"Epistle of Eloisa," or the "Elegy on the Unfortunate Lady;" nor so uniformly sublime as the Essay on Man," or the pastoral of "The Messiah." This last is indeed but a selection and imitation of choice passages; but it bespeaks a power of imitation, and a taste in selection, that Dryden does not seem to have possessed. To all which may I not be permitted to add, what I think I could prove, that the pathos of Homer is frequently improved by Pope, and that of Virgil very frequently debased by Dryden ?

The writings of Dryden are stamped with originality, but are not always the better for that circumstance. Pope is an imitator professedly, and of choice; but to most of those whom he copies he is at least equal, and to many of them superior; and it is pleasing to observe, how he rises in proportion to his originals. Where he follows Denham, Buckingham, Roscommon, and Rochester, in his Windsor-Forest, Essay on Criticism, and poem on Silence, he is superior indeed, but does not soar very high above them. When he versifies Chaucer, he catches, as by instinct, the ease, simplicity, and spirit of Dryden, whom he there emulates. In the Rape of the Lock he outshines Boileau, as much as the sylphs that flutter round Belinda exceed in sprightliness and luminous beauty those mechanical attendants of the goddess of luxury, who knead up plumpness for the chin of the canon, and pound vermilion for the cheek of the monk. His Eloisa is beyond all comparison more sublime and more interesting than any of Ovid's letter-writing ladies. His imitations of Horace equal their archetypes in elegance, and often surpass them in energy and fire. In the lyric

style, he was no match for Dryden; but when he copies the manner of Virgil, and borrows the thoughts of Isaiah, Pope is superior not only to himself, but to almost all other poets.

BEATTIE.

HUNGARIAN ROBBERS.

THIS story was told me by an Italian officer, who was serving, at the time he first learned it, with the "Grande Armée" of Napoleon. It seems to me to contain one of the most striking, most dramatic, and terrible scenes that can be conceived, and I have only to regret that I lack the talent or power of telling the tale of horror so well as it was told to me.

It was a few weeks before the termination of the short, but (for Austria) fatal campaign of 1809that campaign which, begun nobly by the Aus trians, ended in their seeing Bonaparte dictate to their prostrate empire from their capital, and shortly after claim as his bride the daughter of the sovereign he had so injured and humbled-that an Hungarian horse-dealer left Vienna to return to his home, which was situated in an interior province of his country.

He carried with him, in paper money and in gold, a very considerable sum, the product of the horses he had sold at the Austrian capital: To carry this in safety was a difficult object just at that time; for troops, French and Austrian, were scattered in every direction, and he knew by experience, that it was not always safe to fall in with small parties of soldiers, even of his own country or government, (to say nothing of the French,) but that Croates, and wild Hussars, and Hulans, and

others that fought under the Austrian eagle, were seldom over-scrupulous as to "keeping their hands from picking and stealing," when opportunity was favourable or tempting.

The dealer, however, relied on his minute knowledge of the country he had traversed so often; on the bottom and speed of his thorough bred Hungarian horse ;-and having obtained what he considered good information, as to the posts occupied by the belligerents, and the range of country most exposed to the soldiery, he set out from Vienna, which he feared would soon be in the hands of the enemy. He went alone, and on his road carefully avoided, instead of seeking the company of other travellers; for he reasonably judged, that a solitary individual, meanly dressed as he was, might escape notice, while a party of travellers would be

sure to attract it.

By his good management he passed the Hungarian frontier unharmed, and continued his journey homeward by a circuitous unfrequented route. On the third night after his departure from Vienna, he stopped at a quiet inn, situated in the suburbs of a small town. He had never been there before, but the house was comfortable, and the appearance of the people about it respectable. Having first attended to his tired horse, he sat down to supper with his host and family. During the meal, he was asked whence he came, and when he said from Vienna, all present were anxious to know the news. The dealer told them all he knew. The host then inquired what business had carried him to Vienna. He told them he had been there to sell some of the best horses that were ever taken to that market. When he heard this, the host cast a glance at one of the men of the family, who seemed to be his

son, which the dealer scarcely observed then, but which he had reason to recall afterwards.

When supper was finished, the fatigued traveller requested to be shown to his bed. The host himself took up a light, and conducted him across a little yard at the back of the house to a detached building, which contained two rooms, tolerably decent for an Hungarian hostel. In the inner of these rooms was a bed, and here the host left him to himself. As the dealer threw off his jacket and loosened the girdle round his waist where his money was deposited, he thought he might as well see whether it was all safe. Accordingly he drew out an old leathern purse that contained his gold, and then a tattered parchment pocket-book that enveloped the Austrian bank notes, and finding that both were quite right, he laid them under the bolster, extinguished the light, and threw himself on the bed, thanking God and the saints that he had carried him thus far homeward in safety. He had no misgiving as to the character of the people he had fallen amongst to hinder his repose, and the poor dealer was very soon enjoying a profound and happy sleep.

He might have been in this state of beatitude an hour or two, when he was disturbed by a noise like that of an opening window, and by a sudden rush of cool night air; on raising himself on the bed, he saw peering through an open window which was almost immediately above the bed, the head and shoulders of a man, who was evidently attempting to make his ingress into the room that way. As the terrified dealer looked, the intruding figure was withdrawn, and he heard a rumbling noise, and then the voices of several men, as he

thought, close under the window. The most dreadful apprehensions, the more horrible as they were so sudden, now agitated the traveller, who, scarcely knowing what he did, but utterly despairing of preserving his life, threw himself under the bed. He had scarcely done so, when the hard breathing of a man was heard at the open window, and the next moment a robust fellow dropped into the room, and after staggering across it, groped his way by the walls to the bed. Fear had almost deprived the horse-dealer of his senses, but yet he perceived that the intruder, whoever he might be, was drunk. There was, however, slight comfort in this, for he might only have swallowed wine to make him the more desperate, and the traveller was convinced he had heard the voices of other men without, who might climb into the room to assist their brother villain in case any resistance should be made. His astonishment, however, was great and reviving, when he heard the fellow throw off his jacket on the floor, and then toss himself upon the bed under which he lay. Terror, however, had taken too firm a hold of the traveller to be shaken off at once,his ideas were too confused to permit his imagining any other motive for such a midnight intrusion on an unarmed man with property about him, save that of robbery and assassination, and he lay quiet where he was until he heard the fellow above him snoring with all the sonorousness of a drunkard., Then, indeed, he would have left his hiding place, and gone to rouse the people in the inn to get another resting place instead of the bed of which he had been dispossessed in so singular a manner, but, just as he came to this resolution, he heard the door of the outer room open-then stealthy steps