this unfortunate
fair three hundred more, without once repeating the thoughts of Brebeuf!
There is a collection of poems called "_La_ PUCE _des grands jours de
Poitiers_." "The FLEA of the carnival of Poietiers." These poems were
begun by the learned Pasquier, who edited the collection, upon a FLEA
which was found one morning in the bosom of the famous Catherine des
Roches!

Not long ago, a Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdyk, in Flanders, published poems
under the whimsical title of "White and Red."--His own poems were called
white, from the colour of his hair; and those of his lady red, in
allusion to the colour of the rose. The idea must be Flemish!

Gildon, in his "Laws of Poetry," commenting on this line of the Duke of
Buckingham's "Essay on Poetry,"

Nature's chief masterpiece is _writing well_:

very profoundly informs his readers "That what is here said has not the
least regard to the _penmanship_, that is, to the fairness or badness of
the handwriting," and proceeds throughout a whole page, with a panegyric
on a _fine handwriting_! The stupidity of dulness seems to have at times
great claims to originality!

Littleton, the author of the Latin and English Dictionary, seems to
have indulged his favourite propensity to punning so far as even to
introduce a pun in the grave and elaborate work of a Lexicon. A story
has been raised to account for it, and it has been ascribed to the
impatient interjection of the lexicographer to his scribe, who, taking
no offence at the peevishness of his master, put it down in the
Dictionary. The article alluded to is, "CONCURRO, to run with others; to
run together; to come together; to fall foul of one another; to
CON-_cur,_ to CON-_dog_."

Mr. Todd, in his Dictionary, has laboured to show the "inaccuracy of
this pretended narrative." Yet a similar blunder appears to have
happened to Ash. Johnson, while composing his Dictionary, sent a note to
the Gentleman's Magazine to inquire the etymology of the word
_curmudgeon_. Having obtained the information, he records in his work
the obligation to an anonymous letter-writer. "Curmudgeon, a vicious way
of pronouncing _coeur mechant_. An unknown correspondent." Ash copied
the word into his dictionary in this manner: "Curmudgeon: from the
French _coeur_ unknown; and _mechant_, a correspondent." This singular
negligence ought to be placed in the class of our _literary blunders_;
these form a pair of lexicographical anecdotes.

Two singular lit