But

nowhere said a word in his praise. His par-
tial editor admits that he has produced noth-
ing which can be called either sublime or
pathetic; and we are of the same opinion as
to the beautiful. The merit of correct rhymes
and easy diction, we shall not deny him; but
the diction is almost invariably that of the
most ordinary prose, and the matter of his
pieces no otherwise poetical, than that the
Muses and some other persons of the Hea-
then mythology are occasionally mentioned.
He has written lampoons and epigrams, and
satirical ballads and abusive songs in great
abundance, and with infinite success.
these things are not poetry;-and are better
in verse than in prose, for no other reason
than that the sting is more easily remem-
bered, and the ridicule occasionally enhanced,
by the hint of a ludicrous parody, or the drol-
lery of an extraordinary rhyme. His witty
verses, when they are not made up of mere
filth and venom, seem mostly framed on the
model of Hudibras; and are chiefly remarka-
ble, like those of his original, for the easy and
apt application of homely and familiar phrases,
to illustrate ingenious sophistry or unexpected
allusions. One or two of his imitations of
Horace, are executed with spirit and elegance,
and are the best, we think, of his familiar
pieces; unless we except the verses on his
own death, in which, however, the great
charm arises, as we have just stated, from
the singular ease and exactness with which
he has imitated the style of ordinary society,
and the neatness with which he has brought
together and reduced to metre such a number
of natural, characteristic, and common-place
expressions. The Cadenus and Vanessa is,
of itself, complete proof that he had in him
none of the elements of poetry. It was writ-
ten when his faculties were in their perfec-
tion, and his heart animated with all the ten-
derness of which it was ever capable-and
yet it is as cold and as flat as the ice of Thulé.
Though describing a real passion, and a real
perplexity, there is not a spark of fire nor a
throb of emotion in it from one end to the
other. All the return he makes to the warm-
hearted creature who had put her destiny into
his hands, consists in a frigid mythological
fiction, in which he sets forth, that Venus and
the Graces lavished their gifts on her in her
infancy, and moreover got Minerva, by a trick,
to inspire her with wit and wisdom. The style
is mere prose-or rather a string of familiar
and vulgar phrases tacked together in rhyme,
like the general tissue of his poetry. How-
ever, it has been called not only easy but
elegant, by some indulgent critics-and there-
fore, as we take it for granted nobody reads it
now-a-days, we shall extract a few lines at
randon, to abide the censure of the judicious.
To as they seem to be about as much poetry
18 so many lines out of Coke upon Littleton.

"But in the poets we may find

A wholesome law, time out of mind,
Had been confirm'd by Fate's decree,
That gods, of whatsoe'er degree,
Resume not what themselves have given,
Οι any brother god in Heaven:

Which keeps the peace among the gods,
Or they must always be at odds:
And Pallas, if she broke the laws,
Must yield her foe the stronger cause;
A shame to one so much ador'd
For wisdom at Jove's council board;
Besides, she fear'd the Queen of Love
Would meet with better friends above.
And though she must with grief reflect,
To see a mortal virgin deck'd
With graces hitherto unknown
To female breasts except her own:
Yet she would act as best became
A goddess of unspotted fame.
She knew by augury divine,
Venus would fail in her design:
She studied well the point, and found
Her foe's conclusions were not sound,
From premises erroneous brought;
And therefore the deduction's naught,
And must have contrary effects,
To what her treacherous foe expects."
Vol. xiv. pp, 448, 449.

The Rhapsody of Poetry, and the Legion Club, are the only two pieces in which there is the least glow of poetical animation; though, in the latter, it takes the shape of ferocious and almost frantic invective, and, in the former, shines out but by fits in the midst of the usual small wares of cant phrases and snappish misanthropy. In the Rhapsody, the fol lowing lines, for instance, near the beginning. are vigorous and energetic.

"Not empire to the rising sun

By valour, conduct, fortune won;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing laws to govern states;
Not skill in sciences profound
So large to grasp the circle round:
Such heavenly influence require,
As how to strike the Muse's lyre.

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot;
Not bastard of a pedlar Scot;
Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of bridewell or the stews;
Nor infants dropped, the spurious pledges
Of gypsies littering under hedges;
Are so disqualified by fate

To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he whom Phoebus in his ire
Has blasted with poetic fire."

Vol. xiv. pp. 310, 311. Yet, immediately after this nervous and poetical line, he drops at once into the lowness of vulgar flippancy.

"What hope of custom in the fair,

While not a soul demands your ware?" &c. There are undoubtedly many strong lines, and much cutting satire in this poem; but the staple is a mimicry of Hudibras, without the richness or compression of Butler; as, for example,

"And here a simile comes pat in:

Though chickens take a month to fatten,
The guests in less than half an hour,
Will more than half a score devour.
So, after toiling twenty days
To earn a stock of pence and praise,
Thy labours, grown the critic's prey,
Are swallow'd o'er a dish of tea:
Gone to be never heard of more,
Gone where the chickens went before.
How shall a new attempter learn
Of different spirits to discern.
And how distinguish which is which.
The poet's vein, or scribbling itch ?"

Vol. xiv. pp. 311, 312

Such were the libels which a Tory writer | distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for found it safe to publish under a Whig admin- he will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the fairest offer."-Vol. iv. pp. 149-152. istration in 1736; and we do not find that any national disturbance arose from their impuWe have not left ourselves room now to nity, though the libeller was the most cele- say much of Swift's style, or of the general brated and by far the most popular writer of character of his literary genius:-But our the age. Nor was it merely the exasperation opinion may be collected from the remarks ot bad fortune that put that polite party upon we have made on particular passages, and the use of this discourteous style of discus- from our introductory observations on the sion. In all situations, the Tories have been school or class of authors, with whom he the great libellers and, as is fitting, the must undoubtedly be rated. On the subjects great prosecutors of libels; and even in this to which he confines himself, he is unquesearly age of their glory, had themselves, when tionably a strong, masculine, and perspicuous in power, encouraged the same licence of writer. He is never finical, fantastic, or defamation, and in the same hands. It will absurd-takes advantage of no equivocations scarcely be believed, that the following char- in argument-and puts on no tawdriness for acter of the Earl of Wharton, then actually ornament. Dealing always with particulars, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was publicly he is safe from all great and systematic misprinted and sold, with his Lordship's name takes; and, in fact, reasons mostly in a series and addition at full length, in 1710, and was of small and minute propositions, in the handone of the first productions by which the rev-ling of which, dexterity is more requisite than erend penman bucklered the cause of the Tory ministry, and revenged himself on a parsimonious patron. We cannot afford to give it at full length-but this specimen will answer our purpose.

Thomas, Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant

of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climateric, without any visible effects of old age, either on his body or has mind; and in spite of a continual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both. His behaviour is in all the forms of a young man at fiveand-twenty. Whether he walks, or whistles, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each, beyond a templar of three years' standing.He seems to be but an ill dissembler, and an ill liar, although they are the two talents he most practises, and most values himself upon. The ends he has gained by lying, appear to be more owing to the frequency, than the art of them: his lies being somemes detected in an hour, often in a day, and always in a week. He tells them freely in mixed Companies, although he knows half of those that hear him to be his enemies, and is sure they will discover them the moment they leave him. He swears solemnly he loves and will serve you; and your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those about him, you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel-door. Ile is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion; but he chooses at present to whore with a Papist. He has sunk his fortune by endeavouring rain one kingdom, and has raised it by going far

the ruin of another.

genius; and practical good sense, with an exact knowledge of transactions, of far more importance than profound and high-reaching judgment. He did not write history or phi losophy, but party pamphlets and journals;— not satire, but particular lampoons;-not pleasantries for all mankind, but jokes for a particular circle. Even in his pamphlets, the broader questions of party are always waved, to make way for discussions of personal or immediate interest. His object is not to show that the Tories have better principles of gov ernment than the Whigs, but to prove Lord Oxford an angel, and Lord Somers a fiend, to convict the Duke of Marlborough of avarice or Sir Richard Steele of insolvency;-not to point out the wrongs of Ireland, in the depression of her Catholic population, her want of education, or the discouragement of her industry; but to raise an outery against an amendment of the copper or the gold coin, or against a parliamentary proposition for remit ting the tithe of agistment. For those ends, it cannot be denied, that he chose his means judiciously, and used them with incomparable skill and spirit. But to choose such ends, we humbly conceive, was not the part either of a high intellect or a high character; and his genius must share in the disparage. ment which ought perhaps to be confined to the impetuosity and vindictiveness of his temper.

"He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoic; and thinks them well recompensed, by a return of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father. "He has three predominant passions, which you will seldom find united in the same man, as arising from different dispositions of mind, and naturally thwarting each other: these are, love of power, ore of money, and love of pleasure; they ride him sometimes by turns, sometimes all together. Since he went into Ireland, he seems most disposed to the second, and has met with great success; hav-fectation; and chiefly remarkable for a great ing gained by his goverment, of under two years, five-and-forty thousand pounds by the most favour able computation, half in the regular way, and half in the prudential.

Of his style, it has been usual to speak with great, and, we think, exaggerated praise. It is less mellow than Dryden's-less elegant than Pope's or Addison's-less free and noble than Lord Bolingbroke's-and utterly without the glow and loftiness which belonged to our earlier masters. It is radically a low and homely style-without grace and without af

"He was never yet known to refuse, or keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but with an Exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a pension); yet he broke even that, and, Ironless, deceived us both. But here I desire to

choice and profusion of common words and expressions. Other writers, who have used a plain and direct style, have been for the most part jejune and limited in their diction, and generally give us an impression of the poverty as well as the tameness of their language; but Swift, without ever trespassing into figured or poetical expressions, or ever employing a

word that can be called fine, or pedantic, has | that except 300l. which he got for Gulliver, ho

a prodigious variety of good set phrases always at his command, and displays a sort of homely richness, like the plenty of an old English dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy burgess. This taste for the plain and substantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists not on such elements; but was in the highest degree favourable to the effect of his humour, very much of which depends on the imposing gravity with which it is delivered, and on the various turns and heightenings it may receive from a rapidly shifting and always appropriate expression. Almost all his works, after The Tale of a Tub, seem to have been written very fast, and with very little minute care of the diction. For his own ease, therefore, it is probable they were all pitched on a low key, and set about on the ordinary tone of a familiar letter or conversation; as that from which there was a little hazard of falling, even in moments of negligence, and from which any rise that could be effected, must always be easy and conspicuous. A man and in maintaining them, always in the fully possessed of his subject, indeed, and gravest and most familiar language, with a confident of his cause, may almost always consistency which somewhat palliates their write with vigour and effect, if he can get extravagance, and a kind of perverted ingeover the temptation of writing finely, and nuity, which seems to give pledge for their really confine himself to the strong and clear sincerity. The secret, in short, seems to con exposition of the matter he has to bring for- sist in employing the language of humble ward. Half of the affectation and offensive good sense, and simple undoubting conviction, pretension we meet with in authors, arises to express, in their honest nakedness, sentifrom a want of matter, and the other half, ments which it is usually thought necessary from a paltry ambition of being eloquent and to disguise under a thousand pretences of ingenious out of place. Swift had complete truths which are usually introduced with a confidence in himself; and had too much real thousand apologies. The basis of the art is business on his hands, to be at leisure to in- the personating a character of great simplicity trigue for the fame of a fine writer;-in con- and openness, for whom the conventional or sequence of which, his writings are more ad- artificial distinctions of society are supposed mired by the judicious than if he had bestowed to have no existence; and making use of this all his attention on their style. He was so character as an instrument to strip vice and much a man of business, indeed, and so much folly of their disguises, and expose guilt in all accustomed to consider his writings merely as its deformity, and truth in all its terrors. means for the attainment of a practical end-dependent of the moral or satire, of which whether that end was the strengthening of a they may thus be the vehicle, a great part of party, or the wounding a foe-that he not only the entertainment to be derived from works disdained the reputation of a composer of of humour, arises from the contrast between pretty sentences, but seems to have been the grave, unsuspecting indifference of the thoroughly indifferent to all sorts of literary character personated, and the ordinary feelfame. He enjoyed the notoriety and influence ings of the world on the subjects which he which he had procured by his writings; but discusses. This contrast it is easy to heighten, it was the glory of having carried his point, by all sorts of imputed absurdities: in which and not of having written well, that he valued. case, the humour degenerates into mere farce As soon as his publications had served their and buffoonery. Swift has yielded a little to turn, they seem to have been entirely forgot- this temptation in The Tale of a Tub; but ten by their author;—and, desirous as he was scarcely at all in Gulliver, or any of his later of being richer, he appears to have thought writings in the same style. Of his talent for as little of making money as immortality by reviling, we have already said at least enough, means of them. He mentions somewhere, in some of the preceding pages.

never made a farthing by any of his writings. Pope understood his trade better, and not only made knowing bargains for his own works, but occasionally borrowed his friends pieces, and pocketed the price of the whole. This was notoriously the case with three volumes of Miscellanies, of which the greater part were from the pen of Swift.

In humour and in irony, and in the talent of debasing and defiling what he hated, we join with all the world in thinking the Dean of St. Patrick's without a rival. His humour, though sufficiently marked and peculiar, is not to be easily defined. The nearest description we can give of it, would make it consist in ex pressing sentiments the most absurd and ridiculous-the most shocking and atrocious -or sometimes the most energetic and origi nal-in a sort of composed, calm, and uncon scious way, as if they were plain, undeniable, commonplace truths, which no person could dispute, or expect to gain credit by announcing

In

(January, 1810.)

Correspondance inédite de MADAME DU DEFFAND, avec D'Alembert, Montesquieu, le Président Henault, La Duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Choiseul, De Staal, &c. &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809.

Lettres de MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE, écrites depuis l'Année 1773 jusqu'à l'Année 1776, &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809.

THE popular works of La Harpe and Mar- Where the letters that are now given to the montel have made the names at least of these world have been secreted for the last thirty Indies pretty well known in this country; and years, or by whom they are at last publish we have been induced to place their corres-ed, we are not informed in either of the works pondence under one article, both because their history is in some measure connected, and because, though extremely unlike each other, they both form a decided contrast to our own national character, and, taken together, go far to exhaust what was peculiar in that of France. Most of our readers probably remember what La Harpe and Marmontel have said of these two distinguished women; and, at all events, it is not necessary for our purpose to give more than a very superficial account of them. Madame du Deffand was left a widow with a moderate fortune, and a great reputation for wit, about 1750; and soon after gave up her hotel, and retired to apartments in the tament de St. Joseph, where she continued to receive, almost every evening, whatever was most distinguished in Paris for rank, talent, or accomplishment. Having become almost blind in a few years thereafter, she found she required the attendance of some intelligent young woman, who might read and write for her, and assist in doing the honours of her conversazioni. For this purpose she cast her eyes on Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the illegitimate daughter of a man of rank, who had been boarded in the same convent, and was for some time delighted with her election. By and bye, however, she found that her young companion began to engross more of the notice of her visitors than she thought suitable; and parted from her with violent, generous, and implacable displeasure. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, carried with her the admiration of the greater part of her patroness' circle; and having obtained a small pension from government, opened her own doors to a society not less brilliant than that into which she had been initiated under Madame du Deifand. The fatigue, however, which she had undergone in reading the old marchioness asleep, had irreparably injured her health, which was still more impaired by the agitations of her own inflammable and ambitious spirit; and she died, before she had obtained middle age, about 1776,-leaving on the minds of almost all the eminent men in France, an impression of talent, and of ardour of imagination, which seems to have been considered as without example. Madame du Deffand continued to preside in her circle till a period of extreme old age; and died in 1780, in full possession of her faculties.

before us. That they are authentic, we con ceive, is demonstrated by internal evidence though, if more of them are extant, the selection that has been made appears to us to be a little capricious. The correspondence of Madame du Deffand reaches from the year 1738 to 1764;-that of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse extends only from 1773 to 1776. The two works, therefore, relate to different periods; and, being entirely of different characters, seem naturally to call for a separate consideration. We begin with the correspondence of Madame du Deffand, both out of respect to her seniority, and because the va riety which it exhibits seems to afford room for more observation.

As this lady's house was for fifty years the resort of every thing brilliant in Paris, it is natural to suppose, that she herself must have possessed no ordinary attraction-and to feel an eager curiosity to be introduced even to that shadow of her conversation which we may expect to meet with in her correspondence. Though the greater part of the letters are addressed to her by various correspondents, yet the few which she does write are strongly marked with the traces of her peculiar character and talent; and the whole taken together give a very lively idea of the structure and occupations of the best French society, in the days of its greatest splendour. Laying out of view the greater constitutional gaiety of our neighbours, it appears to us, that this society was distinguished from any that has ever existed in England, by three circumstances chiefly:-in the first place, by the exclusion of all low-bred persons; secondly, by the superior intelligence and cultivation of the women; and, finally, by the want of politi cal avocations, and the absence of political antipathies.

By the first of these circumstances, the old Parisian society was rendered considerably more refined, and infinitely more easy and natural. The general and peremptory pro scription of the bourgeois, excluded, no doubt, a good deal of vulgarity and coarseness; but it had a still better effect in excluding those feelings of mutual jealousy and contempt, and that conflict of family pride and consequential opulence, which can only be prevented from disturbing a more promiscuous assembly, by means of universal and systematic reserve.