without committing any decided fault. See what can be done by determination of mind-by mere labour and diligence, even when the strength is but inconsiderable." Mirandola's letters, which unfortunately form but a very small collection, are the most interesting productions of his pen we now possess. They breathe in every page both a literary enthusiasm that is quite inspiring, and a serenity and cheerfulness of heart, than which, adorned, as it is, by all the graces of a fervent devotion, and a very high toned morality; nothing can be more delightful. So precious were they wont to be esteemed, that in some of the earlier editions we find them entitled, The Golden Epistles of the most learned, most noble, and most eloquent of Mortals,'-an inscription which,

seeming as it does to a modern taste to partake somewhat of the pompous and extravagant, speaks at least the reverence and affection with which his own contemporaries regarded their admirable author.

In the remaining part of the letter we have last quoted, Mirandola goes on to inform his friend that the circumstance which had excited in him all this zeal to acquire an acquaintance with the Oriental tongues, was the having obtained the loan for a short time of certain Chaldee or Hebrew books, " if," says he, they are not rather treasures than books," which he had every reason to believe were the genuine productions of the Jew Ezra. The following is another letter relating to this matter, addressed about the same time to his nephew, which forcibly illustrates the literary enthusiasm and devotedness of the writer. "This was the reason," he begins, “why I have not yet answered your letter. Certain Hebrew books have fallen into my hands, on which I have spent the whole week, day and night, with such diligence, that they have almost made me blind. For the person who brought them to me, a Jew, from Sicily, is to leave this in twenty days. Wherefore, until I shall have extricated myself from these manuscripts, do not expect a line from me; for I cannot leave them for a moment, lest they leave me, before I shall have thoroughly perused them. When I shall have made my escape from this engagement, I will overwhelm you with letters, although you know that my mind is exceedingly occupied. But if ever you are to do any thing for my sake, endeavour as far as you can to prevent the Prince of Bar from desiring my coming to him; for I should in that case be obliged to interrupt all my studies, to which you know how much I am devoted, although I care for nothing beside. But I do not know whether it would vex me most to displease him or myself. Farewell.