power and influence, has similar claims on the feelings of private benevolence, and others of a public nature peculiar to itself.

I propose to surround the shores of the United Kingdom with marine cottages, at intervals of a mile, to serve as beacons on certain occasions, and the especial business of whose inhabitants it should be to superintend the incidents passing on the ocean, and to afford relief, advice, and shelter, to ship wrecked or distressed mariners.

Persons who have been at sea, must have been sensible of the inhospitable aspect of our shores; and could never suspect, if they had made the English coast for the first time, that such a country contained a numerous and active population. Our whole coast exhibits a dreary continuation of rock or cliff, without asylum or friendly invitation, and unprovided with watch or guard for its own protection, or the support and security of the strangers or mariners who approach it. Thus unprovided with any means of hospitality, who could suspect that such was the coast of the most ma. ritime people in the world; or that thousands of lives, and millions of property, were every year sacrificed by wrecks, which might, in a considerable degree, he prevented or averted by means like those proposed?

This plan presents also the advantage of providing, in a characteristic and congenial manner, for five or six thousand maimed or superannuated seamen and marines, two of whom, with or without families, might occupy each cottage, keeping a constant look out, in all wea ther in which assistance might be wanted. Each cottage should be provided with a lantero in its roof, in which a good light should by night be constantly displayed, and with ropes, a signal gun, and other means of affording and producing assist ance in case of wreck.

Benevolence will ask for no reasons beyond those which cannot fail to present themselves on the slightest consideration, for the adoption of a plan so obviously useful; however, as it can only be car ried into execution through the influence of a patriotic minister, or by parliamentary sanction, it may not be improper to subjoin some of the reasons which strongly recommend it.

1. Such a continuity of lights indica ting the direction of every line of coast, could not fail to be the means of prevent

ing numerous wrecks, and saving many valuable lives, and an amount of property, equal perhaps in a single year to the expence of building all the cottages.

2. In cases of unavoidable wreck, the instantaneous assistance afforded by the inhabitants of all the adjacent cottages, could not fail to be the means of saving many of the crew, and much of the property.

3. A stop would thus be put to the system of plundering wrecks, a practice which prevails in many parts of our coast, and which sinks us in character, as a people, below the most barbarous nations.

4. These marine cottages would serve as signal-houses for many public purposes, and they might especially be made a means of preventing illicit trade.

5. They would cheaply and usefully provide for five or six thousand seamen and marines, as out-pensioners of Greenwich, or as a separate establishment; and at the close of the war, sɔme means of providing for this extra number will be wanted.

6. The families of the married cottagers would be universally a nursery of seamen; and indeed it might not be impracticable to register the entire male part of them as future resources for the navy, in which they might be marked as objects for promotion in the inferior ranks of the service.

Some objections may probably be started to particular features of both these plans: I entertain, however, no doubt, that these might be removed, on a full investigation; and they must be of trifling consequence, when placed in competition with the vast benefits that would result, in a public and private view, from such establishments. I am indeed sanguine enough to think, that they would in many important respects give a new feature to the moral character of the country; and that at least, instead of solitary roads and desolate coasts, we should have the gra tification of seeing twenty thousand cottages, and the consequent happiness and comfort attending perhaps a hundred thousand souls, now the most miserable and destitute members of the commu• nity.

At any rate, would not the adoption of both plans atone, in some degree, for the miseries occasioned by so many years spent in unprofitable and destructive

wars

COMMON SENSE,

ADVICE to a YOUNG REVIEWER, with a SPECIMEN of the ART.*

You

OU are now about to enter on a profession which has the means of doing much good to society, and scarcely any temptation to do harm. You may encourage genius, you may chastise su perficial arrogance, expose falsehood, correct error, and guide the taste and opinions of the age, in no small degree, by the books you praise and recommend. All this too may be done without running the risk of making any enemies; or subjecting yourself to be called to account for your criticism, however severe. While your name is unknown, your person is invulnerable: at the same time your own aim is sure, for you may take it at your leisure; and your blows fall heavier than those of any writer whose name is given, or who is simply anony mous. There is a mysterious authority in the plural we, which no single name, whatever may be its reputation, can acquire; and, under the sanction of this imposing style, your strictures, your praises, and your dogmas, will command universal attention, and be received as the fruit of united talents, acting on one common principle-as the judgments of a tribunal who decide only on mature deliberation, and who protect the interests of literature with unceasing vigilance.

Such being the high importance of that office, and such its opportunities, I cannot bestow a few hours of leisure better than in furnishing you with some hints for the more easy and effectual discharge of it: hints which are, I confess, loosely thrown together, but which are the result of long experience, and of frequent reflection and comparison. And if any thing should strike you at first sight as rather equivocal in point of morality, or deficient in liberality and feeling; I beg you will suppress all such scruples, and consider them as the offspring of a con tracted education and narrow way of thinking, which a little intercourse with the world and sober reasoning will speedily overcome.

Now as in the conduct of life nothing is more to be desired than some governing principle of action, to which all other principles and motives must be made

This excellent essay having been printed for separate circulation, its merits led us to ask permission of the author to insert it in our pages, in the confidence that it would highly gratify our readers.

subservient; so in the art of reviewing I would lay down as a fundamental position, which you must never lose sight of, and which must be the main spring of all your criticisms-Write what will sell. To this golden rule every minor canon must be subordinate; and must either be immediately deducible from it, or at least be made consistent with it. Be not staggered at the sound of a precept, which upon examination will be found as honest and virtuous as it is discreet. I have already sketched out the great services which it is in your power to render mankind; but all your efforts will be unavailing if men do not read what you write. Your utility therefore, it is plain, depends upon your popularity; and po pularity cannot be attained without hu mouring the taste and inclinations of

men.

Be assured that by a similar train of sound and judicious reasoning, the consciences of thousands in public life are daily quieted. It is better for the state that their party should govern than any other: the good which they can effect by the exercise of power, is infinitely greater than any which could arise from a rigid adherence to certain subordinate moral precepts; which therefore should be violated without scruple, whenever they stand in the way of their leading purpose. He who sticks at these can never act a great part in the world, and is not fit to act it if he could. Such maxims may be very useful in ordinary affairs, and for the guidance of ordinary men; but when we mount into the sphere of public uti lity, we must adopt more enlarged principles; and not suffer ourselves to be cramped and fettered by petty notions of right, and moral duty.

When you have reconciled yourself to this liberal way of thinking, you will find many inferior advantages resulting from it, which at first did not enter into your consideration. In particular, it will greatly lighten your labours to follow the public taste, instead of taking upon you to direct it. The task of pleasing is at all times easier than that of instructing: at least it does not stand in need of painful research and preparation; and may be effected in general by a little vivacity of manner, and a dexterous morigera tion (as lord Bacon calls it) to the hu Your re mours and frailties of men. sponsibility too is thereby much lessened, Justice and candour can only be required of you so far as they coincide with this main principle; and a little experience

will convince you, that these are not the happiest means of accomplishing your purpose.

It has been idly said, that a reviewer acts in a judicial capacity, and that his conduct should be regulated by the same rules by which the judge of a civil court is governed: that he should rid himself of every bias; be patient, cautious, sedate, and rigidly impartial; that he should not seek to shew off himself, and should check every disposition to enter into the case as a partizan.

Such is the language of superficial thinkers; but in reality there is no analogy between the two cases. A judge is promoted to that office by the authority of the state; a reviewer by his own. The former is independent of controul, and may therefore freely follow the dictates of his own conscience: the latter depends for his very bread upon the breath of public opinion; the great law of selfpreservation therefore points out to him a different line of action. Besides, as I have already observed, if he ceases to please, he is no longer read, and consequently is no longer useful. In a court of justice, too, the part of amusing the Bystanders rests with the counsel: in the case of criticism, if the reviewer himself does not undertake it, who will? Instead of vainly aspiring therefore to the gravity of a magistrate, I would advise him, when he sits down to write, to place him self in the imaginary situation of a crossexamining pleader. He may comment, in a vein of agreeable irony, upon the profession, the manner of life, the look, dress, or even the name, of the witness he is examining: when he has raised a contemptuous opinion of him in the minds of the court, he may proceed to draw answers from him capable of a ludicrous turn, and he may carve and garble these to his own liking. This mode of proceeding you will find most practicable in poetry, where the boldness of the image, or the delicacy of thought, for which the reader's mind was prepared in the original, will easily be made to appear extravagant or affected, ifjudiciously singled out, and detached from the group to which it belongs. Again, since much depends upon the rhythin and the terseness of expression, both of which are sometimes destroyed by dropping a single word, or transposing a phrase, I have known much advantage arise from not quoting in the form of a literal extract, but giving a brief summary in prose of the contents of a poetical passage; and

interlarding your own language with occasional phrases of the poem, marked with inverted commas. These, and a thousand other little expedients, by which the arts of quizzing and banter flourish, practice will soon teach you. If it should be necessary to transcribe a dull passage, not very fertile in topics of humour and raillery, you may introduce it as "a favourable specimen of the au thor's manner."

Few people are aware of the powerful effects of what is philosophically termed association. Without any positive vio lation of truth, the whole dignity of a passage may be undermined by contriving to raise some vulgar and ridiculcus notions in the mind of the reader and language teems with examples of words by which the same idea is expressed, with the dif ference only that one excites a feeling of respect, the other of contempt. Thus you may call a fit of melancholy "the sulks," resentment "a pet," a steed "a nag," a feast" a junketing," sorrow and affliction " whining and blubbering." By transferring the terms peculiar to one state of society, to analogous situations and characters in another, the same object is attained; a drill serjeant, or a cat and nine tails, in the Trojan war—a Lesbos smack, put in to the Piraeus-the penny-post of Jerusalem, and other combinations of the like nature, which, when you have a little indulged that vein of thought, will readily suggest themselves, never fail to raise a smile, if not immediately at the expence of the author, yet entirely destructive of that frame of mind which his poem requires in order to be relished.

I have dwelt the longer on this branch of literature, because you are chiefly to look here for materials of fun and irony. Voyages and travels indeed are no barren ground, and you must seldom let a number of your review go abroad without an article of this description. The charm of this species of writing, so universally felt, arises chiefly from its uniting narra❤ tive with information. The interest we take in the story can only be kept alive by minute incident and occasional detail, which puts us in possession of the traveller's feelings, his hopes, his fears, his disappointments, and his pleasures. At the same time the thirst for knowledge and love of novelty is gratified, by continual information respecting the people and countries he visits. If you wish therefore to run down the book, you have only to play off these two parts against

each

be so. The chief are, that this part is both easier, and will sell better. Let us hear the words of Mr. Burke on a subject not very dissimilar. "In such cases," says he, "the writer has a certain fire and alacrity inspired into him, by a consciousness, that, let it fare how it will with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of applause; and this alacrity hecomes much greater, if he acts upon the offensive, by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and the unfor tunate propensity which mankind have to the finding and exaggerating faults.”— Pref. Vindic. Nat. Soc. p. 6. You will perceive that I have on no occasion sanctioned the baser motives of private pique, envy, revenge, and love of detraction; at least I have not recommended harsh treatment upon any of these grounds: I have argued simply on the abstract moral principle which a reviewer should ever bave present to his mind. But if any of these motives insinuate themselves as secondary springs of action, I would not condemn them: they may come in aid of the grand leading principle, and power fully second its operation.

But it is time to close these tedious precepts; and to furnish you with what speaks plainer than any precept, a specimen of the art itself, in which several of them are embodied. It is hastily done; but it exemplifies well enough what I have said of the poetical department, and exhibits most of those qualities which disappointed authors are fond of railing at, under the names of flip pancy, arrogance, conceit, misrepresen tation, and malevolence: reproaches which you will only regard as so many acknowledgments of success in your un dertaking, and infallible tests of an established fame and rapidly increasing circulation.

SPECIMEN OF REVIEWING.

L'Allegro, a Poem, by John Milton.

No Printer's name.

Ir has become a practice of late with a certain description of people who have no visible means of subsistence, to string together a few trite images of rural scenery, interspersed with vulgarisms in dialect, and traits of vulgar manners; to dress up these materials in a sing-song jingle, and to offer them for sale as a poem. According to the most approved recipes, something about the heathen gods and goddesses, and the school-boy topics of Styx, and Cerberus, and Elysium, is occasionally thrown in, and the com.

position is complete. The stock in trade of these adventurers is in general scanty enough, and their art therefore consists in disposing it to the best advantage. But if such be the aim of the writer, it is the critic's business to detect and defeat the imposture; to warn the public against the purchase of shop-worn goods, and tinsel wares; to protect the fair trader, by exposing the tricks of needy quacks and mountebanks; and to chas tise that forward and noisy importunity, with which they present themselves to the public notice.

How far Mr. Milton is amenable to this discipline, will best appear from a brief analysis of the poem before us. In the very opening he assumes a tone of authority, which might better suit some veteran bard than a raw candidate for the Delphic bays; for, before he proceeds to the regular process of invocation, he clears the way by driving from his presence, with sundry hard names and bitter reproaches on her father, mother, and all the family, a venerable personage, whose age at least, and staid matron-like appearance, might have entitled her to more civil language.

Hence, loathed Melancholy;

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn, &c. these matters, without a knowledge of There is no giving rules, however, in the case. Perhaps the old lady had been frequently warned off before, and provoked this violence by continuing still to lurk about the poet's dwelling. And, to say the truth, the reader will have but too good reason to remark, before he gets through the poem, that it is one thing to tell the spirit of Dulness to depart, Like Glendower's spirits, any one may and another to get rid of her in reality. order them away, But will they go when you do order then?"

But let us suppose for a moment, that the Parnassian decree is obeyed; and which is as precise and wordy as if Jusaccording to the letter of the order, tice Shallow himself had drawn it, that the obnoxious female is sent back to the place of her birth,