of wisdom and folly; and all this arises chiefly from his mistaking the means for the end-the instrument of achieving for the object achieved. The fondest wish of his heart is literary fame: for this he would sacrifice every thing. He is handsome, generous, an affectionate son, a merry companion, and is, withal, a very excellent belles-lettres scholar. Tell him that the ladies admire him, that his mother doats on him, and that his friends esteem him-and-keeping back the wished-for eulogy of literary excellence-you tell him of nothing which he cares for. In truth he might attain some portion of intellectual reputation, if he would throw aside his ridiculous habits. He must, as soon as the evening shades prevail, burn wax tapers-he must always have an Argand lamp lighted up before him, to throw a picturesque effect upon a dark wood painted by Hobbima-his pens must be made from the crow's wing-his wax must be greenhis paper must be thick and hot-pressed; and he must have a portfolio of the choicest bits of ancient vellum that can be procured-his body must recline upon a chintz sofa-his foot must be perched upon an ottomanin short he must have every thing for which no man of common sense would express the least concern. Can you be surprised, therefore, that he should commence his sonnet to friendship thus:

Oh, sweetest softest thing that's friendship hight!

or that he should conceive the following address to women, by one William Goddard, worthy of being ranked among the most beautiful poetical efforts of the 16th century:

Stars of this earthly heaven, you whose essence
Compos'd was of man's purest quintessence,

To you, to virtuous you, I dedicate
This snaggy sprig*.

* From "A Satyrical Dialogue, &c., betweene Alexander the Great and that truelye woman-hater Diogynes. Imprinted in the low countryes for all such gentlewomen as are not altogether idle nor yet well occupyed," 4to. no date. A strange composition! full of nervous lines and pungent satire-but not free from the grossest licentiousness.

"Enough," exclaimed Philemon-while Lysander paused a little, after uttering the foregoing in a rapid and glowing manner—“ enough for this effeminate vanity in man! What other ills have you to enumerate, which assail the region of literature?"—" I will tell you,” replied Lysander, "another, and a most lamentable evil, which perverts the very end for which talents were given us-and it is in mistaking and misapplying these talents. I speak with reference to the individual himself, and not to the public. You may remember how grievously ALFONSO bore the lot which public criticism, with one voice, adjudged to him! This man had good natural parts, and would have abridged a history, made an index, or analyzed a philosophical work, with great credit to himself and advantage to the public. But he set his heart upon eclipsing Doctors Johnson and Jamieson. He happened to know a few etymons more correctly, and to have some little acquaintance with black letter literature, and hence thought to give more weight to lexicographical inquiries than had hitherto distinguished them. But how miserably he was deceived in all his undertakings of this kind past events have sufficiently shewn. No, my good Philemon, to be of use to the republic of literature, let us know our situations; and let us not fail to remember that, in the best appointed army, the serjeant may be of equal utility with the captain.

"I will notice only one other, and a very great, failing observable in literary men—and this is severity and self-consequence. You will find that these severe characters generally set up the trade of Critics; without attending to the just maxim of Pope, that

Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.

With them, the least deviation from precise correctness, the most venial trippings, the smallest inattention paid to doubtful rules and equivocal positions of criticism, inflames their anger, and calls forth their invectives. Regardless of the sage maxims of Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace, they not only disdain the sober rules which their

ancient brethren have wisely laid down, and hold in contempt the voice of the public,* but, forgetting the subject which they have undertaken to criticise, they push the author out of his seat, quietly sit in it themselves, and fancy they entertain you by the gravity of their deportment, and their rash usurpation of the royal monosyllable 'Nos.' This solemn pronoun, or rather' plural style,'‡ my dear Philemon, is oftentimes usurped by a halfstarved little I, who sits immured in the dusty recess of a garret, and who has never known the society nor the language of a gentleman; or it is assumed by a young graduate, just settled in his chambers, and flushed with the triumph of his degree of B. A.', whose fond conceyte' [to borrow Master Francis Thynne's § terse style,] is, to wrangle for an asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in a rushe!'

"For my part," continued Lysander, speaking with the most unaffected seriousness-" for my part, nothing delights me more than modesty and diffidence, united with strong good sense, lively imagination, and exquisite sensibility,' || whether in an author or a critic. When I call to mind that our greatest sages have concluded their

*

v. 63.

"Interdum vulgus rectum videt :" says Horace.-Epist. lib. ii. ad Augustum,

+ Vide RYMERI Fœdera-passim.

A very recent, and very respectable, authority has furnished me with this expression.

§ See Mr. Todd's Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. 10.

It is said, very sensibly, by La Bruyere, I will allow that good writers are scarce enough; but then I ask where are the people that know how to read and judge? An union of these qualities, which are seldom found in the same person, seems to be indispensably necessary to form an able critic; he ought to possess strong good sense, lively imagination, and exquisite sensibility. And of these three qualities, the last is the most important; since, after all that can be said on the utility or necessity of rules and precepts, it must be confessed that the merit of all works of genius must be determined by taste and sentiment. Why do you so much admire the Helen of Zeuxis ?" said one to Nicostratus. "You would not wonder why I so much admired it (replied the painter) if you had my eyes."-WARTON: Note to Pope's Essay on Criticism. Pope's Works, vol. i. 196, edit. 1806.

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labours with doubt, and an avowal of their ignorance; when I see how carefully and reverently they have pushed forward their most successful inquiries; when I see the great Newton pausing and perplexed in the vast world of planets, comets, and constellations, which were, in a measure, of his own creation-I learn to soften the asperity of my critical anathemas, and to allow to an author that portion of fallibility of which I am conscious myself.

"I see then" rejoined Philemon, "that you are an enemy to Reviews."*"Far from it," replied Lysander, "I think them of essential service to literature. They hold a lash over ignorance and vanity; and, at any rate, they take care to bestow a hearty castigation upon vicious and sensual publications. Thus far they do good but, in many respects, they do ill-by substituting their own opinions for those of an author; by judging exclusively according to their own previously formed decisions in matters of religion and politics; and by shutting out from your view the plan, and real tendency, of the book which they have undertaken to review, and therefore ought to analyze. It is, to be sure, amusing to read the clamours which have been raised against some of the most valuable, and now generally received, works! When an author recollects the pert conclusion of Dr. Kenrick's review

were

*The earliest publications, I believe, in this country, in the character of REVIEWS the Weekly Memorials for the Ingenious, &c. Lond. 1683, 4to.—and The Universal Historical Bibliotheque : or an Account of most of the considerable Books printed in all Languages, in the Month of January 1686. London, 1687, 4to. Five years afterwards came forth The Young Student's Library, by the Athenian Society,' 1692, folio, "a kind of common theatre where every person may act, or take such part as pleases him best, and what he does not like he may pass over, assuring himself that, every one's judgment not being like his, another may chuse what he mislikes, and so every one may be pleased in their turns.' Pref. A six weeks' frost is said to have materially delayed the publication. After these, in the subsequent century, appeared the Old and New Memoirs of Literature; then, the Works of the Learned; upon which was built, eclipsing every one that had preceeded it, and not excelled by any subsequent similar critical journal, The Monthly Review.

of Dr. Johnson's Tour to the Hebrides,* he need not fear the flippancy of a reviewer's wit, as decisive of the fate of his publication!

"It is certainly," pursued Lysander, " a very prolific age of knowledge. There never was, at any one period of the world, so much general understanding abroad. The common receptacles of the lower orders of people present, in some degree, intellectual scenes. I mean, that collision of logic, and corruscation of wit, which arise from the perusal of a news-paper; a production, by-the-bye, upon which Cowper has conferred immortality. You may remember, when we were driven by a sharp tempest of hail into the small public-house which stands at the corner of the heath-what a logomachy- what a war of words did we hear! and all about sending troops to the north or south of Spain, and the justice or injustice of the newly-raised prices of admission to Covent Garden theatre!! The stagecoach, if you recollect, passed by quickly after our having drunk a tumbler of warm brandy and water to preserve ourselves from catching cold; and into it glad enough we were to tumble! We had no sooner begun to be tolerably comfortable and composed than a grave old gentleman commenced a most furious Philippic against the prevailing studies, politics, and religion of the day--and, in truth, this man evinced a wonderfully retentive memory, and a fair share of powers of argu

After all, said the reviewing Doctor, we are of opinion, with the author himself, that this publication contains the sentiments of one who has seen but little:' meaning, thereby, that the book was hardly worth perusal! What has become of the said Dr. Kenrick now? We will not ask the same question about the said DR. JOHNSON; whose works are upon the shelf of every reading man of sense and virtue.

+ See the opening of the fourth book of “The Task;" a picture perfectly original and unrivalled in its manner.

It is not less true, than surprising, that the ridiculous squabbles, which disgraced both this theatre and the metropolis, have been deemed deserving of a regular series of publications in the shape of numbers-1, 2, 3, &c. As if the subject had not been sufficiently well handled in the lively sallies and brilliant touches of satire which had before appeared upon it in the Monthly Mirror!

C