Part 15 (1/2)

A COMPOSITION WITH CONSCIENCE

Lully, the cohtthe patient's state critical, and his mind very ill at ease, told hi all that he had by him of a yet unpublished opera The remonstrance of his friends was in vain; Lully burnt the music, and the confessor departed well pleased The composer, however, recovered, and told one of his visitors, a nobleman as his patron, of the sacrifice he had made to the demands of the confessor ”And so,” cried the nobleman, ”you have burnt your opera, and are really such a blockhead as to believe in the absurdities of a monk!” ”Stop, my friend, stop,” returned Lully; ”let me whisper in your ear: I knew very hat I was about--_I have another copy_”

SALE, THE TRANSLATOR OF THE KORAN

The learned Sale, who first gave to the world a genuine version of the Koran, pursued his studies through a life of wants This great Orientalist, when he quitted his books to go abroad, too often wanted a change of linen; and he frequently wandered the streets, in search of soht supply him with the meal of the day

THE LATTER DAYS OF LOVELACE

Sir Richard Lovelace, who in 1649 published the elegant collection of amorous and other poeentleman: by the men of his time (the time of the civil wars) respected for his moral worth and literary ability; by the fair sex, alance of his person and the sweetness of his manners An ardent loyalist, the people of Kent appointed him to present to the House of Commons their petition for the restoration of Charles and the settleave offence, and the bearer was comraceful little song, ”Loyalty Confined,” opening thus:

”When love, with unconfined wings, Hovers within rates; When I lie tangled in her hair, And fettered in her eye; The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty”

But ”dinnerless the polished Lovelace died” He obtained his liberation, after a few months' confinement By that time, however, he had consu withassistance to men of talent of whatever kind, whom he found in difficulties Very soon, he becareatest distress, and fell into a deep ht on a consumption, and made him as poor in person as in purse, till he even becaallantry wore cloth of gold, was now naked, or only half covered with filthy rags; he who had thrown splendour on palaces, now shrank into obscure and dirty alleys; he who had associated with princes, banqueted on dainties, been the patron of the indigent, the ad of the chaste and fair--was now fain to herd with beggars, gladly to partake of their coarse offals, and thankfully to receive their twice-given alues forlorn, In short and th expired, in 1658, in ain Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane, and was buried at the west end of St Bride's church, Fleet Street Such is the account of Lovelace's closing days given by Wood in his _Athenae_, and confirmed by Aubrey in his _Lives of Erapher (the son of Hazlitt) pronounces, though he does not prove, the account erated

PAYMENT IN KIND

The E sent, as a present to Voltaire, a small ivory box made by her own hands, the poet induced his niece to instruct his; and he had actually half finished a pair, of white silk, when he becas were, however, he sent theallant poetical epistle, in which he told her that, ”As she had presented him with a piece of ht it his duty to crave her acceptance, in return, of a piece of woman's work from the hands of a man”--When Constantia Phillips was in a state of distress, she took a small shop near Westminster Hall, and sold books, so this time, an apothecary who had attended her once when she was ill, came to her and requested payment of his bill She pleaded her poverty; but he still continued to press her, and urged as a reason for his urgency, that he had saved her life ”You have,” said Constantia, ”you have indeed done so: I acknowledge it; and, in return, here ishim at the sa that he would now take _her life_ in discharge of his demand

CHATTERTON'S PROFIT AND LOSS RECKONING

Chatterton, the marvellous boy, wrote a political essay for the _North Briton_, Wilkes's journal; but, though accepted, the essay was not printed, in consequence of the death of the Lord Mayor, Chatterton's patron The youthful patriot thus calculated the results of the suppression of his essay, which had begun by a splendid flourish about ”a spirited people freeing themselves from insupportable slavery:”

”Lost, by the Lord Mayor's death, in this essay, 1 11 6 Gained in elegies, 2 2 0 Do in essays, 3 3 0 -------- 5 5 0 ---------- Alad he is dead by 3 13 6”

LOCKE'S REBUKE OF THE CARD-PLAYING LORDS