• True wit is nature to advantage drest,' not a ragged gypsy, nor a tawdry strumpet. High, masterly execution is what constitutes a preeminent writer. He exhibits the best thoughts, exprest in the best manner. When he borrows, he improves; what he imitates, he excels. He commands a certain felicity of style, which, though simple, is highly figurative, which convinces by its energy, and charms by its beauty. Of all the ancient poets Pope most resembles Virgil. He has the same correct ness, the same majesty of numbers, allowing for the inferiority of a modern language. There is scarcely a page of Virgil, his Georgics excepted, in which we cannot trace him imitating or translating whole passages from other writers, so that he has fewer pretensions to originality, than almost any poet ancient or modern. And yet what ancient author is so universally read, or affords so "much pleasure, Horace perhaps excepted? Pope has more originality than Virgil, but less than Dryden. Yet who reads more of Dryden than a single satire and a single ode? Pope is the poet of the human species, the favourite of all ages, the oracle of all professions. Originality! Fiddledy diddledy.

ties leave us room to doubt, wheth er we ought to look upon him as the best, or as the worst of men. On the one hand, he was a great philosopher, who knew how to distinguish truth from falsehood, who could at one view perceive all the consequences of a principle, and discover how they are linked together. On the other hand, he was a great sophist, who undertook to confound truth with falsehood, and knew how to draw false inferences from the principles he supported. On the one hand, a. man of learning and knowledge, who had read all that can be read, and remembered all that can be remembered. On the other hand, ignorant, or at least feigning to be so, with regard to the most common things; proposing such difficulties, as had been a thousand times answered, and urging objections, which a schoolboy could not make without blushing. On the one hand, attacking the most eminent men, opening a large field for their labours, leading them through the most difficult roads, and, if he did not vanquish them, giving them at least a great deal of trouble to vanquish him. On the other hand, a man who made use of the worst of authors, to whom he was lavish of his praises; and who disgraced his writings by quoting such names as a learned mouth never pronounced. On the one hand, free, at least in appearance, from all the passions, which are inconsistent with the spirit of christianity; grave in his discourses, temperate in his diet, austere in his manner of living. On the other hand, employing all the strength of his genius to overthrow the foundations of moral virtue, attacking, as much as lay in his power, chastity, modesty, and all the christian virtues. On the one side, appealing to the throne of the most severe orthodoxy; going to the purest springs, borrowing his ar guments from the least suspected writers. On the other hand, following the paths of hereticks, proposing again the objections of the ancient heresiarchs, lending them new arms, and collecting together in our age all the errours of past ages. May that man, who had been endowed with so many talents, be acquitted before God of the ill use he made of them! May that Jesus, whom he so often attacked, have expiated his sins!'

PARNELL AND VOLTAIRE.

THE story of the hermit, which Parnell tells in verse, Voltaire relates in prose, precisely in the same order, in his romance of Zadig. Quere, which is the plagiary, or have they both borrowed the story from another? Voltaire continued an author for more than sixty years, but still I think that Parnell must have been his senior. Few have written so well as Voltaire on such an infinite variety of subjects; but in every department of literature he has been excelled by some. His immortality would have been more secure, had he confined his genius to any one species of composition, though his temporary popularity would have been less extensive.

I

might transpose the paragraphs as you read without injury. The style is indeed more pure and classical than that of Thomson, which abounds with gorgeous epithets and ill-sounding compound adjectives. But the latter has infinitely the advantage in the superiour interest which he excites, in more vigour of conception, in greater tenderness and delicacy, and in every poetical embellishment. give the Seasons an annual perusal, and they always afford me fresh pleasure. I have never been able to read the Task a second time. As to Cowper's produc tions in rhyme, if any man can read them at all, I shall rather applaud his patience, than imitate his example. He seems to have no ear for harmony, so that, were we not acquainted with his age, we should scarcely suspect him of being a modern. Though there may be harmony without poetry, there can be no good poetry without harmony. The want of this indispensible requisite constitutes the principal charge of Horace against Lucilius, as the possession of it in a pre-eminent degree gives to Virgil and Pope the exalted rank which they hold among the poets of their respective countries. The satires and epistles of Horace we probably know not the true method of reading. We cannot at present discover in them that harmony, the want of which he censures in Lucilius, and which, for this very reason, they must undoubtedly possess. I once endeavoured to read Cowper's Homer, but I found it an herculean task, and I was no Hercules. It may possess every other merit, but certainly wants the power of keeping its readers awake. The first lines of. the Seasons are ridiculous, as they contain absurd imagery. Observe.

Come, gentle Spring, ætherial mildness, come! And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While musick wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

I quote from memory, but I be lieve correctly. Now reduce this to painting, and what kind of picture does it present? Spring, an allegorical personage, is described as descending from the bosom of a dropping cloud (quere, what does the cloud drop?) while musick wakes around. What musick, vocal, or instrumental ? non liquet, veiled in a shower of shadowing roses. If Thomson had often written as ill as this, there would be no comparison between him and Cowper. But at present, as a poet, I think the latter decidedly inferiour. Though he may possess no passage so faulty as the one just quoted, yet he seldom rises above the level of mediocrity. Notwithstanding that the style of Cowper is unusually chaste, yet is there a sombre cast of thought, which seems to proceed from a mind not altogether sound and at ease.

EDUCATION.

EDUCATION has been greatly Improved in this country of late years. But though much has been done, yet much remains to be done. Our literary discipline is well calculated for common purposes, and our professional men are little inferiour to those of other countries in the knowledge of their profession. But here our claims to praise must end. Our lawyers are mere lawyers, our physicians are mere physicians, our divines are mere divines. Every thing smells of the shop, and you will, in a few minutes conversation, infallibly detect a man's profession. We seldom meet here with an accomplished character, a young man of fine genius and very general knowledge, the scholar and the gentleman, united. Such a character is not

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uncommon in Europe, but is here a rara avis interris. Whence pro ceeds this difference? From the inferiority of education among us. Our schoolmasters receive a mere pittance, and are consequently men of inferiour talents. Every man, capable of instructing well, follows some profession or business, able to support him. A preceptor, without genius, can never inspire a pupil with the love of learning. Instead of reading Virgil and Horace with the enthusiasm of an amateur, and of explaining them with the taste and acuteness of a Busby, he will barely require a verbatim translation, and a knowl edge of the rules of grammar. The spirit and beauties of the author remain without notice; and what has never been taught will seldom be discovered. They go to college with but a smattering of learning, and often leave it with still less. For the same system of economy pervades our academick walls, and a college tutor receives rather less than a Boston labourer.s Those, who are qualified for nothing else, consequently become tutors, and our guides to Parnassus are themselves ignorant of the road that leads thither.

The schoolmasters of Europe, particularly of Great Britain, are amply rewarded for their labours, and generally consist of the best scholars in the kingdom. The employment is honourable and lu crative, and is almost always rewarded with some distinguished ecclesiastical preferment, the preceptors themselves being always clergymen of the established church. I shall close this article with the character of Dr. Sumner, master of Harrow-school, drawn by his pupil, Sir W. Jones, in the preface to his treatise on Persiarr poetry. The translation of course must be very inferiour to the

the critick by the author himself. Every man who publishes, virtually offers a challenge to the publick, or at least courts their decision. By claiming praise, he runs the hazard of censure; and they, in whose power it is to confer the one, have undoubtedly a right to administer the other. S'ils veulent avoir en nous des admirateurs, il faut qu'ils nous permettent d'oser etre leurs juges,' says the charming La Harpe, in the introduction to his Lyceum. But if we have a right to judge, we must have also a right to laugh; for nothing can compel us to read with gravity in print, what would have convulsed us with merriment, if we had heard it in conversation. If indeed we laugh at what is not laughable, or applaud what is not commendable, or hiss at what is not absurd, we run the common hazard of a critick in the pit, when he has clapped in the wrong place, and is sufficiently disgraced by finding himself alone.

It is plainly no violation of the laws of literary courtesy to hold up dulness and absurdity to the derision of the publick; for it has long since been tacitly agreed, that if an author has a right to be dull, the critick has a right to be severe. Common equity declares, that one side ought not to claim a monopoly of privileges. Nothing but the immunity of satirical criticism can impose the slightest restraint on the vanity of authorship. By rid icule too, the taste of the publick is insensibly corrected and refined; for many, who have no time to listen to a reason, are always ready to join in a laugh; and thousands, who understand nothing of the principles of taste, can see an absurdity when exposed by another. How far it is lawful to distress an author by ridicule or censure, with gut transgressing the laws of chris

tian benevolence, I am not casuist enough to determine. I will give you the opinion of the greatest master of moral science, as well of literary discussion, which the last age produced. "As it very sel, dom happens, that the rage of extemporary criticism inflicts fatal or lasting wounds, I know not that the laws of benevolence entitle this distress to much sympathy. The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teizing other animals, be cause, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea." [Johnson's Rambler, No. 176.]

Authors boldly encounter the silent neglect of the publick, and at the same time complain of the opinion of an individual, and imagine themselves outraged by the censure of a reviewer. While they see with much composure their favourite productions quietly devoured by the moths, those mer, ciless reviewers, who have no more respect for a polished than for a clumsy period, and make as hearty a meal upon a genius as upon a dunce; they will take instant offence at a critick, who presumes to separate in their works the dry from the nutritious, who acciden tally makes a wry face at what is nauseous, or involuntarily rejects what is insipid. It is a common trick of incensed authors to rail against reviewers, as men who have impudently set themselves up as guardians of publick taste, or rather as a band of literary executioners. Indeed there is some show of reason in the complaint, that anonymous reviews are an un