1 broken bottles and pen-knives flung on the flage, the benches torn up, the fcenes hurried into the street, and fet on fire. The curtain drew up; the mufie was of Cocchi, with a few airs of Pergoleti interfperfed. The fingers were (as ufual) deplorable, but there was one girl (fhe "called herself the Niccolina), with little voice, and lefs beanty; but with the utmoft juftnefs of ear, the firongeft expreflion of countenance, the moft fpeaking eyes, the greatest vivacity and variety of gefture. Her fic appearance inftantly fixed their attention; the tumult funk at once; or, if any murmur role, it was foon huthed by a general cry for filence. Her first air ravifhed every body; they forgot their prejudice; they forgot that they did not underftand a word of the language; they entered into all the humour of the part, made her repeat all her fongs, and continued their tranfports, their laughter, and applaufe, to the end of the piece. Within these three laft years, the Paganina and Amici have met with almoft the fame applaufe, once a week, from a polite audience, on the Opera flage. The truth is, the Opera itself, though fupported here, at a great expenfe, for fo many years, has rather maintained itfe f by the admiration beflowed on a few particular voices, or the borrowed taste of a few men of condition, that have learned in Italy how to admire, than by any genuine love we bear to the beft Italian mufic. Nor have we yet got any ftyle of our own; and this I attribute, in great meafure, to the language, which, in fpite of its energy, plenty, and the crowd of excellent writers this nation has produced, does yet (I am forry to fay it) retain too much of its barba rous original, to adapt itfelf to mufical compofition. I by no means with to have been born any thing but an Englishman; yet I fhould rejoice to exchange tongues with Italy. Why this Nation has made no advance, hitherto, in Painting and Sculpture, is hard to fay. The fact is undeniable; and we have the vanity to apologize for ourselves, as Virgil did for the Romans, excudent alii, &c. It is fure, that Architecture had introduced itself in the reign of the unfortunate Charles the Firt; and Inigo Jones has left us fome few monuments of kill, that fhew him capable of greater things. Charles had not only a love for the beautiful arts, but fome tafle in them. The confusion that foon followed fwept away his magnificent collection; the artifs were difperfed or ruined, and the arts difregarded till very lately. The young Monarch now on the throne is faid to efteem and underftand them. I wish he may have the leifure to cultivate, and the skill to encourage them, with due regard to merit; otherwile, it is better to neglect them. You, Sr, have pointed out the trne fources and the beft examples to your countrymen. They have nothing to do, but to be what they once were; and yet, perhaps, it is more difficult to restore good tafte to a nation that has degenerated, than to introduce it in one, where, as yet, it has never flourifhed. You are generous enough to with, and fanguine enough to forefee, that it fhall one day flourish in England. I, too, muft wifh, but can hardly extend my hopes fo far. It is well for us, that you do not fee our public exhibitions: but our artifis are yet in their infancy, and therefore I will not abfolutely defpair. I owe to Mr. How the honour I have of converfing with Count Algarotti; and it feems, as if I meant to indulge myself in the opportunity: but I have done, Sir: I will only add, that I am proud of your approbation, having no relifh for any other fame than what is conferred by the few real judges, that are fo thinly fcattered over the face of the earth. I am, Sir, with great refpect, your much obliged humble fervant, T. GRAY. A Monfieur Monfieur Le Comte 2. SIR, York, Sept. 20, 1763. I think myfelf more honoured than I can exprefs, both by your moft obliging letter to myself, and the very flattering account you have conde fcended to give of my dramatic poems in the Venetian Journal. The fuffrage of a name, fo well known and greatly refpected in the literary world, as that of Count Algarotti, makes me much more than fufficient amends for all the abufe, which the namclefs Critics here have cholen to throw out against my writings. Pleafe, Sir, to be affured, that I should much fooner have paid you this tribute tribute of my gratitude for the great honour you have done me, had I not waited (though alas! in vain) for the pleasure of returning you, at the fane time, my thanks for the very valuable prefent which you intended me. This alone made me defer writing; and it is now, with extreme concern, that I can only add I never received it. My friend Mr. Gray, I find, has the fame lofs. As I live at a distance from the metropolis, it is by his means that I endeavour to tranfmit this to you. I hope in a few months to compleat a collection of my Poems, which I have already revifed with fome care; and particularly Elfrida, which I have pruned of many luxuriant puerilities. These I shall have the honour of fending you by the affiftance of Lord Holderneffe, who is now at Paris, and intends to winter there. If Mr. How is ftill at Pifa, I beg you to make my belt compliments acceptable to him, and that you will believe me to be with the moft fincere and profound refpect, Sir, your moft obliged and moft obedient fervant, W. MASON. Count Algarotti. 3. SIR, London, Nov. 1763. I am ashamed of my own indolence in not anfwering your former letter; a fecond, which I have fince received, adds to my fhame, and quickens my motions. I can fee no manner of objection to your defign of publishing C. A.'s works compleat in your own country. It will be an evidence of your regard for him that cannot but be very acceptable to him. The Glafgow prefs, or that of Bafkervile, have given fpecimens of their art equal at leaft in beauty to any thing that Europe can produce. The expence you will not much regard on fuch an occafion; and, if you fuffer them to be fold, that would be greatly diminished, and moft probably reimburfed. As to the notes (and I think fome will be neceffary), I easily believe you will not overload the text with them; and, helide, every thing of that kind will be concerted between you. If you propofe any vignettes, or other matters of ornament, it would be well they were defigned in Italy, and the gravings execured either there or in France; for in this country they are woeful, and beyond meafure dear. The revifing of the prefs mult be your own labour, as tedious as it is inglorious: but to this you muft fubmit. As we improve in our types, &c. we grow daily more. negligent in point of correctness, and this even in our own tongue. What will it be in the Italian? I did not mean you thould have told Count Algarotti my objection ‡, at leaft not as from me, who have no pretence to take fuch a liberty with him; but I am glad he has altered the pai fage. He cannot wonder if I wished to fave to our own Nation the only honour it has in matters of taste; and no fmall one, fince neither Italy nor France have ever had the leaft notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when they fee it. Mr. Mafon has received the books in queftion from an unknown hand, which I take to be Mr. Hollis, from whom I too have received a beautiful fet of engravings as a prefent; I know not why unless as a friend of yours. Entre [I faw and read the beginning of this year the "Congreffo di Citéra§," and was exceffively pleafed in spite of prejudice; for I am naturally no friend to allegory, nor to poetical profe. nous, what gives me the leaft pleasure of any of his writings that I have feen, is the Newtonianifm. It is fo direct an imitation of Fontenelle, a writer not eafy to imitate, and leaft of all in the Italian tongue, where character and graces are of a higher flyle, and never adapt themfelves eafily to the elegant * Three fmall Treatifes, on Painting, the Opera, and the French Academy for Painters in Italy. See Mafon's edition of Gray's Works, p. 386. + Mr. How (in a letter from Spa, dated Sept. 24, 1763) had afked Gray's opinion, whether an edition of all Count Algarotti's Works, fuppofing it practicable in England, would be acceptable to the lovers of Italian literature, and to the fenfible few. Algarotti, in one of his treatises, had obferved, that the English method of gardening, or rather laying out grounds, was borrowed from the Chinefe. This opinion is controverted by Gray in a letter to Mr. How (inferted in Mafon's edition of Gray's Works, p. 386). Mr. How had informed Gray, nearly in the words ufed by Mason in p. 318, of the Count's politenefs in altering the paffage in queftion, § That he had read the "Congreffo," and with great attention, is manifefted from His Italian notes upon the whole of it, which I have now before me, under the title of Annotazioni sopra il Congreffo di Citéra." Ladinage badinage and legereté of converfation fain be a mifanthrope, and could not. that fits fo well ou the French*.] But" He very frequently profeffes contempt this is a fecret between us. I am glad to hear he thinks of revifiting England; though I am a little afhamed of my Country at this prefent. Our late acquired glory does not fit becomingly upon us and even the author of it, that Reftitutor d'Inghilterrat, is doing God knows what! If he fhould deign to follow the track of vulgar minifters, and regain his power by ways injurious to his fame, whom can we truft hereafter? M. de Nivernois, on his return to France, fays (I hear) of England, Quel Roy, quel peuple, quelle fociété and fo fay 1. Adieu, Sir, I am your most humble fervant, T. GRAY. A Monf. Monf. Taylor How, Gentilhomme Anglois, à Bruxelles. Mr. URBAN, Yarmouth, Nov. 29. of the world, and reprefents himself as looking on mankind fometimes with gay indifference, as on emmets on a hillock, and fometimes with gloomy indignation, as on monfters more worthy of hatred than of pity. These were difpofitions apparently counterfeited. How could he defpife those whom he lived by pleating, and on whofe approbation his efteem of himself was fuperftructed? Why fhould he hate thofe to whofe favour he owed his honour and his eafe? Of things that terminate in human life the world is the moft proper judge to defpife its fentence, if it were poffible, is not juft, and, it it were juft, is not poffible. Pope was far enough from this unreasonable temper; he was fufficiently a fool to fume, and yet he pretended to neglect it. His levity and his fullennefs were only in his HAVING in my poffeffion a very letters; he paffed through common life, antient fhrine of blue enamel, around the fides of which are depicted the twelve apoftles, curionfly gilt, with the Crucifixion, and the folTowing infcription on the lid : VINET MET ELECTA QUO MODO CONVERST IN ÉÃRITVDINEM ME CRVCIFICIS; I fhall feel myself obliged to any of your correfpondents to favour me with a tranflation. WM. BARTH. The in The fhrine in queftion may be paralleled with that belonging to Mr. Afile, engraved in the Vetufta Monu menta, vol. II. pl, LI. LII. fcription is to be tranflated, "How is my chofen vine turned into bitterness? Thou crucifieft me." The first fentence alludes to the text in Jerem. ii. 21, in the Vulgate tranflation: "Ego plantavi te vincam electum; quomodo ergo converfa es mihi in pravam, vinea aliena." Or, as the LXX. aμɛλos Kapπόφορος αληθινη Γραφής εις ΠΙΚΡΙΑΝ, άμπελος η αλλότρια : « How then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of firange vine unto me." D. H. fometimes vexed and fometimes pleafed, with the natural emotions of common men. His fcorn of the Great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he defpifes; and, as falfhood is always in danger of inconfiftency, he makes it his boast at another time that he lives among them." (Vol. IV. p. 154, 155.)—Is not this another fpecimen of the hypocrify defcribed by your correfpondent B.vol. LXXIV. p. 911? and was not the, Poet the happier man than the Philandifference of real and affected contempt? thropist whom he defcribes-by all the and behaviour, the other in the con the one exprelling itfelf in the mind verfation and writings. A lamentable paradox this-that the philanthrope Thould be the mifanthrope. The avarice which your correfpondent C. p. 1028, makes a national characteristick, was noted in the last century by Lord Chesterfield; who fays, "all great and noble-minded spirit is dead in England; and that nothing now remains but the love of the guinea." (Wilkes's Letters, vol. I. p. 192). Others may extend this farther, and fancy that merchants and bankers are rogues Pope is that of a man who would follow thefe refined fentimentalifts. D. This paffage within brackets appears in Mafon, p. 390. The letter in Mason, of which this paffage makes a part, is compofed from two, the one of them dated November, 1763, the other January, 1768. +From feveral expreffions in the letters of Mr. Low and Mr. Hollis, it appears that Mr. Pitt (the late Lord Chatham) is here intended. THE THE PROJECTOR. No XL. *Pleafure's the miftrefs of the world below; ray! [charms: And well it was for man that pleafure How would all stagnate, but for pleafure's [ceafe! How would the frozen ftream of action What is the pulfe of this fo bufy world? The love of pleasure : That, thro' ev'ry vein, Throws motion, warmth, and shuts out death from life." YOUNG. T the commencement of a New Year, it is ufual, with perfons of a ferious difpofition, not only to indulge themfelves in reflections on the fhortnefs and uncertainty of time, but to divert the attention of others to topics which, if they are not often recollected and improved, will, one day, recur with fuch irrefifible force, and with fuch a weight of confcious neglect, as to overwhelm them with depair. The Clergy generally lay hold of this opportunity of exhorting their flocks to a due confideration of the value of time; and fome of my pre deceffors have not been lefs attentive to thofe confiderations which are particularly ufeful at a feafon when it is of almoft impoffible for the moft infenfible not to entertain fome memory the paft, and fome apprehenfion for the future. But while we must applaud the zeal of all who labour to fix the thoughts of the giddy, and check the levity of the inconfiderate, it has often occurred to me that, in fpeaking of the shortness of time, they feem to have accommodated themfelves to the feelings and fentiments of only one part of their readers, To that part, time does, indeed, appear fo fhort, that they are afraid they must frequently miss the effentials of duty, or neglect the interefts of bufinefs; that they muft either become rich at the expence of happiness, or happy at the expence of riches. If this choice be perplexing, it is dangerous; and fuch, therefore, need frequently to be reminded, that virue and induftry cannot be interrupted with impunity, and that plea fure and idlenefs, long continued, will weaken the powers by which only the business ̧ of life can be carried on with advantage, and by which only the approach of death may be viewed without difmay. But there is another clafs to which my readers must have often perceived I have had a refpect in thefe lucubrations, who hold an opinion fo very different from the above, that it would be perhaps an infult to addrefs them on the Shortness of time. So firmly are they convinced that time is intolerably long, that it is their whole employment to devife the means of making it thorter and more bearable: by them it feems to be confidered as an immenfe fund, of which they can neither calculate the amount, nor fee the end; a fund not like thofe in the Bank, of which the intereft only is drawn out, but so apparently inexhauftible, that they imagine the principal can never be ferioufly affected by the moft profufe deductions. Indeed, the language of this clafs fo clearly marks their opinion, that I cannot and need not illuftrate it more forcibly, than by appealing to their "Spending" peculiar phrafeology, their " or "confuming" time; which, as they Tay, hangs heavy on their hands, which they know not what to do with," and which in certain fitua tions (as in the country, or at home, or in fickness, or during a rainy fea fon) becomes intolerable, and has introduced a difeafe peculiar to this clafs, called ennui, a word imported from France, where, however, fome travellers tell us, it does not rage with fuch violence as in our own country, probably owing to their using a preventive called Vive la Bagatelle. But it is more ufual with this clafs of perfons to confider Time as an ene my, whom they are bound to kill, and kill, I am forry to fay it, in the most cruel manner imaginable; namely, by peice-meal. That Time is their enemy I am very ready to allow; every man will find an enemy in the perfon whom he ought to employ, and yet will not employ ; but I would fubmit it to their confideration, both with refpect to the articles of humanity and courage, whether they really think grefs grefs whatever feems to be made in weakening the enemy, or providing for their own fecurity from his future attacks; in proof of this, the moft aged combatants in fuch engagements have often confefled that it was "all vanity and vexation of fpirit." There are fome circumstances, how ever, which diftinguish this warfare from all others, and which it may not be amifs to point out. It may properly be faid to laft the whole year, for what in other wars forms the period of winter quarters, during which there is a ceffation of hoftilities, is here the brifkeft part of the campaign, when the combined powers are in greateft force, and, in their opinion, are able to make the principal ftand against the enemy; on the contrary, in the fummer, which is the period of moft_vigorous action between other enemies, their powers are very languid, although then affifted by certain operations on the coats of Kent and Suffex, where the enenty is in confiderable force; and by mafquerades, afs races, publick breakfafts, and other light troops, which are not known in the armies of any other potentate in Europe. The winter, in fact, whatever the feverity of the weather may be, is the hotteft period of the campaign between Time and his enemies, and the period when, by the vaft acceffions made to their troops, they are enabled to entrench themselves in the metropolis, and defy his attacks, or fally forth in great numbers and difplay their contempt of him. It is alfo peculiar to this warfare, that no man thinks himself accountable for what he does, and that no ambition of rank or precedency is known. Hence it is that their commanders are of a very fingular kind, and fuch, I am afraid, as will not rank with the Marlboroughs and Eugenes of future hiftory. It may look a little fingular that laft year, about this time, they were commanded by a dog, and this year by a boy; circumftances which will require an extraordinary portion of gravity in the hifiorian to prevent his narrative from running into burlefque. Indeed, I remember the time when a learned pig commanded large detachments; and fuch is their innate courage, or natural zeal for the combat, that they will exert thefe qualities without the leaf concern for the rank, fex, or even fpecies of the perfonages who call them forth. A bottle conju au ror, an old woman fencing, Egyptian Bey, a mad horfe, a prattling auctioneer, or a Middlefex candidate, are equally acceptable.-Routs, fuch as are common in the winter feafon, (that is in May and June), may be reckoned pitched battles between the belligerent powers; and let it not be thought that they are altogether bloodlefs engagements; un'efs, indeed, with Shakefpeare's clown, we reckon "breaking of limbs fport for the ladies." But on this lait fubject I have expatiated fo largely in fome of my former lucubrations, that I hope I may be excufed from farther notice of them. I muft add, however, with a reference to our prefent confiderations, that they are efteemed the beft military schools for this fpecies of warfare; and the youth of both fexes are accordingly recommended to take leffons at them, and are regularly introduced by their careful parents for that wife purpose. In fuch places, if they do not learn how to combat the enemy, they at leaft acquire a due contempt for him, and all that hoftility of mind which is a perpetual bar to peace. It may be remarked, however, that although this fpecies of warfare differs from all other, in the points I have juft mentioned, and in more 'which might be mentioned, particularly the active co-operation of both sexes in the "tented field;" yet it perfectly agrees with them in this one refpect, that the feat of war is as frequently changed. It refembles our English wars in this particularly, that the feat of it is feldom at home. About two years ago it was removed to France, where a confiderable body of our best troops, well equipped and cloathed, went to make a diverfion in favour of thofe they had left behind; but circumflances, not worth detailing here, obliging them to turn their diverfion into a precipitate retreat, they have remained fince in confiderable diforder, and have never been able to rally against the enemy in any great force. Their idea, however, of an alliance with the French was a master-ftroke, and the failure of it must be deeply regretted by every enemy to Time, who now hangs on the rear of the troops. If he catches a few fraggiers, he exerts all his cruelty on them, and at all times is particularly inhuman to the fick and wounded. The latter, indeed, fuffer fo much in this war, that upon their |