ed since the great fire. The last grand
Shakspearean dinner-party took place at the Boar's Head about 1784. A
boar's head, with silver tusks, which had been suspended in some room in
the house, perhaps the Half Moon or Pomegranate, (see _Henry IV._, Act.
ii., scene 3,) at the great fire, fell down with the ruins of the
houses, little injured, and was conveyed to Whitechapel Mount, where it
was identified and recovered about thirty years ago.

* * * * *

ORIGIN OF "THE EDINBURGH REVIEW."

The _Edinburgh Review_ was first published in 1802. The plan was
suggested by Sydney Smith, at a meeting of _literati_, in the fourth or
fifth flat or story, in Buccleugh-place, Edinburgh, then the elevated
lodging of Jeffrey. The motto humorously proposed for the new review
by its projector was, "_Tenui musam meditamur avena,_"--_i.e._, "We
cultivate literature upon a little oatmeal;" but this being too nearly
the truth to be publicly acknowledged, the more grave dictum of "_Judex
damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_" was adopted from _Publius Syrus_, of
whom, Sydney Smith affirms, "None of us, I am sure, ever read a single
line!" Lord Byron, in his fifth edition of _English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers_, refers to the reviewers as an "oat-fed phalanx."

* * * * *

CLEVER STATESMEN.

However great talents may command the admiration of the world, they do
not generally best fit a man for the discharge of social duties. Swift
remarks that "Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management
of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road
by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord
Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe, that the clerk in his office
used a sort of ivory knife, with a blunt edge, to divide a sheet of
paper, which never failed to cut it even, only by requiring a steady
hand; whereas, if he should make one of a sharp penknife, the sharpness
would make it go often out of the crease, and disfigure the paper."

* * * * *

THE FIRST MAGAZINE.

The _Gentleman's Magazine_ unaccountably passes for the earliest
periodical of that description; while, in fact, it was preceded nearly
forty years by the _Gentleman's Journal_ of Motteux, a work much more
closely resembling our modern magazines, and from which Sylvanus Urban
borrowed part of his title, and part of his motto; while on t