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 NINETEENTH CENTURY.

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wittily remarlied, that the fiist of all poeU had obserred, that Sleep is the brother of Death. This laureate, who consented to the commutation of his butt of wine for twenty-seven pounds, was succeeded by Mr. Robert Southey, the present occupant of the title and its accompany- ing pension, and the first man of true poeti(»l genius who has held it since the dismissal of Dryden. It is rather curious to observe, that the laureats appointed by the Stuarts were uniformly men of a high order of genius, and that those nominated by the Brunswick sove- reigns, during the whole of the first century of their sway, were, with the single exception of Warton, the dullest pretenders to poetry who existed in their respective lifetimes.

Robert Southey, LL.D. as a poet, biographer, and historian, is unquestionably one of the first writers of the age. He has long been known to the trade as an author of all work; and original writing, compilations, and editorial superintendence, have, in turn, called forth the powers of his intellect, and the resimrces of his varied imd comprehensive knowledge. He was bom August 12, 1774, at Bristol, where his father carried on an extensive business as a wholesale 'linen-draper; and he received his education at Westminster and Baliol college, Oxford, with a view to the church.

1813, Aug. Died, D. Brewman, proprietor of the Sunday Monitor, SfC. and many years an active printer and publisher of the metropolis. He died at Holloway.

1813, Sept. Z>te(2, William Appleton, book- seller, at Darlington, in the county of Durham, aged sixty-three years.

1813, Nov. 1. JoBN RriTHVEN, printer, of Edinburgh, obtained a patent for a machine or press for printing from types, blocks, or other surfaces.

1813, Nov. 20. Died, John Baptist Bo- DONi, the celebrated printer of Parma, and no doubt, the most distinguished in his profession during the eighteenth century. He was born atSaluzzo in the Sardinian states, Feb. 16, 1740, of a respectable but humble family. He learned the rudiments of his art in the office of his father. In his earlier days he showed a taste for design, and at hours of leisure engraved vignettes on wood, which have been since sought for by the amateurs. At eighteen years of age a desire to improve his condition induced him to undertake a journey to Rome. He left Saluzzo with a School-fellow, Dominic Costa, who expected to receive assistance from an uncle, at that time secretary to a Roman prelate. The two friends

Eroceeded on their journey, but their money died. Bodoni, by selling some of his engrav- ings on wood to printers, procured sufficient to enable them to get to Rome. But, upon their arrival there, Costa's uncle told them he could 'do nothing for them, and advised them to return. Bodoni, discouraged by this unexpected recep- tion, yielded to the advice; but, before he quitted Rome, thought he would visit the print- ing house of the Propaganda. His general de-

meanour and vivacity attracted the notice of the abbate Rugg^eri, the superintendent of that establishment, and, after an explanation, Bodoni had the good fortune to be engaged there as a workman. In this employment be attracted the notice of the cardinal Spinelli, at that time the head of the Propaganda, who became his patron, and by whose advice he attended a course of lectures on the oriental languages, in the uni- versity of La Sapienza, and learned to read Arabic and Hebrew. Being intmsted with the printing of the Arah-Copht Mitaal, and the Al- phabetum Tibetanum, edited by P^re Giorgi, he so acquitted himself, that Ruggieri put his name at the end of the volume, with that of his town : Romse excudebat Johannes Baptista Bodonus Salutiensis, mdcclxii. Ruggien's suicide, how- ever, in 1766 (or as other accounts say, as early as 1762) rendered Bodoni's longer stay at Rome insupportable from regret. At this time he had also accepted a proposal to come to England, but going to Saluzzo to see his parents, he fell ill; and the marquis de Felino, in the interval, offering to place him at the head of the press intended to be established at Parma, upon the model of that of the Louvre, Bodoni broke his engagements, and settled there in 1768.

In 1771 he published specimens of his art in Saggio Tipografico di fregi e majutcole, in 8vo.; followed m 1774 by Iicrizioni etotiche, com- posed by J. B. de Rossi; and in 1775, on oc- casion of the marriage of the prince of Piedmont with the princessClotilde of France, a third work of the same description, entitled Epithalamia exoticis linguit reddita, exhibiting the alphabets of twentv-five languages. Between 1755 and 1788, although his fame became universal, his press was not over-actively employed.

In 1788 the chevalier d'Azara, the Spanish minister to Rome, made an offer to Bodoni to establish a press in his palace in that city, to print editions of the Greek, Jjitin, and Italian classics. Bodoni however refused his solicita- tions; and in 1789 the duke of Parma, unwill- ing that so eminent a printer should be drawn away by any one from his dominions, formed a similar project, and fumishing Bodoni with a portion of his palace and a press, some of the most beautiful editions of the classics known issued from it: more especially a Horace m folio, in a single volume, in 1791; Virgil, in two volumes in folio, in 1793; Catullus, Tihullus, Propertius, in 1794; and Taeitus's AntuiU, in three volumes, folio, in 1795. Dibdin says, of this last work, only thirty copies were printed, with a few on large paper. In 1794 Bodoni produced a most beautiful edition of the Geru- salemme Liberata of Tasso, in three vols, folio.

His most sumptuous work of all was his Homer, in three volumes, in folio, printed in 1808, with a prefatory dedication to the emperor Napoleon, in Italian, French, and Latin. When the French armies entered Italy, in the early part of the revolutionary war, Bodoni and his labours had received a marked protection. On the 21st of January, 1810, Bodoni presented a

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