dies, clay-cold hands, and damp fweats? Can a young lady be taught nothing more neceffary in life, than to fleep in a dungeon with venemous reptiles, walk through a ward with affaffins, and carry bloody daggers in their pockets, inftead of pin-cufhions and needlebooks? Every abfurdity has an end, and as I obferve that almost all novels are of the terrific caft, I hope the infipid repetition of the fame bugbears will at length work a cure. In the mean time, fhould any of your female readers be defirous of catching the season of terrors, the may compose two or three very pretty vo lumes from the following recipe : Take-An old castle, half of it ruinous. A long gallery, with a great many doors, fome fe cret ones. Three murdered bodies, quite fresh. As many skeletons, in chefts and preffes. An old woman hanging by the neck; with her throat cut. Affaffins and defperadoes, quant. fuff. Noifes, whispers, and groans, threefcore at least. Mix them together, in the form of three volumes, to be taken at any of the watering places, before going to bed, PROBATUM EST. AMAZING FEAT. TINTINNABULOUS INTREPIDITY, OR SCENES OF BELL-RINGING. AST week the Society of Treasury Youths confifting of the following changes: I. Glory of Old England-exertions by fea and land glorious victories. Exertions by fea and land-glorious victories-and glory of Old England. Glorious Glorious victories-glory of Old England-and exertions by fea and land. II. Honour of the nation-permanent peace-and ample fecurity. Permanent peace-ample fecurity-and honour of the nation. Ample fecurity-permanent peace and honour of the nation. III. Our advice to the Admiralty-a line of fquadrons and the hints we threw out. The hints we threw out-a line of fquadrons-and our advice to the Admiralty. A line of fquadrons-our advice to the Admiraltyand the hints we threw out. . IV. Famine in France-war in La Vendee-fafe landing of the Emigrants. Safe landing of the Emigrants-famine in Franceand war in La Vendee. War in La Vendee-safe landing of the Emigrantsand famine in France. V. Traitors-Jacobins-Democrats. Which they performed with aftonishing skill, for a T CRITICISM ON AN ANCIENT BALLAD. SIR, O point out to public notice the merits of a Poem, is confeffedly the nobleft, as well as the most agreeable part of criticism. Dennis may hunt the errors of Cato, while its illuftrious author is employed in immortalizing Chevy-Chace, by praifes which will probably out-live the subject of them. Antiquity prefents us with many commendatory critics, and the writers of Greece and of Rome have almost all found fome one to applaud what, if they had writ ten ten in modern times, would have drawn on them acrimonieus cenfure. During the prefent century, however, fome of the ancient authors of our own country, who have confined themselves within a fheet of paper, have met with fome one to refresh their laurels. Not only Chery-Chace, but the Children in the Wood, and many other popular fongs, have been dignified by panegyrics. The Lover's Ballad yet remains unpraised; not because it is undeferving, but because it is obfcure. That this poem is of great antiquity, may be concluded from its language and conduct. The heroine is introduced in a fituation in which few modern fine ladies can be found, that of mending her night-cap. We know, too, that the cuftom of burying the dead in open coffins, without any covering, in order to prevent the fufpicion of violence, has been long difcontinued. Lady Alice was fitting at her bow-window, Amending her night-coif; And there the faw the fineft corpfe That ever the faw in her life. Lady Alice she said to the four tall bearers, "What bear you on your fhoulders?" "It is the body of Giles Collins, An old true lover of yours. The great beauty of the second stanza is the circumftance of Giles Collins' love towards Lady Alice being fo generally known; and the delicate and ingenious manner in which the tall bearers infinuate the cause of his death to have been his unfortunate paffion for that lady. The provincialifms and the rugged metre of this poem can only be excufed by the barbarism of that age in which it was probably written. "Set him down, fet him down," Lady Alice fhe faid; For before the clock it doth strike twelve, Lady Alice the then put on her night-coif, She cut her throat with a sharp pen-knife, If Cæfar has been defervedly praifed by his biographers, for the folicitude which he difcovered to die with decorum, let the fame praise be extended to Lady Alice, whofe night-coif was as material to the propriety of her appearance, as the robe of the Roman Emperor. The moral of thefe verfes, it may be faid, is not agreeable to modern times; and fuicide fhould not be encouraged by example, even in fiction. We may here appeal to Virgil, who makes Dido act in the fame way, although he confidered felf-murder to be criminal, as appears from the fixth book of the Æneid. Proxima deinde tenent mæsti loca qui fibi letum - peperere manu, lucemque perofi Projecere animas- and the rest of the paffage. It may be obferved, too, that Dido and Lady Alice, and I believe all our great heroines, declare their intentions first, to fhew how innocent they are of the knowledge of any guilt in them; and, fenfible of the propriety of their conduct, choose to have witnesses of their contempt of death. Lady Alice was buried in the east church-yard, And there came a lilly out of Giles Collins's nofe, The learned reader will immediately perceive that this thought is strictly claffical. It is perhaps borrowed from Perfius; who, in defcribing the advantages which a deceased poet derives from applauie bestowed upon his works, exclaims, Nunc non é manibus illis Nunc non é tumulo fortunatáque favillá, It is indeed astonishing how favourable to vegetation the corpfes of a pair of lovers generally prove. It is long fince I looked into Ovid; but I remember there are few, either male or female, who die for love, who do not add fomething useful or agreeable to the kitchen er to the flower garden. The The limited space which the more important articles of your paper will fuffer me to occupy, is much too fmall to admit an examination of the particular excellence of each line. Of the whole, confidered in the Aristotelian sense, as compofed of beginning, middle, and end, the utmost praife that can be uttered is, that it is interefting. His acutenefs, to fpeak in the diction of a brother critic, is more to be commended than his feelings, who can read with a malignant fneer, what was written under the influence of strong paffions; nor was he, perhaps, fo reafonable as he might have imagined himself to be, who first attempted to subject to the laws of poetry, those paffions of which it is unhappily often a characteristic to defy the laws of morality. [St. James's Chron.] MOMUS CRITICORUM. ETYMOLOGY. SIR, OUR reception of my critique on the Lover's You fult of other critical ftudies. As I have been early trained" to live on fyllables," I may fay without vanity that I am well skilled in the science which hunts a word to its primitive fenfe, by the clue which its component letter affords. I am fenfible that this gives me no title to an elevated rank in the literary world, but it is useful; and though the Etymologist has been claffed among the pioneers of literature, he may, perhaps, as often congratulate himself upon fortunate difcovery, as the poet may upon felicity of invention. That this art has been the fubject of ridicule can hardly be confidered as an impeachment of it, when nothing refpe&table, or even facred, can escape a sneer. My fellow-labourers and myself, neither feel any injury from Swift's derivation of Archimedes from Hark ye maids, Strabo from Stray Beau, nor from that of King Pepin from Oseρ to be found in the diverfions of purley.-Оa, nãɛр, одɛg, Diaper, Napkin, Nipkin, U 2 Pipkin, |