Philip Augustus, desirous of divorcing Ingelburg, to unite himself to Agnes de Meranie, the Pope put his kingdom under an interdict.  The churches were shut during the space of eight months; they said neither mass nor vespers; they did not marry; and even the offspring of the married, born at this unhappy period, were considered as illicit:  and because the king would not sleep with his wife, it was not permitted to any of his subjects to sleep with theirs!  In that year France was threatened with an extinction of the ordinary generation.  A man under this curse of public penance was divested of all his functions, civil, military, and matrimonial; he was not allowed to dress his hair, to shave, to bathe, nor even change his linen; so that upon the whole this made a filthy penitent.  The good king Robert incurred the censures of the church for having married his cousin.  He was immediately abandoned.  Two faithful domestics alone remained with him, and these always passed through the fire whatever he touched.  In a word, the horror which an excommunication occasioned was such, that a courtesan, with whom one Peletier had passed some moments, having learnt soon afterwards that he had been about six months an excommunicated person, fell into a panic, and with great difficulty recovered from her convulsions.

LITERARY COMPOSITION.

To literary composition we may apply the saying of an ancient philosopher:—­“A little thing gives perfection, although perfection is not a little thing.”

The great legislator of the Hebrews orders us to pull off the fruit for the first three years, and not to taste them.  He was not ignorant how it weakens a young tree to bring to maturity its first fruits.  Thus, on literary compositions, our green essays ought to be picked away.  The word Zamar, by a beautiful metaphor from pruning trees, means in Hebrew to compose verses.  Blotting and correcting was so much Churchill’s abhorrence, that I have heard from his publisher he once energetically expressed himself, that it was like cutting away one’s own flesh.  This strong figure sufficiently shows his repugnance to an author’s duty.  Churchill now lies neglected, for posterity will only respect those who

    ——­File off the mortal part
    Of glowing thought with Attic art. 
                                   YOUNG.

I have heard that this careless bard, after a successful work, usually precipitated the publication of another, relying on its crudeness being passed over by the public curiosity excited by its better brother.  He called this getting double pay, for thus he secured the sale of a hurried work.  But Churchill was a spendthrift of fame, and enjoyed all his revenue while he lived; posterity owes him little, and pays him nothing!