BURLESQUE.

F. Vavassor mentions, in his book De Ludicra Dictione, that burlesque was altogether unknown to the ancients; but others are of a different opinion. We even find that one Raintovious, in the time of Ptolemy Lagus, turned the serious subject of tragedy into ridicule, which is, perhaps, a better plea for the antiquity of farce than of burlesque. The Italians seem to have the justest claim to the invention of burlesque; the first of this kind was Bernid, who was followed by Lalli, Caporali, &c. From Italy it passed into France, and became there so much the mode, that in 1649, there appeared a book under the title of "The Passion of our Saviour," in burlesque verse. From thence it passed into England, where some have excelled therein, especially Butler in his Hudibras.

ON THE ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY.

The distinction between the origin of Government and the origin of Political Society, is thus defined in Cooper's Letters on the Irish Nation, 1799:

From the writings of Aristotle, we are taught to consider the origin of Government not as a work of art, or of intellect, much less as the result of contract; but as the consequence of a natural instinctive impulse towards comfort, convenience, and security. Government was not made, created, or covenanted; but arose out of human nature. Laws, indeed, which were afterwards added, are artificial aids and contrivances to prop and support government. They thwart, control, and subject the passions of individuals, in order to prevent their injuring society. But the origin of political society is totally distinct. It was dictated by nature, and cherished by a conviction and sensation of its utility. The same principle of general convenience, which for the wellbeing of mankind necessarily gave rise to government, still holds it together, and must ever continue to do so. Utility is thus the moral principle upon which the obedience of citizens aud the protection of magistrates rests. It was Nature which established the subordination of servant and master, of family to father, and of wife to husband. These three branches of domestic economy are the germ of all government. Principium Urbis et quasi Seminarium Reipublicæ. "The British Government," says Montesquieu," is one of the wisest in Europe, because there is a body which examines it perpetually, and which is perpetually examining itself; and its errors are of such a nature as never to be lasting, and are frequently useful, by rousing the attention. In a word (he adds), a free government, that is to say, one for ever in motion, cannot support itself, unless its own laws are capable of correcting the abuses of it." The benevolent Hanway

says,

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"Government originates from the love of order. Watered by police it grows up to maturity, and, in the course of time, spreads a luxuriant comfort and security. Cut off its branches, and the mere trunk, however strong it may appear, can afford no shelter." Police, being one of the means by which an improved state of society is produced and preserved, is defined by Mr. Colquhoun to be, a new science; the properties of which consist not in the judicial powers which lead to punishment, and which belong to magistrates alone; but in the prevention and detection of crimes, and in those other functions which relate to internal regulations for the well ordering and comfort of civil society." Again," says he, " to effect this purpose, inestimable in a national point of view, and benevolent and humane to all whose vices and enormities it tends to restrain; a police must be resorted to upon the broad scale of general prevention, mild in its operations, effective in its results; having justice and humanity for its basis, and the general security of the state and individuals for its ultimate object."

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ORIGIN OF BOOKS, AND VARIOUS OTHER MATTERS CONNECTED

WITH THEM.

Several sorts of materials were used formerly in making records; plates of lead and copper, the barks of trees, bricks, stone, and wood, were the first materials employed to engrave such things upon as men were willing to have transmitted to posterity. Josephus speaks of two columns, the one of stone, the other of brick, on which the children of Seth wrote their inventions and astronomical discoveries. Perphyrius makes mention of some pillars, preserved in Crete, on which the ceremonies, practised by the Corybantes in their sacrifices, were recorded. Hesiod's Works were originally written upon tables of lead, and deposited in the temple of the muses, in Boeotia.

The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses were written upon stone; and Solon's Laws upon wooden planks. Tables of wood, box, and ivory, were common among the ancients; when of wood, they were frequently covered with wax, that people might write upon them with more ease, or blot out what they had written. The leaves of the palm-tree were afterwards used instead of wooden planks, and the finest and thinnest part of the bark of such trees as the lime, the ash, the maple, and the elm ; hence is derived the word liber, which signifies the inner bark of the trees; and as these barks were rolled up, in order to be removed with greater ease, these rolls were called volumen, a volume; a name afterwards given to the like rolls of paper or parchment.*

*The name is derived from the Latin volvo, to roll up, the ancient manner of making up books, as we find in Cicero's time the libraries consisted wholly of such rolls.

Thus we find books were first written on stones, witness the Decalogue given to Moses; then on the parts of plants, as leaves chiefly of the palm-tree; the rind and barks, especially the tilia, or phylleria, and the Egyptian papyrus. By degrees wax, then leather, were introduced, especially the skins of goats and sheep, of which at length parchment was prepared; then lead came into use; also linen, silk, horn, and lastly, paper itself. The first books were in the form of blocks and tables; but as flexible matter came to be wrote on, they found it more convenient to make their books in the form of roils; these were composed of several sheets, fastened to each other, and rolled upon a stick, or umbilicus, the whole making a kind of column or cylinder, which was to be managed by the umbilicus as a handle, it being reputed a crime (as we are told) to take hold of the roll itself.

The outside of the volume was called frons; the ends of the umbilicus, cornua (horns,) which were usually carved, and adorned with silver, ivory, or even gold and precious stones; the title was struck on the outside, and the whole volume, when extended, might make a yard and a half wide, and fifty long. The form, or internal arrangement of books, has also undergone many varieties; at first the letters were only divided into lines, then into separate words, which by degrees were noted with accents, into periods, paragraphs, chapters, and other divisions. In some countries, as among the Orientals, the lines began from the right and ran leftward; in others, as the northern and western nations, from left to right; others, as the Greeks, followed both directions, alternately going in the one, and returning in the other, called Boustrophedon; in most countries the lines run from one side to the other; in some, particularly the Chinese, from top to bottom. Again, in some the page is entire and uniform; in others, divided into columns; in others, distinguished into texts and notes, either marginal or at the bottom; usually it is furnished with signatures and catch-words; sometimes also with a register, to discover whether the book is complete. To these are added summaries, or side-notes, and the embellishments, as in old books, of red, gold, or initial letters; they had likewise, as with the moderns, their head-pieces, tail-pieces, effigies, schemes, maps, and the like. There were also certain formulas at the beginnings and endings of books; the one to exhort the reader to be courageous, and proceed to the following books; the others were conclusions, often guarded with imprecations against such as should falsify them. Of the earlier books we have nothing that is clear on that subject. The Books of Moses are doubtless the oldest books now extant. Of profane books, the oldest extant are Homer's Poems, which were so even in the time of Sextus Empiricus; though we find mention in Greek writers of seventy others prior to Homer, as Hermes, Orpheus, Daphne, Horus, Linus, Musæus, Palamedes, Zoroaster, &c., but of the greater

part of these there is not the least fragment remaining; and of others, the pieces which go under their names are generally held by the learned to be supposititious. Hardouin goes farther, charging all the ancient books, both Greek and Latin, except Cicero, Pliny, Virgil's Georgics, Horace's Satires and Epistles, Herodotus, and Homer, to be spurious, and forged in the 13th century by a club of persons, under the direction of one Severus Archontius. Among the Greeks it is to be observed, the oldest books were in verse, which was prior to prose. Herodotus's History is the oldest book extant of the prosaic kind.

To books we are indebted, as one of the chief instruments of acquiring knowledge; they are the repositories of the law, and vehicles of learning of every kind; our religion itself is founded in books, and without them, says Bartholin, "God is silent, Justice dormant, Physic at a stand, Philosophy lame, Letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness."

The eulogia which have been bestowed upon books are infinite; they are represented as the refuge of truth, which is banished out of conversation; as standing counsellors or preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over all instructions, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please. Books supply the want of masters, and even, in some measure, the want of genius and invention, and can raise the dullest persons who have memory above the level of the greatest geniuses, if destitute of their help. Perhaps their highest glory is the affection borne them by the greatest men of all ages. Cato, the elder Pliny, the Emperor Julian, and others, are on record for their great devotion to books; the last has perpetuated his passion by some Greek Epigrams in their praise.

THE ALPHABET.

Alphabet is the name given to the series of letters used in different countries at different times. The term is borrowed from the Greek language, in which Alpha, Beta, are the first two letters; or, if we go a step farther back, we should derive the words from the Hebrew, which gives to the corresponding letters the names Aleph, Beth. Thus, the formation of the word is precisely analogous to that of our familiar expression, the A, B, C.

DEDICATIONS TO BOOKS.

Dedications to Books were first introduced in the time of Mæcenas, A.D. 17; practised for the purpose of obtaining money in 1630.*

*A very curious chapter on dedications is to be found in D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, p. 122.

ON THE ORIGIN OF PAMPHLETS AND TRACTS,

How many subjects owe their birth to a Pamphlet, which, but for the temptation it affords to the expression of temporary feelings, and trivial discussion (to which local or personal prejudices may have given importance,) would have died a natural death, or have been smothered in the attempt to perpetuate them, under the more repulsive garb of even the most tiny volume? Pamphlets are like essences, combining in a narrow compass all the pungency of the subject of which they treat; where the declamation and violence of the writer are admired while sparingly used, but would be tedious, if not disagreeable, if spread over a wider field. They may be called a species of missile weapons, easily discharged against an adversary; not the less dangerous because they are light, and generally bearing a portion of that fire and spirit to which they owed their existence. Every controversy is preceded by them; like the skirmishers of modern warfare, they are the irregular auxiliaries of literature, which, though not formally enlisted in its service, may, like wandering guerillas, yet do fearful execution. "From pamphlets," says the Icon Libellorum, "may be learned the genius of the age, the debates of the learned, the follies of the ignorant, the views of government, the oversights of the statesman. They furnish beaux with their airs, coquets with their charms; pamphlets are as modish ornaments to a gentleman's toilet, or to gentlemen's pockets; they are chat to the talkative, stories for nurses, toys for children, fans for misses, poverty to their authors, gain to the lucky, fatal to the unlucky." There have been many conjectures respecting the origin of the word Pamphlet; but of all the words that have been suggested, those which express a small book consisting of a few leaves of paper secured together and not bound, are probably the most plausibly ingenious, as well as the nearest to the sense and sound of the word itself. For example:-Par un filet, held by a thread (Dr. Johnson;) Palme feuillet, a leaf to be held in the hand (Dr. Pegge;) Papelon, Spanish, from papel; papaleta, signifying both a bill and a pamphlet (Dr. Webster.) It occurs in a Latinised form so early as to be familiarly mentioned in a work entitled Philobiblon; or a treatise concerning the love of Books, written in the fourteenth century by Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham. "If, indeed," says the author of that curious work, "we formerly desired to possess vessels of gold and silver, or stately horses, or to collect together no small sums of money; we now revere books and not pounds, and volumes more than florins, and we prefer little panflets before noble palfreys."

Most books were originally published in the pamphlet form. The Scriptures were supposed to have been written in this manner at first, in distinct sheets, or rolls, as they were affixed by the command of Heaven to the doors of the Temple, or Tabernacle.