finer fenfations; he must likewife very well know the refult of fuch a conduct, and must be fuppofed to eftimate, in fome degree, the value of the money he borrowed, by what he was about to lofe. Whatever he thought upon the fubject, the connection between Lord Chesterfield and him ended here; tho' we believe Jones afterwards took fome pains to revive it, if we may judge from the following lines addreffed to Lord Tyrawley, entitled, "On his fending me to Lord Chesterfield when I durft not knock at his door."

Rejoic'd I went, of (peeding fure,
My Lord! at your command
I boldly food at Stanhope's door,

And ftourly itretched my hand.
The founding brafs I rafhly rais'd,

Refolv'd my hopes to crown;
Some power unfeen my fenfes feiz'd,
I laid it filent down.

The knocker thus I thrice upheld,
And thrice I made effay-
For your command my arm impell'd,
And I would fain obey.

But Fate forbid th' intruding found

Which would his ears affail;

By greatness awed, and worth renown'd, Hibernian front muft fail.

Jones, thus emancipated from the awe of his patron, feemed to turn his thoughts to the Stage, as the best refource for his future fame and fortune. He had at that time made fome progrefs in a Tragedy called "Harold," and he flattered himfelf much on the profits of this production; but in this he neither eftimated his industry, his ceconomy, or reputation. He raised money (as we before oblerved) upon this Tragedy in embryo, and fuch was his unaccountable indolence, and neglect of all character, that fooner than finish it for the Stage, which in all probability would produce him a fair fame and confiderable profits, he chofe to employ it as the temporary expedient of raising money under falfe pretences.

His intercourfe with fome of the principal performers of both Houfes is pretty evident from the poems he dedicated to them from time to time. He wrote a Prologue for old Hufbands, the player; paid fome poetical compliments to Barry on his Hamlet; and gives the fol

lowing eulogium on Mrs. Woffington, which we have tranfcribed as one proof out of the many, how far the various talents of this all-accomplished and selftaught Actress were then eftimated.

ON SEEING MRS. WOFFINGTON AP.
PEAR IN SEVERAL CHARACTERS.
Delightful WoFFINGTON, fo form'd to
pleafe,

Strikes ev'ry tatte-can ev'ry paffion raise,
In fhapes as various as her fex's are,
And all the Woman feems compris'd in

her.

With eafy action and becoming mien
She fhines accomplish'd, bright'ning ev'ry

fcene.

The Prude and the Coquet in her we find, And all the foibles of the fairer kind, Exprefs'd in characters themfelves would

own,

The manner-fuch as might the vice atone; Her taking Graces gain them new esteem, They're chang`d to Virtues-or like Virtues feem.

If, drown'd in grief, pathetic forrows flow,
The pitying audience feels the mimic woe;
The foft infection fwimis in gufhing tears,
We weep the ills of twice two thoufand
years:

When warlike Pyrrhus wooes th' afflicted fair,
Then all Andromache's display'd in her ;
The fprings of Nature feel her powerful art,
She moves the paffions, and the melts the
heart;

Her nobler manner all the foul alarms
When forrow thakes us, and when virtue
charms.

Sincere emotions in each bofom rise,
And real anguifh knows no mock difguife.
Who would not Beauty's falling fate deplore,
Who fees her faitit, and droop, and fink in
Store?

The dying Fair excites fuch generous pain,
What bofom bleeds not when the begs in vain?
Extreme diftrefs fo feelingly the draws,
She feems to challenge, not to court ap
plaufe;

Secure of worth, nor anxious of her claim,
She coolly draws a careless bill on Fame.
The nobleft fentiment by her difplay'd,
In all the pomp of Milton's Mufe array'd,
Emphatic beauties from her hand receive,
Adorn'd by graces which they us'd to give;
Envy berfelf extorted tribute pays,
And Candour fpreads, and Justice crowns her
praife.

[To be concluded in our next.]

DROS.

HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF

CHARLES THE FIRST,

LE Mercredi 13 Janvier 1619, la Reine d'Angleterre logée dans le Louvre. et, reduire a 'extremité, demande fecours au Parliment de Paris, qui lui ordonna 2000 livres pour fa fubfiftence.".

Memoires d'Omer Talon, Avocat General au Parliament de Pars.

OMER TALON.

This intelligent and inflexible Magiftrate having, in a fpeech that he made in the Parliament of Paris to Ann of Auftria, during the minority of Louis the XIVth, touched gently upon the diftreffes of the common people of the kingdom of France, found himfelf treated with flight and coolness by her Majefty at the next audience he had of her. "This," fays he, "was owing to the misreprefentation of the Minifters, and fome of the vermin that frequent places. I then,' adds he,

began to perceive that La cour eft le pays de menfonge, dans laquelle il A difficile de reuir aux hommes de coeur, de probité, et de verité.' Talon having on fome occafion taken a part that pleafed the Queen and the Court, Cardinal Mazarin fent for him, and after paving him feme compaments on his behaviour, offered him an Abbey for his brother. M. de Talon very politely refuzed it, adding, that as his late conduct had nothing in view but the fervice of the King and the fatisfaction of his own coafcience, he fhould be extremely unhappy if there, was the leaft fufpicion afforded to the world at large that he had acted from other motives. "I love," added this honeft Frenchman, "both the King and the Parliament, without being under any apprehenfion that this apparent contradiction thould do me any prejudice with mankind." Mazarin fent for him another time, to request him to fpeak in the Parliament of Paris in favour of fome Edits of the King, that were to be prefented by himlelf in

/ HAMLET.

perfon, to be registered by that Affembly. M. de Talon replied, that he hould do his duty-that the prefree of the Sovereign on fuch occasions caufed always trouble and difcontentthat it was therefore the more neceffary that he fhould exercife properly the functions of his office without fear and without partiality. "I love," fays he, both the King and the Par liament." M. Talon's reafons for quitting public affairs were thofe which but too often have infpired men as honeft and as well-intentioned as him. felf. "All refiftance and contradic tion," fays he," to the Governing Power was ineffectual and useless, who carried every point they withed to gais by violence and constraint. I was, however," adds he, "very much aftonished that many honeft men, who wifhed well to the public peace, ftill attended the Parliament, in which they were certain that every thing must be carried as it pleafed the Princes; fo that in the fituation in which matters were, it would have been more for their honour, that what was done thould have been done by the voices of a few perfous only, whofe partiality might well have been fufpc&ted, than by the majority of the Parliament, who had not the power either to do the good, or to prevent the evil, as they wifhed. Nevertheless the general ti midity was fo great, that many perfons were afraid of being fufpected if they did not attend that Affem ly; and the majority of thofe that vent there did not corfider so muen what opinion tncy fhould give, as how their perfons thould be fecure, even when they had betrayed their confcience, and had voted on the fame fide with the Princes."David Hume fays in his Fay upon Eloquence, that during the disputes of the Parliament of Paris there appear ed in ny fymptoms of ancient eloquerce. "The Avocat-Generai Talon," fays he, from De Retz, "ju an oration, inyoked on his knees the Spirit of St. Louis to look down with compallion ca

his divided and unhappy people, and to infpire them from above with the love of concord and unanimity." Talon in his Memoirs draws a very excellent picture of his father, to whom he fucceeded in his office, and fays, that before his death his father drew up for him fome inftructions for his conduct in life," which," adds he, are fo good, and contain fentiments fo worthy of a Chriftian and a man of honour, that I efteem the poffeffion of them much more valuable than all the wealth which he left me. When," adds he, "I asked his bleffing of him juft before he died, he faid three times, Mon fils, Dieu te faffe homme du bien,'-My Son, God make you an honeft man."

MARAT.

When this unprincipled and fanguinary Demagogue was in England, fome years ago, withing well, no doubt, to the happinefs of that kingdom which had afforded him an afylum, he wrote in French a book called "Les Fers ou les Chaines de l'Esclavage." He found fome good foul, however, in London, who tranflated it into English in one volume quarto, with this title, "The Chains of Slavery." A few copies of this daring and impudent book were fold. Marat had in early life written upon fire, and upon electricity. Happy had it been for mankind had he confined his exertions to the material fire, and had not extended them to the fpiritual fire; he had not then inflamed the minds of his deluded Countrymen with thofe principles of conflagration, which, if not timely prevented, threaten the deftruction of every thing that has hitherto been held facred amongst wife and polifhed nations.

TURGOT.

It was faid of Turgot, and of his fucceffor in the finances, " que le premier fit mal le bien, et que le fecond fit bien le mal." There might be fome truth in this, for Turgot, with the beft intentions in the world, was, perhaps, rather too precipitate in fome of his meafures. He fuppofed the reft of mankind to be as honeft, as virtuous, and as intelligent as himfelf, but was moft fatally deceived. Turgot innovated many things in the French govern ment-the things were very probably in themselves right, but were not VOL. XXV.

Alors l'amour et fureté

Entre foeurs et freres,
Sacrements et parenté
Seront des chimères;
Chaque pére imitera
Noé quand il s'enivra.
Liberté pleniere,
O gué,
Liberté pleniere !

Plus de Moines langoureux,
De plaintives Nonnes,
Au lieu d'adreffer aux Cieux
Matines et Nones,

On verra ces malheureux
Danfer, abjurant leur vœux,
Galante chaconne,
O gué,

Galante chaconne !
Partifans des novations,
La fine fequelle

La France des nations

Sera le modele.

Et cet honneur nous devrons
Au TURGOT et compagnons,
Befogne immertelle,
O gué,
Befogne immortelle !

A qui devrons nous le plus ?
C'est à notre maitre,
Qui fe croyant un abus,

Ne voudra plus l'être.
Ah! qu'il faut aimer le bien
Pour de Roi, n'etre plus rien,
J'enverrois tout paître,
O gué.

J'enverrois tout paître !

M. Turgot gave always his teftimony in favour of the virtue and of the good intentions of the late unfortunate monarch of his country: "Nous avons un Roi honnête homme," he used always to fay-"We have a King who is an honeft man." Poor Turgot thould have looked into that oracle of human wifdom, Lord Bacon-he would have told him, "It is good not to try experiments on bodies politic, except the neceffity be urgent, or the utility evident, and to take good care that it be the defire of reformation that draws on the change, and not the defire of change that projects on the reformation. Further," adds his Lordship, "all novelty, though perhaps it mult not be rejected, yet ought ever to be held fufpected; and lastly, as the fcripture directs, fiate fuper vius anti

quas-let us make a ftand upon the ancient ways, and then look about us, and discover what is the ftraightest and right way, and so walk in it."

MARIE DE MEDICIS.

How often do weak perfons facrifice things of great confequence to matters of no importance, that are perhaps either matters of habit or of mere amufement. Omer de Talon tells us, in his celebrated "Memoirs of the Fronde," that "Meffieurs de Marilac and the reft of the cabal that confpired against Cardinal de Richelieu, would moft certainly have carried their point, had not the chief agent in the cabal, Mary de Medicis, Louis the Thirteenth's Queen, followed her hufband to Verfailles, inftead of stay. ing at Paris. Yet," adds he, the Queen, who was fo fond of her cafe that fhe would rather have loft an empire than had one hour's fleep interrupted, or one moment of her ordinary occupations broken in upon, refused to follow the King, in spite of every argument that could be made use of to prevail upon her to take that measure." Cardinal Imperiali used to say comically and perhaps truly enough, "Fortune knocks once at every man's door in the courfe of his life, but if the blind Goddefs does not then find him at home, he never afterwards troubles herself to pay him a vifit."

Whilt

AFTER all, honefty is the best policy." If Mr. Knight had held out his poem as fatyrical rather than as didactic, his readers would have found lefs difficulty in difcovering the drift of it; and nothing more would have been expected from the Poet, in this cafe, than a fuperficial acquaintance with his fubject. Now, we look for a maturity of talte in Landscape, rather than in Poetry; and are doubly disappointed.

Mr. Knight's ftyle of poetry is of a fuperior caft; nervous and manly; often mafterly, though not uniformly fo. A moroseness of manner, if we may so terin it, not unfrequently breaks in, and a want of general knowledge in the subject he is writing upon as frequently betrays him into ridiculous fituations. Sometimes we fee him buffeting the winds, lafhing the phantoms of his own imagination; at other times grovelling beneath his fubject. How could a Poet of fuch pretenfions as Mr. Knight has a right to claim, stoop to the fty nay, down to its very dunghill !

It will of course be expected from us ta give fome general account of the author's ideas in Landscape. This, however, we find difficult, or impoffible, as he does not appear to have yet formed any general ideas himself on the fubject, which, in his mind, we conceive, is ftill without form and void." If we understand his meaning at all, his first principle in the rural art is reducible within a convenient compassto this narrow point, " let things remain as they are," for "whatever is, is right," no matter how brought about, or what the effect. Thus Duck Island, which many of our Town readers may recollect, with 222

its,