Memoirs of an American Lady (Vol. i., p. 335.).—­If this work cannot now be got it is a great pity,—­it ought to go down to posterity; a more valuable or interesting account of a particular state of society now quite extinct, can hardly be found.  Instead of saying that “it is the work of Mrs. Grant, the author of this and that,” I should say of her other books that they were written by the author of the Memoirs of an American Lady.  The character of the individual lady, her way of keeping house on a large scale, the state of the domestic slaves, threatened, as the only known punishment and most terrible to them, with being sold to Jamaica; the customs of the young men at Albany, their adventurous outset in life, their practice of robbing one another in joke (like a curious story at Venice, in the story-book called Il Peccarone, and having some connection with the stories of the Spartan and Circassian youth), with much of natural scenery, are told without pretension of style; but unluckily there is too much interspersed relating to the author herself, then quite young.

C.B.

Poem by Sir E. Dyer (Vol. i., p. 355.).—­“My mind to me,” &c.  Neither the births of Breton nor Sir Edward Dyer seem to be known; nor, consequently, how much older the one was than the other.  Mr. S., I conclude, could not mean much older than Breton’s tract, mentioned in Vol. i., p. 302.  The poem is not in England’s Helicon.  The ballad, as in Percy, has four stanzas more than the present copy, and one stanza less.  Some of the readings in Percy are better, that is, more probable than the new ones.

“I see how plenty surfeits oft.”—­P.
suffers.—­Var.

“I grudge not at another’s gain".—­P.
pain.—­Var.

“No worldly wave my mind can toss.”—­P.
wants.—­Var.

These seem to me to be stupid mistranscriptions.

“I brook that is another’s pain.”—­P.
“My state at one doth still remain.”—­Var.

Probably altered on account of the slight obscurity; and possibly a different edition by the author himself.

“They beg, I give,
They lack, I lend.”—­P.
leave.—­Var.

In this verse,

“I fear no foe, I scorn no friend.”—­P.
fawn.—­Var.

I think the new copy better.

“To none of these I yield as thrall,
For why my mind despiseth all.”—­P.
doth serve for.—­Var.

The var. much better.

In this—­

“I never seek by bribes to please,
Nor by dessert to give offence.”—­P.
deceit.—­Var.

I cannot understand either.

So very beautiful and popular a song it would be well worth getting in the true version.

C.B.