above condescending to hearken to their advice and to attend to their reprehension, or fuppofe himfelf or his art injured by their free examination of his merits.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his excellent notes on Fresnoy, has generously admitted, that, if the painter was to be informed of the remarks every spectator would neceffarily make on his picture, when expofed to public view, he would gain confiderable advantange from them.-This may be applied to acting, a fortiori, as every man must be a more adequate judge of ftage-reprefentation than of painting. In every nation in Europe, the productions of art are open to examination. In a free country, like ours, the legiflators, and the acts of legislature itself, are not exempt from difcuffion. A poem, a picture, a ftatue, a piece of mufic, the action of a player, are all offered to the public eye, and, from their approbation or cenfure, muft ftand or fall. The actor while he continues to be of value, will be an object of criticifm. It is, indeed, a teft of his confequence; and, when that is withdrawn, he will fink to nothing. Parties there will be, and prejudices muft exift; but the public is far in its determination, and will not permit an artist of merit to suffer by unjust remarks or illiberal cenfures.

"Dr. Warburton affected to despise the learning of Magazines and Reviews. He might, perhaps, receive no addition to his acquirements by perufing them; but the good per p'e of England I will prefume to aver, have been much improved, within thefe twenty or thirty years, by that variety of literature and fcience which has been every where diffeminated in these vehicles; nor do I think all ranks of people could be more innocently or more profitably employed, than in acquiring knowledge fo readily, and with fuch little expence of time and money."

ANECDOTES of the AUTHOR.
Mr. Thomas Davies, as the title-page of

the prefent entertaining performance tells us, is a bookfeller in Ruffel-ftreet, Covent-garden. Though certainly poffeffed of no common fhare of literature, and though acquainted with books better than most of his brethren, he has been by no means fuccessful in his bufinefs. The first notice we have of him is from the Dramatis Perfonæ of Lillo's celebrated tragedy of Fatal Curiofity, acted at the Hay-market in 1736. At that time he performed under the management of Henry Fielding, and was the original reprefentative of Young Wilmot. He afterwards commenced book feller in Duke's-court, but met with misfortunes which induced him to return to the theatre. For feveral years he belonged to various companies at York, at Dublin, at other places, at the first of which he married his wife, Mifs Yarrow, daughter of a performer there, whofe beauty was not more remarkable than her private character has ever been unfullied and irreproachable. About 1752 he returned to London, and with Mrs. Davies was engaged at Drury Lane, where they remained for several years in good eftimation with the Town, and played many characters, if not with great excellence, at leaft with propriety and decency. Churchill's indifcriminate Satire has endeavoured to fix fome degree of ridicule on Mr. Davies's performance; but the pen of a fatirist is not entititled to implicit credit. Our author quitted the theatre about 1762; and it would afford us fatisfaction could we have recorded that his efforts in trade had been crowned with the fuccefs which his abilities in his profeffion merited. Befides the prefent work, and the Life of Mr. Garrick, Mr. Davies is generally fuppofed to be the author of fome Anecdotes of Mr. Henderfon, A Review of Lord Chefterfield's Characters, A Life of Maflinger, Lives of Dr. John Eachard, Sir John Davies, and Mr. Lillo, and many fugitive pieces in profe and verfe published in the News-papers.

their breafts, efpecially when they mean to proceed in that holy exercife with unufual fervour and feverity. A few orders of friars, among whom are the Capuchins, alfo ufe the lower kind of difcipline; but for what reafon the commentator has not been as yet informed.

66

Perhaps, it will be afked here, how priests and confeffors have been able to introduce the ufe of fuch a painful practice as flagel

lation,

lation, among the perfons who choose to be directed by them in religious matters; and how they can enforce obedience to the profcriptions they gave them in that refpe&t? But here it must be remembered, that penance has been made a facrament among Catholics, and that fatisfition, as may be seen in the books that treat of that fubject, is an effential part of it, and must always precede the abfolution on the part of the confeffor. Now, as confeffors have it in their power to refufe this abfolution, fo long as the penances or fatisfactions of any kind, which they have enjoined to their penitents, have not been accomplished, this confers on them a very great authority; and though, to a number of thofe who apply to them, who care but little for fuch abfolution, or in case of refusal are ready to apply to other more eafy confeffors, they fcarcely prefcribe any other kind of fatisfaction than faying a certain number of prayers, or fuch like mortification; yet to thofe perfons who think it a very ferious affair when a conteffor in whom they trust continues to refuse them his abfolution, they may enjoin almost what kind of penance they pleafe. And indeed fince confeffors have been able to prevail upon kings to leave their kingdoms and engage in perilous wars and croifades to the Holy Lands, and to induce young and tender queens to perform on foot pilgrimages to very diftant places, it is not difficult to understand how they have been able gradually to prevail upon numbers of their devotees of both fexes, to follow practices which they had been so foolish as to adopt for themfelves, and to practise, at their own choice, either the lower, or the upper, difcipline." On a revelation made by St. Bridget, that Jefus Chrift had been flagellated with great cruelty, our author comments thus:

:

Initances of revelations, like thofe of St. Bridget, concerning the perfon of Jefus Chrift and his fufferings, are very frequent among Nuns and to fay the truth, it is no wife furprising that they should, at times have vifions of this kind. As those women who are deftined to live in the condition of Nuns, are commonly, not to fay always, made to take their vows at an early age, that is, at a time when their paffions are moft difpofed to be inflamed, and when an object of love may be looked upon as one of the necessaries of life, this, together with the circumstance of their clofe confinement, induces a number of them to contract a real and ardent love for the perfon of Jefus Chrift, whofe picture they fee placed almoft in every corner, who is, befides, exprefsly called their Husband, whofe Spouses they are laid to be, and to whom, at the final and folemn clofing of their vows, they have been actually betrothed,

by having a ring put on their finger. To the mind of fuch of thofe unfortunate young women who have begun to indulge fancies of this kind, the image of the beloved Spoufe is continually prefent, under fome one of the figures by which he is reprefented in the above-mentioned pictures; and his flagellations, and other hardships he was made to undergo, are among other things, the objects of their tendereit concern: hence the numberlefsvifionsand revelations which nuns, like St. Bridget, have at all times had upon thofe fubjects; and several among them, whofe love was more fervent, or who thought themselves intitled to fome particular diftinction from their Spouse, have even fancied, on certain occafions, that they had been favoured with a visible impreffion of his facred ftigmats, that is, of the marks of the five main wounds which he received when he was put to death. The idea of thofe vifible marks or figmats of Jefus Chrift's wounds, we may obferve, was, in the firft inftance, a contrivance of St. Francis, who pretended that they had been imprefed on his body during a vifion he had in a remote place; and he prevailed upon his monks, and other adherents, to confider them as enblems of a clofe affinity between him and our Lord, and as a kind of order of knighthood that had been conferred on him."

Speaking of the flagellatory power affumed by confeffors over their penitents, our commentator tells us, on the exprefs autho rity of Abelard, that the blows he gave Heloifa" were fuch blows as friendship alone, not anger, fuggefted: he even adds, that their fweetness furpaffed that of the fwerteft perfumes,—verbera quandoque dabat amor, non furor, gratia, non ira, quæ omnium unguentorum fuavitatem tranfcenderent."

"FatherGiraud, as is evident from the whole tenor of the declaration of Mifs Cadiere herfelf, had as little intention as Abelard, to do any kind of injury to his papil or penis tent; and Cornelius Adrianfen, as appears from Meteren's account, used to proceed with the fame caution and tenderness for his difciples, as the two above-mentioned gen. tlemen, had contented himself, as the Abbe Boileau obferves, with gently rubbing them with his inftruments of difcipline;-moliter perfricabat.

"That confefforsfhould contract sentiments of friendship for their female penitents, like thofe mentioned by Abelard, is however nowife furprizing La Fontaine fays, that Tout homme eft homme, & les moines fur tous. "Every man is a man and monks above all others." He might at least have faid, "Every man is a man, and monks as well as others;" and to this have added, that their virtue, ef

pecially

pecially that of confeffors, is expofed to dan gers of a peculiar kind. In fact, the obligation which those who perform that office are under, to hear, with feeming indifference, the long confeffions of women of every age, who frequently enter into numerous particulars concerning the fins which they have either committed, or had distant wishes to commit, is no very easy task for men who, as hath just now been observed, are after all nothing but men; and they are, under fuch circumftances, frequently agitated by thoughts not very confonant with the apparent gravity and fanctity of their looks. Nay, raifing fuch thoughts in them, and in general creating fentiments of love in their confeffors, are defigns which numbers of female penitents, who at no time entirely cease being actuated by womanish views, exprefsly entertain, notwithstanding the apparent ingenuity of their confeffions, and in which they but too often fucceed, to their own, and their frail confeffors, cost. Thus, it appears from Mifs Cadiere's declarations, that she had of herself aimed at making the conquest of father Girard, though a man paft fifty years of age, being induced to it by his great reputation both as a preacher and a man of parts; and The exprefsly confefled, that he had for a long while been making interest to be admitted into the number of his penitents.

"Indeed, thefe dangers to which confeffors are expofed from their continual and confidential intercourse with the fex, (for, to the praise of women be it fpoken, they are infinitely more exact than men in making their confeffions) are much taken notice of in the books in which directions are given to such pricfts as are defigned for that employment; and they are warned against nothing fo much as an inclination to hear preferably the confeffions of the other fex.-St. Charles Borommee, as I have read in one of thofe books, prescribed to confeffors to have all the doors wide open, when they heard the confeflion of a woman; and he had fupplied them with a set of paffages from Pfalms, fuch as, Car mundum crea in me, Domine, and the like, which he advifed them to have pafted on fome confpicuous place within their fight, and which were to ferve them as ejaculatory exclamations by which to vent the wicked thoughts with which they might feel themfelves agitated, and as kinds of Abracadabras, or Retrò Satanas, to apply to, whenever they fhould find themselves on the point of being overcome by fome too fudden temptation.

"Numbers of confeffors, however, whether it was that they had forgotten to fupply themselves with the paffages recommended by St. Charles Borommee, or that thofe paffages really proved ineffectual in thofe inftants EUROP. MAG.

in which they were intended to be useful, have, at different times, formed ferious defigns upon the chastity of their penitents; and the fingular fituation in which they were placed, both with respect to the public, and to their penitents themfelves, with whom, changing the grave fupercilious confeffor into the wanton lover was no easy transition, have led them to use expedients of rather fingular kinds, to attain their ends. Some, like Robert d'Arbriffel (and the fame has been faid of Adhelm, an English faint who lived before the Conquest), have induced young women to lie with them in the fame beds, giving them to understand, that, if they could prove fuperior to every temptation, and rise from bed as they went to it, it would be in the highest degree meritorious. Others, Menas for inftance, a Spanish monk whofe cafe was quoted in the proceedings against father Girard, perfuaded young women to live with him in a kind of holy conjugal union, which he defcribed to them, but which did not however end, at last, in that intellectual manner which the father had promised.Others have perfuaded women, that the works of matrimony were no lefs liable to pay tithes than the fruits of the earth, and have received thefe tithes accordingly. This fcheme was, it is faid, contrived by the friars of a certain convent in a fmall town in Spain, and La Fontaine has made it the fubject of one of his Tales, which is entitled The Cordeliers of Catalonia, in which he defcribes with much humour the great punctuality of the ladies in that town, in difcharging their debts to the fathers, and the vast business that was, in confequence, carried on in the convent of the latter.

"Laftly, other confeffors have had recourfe to their power of flagellation, as an excellent expedient for preparing the fuccefs of their fchemes, and preventing the first fufpicions which their penitents might entertain of their views.

"In order the better to remove the fcruples which the modesty of these latter caused them at first to oppose, they used to represent to them, that our first parents were naked in the garden of Eden: they moreover asked, whether people must not be naked when they are chriftened? and fhall not they likewife be fo on the day of Refurrection? Nay, others have made fuch a state of nakedness, on the part of their penitents, a matter of exprefs duty, and have fupported this doctrine, as the author of the Apologie pour Hsrodote relates, by quoting the paffage of Jefus Chrift, in which he fays, Go, and fhew thyfelf to the priest.

"However, inftances of the wantonnefs of priests like this latter, in which a ferious Cc