MISCELLANEOUS.

Which is generally the most successful in life, the Modest or the Impudent Man.

A MODEST man, even if he possess merit, is generally a person diffident of his own abilities; he is also capable of seeing his own defects, and duly appreciating the excellency of others; he does not obtrude himself on the notice of the world but must be sought after, and when found can hardly be made to believe he possesses the merit he is

many invitations, accepts them boldly, and possibly soon acquires a good patron, although he may, for doing many little dirty actions, deserve to practise a few steps on the tread mill, as that has become a most fashionable and highly approved dance, and of much greater utility to society than the waltz, as requiring equal agility and energy. But should he be promoted to the tread mill, even there you may mark the superiority of impudence over modesty, for you may find a modest man for some inadvertent act, taking a little exercise there also,

praised for, and takes it to be only a friendly especially if he be found guilty of the sin of compliment. He always speaks highly of poverty. Or he may not have a friend to others, and is afraid of doing himself even speak for him, and that is another crime; common justice, lest he should be thought and he may be ignorant of the law, which too assuming. He is too low in his own opinion to dare to solicit patronage, and humbly keeping his distance from society, he is soon neglected and forgotten. Being neglected by the world, he soon neglects him self; becomes a sloven, it may be, idle and dissipated, and a fine genius is lost to himself and to mankind. Now this often is the effect of too much modesty. There is a

few know much about, there being such a glorious uncertainty of it, that it frequently depends on the tip of the tongue of a skillful counsellor. Now I say impudence is a very useful accomplishment; for when the time is expended in which they are to take their lessons and they come to be dismissed. the modest man hides his face, is ashamed, and broken hearted, while the impudent

common trite saying that you can't have too man, with head erect and face unblushing, much of a good thing. But every one will boldly enters the company even of his old asallow modesty to be a good thing, though I sociates, laughs at the fun, raises a laugh think the person alluded to has proved that from all about him, and soon becomes their he had too much. To try the subject on idol again. There is a possibility of some

another ground, we will suppose him not to be so very modest, or, I may call it, weakheaded and bashful. He ought to be too modest to take to himself any undue praise, but he ought to accept what he knows he is

one or two persons who will neglect and despise him, but his impudence bears him through all that. The same tailor will trust him, the same company receive him, and all is forgotten. If he is industrious, he gets

deserving of without arrogance or even the business; if he is idle or lazy, he gets treatappearance of it; he should neither be diffi-ed: so he has an opportunity either of getdent nor assuming; in company he should ting work, or of sponging on his friends. He show respect to others, and accept of that will live by the name of the unfortunate respect which is due to himself, and not dog- man, though he ought to think himself very matically explain any subject, not even in fortunate he was not transported; and the his own occupation, but with deference to world may think itself very unfortunate in the opinion of others deliver his own with that he was not hanged. But impudence gentleness and mildness, and rather give up being his unerring guide, such is the world a point than contend it. This man, I should that he may be a bright fellow, and either think, would be called a modest man, and by marriage or by gambling make a forbe esteemed and patronised by the world in

general.

Now for the impudent man. The impudent man, not having any of the embarrassments of the modest man, can dress well, as he will find almost any tailor will trust him if he promises prompt payment, which he will willingly do, though, at the same time, he is conscious he never intends it, but by sheer impudence obtains his end, and boldly enters into good and genteel society, where be speaks highly of his own merit, depreciates the merits of his superiors in the same profession or occupation, and is believed, particularly if he sings a good song or acts some monkey grimaces, and becomes the fiddle of the company, and is highly applauded. Of course he gets their esteem, has

tune.

Desultory thoughts.-One man marries a woman because she looks well when she dances-she never dances afterwards. Another man marries because the lady has a handsome foot and ankle, which, after marriage, he never takes the trouble to admire. A third marries for love, which wanes with the honey-moon. A fourth marries for money, and finds that his wife does not choose to die, to complete his satisfaction. And a fifth, being old in wisdom as in years, marries a young woman, who soon becomes a suitable match for him, by growing old with grief. Thousands do wrong because others have done the same before them, upon the grand principle that many blacks make

white. Many embrace opinions different from those commonly received in order to show that they have a mind able to think for itself, and superior to what they call vulgar prejudices, without considering whether erroneous prejudices are better than those they have abandoned. All grumble at the unsubstantial nature of worldly enjoyments, and yet many purchase them at the expense of their souls. Hypocrites have a strange taste, neither to enjoy this life nor the next. Many write for religion, speak for it, quarrel for it, fight for it, die for it, but few live for it. It is not uncommonly remarked that such a one is "religious," by way of reproach, and that too by a Christian, at a tea party of Christians. Millions of people are most anxious about what they least require, and, after teazing themselves and others for many a weary day, they die-leave their cash to those who have no need of it-and are, for the first time eulogised, when the praise of man can avail them nothing.

Mr. Courtois, whose death at an advanced age has recently been recorded, was for many years a hair-dresser, in London.By dint of extraordinary exertions in va rious ways, and through a most rigid system of economy in his expenditure, this man (who seemed to have no small portion of the Charteris and the Elwes blended in his composition) died immensely rich, having amass

venerable visitor, alarmed at the gleomy preparations and dire threats of the desperate female, asked for pen, ink, and paper, which being immediately produced, he wrote a check on his banker for (we believe) two thousand pounds. He immediately retired with precipitation, happy to escape without personal injury. The next morning, before its opening, he attended at the bank with some police myrmidons, and on Mrs. Phepoe's making her appearance with the check, she was arrested, and subsequently tried at the Old Bailey, on a capital charge, grounded on the above proceedings. However, through the able defence made by her counsel (now Mr. Justice Fielding), who took a legal objection to the case as proved, and contended that she never had or obtained any property of Mr. Courtois, on the principle that possession constituted the first badge or ownership, she was eventually acquitted. Truth, however, obliges us to add, that Mrs. Phepoe, who was once connected with a respectable family in the sister island, was in about four years after capitally convicted on a charge of cutting and maiming a poor woman, for which she suffered the last penalty of the law. Some years since, the late Lord Gage met Courtois, at the Court Room of the East India House, on an election business. "Ah, Courtois," said his Lordship, "what brings you here?"-" To give my votes, my Lord," was the answer.

ed, according to confident reports, nearly "What! are you a proprietor ?"-" Most two hundred thousand pounds! Old Cour-certainly."-" And more votes than one?" tois was long well known in the purlieus of -"Yes, my Lord, I have FOUR!"-" Aye, St. Martin's and the Haymarket. His ap- indeed! Why, then, before you take the pearance was meagre and squalid, and his book, pray be kind enough to pin up my

curls?" with which modest request the Proprietor of four votes, equal to ten thousand pounds, immediately complied!

done."

Epitaph from the Greek.

"Ma

clothes, such as they were, were pertinaciously got up in exactly the same cut and fashion, and the colour always either fawn or morone. For the last thirty years the venerable chapeau was uniformly of the same French Promises. - The Queen Marie cock. The principal feat, however, in which Antoinette said to M. de Breteuil, "Baron, this fervent votary of Plutus appeared be- I have a favour to ask of you." fore the public, was his curious and nearly dame," he replied, " if the thing be possible, fatal affair with the unfortunate Mrs. Maria it is already done; if impossible, it shall be Theresa Phepoe. About twenty years ago, this ill-fated woman projected a rather bungling scheme, in order to frighten her old acquaintance and visitor, Courtois, out of a considerable sum of money. One evening, when she was certain of his calling, she had her apartment prepared for his reception in a species of funereal style-a bier, a black velvet pall, black wax candles lighted, &c. No sooner had the old friend entered the room, than the Lady, assisted by her Maid, pounced on him, forced him into an arm chair, in which he was forcibly held down by the woman, while the Lady, brandishing Subscriptions received by G. & C. Carvill, 127 Broada case knife or razor, swore, with some vio-way-where communications may be left, or transmitlent imprecations, that instant should be his ted through the post-office to the editor.

last, if he did not give her an order on his

banker for a large sum of money. The

Pillars of death! carv'd syrens' tearful urns!
In whose sad keeping my poor dust is laid,
To him that near my tomb his footsteps turns,
Stranger or Greek, bid hail! and say, a maid
Rests in her bloom below; her sire the name
Of Myrtis gave: her birth and lineage high;
And say her bosom friend Erinna came,
And on the marble graved her elegy.

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JAMES G. BROOKS,

Editor and Proprietor, No. 4 Wall-street. New-York.

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LITERARY.

in the minds of those who do not take the trouble of judging for themselves-a sober and serious disquisition, almost entirely reThe Defence of Poesy. By Sir Philip jecting the "foreign aid of ornament," and

[Retrospective Review.]

equally free from dogmatism and declamation. It is evidently the result of a deep conviction in the mind of the writer, and a

Sidney, knt. 1752.

ONE would think, that to write a "De- strong desire to impress that conviction fence of Poesy," were something like wri- upon others to impress it, however, in a ting "an Apology for the Bible." And yet manner that shall render it not merely a it appears that this was considered necessa- sentiment of the heart, or a theory of the ry, by the most poetical person of the most brain, but a settled and active belief of the poetical age that England, or any other reason and the judgment. To this end Sir country, ever knew. It must be remem- Philip Sidney not only examines the nature bered, however, that the exact period to and objects of poetry as an art, and brings forwhich we are now referring was but the ward all the arguments that have been urearly dawn of the bright Elizabethan day- ged in its favour, but he weighs and exaShakspeare and the great dramatists having mines those arguments fairly, and contrasts scarcely as yet commenced their immortal them with those which have been or may be labours, and Sidney himself being, with the alleged on the opposite side of the question; exception of Spencer, the best poet of the and finally rejects or admits, as the proofs time. That this noble defence of his high may seem to preponderate. He begins by art had some share in bringing forward the showing the antiquity of poetry, and arguing glories that followed so close upon its ap- for the consequent inference, that it was the pearance, as well as in preparing the way parent and source of all other learning; for the due reception and appreciation of and this he addresses to those learned of his those glories, is what can scarcely be doubt- own and of other days who have inveighed ed; and that it was intended and calculated against poetry as a vain thing. "And will so to do, is certain: for, of all the charac- you play the hedge-hog, (says he) that being teristics that belong to it, that of a fervid sin- received into the den drove out his host? cerity, speaking from the heart, to the heart, or rather the vipers, that with their birth kill is its most striking. In other respects, the excellencies of this admirable Essay are equally conspicuous, whether we regard the purity and simplicity of its style, the strength and all three nothing else but poets. Nay, let any soundness of its reasoning, the rich fervor of history be brought, that can say any writers its eloquence, or the variety and aptness of were there before them, if they were not men its illustrations. In short, nothing is wanting to make the Defence of Poesy a piece of writing that, in a similar space, is not to be paralleled in our language.

their parents? Let learned Greece, in any of her manifold sciences, be able to show me one book before Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod

of the same skill-as Linus, Orpheus, and some others, are named, who having been the first of that country that made pens deliverers of their knowledge to posterity, may justly challenge to be called their fathers in

Sir Philip Sidney, in the opening paragraph of his essay, gives himself out as "a learning." And so he goes on, through the piece of a logician;" and, in fact, the De- earliest writers of all civilized countries; fence of Poesy may be regarded as a logical and concludes the enumeration thus: "In discourse, from beginning to end-inter- our neighbour country, Ireland, where truly spersed here and there with a few of the more learning goes very bare, yet are their poets flowery parts of eloquence, but every where held in devout reverence. Even among the keeping in view the main objects of all lo- most barbarous and simple Indians," (only gic and of all eloquence-namely, proof and the next remove to the Irish, as he seems persuasion. It is, in fact-contrary to the to think) where no writing is, yet have general notion that prevails concerning it they their poets, who make and sing