judges agree in opinion this it is, this same Britannicus." Voltaire, too, seems to be of this opinion. He has somewhere said, "Britannicus is the tragedy of the connoisseurs." Nevertheless he esteemed Athaliah before it for the merit of invention and the sublimity of the style, and Andromache and Iphigenia for theatrical effect. But, it will be said, if this effect is the first object of the art, how can there be any thing that the connoisseurs prefer? I answer, nothing surely, when to this effect are united the other sorts of beauties, which the same art admits, as in Iphigenia and Andromache. But these connoisseurs distinguish that in a work, which the nature of the subject affords to the author, from that, which he can owe only to himself. We have pieces upon the stage which draw many tears from the audience, which, nevertheless, have not procured any great reputation to their authors; for example, Ariane and Inès. Why? It is because, with much interest, they fail in many other qualities, which constitute dramatical perfection; and the feebleness of other productions of the same authors have shown, that a man of ordinary talents, in treating of certain situations, more easy to manage than others, and more naturally interesting, may obtain success; whereas there are other subjects, in which the author cannot support himself, but by the most exalted abilities in all parts of the art, and by beauties, which belong only to the greatest talents and of this kind is Britannicus.

The circumstance which excites pity in this piece is the mutual love of Britannicus and Junia, and the death of the young prince; but love is here much less tragical, and has an effect much less

sensible, than in Andromache. Nevertheless the union of the two lovers is traversed by the jealousy of Nero; the life of the prince is threatened, as soon as the character of the tyrant is developed, and his death is the catastrophe, which terminates the piece. What is the reason, then, that love produces here impressions much less lively, than in Andromache? If we search for the reason of this, we shall find, that the study of tragedy is at the same time the study of the heart. I have remarked, at the theatre, that love, combatted by foreign obstacles, however interesting it may be even in that case, is never so much so, as it is by the torments which arise from itself; and afterwards comparing the theatre with nature, of which it is the image, I have been convinced that this relation is exact, and that the greatest evils of love are not commonly those which happen to it from abroad, but those which it makes for itself. Nothing is so much to be dreaded by lovers as their own heart. Difficulties, dangers, absence, separation, nothing bears any comparison with the torments of jealousy, the suspicion of infidelity, the horrours of treachery. I shall have occasion to apply and to investigate this principle, when I come to examine, why Zaire and Tancrede are the two pieces, in which love is the most distressing, and cause our tears to flow in the greatest abundance and the most bitterness.

Junia and Britannicus are two very young persons, who love each other with all the sincerity, good faith, and candour of their age. A painting of their love could offer nothing but the softest touches. Their passions are as ingenuous as their characters. They are

sure of each other, and if the artifice of Nero causes to Britannicus one moment of inquietude, it cannot excite him to any desperation, and one moment afterwards he is reassured. This love therefore has nothing in it to take a strong possession of the souls of the spectators, which we cannot entirely command but by strong and multiplied shocks. The death of Britannicus, therefore, related in the fifth act, in the presence of Junia, produces more of horrour for Nero, than of compassion for her; her love has not occupied place enough in the piece for the catastrophe to make a very lively impression. The soft and feeble character of Junia excites no apprehensions of any terrible, and the resolution she takes to place herself in the number of the vestal virgins, tho' conformable enough to the manners and decorum of the age, is not a very tragical, event. This fifth act is therefore the feeble part of the work, and it is that which gave the greatest advantage to the enemies of Racine. But they closed their eyes to the beauties of the four former acts; beauties of such excellence, that for a century they seem to have been

every day more sensibly felt, and to have excited increasing admiration. The enemies of the author, to console themselves under the success of Andromache, had said, that it was true, he understood how to treat of love; but that this was all his talent; that he would never be able to design characters with the vigour of Corneille, nor to treat like him of the policy of courts. Such is the course of prejudice they take revenge, for the talents which they cannot refuse to a writer, by refusing him those which he has not yet attempted to employ. Burrhus, Agrippina, Narcissus, and above all Nero, were a terrible answer to these unjust prepossessions. But this answer was not at first understood. The merit of a piece, which united the art of Tacitus with that of Virgil, escaped the observation of the greatest number of spectators. The word politicks is not once pronounced; but the policy which reigns in courts, more or less in proportion as they are more or less corrupted, has never been painted in characters so true, so profound, and so energetick, and the colours are worthy of the design. To be continued,

Ar this time I did not know Oliver Goldsmith even by person; I think our first meeting chanced to be at the British-Coffee-House; when we came together, we very speedily coalesced, and I believe he forgave me for all the little fame I had got by the success of my West-Indian, which had put him to some trouble, for it was not his nature to be unkind, and I

had soon an opportunity of convincing him how incapable I was of harbouring resentment, and how zealously I took my share in what concerned his interest and reputation. That he was fantastically and whimsically vain all the world knows, but there was no settled and inherent malice in his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pre

tensions, that did not, and by nature could not, belong to him, and at the same time inexcusably careless of the fame, which he had powers to command. His tabletalk was, as Garrick aptly compared it, like that of a parrot, whilst he wrote like Apollo; he had gleams of eloquence, and at times. a majesty of thought, but in general his tongue and his pen had two very different styles of talking. What foibles he had he took no pains to conceal, the good qualities of his heart were too frequently obscured by the carelessness of his conduct, and the frivolity of his manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trim and order for society, if he would have been amenable, for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good sense, great propriety with all the social attributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man. He well knew how to appreciate men of talents, and how near a-kin the Muse of poetry was to that art, of which he was so eminent a master. From Goldsmith he caught the subject of his famous Ugolino; what aids he got from others, if he got any, were worthiJy bestowed and happily applied.

There is something in Goldsmith's prose, that to my ear is uncommonly sweet and harmonious; it is clear, simple, easy to be understood; we never want to read his period twice over, except for the pleasure it bestows; obscurity never calls us back to a repetition of it. That he was a poet there is no doubt, but the paucity of his verses does not allow us to rank him in that high station, where his genius might have carried him. There must be bulk, variety, and grandeur of design to constitute a first-rate poet. The

Deserted Village, Traveller, and Hermit are all specimens beautiful as such, but they are only birds eggs on a string, and eggs of small birds too. One great magnificent whole must be accomplished before we can pronounce upon the maker to be the ons. Pope himself never earned this title by a work of any magnitude but his Homer, and that, being a translation, only constitutes him an accomplished versifier. Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings, neither congenial with his studies, nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chamber in the Temple, he shewed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's show-man would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table. But publishers hate poetry, and PaternosterRow is not Parnassus. Even the mighty Doctor Hill, who was not a very delicate feeder, could not make a dinner out of the press till by a happy transformation into Hannah Glass, he turned himself into a cook, and sold receipts for made dishes to all the savoury readers in the kingdom. Then indeed the press acknowledged him second in fame only to John Bunyan; his feasts kept pace in sale with Nelson's fasts, and when his own name was fairly written out of credit, he wrote himself into immortality under an alias. Now though necessity, or I should rather say the desire of finding money for a masquerade, drove Oliver Goldsmith upon abridging histories, and turning Buffon into

English, yet I much doubt if, with out that spur, he would ever have put his Pegasus into action; no, if he had been rich, the world would have been poorer than it is by the loss of all the treasures of his genius and the contributions of his pen.

Who will say that Johnson himself would have been such a champion in literature, such a front rank soldier in the fields of fame, if he had not been pressed into the service, and driven on to glory with the bayonet of sharp necessity pointed at his back? If for tune had turned him into a field of clover, he would have laid down and rolled in it. The mere manual labour of writing would not have allowed his lassitude and love of ease to have taken the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of hunger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet before he saw the table-cloth. He might indeed have knocked down Osbourne for a blockhead, but he would not have knocked him down with a folio of his own writing. He would perhaps have been the dictator of a club, and wherever he sate down to conversation, there must have been that splash of strong, bold thought about him, that we might still have had a collectanea after his death; but of prose I guess not much, of works of labour none, of fancy perhaps something more, especially of poetry, which under favour I conceive was not his tower of strength. I think we should have had his Rasselas at all events, for he was likely enough to have written at Voltaire, and brought the question to the test, if infidelity is any aid to wit. An orator he must have been; not improbably a parliamentarian, and, if such, certainly

an oppositionist, for he preferred to talk against the tide. He would indubitably have been no member of the Whig Club, no partisan of Wilkes, no friend of Hume, no believer in Macpherson; he would have put up prayers for early rising, and laid in bed all day, and with the most active resolutions possible been the most indolent mortal living. He was a good man by nature, a great man by genius; we are now to inquire what he was by compulsion.

Johnson's first style was natu. rally energetick, his middle style was turgid to a fault, his latter style was softened down and harmonized into periods, more tuneful and more intelligible. His execution was rapid, yet his mind was not easily provoked into exertion; the variety we find in his writings was not the variety of choice arising from the impulse of his proper genius, but tasks im、 posed upon him by the dealers in ink, and contracts on his part submitted to in satisfaction of the pressing calls of hungry want; for, painful as it is to relate, I have heard that illustrious scholar assert (and he never varied from the truth of fact) that he subsisted himself for a considerable space of time upon the scanty pittance of four-pence half-penny per day. How melancholy to reflect that his vast trunk and stimulating appetite were to be supported by what will barely feed the weaned infant! Less, much less, than master Betty has earned in one night, would have cheered the mighty mind, and maintained the athletick body of Samuel Johnson in comfort and abundance for a twelvemonth. Alas! I am not fit to to paint his character: nor is there need of it; Etiam mortuus loquitur; Every man, who can