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and malignant hints you threw out, with great dexterity, against thofe of whom you entertained any jealousy.

At length, when you had no longer any thing to fear; when you perceived that the number of your difciples and admirers was increased; when you obferved that they trumpeted your praifes, and registered your decrees, you threw off the mask, you laid afide all conftraint and diffimulation; you exerted your utmoft efforts to difcredit the antients, in order the more eafily to difparage thofe illuftrious moderns who gloried in imitating them;-quolibets, plaifanteries, traductions ridicules, tout vous fut ban.

You compared Efchylus to Calderon; you traveftied the fublime paffages of the Iliad and Odyssey; you faid that La Fontaine was not one of the great geniuses of the age of Lewis the Fourteenth; you told us that there was no enthusiasm in Boileau's poetry; you treated Rouffeau as a verfifier, who neither knew philofophy, poetry, his own language, nor the age he lived in, &c. &c. &c.

You flattered yourself, that thefe new opinions, published with a magifterial air, and fupported by the weight of your authority, would become laws in literature; and that the judgment of the prefent age, and that of pofterity, being thus gradually formed upon yours, all other books would be buried for ever in the most profound oblivion, and none read but your

own.

As to the prefent age, your expectations have not been dif appointed. The number of thofe who examine, who think and judge for themfelves, is at prefent very finall. 'Tis a much fhorter and easier way to retain your light and bold decifions, and, after you, to pafs fentence, without appeal, upon writers of the most exalted genius. Accordingly, a thousand echos have been heard repeating your different opinions; verses have been crowned at the academy, in which Lucan and Tafso were preferred to Virgil; and Boileau was treated as a writer without fire or imagination; a party has been formed to raise Quinault to the rank of great poets, and to make him at least equal to Racine; we have feen mere geometricians fetting up for judges of poetry, and, with all the fang-froid imaginable, laying down the most ridiculous precepts concerning an art as diftant from them as Euclid is from Homer.

-He who has read your works, is thought to know every thing. The principles of good tafte are forgotten; the reading and the imitation of the illuftrious writers of antiquity are Alighted and neglected, and those who recommend them are looked upon as pedants. In a word, Sir, you have seen the prefent docile age adapt your decifions implicitly, and form its tafte upon yours. Your literary opinions have produced fuch a APP. Rev. Vol. xlix. revolution,

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revolution, and reduced us to fuch a degree of bad tafte, that nothing but an age of barbarism and profound ignorance can make us forget fo many abfurdities, and restore us to a capacity of having jufter notions, a founder judgment, and a more natural tafte.

Happy would it be for us, were this general depravity confined to matters of mere tafte and entertainment; thefe, 'tis true, are connected with the glory of a nation, but they are not eflential to man; he may be deprived of them, without any lofs to his virtue or his happiness. The mortal blow that your writings have given to the morals of this age and nation, is a dreadful calamity, and perhaps an irreparable one. It can give no pleasure to a generous mind to prefent fo melancholy and deplorable a picture to public view; I fhall, therefore, only confider the fatal effects which your writings, have had on the fair fex, and on the young and unexperienced; for fuch principally are the readers whom you have a right to please, by the levity, and I will be bold to fay, by the frivoloufness, of your

wit.

I am at a lofs to account for it, but so it is, that women, in general, prefer a forward, filly, impertinent, fellow, to a wife, difcreet, and fenfible man. Two gentlemen, we fhall fuppofe, are introduced into a company of ladies, even the most virtuous*, if you will; the one is poffeffed of agreeable and elegant talents, but fedate, referved, folid, and knows when it is propes to speak, and when to be filent: the other is bold, petulant, talks much, treats the gravest subjects with indecent and illiberal drollery, exercifes his rallery upon those who are prefent, çaluminates those who are abfent, attends to nothing but what he fays himself, and is the firft to laugh at his own filly jokes; the ladies will neither have eyes nor ears for the former; and though he may have some small share of their efteem, yet they will ever, through I know not what ftrange propenfity, find themselves moft favourably disposed to the latter.

Don't fmile, Sir, this fable is your own hiftory. Your lively wit, your libertinifm, your bold and affuming manner, your decifive tone, the levity of your imagination, your free and familiar humour, have turned the heads of the generality of our ladies. Such are the charms wherewith you have gained their hearts, and which render your works their chief ftudy and delight. You have taught the most dangerous of all leffons for

*The Reader will bear in mind that our Author is a Frenchman, and may, probably, have formed his ideas of the fair fex from what he has obferved of his countrywomen. In England, such a coxcombcharacter as he has described, would never be a favourite with the "most virtuous' ladies.

them;

them; you have taught them to laugh at every thing, to turn into ridicule what is not fufceptible of ridicule, and to reafon upon what they ought to revere with humble and submissive filence.

In fuch a school they foon learn to fhake off all thofe principles that are fo uneafy and troublefome to their fex; to treat, as mere chimeras, thofe rigid laws of modefty and decorum which nature, they fay, has no more impofed upon their fex than the other; to analyfe their duties, and, in conformity to your maxims, to reduce them to very narrow bound; to confider the dominion of men over women as an abfurd and filly prejudice; they learn to reafon and decide upon every thing; to be beaux-efprits and phil:fophers; to talk with as much levity upon the fyftem of Nature as upon a novel or a play; to speak upon the most serious and important fubjects, as they would upon an ariette or a fong; and to infil their notable maxims into the minds of their children and domeftics, who receive them greedily, and whofe understandings and hearts are depraved before they can well diftinguish between good and evil.

I am far from meaning to include all the ladies in this cenfure, which, unfortunately, is too well grounded, but which would be unjust, without fome exception. There is ftill, undoubtedly, a great number of ladies of refpectable characters, who cultivate thofe virtues which adorn their fex and condition; who are free from that filly and indecent ambition of being thought philofophers and beaux-efprits; who read and ftudy, in order to know and to love their duty; who cultivate their understandings, in order to be established in good principles; and who, without defiring to be free-thinkers, are fatisfied with being vittuous women and reafonable creatures.

I afk pardon of the reft for drawing a picture which bears fo ftrong a resemblance to the original. It is contrary, I well know, to the laws of French gallantry to tell ladies their faules, whatever they may be, or to mention difagreeable truths in a public manner; but I beg of them to confider that, as they are ambitious of laying afide their fex, in order to become men and philofophers, they have placed us a little more at our eale with them, and have given us a right to talk to them with lefs referve, lefs gallantry, and a more manly freedom.

dif

What I have faid of the ladies, may, in fome meafure, he ap plied to our youth, who receive their tone from the fair fcx. They have fcarce left college when they commence your ciples, and the fatal effects of this firft ftep are but too viable. They begin with defpifing all the falutary inftructions they formerly received; call every thing pedantry that is not libertinifm and infidelity; and, in a little time, by treating every thing forious as mere prejudice, they come to think themfelves phi lofophers,

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lofophers, and call themfelves fo. They have no longer any moral principles to make them uneafy, no checks or restraints upon their paffions; and provided they can elude the laws, their confcience is perfectly at eafe. They talk upon the graveft fubjects with a levity that has nothing to equal it but their ig norance. Low, infipid raillery, common-place jokes, hackneyed bon-mots, fupply the place of arguments, even on the mot facred topics. If they attempt to reafon, it is with a confidence, a good opinion of themselves, ftill more ridiculous, if poffible, than their pretended wit and humour. They flatter themselves that they comprehend the most incomprehenfible things, though they remain ignorant of fome of the moft common; they pretend to calculate, define, and know every thing, and yet entertain doubts concerning the moft obvious truths; they defpife and forget their duties; extinguish the light of nature; ftifle the good principles that were inftilled into them in the early part of life; perplex and confound their understandings; lofe all fenfibility of heart, and every idea of virtue and morality. They become, in a word, ufelefs or pernicious to fociety; hateful and troublefome to themfelves; lofe all relifh for life, and at last have recourse to a halter or a pistol, in order to deliver themfelves from the infupportable burthen of living alone.

What fentiments, Sir, muft we entertain of you and your philofophers, if fuch deplorable evils can only be imputed to the contagious licentioufnefs of your writings? But I fhall dwell no longer upon the horrid profligacy which the rage of impiety has introduced into our manners. Every good man fees and laments it. How many worthy and virtuous parents are there who, in the anguish of their hearts, are weeping over the depravity of their children, and who have a right to impute to your works ?

This is part of what our Author has advanced concerning M. de Voltaire's literary policy, and the influence which it has had upon the taste and manners of the prefent age; there is a great deal more to the fame purpose in his first letter, to which we refer our Readers. He concludes it with fhewing the means which M. Voltaire has employed to get poffeffion of the literary fcepter, and the manner in which he has treated those writers who refufe to bow the knee before him. If what M. Clement fays be true, it is impoffible to have a good opinion of M. de Voltaire's heart; nay, if he is capable of fuch low, pitiful, and illiberal arts, as thofe which he is charged with by our Letterwriter, his fondeft admirers must even think lefs favourably of his genius; for he himself fays, and his words cannot but have weight with them

Un efprit corrompu ne fut jamais fublime.

In his fecond letter, M. Clement examines the characters which Voltaire has given of fome of the old French writers; fuch as Rabelais, Marot, Montagne, Malherbe, Regnier, Võiture, &c. and his defign is to excite an attention to these writers, whom it is great injuftice, he says, to neglect, as they are much more deferving of regard than the generality of modern wits. This letter, though not fo interefting to the generality of readers as the firft, fhews the Author to be a man of taste, and of found principles in literature; and will afford peculiar pleasure to those who are acquainted with the works of Rabefais, Montagne, Malherbe, &c.

In his third letter, he confiders the character which M. de Voltaire has given of Quinaut, Lamotte, and Fontenelle; but we must take our leave of him for the prefent, yet not without heartily recommending him to our Readers, as a sprightly, ingenious, and animated writer.

AR T. III.

R.

La Politique Naturelle. Ou Difcours fur les vrais Principes du Government. The true Principles of Government. By a late Magiftrate. 8vo. 2 Vols. Paris. 1773.

THE

HE Author of this work is unknown to us; but he арpears to be a fincere friend to truth, to virtue, and to liberty; and to be well acquainted with political fubjects. He writes in a clear, eafy, and natural manner; but he has advanced nothing that is new, and the same sentiments are often repeated; yet the political principles and maxims which he recommends to public attention, are fo important in themselves, and look with fo friendly an afpect upon fociety, that every liberal-minded Reader will perufe what he has advanced with great pleasure. In regard to religion, it is very obvious what his fentiments are; it is but juftice to acknowledge, however, that he writes upon this fubject in a much more modeft and decent manner, than the generality of modern French writers.

In a very fhort, but fenfible preface, he obferves, that the fcience of government is far from being dark, perplexed, or intricate; that those who study human nature attentively, and the great ends of civil fociety, will find nothing myfterious in it, but, on the contrary, a series of truths intimately connected, a chain of principles as clear and certain as in any other branch of human knowledge.

It is generally thought, continues he, that a reformation of abufes in government is impoffible; and this maxim is fo well adapted to the indolence of mankind, that it is looked upon as indubitable; accordingly, few citizens, and ftill fewer Princes.

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think