dead. His friends took all imaginable pains to efface the impression made on his mind by this unlucky event; explaining the true cause of the agitation of the skeletons; nevertheless his spirits were affected in so violent a manner, that he never recovered his health, but died soon after, at 42 years of age.

DUELLING.

A CAPTAIN in the English army, in answer to a person from whom he had received a challenge, wrote as follows:

ter.

"I have two objections to this duel mat

The one is lest 1 should hurt you; and the other is, lest you should hurt me: I do not see any good it would do me to put a bullet through any part of your body. I could make no use of you when dead, for any cu linary purpose, as I would a rabbit or a tur key. I am no cannibal to feed on the flesh of men. Why then shoot down a human creature, of which I could make no use. A buffalo would be better meat. For though your flesh might be delicate and tender, yet it wants that firmness and consistency which takes and retains salt. At any rate it would not be fit for long sea voyages. You might make a good barbecue, it is true, being of the nature of a raccoon or an opossum ; but people are not in the habit of barbecuing any

thing that is human now. As to your hide, it is not worth taking off, being little better than that of a year old colt. As to myself, I do not like much to stand in the way of any thing that is harmful. I am under apprehensions you might hit me. That being the case, I think it most adviseable to stay at a distance. If you want to try your pistols," take some object, a tree, or a barn door, about my dimensions. If you hit that, send me avord, and I shall acknowledge, that if I had been in the same place, you might also have hit me."

CAMDEN'S chapter of epitaphs afforded me some amusement, and an extract or two, I fancy, may not be displeasing to many of your readers.

The following lines, which were written on the removal of Queen Elizabeth's body from Richmond to Whitehall by water, contain an allusion or figure, or what you please to call it (for I think there is no name in rhetorick for it) which one cannot be but pleased with :

The Queen was brought by water to Whitehall, At every stroke the cars tears let fall:

More clung about the barge, fish under water, Wept out their eyes of pearl, and swam blind after,

I think the bargemen might with easier thighs,
Have rowed her thither in her people's eyes.
For howsoe'er thus much my thoughts have
scann'd,'

Sh'ad come by water, had she come by land.

Now, Mess. Printers, I fairly challenge all the modern poets, from Hayley to Sir Cecil Wray and Lord Nugent, to produce any thing so well connected as the above. Mr. Camden calls them passionate, doleful lines. The idea of rowing the Queen's body from Richmond to Whitehall in her people's eyes, is loyal, at least, if not poetical; and if it be not very practicable, must at least be allowed to be very marvellous.

The poets of these days, however, have been more successful. when employing their pens on objects of less rank, more nearly ap proaching their own than that of royalty. In this epitaph upon a maker of bellows, there is better poetry, and more wit and truth.

Here lieth John Cruker, a maker of bellows,
His crafts master, and king of good fellows
Yet when he came to the hour of his death,
He that made bellows could not make breath!

I quote the following upon account of the rhymes, which are very peculiar, and have been of late very successfully imitated by some political poets, and Hudibrastiek serio cemiek Eclogue writers.

Under this stone

Lies John Knapton,

Who died just
The 28 of August,

M. D. XC. and one,

Of this Church Peti canon.

But if truth, perspicuity, wit, gravity, and every property pertaining to the ancient or modern epitaph, may be expected in one single epitaph, it is in one made for a Mt. Burbidge, a tragedian, in the days of Shakespeare, but whether it comes from the pen of that great poet, I cannot determine. Its brevity particularly recommends it, the fol lowing being the whole :

Exit Burbidge.

There is a superiority of merit in the fol-lowing, which would not disgrace a poet of eminence, on the untimely death of a child. As careful nurses to their bed do lay

Their children, which too long would wanton's play,

So to prevent all my ensuing crimes,

Nature, my nurse, laid me to bed betimes."

The thought is quaint, and has beauty, although the versification cannot be commended.

Many of the old epitaphs speak very famil arly of death, as if he was a door neighbour,

on whom they might at any time crack their jokes thus, upon a collier.

Here lies the collier John of Nashes;
By whom death nothing gain'd he swore ;
For living he was dust and ashes,

And being dead he is no more.
[Boston Mag. 1784.]

WALKER'S CRITICISM.

"There is no letter in all the alphabet," says the Editor of the New-York Herald, in a late Re view of Webster's Dictionary, "whose sound so distinctly marks the polite or the vulgar speaker, as the u preceded by d or t. On this subject Mr. Walker has laid down the only sound canon of criticism." We perfectly agree with Mr. Coleman; and eager to quicken the prevalence of correct orthoepy in the metropolis of NewEngland, we think no apology necessary for introducing Mr. Walker's remarks on this subject into the Polyanthos. Mr. C. is entitled to much credit for exposing Mr. Webster's attempts "to banish an elegant pronunciation from the country, and to substitute in its room that of the vulgar and illiterate."]

Tis the sharp sound of D; but though the latter is often changed into the former, the former never goes into the latter. The sound to which this letter is extremely prone E... VOL.