teration. Milton, a strict observer as well as a constant imitator of the antients, has adopted the same idea in the following lines,

What time the labor'd ox,

With loosen'd traces from the furrow came,
And the swink'd hedger at his supper sat.

The father of English poetry, like that of the Grecian, lived in a period little favourable to simplicity in poetry; and several meannesses occur throughout his works, which in an age more refined, or more barbarous, he must have avoided. We see among the worthie acts of Duke Theseus.

How he took the nobil cite after,

And brent the walls and tore down roof and rafter.

And among the horrid Images which crowd the temple of Mars,

The child stranglid in the cradil,

The coke scaldid for alle his long ladil.

That state of equipoise between horror and laughter, which the mind must here experience, may be ranked among its most unpleasing sensations.-The period at which the arts attain to their highest degree of perfection, may be esteemed more favourable to the productions of the Muses, than either of the foregoing; the mind is indulged in free retrospect of antiquity, and sometimes in conjectural glimpses of futurity; with such a field open before him, the objects which we must suppose should more immediately attract the attention of the poet, would be the failure or success of his predecessors; and the causes to which either was to be attributed. Pope has fully availed himself of

the dear-bought experience of all who went before him; there is perhaps no poet more entirely free from this failing. I shall however only cite one instance in which he may seem to have carried his regard for simplicity so far, as to show himself guilty of inaccuracy and inattention.

The hungry judges now the sentence sign,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

That judges in England never sign a sentence is well known; and hunger, whatever effect it might have had on the jurymen of antient days, with those of modern times, seems to operate rather as an incitement to mercy. Clifden's proud Alcove has not at present, and probably never had any existence; but the fault, if any there is, seems rather that of the language than of the poet: or perhaps, after all, it was mere penury of rhyme, and a distress similar to that which made him in another place hunt his poor dab-chick into a copse where it was never seen but in the Dunciad.

After so much said on the subject of local allusions, and terms of art, it cannot but occur to me, that I have myself sometimes fallen into the error which I have here reprehended, and adopted phrases and expressions unintelligible, except to the little circle to which my labors were at first confined; an error I shall cautiously avoid for the future: for how little claim soever the lucubrations of GREGORY GRIFFIN may have to public notice, or a protracted term of existence, he is unwilling to abridge either by wilful continuance in an acknowledged error.

D.

VOL. I.

G

No. 10. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1787.

Et silicis venis abstrusum, excuderet ignem-VIRG.
And struck th' imprison'd spark from veins of stone.

MANKIN

ANKIND in general, when they contemplate the records of those illustrious for patriotism, philosophy, poetry, or any other qualities which entitle them to immortality, are inclined to complain of the dearth of abilities and paucity of true genius observable in all ages. Genius, exclaims the discontented complainant, is given but with a sparing hand; instead of moving in a regular orbit as the planet, its course is lawless as the comet's; instead of dif·fusing the permanent rays of the sun, it glitters only with the dazzling glare of the lightning; it is quick and transitory, and like the phoenix, appears not once in a century. Such is the usual outcry of those, who love to turn good into evil! to depreciate the dignity of man, and undervalue the works of their creator. The arguments by which they support this hypothesis are plausible; they observe, that illustrious men have generally flourished not in a continued series, when the loss of one was supplied by a successor equally capable, but in a collective body. After their demise, nature, as exhausted by such an unusual effort, has sunk into a lethargy, and slept for ages. These sons of fame, like the brighter constellations of the heavens, obscure by their superior splendor the infinite hosts of stars which are scattered through the regions of endless space.

To establish this position, they instance the noted reigns of Augustus, Charles, Ann, and Louis. The respectable names of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, Livy, and other glories of this learned age are produced; Milton, Dryden, Tillotson, and Clarendon, with Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, Addison, Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, seem to corroborate this assertion. But let us examine with impartiality, and the deception will be detected. Can we suppose, that nature has scattered her blessings with more profusion to one age than another; or, that like an unfeeling step-mother, she has robbed one child of its portion to enrich the other? Rather has not the universality of her influence been extended to all? Whence then, it is required, whence originates that inequality of genius and learning, which is so incontrovertibly conspicuous in the annals of history? The answer is brief, from the difference of cultivation. The most fertile fields will, if neglected, be overrun with weeds; and the bramble will choak the luxuriance of the floweret. How many neglected spots are concealed in the wilds of Africa; how many tracts seemingly oppressed with the curse of sterility, have, by the assistance of art teemed with the fruits of cultivation. The human mind is that luxuriant field, rich in the gifts of nature, but requiring the fostering care of education, to raise the imperfect seed to the maturity of the full grown crop.

I will venture to affirm, that neither the dark ages of the latter Roman empire, nor the darker ones which succeeded, (the period when human nature was at its lowest ebb, and had relapsed into the barbarism from which the superior wisdom of the first race of man had raised it) were de

ficient in genius, if opportunity had called forth its powers. Statius and Claudian undoubtedly possessed the fire so requisite to form the poet; and the excellent Boetius, martyred by the cruel policy of the imperial court, was born to grace a more splendid æra. To descend still deeper into this region of darkness, even so late as the closing years of the Greek empire, the princess Anna Commena, to the eminence of her illustrious birth, joined the milder glories of arts and literature. Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and the other schoolmen show an acuteness of reason, and comprehension of mind, employed indeed on subtle niceties and frivolous distinctions; but which, under the direction of a better taste, might have explored the profoundest depths of true philosophy. The Rosicrucians, with other chemical projectors, in the course of an extravagant search after an imaginary menstruum, stumbled on many useful discoveries in that curious science. Pope Silvester, with his illustrious follower, Friar Bacon, who were for their extraordinary knowledge deemed magicians by the ignorant multitude, and who were both, for the honor of our nation, Englishmen, directing their studies to the proper ends of philosophy, were the harbingers of that glorious light which has since blazed out. Charlemagne and Alfred are characters which might digaify the annals of any historian, as warriors and legislators; the first softened the rigors of the feudal system so peculiarly adapted to bind mankind in indissoluble chains; the other blessed his native land with liberty, and laid the first foundations of that constitution, which has since proved the envy and admiration of Europe. These few illustrious names, which are the sole ornaments of so many ages only feebly enlightened, were not able to dispel