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the splendor of their renown: and thus, under diffidence, bury our strength.

He next asserts, that the truest way of writing like the ancients is to draw from nature. Let us build our compositions with the spirit, and in the taste of the ancients, but not with their materials. It is by a sort of noble contagion, from a general familiarity with the writings of the ancients, and not by any particular sordid theft, that we can be the better for those who went before us. Genius is a master workman, learning but an instrument; and an instrument, though most valuable, not always indispensable.

Of genius there are two species, an earlier and a later; or call them infantine and adult. An adult genius comes out of nature's hand, as Pallas out of Jove's head, at full growth and mature. Shakspeare's genius was of this kind; on the contrary, Swift had an infantine genius, which, like other infants, must be nursed and educated, or it will come to nought. Men are often strangers to their own abilities; genius, in this view, is like a dear friend in our company under disguise, who, while we are lamenting his absence, drops his mask, striking us at once with equal surprise and joy. Few authors of distinction but have experienced something of this nature at the first beamings of their unsuspected genius, on the hitherto dark composition. Let not then great examples, or authorities, browbeat our reason into too great a diffidence of ourselves. Let us reverence ourselves, so as to prefer the native growth of our own minds to the richest imports from abroad, since such borrowed riches serve only to increase our poverty. Admiration of others depresses the admirer, in proportion as it lifts the object of our applause.

He proceeds, by complaining that Pope, who had a genius truly original, if he chose to exert it, was contented with being an humble imitator, and even boasted of his skill at imitation.

Swift, on the contrary, not sufficiently acquainted with himself, left truth, in order to be original only in the wrong; and has so satirized human nature, as to give a demonstration in himself, that it deserves to be satirized. The author then proceeds to characterize Shakspeare and Ben Jonson; by the by, paying his friend, the author of Sir Charles Grandison, some very pretty compliments. Dryden, he justly observes, was by no means a master of the pathos in tragedy. "He had a great, but a general capacity; as for a general genius, there is no such thing in nature. A genius implies the rays of the mind, concentred and determined to some particular point; when they are scattered widely they act feebly, and strike not with sufficient force to fire or dissolve the heart. As what comes from the writer's heart reaches ours, so what comes from his head, sets our brains at work and our hearts at ease."

He then makes a transition to Mr. Addison, whose tragedy of Cato is observed to be a fine, but not an affecting performance. But though this poet deserved a superiority over cotemporary claims, even by his writings, he infinitely surpassed his rivals for fame in the integrity of his life, and in a glorious circumstance attending his death. Perceiving his last moments to approach, and no help from his physicians, he sent for a youth nearly related to him, finely accomplished, and who felt the utmost distress at separation. The young man came, "but life, now glimmering in the socket, the dying friend was silent: after a decent and proper pause, the youth said, 'Dear Sir! you sent for me: I believe, and I hope, that you have some commands; I shall hold them most sacred.' May distant ages not only hear, but feel the reply! Forcibly grasping the youth's hand, he softly said, 'See in what peace a Christian can die.'"*

*["Tickell, in his excellent elegy on the death of Addison, alluded, in the

As Dr. Young's manner of writing is peculiarly his own, and has already secured him an ample share of fame, we hope to see some succeeding man of genius do justice to the integrity of his life, and the simplicity and piety of his manners; for in this respect not Addison himself was, perhaps, his superior. We would, in a word, be much better pleased to see the writers of the rising generation more fond of imitating his life than his writings; his moral qualities are transferable; his peculiarities, as a genius, can scarcely be imitated, except in their faults.

XX. BUTLER'S REMAINS, IN PROSE AND VERSE.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "The Genuine Remains, in Prose and Verse, of Mr. Samuel Butler. Published from the Original Manuscripts, formerly in the possession of W. Longueville, Esq.;* with Notes by R. Thyer, Keeper of the public Library at Manchester." In two vols. 8vo.]

WHEN We consider Butler merely as a poet, and a party poet too, and reflect that poets, in our own time, have been known to excel in one species of composition, and yet have been useless in

following lines, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving interview with Lord Warwick:

'He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high
The price of knowledge! taught us how to die." "

JOHNSON'S Life of Addison.]

* [“ Mr. William Longueville was a conveyancing lawyer, and a bencher of the Inner Temple, and had raised himself from a low beginning to great eminence in that profession. He was the last patron and friend that poor old Butler, the author of Hudibras, had, and in his old age he supported him, otherwise he must have been literally starved. All that the poet could do to recompense him, was to make him his heir, that is, give him his Remains; but on loose paper, and undigested."-Life of Lord Keeper Guilford, vol. ii. p. 189, edit. 1826.]

all other purposes of life, and ignorant in all other pursuits of learning, we bewail, but we are not greatly surprised at, the indigence in which we are told he lived and died. But when we view him by the light in which this publication places him, we are struck with somewhat next to horror at the want of discernment, at the more than barbarous ingratitude, of his cotemporaries. When we see him join the humor of Lucian to the philosophy of Plato, and unite the virtue of Socrates with the wit of Aristophanes; when he displays an equal knowledge of men and books; when he adapts reading to reasoning, and all in the cause of liberty and religion, we are apt to bewail, not only the disgrace, but the loss, of our country, that could suffer such a person to be, in a manner, dead to society.

Till the pieces before us were published, Swift could, with some appearance of justice, have disputed with Butler the palm of wit, humor, and observation of life. But we are of opinion, that the question must be now, by the discerning and impartial part of the public, decided in Butler's favor. We cannot, however, say of all the pieces of this collection, as Ovid does of the chariot of the sun, "Materiam superat opus;" for here many of the materials are rich, but the workmanship is rough; they look like pieces of the most precious metal, when they first come out of a beautiful mould; but without the finishing and heightenings, that the hand and the tools of the artist can bestow. Many of them bear manifest indications of genius laboring, but not crushed, under indigence; while some of them have received all the polish that art and judgment can bestow.

The editor has performed his duty with great pertinency, yet modesty, of observation; and this publication is far from being one of those catchpenny subscription-works, which, circulating from one good-natured friend to another, at last picks the pocket of the public. We are tempted to wish, however, that Mr. Thyer's

studies had led him a little more than they seem to have done, into those piddling walks of pamphlet and polemical reading, from which alone can be drawn the illustrations of many dark passages of his admirable author; nor can we think he has been always happy in his conjectures.

Through great part of the two volumes before us, we perceive that Butler was no friend to the Royal Society,* and the method of philosophizing in fashion in his time; and, indeed, as Mr. Thyer observes with great truth, one must own, that the members of that learned body, at their first setting out, did justly lay themselves open to the lashes of wit and satire.

The first poem in this collection is entitled "The Elephant in the Moon," and is planned upon a humorous story of a mouse getting into a telescope, with which the virtuosos were viewing the moon, and which they instantly pronounced to be an elephant in the moon. The story, which is full of Butler's humor, is told at first in short, and then in long, verse, but generally in the same terms and terminations of rhyme.

The poem which follows is entitled, "A Satire upon the Weakness and Misery of Man," and bears the stamp not only of genius but virtue; with such characteristics of the latter as are impossible to be counterfeited: as for the former, they speak for themselves. In short, this is perhaps the finest and justest satire that any language can produce; and the whole of it has those marks of virtuous indignation, which prove that the poet speaks from the heart. This indignation is levelled equally against the court of Charles the Second as against the fanatics; and the

*["The enemies of the Royal Society were for some time very numerous and very acrimonious; for what reason it is hard to conceive, since the philosophers professed not to advance doctrines, but to produce facts; and the most zealous enemy of innovation must admit the gradual progress of experience, however he may oppose hypothetical temerity."-JOHNSON.]

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