Bowditch was bred to the sea, and in his early voyages taught navigation to the common sailors about him. Captain Prince, with whom he often sailed, relates, that one day the supercargo of the vessel said to him, "Come, Captain, let us go forward and hear what the sailors are talking about under the lee of the long-boat." They went forward accordingly, and the captain was surprised to find the sailors, instead of spinning their long yarns, earnestly engaged with book, slate, and pencil, discussing the high matters of tangents and secants, altitudes, dip, and refraction. Two of them, in particular, were very zealously disputing,--one of them calling out to the other, "Well, Jack, what have you got?" "I've got the _sine_," was the answer. "But that ain't right," said the other; "_I_ say it is the _cosine_." * * * * * LEWIS'S "MONK." This romance, on its first appearance, roused the attention of all the literary world of England, and even spread its writer's name to the continent. The author--"wonder-working Lewis," was a stripling under twenty when he wrote _The Monk_ in the short space of ten weeks! Sir Walter Scott, probably the most rapid composer of fiction upon record, hardly exceeded this, even in his latter days, when his facility of writing was the greatest. * * * * * THOMSON'S RECITATIONS. Thomson, the author of the "Seasons," was a very awkward reader of his own productions. His patron, Doddington, once snatched a MS. from his hand, provoked by his odd utterance, telling him that he did not understand his own verses! A gentleman of Brentford, however, told the late Dr. Evans, in 1824, that there was a tradition in that town of Thomson frequenting one of the inns there, and reciting his poems to the company. * * * * * GOLDSMITH'S "SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER."