PAULUS POTTER, LL.D., S.T.D.; Barat.  V. Gubernator, Lit.  Hum.  Prof., e Cong., Praeses Rerumpub.  Foed., A.B.  Yal., M.D.  Dart., D.D.  Dart., P.D.  V. Mon., etc., etc., etc.

I have put myself down stelliger, because it is certain, that, after obtaining all the above honors, if not an inmate of the cold and silent tomb, I should be false to my duties as a member of society, and a nuisance to my fellow-creatures.  The little anachronism of translating after being translated you will also pardon; and talking of the tomb, let us return to Sannazarius.  I pray that your nicely noble nose may not be offended by the tarry flavor of my version.  You will find the Latin in Howell’s “Survey of Venice,” 1651,—­a book so thoroughly useless, and so scarce withal, that I am sure it must be in your library.  By the way, as you have written travels in all parts of this and other worlds, without so much as stirring from your arm-chair, and have calmly and coolly published the same, I must quote to you the rebuke of Howell, who says, “He would not have adventured upon the remote, outlandish subject, had he not bin himself upon the place; had he not had practicall conversation with the people of whom he writes.”  This veracious person very properly dedicated his book to the saints in Parliament assembled, many of whom had, soon after, ample leisure for perusing the fat folio.  Nor is it perfectly certain that you have read the book, although you may own it; since it is your sublime pleasure to collect books like Guiccardini’s History, which somebody went to the galleys rather than read through.

But let us return, my dear Bobus, to the money question.  Know, then, that the Sannazarian performance above quoted, so different from the language of the malignant and turbaned Turks, filled with rapture the first Senator and the second Senator and all the other Senators mentioned in Act I., Scene 3, of “Othello,” so that, in grand committee, and, for all I know to the contrary, with Brabantio in the chair, they voted to the worthy author a reward of three hundred zechins, or, to state it cambistically in our own beloved Columbian currency, $1,233.20,—­this being the highest literary remuneration upon record, if we except the untold sums lavished by “The New York Blotter” upon the fascinating author of “Steel and Strychnine; or, the Dagger and the Bowl.”  But as we have had enough of Sannazarius, let us leave him with the gentle hope that his check was cashed in specie at the Rialto Bank, and that he made a good use of the money.

Now, dear Don, in the great case of Virtue vs.  Money, I appear for the defendant.  Confound Virtue, say I, and the whole tribe of the Virtuous!  I am as weary of both as was that sensible Athenian of hearing Aristides called The Just; and if I had been there, and a legal voter, I know into which box my humble oyster-shell would have been plumped.  Such was the vile, self-complacent habit of the Athenians,