Volume I Part 36 (1/2)

PERITURAE PARCERE CHARTAE.

What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in ma.n.u.script a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual 'literati' of the country, if they would publish the valuable ma.n.u.scripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of----, but it is treading on hot embers!

TO HAVE AND TO BE.

The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet: Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange souls!

The following is offered as a mere playful ill.u.s.tration:

”Women have no souls,” says prophet Mahomet.

Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave?

I said you had no soul,'tis true: For what you are, you cannot have-- 'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.

PARTY Pa.s.sION.

”Well, Sir!” exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impa.s.sionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, ”Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?”--”Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!”--”Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?”--”Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't he?”--”Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!”

GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO A MAN OF GENIUS.

'If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a good man. (Dedication to 'the Fox').'

Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and n.o.ble sentiment from Strabo.

[Greek (transliterated): 'h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron genaethenta andra agathon.]

( Lib. I. p. 33. folio.)

MILTON AND BEN JONSON.

Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's address to the sun in 'Paradise Lost' to the first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

”Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wis.h.i.+ng thy golden splendour pitchy darkness!”

But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly ent.i.tled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation.

STATISTICS.

We all remember Burke's curious a.s.sertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prost.i.tutes, and thieves in the City of London.

Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he a.s.sures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.

MAGNANIMITY.