They have got a parcel of phrases, which they utter on all occasions as decisive, French, I believe, though I can scarce find any of them in the dictionary, and am unable to put them upon paper; but all of them mean something extremely fashionable, and are constantly supported by the authority of my lady, or the countess, his lordship, or sir John.

As they have learned many foreign, so have they unlearned some of the most common and best understood home phrases. When one of my neighbours was lamenting the extravagance and dissipation of a young kinsman who had spent his fortune, and lost his health in London, and at Newmarket, they called it life, and said it showed spirit in the young man. After the same rule, they lately declared, that a gentleman could not live on less than 1000l. a year, and called the account which their mantua-maker and milliner sent me, for the fineries purchased for their visit at "" a trifle, though it amounted to 597. 118. 4d. exactly a fourth part of the clear income of my estate.

All this, Mr. MIRROR, I look upon as a sort of pestilential disorder, with which my poor daughters have been infected in the course of this unfortunate visit. This consideration has induced me to treat them hitherto with lenity and indulgence, and try to effect their cure by mild methods, which indeed suit my temper (naturally of a pliant kind, as every body, except my wife, says) better than harsh ones. Yet, I confess, I could not help being in a passion t'other day, when the disorder showed symptoms of a more serious kind. Would you believe it, sir, my daughter Elizabeth (since her visit she is offended if we call her Betty) said it was fanatical to find fault with card-playing on Sunday; and her sister Sophia gravely asked my son-in-law, the clergyman, if he had not some doubts of the soul's immortality.

VOL. I.

G

As certain great cities, I have heard, are never free from the plague, and at last come to look upon it as nothing terrible or extraordinary; so, I suppose, in London, or even your town, sir, this disease always prevails, and is but little dreaded. But in the country it will be productive of melancholy effects indeed; if suffered to spread there, it will not only embitter our lives, and spoil our domestic happiness, as at present it does mine, but, in its most violent stages, will bring our estates to market, our daughters to ruin, and our sons to the gallows. Be so humane, therefore, Mr. MIRROR, as to suggest some expedient for keeping it confined within those limits in which it rages at present. If no public regulation can be contrived for that purpose (though I cannot help thinking this disease of the great people merits the attention of government, as much as the distemper among the horned cattle), try, at least, the effects of private admonition, to prevent the sound from approaching the infected; let all little men like myself, and every member of their families, be cautious of holding intercourse with the persons or families of dukes, earls, lords, nabobs, or contractors, till they have good reason to believe that such persons and their households are in a sane and healthy state, and in no danger of communicating this dreadful disorder. And, if it has left such great and noble persons any feelings of compassion, pray put them in mind of that well-known fable of the boys and the frogs, which they must have learned at school. Tell them, sir, that though the making fools of their poor neighbours may serve them for a Christmas gambol, it is matter of serious wretchedness to those poor neighbours in the afterpart of their lives: It is sport to them, but death to us. I am, &c. JOHN HOMEspun.

Z.

No. 13. TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1779.

THE antiquity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, the son of Fingal, has been the subject of much dispute. The refined magnanimity and generosity of the heroes, and the tenderness and the delicacy of sentiment, with regard to women, so conspicuous in those poems, are circumstances very difficult to reconcile with the rude and uncultivated age in which the poet is supposed to have lived. On the other hand, the intrinsic characters of antiquity which the poems bear; that simple state of society the poet paints; the narrow circle of objects and transactions he describes; his concise, abrupt, and figurative style; the absence of all abstract ideas, and of all modern allusions, render it difficult to assign any other æra for their production than the age of Fingal. In short, there are difficulties on both sides; and, if that remarkable refinement of manners seem inconsistent with our notions of an unimproved age, the marks of antiquity with which the poems are stamped make it very hard to suppose them a modern composition. It is not, however, my intention to examine the merits of this controversy, much less to hazard any judgment of my own. All I propose is, to suggest one consideration on the subject, which, as far as I can recollect, has hitherto escaped the partisans of either side.

The elegant author of the Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian has very properly obviated the objections made to the uniformity of Ossian's imagery, and the too frequent repetition of the same comparisons. He has shown, that this objection proceeds from a careless and inattentive perusal of the poems; for, although the range of the poet's objects was not wide, and consequently the same object does often return, yet its appearance is changed; the image is new; it is presented to the fancy in another attitude, and clothed with different circumstances, to make it suit the illustration for which it is employed. • In

this,' continues he, 'lies Ossian's great art;' and he illustrates his remark by taking the instances of the moon and of mist, two of the principal subjects of the bard's images and allusions.

I agree with this critic in his observations, though I think he has rather erred in ascribing to art in Ossian, that wonderful diversification of the narrow circle of objects with which he was acquainted. It was not by any efforts of art or contrivance that Ossian presented the rude objects of nature under so many different aspects. He wrote from a full heart, from a rich and glowing imagination. He did not seek for, and invent images; he copied nature, and painted objects as they struck and kindled his fancy. He had nothing within the range of his view but the great features of simple nature. The sun, the moon, the stars, the desert heath, the winding stream, the green hill with all its roes, and the rock with its robe of mist, were the objects amidst which Ossian lived. Contemplating these, under every variety of appearance they could assume, no wonder that his warm and impassioned genius found in them a field fruitful of the most lofty and sublime imagery.

Thus the very circumstance of his having such a

circumscribed range of inanimate objects to attract his attention and exercise his imagination, was the natural and necessary cause of Ossian's being able to view and to describe them, under such a variety of great and beautiful appearances. And may we not proceed farther, and affirm, that so rich a diversification of the few appearances of simple nature could hardly have occurred to the imagination of a poet living in any other than the rude and early age in which the son of Fingal appeared?

In refined and polished society, where the works of art abound, the endless variety of objects that present themselves, distract and dissipate the attention. The mind is perpetually hurried from one object to another; and no time is left to dwell upon the sublime and simple appearances of nature. A poet, in such an age, has a wide and diversified circle of objects on which to exercise his imagination. He has a large and diffused stock of materials from which to draw images to embellish his work; and he does not always resort for his imagery to the diversified appearance of the objects of rude nature; he does not avoid those because his taste rejects them; but he uses them seldom, because they seldom recur to his imagination.

To seize these images belongs only to the poet of an early and simple age, where the undivided attention has leisure to brood over the few, but sublime objects which surround him. The sea and the heath, the rock and the torrent, the clouds and meteors, the thunder and lightning, the sun and moon, and stars, are, as it were, the companions with which his imagination holds converse. He personifies and addresses them every aspect they can assume is impressed upon his mind: he contemplates and traces them through all the endless varieties of seasons; and they are the perpetual subjects of his images and allusions. He has, indeed, only a few objects around