tions, compared with those of more modern times, has been collected our knowledge of the changes of the solar and lunar orbits, which has been confirmed by the theory of gravitation. The first observations of the obliquity of the ecliptic and the measure of the earth are supposed to have been made by Eratosthenes, who was born two hundred and seventy-six years before the Christian era; the latter he determined to comprehend 250,000 stadia, but the length of the stadium which he employed is uncertain. Systeme du Monde par La Place, liv. 5. ch. 3. Hist. de l'Astron. Mod. par Baillie, tome 1. p. 32.

The caliph Almamon himself observed the obliquity of the ecliptic, and his astronomers measured a degree of a meridian in Mesopotamia. The degree was determined to contain 200,000 cubits, of which one is contained four hundred times in each side of the base of the great pyramid; so that the circumference of the earth was found to contain 24,000 miles. Decl. and Fall, &c. vol. 5. p. 427, 428. The French astronomers, for the purpose of ascertaining their standard of measure, have computed the quadrant of the meridian, and found it to contain 5130740 French toises; according to which computation the whole circumference contains 20522960 French toises; and since the French toise is to the English fathom, as 213 to 200,

that circumference must contain, in English measure, 24837 miles and not quite a half, except indeed so far as the quantity may be affected by a difference supposed to exist in the forms of the northern and southern hemispheres.

As the Arabians corrupted chemistry with alchemy, so did they blend astronomy with the reveries of astrology, which was however of Chaldean or Egyptian original. This folly still prevails, and especially in Italy: the count of Boulainvilliers wrote a very serious treatise on the subject within our own time. Encycl. art. Astrologie. An astrological magazine has been recently published in the metropolis of the British empire, though for the lowest of the people. The beautiful, though somewhat mystical, lines of Lord Byron would almost persuade one to calculate a nativity:

Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven!
If in your bright leaves we would read the fate
Of men and empires-'tis to be forgiven,
That in our aspirations to be great,
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state,
And claim a kindred with you; for ye are
A beauty and a mystery, and create
In us such love and reverence from afar,
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named
themselves a star.

Childe Harold, canto 3, 88.

(ff) The people of these provinces erected among themselves a singular tribunal, called the court of love, for deciding the controversies occasioned by the subtleties of amorous casuistry; and formed from its determinations the system which they denominated the gay science, gai saber. Le Grand, tome 1. pref. p. 57. They disputed, for example, which of two lovers manifests more passion, he who is so jealous that he is alarmed at every occurrence, or he who is so prepossessed in favour of his mistress, that he cannot perceive that he has good cause for jealousy. Vie de Petrarque, tome 2. notes, p. 59.

(gg) I am persuaded, says De Sade, that it was while Petrarca resided at Toulouse and in Gascony, that he became acquainted with the Provençal poets: though the Provençal poetry had declined in this 'country, since there were no longer dukes of Aquitaine and counts of Toulouse, it was however still held in honour there; and Petrarca arrived at Toulouse but six years after the floral games had been estab lished there to reanimate the genius of the poets of the province. Vie de Petrarque, tome 1. p.

154, 155.

(hh) Though the ancients had some poetry on amorous subjects, for it was impossible that these should be wholly overlooked, yet that the general character of the ancient poetry was of a

very different kind, is attested by Lucian in the dialogue in which Venus demands of her son, why he had not directed his arrows against the Muses. They, he replies, are venerable, and always thoughtful, and occupied with their

music.

(i) In these, which were called tensons, they maintained opposite sentiments, almost always on subjects of gallantry, often extremely licentious. Hist. Litt. des Troub. disc. prel. p. 67,

68.

(kk) The first rude efforts of the English drama were made in rhyme; but the tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, first performed in the year 1561, set an example of blank verse, which, notwithstanding the rhyming tragedies of Dryden, has been happily established as the proper poetry for dramatic dialogue. Milton too, in his greater poems, emancipated himself from the restraint of this species of versification, and in our own days he has been followed by Cowper and by Southey. But rhyme, which Madam de Staël has fancifully named "the image of hope and of remembrance," has however continued to constitute the general characteristic of all our poetry except that of the drama. In the languages of France and Italy also attempts were made to sustain poetry without the aid of rhyme, but with little success, except so far as the dramas of Alfieri in the latter country,

which yet seem to owe their estimation rather to a political feeling than to their dramatic merit, may have furnished more favourable examples. It was natural that the restoration of the ancient literature should have disposed men to seek in modern languages the same resources of harmony, by which the poetry of Greece and Rome had been maintained. We have accordingly in the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, says Mr. Dunlop, vol. 3. p. 174, 175, hexameters, or at least what seem intended by the author as such, elegiacs, Sapphics, Anacreontics, Phaleusiacs, Asclepiades, and in short every thing but poetry." Similar attempts have been made with as little advantage in the French, Italian, and Spanish languages, though in France an academy had been formed, composed partly of musicians, for the purpose of ascertaining with accuracy the measures of poetry. Baillet sur les Poetes. The German language alone has long and short syllables, like those of ancient Greece and Italy; and Klopstock, whose Messiah constitutes the poetical epoch of Germany, has accordingly constructed his verses of the hexameters and the iambics of ancient poetry. Allemagne par Mad. de Staël, tome 1. p. 271, 279. Lon. 1813. Mad. de Staël however has remarked, that quantity in the German language is determined solely by a grammatical consideration, the radical syllable being long