Britain. Dr. Cocchi shews how "a wife falls into impudicity or conjugal infidelity by insensible gradations!" That women from their situation in life " are addicted to falsehood, and fond of trifles and slander," Their capriciousness arising from their ignorance of the vices and virtues of the living world, because they will not read history!— Their passion for dress and expence, and their irascibility derived from their constitutional delicacy, produces perpetual discords.

At length when the doctor finds a woman as all women ought to be, he opens a new spring of misfortunes which must attend her husband. He dreads one of the probable consequences of matrimony,-progeny, in which we must maintain the children we beget! He thinks the father gains nothing in his old age from the tender offices administered by his own children: he asserts these are much better performed by menials and strangers! The more children he has, the less he can afford to have servants! The maintenance of his children will greatly diminish his property! Another alarming object in marriage is that, by affinity, you become connected with the relations of the wife. The envious and ill-bred insinuations of the mother, the family quarrels, their pover-> ty or their pride all disturb the unhappy sage who falls into the trap of connubial felicity! But if a

sage has resolved to marry, he impresses on him the prudential principle of increasing his fortune by it, and to remember his "additional expences!" Dr. Cocchi seems to have thought that a human being, is only to live to act for himself, in a monkish state of self-enjoyment. He had neither a heart to feel, a head to conceive, nor a pen that could have written one harmonious period, or one beautiful image!

James Petiver, then a bachelor, the friend of Sir Hans Sloane, in an album which I have seen, signs his name, with this date:

"From the Goat tavern in the Strand, London, Nov. 27. In the 34th year of my freedom. A. D. 1697."

DEDICATIONS.

I THINK the following authors excelled in this species of literary composition. Doni, an Italian, and literary parasite, dedicated each of his letters, in a book called La Libraria, to persons whose names began with the first letter of the epistle; and dedicated the whole collection in another epistle; so that the book, which only consisted of forty-five pages, was dedicated to above twenty persons. This is carrying literary mendicity pretty high. Politi, the editor of the Martyrologium Romanum published at Rome in 1751, has im

proved on the idea of Doni; for to the 365 days of the year of this Martyrology he has prefixed to each an epistle dedicatory. Galland, the author of the Arabian Nights, surpassed them both, by prefixing similar dedications to each of his one thousand and one nights.

Mademoiselle Scudery tells a remarkable expedient of an ingenious trader in this line-One Rangouze made a collection of letters, which he printed without numbering them. By this means the book-binder who bound his book, put that letter which the author ordered first; by this means all the persons to whom he presented this book, seeing their names at the head, considered themselves under a particular obligation. There was likewise an Italian physician, who having wrote on Hippocrates's Aphorisms, dedicated each book of his Commentaries to one of his friends, and the index to another!

More than one of our own authors have dedications in the same spirit. One B. Spencer in his singular work" Chrysomeson, a golden mean or a middle way for christians to walk by, 1650;" has prefixed nine epistles dedicatory. This was an expedient to procure money (as Granger observes) in lieu of the practice of publishing books by subscription, not then known. Another contrived better than this Spencer. He prefixed a different dedication to a certain number of printed copies,

and addressed them to every great man he knew, who he thought relished a morsel of flattery, and would pay handsomely for a mouthful of fame. Fuller, in his "Church History," has with admirable contrivance introduced twelve title pages, besides the general one, and as many particular dedications, and no less than fifty or sixty of those by inscriptions which are addressed to his benefactors, and for which he is severely censured by Heylin.

One of the most singular anecdotes respecting DEDICATIONS in English bibliography, is that of the Polyglot bible of Dr. Castel. Cromwell much to his honour patronised that great labour, and allowed the paper to be imported free of all duties, both of excise and custom. It was published under the protectorate, but many copies had not been disposed of, ere Charles II. ascended the throne. Dr. Castel had dedicated the work gratefully to Oliver by mentioning him with peculiar respect in the preface, but he wavered with Richard Cromwell. At the restoration, he cancelled the two last leaves, and supplied their places with three others, which softened down the republican strains, and blotted Oliver's name out of the book of life! The differences in what are now called the republican and the loyal copies have amused the curious collectors; and the former being very scarce, are most sought after. I have

seen the republican. The laborious authors of a Bibliographical Dictionary, who have enlivened their arid labours with criticism, have drawn a very curious comparison. In the loyal copies the patrons of the work are mentioned, but their titles are essentially changed; Serenissimus, Illustrissimus, and Honoratissimus were epithets that dared not shew themselves under the levelling influence of the fanatic politician Oliver.

It is a curious literary folly, not of an individual, but of the Spanish nation, who, when the laws of Castile were reduced into a code under the reign of Alfonso X. surnamed the Wise, divided the work into seven volumes; the sole cause of which division was, that they might be dedicated to the seven letters which formed the name of his majesty!

Never was a gigantic baby of adulation so crammed with the soft pap of Dedications as Cardinal Richelieu. French flattery even exceeded itself.-Among the vast number of very extraordinary dedications to this man, in which the divinity itself is disrobed of its attributes to bestow them on this miserable creature of vanity, I suspect

that even the following one is not the most blasphemous he received. "Who has seen your

face without being seized by those softened terrors which made the prophets shudder when God shewed the beams of his glory? But as him whom