THE

BALTIMORE REPERTORY,

OF PAPERS ON LITERARY AND OTHER TOPICS:

BY A SOCIETY OF GENTLEMEN.

La maxime n'est point fausse, qu'il n'y a si méchant livre dont on ne puisse tirer quelque chose de bon; aux uns on loue la doctrine, aux autres les expressions. S'il n'y a rien de bon de l'auteur, il rapporte possible quelque chose de rare qu'il a pris d'ailleurs.

DE LA CONNOISSANCE DES BONS LIVRES.

SINCE Denterville's arrival in town he had possessed frequent opportunities of observing the number of persons that regularly attended the levees of the minister; he had, with envy, remarked the number of lucrative places with which that person was always enabled to reward the fidelity and services of his numerous adherents; and the extensive weight that such a power, when judiciously employed, must necessarily bestow on all his measures. He had seen him familiarly converse with the most exalted characters of the realm, nay, even with the sovereign himself: and the unbounded partiality the latter entertained towards him was visible to the perception of every one. "This, after all," said Denterville, one day VOL. 1.No. 6. Ll

as he silently revolved all these circumstances in his mind, "this is certainly the happy man. Possessed of such an exalted station, he must envy no one; the numerous offices he can perform for his friends must render him beloved; the confidence reposed in him by his sovereign, and the crowds that are dependent on his bounty, must secure him universal respect, and, encircled with blessings like these, he must be unavoidably happy."

Denterville, indeed, well knew that the generality of the people were extremely disgusted with the expensive prodigality of the present administration, and with the oppressive taxes, still accumulating, that were continually imposed upon them; but, at the same time, however shallow in other respects his political knowledge might be, he was perfectly sensible, that as long as the minister was able to maintain his interest with the majority in parliament, he might securely smile at the harmless execrations of the rabble, or the impotent endeavours of the disaffected party. More than once he felt himself openly inclined to abandon the opinions and connexions of his friends the anti-ministerialists, and to offer himself, boldly, to his former adversaries, as a volunteer, able, as well as willing, to employ his powerful weapons in the defence of their cause; but his unconquerable pride, that quality which too generally supplies the place of innate virtue, was always sufficient to restrain him from executing these unprincipled designs. Secretly pining, however, for having embarked in what he now esteemed such an unprofitable and desperate scheme, and detesting the man whose situation he considered as so greatly preferable to his own, he began immediately to exclaim still louder against him; and, as he imagined he should never be able to ascend in the scale of happiness to an height equal with his antagonist, he very naturally endeavoured, by an inverse proportion, to reduce him on a level with himself.

In a short time he rendered himself conspicuous in the house, rather for the virulence than the eloquence of his lan

guage. Every measure, however necessary, every scheme, however judicious, that had the misfortune to be first suggested by the minister in parliament, was reprobated by him. in the most vehement manner; and, from being but an inferior, he soon, by these extraordinary methods, became the most formidable enemy of the administration. In all his harangues, in every oration, he demonstrated to the people, by what he was pleased to call incontrovertible arguments, that their glorious constitution was secretly subverted, and the prosperity of the kingdom irretrievably overthrown. He assured them that they were on the brink of destruction; at the very edge of a precipice; that nothing could preserve them but a change of their ministers: and he conjured them by every moral and political consideration, by their publick welfare & domestick happiness, nay, by their very existence as a nation, immediately to commence such a salutary measure.

The moderate, and more respectable part of the nation, heard his complaints against the servants of government with outward indifference and inward suspicion; they were surprised that he, influenced, as he affirmed, by no other motives than the general welfare, should on a sudden, become such a strenuous and disinterested patriot; but the mob, who, resembling in some degree himself, were always discontented with their present situation, listened to him with rapture, and implicitly believed his most extravagant assertions. In a short time he had the appellation given him of "Man of the People;" the voice of wisdom was effectually drowned in the tumultuous exclamations of a licentious multitude; and, by a strange infatuation, the whole kingdom appeared unanimously to resound with eulogies on Denterville.

Some fresh taxes the minister was, about that time, obliged to impose, for the further prosecution of a disastrous war, greatly augmented the publick discontent. Cabals were formed, societies were instituted, confederacies were made for the determined opposition of what was now deemed his uncon

stitutional measures; the throne of majesty was overwhelmed with petitions for his immediate removal; the party that withstood him in Parliament was lately considerably increased; and at length unable to resist the torrent of an angry op position, he resigned, with reluctance, a station he was no longer in a condition to maintain.

Now it was the ingenuity of Denterville appeared in a manner so conspicuous. He foiled, with wonderful dexterity, a crowd of competitors; he alternately employed, as most convenient to the prosecution of his designs, flattery and entreaty, threatening and promises, persuasions and presents; he encouraged the discontented, excited the populace, raised their expectations, and really promised them their most extravagant demands; and by his skilful management, he, alas! to his own misfortune, was finally victorious. The favourite of the people was constituted their prime minister; and the party which he had joined, as well as those he had formerly opposed, beheld with equal astonishment and disgust, an obscure individual, entirely unknown in the sphere of politics till within a couple of years, elevated to that honourable rank which each had the vanity to suppose was peculiarly due to himself. Every nobleman in the realm was incensed ; and the ambitious Denterville was presented, by his sovereign, with the vacant office, not on account of any partiality the latter entertained towards him, but merely to appease the presumptuous murmurs of a discontented multitude.

No one can suppose that Denterville could derive the smallest degree of satisfaction from a station obtained in such an extraordinary manner. There was not a leading man throughout the kingdom, whom he could, with confidence, rely upon as his faithful friend; there was scarcely a single courtier but who, at the same time when, in the usual compli mentary language of a court, he expressed the most unbounded affection for his person, waited with an inward impatience for the moment of his degradation; and his only reliance

was placed in the continuance of the affection of that populace, whose opinions are proverbial for their fluctuation, whose, aversions and partialities are always formed with equal inconsideracy, and who are liable to be enflamed and misled by every orator who will flatter and harangue them. If he should be once deprived of their support and affection, he knew, too well, his fall was inevitable. Like the courtier of Dionysius, he constantly beheld the suspended sword, supported only by a single: thread, hovering over him; at the sumptuous banquet, or the gilded couch, he shuddered with horror as he silently viewed the fate that was impending; and a continual solicitude for the fearful production of a tremendous futurity, prevented him from participating even in the scanty enjoyments of his newly acquired situation.

"It is more easy," says the father of our dramatic writers, "to teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow our own instructions ;" and it certainly does not require the wisdom of a sage to be enabled to observe, that in the political, as in the moral world, to cen. sure the imperfections of an act already performed, demands by far less ingenuity and understanding than, in our turn, to execute one equally judicious and equally salutary. The merciless marauder may easily destroy, within the fleeting space of a single hour, that magnificent structure which has employed the labor and dexterity of the artist during the entire revolution of a century.

The abilities of Denterville, it must be acknowledged with a sigh, were solely of this destructive nature. By his specious objections and inflammatory language, the sword and buckler of a popular oratar, he had been empowered, at his pleasure, to oppose and overturn the most prudent measure of his preliminary antagonist; but scarcely was he seated in the place of the person whose conduct he had reprobated, before, corrected by experience, he became perfectly sensible of his own incapacity, and was unable, during the course of a short