pressions, the dying
critic interrupted him:--"Hold your tongue," he said; "your wretched
style only makes me out of conceit with them!"

The favourite studies and amusements of the learned La Mothe le Vayer
consisted in accounts of the most distant countries. He gave a striking
proof of the influence of this master-passion, when death hung upon his
lips. Bernier, the celebrated traveller, entering and drawing the
curtains of his bed to take his eternal farewell, the dying man turning
to him, with a faint voice inquired, "Well, my friend, what news from
the Great Mogul?"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 116: Barham, the author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_, wrote a
similar death-bed lay in imitation of the older poets. It is termed "As
I laye a-thinkynge." Bewick, the wood-engraver, was last employed upon,
and left unfinished at his death, a cut, the subject of which was "The
old Horse waiting for Death."]

SCARRON.

Scarron, as a burlesque poet, but no other comparison exists, had his
merit, but is now little read; for the uniformity of the burlesque style
is as intolerable as the uniformity of the serious. From various sources
we may collect some uncommon anecdotes, although he was a mere author.

His father, a counsellor, having married a second wife, the lively
Scarron became the object of her hatred.

He studied, and travelled, and took the clerical tonsure; but discovered
dispositions more suitable to the pleasures of his age than to the
gravity of his profession. He formed an acquaintance with the wits of
the times; and in the carnival of 1638 committed a youthful
extravagance, for which his remaining days formed a continual
punishment. He disguised himself as a savage; the singularity of a naked
man attracted crowds. After having been hunted by the mob, he was forced
to escape from his pursuers; and concealed himself in a marsh. A
freezing cold seized him, and threw him, at the age of twenty-seven
years, into a kind of palsy; a cruel disorder which tormented him all
his life. "It was thus," he says, "that pleasure deprived me suddenly of
legs which had danced with elegance, and of hands, which could manage
the pencil and the lute."

Goujet, without stating this anecdote, describes his disorder as an
acrid humour, distilling itself on his nerves, and baffling the skill of
his physicians; the sciatica, rheumatism, in a word, a complication of
maladies attacked him, sometimes successively, sometimes together