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late publications, and we doubt not their welcome reception of them will evince their regard to his memory.

The writer may be styled the friend of Society, in the most agreeable acceptation of the term; for he rather converses with all the ease of a cheerful companion, then dictates, as other writers in this class have done, with the affected superiority of an author. He is the first writer since Bickerstaff, who has been perfectly satirical yet perfectly good-natured; and who never, for the sake of declamation, represents simple folly as absolutely criminal. He has solidity to please the grave, and humour and wit to allure the gay in a word, as the manners of the times which he represents differ from those of the preceding, so his method of treating them is different from that of former essayists. "Whatever objections," says our author, “the reader may have to the subjects of my papers, I shall make no apology for the manner in which I have chosen to treat them. The dread of falling into what they are pleased to call colloquial barbarisms, has induced some skilful writers to swell their bloated diction with uncouth phrases and the affected jargon of pedants. For my own part, I never go out of the common way of expression, merely for the sake of introducing a more sounding word with a Latin termination; the English language is sufficiently copious, without any further addition of new terms; and the native words seem to me to have far more force than any foreign auxiliaries, however purposely ushered in,-as British soldiers fight our battles better than the troops taken into our pay.

"The subjects of my Essays have been chiefly such as I thought might recommend themselves to the public notice, by being new and uncommon. For this reason I purposely avoided the worn-out practice of retailing scraps of morality, and affecting to dogmatize on the common duties of life. In this point, indeed, the Spectator is initimable: nor can I

hope to say any thing new upon these topics, after so many excellent moral and religious essays, which are the powerful ornament of that work; I have therefore contented myself with exposing vice and folly, by painting mankind in their natural colours, without assuming the rigid air of a preacher, or the drowsiness of a philosopher; I have rather chosen to undermine our fashionable excesses by secret sapping, than to storm them by open assault. In a word, upon all occasions I have endeavoured to laugh people into a better behaviour; as I am convinced that the sting of reproof is not less sharp for being concealed, and advice never comes with a better force than when it comes with a laughing one."

IV.—WILKIE'S EPIGONIAD." (1)

[From the Monthly Review, 1757. "The Epigoniad. A Poem, in nine Books. 12mo. Edinburgh."]

This poem, as the author informs us, "is called the Epigoniad, because the heroes whose actions it celebrates, have got the name of Epigones," (Epigoni, he should have said),

(1) [William Wilkie, D.D., the "Scottish Homer," as he has been called, was born at Echlin, in the county of Linlithgow, in 1721. While at the university of Edinburgh, he formed intimacies with Dr. Robertson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and John Home, the author of " Douglas." Henry Mackenzie, in his Life of the last-mentioned individual, says that Wilkie's friends all spoke of him as "superior in genius to any man of his time, but rough and unpolished in his manners, and still less accommodating to the decorum of society in the ordinary habits of his life. Charles Townshend, a very competent judge of men, said, after being introduced to him and spending a day with him, that he had never met with a man who approached so near to the two extremes of a god and a brute as Dr. Wilkie." The "Epigoniad" was published at Edinburgh in 1757, and a second edition in 1759; after which it was not re-printed till 1794, when it was admitted by Dr. Anderson into his edition of the British Poets. Wilkie died in 1772.]

"being the sons of those who attempted the conquest of Thebes in a former expedition."

When the poet carries his readers back into classic antiquity, he seems in a peculiar manner to bespeak the patronage of the learned; for them his labours appear to be calculated, and from them alone he must expect an adequate reward: but then, as he writes for the scholar, it is expected that he himself should be one of the number. Possessed of this advantage, the learned will regard him with fraternal tenderness; and though he may not obtain the highest applause, he is sure at least to meet with indulgence for slight defects. On the contrary, if he be detected of ignorance when he pretends to learning, his case, indeed, will deserve our pity: too antique to please one party, and too modern for the other, he is deserted by both, read by few, and soon forgotten by all, except his enemies.

The Epigoniad seems to be one of these new old performances; a work that would no more have pleased a peripatetic of the academic grove, than it will captivate the unlettered subscriber to one of our circulating libraries. "Tradition," says the author in his preface, "is the best ground on which a fable can be built, not only because it gives the appearance of reality to things that are merely fictitious, but likewise because it supplies a poet with the most proper materials for his invention to work upon." We might have expected from this remark, that he had not only taken tradition for the ground of his fable, but employed it also to guide him through the narration; nevertheless, unfortunately, he has not only forsook, but contradicted it, on almost every occasion; and given up the conduct of his poem to an invention barren of incidents, or at best productive of trifling ones.

Eustathius, in his commentary upon the fourth book of the Iliad, gives us a list of the nine warriors who were

called the Epigoni; most of which our author never once mentions in this poem, but, instead of them introduces, not the descendants of those unfortunate heroes who fell before Thebes in a former expedition, but several of their cotemporaries, as Theseus and Nestor, who had no motives of revenge to prompt them to this undertaking. Theseus in particular was not there; for we find in the Suppliants of Euripides, that Theseus went upon a former expedition to Thebes, to procure funeral honours for the seven fathers of the Epigoni, who lay unburied before the walls of that city; and at the end of the same tragedy we are told, that the capture of the city was reserved for the Epigoni alone. Our poet also gives Theseus the conduct of the war, in contradiction to Diodorus Siculus, who affirms, that by the advice of the oracle of Apollo, Alemæon was constituted generalissimo. He likewise makes Creon king of Thebes; but Creon had been dead four years before; and Eustathius positively says, that Laodamas was at that time their king.

The author's disregard of the traditions of the ancients, is not more flagrant than his neglect of their manners and customs; thus he introduces virgins as priestesses at the altar of Venus, talks of Styx as a river of fire, gives a nymph the conveyance of winged shoes; the caduceus of Mercury he calls his sceptre, and instead of the whistle which Virgil describes as pendant from the neck of Polyphemus, our author claps a bag on the giant's back,

around his shoulders flung,

His bag enormous, by a cable hung,"

Here is a large bag, and a very strong rope to tie it withal; but we cannot conceive what use the Cyclops had for such a bag, unless he chose to wear it as our physicians wear their swords, merely for ornament.

However, we must acknowledge, though he had been minutely exact, nor ever transgressed in any of the abovementioned particulars, his subject is of such a nature as could at best have afforded us but small satisfaction. We speak with regard to our own particular feelings; and some may perhaps wonder when we assign as a reason of our disgust, our being conscious that the poet believes not a syllable of all he tells us. Poets, like flatterers, are only heard with pleasure when they themselves seem persuaded of the truth of all they deliver. Boileau, to convince us that he believes what he writes, avers, that if he has any success beyond his cotemporary poets, it is wholly owing to his being superior to them in point of truth. We have no reason to doubt but Homer, who lived in an age of ignorance, and consequently of credulity, believed, or at least was thought to believe, what he relates; and Virgil, though he might not credit the story of Eneas, yet his countrymen gave credit to it. Witches and enchanters, too, made a part of the popish mythology (if we may so call it) in the days of Tasso: and the subject of Paradise Lost is reverenced with almost universal assent.

As we have nothing to commend in this author's plan, so we have little to praise with respect to his execution. He has, indeed, some good lines, and here and there something of the true spirit of poetry flashes out; but what can be said for such passages as the following?

"The Gods assembled met; and view'd from far,
Thebes and the various combats of the war.

From all apart, the Paphian goddess sat,
And pity'd in her heart her fav'rite state,

Decreed to perish by the Argive bands,

Pallas's art, Tydides' mighty hands.”

That the gods not only assembled but met, is truly marvellous; and as truly piteous is the distress of poor Venus : -but we are chiefly struck with the Broughtonian idea of

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