never before engraved. As for the drama itself, the picture of Anarchy which it gives is abundantly darkened with horrors: but the plot is miserable, and the language poor in the extreme. It is probably the production of some French emigrant, who has learned to write tolerable English, and who has here made an effort to keep alive loyalty to the Bourbons, and detestation of the usurper. Though Anarchy prevails, and the lawful king is destroyed, the final exhortation to the adherents of the monarchy is, • live for times When yet your country may be served by you, Art.37. Nobility, a Poem, in Imitation of the Eighth Satire of Juvenal 4to. pp. 31. 4s. Gale and Curtis. 1811. The moral of Juvenal's eighth satire is that Virtue alone is true mobility,' and no writer has enforced it with more spirit and energy: but his remonstrances produced little effect on the corrupted patricians of the Roman world; and satire itself becomes pointless when states grow opulent, luxurious, and depraved. Though we are happy to know that such is not universally the case, yet hereditary honours, and the consequence which they give in society, are too often considered as superseding the necessity of virtue. Some of our moderns seem to construe Juvenal's celebrated line, "Nobilitas sola est atque unica Virtus," in the order of the Latin words, Nobility alone and of itself is Virtue; and to understand it as asserting that, provided a man possesses nobility, he may leave so vulgar a thing as practical virtue to plebeians. Against this fashionable mistake, the present Imitator points his quill: but we fear that the young nobleman, whether at the gaming-table in St. James's Street, or at Newmarket, or at the Fourin-hand Club, will rather be inclined to smile than to blush, when he reads Juvenal's line, Paulus, vel Cossus, vel Drusus moribus esto,” thus imitated, More proud of morals pure, than purest blood, Be thou a noble, what a noble should.' After the many translations and imitations of Juvenal which have appeared, this attempt might have been spared. CORRESPONDENCE. Although the subject of the ensuing letter be not so perfectly novel, nor generally receiving so little attention, as the writer perhaps supposes, yet we give a place to it because the question to which it relates is curious, aud is still very far from being solved; and because, also, it comes from an old and respected correspondent: Sir, To the Editor of the Monthly Review. The following idea I hope is not fanciful, and I believe it is new. It is long since it occurred to me; and in collecting materials and observations with a view to support it, I think I have been far from un successful; successful; but as I find the full prosecution of it rather unsuitable to my situation and my habits, and at the same time flattering myself that it is not unworthy of attention, I wish to take this method of broaching it to the public, not doubting that, if it deserves notice, the present rationally investigating age will not overlook it, and your valuable Journal will give it credit, and the best means of publicity. Is there not in the human constitution, nay in all organized nature, and perhaps even in what we call inorganized, a power whose office is to modify heat and cold? The human body, subjected to a confined atmosphere of extreme heat, cannot be made to acquire the degree of heat incompassing it; the same thing happens reversely when the human body is subjected to a confined atinosphere of cold. The fruit on the trees is always colder than the atmosphere around it, or the leaves and branches to which it belongs; the earth itself has acquired no additional heat from all the heat that has been poured upon it these thousands of years; nor have we reason to believe that the effects of cold are increasing in the coldest regions; and ought not the heat of animals, in whatever way generated or kept up, to be always increasing, not only sensibly to itself, but with evident effect on the general atmosphere? There must be a contrivance or power, then, in nature to effectuate all this; and this contrivance or power must be applicable to the different circumstances of being, and according to its necessities. In man, created for every climate, and every vicissitude, and as the most generally complete being we know of, we have reason to believe this power is most strongly marked. May not the general or topica! suspension, or the derangement of this power, be the principal cause of fever, nay of most general diseases ; and the loss of it the principal cause of death; and may not the existence of this power explain many of the phenomena of nature better than has hitherto been done? 'I am, Sir, your's, &c. 'R. C.' Our friend PINDAR (not Peter) ridicules the expression in Mr. Walter Scott's Vision of Don Roderick, quoted in p. 298. of our Number for July," and the loud hinges bray'd," which certainly is not very elegant: but perhaps Pindar did not recollect the Miltonic authority for it, "Arms on armor clashing bray'd Horrible discord." The note from the Rev. T. R. is received. We have corrected, in the Table of Errata in our last volume, the miscalculation obligingly pointed out by Curiosus. The petition of W. S. has been presented to their Worships: but the Benah must not be mocked! NOTICE. The APPENDIX to the last volume of the M. R. is published at the same time with this Number, and contains a variety of articles of FOREIGN LITERATURE, with the General Title, Table of Contents, and Index, for the volume. Any failure in the supply of it, particularly in the country, must arise from the want of a specific order for it being sent to the London booksellers. THE MONTHLY REVIEW, For OCTOBER, 1811. Boards. ART. I. Letters of Anna Seward; written between the Years 1784 and 1807. In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo. 31. 38. Edinburgh, Constable; London, Longman and Co. 1811. IE, jealous for the honest fame of some illustrious dead, we have occasionally questioned the honour and even the morality of ransacking drawers and cabinets for the purpose of making collections of letters for general perusal, out of papers which were never designed to see the light, if, in some instances, we have lamented the mistaken officiousness of friendship, and in others have reprobated the sordid motives which have operated in bringing the dead on the stage under circumstances highly to their disadvantage,- we cannot, in the case now before us, yield to any feelings of this kind. As far as the editor is concerned, he is exonerated from all the usual objections which attach to the publication of posthumous letters, Miss Seward having bequeathed the MSS., from which these volumes were printed, to Mr. Constable of Edinburgh, for the express purpose of their publication; so that the wish of the author is no more than fulfilled *. How far, considering the < *As a fac-simile of Miss Seward's hand writing, her posthumous letter to Mr. Constable is inserted after the preface. It is as follows: 'Sir, July 17, 1807. In a will, made and executed since I had the pleasure of seeing you in April last, I have left you the exclusive copy-right of twelve volumes quarto, half-bound. They contain copies of letters, or of parts of letters, that, after I had written them, appeared to me worth the attention of the public. Voluminous as is the collection, it does not include a twelfth part of my epistolary writing from the time it commences, viz. from the year 1784, to the present day. I wish you to publish two volumes annually; and by no means to follow the late absurd custom of classing letters to separate correspondents, but suffer them to succeed each other in the order of time, as you find them transcribed. When you shall receive this letter, its writer will be no more. While she lives she must wish Mr. Constable all manner of good, and that he may enjoy it to a late period of human life. Anna Seward.' implied implied confidence of epistolary intercourse, this accomplished lady was justified in publishing, without their consent, her comments on the letters of her friends, exposing their foibles, their mistakes, and even occasionally making extracts from those letters, may be left to the decision of every reader. Certain, however, we are that several of her correspondents must be hurt at her freedom; that many will be sorry that her thirst for posthumous reputation had not been more qualified by discretion, and by a regard to the feelings of others; and that some may accuse her of unfairness, and will regret that they gave her an opportunity of inserting their names in the long list which constitutes her triumph of vanity. At her rage against all Reviews and Reviewers* we were much more diverted than offended; and we smiled to think that, while this lady, sitting on her throne of self-sufficiency in a provincial town, was incessantly playing the part of a critic on all works of taste and imagination, she should be so ready to pronounce that the remarks of other persons on the productions of the press were the impertinence of criticism.' Because Reviewers were not sufficiently courteous to her muse, Miss Seward has endeavoured to take ample revenge by leaving a rod in pickle for them among her posthumous papers but her poor ghost will not be gratified at the manner in which these hardened culprits take her chastisement; nor will it be much delighted at the christian return which we are inclined to make for these animadversions. She shall learn, if she can learn, that we are disposed to be just, though she would provoke us to be otherwise; and that the talents and virtues which these her letters display shall have their full meed of commendation; though she was long in the habit of telling her friends that Reviewers were a set of -, !!!!!!!! Much had this lady read and reflected; and uncommon pains had she taken to cultivate her mind, to improve her taste, and to expand her heart. She unquestionably ranks in the first class of British females; and the collection of letters which she has here prepared for the public will interest, amuse, and instruct. In offering her opinions on a great variety of subjects, she displays a masculine strength and capacity of mind, unfolding her sentiments in general with great command and felicity of language. In religion she is no bigot, and *On the subject of Reviews, Miss S. would have it supposed that she is quite in the secret: but never was a lady more completely in the wrong than in the assertions which she makes respecting the M. R. in Vol. ii. p. 9. Neither of the gentlemen there named ever wrote poetical criticisms in our pages. in politics no slave to fashionable and courtly opinions. She writes as she thinks, without constraint; and many of her observations are so correct in themselves, and so happily expressed, that they may be quoted as apophthegms for the direction of posterity. As a correspondent she was courted; and though she was vain of her talents, and both pedantic and arrogant in the display of them, the fund of knowlege and good sense which she disclosed made her gold current in spite of the alloy. Even as a critic, her powers are considerable; and in combating the excentricities of her critical friends, she manifests a portion of reading and acumen which is very rare among blue-stockings. She writes with all the pride of independence, and tells one of her correspondents that 'her indignation is apt to kindle at every appearance of people presuming upon the superiority of their situation.' It is very evident, however, that she is fond of the great; and that she is peculiarly flattered by the praise which comes from that quarter. In every letter, she appears to be writing for the public rather than for the individual to whom it is addressed, and in consequence of this circumstance a want of ease is apparent. With all her friends, indeed, she is full of display. She is even vain of her person; for she tells us that she has been thought to resemble Mary Queen of Scots, and Mrs. Fitzherbert, between whom no resemblance can exist; and her portrait, prefixed to the first volume of this work, must confire the similitude to the former, if it allows of any to either. Of her talents as a writer and a critic, no individual could cherish a higher opinion than herself*; and, notwithstanding she tells Mr. Hardinge that she had written on one of his letters, in which he spoke a little too plainly, "to be read frequently as a medicine against vanity," (see Vol. 2. p. 167.) we never hear that the drawer was again opened which contained this letter, for the purpose of applying the antidote which it furnished. More than once she quotes the golden rule of doing to others as we wish them to do towards us in similar circumstances: but, if she had been a young clergyman in want of a sermon for a particular occasion, and if a female friend who was ready at composition had kindly furnished that sermon, which on delivery had gained applause, what would Miss Seward have said of the honour and generosity of the real author, who afterward disclosed the fact in letters designed for publication and so marked the circumstances that the poor preacher of petticoat-sermons must be unmasked to the ridicule of all his acquaintance? Yet this has she done.-Her Having in one place mentioned her own poems, she adds, I know their poetic worth." |