Sept. 7.-"How in the world does it happen," said a gentleman to Wilkes, "that your brother alderman, Brook Watson, who never sides with opposition on any other occasion, should join you in your late attack "I should think the reason was plain enough," upon us poor attornies?" said Wilkes ; don't you know how damnably he was bit by one of you, when he was young?" (he had lost his leg by a shark). On my mentioning (Aug. 23) that I was with Tooke on the hustings, when Wilkes gave him his vote, Mr. Humphry Williams related, that on that very day he overheard Mr. Scott (now Lord Eldon), to whom the reconciliation was communicated, telling this anecdote at Westminster Hall, as an excellent

sarcasm.

Sept. 12.-Mr. Austin called. Had, as usual, much legal, jurisprudential, and metaphysical discussion: expressed himself eager and anxious to believe in Christianity, but repelled by the monstrosities involved in it. Willingly acquiesced in my solution of the presence of evil in the world-by the want of power to prevent. Absolute Omnipotence, coupled with the present order of things, presented, he thought, a terrible prospect. He considered the Methodists as gradually refining, with their spread and increase, into men of the world.

Oct. 3.-Read Warburton's Letters to Hurd. There cannot be a finer commentary than this Correspondence presents to Parr's description. of both these characters; every lineament, pleasing and offensive, comI should not be surmon and peculiar, is brought out to the very life. prised, if, as Parr intimates, when the buoyancy of his spirits had subsided, Warburton was disposed to abandon some of those paradoxes which he had espoused and defended with such fervour in the animation of youth. In what a situation, in this case, would his toad-eater find himself. Much of the latter correspondence between them, I suspect, is suppressed. Bishop Hallifax told Lord Chedworth that Hurd inquired if there was anything in Parr's "Tracts by a Warburtonian" that required an answer; and on being told "No," he said, he should abstain from the perusal. In the 33rd letter, Warburton makes the will of a superior essential to obligation, in opposition to Browne's account of moral obligation. Nothing can be juster or more profound than his maxim to Hurd. (Lett. 183.) "In your commerce with the great, if you would have it turn to your advantage, you should endeavour when the person is of great abilities, to make him satisfied with you; when he is of none, to make him satisfied with himself." Finished correcting Sharon Turner's History, an ungracious occupation!

Oct. 6.-Looked into Warburton's (for I presume it is his) Answer to Lowth's incomparable Lowth's Letter-very heavy and incumbered. Epistle, I suspect, to have been Warburton's death-blow, from which he never recovered. Parr considers Lowth as the popular, and not the successful antagonist of Warburton. I cannot discover the origin of the dispute in the Prælections, and suspect that Lowth suffered himself to be unwarily drawn astray from the real merits of the case: if the Patriarchs possessed secular power, he might safely have left it to human nature to establish the fact of their employing it for spiritual purposes. Warburton in this tract puts the alliance of Church and State on the same ground with the original compact between King and People; a convenient supposition for regulating the rights and duties on both sides. Warburton observes on one occasion, "that it was not his business to see how far the Professor carried his argument, but how far his argument would carry him."

GENT. MAG. VOL. XI.

4 E

Oct. 7.-Looked over Warburton's Divine Legation. He here gives an admirable display of his plastic powers in twisting and untwisting the triple cord, of which he composes morality when complete. Against Mandeville's doctrine he contends, that luxury, which he defines an abuse of the gifts of Providence, benefits society only as it promotes consumption, which is more effectually done by their proper use; in which many will share instead of the few.* His vigour of argumentation is wonderful, but his arguments seem the deeper by the circuitous detours through which he arrives at the bottom of the question.† Christianity, he affirms, enjoins nothing in moral practice, and forbids nothing, which natural religion had not before enjoined or forbid-a bold assertion! Wrote to Sharon Turner, and returned the corrected sheets of his History.

Oct. 16-Read Mathias's Observations on the Writings of Gray, written in that ambitious style which frequently perplexes the writer himself in the artificial difficulties of the construction, and is painfully incommunicative in its character. Mr. Nicholls, the friend of Gray, seems to have been a very amiable and accomplished character, though tainted a little, I suspect, like all Gray's acquaintance, with his effeminate peculiarities.

Oct. 25.-Called at Christ Church, and sat with Mr. Fonnereau. He lived for some time next door almost to Pope, and had often seen him carried down in his sedan to the Thames, and placed, in it, in the boat, which usually conveyed him to town. Mr. F. mentioned that his friend Grose, the antiquary, always congratulated himself that he could slip out of life when he chose.

Nov. 5.-Read Sprat's Life of Cowley. Much too laudatory: one cannot but smile at his extolling the loose unconfined measure of his author's Pindarics, because it approaches nearly to prose. Some of his remarks, however, are excellent, as when he observes that to scorn the pomp before a man knows it, proceeds rather from ill manners than true magnanimity. The most difficult style to be imitated, he remarks, is that which consists of natural ease and unaffected grace; where nothing seems to be studied, but everything is extraordinary. Cowley's learning, he says, sat exceedingly close and handsomely upon him; it was not embossed on his mind, but enamelled.

Nov. 20.-Read Godwin's Lives of the Philipses, Milton's nephews, containing anecdotes of Milton and his times, anything but of the personages named, of whom nothing seems known but from their obscure publications. The style would be respectable but for occasional aspirations after fine writing, which is uniformly in the worst possible taste. "Whenever you have written any passage which you think particularly fine, strike it out,"-was the injunction of a tutor, which might be applied to Godwin with good effect.

Nov. 21.-Pursued Godwin's Lives. I like him the less the further I advance. The coarseness of his nature and feelings, the cold, heavy, leaden character of his philosophical pedantry, the swells and throes with which he amplifies his insignificant discoveries, and the occasional brutality of his invectives, on Johnson and Clarendon particularly, are at once offensive, repulsive, and oppressive. He mentions Thomas Salmon (c. vi.) as the person who published a proposal for taking away the different clefs in music. Of Speed the historian, Godwin observes,

*The great fallacy of Mandeville's book is to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree, or in any direction. See Ad. Smith's Moral Sentiments, ch. iv. sect. 7. Parr's Spital Sermon, p. 56. Dug. Stewart on the Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 214.-Ed.

+ Warburton's passion for paradoxes has the same effect as a propensity to lying: we hardly give him credit, even when he is right.-Diary.

Oct. 7.-Looked over Warburton's Divine Legation. He here gives an admirable display of his plastic powers in twisting and untwisting the triple cord, of which he composes morality when complete. Against Mandeville's doctrine he contends, that luxury, which he defines an abuse of the gifts of Providence, benefits society only as it promotes consumption, which is more effectually done by their proper use; in which many will share instead of the few. His vigour of argumentation is wonderful, but his arguments seem the deeper by the circuitous detours through which he arrives at the bottom of the question.† Christianity, he affirms, enjoins nothing in moral practice, and forbids nothing, which natural religion had not before enjoined or forbid-a bold assertion! Wrote to Sharon

Turner, and returned the corrected sheets of his History.

Oct. 16-Read Mathias's Observations on the Writings of Gray, written in that ambitious style which frequently perplexes the writer himself in the artificial difficulties of the construction, and is painfully incommunicative in its character. Mr. Nicholls, the friend of Gray, seems to have been a very amiable and accomplished character, though tainted a little, I suspect, like all Gray's acquaintance, with his effeminate peculiarities.

Oct. 25.-Called at Christ Church, and sat with Mr. Fonnereau. He lived for some time next door almost to Pope, and had often seen him carried down in his sedan to the Thames, and placed, in it, in the boat, which usually conveyed him to town. Mr. F. mentioned that his friend Grose, the antiquary, always congratulated himself that he could slip out of life when he chose.

Nov. 5.-Read Sprat's Life of Cowley. Much too laudatory: one cannot but smile at his extolling the loose unconfined measure of his author's Pindarics, because it approaches nearly to prose. Some of his remarks, however, are excellent, as when he observes that to scorn the pomp before a man knows it, proceeds rather from ill manners than true magnanimity. The most difficult style to be imitated, he remarks, is that which consists of natural ease and unaffected grace; where nothing seems to be studied, but everything is extraordinary. Cowley's learning, he says, sat exceedingly close and handsomely upon him; it was not embossed on his mind, but enamelled.

Nov. 20.-Read Godwin's Lives of the Philipses, Milton's nephews, containing anecdotes of Milton and his times, anything but of the personages named, of whom nothing seems known but from their obscure publications. The style would be respectable but for occasional aspirations after fine writing, which is uniformly in the worst possible taste. "Whenever you have written any passage which you think particularly fine, strike it out," -was the injunction of a tutor, which might be applied to Godwin with good effect.

Nov. 21.-Pursued Godwin's Lives. I like him the less the further I advance. The coarseness of his nature and feelings, the cold, heavy, leaden character of his philosophical pedantry, the swells and throes with which he amplifies his insignificant discoveries, and the occasional brutality of his invectives, on Johnson and Clarendon particularly, are at once offensive, repulsive, and oppressive. He mentions Thomas Salmon (c. vi.) as the person who published a proposal for taking away the different clefs in music. Of Speed the historian, Godwin observes,

The great fallacy of Mandeville's book is to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree, or in any direction. See Ad. Smith's Moral Sentiments, ch. iv. sect. 7. Parr's Spital Sermon, p. 56. Dug. Stewart on the Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 214.-Ed.

+ Warburton's passion for paradoxes has the same effect as a propensity to lying: we hardly give him credit, even when he is right.-Diary.