dence and real modesty which characterized his life. The impressions of virtue, however, were too feeble to resist the strong pleadings of necessity, and he yielded to that licentiousness of manner, and obscenity of description, which could alone crown his dramatic compositions, if not with fame, at least with success. He lived to lament the immorality of his plays, but he did not live to behold the stage reformed, or disposed to reject profligate characters, and indelicate scenes, The English stage, or rather the English nation, has surpassed all other countries for its indelicate comedy. "Accustomed to the indelicacy of our own comedy," says Dr. Blair," and amused with the wit and humour of it, its immorality too easily escapes our observation. But all foreigners, the French especially, who are accustomed to a better regulated and more decent stage, speak of it with surprise and astonishment." Voltaire, who is, assuredly, none of the most austere moralists, plumes himself not a little upon the superior bienseance of the French theatre; and says, "that the language of English comedy is the language of debauchery, not of politeness." M. Moralt, in his letters upon the French and English nation, ascribes the corruption of manners in London to comedy, as its chief cause. "Their comedy," he says, "is like that of no other country; it is the school in which the youth of both sexes familiarize themselves with vice, which is never represented there as vice, but as mere gaiety." "As for comedy," says Diderot, in his observations upon dramatic "the English have poetry, none; they have, in their place, satires full, indeed, of gaiety and force, but without morals, and with out taste,-Sans mœurs et sans gout." Lord Kaimes, in his "Elements of Criticism," has censured the indelicacy of English comedy in terms still stronger than Dr. Blair's, concluding his invective against it in these words:" How odious ought those writers to be, who thus spread infection through their native country, employing the talents which they have received from their Maker most traiterously against himself, by endeavouring to corrupt and dis figure his creatures! If the comedies of Congreve did not rack him with remorse, in his last moments, he must have been lost to all sense of virtue." We cannot, however, agree with Lord Kaimes in laying the entire blame on the writers of comedy. If the taste of the nation at large had not been vitiated, immodest writers would find no encouragement, and, consequently, would not cultivate that species of comedy, which tended neither to increase their wealth, nor their reputation— at least, the greater censure must attach to the nation, for what will not a writer do, who lives by his profession? That excuse, which Churchill pleads in his own behalf, will always be found stronger in defence of writers than any plea which the nation can ever advance in defence of itself. We do not, by this, mean to advocate profligate writers: we only mean to say that, culpable as they are, they are still less so than the nation that encourages them. While the stage continued to be the great nursery of voluptuous writers, it was not wonderful, indeed, that those the contagion which it was so highly who frequented it, did not escape calculated to infuse. Of this pleasure it may be truly said, Principium dulce est, at finis amoris amarus, Læta venit Venus, tristis abire solet. Ovid himself, the prince of amatory poetry, confesses the danger of the voluptuous muse, though he says, in making this confession, he brings discredit on his own productions: Eloquar invitus, teneros ne tange poetas, Even Shakspeare, who is, at bottom, perhaps the most moral of all writers, is so replete with that indelicacy which was the growth of his own age, and with which he was necessarily obliged to conform in part, that he is too gross for his greatest admirers at present; and, accordingly, we have an edition of his works, in which the obscene passages are expunged. When the mental powers are once vitiated in any of their functions, and become subject to an improper or immoral influence, the contagion becomes, in a manner, universal, and the mind takes a false and distorted view of all its objects. Accordingly, we find that the perversion of moral sentiment which sacrificed truth and modesty to obscenity and licentiousness, banished nature altogether from the literary productions of the time; and servility became the natural consequence of false sentiment and conceit. Cowley, Donne, and Clieveland unite, perhaps, more than all the rest, this prostrate servility of adulation to a total abandonment of nature, whose modesty they left at an immeasurable distance behind them. Donne, not satisfied with transforming the Countess of Bedford into a goddess, endows her with that divinity which is the object of Christian adoration. In one of his epistles, he addresses her in the following unintelligible rant :— What shall my West hurt me? As West In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross, and Adam's tree, stood in one place; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace. Were these lines addressed ironically to some Pagan idol, they might pass for wit: addressed to the God of his faith, they are impious in the highest degree. Of Clieveland, little remains to be said, as all our observations on Donne He has not a single poem worthy the and Cowley are applicable to him.— attention of a reader of taste; and it is doubtful, whether a copy either of his or Donne's poems will be extant at the close of the nineteenth century, if nature, united with a correct and elegant taste, continue to be cultivated and progressively improved. At present, indeed, we have so many schools of poetry, so many heresies in matters of taste, that little can be said with certainty with regard to the future; but if false taste, and arbitrary notions of poetic beauty were once exploded, the works of Donne, Cleveland, and their metaphysical contemporaries, would soon glide into oblivion. Their names, no doubt, will travel down to posterity, while antiquarian research continues to hoard up the useless lumber of ancient times. But if it ever becomes popular to reject whatever is not stamped with the impress of native excellence,-if it ever be deemed wise not to encumber the mind with useless knowledge, and to pervert the taste by the perusal of false models, we have no hesitation in prophesying the fate of their works. The following lines from Clieveland will shew how exactly his genius and manner correspond with those of Donne and Cowley. To Julia, to expedite her Marriage. Think but how soon the market fails; Your sex lives faster than the males; Now since you bear a date so short, Live double for't. How can thy fortress ever stand, The siege so gains upon the place, Pity thyself, then, if not me, And hold not out, lest, like Ostend thou be, Nothing but rubbish at delivery. To the Memory of Mr. Edward King, who was Drowned in the Irish Seas. I am no poet, here my pen's the spout Where the rain water of my eyes run out, In pity of that name whose fate we see Thus copied out in fate's hydrography. The muses are not mermaids, though upon His death the ocean might turn Helicon. The sea's too rough for verse, who With Xerxes strives to fetter the Helrhymes upon't, lespont. My tears will keep no channel, own no laws To guide their streams, but, like the waves, their cause Run with disturbance, till they swallow me, As a description of his misery. Perhaps it would be wrong to conclude, that Clieveland felt no real sorrow for the loss of his friend; but if the greatest scribbler of the present day wrote such lines, they would be deemed an impious mockery of the dead. It may be safely asserted, that many poets of our own time, edition, and who are never more whose works never pass beyond one destined to be heard of in the lists of fame, are not merely superior to Donne and Cowley, but possess merit which would become the theme and the admiration of future ages, had they lived at the same time. M. M. D. SONNET. BY BUONDELMOnte. Spesso amor sotto la forma D'amista ride, e s'asconde : Poi si mischia e si confonde Con lo sdegno e col rancor. In pictade ei si trasforma : Par trastullo, e par dispetto: Mà nel suo diverso aspetto Tempr' egli è l'istesso amor. TRANSLATION. Oft will Love his radiant eyes CLIO.. APHORISMS, OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS ON MORALS. How often are persons led to detract from the merit of others, by a feeling of competition, of which they are wholly unconscious.—“ I can have no envious motive for undervaluing Selina's accomplishments, because I have no pretensions to accomplishments myself," says Lavinia; "therefore we come into no competition."-" As I do not sing, I cannot be envious of Leander's singing," cries Sophia, "because we come into no competition." Certainly they come into no particular competition, but there is a general one, which answers the same purpose, and excites equal envy: namely, competition for notice. While Selina is displaying her accomplishments, Lavinia obtains no notice. While Leander is singing, Sophia's powers of conversation are undesired and unvalued, and she is not attended to. To be noticed, if not admired, is the general wish; and none, however insignificant in the eyes of their acquaintances, are sufficiently so in their own as to be satisfied, while a display of the talents of others causes them to be wholly disregarded. The person who lies, in order to conceal a weak or wicked action, is no more sure of effecting the purpose, than the slattern, who ties a clean apron over a dirty petticoat, is of concealing her untidiness-the slightest gust of wind may blow the apron aside; and the slightest cross examination may detect the lie. The vain man is he, who values himself on the qualities and advantages which he really possesses ;the conceited man values himself on qualities which he has not, and adds poverty of intellect to arrogance of pretension. Some one has said, and said truly, that a woman can be handsome only one way, but she can be graceful a thousand; and the French expression of "la grace plus belle encore que la beauté" (grace still more beautiful than beauty), is a sort of kindred observation to this. But what is grace? Not external conformation certainly;-the finest form may be devoid of it, and the clumsiest Eur. Mag. Vol. 82. may possess it. One definition of it is, the power of moving with ease and dignity, and with appropriate gesture; and it requires a discriminating mind to teach and to bestow this power without it, the best made man, or woman, would be no more than the well-made, well-stuffed, and well-coloured clay figure in the room of the artist; whose beauty is powerless and valueless, till the. creative mind of the painter puts its limbs into graceful and appropriate attitudes. "Before such genius all objections fly, Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high," says Churchill; but as "genteel" is is arbitrary over words as well as now become a vulgarism, and fashion dress, I would rather read it thus: . "Pritchard is graceful, Garrick six feet high." If I were not withheld from lying by any better motives, I should be deterred from it, by its being contemptible, because it is so easy; nay, the very easiest thing in nature; for children and fools excel in it. Children are not conscious of the probable mischievous consequences of the disgrace of a lie, and fools regard them not. Those who are older and wiser, too weak to resist temptation to falsehood, yet too strong not to see the difficulties and dangers which surround it, are apt to betray themselves, even while committing the vice of lying; and by an involuntary blush, a snapping eye-lid, and a downcast eye, do homage to that truth, against which they are rebelling. Though no one can deny that various evils are mingled with the blessings of existence; still, if we were to take from the catalogue of miseries those, which are merely the result of our own diseased imaginations, and the distorted or mistaken view which we take of circumstances and persons, I am convinced that the list would be astonishingly diminished. I have often heard the cry of "the church is in danger!" and I always P wonder that it has stood so long: for what edifice can be considered secure, of which so many of the newest pillars are rotten? While the dunce, the idler, the spendthrift, the profligate, of whom nothing else can be made, is thought good enough for a clergyman; and he is licenced to take care of the souls of others, who has notoriously proved that he cannot take care of his own. Well may the friends of the establishment exclaim that "the church is in danger;" for the traitors are within its walls, and far more formidable than all the conventicles of sectaries, and the orations of demagogues and infidels. Enviable, indeed, are those who, when the hand of faithlessness, treachery, or death has blighted all their own prospects in this life, can delight to busy themselves in promoting the public or private welfare of their fellow-creatures. Though bankrupts themselves in happiness, by trading on commission for others, they will by that means gain in time a small capital of their own. I always consider the sceptic, who endeavours to deprive his companions of their religious belief, by his arguments and his eloquence, as influenced by the same motives as the fox in the fable; who having lost his tail, and feeling the misery of the privation, could not bear that his brethren should possess an advantage of which he was deprived; and therefore selfishly endeavoured to persuade them to cut off their brushes in imitation of him. Men and women of talent, who live in the country,or in a provincial town, are very apt to overrate their own abilities, and to become conceited:those who are in retirement have no one to compare themselves with, and are, therefore, ignorant of their deficiencies; and those who live in a country town have, generally, only pigmies to measure with, and natuturally enough, therefore, suppose themselves to be giants. Which is the happiest, or most enviable person-that being who, having just pretensions to fame and universal homage, is in full and undisturbed possession of them; or that being who having possessed them, and feeling their emptiness, has chosen to resign them, and re tire from the tumult of the world to the quiet of retirement? There is nothing which requires so much mental courage, and so much firm principle, as to tell the strict truth, in spite of strong temptation to tell the lies of interest, of pride, and of complaisance; because no fame, no honor await the person who so does; as there is scarcely an individual in society who values spontaneous truth, or indeed any truth-to tell a little fib, a white lie, is thought even meritorious on some occasions; while a strict adherence to truth on small, as well as on great points, exposes the person who so adheres to be ridiculed, if not despised, by people in general: therefore, he who can act up to his own sense of right, in defiance of ridicule and example, and also, unstimulated by aught but the whisper of conscience, is capable of what I must call the most difficult moral heroism. A man of moderate talents is always contented with himself—a man of sterling talents, on the contrary, is always discontented, because he continually discovers powers and acquirements beyond what he possesses thus is the balance in life kept even-and those who are the best gifted, are not the most happy. How very easy, and how very common it is to become ridiculous, and a mark for petty detraction, though possessed of great personal qualities, rare talents and superior wit, unless a constant watch is kept over the vanity; and how often does one see superior men or women rendered objects of ridicule by an inferior and contemptible one, who has the power of playing them off, as it is called, and of putting the springs of their vanity, unconsciously, in motion:when so played upon, they lose their shining and marked superiority of character, and are levelled, for the time, with the most ungifted of their companions-as the toy called the whiz-gig, however rich and handsome it may be from the outward decoration bestowed on it, when it is whirling round under the hand of the player, loses every trace of its external beauty, and looks no better than one made of the most common materials. |