and indifferent parts of a literary work, would exceed his faculties of attention, his candour, and his sagacity.

Logic and Poetry.

So widely separate are the provinces of these studies, that they seem incompatible, even in the minds of very considerable intellects. Who does not admire the precision with which the late David Hume, the historian, treats many subjects of rational enquiry; yet, in his observations on poetry, he seems not only out of his element, but many may think out of his senses also. What admirer of our great bard can read, without indignation, the following criticism;- Nervous and picturesque expressions, as well as descriptions, abound in him but in vain we look either for purity or simplicity of diction.'+

Prose Writing.

This mode of composition is more difficult than those may imagine who have not tried it. Those who trust solely to the rules of grammar, will write like boys ignorant of accredited phraseology, and will attempt without success new combinations. Those who altogether confide in their memories

* Shakespeare. ↑ History of England, vol. vi. p. 162.

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fall into a patchwork kind of composition, made up from phrases of various and very different authors. The solid grandeur of Johnson, the splendid diction of Gibbon, the lively flippancy of Horace Walpole, would exhibit a very strange and uncouth arrangement; as the mere schoolboy composition would be flat, dull, and obscure. dictionary of phrases, from our most eminent writers, would be as valuable to the young prose writer, as the Gradus ad Parnassum is to the unfledged votary of the Muses. The works of Dryden, Swift, and Addison would make an excellent Thesaurus Anglicitatis.'

Commerce between Scholars and the Great.

M. D'Alembert, who by his connection with the great Frederic of Prussia was a proper commentator on the line of the philosophical Latin poet,

'Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici,"

wrote an essay on the Commerce between Men of Letters and the Great, but gives little encouragement for the cultivation of it to his fellow literati. Should you,' says he, ⚫ enter into an argument with your Mæcenas, and get the better of him; as his personal merit sunk, so would his assumed consequence rise, and a quarrel would

certainly ensue, and perhaps both parties would take umbrage, and the connection would soon be dissolved." Perhaps this circumstance occasioned the separation of the late Lord Orford and the Poet Gray.

Subject continued.

D'Alembert was indeed a man of a very independent mind; and tells, con amore, in the above treatise, the bon mot of a friend, a man of letters, who was compelled, by some cogent reasons, to attend on a Minister of State. 'Sir, he, the patron, endeavoured to be on a very familiar footing with me, but with much seeming reverence. I rejected his overtures of intimacy. His proposed epitaph, written by himself, is strougly characteristic of the writer:

"He was greatly esteemed by many honest men. "He died poor, because he would not sacrifice his liberty to the will of a powerful Monarch."

D'Alembert's Letter to Madame Deffand; in which he declares, that he would be content to have this in scription on his tomb-stone.

The same Subject.

D'Alembert divides the scholars who pay their courtships to the great into four Jescriptions,

"The first bear this servitude without feeling it, and are beyond the power of cure. The second wince under the yoke, but bear it from the hopes of profit contingent or in possession. The third

class are those persons, who in the morning are determined to break their chains, and in the evening rivet them still faster, and seem to reject the favours with one hand, and accept them with the other, and are never decisive. The fourth class is by far the worst, and are more numerous than one would imagine. These persons pay the utmost reverence to their patrons in public, whilst in private they abuse them with the utmost rancour. They resemble a sect of ancient philosophers, who, being obliged to enter the Temple of Jupiter at certain times, on leaving it reviled the god most handsomely."

Translations from the French.

Though to every educated person some general rules of grammar must be known, and to such the French tongue cannot be difficult to interpret; yet in no department of literature is there so much neglect or ignorance of language than in English translations from the French. It is true that the French have many phrases, and that idioms are

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often difficult to match with correspondent ones in another language; yet booksellers should, at least, employ persons of education in these works; if they do not, but frequently omit this caution, mere English readers are scurvily used by men who should always be, and often are, patrons of literature.

Principles of Science.

Many persons have not leisure, and others, though attached to literary pursuits, may not have perseverance to enter into the detail of science, yet have comprehension enough to learn the principles. He who would not follow the process of calculating an eclipse, would yet wish to know the rationale of the calculation. He who would not undertake to penetrate the secret of algebra, would yet be very desirous of knowing its nature and power. How many persons, on the contrary, among the learned, but surely not among the knowing, plod in particulars, without ever using their minds to trace principles. Hence arises much error in matters of importance, and the calculator in his statements proves himself a very good arithmetician, or even algebraist, but a very bad logician. The famous Dr. Price,* in his Essay on *Price on Population, &c. G

VOL. I.