Milton’s London residences have all, with one exception, disappeared, and cannot be recognised; this is in Petty France, at Westminster, where the poet lived from 1651 to 1659. The lower part of the house is a chandler’s-shop; the parlour, up stairs, looks into St. James’s-park. Here part of Paradise Lost was written. The house belonged to Jeremy Bentham, who caused to be placed on its front a tablet, inscribed, “Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets.”

In the same glass-case with Shakspeare’s autograph, in the British Museum, is a printed copy of the Elegies on Mr. Edward King, the subject of Lycidas, with some corrections of the text in Milton’s handwriting. Framed and glazed, in the library of Mr. Rogers, the poet, hangs the written agreement between Milton and his publisher, Simmons, for the copyright of his Paradise Lost.—Note-book of 1848.

WRITING UP THE “TIMES” NEWSPAPER.

Dr. Dibdin, in his Reminiscences, relates:—“Sir John Stoddart married the sister of Lord Moncrieff, by whom he has a goodly race of representatives; but, before his marriage, he was the man who wrote up the Times newspaper to its admitted pitch of distinction and superiority over every other contemporary journal. Mark, gentle reader, I speak of the Times newspaper during the eventful and appalling crisis of Bonaparte’s invasion of Spain and destruction of Moscow. My friend fought with his pen as Wellington fought with his sword: but nothing like a tithe of the remuneration which was justly meted out to the hero of Waterloo befel the editor of the Times. Of course, I speak of remuneration in degree, and not in kind. The peace followed. Public curiosity lulled, and all great and stirring events having subsided, it was thought that a writer of less commanding talent, (certainly not the present Editor,) and therefore procurable at a less premium, would answer the current purposes of the day; and the retirement of Dr. Stoddart, (for he was at this time a civilian, and particularly noticed and patronised by Lord Stowell,) from the old Times, and his establishment of the New Times newspaper, followed in consequence. But the latter, from various causes, had only a short-lived existence. Sir John Stoddart had been his Majesty’s advocate, or Attorney-General, at Malta, before he retired thither a second time, to assume the office of Judge.”

RELICS OF THE BOAR’S HEAD TAVERN, EASTCHEAP.

The portal of the Boar’s Head was originally decorated with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince Henry; and in 1834, the former figure was in the possession of a brazier, of Great Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied 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.”