Avarice. It is much the vogue with moral writers to treat this passion (too common indeed in old age) as totally without motive or excuse. They seem to consider it as a mere magpie propensity to steal and hide money. Avarice may plead for its defence, amongst old persons, the potency of gold to ensure respect to aged persons, when no other motive will induce mankind to pay them observance or attention. Men learn by experience that their money is their friend, their only support in the decline of natural pleasures. Old men soon perceive that they owe to gold, and not to their virtues or wisdom, that degree of attention from their fellow creatures that we all wish for. The rich man is secure of it. This yellow slave Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd, And give them title, knee, and approbation With seuators on the Bench, &c. Timon of Athens, scene 3. Friendship. "Idem velle et idem nolle ea demum fermè est amicitia," though a passage in a classic author of great eminence, is yet a very imperfect delineation of the friendship among the wise and honest. The sportsman and the sot may call their associates in their different amusements friends, but the illness of any such friends would dissolve the partnership. Romances. Though the heroes and heroines in these sublime narratives seem sometimes in their sentiments to soar above humanity, yet when real passions take place of pompous diction and high vaunts, these ladies and gentlemen are contented, like Falstaff, to talk and act like men of this world. When the giant was killed or confined, the lady became very grateful to her knight; and ceased to be a heroine, when her lover became more interesting, as both were now in safety. Our merry and satirical Bard has well described these histories mock-heroic There was an ancient sage philosopher, Hudibras, cant. 2. N.B. A commentator, the least inclined to allegorize, might consider the giant as a crabbed father or guardian to the ladies, and the castles and monsters as so many restraints contained in the Marriage Act. Poem on the Spleen. This most humorous and philosophic poem is not sufficiently known. With much of the knowledge, if not of the learning, of Butler, the author of these lines seems to have imbibed with the style of Hudibras a great deal of his wit and humour. As the following paragraphs touch on the subjects in vogue now, we will transcribe a few of them. Missionaries. When G-1 P~s and others say, By vicious means such virtuous ends, Certain Sectaries. Nor they, so pure and so precise, Who their ill-tasted home-brew'd prayer Which are not steep'd in vinegar, &c. Reformers. Reforming schemes are none of mine: To mend the world's a vast design, Like their's who tug their little boat To pull them to the ship afloat, While to defeat their labour'd end At once both wind and stream contend. Success herein is seldom seen, And zeal when baffled turns to spleen. Poets. Or see some poet pensive sit, To fill the epic trump of fame; Nor learn conviction from their coat. Critics. On poem, by their dictates writ, Critics as sworn appraisers sit, And, mere upholsterers, in a trice Invent cramp rules, and with straight stays Emaciate sense before they fit. The Spleen: an epistle to Mr. C-J-, by Mr. Dr. Samuel Johnson, The great author of the Rambler, both in his moral and critical works, exhibits his principal excellencies, ratiocination and common sense. Though many readers object to his language as tumid, and to an ostentatious display of eloquence in his moral essays, yet the latter fault, if it be one, may be defended by what he says of Swift's style of unvaried simplicity. This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift's desire to obtain, and having attained, he deserves praise. For purposes merely didactic, when something is to be told that was not known before, it is the best mode; but against that inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected, it makes no provision. Life of Swift, in his Lives of the Poets. |