Many, unknown to their readers, like COMINES, have had a booted head; but the secret poison is distilled on their lasting page, as we have recently witnessed in Lord Waldegrave's "Memoirs." Swift's perpetual malevolence to Dryden originated in that great poet's prediction, that "cousin Swift would never be a poet;" a prediction which the wit never could forget.

I have elsewhere fully written a tale of literary hatred, where is seen a man of genius, in the character of GILBERT STUART, devoting a whole life to harassing the industry or the genius which he himself could not attain.[A] [Footnote A: See "Calamities of Authors," pp.

131--139.] A living Italian poet, of great celebrity, when at the court of Rome, presented a magnificent edition of his poetry to Pius VI.

The bard, Mr.
Hobhouse informs us, lived not in the good graces of his holiness, and although the pontiff accepted the volume, he did not forbear a severity of remark which could not fall unheeded by the modern poet; for on this occasion, repeating some verses of Metastasio, his holiness drily added, "No one now-a-days writes like that great poet." Never was this to be erased from memory: the stifled resentment of MONTI vehemently broke forth at the moment the French carried off Pius VI.

from Rome.