Catch the quick smile, and HIS attentive ear. But ah! for what has thou reserv’d my age? Say, how can I expect the approving stage; Fled is the bloom of youth—the manly air— The vigorous mind that spurn’d at toil and care; Gone is the voice, whose clear and silver tone The enraptur’d theatre would love to own. As clasping ivy chokes the encumber’d tree, So age with foul embrace has ruined me. Thou, and the tomb, Laberius, art the same, Empty within, what hast thou but a name? Macrobius, it may be remembered, was the author, with a quotation from whom Johnson, after a long silence, electrified the company upon his first arrival at Pembroke College, thus giving (says Boswell) ‘the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, i. 59). If the study of Macrobius is to be regarded as a test of ‘more extensive reading’ that praise must therefore be accorded to Goldsmith, who cites him in his first book. ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH STRUCK BLIND WITH LIGHTNING. This quatrain, the original of which does not appear to have been traced, was first published in _The Bee_ for Saturday, the 6th of October, 1759, p. 8. It is there succeeded by the following Latin epigram, ‘in the same spirit’:— LUMINE Acon dextro capta est Leonida sinistro Et poterat forma vincere uterque Deos. Parve puer lumen quod habes concede puellae Sic tu caecus amor sic erit illa Venus. There are several variations of this in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1745, pp. 104, 159, 213, 327, one of which is said to be ‘By a monk of Winchester,’ with a reference to ‘Cambden’s _Remains_, p. 413.’ None of these corresponds exactly with Goldsmith’s text; and the lady’s name is uniformly given as ‘Leonilla.’ A writer in the _ Quarterly Review_, vol. 171, p. 296, prints the ‘original’ thus— Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro, Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos. Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori; Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus; and says ‘it was written by Girolamo Amalteo, and will be found in any of the editions of the _Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina_, under the title of ‘De gemellis, fratre et sorore, luscis.’ According to Byron on Bowles (_Works_, 1836, vi. p. 390), the persons referred to are the Princess of Eboli, mistress of Philip II of Spain, and Maugiron, minion of Henry III of France, who had each of them lost an eye. But for this the reviewer above quoted had found no authority. THE GIFT.