the summer, as was his custom, beyond the precincts of the university, he at length became heated and fatigued, and, seeking the shade of a spreading tree, he laid himself down to meditate, and soon fell asleep. During the time that he slumbered, two foreign ladies passed near the spot in a carriage, who, astonished at the loveliness of his appearance, in the heat of their admiration alighted, and viewing him, as they thought, unperceived, the youngest, who was extremely handsome, drew a pencil from her pocket, and having written some lines upon a piece of paper, put it with a trembling hand into Milton's. They then entered their carriage and proceeded on their journey. Some of his academic friends had silently observed this adventure, undiscovered by the fair admirers, not knowing it was their friend Milton who was unconsciously playing the enchanter: but, approaching the spot, they recognised him, and, awaking him, told him what had passed. Milton opened the paper, and, to his no small surprise, read the following verses from the Italian poet, Guarini :—

"Oechi, stelle mortali,
Ministri de mici mali,
Se chiusi m'accidete,
Apperti che farere?"

TRANSLATED.

O eyes! O mortal stars! I find ye
Authors of lovely pangs that blind me:

If thus when shut you've power to wound me,
Open, alas! how hadst thou bound me?

Milton was cager to discover the fair incognita, and i

was probably this incident which afterwards carried him to Italy, in hopes of discovering her abode, but in vain. The idea that Milton had formed of his unknown admirer so fanned his poetic fervour, that his own times, the present, and the latest posterity, must probably feel indebted to it for several of the most beautiful and impassioned passages in his Paradise Lost; and from the above incident, perhaps, he caught the idea of that inimitable poem.

FICTION AND TRUTH.

Waller, the poet, who was bred at King's College, Cambridge, wrote a fine panegyric on Cromwell, when he assumed the protectorship. Upon the restoration of Charles, Waller wrote another in praise of him, and presented it to the king in person. After his majesty had read the poem, he told Waller that he wrote a better on Cromwell. "Please your majesty," said Waller,

like a true courtier,
in fiction than in truth."

"SLEEP ON, AND TAKE YOUR REST."

A wit at Cambridge, in the days of King James, was appointed to preach at St. Marie's, before the Vice-chancellor and the heads of the universitie, who formerlie had observed the drowsiness of the Vice-chancellor, and thereupon took this place of Scripture for his text, "What! cannot ye watch one hour!" At everie division, he concluded with his text, which, by reason of the Vicechancellor sitting so near the pulpit, often awaked him.

This was so noted by the wits of those daies, that it was the talk of the whole universitie, and, withal, it did so nettle the Vice-chancellor, that he complained to the Archbishop of Canterburie, who, willing to redress him, sent for this scholar up to London, to defend himself against this crime laid to his charge by the Vice-chancellor ; where coming, he gave so many proofs of his extraordinary wit, that the archbishop enjoined him to preach before King James; to which, after some excuses, he at length consented, and, coming into the pulpit, begins, James the First and the Sixth, waver not,-meaning the first king of England and the sixth of Scotland. At first, the king was somewhat amazed at the text, but, in the end, he was so well pleased with the sermon, that he made the preacher one of his chaplains in ordinary. After this advancement, the archbishop sent him down to Cambridge to make his recantation to the Vice-chancellor, and to take leave of the university, which he accordingly did, in a sermon, for which he took the latter part of the verse of his former text, Sleep on now, and take your rest. Concluding his sermon, he made his apology to the vice-chancellor, saying, "Whereas, I said before," which gave offence, “what, cannot ye watch one hour? I say now, sleep on, and take your rest,” and so left the universitie.

"APROPOS."

The Rev. George Harvest, who had been his schoolfellow at Eton, came down to Cambridge to vote for Lord Sandwich, when he stood candidate for the chancellorship of that university. At a dinner given to his

friends on the occasion, his lordship, joking him on some of their school-boy tricks, in the simplicity of his heart, Harvest suddenly exclaimed, " Apropos! where do you derive your name of Jemmy Twitcher?"-" Why," answered his lordship, "from some foolish fellow or other."-" No, no," interruptod Harvest, "it is not some, but every body calls you so." His lordship being seated near the pudding, for which he knew Harvest had no slight relish, put a large slice on his plate, which Harvest immediately attacked, which had the desired effect of putting an end to his apropos.

"ALAS! WE CAN'T."

At a party where there was no lack of either good port, good fellowship, or harmony, one of the gentlemen proposed, at the end of a song, they should take a glass. "Would we could have a lass!" exclaimed a second. "A-las! we can't," was the bewail-instanter of a third.

SIR BUSICK HARWOOD AND THE CANDLE AND LANTERN.

During the period Sir Busick Harwood was professor of anatomy in the University of Cambridge, he was called in, in a case of some difficulty, by the friends of a patient, who were anxious for his opinion of the malady. Not approving the treatment which had been pursued towards the invalid, and, in answer to his inquiry, being told the name of the medical man who had previously

prescribed, Sir Busick exclaimed, perhaps with more truth than feeling,-"He! if he were to descend into the patient's stomach with a candle and lantern, when he ascended he would not be able to name the complaint."

HOCK versus FALERNIAN.

As some Peter-house fellows, one day, as I have heard,
Were disputing which liquor old Horace preferred,
While some were for this sort, and others for that,
And backed their belief with quotations quite pat;
Whilst, in spite of their joking, the contest ran high,
And some would have quarrell'd, but couldn't tell why:
Old P-ne, who, till now, had not moved tongue or
breech,

Put an end to the war by this comical speech :-
"You may talk of your wines, with a name purely
classic,

Such as Chiar, Falernian, Lesbian, and Massic;
But of this I am sure, and it worthy of note is,
Hock, hock was his liquor,- Hoc erat in votis !'"'*

A LONG-WINDED SERMON.

The erudite Dr. Isaac Barrow, who, it is well known, was tutor to Sir Isaac Newton, during his residence as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, was complimented, by King Charles II., with the title of the best scholar of the age, but called him an unfair one; "for," said the king," when he once begins a subject, he says so much on it, that nobody can say anything on the

* Vide Hor. Sat. 6. lib. 2.