sage in a Latin poet, I have been only informed, that such or such ancient manuscripts for an et write an ac, or of some other notable discovery of the like importance. Indeed, when a different reading gives us a different sense, or a new elegance in an author, the editor does very well in taking notice of it; but when he only entertains us with the several ways of spelling the same word, and gathers together the various blunders and mistakes of twenty or thirty different transcribers, they only take up the time of the learned reader, and puzzle the minds of the ignorant. I have often fancied with myself how enraged an old Latin author would be, should he see the several absurdities in sense and grammar, which are imputed to him, by some or other of these various readings. In one he speaks nonsense; in another makes use of a word that was never heard of: and indeed there is scarce a solecism in writing which the best author is not guilty of, if we may be at liberty to read him in the words of some manuscript, which the laborious editor has thought fit to examine in the prosecution of his work.

I question not but the ladies and pretty fellows will be very curious to understand what it is that I have been hitherto talking of. I shall therefore give them a notion of this practice by endeavouring to write after the manner of several persons who make an eminent figure in the republic of letters. To this end we will suppose, that the following song is an old ode which I present to the public in a new edition, with the several various readings which I find of it in former editions, and in ancient manuscripts. Those who cannot relish the various readings, will perhaps find their account in the song, which never before appeared in print.

My love was fickle once and changing,
Nor e'er would settle in my heart;

From beauty still to beauty ranging,
In ev'ry face I found a dart.

Stanza the first, verse the first. And changing.] The and in some manuscripts is written thus, &, but that in the Cotton Library writes it in three distinct letters.

Verse the second. Nor ere would.] Aldus reads it ever would; but as this would hurt the metre, we have restored it to its genuine reading, by observing that synæresis which had been neglected by ignorant transcribers.

Ibid. In my heart.] Scaliger and others, on my heart.

Verse the fourth. I found a dart.] The Vatican manuscript for I reads it, but this must have been the hallucination of the transcriber, who probably mistook the dash of the I for a T.

Stanza the second, verse the second. The fatal stroke.] Scioppius, Salmasius, and many others, for the read a, but I have stuck to the usual reading.

Verse the third. Till by her wit.] it his wit, others your, others their wit.

Some manuscripts have

But as I find Corinna

'V. Nichol's select collection of poems, vol. 2, p. 68-et seq., note on

a remark in the Chef d'œuvre d'un Inconnu.-C.

to be the name of a woman in other authors, I cannot doubt but

it should be her.

Stanza the third, verse the first. A long and lasting an guish.] The German manuscript reads a lasting passion, but the rhyme will not admit it.

Verse the second. For Belvidera I endure.] Did not all the manuscripts reclaim, I should change Belvidera into Pelvidera; Pelvis being used by several of the ancient comic writers for a looking-glass, by which means the etymology of the word is very visible, and Pelvidera will signify a lady who often looks in her glass, as indeed she had very good reason, if she had all those beauties which our poet here ascribes to her.

Verse the third. Hourly I sigh and hourly languish.] Some for the word hourly read daily, and others nightly; the last has great authorities of it's side.

Verse the fourth.

reads wanted cure.

The wonted cure.] The elder Stevens

Stanza the fourth, verse the second. After a thousand beauties.] In several copies we meet with a hundred beauties, by the usual error of the transcribers, who probably omitted a cypher, and had not taste enough to know, that the word thousand was ten times a greater compliment to the poet's mistress than an hundred.

Verse the fourth. And finds variety in one.] Most of the ancient manuscripts have it in two. Indeed so many of them concur in this last reading, that I am very much in doubt whether it ought not to take place. There are but two reasons which incline me to the reading, as I have published it; first, because the rhyme, and, secondly, because the sense is preserved by it. It might likewise proceed from the oscitancy of transcribers, who, to dispatch their work the sooner, used to write all numbers in cypher, and seeing the figure 1 followed by a little

dash of the pen, as is customary in old manuscripts, they perhaps mistook the dash for a second figure, and by casting up both together composed out of them the figure 2. But this I shall leave to the learned, without determining any thing in a matter of so great uncertainty." C.

No. 471. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30.

Ἐν ἐλπίσιν χρὴ τοὺς σοφοὺς ἔχειν βίον.

EURIPID.

The wise with hope support the pains of life.

THE time present seldom affords sufficient employment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the soul in constant action, and supply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In order, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recal what is past, and anticipate what is to come.

That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals, that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails.

As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is past, we

Mr. Addison knew how to proportion the expence of his wit, to the worth of his subject. There is more good sense, as well as true humour, in this little paper, than in the long laboured work of St. Hyacinth, which goes under the name of, "Le Chef d'œuvre d'un Inconnu.”—H.

have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the passions of hope and fear.

By these two passions we reach forward into futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts objects that lie hid in the remotest depths of time. We suffer misery, and enjoy happiness, before they are in being; we can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earth shall be no more.

By the way, who can imagine that the existence of a creature is to be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are not? shall, in this paper, confine myself to that particular passion which goes by the name of hope.

Our actual enjoyments are so few and transient, that man would be a very miserable being, were he not endowed with this passion, which gives him a taste of those good things that may possibly come into his possession. 'We should hope for every thing that is good, (says the old poet Linus,) because there is nothing which may not be hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are able to give us.' Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habitual serenity and good humour. It is a kind of vital heat in the soul, that cheers and gladdens her, when she does not attend to it. It makes pain easy, and labor pleasant.

Besides these several advantages which rise from hope, there is another which is none of the least, and that is, its great efficacy in preserving us from setting too high a value on present enjoyments. The saying of Cæsar is very well known. When he had given away all his estate in gratuities among his friends, one of them asked what he had left for himself; to which that great man replied, Hope. His natural magnanimity hindered him from prizing what he was certainly possessed of, and turned