What strengthens this conjecture is, that those talents, which you are pleased to take from Dr. Bentley, you liberally bestow upon Mr. Hobbes.1

According to this rule of inversion, how shall we, my Lord, interpret the many fine things you tell us of yourself? such as that "you are a true lover of peace and quietness, of mutual freedom, candour, and benevolence; that you detest the jealous and peevish squabbles of authors." These are virtues, which upon your Lordship's report we gave you credit for; it would be with extreme reluctance we should find ourselves obliged to carry them to the other side of the account.

But these are groundless appréhensions. You have favoured the word with a faithful portrait of yourself, however you have daubed and disguised those of other people: I have at this time your letter to the Demonstrator of the Divine Legation of Moses before me; and I hold it for impossible, that the author of any work, so full of pleasant and innocent raillery, so replete with playful and facetious conceits, can be capable of wrath, rancour, and malevolence. Can any thing be more lively than the strain in which you accost your Right Reverend correspondent in the second page of your epistle?-"I thought," says your Lordship, "you might possibly whip me at the cart's a- (I beg pardon, I should have said) "cart's tail, in a note to Divine Legation."-Inimitable humour! courtly, elegant, episcopal wit! so severe upon Bishop W; so very just and suitable to yourself! never did I know a whipping better laid on or more properly applied. But behold another attitude!" Or pillory me in the Dunciad."-Surely there is something ravishingly delectable, when a grave, wise, and dignified priest, or prelate, like your Lordship, surprises one all at once with a stroke of this nature; there is no withstanding it.-But your vein is not yet exhausted, and you proceed-" or, perhaps, have ordered me a kind of Bridewell correction by one of your Beadles in a pamphlet." Well, I protest, my Lord, this climax of yours exceeds in profundity of false humour every thing that Swift has given us in his Art of Sinking. We laugh indeed; but it is not at Bishop W——: you ask us to an entertainment provided in his name, while your Lordship obligingly pays the whole cost. These postures, in which you have exhibited yourself before us, put me in mind of the freaks of a Merry Andrew, who suffers himself to be kicked and cuffed and tweaked by the nose, to make sport

Page 21.

2

I

for the mob; while the vile empiric imposes upon them his nostrums and quackeries, the paltry sweepings of the counters, for universal panaceas. When we expected some solemn sententious reproof from the learned and pious Prelector on the Hebrew Poesy, out comes all Bartlemy Fair let loose upon us at once; and we see your Lordship whipt at the cart's tail; posted up in the pillory; flogged by the Beadles of Bridewell; caned by Bishop W's footman; hunted and waylaid by his Cherokees and Iroquois, and at length (good man!) exhibited on a Scaffold, erected on purpose for you, and in the most conspicuous place. How much you must have profited by your studies on the book of Job, this example of your patience demonstrates: but what agreeable company to introduce us into! and you seem so sociable and intimate with them; Footmen and Bum-bailiffs, Beadles, Constables, Hangmen, and wild Indians! Edifying society! elegant allusions! taste, that savours of the kennels of Saint Giles's; jests, that would put the Ordinary of Newgate to the blush; and wit, the genuine offspring, not of Athens, but of the Old Bailey!

Now, my Lord, would I venture to undergo all the discipline your Lordship has run through, if that old cynic Dr. Bentley would have stirred a muscle of his face to laughter at all this pleasantry?-No, no; he had no taste or capacity, but for hedging and ditching, and milking of Goats; not a syllable of all this would he have comprehended. In matters of such pure taste, as your Lordship has now given us a sample of; compositions of a character so different from any he ever had been used to; style of a colour so directly opposite to his own, and a manner of thinking so utterly unlike that of any gentleman, who ever thought at all, I do allow, and am persuaded he would not have shown the least shadow of discernment.

For this, however, I do seriously, and from the ground of my heart, thank your Lordship again and again, viz. that when you informed the world of his utter want of taste, you consented to give us so fair a specimen of your own. But your railleries are not confined to yourself only, you are wonderfully pleasant upon the patriarchs. Your arch insinuations about Abraham's offering his son Isaac,+ are infinitely facetious. I was so ignorant as to consider this as a circumstance of a most serious and edifying nature; an exalted instance of the most perfect faith in God, and obedience to his word, and a sacred type of our Redeemer's death and passion, selected

' Page 11. VOL. XX.

2 Ibid. CI.JI.

3 Page 4.
NO. XL.

4 Page 16.

2 A

as the passage of scripture best suited to our Good Friday's meditation; I have been apt therefore to think and to speak of this act of the patriarch's with reverence and devotion. Your Lordship treats it with the levity of a Milesian Fable, and puts some arch queries upon the matter relative to the sin of Sodom. This sin of Sodom, it seems, has been a sort of stumbling-block to your Lordship, and you tell us you have hunted after it from the beginning of the Bible to the end. The search might be useful, though the object of it was not the most worthy. I hope, my Lord, you were not equally inquisitive, when you turned to your Catullus in search of those reproachful terms, (Caprimul gus aut Fossor,) to bestow them upon Dr. Bentley. Had you ransacked that author through, as you did the Bible, every leaf would have furnished you with descriptions of the sin of Sodom. As good luck will have it, you have carried us into one of his cleanliest poems; and as your quotation put me upon reading it over, I really thought I traced the features of your Lordship, as strongly marked out in the picture of Suffenus, as you conceived you did those of Dr. Bentley; for this Suffenus, says the poet,2

"Homo est venustus, et dicax, et urbanus,
Idemque longe plurimos facit versus :

*

neque idem unquam

Æque est beatus, ac poema quum scribit,
Tam gaudet in se, tamque se ipse miratur."

The moral, with which the epigram concludes, I more particularly recommend to your Lordship.

"Nimirum idem omnes fallimur; neque est quisquam
Quem non in aliqua re videre Suffenum

Possis: suus quoique adtributus est error:

Sed non videmus manticæ quid in tergo est."

But I have detained your Lordship a long time, and hasten to conclude myself,

My Lord,

Your Lordship's most obedient humble Servant,

A MEMBER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.

1 Page 17.

2 Vide Cat. ex rec. Is. Voss. p. 50.

CAMBRIDGE PRIZE POEM FOR 1805.L

THE RESTORATION OF LEARNING IN THE EAST.

LET there be light!"-So spake th' Almighty Word,
And streams of splendor gush'd around their Lord.
Forth at that bidding, emulous to run

His course of glory, sprang the giant Sun;
And, as he chas'd the scatter'd rear of night,"
O'er the wide East diffus'd his earliest light.
There while his infant beam on Ganges play'd,
Or hung entranc'd o'er Agra's spicy glade,
India, first cherish'd with his orient ray,
Shone like a bride in brightest colours gay.
Cradled on earth's soft lap, its lowly bed,
In blushing pride luxuriant Butea spread :3
Itself a grove, the banyan there was seen,
Arch within arch, and " echoing walks between;"
There Vegetation fix'd her choice abode,
And one sweet garden all the region glow'd.
When the world sunk into its wat'ry grave,
India rose brilliant from the penal wave;

This is reprinted in the Author's Works, just published in three Octavo Vols. price 21. 2s.

The Rev. Claudius Buchanan, Vice-Provost of the College of Fort William in Bengal, and formerly a Member of Queen's College, Cambridge (where he proceeded to the degree of B. A.) gave to the University, in 1804, the Sum of Two Hundred and Ten Pounds; desiring that it might be divided into the under-mentioned Prizes:

I. One Hundred Pounds for an English Prose Dissertation, "On the best Means of Civilising the Subjects of the British Empire in India, and of Diffusing the Light of the Christian Religion throughout the Eastern World." II. Sixty Pounds for an English Poem, "On the Restoration of Learning in the East."

III. Twenty-five Pounds for a Latin Poem on the following Subject; "Collegium Bengalense."

IV. Twenty-five Pounds for a Greek Ode on the following Subject; « Γενέσθω Φῶς.”

The Gentlemen appointed by the University of Cambridge to award Mr. Buchanan's Prizes, after having adjudged the Second of the above Prizes to Mr. Charles Grant, Fellow of Magdalen College, unanimously expressed their wish for the publication of the following Poem. The Author, therefore, with a just sense of the honour which it has experienced, now submits it to general perusal.

2 "Scattering the rear of darkness." (Sacontalá, Act IV.) * Pennant'sOutlines of Hindostan,' II. 95.

4 Par. Lost, IX. 1107.

Shook off her stains, and rich in nature's charms,
Rush'd to the Sun's invigorating arms.

Rear'd in her fields, and foster'd by her skies,
The growth of mind attain'd its loftiest size:
There where the mango swell'd on every bough,
And double harvests teem'd without the plough,
Her happy race knew none save letter'd toil,
And Arts and Science bless'd the genial soil.

Ere Revelation flam'd from Sinai's height,
India rejoic'd in patriarchal light.

Tradition there preserv'd, from sire to son,
That first great truth, that God is All and One;
"Till fabling bards the mystic song began,
And learned darkness stole on wilder'd man.
His rigid code then selfish Brahma fram'd,
Then for his Caste its proud distinction claim'd;
Wav'd o'er the cheated realm his ebon wand,
And scatter'd demon-meteors through the land.

So born and fed 'mid Turan's mountain-snows,
Pure as his source, awhile young Ganges flows;
Through flow'ry meads his loit'ring way pursues,
And quaffs with gentle lip the nectar'd dews;
"Till, swoln by many a tributary tide,

His waters wash some tall pagoda's side:
Then broad and rough, 'mid rocks unknown to day,
Through tangled woods where tigers howl for prey,
He foams along; and, rushing to the main,
Drinks deep pollution from each tainted plain.
Yet still kind Science, prodigal of good,

Smil'd on her dusky suitor as he woo'd.

To him, while Europe's hordes lay whelm'd in shade,
Her fullest charms the radiant power display'd:
Show'd him the wonders of her secret lore,

The plant's retiring virtues to explore;

From midnight depths the sparkling gem to raise,
And bid it on the brow of beauty blaze:
Urged him afar to send his ranging eye

'Mid the bright orbs, that gild the peopled sky;
To trace the self-poised planets, as they run
In endless circle round their central sun:
See whirling earth, with two-fold impulse driven,
Wheel through the vast obliquity of heaven;
While day and night, and all the changeful year,
Turn as she turns, and hang on her career:

e