Notes On Literature, Science And Art.

O'er naked Snowdon ' s wide aerial waste ; Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill !" This is high praise from so true a brother-bard , and more than compensates for Dr . Johnson ' s somewhat churlish

criticism ; who , because the poem never became popular ( as Grongar H ill , from the same pen , did , ancl still retains its popularity ) , and because it was then " universally neglected , " could " say little that was likely to recall it to attention . " Indeed , " the

wooleomber ancl the poet " appeared to the great lexicographer " such discordant natures , that an attempt to bring them together" seemed to him as unnatural as "to couple the serpent ici ' . h the fold . ' ' The italics are Johnson ' s own , proving that he

considered he was uttering a very fine thing ; but in my own opinion nothing in " The Fleece " is more inelegant or far-fetched . He admits that Dyer ' s " mind was not uupoetical , " but adds , that when he '' has done bis utmost , by interesting bis reader in our native commodity , by interspersing rural imagery , and

incidental digressions , by clothing small images in great words , and by all the writer ' s arts of delusion , the meanness naturally adhering , and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and commerce , sink him under insuperable oppression ; ancl the disgust which blank verseencumbering

, ancl encumbered , superadds to an unpleasing subject , soon repels the reader , however willing to be pileased . " But the great literary bear is honest enough to report what certainly " may counterbalance this weight of censure" viz . the

, more poetical Akenside ' s remark , " that he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer ' s ' Fleece ; ' for , if that were ill-received , he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence . " And yet Johnson

thought " some passages" in Dyer ' s " Ruins of Rome " were " conceived with the mind of a poet ; " and , with all his faults to "Grongar Hill , " admitted that " when it is once read , it will be read again . " The critic who wittily told Dodslev that the author of "The Fleece "

would be " buried in woollen" might be true as to the corpse of the bard , but not as regards his poems ; and perhaps both him and Johnson would equally have

Notes On Literature, Science And Art.

condemned to the fire the manuscript of Virgil ' s " Georgics " or of Hesiod ' s " Works and Days , " if they had been sitting in judgment upon them as new productions . But a hundred and eig hteen years after the death of good John Dyer , his lineal

representative , Mr . W . H . Dyer Longstaffe , has requested a well-qualified brother-clergyman of the bard , the Rev . A . B . Grosart , of Park View , Blackburn , to prepare a collected and corrected edition of his poems , with Portrait and Memoirautotypes of

, examples of his paintings , drawings , etc ., of which only a limited number of impressions will be published , ancl which will become the standard edition of Dyer . Rose Cottage , Slokesley .

The Origin And References Of The Hermesian Spurious Freemasonry.

THE ORIGIN AND REFERENCES OF THE HERMESIAN SPURIOUS FREEMASONRY .

BY REV . GEO . OLIVER , D . D . CHAPTER VI , THE TABLET OR TRACING BOARD . "Reminiscere quoniam es initiatus , quEtradan , tur mysteriis ; turn denique quam hoc late pateat 1

intelliges . '—CICEBO . WE now come to the consideration of the Tracing Board on which are embodied many of the secret doctrines of the Spurious Freemasonry . The Tablet isof a square form , which was one of the emblems of the deity , and was peculiarly sacred to Hermes Trismegistus who was sometimes venerated

under the form of a square stone . * Suidas says that stones . were placed at the porches of doors ancl temples in Athens , which were of a square or cubical form ; because as Mercury was considered to be the god of eloquence ancl-truth , these stones were

an appropriate symbol , for , in common with truth , on what side soever they are viewed they always appear the same . Many of the heathen deities were represented by a stone , and with reverence be it spoken , the Messiah of the Jews was

described under the same symbol . f Moses asks the Israelites , on their emancipation from Egyptian bondage , " Where are their gods , their rock in whom they trusted ; svhich did eat the fat of their sacrifices , and