obliged to attend to the minutest strictness of grammar; since whatever serves to make his composition most clear and intelligible, contributes to the giving it the greatest beauty it can possibly have. For this reason, too long sentences, and the intricacies of parentheses ought, by all means, to be avoided, however the sun-like genius of some authors may have gilded those clouds into beauty.

This one rule of perspicuity will hold good for all sorts of people, from those of mere business to those of absolute speculation. The next is, that writers put no constraint upon their natural turn of mind, which will always give a truer spirit than is within the reach of any art. Yet often from an admiration of that in others, which is utterly unsuitable to themselves, they put on a character in writing, that is mighty difficult to support throughout.

The affectation of wit and humour leads into that low burlesque, which is, of all dulness, the most disagreeable. Unable to reach the true sublime, they are willing to bring it down to their own pitch; hence spring such multitudes of travesties, parodies, and such like perversions of passages really fine; when, if they can but present you with low, and often dirty images, instead of such as are noble and beautiful, yet in such a manner, as strongly to put you in mind of the difference, all the way, they are greatly conceited of their own ingenuity. Where any of these have real humour in them, it must arise from some particular occa

sion, and is by no means inherent in that kind of composition.

But while little wits think that lowering and debasing the sublime is being witty, those, who, with an exalted genius, have a sportive liveliness of temper, can find means of ennobling their easiest and lightest compositions. Of all people Mr. Prior has succeeded the best in this way, if he had not, now and then, allowed his pen too much licence for the demureness of the Muse. As Homer's dreams were the dreams of Jupiter, so Prior's gaieties are the sportings of Apollo; and where he introduces his fabled deities, in a mirthful scene, it is not by depressing them to the level of merry mortals, but by employing (to use the phrase of an excellent modern author) "a new species of the sublime that has, hitherto, received no name."

There is a celebrated passage in Longinus, in which he prefers, upon the whole, a mixture of striking faults and beauties, to the flat correctness of an uncensurable, laboured author. One of the books, which, to those, who, for want of translations, can know little of Isocrates and Demosthenes, he has most convincingly proved the justness of this determination, is Dr. Barrow's Sermons, who seems most exactly to answer what Longinus says of the irresistible Greek orator. His expressions are frequently singular; and though crowded together, are so poured out from the abundance of one of the best

hearts, that the finest turned periods are insipid in comparison. His genius too, whatever were the littlenesses of language in those days, was certainly poetical and noble; and his imagination so warmed and delighted with the fairest view of every thing in the scheme of Providence, that religion wears, through every page of his, its

proper grace.

VIII.

On Prior's Henry and Emma.

To enliven an airing the other morning, Prior's Henry and Emma was read aloud to the company; and the different sentiments they expressed upon it, determined me to put down my own upon paper; as that poem has always been a favourite with me, and yet wants, I think, a good deal of expianation and excuse.

The tale is introduced in a way so much more interesting than one commonly meets with in pastoral dialogues, with circumstances of such tenderness and delicacy, and images so smiling and engaging, that one is concerned, before his characters have said a word, to have them keep up to the ideas which partial imagination has formed of each. That of Emma is distinguished by something so peculiarly mild and affectionate, that if we do not attend to this as her chief characteristic, we shall be apt to be surprised at many of her most beautiful sentiments, as too different from the common ways of thinking on such occasions.

Emma, susceptible of soft impressions beyond