pellants to the sentiments and passions of mankind, and you may calculate with tolerable accuracy upon their deserts by the extensiveness of their circulation. Yet, in our day of refinement, very little is directed to the fancy or heart; for, from some cogency or other, it is unfashionable to be moved. Should an author, in the interest of his subject, unfortunately be animated to an ebullition of the moment, his introduction of the costume of his grandsire's (square-toes, bag-sleeves, buckram, and so on) could not more completely expose him for the purposes of ridicule. Style must be equable and level,as water at rest (the only superficies in nature, mechanically straight); smooth & tonsored as the forehead of a friar; no pleasing sallies of cadence, or thought, must occur, but members of sentences be intermarried with members, tediously constituting, like the links in a chain, a series of polished monotonies. But, in so doing, our copyists of antiquity, as it generally happens with imitation, have not only departed from truth, but omitted the spirit of their original. Variety, that miracle of nature and genius, is endlessly exemplified in the father of epick, His verse, like some of the rivers of our country, accomplishes its journey over the abruptness of precipices, as well as through the tranquillity of vallies; along the cultivated confines of population, or through the solitudes of the wilderness. We alternately climb with him to the sublime, or condescend to the simple; struggle with the irregular, or relapse on the proportional; the imagina, tion is sometimes permitted to subside, that it may endure to be agitated; entertained with the plaintive, to be contrasted by the tremendous. But the times of inspiration are departed; and nature, the only muse of the poet, is unfeelingly forgotten. We have substituted rhetorick in her room, and degenerated to a race of manufacturers. We have striven to be faultless, and neglected to be natural; criticism is satisfied, but sensibility frozen. The passions, that hung on the lyres of old, are long since buried with their masters, or prostituted on the vulgar intercourses of a day. Establishment has crowded out sentiment; luxury and refinement have enervated virility. But posterity will do justice to nature and genius; and thousands will daily devour Skakespeare, for one that reads Pope; thousands shall prefer playing with a dried leaf and a switch, in the simple retirements of Weston and Cowper, for one that sits primly with Addison and propriety, on a visit of ceremony, in the parlour of the muses. Truth to nature will be the test,by which poetry is tried; and as she approaches or retires in her analogics, her merits to consideration or neglect will be eventually determined. The various character of her theme indulges a multiplicity of styles; but style, without character appropriate, will perish with its mannerist. Sir Joshua Reynolds supposes, that the perfection of his art originates at the point of its concealment ; or, in other words, when the painter and his tools are forgotten in the truth of effect. With so high an authority to support our position, permit us farther to quote the pertinent assertion," that deformity commences with the dancing-master." But little evidence is necessary where the fact is perspicuous. The superiority of nature over art, is the superiority of the works of heaven over those of man; and he, who neglects the performances of the former, for the second hand imitations of the latter, does certainly little credit to his heart, and still less to his fancy. Nature is brimful of character; and, to genuine taste and philosophy, the untutored gestures of children are more exquisite, than the accomplished ceremony of courts. In the adjustment of their little etiquettes of first meeting, there is sweeter food for contemplation than my lord Chesterfield or yourself would imagine. Nay, there is an interesting character about my great grandmother, smoking in the chimney corner, or even in the playsomeness of kittens through the broken straw-bottoms of the old famity furniture. We are environed with articles of delicacy and daintiness, yet murmur at the narrowness of materials; we starve upon copying in the centre of originals! To me more dear, congenial to my heart, The foregoing observations are not enforced as expressly applicable to the performance in review. Mr. Linn, though innocent of the charges of originality, and considerably infected with the epidemick in question, is sufficiently respectable to escape the acrimony of stricture. The truth is, a counter-train has been form ing beneath the miners of literature, of which fraternity Mr. Linn was unfortunately a member; what mischief he has sustained by their explosion may be particularly ascertained from the examination that follows. The contents of the volume before us stand thus : Powers of Genius, Part 1. .Part 2. ..Part 3. Appendix, containing illustra tions of Genius. Midnight Hymn to Deity. Address to my Taper. Address to Hope. Picture of Morning. Farewel Song of Ossian. Epistle to a Friend, with the poem on the Powers of Genius. The first of these performances is the principal; the remainders are the little fashionable poetick expletives, usually tagged to the conclusion of lean manuscripts, to distend them to the necessary dimensions for publication. Mr. Linn, in his preface, appears sufficiently apprized of the requisites for didactick poesy; and with that heroism indispensable to authorship, honestly intimates his impressions of adequateness. He mentions with familiarity the authors of didactick poetry, from Hesiod and Lucretius to Akenside and Armstrong; and, after venturing to invoke the same muse who has rewarded their toils, requests to indulge the expectation, that the publick will hear him. The confessions of self-confidence are generally more honest, than politick, and the gentleman, on this occasion, is rather commendable for ingenuousness, than remarkable for prudence. The ancients, we believe, esteemed it inauspicious to stumble on the threshold; and, were the society equally superstitious with a late erudite doctor, the occurrence of the following blunder, at the commencement of this performance, might be considered, perhaps, as rather ominous of perplexities in sequel. "GENIUS we know by HER impetuous force." inine."-" Palpable, sir; (cried the enthusiast) I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the dutchess of Devonshire, with which her grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath, in the military uniform, and I suppose her the Genius of Britain." Johnson"Sir, you are giving a reason for it, but that will not render it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; they will still make but four." The detection of plagiarism is a delicate branch of criticism; for analagous passages are frequently original, and distant resemblances may be palpable thefts. Whether we have fancied analogies to brother bards, in Mr. Linn, or they do in reality exist, our readers shall determine for themselves. "When knowledge first unrols her endless page, "Moves like a giant just refresh'd with wine,” Though we usually acquiesce in every compliment to the females, we are very sorry that we cannot, in this particular, second the galJantry of Mr. Linn, by admitting Genius to be a lady. That every bard has been ransacked from Ferdusi to Bloomfield, to palliate the violence of the incongruity, the ladies and Mr. Linn will do us the justice to believe. But it is to no effect! We do, indeed, discover that the Muses certainly were females, but, though it is very rude of the poets, they all persist, to a man, in representing Genius as a gentleman. There's Doctor Johnson too (who, though his rudeness to the softer portion of creation may make him a suspicious authority, is decidedly unanswerable), there's the Doctor himself too, unquestionably opposed, in this instance, to politeness and Mr. Linn. For the anecdotal Bozzi has recorded his unkindness to the dutchess of Devonshire, whom he would not permit a respectful bard to repre- Mr. Linn appears anxious to resent as the Genius of Britain. pay Poetry for the loan of her "Sir," said he, (rolling, we'll lines, by exemplifying the corsuppose, ladies, his uncouthness rectness of her sentiments; for, about, like an ice-island in a tem- after reaching fruit from the lofty pest) "Sir," said he to the gen- branches of Shakespeare, he etleman of elogy, "here is an er- vinces the "good" that there is rour, you have made Genius fem-in every thing," by plucking a A line, parallel to a quotation al- "Genius finds fpeech in trees; the ruuning brook How weed of the earth, seemingly mired, is perhaps his strongest little worth the stooping for. "Hufh every found...let not a zephyr move." "Hufh! every breeze, let nothing move, My Delia Gngs, and fings of love." These are the effusions of some ballad-monger,or the packthreads of poesy, tacked together for a musick-book, and better fitted apparently, for sound than adapted to sense..." I am ill at these numbers." *To arms, the cries, and grafps the quivering fpear." To arms cried Mortimer, and couch'd his quiv'ring lance. GRAY. Our author, too, professes to direct his course amidst regions hitherto unexplored; but, considering the approved assistants he employs, his undertaking is not so hazardous. Doctor Beattie's Minstrel evidently appears to direct him on numerous occasions, and the associates of young Edwin are the friends of " Genius." She sets out with "Memory," "Judgment," and " Sympathy," and very opportunely concludes with "Education." Of Edwin, it is related, And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb, Genius, too, BEATTIE'S MINSTREL. "Difdains the paths that common footsteps tread, The defect of most poetry, profusion of epithet, is palpable in the "Powers of Genius." Meaning is too often extended by such means into feeble procerity, resembling a flaccid, overgrown stripling. Verse should be compact in structure like little, short, muscular men. Pope's compression of sense, which Swift ad Vol. II. No. 10. Www hold. "When Pope can in one couplet fix More fenfe than I can do in fix." Epithets, are the spice and seasoning of poetry, and when administered by a skilful hand, surprisingly delicious. But Mr. L. to condescend to a pun, may be considered all spice. "Though Genius moftly loves fome daring theme Now, to use a rustick phrase, a man may make lines like these "till the cows come home." Mr. Linn, too, is frequently adjectively vulgar. "She leads BOLD Cæfar o'er the ROLLING flood," Though notes are as useful in didactick, as in any species of poetry, a little frugality is necessary in their application. They should and as concise as the nature of certainly be german to the text; explanation permits. But, on this subject, we are fearful, that we have been much oftener detained, than instructed. With Mr. Linn it is but to "See Johnfon feated on his critick throne." or see any body, or any thing else, and then follows a long, boring, biographical note, as long (as Cowper would say) as "from here to Eartham." Mr. Linn, too, in his extraordinary faculty of vision, has very frequently reminded us of the apparition in " Tom Thumb," and, with regard to the length of a note, we were often induced to cry out with Polonius in the play, "this is too long," and with Hamlet," it shall to the barber's, with your beard." If there was any novelty in these marginal preachments, they might be tolerably supportable, but they are old, literary anecdotes, obsolete as the cakes of roses and musty seeds of Romeo's apothecary. Lest we should be considered as contemplating separately the melancholy features of our performance, we are gratified by encountering the following opportunities for approbation. It is easier to criticise, than compose; and he who censures when the majority applaud, should be suspected as a friend and abandoned as a critick. Mr. Linn's descriptions of the lady of Prospective is neat, delicate,and sprightly. "Bid Hope ftand tiptoe with her torch on fire." And the circumstance attending the production of Genius is strongly imagined and decidedly given. Only an age can give a giant birth, Then more than earthquakes thake the folid earth.”~ There are unpremeditated lines "When Homer wrote, no critick's laws confind The last couplet is not, perhaps, most immediate of poets. Fers Amid The arguments of the "Three Parts" of "The Powers of Genius" are as follows. ARGUMENT. FIRST Genius defcribed.-Invention, the criterion of Genius.-The alliance of Genius with Fancy-Memory, Judg- rules. Alonzo d'Ercilla.-Genius pro- ARGUMENT. SECOND. Education necessary to give Genius its full power and usefulness.—Beattie's Edwin defcribed.-Milton.-Johnfon.Sir William Jones-Subjects of Genius. -Satire.-Genius, though daring, excels alfo in fubjects of the most soft and pleafing kind.-Virgil's Eclogues.—Petrarch.-Gray-Cowper-The force of Fiction. Rouffeau-Richardfon.- Female Genius.-The varied directions Fielding-Genlis-Burney.--Radcliffe. of Genius. |