The loveliest pair That ever _since_ in love’s embraces met.—_Ib. B. iv._ Swift, being an Irishman, of course abounds in blunders, some of them of the most ludicrous character; but we should hardly expect to find in the elegant Addison, the model of classical English, such a singular inaccuracy as the following:— So the _pure limpid_ stream, when _foul with stains_ Of rushing torrents and descending rains.—_Cato._ He must have _seen_ in a blaze of _blinding_ light (this is “ipsis Hibernis Hibernior”) the vanity and evil, the folly and madness, of the worldly or selfish, and the grandeur and truth of the disinterested and Christian life.—_Gilfillan’s Bards of the Bible._ The real and peculiar magnificence of St. Petersburgh consists _in thus sailing apparently upon the bosom of the ocean, into a city of palaces_.—_Sedgwick’s Letters from the Baltic._ The astonished Yahoo, smoking, as well as he could, a cigar, _with which he had filled all his pockets_.—_Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year._ The following specimens are from the works of Dr. Johnson:— Every monumental inscription should be in Latin; for that being a _dead_ language, it will always _live_. Nor yet perceived the vital spirit fled, But still fought on, _nor knew that he was dead_. Shakspeare has not only _shown_ human nature as it is, but as it would be found _in situations to which it cannot be exposed_. Turn from the glittering bribe your scornful eye, Nor sell for gold _what gold can never buy_. These observations were made _by favor of a contrary wind_. The next two are from Pope:— Eight callow _infants_ filled the mossy nest, _Herself the ninth_. When first young Maro, in his noble mind, A work _t’ outlast immortal Rome designed_. Shakspeare says,— I will strive with things impossible, Yea, _get the better of them_.—_Julius Cæsar_, ii. 1. A _horrid silence_ first _invades the ear_.—§Dryden.§ Beneath a mountain’s brow, the most remote And _inaccessible_ by _shepherds trod_.—§Home§: _Douglass_. In the Irish Bank-bill passed by Parliament in June, 1808, is a clause providing that the profits shall be _equally_ divided and the _residue go to the Governor_. Sir Richard Steele, being asked why his countrymen were so addicted to making bulls, said he believed there must be something in the air of Ireland, adding, “I dare say _if an Englishman were born there_ he would do the same.” Mr. Cunningham, to whom we are indebted for the interesting notes to Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets,” pronounces his author _the most distinguished of his cotemporaries_. Sir Walter Scott perpetrates a curious blunder in one of his novels, in making certain of his characters behold a sunset over the waters of a seaport on the _eastern_ coast of Scotland.