cases where process of outlawry lay, the additions of the estate, degree, or profession, of the defendant should be inserted; this made it necessary to ascertain who was entitled to this degree; and it is now universally agreed, by those who are conversant in titles of honour, that there are seven sorts of Esquires.

1. Esquires of the king's body, limited to the number of four, and well known at St. James's; so that it is not necessary to describe more particularly this very small number.

2. The eldest sons of knights, and their eldest sons successively.

3. The eldest sons of the youngest sons of barons, and others of the greater nobility.

4. Such as the king invests with the collar of SS. as the kings at arms, heralds, &c. There are some modifications in this class, which, for my general purpose, are not necessary to be specified.

5. Esquires of the knights of the bath, being their attendants on their installation: these must bear coat-armour according to the law of arms, and are Esquires for life, and so are their eldest sons.

6. Sheriffs of counties and justices of peace, (with this distinction, that a sheriff, in regard to the dignity of the office, is an Esquire for life, but a justice of the peace only so long as he continues in the commission,) and all those who bear special office in the king's household, as gentlemen of the privy chamber, carvers, sewers, cupbearers, pensioners, serjeants at arms, and all that have any near or special dependence on the king's royal person, and are not knighted: also captains in the wars, recorded in the king's lists. (This includes generals, colonels, &c.)

Lastly, 7. Counsellors at law, bachelors of divinity, law, and physic: mayors of towns are reputed as Esquires, or equal to Esquires, though not really so. It is also a privilege to any of the king's ordinary or nearest attendants, who if he serve in the place of an Esquire, he is absolutely an Esquire by that service; for it is the place that dignifies the person, and not the person the place.

Now, Sir, as these are the only persons who have a right to the title of Esquires, I shall leave it to your readers to determine how many of our new Esquires possess the above right.

I am, Sir, yours,*

BLUEMANTLE.

LITERATURE OF THE GREEKS.

[From the Edinburgh Review of Mad. de Stael.]

Nor knowing any thing of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, Mad. de Staël takes the Greeks for the first inventors of literature-and explains many of their peculiarities by that supposition. The first development of talent, she says, is in poetry; and the first poetry consists in the rapturous description of striking objects in nature, or of the actions and exploits that are then thought of the greatest importance. There is little reflection-no nice development of feeling or character-and no sustained strain of tenderness or moral emotion in this primitive poetry; which charms almost entirely by the freshness and brilliancy of its colouringthe spirit and naturalness of its representations-and the air of freedom and facility with which every thing is executed. This was the age of Homer. After that, though at a long interval, came the age of Pericles: when human nature was a little more studied and regarded, and poetry received, accordingly, a certain cast of thoughtfulness, and an air of labour-eloquence began to be artful, and the rights and duties of men to be subjects of investigation. This, therefore, was the era of the tragedians, the orators, and the first ethical philosophers. Last came the age of Alexander, when science had superseded fancy, and all the talent of the country was turned to the pursuits of philosophy. This, Mad. de Staël thinks, is the natural progress of literature in all countries; and that of the Greeks is only distinguished by their having been the first that pursued it, and by the peculiarities of their mythology, and their political relations.

The state of society in these early times, was such as to impress very strongly on the mind those objects and occurrences which formed the first materials of poetry. The intercourse with distant countries being difficult and dangerous, the legends of the traveller were naturally invested with more than the modern allowance of the marvellous. The smallness of the civilized states connected every individual with its leaders, and made him personally a debtor for the protection which their prowess afforded from the robbers and wild beasts which then infested the unsubdued earth. Gratitude and terror, therefore, combined to excite the spirit of enthusiasm; and the same ignorance which imputed to the direct agency of the Gods the more rare and dreadful phenomena of nature, gave a character of supernatural greatness to the reported exploits of their heroes. Philosophy, which has led to the exact investigation of causes, has robbed the world of much VOL. II. New Series.

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of its sublimity; and by preventing us from believing much, and from wondering at any thing, has taken away half our enthusiasm, and more than half our admiration.

The purity of taste which characterizes the very earliest poetry of the Greeks, seems to us more difficult to be accounted for. Mad. de Staël ascribes it chiefly to the influence of their copious mythology; and the eternal presence of those Godswhich, though always about men, were always above them-and gave a tone of dignity or elegance to the whole scheme of their existence. Their tragedies were acted in temples-in the presence of the Gods, the fate of whose descendants they commemorated, and as a part of the religious solemnities instituted in their honour. The legends, in like manner, related to the progeny of the immortals and their feasts-their dwellings-their farming-their battles and every incident and occupation of their daily life being under the immediate sanction of some presiding deity, it was scarcely possible to speak of them in a vulgar or inelegant manner; and he nobleness of their style, therefore, appeared to result naturally from the elegance of their mythology.

Now, even if we could pass over the obvious objection, that this mythology was itself a creature of the same poetical imagination which it is here supposed to have modified, it is impossible not to observe, that though the circumstances here alluded to may account for the raised and lofty tone of the Grecian poetry, and for the exclusion of low or familiar life from their dramatic representations, it will not explain the far more substantial indications of pure taste afforded by the absence of all that gross exaggeration, violent incongruity, and tedious and childish extravagance, which are found to deform the primitive poetry of most other nations. The Hindoos, for example, have a mythology at least as copious and still more constantly interwoven with every action of their lives: but their legends are the very models of bad taste; and unite all the detestable attributes of obscurity, puerility, insufferable tediousness, and the most revolting and abominable absurdity. The poetry of the northern bards is not more commendable: but the Greeks are wonderfully rational and moderate in all their works of imagination; and speak, for the most part, with a degree of justness and brevity, which is only the more marvellous, when it is considered how much religion had to do in the business. A better explanation, perhaps, of their superiority, may be derived from recollecting that the sins of affectation, and injudicious effort, really cannot be committed where there are no models to be at once copied and avoided. The first writers naturally took possession of what was most striking, and most capable of producing effect in nature and in incident. Their successors, consequently, found these occupied; and were obliged, for the credit of their

originality, to produce something which should be different, at least, if not better, than their originals. They had not only to adhere to nature, therefore, but to avoid representing her exactly as she had been represented by the ancients; and when they could not accomplish both these objects, they contrived, at least, to make sure of the last. The Greeks had but one task to perform: they were in no danger of comparisons, or imputations of plagiarism; and wrote down whatever struck them as just and impressive, without fear of finding that they had been stealing from a predecessor. The wide world, in short, was before them, unappropriated and unmarked by any preceding footstep; and they took their way, without hesitation, by the most airy heights and sunny valleys; while those who came after, found it so seamed and crossed with tracks in which they were forbidden to tread, that they were frequently driven to make the most fantastic circuits and abrupt descents to avoid them.

The characteristic defects of the early Greek poetry are all to be traced to the same general causes the peculiar state of society, and that newness to which they were indebted for its principal beauties. They describe every thing, because nothing had been previously described; and encumber their whole diction with epithets that convey no information. There is no reach of thought, or fineness of sensibility, because reflection had not yet awakened the deeper sympathies of their nature; and we are perpetually shocked with the imperfections of their morality, and the indelicacy of their affections, because society had not subsisted long enough in peace and security to develop those finer sources of emotion. Those defects are most conspicuous in every thing that relates to women. They had absolutely no idea of that mixture of friendship, veneration, and desire, which is indicated by the word love, in the modern languages of Europe. The love of the Greek tragedians is a species of insanity or frenzy-a blind and ungovernable impulse inflicted by the Gods in their vengeance, and leading its humiliated victim to the commission of all sorts of enormities. Racine, in his Phædre, has ventured to exhibit a love of this description on a modern stage; but the softenings of delicate feeling-the tenderness and profound affliction which he has been forced to add to the fatal impulse of the original character, show, more strongly than any thing else, the radical difference between the ancient and the modern conception of the passion.

The political institutions of Greece had also a remarkable effect on their literature; and nothing can show this so strongly as the striking contrast between Athens and Sparta-placed under the same sky-with the same language and religion-and yet so opposite in their government and in their literary pursuits. The ruling passion of the Athenians was that of amusement; for, though

the emulation of glory was more lively among them than among any other people, it was still subordinate to their rapturous admiration of successful talent. Their law of ostracism is a proof how much they were afraid of their own propensity to idolize. They #could not trust themselves in the presence of one who had become too popular. This propensity also has had a sensible effect upon their poetry; and it should never be forgotten, that it was not composed to be read, and studied, and criticised, in the solitude of the closet, like the works that have been produced since the invention of printing; but to be recited to music before multitudes assembled at feasts and high solemnities, where every thing favoured the kindling and diffusion of that enthusiasm, of which the history now seems to us so incredible.

There is a separate chapter on the Greek drama, which is full of brilliant and original observations;-though we have already anticipated the substance of many of them. The great basis of its peculiarity was the constant interposition of the Gods. Almost all the violent passions are represented as the irresistible inspirations of a superior power;-almost all their extraordinary actions as the fulfilment of an oracle-the accomplishment of an unrelenting destiny. This, probably, added to the awfulness and terror of the representation, in an audience which believed implicitly in the reality of those dispensations. But it has impaired their dramatic excellence, by dispensing them too much from the necessity of preparing their catastrophes by a gradation of natural events—the exact delineation of character-and the touching representation of those preparatory struggles which precede a resolution of horror. Orestes kills his mother, and Electra encourages him to the deed -without the least indication, in either, of that poignant remorse which afterwards avenges the parricide. No modern dramatist could possibly have omitted so important and natural a part of the exhibition; but the explanation of it is found at once in the ruling superstition of the age. Apollo had commanded the murderand Orestes could not hesitate to obey. When it is committed, the Furies are commissioned to pursue him; and the audience shudders with reverential awe at the torments they inflict on the murderer. Human sentiments, and human motives, have but little to do in bringing about these catastrophes. They are sometimes suggested by the Chorus ;-but the heroes themselves act always by the order of the Gods. Accordingly, the authors of the most atrocious actions are seldom represented in the Greek tragedies as guilty, but as piacular :-and their general moral is rather that the Gods are omnipotent, than that crimes should give rise to punishment and detestation.

A great part of the effect of these representations must have depended on the exclusive nationality of their subjects, and the