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An extract from the "Mystery of St. Denis" is in the "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768." In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.

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The idea of "No light but rather darkness visible" was perhaps suggested to Milton by Spenser's

A little glooming light much like a shade.

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In the Dutch Vondel's tragedy "The Deliverance of the Children of Israel" one of the principal characters is the Divinity himself.

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Darwin is indebted for a great part of his "Great poem" to a Latin one by De La Croix, published in 1727 and entitled "Connubia Florum."

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Mr. Bryant in his learned "Mythology" says that although the Pagan fables are not believe, yet we forget ourselves continually and make inferences from them as existing realities.

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The shield of Achilles in Homer seems to have been copied from some Pharos which the poet had seen in Egypt. What he describes on the central part of the shield is a map of the earth and of the celestial appearances.

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Anaxagoras of Clazomenw is said to have prophecied that a stone would fall from the sun. This is a mistake of the learned. All that Anaxagoras averred may be seen in the Scholiast upon Pindar (Olymp. Ode. 1.) It amounts only to this, that Petros was a name of the sun.

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The Hebrew language has lain now for two thousand years mute and incapable of utterance. The "Masoretical punctuation" which professes to supply the vowels was formed a thousand years after the language had ceased to be spoken, and disagrees in many instances with the Seventy, Origen and other writers.

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James Montgomery thinks proper to style M'Pherson's Ossian, a collection "of halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs."

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The paucity of spondees in the English language, is the reason why we cannot tolerate an English Hexameter. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Arcadia, thus speaks of Love in what is meant for Hexameter verse:

So to the woods Love runnes, as well as rides to the palace:

Neither he bears reverence to a prince, nor pity to a beggar;

But, like a point in the midst of a circle, is still of a nearnesse.

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His form had not yet lost

All her original brightness,

is a very remarkable passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, wherein a person is personified.

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It is certain that Hebrew verse did not include rhyme: the terminations of the lines where they are most distinct, never showing any thing of the kind.

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Francis le Brossano engraved these verses upon a marble tomb which he erected to Petrarch at Arqua.

Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcae.

Suscipe, virgo parens, animam: sate virgine, parce,

Fessaque jam terris, cceli requiescat in arce.

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"Statua Stature" was an inscription handed about at Paris for the equestrian statue of Louis XV, begun by Bouchardon and finished by Pigal. The following also,

Bouchardon est un animal

Et son ouvrage fait piti6:

II place les vices h cheval

Et les vertus i pied.

And another,

Voila notre roi commnie il est h Versailles

Sans foi, sans loi, et sans entrailles.

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Bochart derives Elysium from the Phoenician Elysoth, joy, through the Greek [[Greek text=]] 'Hxxxx [[=Greet text]]. Circe from the Phoenician Kirkar, to corrupt — Siren from the Phoenician Sir, to sing — Scylla from the Phoenician Scol, destruction — Charybdis from the Phoenician Chor-obdam, chasm of ruin.

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Attrogs, a fruit common in Palestine, is supposed to have been "the forbidden." It has a rough rind, and resembles a citron or lemon.

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The following quaint sentence is found in Saint Evremond. "I own I do not envy him, when I consider that there are in the next world such people as Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Eacus."

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The standard of Judas Maccabaeus displayed the words