English in perspicuity and method. If they really possess this superiority in the former, it may be attributed to the multitude of connective words in the French language, its genders, inflections and varied terminations: if they possess it in the latter, it may be supposed to proceed from the mode of French education, in which a large portion of time, even in their humblest academies, was given to a course of rhetoric.

Equally subscribing to the decided superiority, which the English assign to Shakspeare and Milton over all the poets of France, the Reminiscent yet feels that other nations do not seem to acquiesce in this opinion. This is usually ascribed to their imperfect knowledge of the English language; but it may be observed, that few, who are not natives of France, have that complete knowledge of the French language which enables them to feel and judge of those niceties of language, which constitute the difference between a perfect and an imperfect style. It must be added that both Mr. Fox and Mr. Gibbon, the former a real, the latter a professed admirer of the Grecian school, are said to have preferred Corneille and Raçine to the two great English bards.

In the second order of French poets,-none can be compared to Dryden. Boileau and Pope may be considered to be equally balanced, the style of the former is singularly perfect and his poems have nothing of the useless epithet,

the pertness, or the ribaldry which too often disfigure the strains of Pope; but in vain should we seek in the pages of Boileau, for the fire, the imagination, the dignity, the elegant playfulness, or the occasional, though not frequent tenderness, which Pope displays. Who that reads his happy imitation of the Intermissa Venus diu of Horace, does not wish he had oftener touched the plaintive chords. All the Odes sacrées of Jean Baptiste Rousseau, many of his other odes, and many of his allegories and cantatas, possess an extraordinary degree of merit; we suspect that most foreigners would prefer them to the odes of Gray.

We have nothing to oppose to the comedies of Molière, the fables of La Fontaine, or the elegant trifles of Chaulieu or Gressét. In novels,certainly the most numerous offspring of modern the literature, England,- (at least if we except two most perverse productions of human talent, the Emile and the Nouvelle Héloise),—has the pre-eminence.

The French allow the superiority of Bacon, Locke and sir Isaac Newton, over their own philosophers, and the superiority of Hume, Robertson and Gibbon*, over their own historians;

It is not a little remarkable that, notwithstanding the immense extent of Mr. Gibbon's subject, he always appears to be master of it, and to write down upon it, while Hume and Robertson seem to be writing up to theirs, and to acquire information as they proceed.-How much is it to

but they observe that, while Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon are to be found in all libraries and on many toilets in every part of the continent where literature is cultivated, scarcely one English preacher or divine is read out of England.With respect also to sir Isaac Newton, they remark,

be lamented, that Gibbon did not form his style on those models of Greek simplicity, which he so often praises! An historian may reasonably expect some previous information in his readers; Gibbon's demand for it is exorbitant. For the intelligence of his history, they should bring to the perusal of it a quantity of knowledge, sufficient to fill a considerable library. His prejudices against christianity are much to be lamented, the insidiousness of his attack upon it, cannot be condemned with too much severity. Dr. Whittaker's criticism of his history is rough, but powerful; it is expressed in language scarcely less affected than his own; but the critic

often draws blood.

Robertson's style is clear and dignified, but generally too measured, and when it is not supported by his subject, is unpleasantly grandiloquent. In words and phrases Hume often sins, and inaccuracy is too often justly chargeable upon him: But the general charm of his composition is indescribable : he never places himself between the book and the reader; he conducts him, seldom delighted, but always pleased and interested, to the end. Then, for the first time, the author is thought of, and receives his due tribute of admiration.

The particular merit of Voltaire's prose, is its exquisite simplicity: it is not a little remarkable, that in this, he has not produced, among his disciples, a single imitator: in general, they disgust as much by their affectation of the grand and the striking, as both they and their founder do by their ribaldry and impiety.

Is the terse simplicity of Mr. Orme's "History of Hin "dustan," sufficiently known or appreciated?

Y

:

that, since the death of that great man, the English mathematicians have done little more than slumber under his glories, while d'Alembert, Le Gendre, La Grange, La Place, & Carnot, have pursued his discoveries, have completed the grand edifice which he left unfinished, and may therefore be said to have given him a kind of posthumous domicile in France.

In general, the French mathematicians do justice to his memory; but recently M. Bossút, in his History of Mathematics, has endeavoured to rob him of the glory of being the inventor of Fluxions. This appears to make it very desirable, that a new edition of the Commercium Epistolicum of Collins, with a preliminary history of the discovery of that sublime science, of the important consequences which have emanated from it, and of the disputes to which it has given rise, should be published. Is it not to be wished, that some mathematical Mecænas would make it agreeable to a Wollaston, an Ivory, or a Babbage, to employ his time on such a work? this is the more to be desired, as the Commercium Epistolicum is become extremely

scarce.

XXXI. 4.

The present general Diffusion of Learning among all Ranks of Persons.

THE circumstance which most distinguishes the present era of British Literature from all others, is the general diffusion both of useful and ornamental knowledge among every rank of society, in a manner unknown to former times, and yet unknown to every other nation. With all the faults imputable to newspapers and other periodical effusions of the press, how much useful information is conveyed by them, to every rank of society? The author of an excellent article in the Edinburgh Review, for October 1819, shews, that in a given time, an Englishman reads about seventy-five times as much of the newspapers of his country, as a Frenchman does of his. What a spread of information !— It may be said, that the reading might be more useful and edifying; but what an exercise of the mental powers! What an excitement to better reading, to further attainment! A person can seldom find himself in a mixed society in which there is not more than one person both elegantly. and extensively instructed.