depends on the use of words! The poet, and his cousin-german the rhetorican, have their peculiar phrases; and the philosopher uses more precise and pure phraseology. The sensible Dean of St. Patrick was aware of the uncertainty of language, and in his didactic pieces has used the most primitive terms to avoid, as much as he could, any phrases of a figurative or metaphorical nature.

Cupid.

Though this little gentleman is very frequently celebrated by modern poets and painters, yet are his qualities often mistaken by the first, and his figure misrepresented by the latter, artists. Modern poets describe the God of Love to be blind; and the painters actually put a bandage on his eyes. A blind and skilful archer is a strange phenomenon. The ground-work of these modern errors seems to be that the idiom of classical expression is in both instances misunderstood. In classical lore, especially the poetical part, the agent and the patient take place of one another, and the action of the former recoils upon him because love makes persons blind to the faults of others, the God of Love is called blind: this is well known to the readers of classical metaphors; but no one wili find, in Spence's Polymetis, an account

of a blind or hood-winked Cupid: Mr Spence speaks of his sly and insidious looks, &c.

Ancient and Modern Dramas.

The personal introduction of gods and goddesses on the public stage by the most eminent writers, Eschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, &c. conveys a very disadvantageous idea of decorum in the religion of Greece. Since the refinement of modern manners, the English stage has quitted these profane and licentious mummeries. The old plays, called Mysteries and Moralities, were guilty of introducing the sacred characters of scripture in person. A most amusing history of this singular practice, and a learned detail and ingenious commentary on the "Sacred Dramas”. are given by a late very excellent critic; in which the accurate antiquary and the man of taste, the fancy of the poet, and the piety of a christian writer, are amply displayed.-T. Warton's History of Ancient English Poetry.

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Ancient and Modern Sepulchres.

Sculpture employed its most pleasing powers in the decoration of the ancient monument, or "sarcophagus;" and the imagery it exhibited was

grateful to the eye, and soothing to the feelings. Flowers, of the most beautiful colours and forms, spoke of the brevity of life's pleasures; and the butterfly, expanding its wings and seeking the upper regions, was a lively symbol of the soul's immortality. What shall we say of the coarse structure and design of our rural monuments,* but that they are equal to the poetry, which Gray says is written

To teach the rustic moralist to die;

but can convey to the eye of the more refined spectator nothing but the most disgusting images of the wrecks of the human frame.

Picturesque.

The poet Cowley's wish for a small house and a large garden seems in equal conformity to taste and good sense. When a house is too large for the premises, the picturesque effect is lost; the grounds about it appear scanty and mean. Lord Bacon, in his Essay on Gardening, says, with his usual soundness of judgment, "that buildings, in comparison with natural beauties, are gross handy works." To use an expression taken from musicians, "the house should play the second-fiddle,

* Sculls, bones, &c. tied together with a gay ribbon.

then true harmony is produced by its accompaniments. When a huge mansion stands on ย small base of cultivated ground about it, it gives the appearance of a large inn without a sign, and of a rich owner without any taste.

A Bull of Alexander Pope, or what John Dennis would have called Pope Alexander's Bull.

In a poem which Pope seems to have written con amore, and with that laborious diligence which marked his literary efforts, we are surprised to find the oversight in this line

And sleepless lovers just at twelve awake.

Poets, no doubt, are allowed to soar above reason, but not to contradict it. One cannot but smile at the precise time which is marked, in which persons are said to awake who never had been asleep. This error in Blackmore, Phillips, or any of Pope's poetical foes, would have gained him a place in Martinus Scriblerus on the art of writing on impossible subjects. Surely the blunder in the verses where Prince Vortigern is said to wear a painted cloak, won from a naked Pict, is as capable of excuse as Pope's sleepless lovers, &c.

Ruins built as Ornaments in Gardens, &c.

The arts of poetry and painting have licenses allowed to them of stepping o'er the modesty of nature, and why should it not be permitted to the art of gardening to indulge in some? To build ruins from the ground de novo, if we may so say, certainly is a strong effort of fancy. Martinus Scriblerus has quizzed this taste with no little humour; speaking of his hero, he says, "he builds, not with so much regard to present symmetry or convenience, as with a thought, well worthy of a true lover of antiquity, to-wit, the noble effect the building will have when it shall fall into ruin." A ludicrous story is told of a nobleman's gardener, who, shewing some visiters one of these modern ruins, on their expressing their admiration of the antiquities of the edifice, Well, gentlemen, my lord means to build some a good deal older next year.”

Esop and Dr. Swift

Have said that men wear two budgets, one behind and the other before them; in the former they carry their own faults, and in the latter the faults of their neighbours, by which means they see the