*

-Here shall come
Calm Contemplation from her sunless grot
To meet the favour'd youth, whom scenes like these
Can please ; who views with eye inquisitive
These rude memorials of ancient times.
Long o'er these stones the Aow'sing weed shall spread
Its colour'd folds, and long the thistle Thake
Its white beard to the winds; the wintry storm,
Oft through these cloifter'd cells and arches dim
Shall howi amain ; and oft the summer gale
Wave the high grass that tops the ruin'd wall,
Ere he who loves the Muses shall forego
These fimple beauties and unboastful charms,
For Folly's tinsel glitter, though her lyre
To Music's softest blandishments be ftrong
lo hall or bower ;-these o'er the soul thall med
A placid calm, as when the rising Moon

O'er the smooth lake reflects her Silver beam.'
Mr. Whitehouse, however, is not at all times attentive to the
harmony of his numbers :--for example,

• Retir'd and sought th' ocean's utmost verge.'

• Passing each flow'r that scents th' amorous gale." He seems to remember the remark of the poet, that

Oft the ear the open vowels tire;"
and therefore has recourse to elifion; but as the flow of the verse
is necessarily interrupted by it, the practice is discontinued by
our better poets. The defect, indeed, is trifling, and we really
wish that there was nothing more material to be objected to him;
but juftice obliges us to acknowlege that he sometimes runs into
error and absurdity, -of which we will produce an inftance or
two:

L'bidd'lt the foul-commending lyre
Some such magic numbers chuse
As love and tenderness inspire,
Till the forrow foothing strain

On the rapt car with nectar'd sweetness fall."
A found may be said to fall upon the ear with sweetnes; but it
is wholly imposible that it should fall with neflar'd sweetness.
The Poet has unwarily confounded the sweetness or melodioufs
ness of sound, with the sweetness which is perceivable by the pa-
late,--by the sense which we denominate taste. We know, in-
deed, that the like incongruous metaphor is frequently found in
poetry, but we have not che less objection to it on that account:

• Naiad, that lov'it to pour thy azure wave
In soft muanders throʻyon shadowy cave ;
Whose woods faint-murmuring o'er the rocky steep,
O'er all the place a folemn fillness keep'-

But

But if the woods are faint-murmuring,' how can they keep a • solemn stillness ? Faint-murmuring is found; and fillness is privation, or absence, of all found.

• Dear Goddess of each amiable Muse.' This is the beginning of an address to Simplicity. But what it is to be the Goddess of an amiable Mufe, we do not know.

am' slant hillock gay, With which erst Flora deck'd in trim array.' The second line is faulty in its conitruction. •Erst appears as though it were an epithet. it might be written thus :

Which Flora erft bedeck'd in trim array. There are other inaccuracies in Mr. W.'s poems. We likewise track him in the walks of Akenfide, Warton, Shenstone, &c. &c. He is, however, a man of abilities; but let him ftudy to be correct : correctness (since the days of Pope) is a quality expected in every one who aspires to the name of Poet.

2 S.

W

Art. XIII. Remarks on the most important Military Operations of the

English Forces, on the Western Side of the Peninsula of Hindooftan, in 1783 and 1784; in which the Conduct of the Army ure der the Command of Brigadier General Mathews is vindicated, from the illiberal Mil-representations contained in a late Narrative, figned JOHN CHARLES SHEEN, and published by Order of the Court of Directors of the East India Company. By a British Officer.

8vo. Robson and Co. &c. 1788. 'HEN a writer presents a state of facts or events to the

Public, and pledges himself for their authenticity, he has a right to a degree of credit, proportionate to the character and rank which he holds in society. On this principle, we paid due regard to the narratives of Capt. Oakes and Lieut. Sheen, and mentioned them accordingly, in our 720 volume, p. 379. These gentlemen, however, are here animadverted on, by a writer who pretends to better information, but who has withheld the sanction his name, and contented himself with telling us that he is " A British Officer ;' and with figning the initials J. M. to his Dedication 'To the Officers in the Service of the King, and of the East India Company, employed during the late War on the Western Side of India ;'-with whom he says, he had the honour to Thare in their toils, and to be an eye-witness of their services.

We wilh that J. M. bad given us his name at length, as it might have added great weight to his representations, and precluded the objection of those who pay little regard to anonymous accounts; and who, beside, may deem it an infraction of the laws of literary war, thus, in disguise as it were, or under a masque, to enter the lifts against the man who appears in pror priâ perfonâ. Rev. Aug. 1788.

M

The

The Remarker premises, that his intention in writing these letters, is not to exculpate General Mathews from imputed guilt, but to clear his officers and soldiers from the imputations with which they have been indiscriminately aspersed, as if it were not possible for them to be otherwise than guilty under him.-Admitting him, therefore, in all respects, to be as culpable as represented, guilty of cruelties and peculation,-it must be unjuft to make it a necessary consequence, that the officers of the army under his command were equally criminal: for in direct contradiction of all the malicious representations to their prejudice in the public prints, I can in conscience positively declare, that there never was an army in any quarter of the globe less inclined to cruelty and oppreslion ; nor one which had exhibited stronger proofs of unwearied zeal, honour, and humanity, than that employed on the western side of India, during the last war.'

The narrative of Capt. Oakes comes first under this author's notice. As we cannot descend to the enumeration of particular facts, we shall here only observe, in brief, that our British Officer' considers the charges of licentiousness, rapine, and cruelty, brought against the officers who served under General Mathews, as totally groundless, and landerous in the higheft degree.

With respect to Lieut. Sheen's narrative, the Remarker is equally ftrenuous in contradicting that part of it which repeats and enforces the above-mentioned charges against the British soldiers; and, in return, he is occasionally very free in his glances at the credit of the Lieutenant's testimony, and even against the Lieutenant himself; frequently aiming as him a random thot from the battery of Ridicule-a battery which most controversialists are ever forward to open on their opponents.

We hope, for the credit of the British name and nation, that we have here a more fair and just account of the conduct of the unfortunate General M. and his troops, than that which had before been given. The Author does not undertake the General's vindication in every point, but only where tyranny and oppres. fion have been laid to his charge ; and we regret with him, that no general and impartial history of the military operations of the British forces in Hindooftan, has been publithed under the sanction of any respectable authority, though, as he observes, the subject • is of the highest magnitude, and deserves to be recorded in the most circumstantial manner.' As to some particular papers, including Lieut. Sheen's narrative, the Remarker confiders them as having been published under the Company's authority, and as adapted rather to strengthen than to remove those illiberal aspertions' which have gained too much credit with the uninformed part of mankind.

The tract now before us is well calculated to do justice to the injured reputation of our troops, and to give the Public more fatisfactory information than had before been obtained, concerning the principal events which are here brought under review. The relations, with respect to many of the circumstances, are highly interefting, and the traits of Tippoo Saib's character will increase the abhorrence and deteftation, in which that Eastern tyrant has long been held by the friends of HUMANITY in every part of the globe to wbich the report of his horrid barbarities hath extended.

Art. XIV. Elements of Natural History, and of Chemistry: being

the Second Edition of the Elementary Lectures on those Sciences, first published in 1782, and now greatly enlarged and improved, by the Author M. de Fourcroy, Doctor of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, &c. &c. Translated into English. With occafional Notes, and an historical Preface, by the Translator. 8vo. 4 Vols. 11. 45.

Boards. Robin.

sons. 1788.

E expressed our hearty approbation of the first edition of

M. de Fourcroy's work *, regretting only that the office of translating it had been undertaken by a person, who was unequal to the task. The present publication is, as the title-page expresses, very much improved throughout, and enlarged from two volumes to four; the discoveries made fince the former went to the press (in 1781) having required many corrections and additions. The translation is executed with fidelity and propriety, and we think we can recognise in it the same mafterly hand, to which the Englith philosophers have already been indebted for several valuable productions of the continent.

The Translator's notes are few, but judicious. There is one very curious, and of considerable length (in vol. i. p. 108-115.), containing a series of propofitions, drawn up in the geometrical form, on the theory of heat;--not its chemical theory, but that of its communication, quantity, and the different capac ties of bodies for containing it, which are objects of mathematical de monftration, and must obtain equally, whatever its nature may be. From these propofitions, a rule is deduced, for investigating (from the ratio of the capacities of the fame body in its folid and fluid ftates, and the number of degrees that the fluid would increase in temperature by the heat which simply melts the solid) the number of degrees becween the temperature of the solid just melting, and the natural zero, or absolute privation of beat; and from experiments on water and ice, the zero is determined to be 1300 degrees of Fahrenbeit's scale, below the freezing point of water.

The Translator has given, in bis Preface, a concise historical account of some of the principal changes which the chemical

• See Monthly Review, vol. lxxiii. p. 329.

M 2

science

science has, of late years, undergone. A fair and impartial statement of these points, which we believe this to be, is now the more necessary, as it is certain' (to use his own words)

that the want of a speedy and faithful communication of philosophical discoveries between Great Britain and the continent, together with the unprincipled conduct of such persons as are daily employed in endeavouring to appropriate to themselves the discoveries of others, have produced many historical mistakes: and on the other hand, among the variety of new theories of chemistry offered to the Public, few have been exhibited with a proper discrimination between hypothesis and matter of fact.'

Of the above-mentioned want of speedy and faithful communication between us and our neighbours, we observe a striking instance in the present work, vol. i. p. 152. “An instrument capable of indicating with exactness the high degrees of heat' (M. de Fourcroy says) would be an acquisition of great value and importance. We are assured that such an instrument has been constructed in England. It consists of a very acute angled cone, on which a ring of the same matter is occasionally placed. The contraction of the dimensions of the cone by heat causes the ring to fink to a position nearer the base, according to its intensity. This ingenious inkrument is yet unknown in France.' · This strange misrepresentation of Mr. Wedgwood's chermometer is corrected by the Tranflator in a note ; but we could hardly have believed that such a chemift as M. de Fourcroy Thould be so ill informed respecting an invention (of which he so well understood the importance, and felt the want), that was described at large in the Philosophical Transactions so long ago as the year 1782 *, and connected with the common thermometer, so as to form one regular scale of heat from the freezing of mer., cury, up to the strongest fires of our furnaces, in 1784 +.

With regard to the different theories which have lately divided the philosophical world, the Author, in the first volume, embraces the phlogistian, as explained and modified by Macquer ; but many important facts which arose in the progress of the work, induced him to change his opinion, and to adopt the principles of Lavoisier. As these facts could not be inserted in the places which they ought properly to have occupied, he has prefixed a connected view of them, with all the others that relate to the same subject, so far as they are known, under the title of ' A short Account of the Nature and Properties of Elastic Fluids ;' Itating, clearly and diftin&t!y, the fyftem of Lavoisier, in its full extent. We shall here juft observe, that some other important facts have arisen fince the time of M. de Fourcroy's publication, which, had they been then known, ingenious and

* See Review, vol. Ixix. p. 386.
t

6

vol. Ixxii. p. 250.

alluring