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The difference is, the telescope, which brings the one to our view, is artificial; that which fhews us the other is natural: In short, the fame arguments that will convince a fightlefs man of the reality of light, and another who has no idea but of noife, of the reality of harmony, will as conclufively prove to one wholly void of tafte, the exiftence of poetical excellences. Some of thefe, it is allowed, may be difcourfed of with accuracy and clearness enough; that is to fay, fo as to be understood by thofe who understand them already; but there are others of that exquifite nicety, that they will not fall under any defcription, nor yield to the torture of explanation. We are irrefiftibly captivated by them wherever we find them in good authors, without being able to fay precifely what that power is that captivates us; as when one views a very beautiful woman, one is immediately affected with her beauty, tho' we cannot mechanically explain the caufe that has that force over us; we feel the inchantment, and the eye ftrikes it into the heart, but are at a lofs for the folutions and reafons of it; we know we are filently struck by the power of a certain proportion or fyminetry, but do not strictly know the mea. fure of that fymmetry, and the pofitive laws by which it is governed. Poetry, in this particular view of it, as Dryden obferves, may be faid to flow from a fource, which, like the Nile, it conseals; the stream is rich and tranfparent, while the fountain is hid. Here then, at leaft, rules are impracticable; but it must not be underfood by this affertion, that the talent of writing in verfe is a lawless myftery, a wild ungoverned province, where reafon has nothing to do.

It is certain that every thing depends on reason, and must be guided by it; but it is certain, that reafon operates dif. ferently when it has different things for its object. Poetical reafon is not the fame as mathematical reafon; there is in good poetry as rigid truth as there is in a question of algebra, but that truth is not to be proved by the fame procefs or way of working. Poetry depends much more on imagination than other arts, but is not, on that account, lefs reasonable than they; for imagination is as much a part of reafon as memory or judgment is, or rather a more bright emanation from it, as to paint and throw light upon ideas is a finer act of the underfanding than fimply to feparate or com

pare them. The plays, indeed, and the lights of fancy do not fubmit to that fort of difcuffion which moral or phyfical propofitions are capable of, but muft, nevertheless, to pleafe, have juftnefs and natural truth. The care to be had in judging of things of this nature, is to try them by thofe tests that are proper to themfelves, and not by fuch as are proper only to other points of knowledge. Thus Poetry is not an irrational art, but as clofely linked with reafon, exerted in a right way, as any other knowledge; what it differs in, as a fcience of reafon, from other fciences, is, that it does not, equally with them, lie open to all capacities; that a man, rightly to perceive the reafon and truth of it, must be born with taste, or a faculty of judging; and that it cannot be reduced to a formal fcience, or taught by any determined precepts. In most. other arts, care and application are. chiefly required, which is not fufficient in Poetry. A Poet often owes more to his good fortune than to his induftry, and this is what is ufually called the felicity of a writer; that is, when in the warmth of his imagination he lights upon any conception, an image, or way of turning a thought or phrafe with a beauty which he could not have attained by any ftudy, and which ne rules could have led him to; and this happinefs it is, which, in honour to great Poets, is called or believed to be infpiration. But the mind requires to be wonderfully filled and elevated with the contemplation of its fubject before it hits upon thofe fublimities of thought and felicities of expreflion, and to be entirely undisturbed by all foreign paffions that might either call p unpleafant fenfations, or divert it from its objet. Nothing requires fo much chearfulness and ferenity of fpirit: It must not be either overwhelmed, fays Cowley, fpeaking on the fame fubject, with the cares of life, or overcaft with the clouds of melancholy and forrow, or fhaken and difturbed with the ftorms of injurious fortune; it muft, like the halcyon, have fair weather to breed in. The foul must be filled with bright and beautiful ideas, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is the principal end of all poefy. One' may fee through the ftile of Ovid de Trift. the humble and dejected condition of fpirit with which he wrote it; there fcarce remain any feotsteps of that genius, Quem nec Jovis ira, nec ignes, &c.

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The truth is, for a man to write well, it is neceffary to be in a good humour; neither is wit lefs eclipfed with the inquietnefs of the mind, than beauty with the indifpofition of the body; fo that it is almoft as difficult a thing to be a Poet in spite of fortune as it is in fpite of nature. Upon the whole, one may fafely pronounce, that the qualifications of a Poet are the peculiar gifts of Hea. ven, and promoted and embellished by a happy concurrence of events. Foetry is not the province of art; and I think what Valerius Maxinus has affirmed concerning virtue, may, with equal, or better reafon, be applied to general maxims and rules in Poetry.-Quid enim doctrina proficit? Ut palitera, non ut meliora fiant ingenia; quoniam quidem fola virtus nafcitur magis quam nagitur. Some of thefe maxims may posibly ferve to polifo a genius, but cannot make it better than nature made it; as a rough diamond is not heightened in valuc, but only prepared to be fet in view by the hand of the lapidary.

I intended to have faid a few words here on the utility of Poetry, but as this paper already exceeds my original de. fign, I fall only infert the Third Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace, to fhew the enthufiaftic notions that writer had. of the efficacy of genius and nature in Poetry, and how fruitless he judged all other aids to be without them.

QUEM tu, Melpomene, femel

Nafcentem placido lumine videris, Illum non labor Ifthmius

Clarabit pugilem; non equus impiger
Curru ducet Achaico

Victorem; neque res bellica Deliis
Ornatum foliis ducem,
Quod regum
minas.

Oftendit Capitolio:

tumidas contuderit

Romæ principis urbium

Fingent olio carmine nobilem.

Dignatur foboles inter amabiles
Vatum ponere me choros ;

Et jam dente minus mordeor invido.
O teftudinis aureæ

Dulcem quæ ftrepitum. Pieri, temperas !

O muris quoque pifcibus

Totum muneris hoc tui eft,
Donatura cycni, fi libeat, fonum!

Quod monitror digito prætereuntium,
Romanæ fidicen lyræ:
[eft.
Quod fpiro, et places, fi placco, tuum

The commendation given by Scaliger to this Ode is fo extraordinary, that it is known almoft to every body, viz. That be bad rather have been the writer of it than King of Arragon. The following is a Tranflation of it by a Poet that flourished fone years ago.

HOR. ODE III. LIB. IV.

WHOM thou, O daughter chafte of
Jove,

Didft, at his birth, with eyes of love
Behold; in Ifthmian games, nor he
Fam'd for the wreftler's wreath fhall
be,

Nor his latest lineage grace,

By conquering in the chariot-race :
Now him the teils to warriors known,
A laureli'd chief! thall lead along ;
But fruitful Tibur's winding floods,
And the flent gloomy woods,
To render famous fhall confpire,

For the poem of the lyre.
Imperial Rome, the nurfe of faine,

Kindly does enroll my name
Among the Pects charming choir,

And Envy now abates her ire.
Goddefs! who the notes doft fwell
Who canft give, if fuch thy choice,
So fweetly on my golden fhell;

To fishes mute the cygnet's voice,
'Tis to thee I wholly owe

Whispers flying where I go,
That to the preffing throng I'm show'd,
Inventor of the Roman Ode !

Monf. Dacier has fome very pretty obfervations on this Ode, and with them I shall beg leave to conclude this paper. "Horace," fays he," in this poem, thanks the Mufes for the favourable or propitious eye which they caft upon him in the hour of his nativity; he acknowledges, it was at that first ipftant of his

Sed quæ Tibur aquae fertile perfluunt, being that he received from them whatA fpiffe nemorum comæ,

ever diftinguithes him; and by this acknowledgment

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Qui terret pius ille timet, fors ifta tyrannis."

"How hard a fate a tyrant bears, "More than himmelf is fear'd he fears."

"On cite a chaque inftant la prophetie de Noftradamus, ecrite fur l'année 1566. "Celui qui la principauté "Tiendra par grande cruauté "A la fin verra grande phalange "Porter coup de feu, tres dangereux. "Par accord pourra faire mieux "Autrement, boira fuc d'Orange."

"He who the British empire's reins "By force and cruelty maintains, "Shail in h's turn each horror feel, "The blasting fire, th' avenging steel..

HAMLET.

"Then let him with his foe agree,
"And fave the land from mifery;
"Or to his lips the Orange juice
"Shail poifon's fatal ills produce."

The diary of this mifguided Prince, and many other curious MSS. relative to the hiftory of Britain, were in the library of the Scots College of Paris. It is to be hoped that they have been preferved from the fury and ravages of the prefent favages of Europe, if indeed it is not doing them too much honour to give them that appellation. Some one was faying the oilier day, before a celebrated writer, "that the modern French were a compound of the Monkey and the Tyger.' Pray, Sir, what have thefe poor animals ever done to defeive the comparison ?" was the reply.

CARDINAL DE BERULLE.

This pious man died, as the late cxcellent Mr. Grainger did, as he was celebrating the Sacrament. The Cardinal fell down dead upon the steps of the altar at the moment of confecration, as he was pronouncing the words, "Hanc igitur oblationem,' This occafioned the fol lowing dutich:

Capta fub extremis nequeo dum facra

facerdos

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behaviour. He had really, like the prefent Patriarch of our Church in age as well as in learning and piety, the nolo Epifcopari, in the extreme purity of intention; for when his fovereign, Louis the Thirteenth of France, preffed him to take the Bishopric of Leon, he refused; and on that Monarch's telling him that he fhould employ the folicitation of a more powerful advocate than himself (meaning the Pope), to prevail upon him to accept of it, he faid, " that if is Majefty continued to prefs him, he should be obliged to quit his kingdom." He founded the venerable Order of the Fathers of the Oratory in France, and was a man of fuch eminent goodness, that the Pope Leo XIth faid of him when he faw him at Rome as a fimple friar, "Le Pere Berulle n'eft pas un homme, c'eft un ange."

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JOHN OF LEYDEN,

The Citizens of France have done very ittle indeed in marrying three wives a-piece, in comparifon with the followers of this celebrated demagogue, in their fyltem of polygamy. Each man was permitted to have as many wives as he pleafed. John, who by occupation was a aylor, contented himself with feventeen only. John, like the modern French, had his fyftem of Equality, which he prefcribed to his difciples at Munster in 1524. We are," faid he, "ali brothers, and we have one common father in Adam; how then does this inequality in rank and in riches happen, that tyranny has introduced between the great and ourfelves? Have not we then a right to an equality of property, which in its own nature is conftituted to be partaken of, without diftin&tion, equally amongst all ranks of mankind? Reftore to us then, O, ye rich! you avaricious ufurpers! all the property that you have unjustly detained from us, and kept to yourselves. It is not only as men, but as Chriftians, that we have a right to this divifion. At the first establishment of Chriftianity, did not the Apottles divide amongst the faithful that wanted it, all the money that was brought to them, and laid at their feet? The Omnipotent himself requires of us, and of all mankind, that the tyranny of the Rulers fhould be deftroyed, that we fhould demand our liberty iword in hand, that we fhould refuse to

pay all taxes, and put the goods of 11 porfons in common. It is to my feet, like to thole of the Apoftles of old, that every thing rich and valuabic should be brought."

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By fpeeches of this kind he foon found himfelf at the head of upwards of forty thousand men, who feized upon the perfons and eftates of the nobility, rich citizens and clergy, broke into their houles and libraries, and burnt every book that they could find in them except the Bible. Their cry was, "Repent ye ali mortify yourfelves and be baptifed, that the anger of God may not fad upon you." The fyftem of equality in point of rank, and most probably in point of property, did not last long, for John and certain of his affociates became governors of their followers, under the name of the Twelve Apostles. They found, however, even this kind of government too democra tical, for they elected one of the twelve, by name John Becold, for their Monarch, who exercifed the most oppreffive tyranny that has, perhaps, been ever recorded in hiftory. His reign was, however, a very fhort one, for he died upon the fcaffold not many months afterward; fo true is it what Shakipear fays,

-Headstrong liberty is lafh'd with woe. There's nothing fituate under Heaven's

eye,

But hath his bound

The ingenious and elegant Mr. Greville fays extremely well in his Maxims,

Whatever natural right men may have to freedom and independency, it is manife that fome men have a natural afcendancy over others."

PASCAL.

The modern French feem to have imagined themfelves much wifer than this Jearned and acute countryman of their's. He fays, "La puiffance des Rois eit fondée fur la raifon, & fur la foibleffe du peuple." According to him, his prefent countrymen in their adoration of reafon,

Infaniri docent ratione.
They tell the world to worthip reafon,
That is, rank facrilege and treason.

In his "Thoughts written about the Year 1650," he fays, "Qui auroit eu l'amitie du Roi d'Angleteire (Charles Premier), du Roi de Pologne (Cafimir Cinq), & de la Reine de Suede (Chrif tina), auroit il cru pouvoir manquer de retraite & d'azyle au monde ?" How applicable is this to fome late Revolutions in Europe, and what a leffon for men to fee -quam fragili loco

Starent fuperbi. -Senec." "Jamais on ne fait le mal fi pleinement & fi gaiement," fays this acute writer, "que quant on le fait par un faux principe de confcience." How well this obfervation

applies

applies to all religious and political perfecutions! The leaders in general know but too well what they are doing, the reft follow them tete baile, as theep do the head of the flock. Pafcal's prayers are extremely pious and eloquent, and remind us very much of thofe of the late Dr. Johnfon. Pafcal's fifter, Madame du Perner, tells us, in that very interefting life of him prefixed to his Thoughts, that at the age of twelve years, by the mere dint of his genius, he had inverted the thirty-fecond first propofitions of Euclid. His father, for fear his son should become too fond of mathematics, to the exclufion of all other knowledge, had kept out of his fight all mathematical books and problems. Of the terms of that fcience his after fays he was fo ignorant, even after he had inverted thefe propofitions, that he used to call a circle a round, and a line a bar.

MILTON

in one of his fonnets has fome lines which may well apply to the French Republic:

-A barbarous noife environs me, Of owls and cuckoos, affes, apes, and dogs. They bawi for freedom in their fenfelets mood,

And ftill revolt, when truth would fet them free;

Licence they mean, when they cry liberty, For who loves that must first be wife and good;

But from that mark how far they rove we fee,

For all this waste of wealth and lojs of blood!

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A celebrated English lawyer was at Paris two or three years ago, and was defired to affift at one of their Committees for the establishment of the Trial by Jury in the English manner. He found them fo grofsly ignorant of the first principles of that bulwark of our excellent Conftitution, that he faid to an acquaintance of his belonging to the Committee, "My dear Sir, your countrymen are not yet fit for the trial by Jury." "My good friend, my countrymen are not yet fit for liberty," was the reply. A celebrated Italian poet faid of the prefent French, "Liberty is to them what love is to a enuch; they are incapable of enjoying " Ariftotle, in his Politics, fays, "that they only who have been governed are fit to govern; and when all will govern, as in modern France, without having derved an apprenticeship to it, what good can be expected from fo ignorant and unprinciped a pantocracy ???

VOL. XXV,

E

DR. LETHERLAND

added to the knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages that of the Hebrew, the Arabic, the Spanish, the German, the French, and the Italian. A buffoonifh profeflional brother of his ufed occafionally to quote a Greek sentence to him, as one of Galen's or of Hippocrates's. This used to fet poor Letherland, who was extremely converfant with the Greek Phyficians, a looking throughout their works, and when his foolishly-facetious friend faw him vext, he would tell him that it was in Aretæus, perhaps. Dr. Letherland, different from many of his brethren, ufed to fay," that the most degrading part of phyfic was the taking the fee, the being paid like a carpenter for work done; fometimes, perhaps, undone." A celebrated physician of Bath had that opinion of the utility, the neceffity, and the dignity of it, that one day, after having prescribed for himself in an illness without effect, he took a guinea out of his pocket with his left hand, and put it into his right, faying, "I have given myself a fee-I think now I fhall prefcribe better." The fame Phyfician, on an attendance upon Dr., Provost of Eton, who had the pally in his hands, during the abfence of his female relation, who geneJally was with the patient when the Doctor came, was defired by the Provoitto put his hand into his breeches pocket, and take out one of thofe fhining pieces of metal that have fuch attractions for Phyficians, as well as for other persons." "Why, my worthy friend," replied the Doctor," will not this be Hike picking your pocket?" "Very like it, indeed! my good Doctor," was the reply.

DR. BIRCH

wrote at one time one hundred and eighty lives for Houbraken's "Illuftrions Heads of Englishmen." The bookfeller faid, "that the Doctor was a dead hand at a life." The heads in this collection were not always taken from the most approved pictures, and that of the celebrated John Hampden is an ideal head Very indiffe rent copies were fent over to Houbraken in Holland, who returned them with his engraving. He prefented the proprietors with a plate of his own head, which is ore of the fineft in the collection. Perrault's "Illuftrious Frenchmen" is a work of more accuracy refpeeling the kenetles, and the biographical part is more full, and better written than the English one.

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