their worship as these savages. The croce dile supplies them with a trial by ordeal. The party accused, invokes this Jacaret, as they call it, and adjures it to spare him if he is innocent, but to devour him, if what he swears be false: then he plunges into the water.. I do not remember any other ordeal which has been so totally referred to chance. Those Egyptians who were wise enough not to worship crocodiles, had an excellent method of destroying them. They laid a bait for them, and made a pig cry upon the shore to attract them. As soon as one was hooked and drawn out of the water, they threw dust in its eyes; and having thus blinded it, were easily able to destroy it. This animal is tameable. The Egyptians of Thebes and those who dwelt near Lake Mœris, each had one which would suffer itself to be handled, and wore earrings and bracelets. The Javanese take a fancy, that a particular crocodile is their brother or sister, and accustom it to come at a call and be fed. Less cost of money than was expended upon Cleopatra's barge, would have sufficed to have trained crocodiles to draw it. The testicles of the crocodile are greatly valued in some parts of India for their strong musky odour. 60. Small Wit. "Many there are (says an old writer that will lose their friend rather than their jest, or their quibble, pun, punnet or pundigrion, fifteen of which will not make up one single jest." Is there any commentator who can explain the punnet and pundigrion, or must they be enumerated in the next work which shall be written De rebus deperditis? The recovery of this lost species of the wit, would be of signal modern dramatists. small currency of advantage to our What was the clench, another favourite figure of wit in old times; but which was going out of fashion in the days of the pundigrion? Clenches and quibbles are now out of date,' is a line of Flecknoe's. Children find, if they endeavour it, Your learning, chronicle; clinches your wit. Sir William Duvenant. The quip seems to be another lost spe cies, and we now hear of no quirks but those of pettyfogging lawyers. 61. Grapes in Madagascar. The grape was believed to be poisonous in Madagascar till the French taught the natives to eat it. Can this have been a mere prejudice, or was the opinion introduced by some of their Moorish visitors, who thought prejudice a better security against the abuse of the grape than prohibition would be. * Dellon, t. 1. c. 9. 62. Richard Flecknoe. Flecknoe has these excellent lines ad drest to a miser. Money's like muck, that's profitable while What was the cause of Dryden's enmity to this poor author? so far from having provoked it, Flecknoe has even written an epigram in his praise: this tribute, and his religion (for he was a Catholic) it might have been thought, would have saved him. Perhaps Dryden was offended at his invectives against the obscenity of the stage, feeling himself more notorious, if not more culpable than any of his rivals, for this scandalous and unpardonable offence. Flecknoe is by no means the despicable writer that we might suppose him to be from the nich in which his mighty enemy has placed him. These stanzas are well turned in their way. TO LILY, DRAWING THE COUNTESS OF CASTELMAIN'S PICTURE. Stay, daring man, and ne'er presume to draw Nor e'er were known by any painter yet, "Till from all beauties thou extracts the grace, And from the sun the beams that gild the skies, Never presume to draw her beauteous face, Nor paint the radiant brightness of her eyes. In vain the whilst thou dost thy labour take, Yet be'n't discouraged, since whoc'er do see't, Much more than others, tho' than her's much less. So those bold giants who would scale the sky, Than those who never strove to climb at all, |