_Withs_ (Witts), à cet aimable maistre qui n'a jamais eu pour eux que de la douceur et de la bonté." The _Sermon du grand Docteur Burnet_ is very clever, light, pungent, and satirical, especially against the king: the text being "Dominus regnavit, exultet terræ, lætentur insulæ." In the _L'Ombre de Monmouth_, William is described as wishing to be "le singe du glorieux Cromwell;" Portland, Shrewsbury, Burnet, and Dykvelt, are "ses quatre Evangélistes;" and the king is made to utter violent complaints against the Parliament, which he calls "une étrange beste," and adds: "Si je n'avois pas cassé celui que j'ai rompu pour en convoquer un autre, toutes mes affaires s'en alloient sens dessus dessous." In the _Estrennes d'Esope_, which was burnt by order of the States-General, there is the following description of England: "L'Angleterre sous son Roi légitime et ne lui donnant qu'avec epargne comme elle faisoit le nécessaire pour son entretien, estoit justement comme ces sages et vertueuses femmes qui, fidèles à leurs époux, gouvernen avec un prudent économie leur ménage reglé, et cette mesme Angleterre, qui s'épuise pour satisfaire à l'avidité d'un tyran, est aujourd'hui comme une de ces infames debauchées qui, emportée de fureur pour une adultère qui l'enlève à son mari, lui fait une profusion criminelle de son bien." In illustrations such as these, Le Noble was most happy, as with the vice he was most familiar. The length of this paper precludes my sending to you a pasquinade, in the epitaph written for Innocent XI., which, considering its purport, is of value as indicating the opinions of the Jacobites against the policy of the Pope. This I will do in another paper. S. H. CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS. The miseries and disappointments of the literary life are proverbial: "Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol." To these "calamities of authors," I wish to add a new, and as yet unrecorded trial, incidental to this age of cheap postage and extravagant puffs. I am myself _a small author_, and have written on theology and antiquarianism; and my publisher's shelves know the weight of my labours. Conceive then my delight, a few weeks ago, at receiving a "confidential" letter from B. D., requesting the immediate transmission of my theological tomes to a country address; on the representation that, although B. D. well knew that my writings had been favourably received, he judged that "striking recommendations at this moment in influential journals to which he had reviewing access during the parliamentary recess, would prove of essential service." I wrote to my publisher, who coolly answered that it was "no go;" and I even stood the tempting shock of a second application from B. D., remonstratively hinting that, but for the non-arrival of the volumes, a notice would have appeared that very week in an "important quarter." The hopeful mind has difficulty in settling down into a belief that men deceive.