ple forms, is wholly incapable of them. A simple government of the one, the few, or the many, is essentially and inevitably a government of men, and of the passions, prejudices and appetites of men for the most part without laws, because that no laws can stand before the passions of men in such governments. Examine every one of these in its turn, and you will find it to be the government of the House of Pride.

And proud Lucifera men did her call,

That made herself a Queen, and crown'd to be ;
Yet rightfull kingdom she had none at all,
Ne heritage of rightfull soverainty,
But did usurpe with wrong and tyranny
Upon the scepter which she now did hold;
Ne rul'd her realme with Laws but Policy
And strong advisement of six wizards old,

That with their councils bad, her kingdom did uphold.

Vanity was the lady usher, to introduce all visiters to this palace, and the six old Wizards, by whose policy and councils Pride governed her dominions, were Idleness, Gluttony, Lechery, Avarice, Envy and Wrath. When the royal dame rode out for her health, her six counsellors attended and served as postillions to her coach.

But this was drawn of six unequal Beasts
On which her six sage Counsellors did ride,
Of which the first that all the rest did guide
Was sluggish Idleness, the Nurse of Sin;
· Upon a slothful asse he chose to ride.

And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony,
Deformed creature, on a filthy swine.

And next to him rode lustful Lechery
Upon a bearded goat.

And greedy Avarice by him did ride,

Upon a camel loaden all with gold,

Accursed Usury was all his trade,

And right and wrong alike in equal ballance weigh❜d.

And next to him malicious Envy rode

Upon a ravenous wolf, and still did chaw

Between his cank'red teeth a venemous toad,

That all the poison ran about his jaw;

And him beside rides fierce revenging Wrath
Upon a lyon, loth for to be led.

His ruffian rayment all was stain'd with blood
Which he had spilt, and all to rags yrent,
For of his hands he had no government,
Nor car'd for blood in his avengement.

Full many Mischiefs follow cruel Wrath;
Abhorred Bloodshed, and tumultuous Strife,
Unmanly Murder, and unthrifty Scath,
Bitter Despight, with rancour's rusty knife:

And after all upon the waggon beam
Rode Satan with a smacking whip in hand,
With which he forward lash'd the lazy team

So oft as Sloth still in the mire did stand.

Spenser's Fairy Queen, Book I. Canto 4. Stanza 12.

The government of the House and Realm of Pride, was we see a government of Vices, Sins and Crimes, and not of Men: and such has ever been every simple government in the world.

No generation of men, since the fall of the first, has ever had better opportunities to know mankind, than the present. France has been the very House of Pride, and Mirabeau, Condorcet, Robespierre, Barras, have been one after the other, riding in the car of the Queen Lucifera, drawn by incarnate passions, whipped on by Satan. Such has democracy ever been and ever will be. There cannot be a greater absurdity, or a grosser insult to common sense than to call it a government of laws.

There is, in human nature uncultivated, a dark and deep aversion and oppugnation to government, which is never overcome but with difficulty, and that after its necessity to society has become obvious and indisputable to all. It would be sufficient in proof of this to refer to every parent, especially to every mother, for her experience of the temper of children.

Remnants of this surd and sullen opposition remain in every stage of society, and under every form of government. These assume many shapes, and among others is an artifice of disguising to themselves that men are essential to government. Laws are a kind of metaphysical entity, about which they care not, if men can be excluded from their imagination.

Io sylvae !

OVID. Metam: lib. 3. v. 442.

TRAVELLERS

MAY be divided into travellers for business, for pleasure, and for information. The first class probably pursue their undertaking with most energy and effect, yet to the last the world is more indebted for the enlargement of its general stock of knowledge. In one instance the love of gain, which is the predominant motive, centers entirely in the individual; in the other the passion for fame is not satisfied, till the world at large are made partakers of the benefits resulting from the enterprize. The above prelude has very little to do with the following imitation of Horace, book I. ode 29.

Icci, beatis nunc Arabum invides, &c.

TO A. H. E.

Dear Sandy, still remote from home,
You choose Muscovian realms to roam,
In climate cold and drear;
With Russian boors sit jole by cheek,
And list while Fins and Cossacks speak,
And relish all the heathen Greek,
They pour upon your ear.

Say, has your search some crony found,
Whose classick taste, or wit profound,
Has fastened your esteem?

Or has some fur-clad northern fair,
Of stature short, and tawny hair,
Glanced from her eye, too bright to bear,
A soul dissolving beam?

So strangely soon the ties you broke,
Of Blackstone, Lyttleton, and Coke,
And made your law books all a joke,
To sail beyond the brine;

I should not wonder at the feat,
Should walking trees invade the street;
Should Charles' refluent stream retreat,
Or Taunton waves concoct the meat
Of Jew-detested swine.

BACCHUS

Is by the poets called LIBER, quia liberos homines facit.

MISERS

WERE as harshly treated by the ancients as by any of the wits of our own time. In the Anthologia is a Greek epigram, of which Jortin has given the point with much simplicity in the following translation:

"Thou little rogue, what brings thee to my house ?”
Said a starv'd miser to a straggling mouse.

"Friend, quoth the mouse, thou hast no cause to fear;
I only lodge with thee, I eat elsewhere."

ARNOBIUS

Is in many respects, says a witty critick, a valuable author, and a good edition of his works is much wanted. He is but the bad defender, however, of a good cause; and makes objections to the Pagans, which they might easily have retorted upon Christianity, and particularly upon Judaism. He reminds me of a poor fellow who was put into the inquisition at Goa. The Inquisitor said to him, "Sirrah, thou art a Jew, and a worshipper of Moses." "Not I, indeed, my lord," said he, “I worship Moses! I hold him to be an impostor." "This may be an honest fellow," said the Inquisitor.

HIGH COMMENDATION.

ALL the sneers of succeeding, and all the envy of contemporaneous rivals how willingly would I bear, to have a hundredth part of the praise of Joseph Scaliger from such a pen as Jortin's, who says "Catullus has been corrected by the best critick and the greatest scholar that ever was born,-by Joseph Scaliger."

BISHOP FLEETWOOD.

JONATHAN RICHARDSON, the son of the painter, has recorded the opinions of Bishop Fleetwood, which that worthy ecclesiastick delivered to his father. Old Richardson was once full of doubts and scruples in matters of faith, and applied to the bishop for instruction and direction. "Where mystery begins," said Fleetwood, "religion ends. Make a truce with texts and Fathers, and read Don Quixote. In your present situation of mind and weakness of spirits, you are not capable of doing them justice, nor are you equal to such points of speculation." "Ah, Doctor," replied Richardson, "but if I should be mistaken, and put up with an erroneous faith-" "Well," said the bishop, " and if you should ?" "If I should,”

said the old man, "if after the utmost diligent inquiry I can make I should be mistaken, am I not sure to make my God "Are you!" said Fleetwood warmly, "then

my enemy

he is no God for me."

HYPERCRITICISM.

THERE is a class of criticks who amuse themselves, and a class of readers who suffer themselves to be amused, with the detection of remote resemblances between the thoughts of different writers, which they arrogantly call imitations. They seem to think that similarity of expression is always plagiarism, and from a single word derive the imitation of a whole

passage. No man was ever more liable to this censure than Gilbert Wakefield. Whoever has read his edition of Pope's Homer must have frequently smiled at the critical acumen which he has lavished on the most trifling and unimportant passages. He frequently travels out of his duty as an editor, and examines the characters and productions of persons entirely unconnected with Homer and his translator. The resemblances he traces are almost always imaginary, and generally pursued to some of the Greek and Roman poets, which he quotes, with apparently greater ease and fluency than those in his vernacular. In one of his numerous excursions, he notices a passage in Gray's spring:

The attick warbler pours her throat.

After bestowing considerable praise on the poetical imagery he declares it to be "an admirable improvement of the original form in the Greek and Roman classicks :

This I conceive to be an unparalleled instance of the waste of learning. If Wakefield had been as familiar with English poetry as he was with that of the ancients, he never would have undertaken to find or force a resemblance between these radically dissimilar passages. Instead of applying to Hesiod and Lucretius, he would have been satisfied with a line from Pope, which Gray undoubtedly had in his eye when he wrote this passage:

"Is it for thee, the linnet pours her throat."

Essay on Man. Ep. III. v. 33.