MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES.

A POEM on a slight subject requires the greatest care to make it considerable enough to be read.—Mr.Pope-[just after speaking of his Dunciad.]

Most little poems should be written by a plan. This method is evident in Tibullus, and Ovid's Elegies, and almost all the pieces of the ancients.-The same.

Horace's Art of Poetry was probably only fragments of what he designed. He wants the regularity that flows from a plan; and there are several passages in it that are hints only of a larger design. This appears as early as at the 23d verse:

Denique sit, quod vis, simplex duntaxat et unum, which looks like the proposal of a subject, on which much more was necessary to be

off to another in the

said; and yet he goes
very next line.-The same.

A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation robes. Education leads us from the admiration of beauty in natural objects to the admiration of artificial or customary excellence. I do not doubt but that a thorough-bred lady might admire the stars, because they twinkle like so many candles on a birth-night.-The same.

As L'Esprit, Rochefoucault, and that sort of people, prove that all virtues are disguised vices, I would engage to prove all vices to be disguised virtues. Neither indeed is true; but this would be a more agreeable subject, and would overturn their whole scheme.-The same.

Arts are taken from nature; and after a thousand vain efforts for improvements, are best when they return to their first principles. The same.

A sketch or analysis of the first principles of each art, with their first consequences, might be a thing of most excellent service.

Thus, for instance, all the Rules of Architecture would be reducible to three or four heads; the justness of the openings-bearings upon bearings-and the regularity of the pillars.-The same.

That which is not just in buildings, is disagreeable to the eye; as a greater upon a slighter, &c.: this he called the reasoning of the eye. The same.

1728. In laying out a garden, the first and chief thing to be considered is the genius. of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is all a plain, and nothing can please without variety. The same.

I have sometimes had an idea of planting an old Gothic cathedral in trees. Good large poplars, with their white stems, cleared of boughs to a proper height, would serve very well for the columns, and might form the different aisles or peristilliums, by their different distances and heights. These would look very well near, and the dome rising all in a proper tuft in

the middle, would look as well at a distance.

-The same.

As to our senses, we are made in the best manner that we possibly could. If we were so turned as to see into the most minute configuration of a post, we might perhaps be liable to break our shins against it. We see for use, and not for curiosity.. Was our sight so fine as to pierce into the internal make of things, we should distinguish all the fine ducts, and the contrivance of eachcanal for the conveyance of the juices in every one of these leaves; but then we should lose their beautiful prospect it would all be only a heap and confusion to the eye.-Lord Bolingbroke.

The editorial criticism was very useful and necessary in Erasmus and the earlier revivers of learning; but the carrying it on without mercy by the later critics has only served to puzzle the text.-The same.

After all, it is Nicholas the Fifth to whom Europe is obliged for its present state of learning. The same.

At Paris, they have a set of stated para

doxical orations. The business of one of these was, to show that the History of

Rome for the four first centuries was a mere fiction. The person engaged in it proved that point so strongly and so well, that several of the audience, as they were coming out, said, the person who had set that question had played booty; and that it was so far from being a paradox, that it was a plain and evident truth.-The same.

Monsieur Fenelon, the author of Telemachus, and Archbishop of Cambray, used to entertain Protestants as readily as Papists. He was above all the little distinctions of country or religions. He used to say, that he loved his family better than himself, his country better than his family, and mankind better than his country; for I am more a Frenchman (added he) than a Fenelon, and more a man than a Frenchman.-Chevalier Ramsay, (author of the Travels of Cyrus, and for several years in the archbishop's family; I think, as his secretary.)

The true reason of the archbishop's