in our Pope's Pastoral.

"Amicus Plato, sed

magis amica veritas," must be my excuse.

A Vulgar Error.

There prevails in the world a miserable cant with regard to the poet, viz. that he is born so, and does not become one by art and study. A poet* has said so, and succeeding poets. have not been unwilling to render the wreath of poesy sacred to mystery and jargon. Let us break into this conjurer's circle, and tell him a plain unvarnished tale. A man whose mind is turned to poetry must, and often does, cultivate this faculty, with every method in his power, as he would (with due encouragement) any other art to which his turn of mind inclined him. Poetry, like every plant, must be well nurtured, or it will not be better than a weed; and though thriving indeed, but weak, and of a bad colour and odour!

An Elegant Compliment.

M. Menage relates, that he told his servant one morning to deny him to all visiters, as he was engaged in his study. "M. Carpentier called on

Homer in his Odyssey.

me," says Menage," and he was, according to order, refused admission; but hearing his voice I ran after him, and bringing him back I said, My dear friend, I did not mean to exclude you, for a man of letters can never interrupt a man of letters." --Menagiana.

Orators

Seem to resemble poets in one striking circumstance, viz. their power of influencing our minds without the aid of reason, and perhaps better without it. Gibbon, the historian and orator, depends more on his faculty of talking than arguing. M. Buffon, the great animal historian, covers his dubious facts, and his more dubious inferences, with the splendor of his oratory and Voltaire, by his wit, (a kind of short-hand oratory,) shews that a very easy and beaten path opens to persuasion, which lies very far apart from reason, and has often joined his brother bard in the utterance of some rational queries.

How shall my debts be paid, or can my scores
Be cleared with verses to my creditors.

Hexameter's no sterling, and, I fear,

What the brain coins is scarcely current there.
Can metre cancel bonds? is there a time

Ever to hope to wipe out chalk with rhyme?
Or if I now were hurrying to a gaol,

Are the Nine Muses held sufficient bail?

Randolph's Poems, 1638.

a

Note. This merry bard, who was the author of dramatic piece, "The Muses' Looking-Glass," died young, after a life of intemperance, and negligence, and want.-Chalmers's Biog. Dict.

Laurence Sterne.

The reader of the Sentimental Journey by this author, if he has either sense or delicacy, must be very sorry that a man capable of writing with such true pathos, should have condescended to vitiate his claim to elegance and pure sentiment by any obscenity. " Exemplum vitiis imitabile decipit," says a writer* of very excellent taste; yet Sterne, who seems to have read Rabelais con amore, had not virtue or good feeling enough to avoid an imitation of his favourite author, in a work where the reader could least expect such an impropriety, not less hostile to the writer's taste than his morals. If, as Pope very justly observes, Immodest words admit of no defence, As want of decency is want of sense;

a still stronger objection lies against an author who endeavours, under the guise of raising your best affections and sentiments, to seduce you by vicious representation: it is transplanting, by a legerdemain trick, the statue of Priapus to the pedestal of an Apollo, or the celestial Venus.

* Horace.

Four in Hand.

Though this volunteering system of men of fortune, in driving their own carriages of various denominations, may seem a new method of gaining some elevation above their fellows, yet Horace, in his first ode, seems to have alluded to it with a prophetic eye of taste:

Sunt quos CURRICULO pulverem Olympicum
Collegisse juvat, metaque fervidis

Evitata rotis, palmaque nobilis,

Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos.

Ode 1.

The editor has ventured to translate, or rather imitate, the above passage, for the sake of country gentlemen, who may have lost their Latin amidst more active employments than their libraries could have supplied them with, or their inclinations, perhaps, suggested to them:

Lo! some to curricles repair,
And take the dust as well as air.
The skilful coachee makes his boast
Closely to pass, yet miss, the post;
And on their boxes plac'd so high,
These landlords seem to reach the sky.

Chaucer vindicated.

"From the accidental circumstance of Dryden and Pope's having copied the gay and ludicrous parts of Chaucer, the common notion seems to

have arisen that Chaucer's vein of poetry was chiefly turned to the light and ridiculous. In a word, they who look into Chaucer will soon be convinced of this prevailing prejudice, and will find his comic vein to be only like one of Mercury, imperceptibly mingled with a mine of gold.”Warton's Essay on Pope, &c. vol. ii. p. 70.

Envy in Authors.

We can easily excuse a poor poet, who writes for his subsistence, shewing some degree of envy and jealousy at the success of a rival bard; but lament this failing in a man of true genius. "Old Jacob Tonson used to say, that Dryden was a little jealous of rivals. He would compliment Crown, when a play of his failed; but was very cold to him, if it met with success. He sometimes used to say, that Crown had some genius; but then he added always that his father and Crown's mother were well acquainted." Mr. Pope to Mr. Spense. -Dr. Warton's Essay on the Genius, &c. of Pope, vol. ii. p. 310, note.

Example and Precept.

How many things obtain consequence by being placed in comparison. Thus, when precept is said to be inferior to example, the latter gains a seem¬