The Sun.
London, England, 1829-08-24 00:00:00

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.--(THIS DAY.)

FROM LLOYD'S.
DEAL, AUG. 22.—Wind W.S.W.—Arrived the
Justinian, Reay, from Quebec.
AUG. 23.—Arrived the Sir Joseph Banks, Fracer,
from Sincapore.
PORTSMOUTH, AUG. 22.—Wind S.W.—Arrived
the Hope transport from Chatham ; and his Majesty's
ship Pearl, from Ireland. Arrived from London,
the Triumph, Green, for Bombay ; and Osprey,
Martin, for Jamaica.
PLYMOUTH, AUG. 21 and 22.—Wind
Arrived the Susan, Williamson, from Trieste. Sailed
the Lord William Bentinck, Ellison, for Malta; and
Clarinda, Antrim, for Bermuda.
FALMOUTH, AUG. 21.—Wind N.W.—Sailed the
Lyra packet, for Rio Janeiro; and his Majesty's
cutter Bramble, for Lisbon. The Skylark packet,
for St. Domingo, Jamaica, &c., and the Baracouti
packet, for the Leeward Islands, received orders for
sailing this post, but in consequence of the boisterous
state of the weather have not been able to break

ground.
LIVERPOOL, AUG. 22.—Arrived the Montezuma,
West, f►on► Philadelphia; Caroline Augusta, Mer-
ritt, and Shinandroak, Rose, from Virginia.
BRISTOL, AUG. 22.—Arrived the Earl of Liver-
pool, Claxton, from Nevis; and Cicero, Robinscn,
from Quebec.
BELFAST, AUG. 20.—Arrived the Union, Cun-
ningham, from Archangel ; and Success, Lawson,
from St. Petersburgh.
DOVER, AUG. 22.—Off Port, the St. Andrew,
Gilmore, from Trinidad.
GREENOCK, AUG. 20.—Arrived the Annandale,
Harvey, from Richebucto ; and Monarch, Miller,
from Trinidad.

CORK, AUG. 19.—Arrived the Rose, Ditchburne,
From Quebec.

The William and Ann, Swan, from London, was
totally lost at the entrance of the Colombia River
on the l'Oth. of March, and the master and crew
drowned.

LITERATURE.

PERSONAL AND LITERARY MEMORIALS.

LONDON, 1829.

For variety, amusement, and that pleasant sort
of information which a long literary experience
can alone afford, we know no miscellany of the
present day which we should prefer to this
volume. It is biographical, anecdotical, and
even critical, but so good-humoured is the style
of its criticism, so racy even its common places
that it cannot fail to give general satisfaction.—
With regard to its anecdotes, they refer to the
most distinguished characters of the past and
present century. Drs. Johnson and Parr, the
Earl of Lauderdale, the Duchess of Gordon,
who, it seems was a wit and satirist, as
well as a Duchess, Horne Tooke, the late Duke
of Gloucester and Gibbon, Drs. Phiipotts and
Cyril Jackson (the latter of whom was the tutor
of his present Majesty, the college patron of Mr.
Peel, and the well-known Dean of Christ-church)
the famous Lord Chancellor Thurlow, Paley of
polemical and philosophical notoriety, the two
great living novelists, Scott and Cooper, the
high-minded but eccentric and unsettled Percy
Bysche Shelley, Sir William Drummond, Lord
Nelson, Major Cartwright, and Napoleon—all
these men of great and various intellects " dance
the hays," to adopt an expression of Junius,
through the present volume with a sprightliness
and versatility peculiarly enlivening. We have
few writers in English literature who excel in
this pleasant style of composition. In France
they abound, for no nation on earth equals the
French in the number and agreeableness of their
memoir-writers, but in England, authors generally
are too much addicted to shewing off themselves—
too fond of displaying the power and grace of their
own style and sentiment, to be enabled to bestow a
thought or a passing recollection upon their co-
temporaries. With the exception of Horace
Walpole, and we may now add of Lady Morgan,
whose Book of the Boudoir is a delightful spe-
cimen of the familiar and colloquial in literature
we have scarcely one memoir-writer worth men-
tion. With these prefatory remarks we proceed
to the consideration of the volume before us.
The author, we should premise, is a Mr. Best,
late Fellow of one of the Oxford Colleges, who
having been in his time distinguished as a
scholar and a gentleman, and as such been in
habits of intimacy with the greatest men of his
day, has here' presented us with the primitice or
first-fruits of his experience. But we shall let him
speak for himself on the different topics that come
within reach of his observation. On wigs, at the
very opening of his volume, he is abundantly
severe.

" As for wigs, they are the most detestable and ridi-
culous invention that ever entered into, or upon, the head
of man, civilised or savage. The savage has, indeed, some
excuse for himself, when he sticks cock's feathers in his
hair to make himself look pretty, or displays polished shells
pendent from the cartilages of his visage—he has no great
choice of embellishment : luckily there are no perruquiers
on the banks of the Mackenzie or the Orellana, and he
is not tempted by the glories of the full-blown perriwig.
" I am well aware on what dangerous ground I tread :

the full-bottomed wig is imposing and grand by associ-
ation ; nor is the authoress of that very pretty romance,
Nature and At, at all extravagant, when she represents
the little boy as making a bow to his uncle's wig which
he happens to see on its peg in the Dean's dressing-
room. I know, too, that when Dr. Randolph, regius
professor of divinity at Oxford, kissed hands, as the
phrase is, for his bishopric, King George 111. said to him,
You have got no wig ! Don't you mean to have a
wig ?' And OR the new-made prelate's answer in the
negative, the King insisted, ' You must have a wig.'
The mandate was not obeyed.
" I have heard, too, of a Somersetshire peasant lad who
went with his father to the country town, at the time of

the assizes, to see the judge. He gazed at the judge, who
happened to be in a state of quiescent attention ; the lad's
admiration was almost sated ; the judge changed his
posture : ' Father ! father ! it 's alive !' exclaimed the boy."
We must confess we have a lurking predilec-
tion for wigs, whether scratch, bob, or full-bot-
tomed. To barristers they are particularly ser-
viceable, forming in many instances the wisest
part of their intellectual composition. Who
forgets Dr. Parr's magnificent wig, or the adroit
comparison in the Edinburgh Review, between
its well-rounded curls and the equally well-
rounded periods of the Doctor's Spital sermon ?
Of the author of the Rambler we have a highly
curious anecdote :
" After breakfast we walked to the top of a very steep
hill behind the house. When we arrived at the summit,
Mr. Langton said, Poor, dear Dr. Johnson, when he
came to this spot, turned back to look down the hill, and
said be was determined 'to take a roll down.' When we
understood what he meant to do, we endeavoured to dis-
sulde him; but he was resolute, saying, ' he had not had
a roll for a long time;' and taking out of his lesser pockets
whatever might be in them—keys, pencil, purse, or pen-
knife, and laying himself parallel with the edge of the hill,
he actually descended, turning himself over and over, till
he came to the bottom.'
" The story was told with such gravity and with an
air of such affectionate remembrance of a departed friend,
that it was impossible to suppose this extraordinary freak
of the great lexicographer to have been a fiction or inven-