4 At manhood, and, by her enlightened love, tear! And, oh! may fuperftition never blaft *"Soul-creative fenfe." Mind cannot exist before it be created by the senses; for what is mind but a chain of ideas, and the faculty of receiving and combining them through the medium of the organs of fenfe? And the more acute the fenfes are rendered, by early roufing and exercising them, the more powerful must be the mind, and the greater the chance of arriving at eminence of genius and virtue, And you, ye fair! whose power ineffable * Life confifts in fenfation; furely, therefore, the man who sympathises in the pains and pleasures of every living creature he meets-who weeps when they weep, rejoices when they rejoice, and "exults in all the good of all mankind" - fuch a man " lives ten thousand lives," when compared with the poor folitary being, whose circumfcribed foul never foars above self, nor ever banqueted on the sweets of participation! Does the exif. tence of such a creature deserve to be dignified with name of life? † Since the first ideas are generally stamped by the mother or nurse, and these modify every fucceeding impreffion, of what infinite importance is it that she should be fitted for the fateful task ! Nor WITH thee, sweet bard! I've felt th' exAwak'd by "SYMPATHY," and trac'd her laws; "HUMANITY" has taught my tears to 4 flow; BENEVOLENCEI" has urg'd the "POOR" man's caufe. Led by the magic of thy fertile mind Through fields of fancy I have lov'd to stray; Now wept fictitious woes to gloom resign'd, Now caught mirth's transports from thy colouring gay; To every touch my heart refponfive beat, But, should thy playful fancy scorn To grace the new rais'd woodland shade, Where wilt thou rove, sweet bird, forlorn, When all thy native groves are laid? Far from this defolated plain, Go feek fome well-protected glades; Swept by the fierce, the howling storm, Cynthia, no more thy filver ray White Webb Farm, Enfield Chace, When duller fouls are funk in fleep, And Sorrow's children watch and weep; And own'd a mafter's Irand, and felt his powers with the scene's calm relucent glow, complete. W. MAVOR, L.L.D. ADDRESS to the NIGHTINGALE, on the interded Fall of the Woods, in consequence of the Inclosure of Enfield Chace. SWEET fongster of the leafy grove! Protected there, from spray to spray A Poem so called, + See end of vol. iii, of Gleanings. 1 TRIUMPH OF BENEVOLENCE. The Poor, a poem. I feek to foothe my bosom's woe; A. R. VERSES on the DEATH of the late REV. E. OYE whose hearts the social virtues warm, And ye whom truth's celestial rays can No more the wretch, oppress'd with grief and The hapless victim of unpitying pride, No more the latent beauties of his mind PROWITT. care, That time B Extracts from the Port-folio of a Man of Letters. POETS DEPRECIATED. Y a law of the emperor Philip, (lib. x. lit. 151.) poets were not admitted to those immunities conferred on other profeffors of liberal arts. A fimilar sneer at their teasing infignificance, has escaped a petty fovereign of Germany. In the edict, published at Erfurt, 22d March 1796, for the inftruction of the cenfors or licenfers of the press, provision is made, that those who publish poems, shall pay double price per sheet for the writings they submit to official examination. Manes of Archilochus, infpire fome vindictive iambics! WATER-PROOF CLOTHS. It is now become very fashionable to render one's great coat water-proof. An early notice of this admirable invention occurs in Lalande's Travels through Italy, in 1766. Prince San Severo, of Naples, (lays he, VI. 249.) presented to the king of Spain a very light and thin over-coat, which the rain could not penetrate, and which was of his own invention. San Severo is known among men of letters by his interesting correfpondence with the Abbé Nollet, and by feveral printed diflertations. His fpirit of research, like that of Count Rumford, had the merit of aiming at practical utility. To improve the art of tinning a faucepan, or of platter. ing a floor, or of manufacturing the down of the Syrian Afclepias, was to him more than to afcertain whether Franklin is right in referring the electric phenomena to a fingle fluid, or whether Nollet is right in afcribing them to a vitreous, or oxygenous, and to a refinous, or phlogistic, emanation. ALEXANDER GEDDES. The Jews of Alex ndria (fays Philo, in his Life of Mofes) had inftituted a yearly festival, a marine proceffion, in honour of the tranflators of their Bible. In a ficet of boats, gay with flags, whose oars beat time to sacred music, a numerous company the idea of a perfect government, too mar were wont, annually, to assemble, and to pass over from the continent to the Pharosifland, in order to pitch their awnings on that shore and befide those cloisters, where the industry and talent of their great interpreters had brooded so lafting a benefit to learning and to religion. During the facrament of commemoration, rank was fufpended, enmity forgotten, licence overawed, master and fervant, friend and foe, male and female, spread their mats beside one another, on fands to them holier than floors of palaces; and together drank wine of dates, or partook a refreshing banquet, preceded by thanks to the Almighty for the revelation vouchfafed to them alike. And shall no act of grateful remembrance mark the departure of GEDDES? who, feparated by a far greater interval of time and space from the original of Hebrew writ, has tranflated more of it than any one of the seventy interpreters, in a manner which it is the utmost of erudition to chip at, and of taste to criticize. Nor is the magiftrate less indebted to GEDDES than the inquirer. He has ftruck at Sadduceifin a shattering blow. Since Warburton, it has been popularly notorious that the Mofaic system or doctrine does not inculcate the idea of a future state. Whatever props of miracle or prophecy can be lent to fuch a religion, they tend, confequently, to favour scepticifm about an hereafter, to set one fupernatural com munication against another, a revelation without a future ftate against a revelation with one. Geddes has demolished these props, which was not easy, without taking away those on the opposite side of the precinct. CRITICISM OF MERCIER'S. "There is scarcely any difference, (lays Mercier) between the odes of Roufleau, and the profe of Telemachus: in our language, the most illustrious writer cannot be audacious, nor can the scribbler let down his diction. Is it not to be feared that an acquaintance with foreign tongues may change among us this clear luminous national style?" The invariety of French style is no doubt a fact: but is it not a fault? Is it not the cause of the declining taste for French literature in Europe? The odes of Rouffeau are tame as pinioned fwans, and have never been admired out of their native land. Telemachus is a convenient school-book, because it is one of the few prose works of the French, which inculcate neither infidelity nor obscenity: but in what does its literary merit confift? For an epopea, it is too preaching, for 2 vellous. It has, however, more epic, thart didactic merit, and might by a skilfull versifier be abridged into a tolerable poem. Omit the fimilies, make the descriptions picturesque, give dramatic spirit to the dialogue, and manners and paflions to the heroes, and it would please; for the plot, though trivial, is good. The Telemachus, like the Exodus, feems to have been drawn up for an epic poem, and then interpolated with a code. TWO MAGNETIC FLUIDS. C. Coulomb, known by various memoirs presented to the Academy of Sciences, has revived the hypothefis of two magnetic fluids; and has endeavoured to prove, that their particles attract and repel each other, directly as their densities, and inversely as the squares of their distances. Thus the Newtonian rule of philosophizing, never to call in more cautes than are fufficient for the explanation of phænomena, begins to be laid aside. Why should nature be fo fond of number one? Where are the proofs of an habitual unity of caufation, or of preferring few to many? Has the made men with but one hand, or insects with a single leg? SUBAQUEOUS BRIDGES. Philoftratus incidentally fays, in the life of Apollonius, (lib. I. c. 25), that Nitocris, the Affyrian Queen, made under the Euphrates a bridge two fathoms wide, or rather an arched vault, beneath which one might pass the river conveniently. The tale will not bear fifting: for Herodotus, who must have known best, gives (I. 186.) a very different account of the bridge of Nitocris, and makes it a mere row of piles, across which, and during the day-time only, some planks were laid for passengers. Yet, perhaps, the account of Philoftratus may be pleaded in proof of the eventual conftruction of a subaqueous road, on the fite of of the wooden bridge of Nitocris, and known by the fame name. HEBREW INSCRIPTIONS IN EGYPT. Cæfar Lambert, of Marseilles, visited Egypt in 1627. In describing Cairo, he mentions, concerning one of the antiquities, a surprising circumftance. "Returning to the castle and town-hall of Cairo, (says he, p. 10.) I observed, by the ruins on the left fide, as one goes from the city towards it, that it had of old been more extensive. After palling three gate ways, one comes to an extensive, encloled, square. In this is a vast open saloon, whose walls are broken down, which is adorned with twenty-two columns, fifty feet high, (welling out in the middle, and raised on pedef tals. CALVIN'S OPINION OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. Although the articles of the church of England are very Calvinistical, yet Calvin did not like that church; for Grotius, in his Vote for Peace, tells us of Calvin: Illam mutationem, quæ Buceri confilio in Anglia erat infiituta, Papismi accufavit. WOOBURN THE PALLADIUM OF In Queen Mary's days, (fays a prebendary of Exon) when the Pope folicited the queen for a restoration of church lands and dignities, it was first proposed to the cabinet council; where the lord of Bedford being prefent, and knowing himself greatly concerned, fell into a great paffion, and, breaking his chaplet of beads from his girdle, flung them into the fire, swearing deeply, That be valued his sweet abbey of Wooburn more than any fatherly council or commands that could come from Rome. Whereupon, the queen confidering of what temper others of the nobility might be, was difcouraged from profecuting that defign. ANECDOTES OF JOHN TAYLOR, from HIS WORKS, 1630. This author had the merit of interrupting the servile etiquette of kneeling to the king. I myself, (fays the Water-poet), gave a book to king James once, in the great chamber, at Whitehall, as His Majesty came from the chapel. The Duke of Richmond faid merrily to me: "Taylor, where did you learn the manners to give the King a book and not kneel?" " My Lord, faid I, if it please your grace, I doe give now; but when I beg any thing, then I will kneele." Myself, (says the fame writer), carried an old fellow by water, that had wealth enough to be deputy of the ward, and wit enough for a scavenger. The water being fomewhat rough, he was much afraid, and threatened me that if I did drown him, he would spend a hundred pound but he would fee me hanged for it. In little space I landed him on the Bank fide. Well, (faid he), I am glad I am off the water, for if the boat had overset, I could have swam no more than a goose. at my reply, I said: That which is less than one, is little or nothing. An hoftefs of mine at Oxford roafted a shoulder of a ram, which in the eating was as tough as a buff jerkin. I asked her, why the mutton was so tough. She faid: the knew not, unless the butcher deceived her in the age of it. Nay, quoth I, there is, I think, another fault in it, which will excuse the butcher, for, perhaps, you roafted it with old wood. In troth, replied she, that is likely enough, for my husband buys nothing but old stumps and knots, which make all the meat we roaft or boil so exceeding tough that nobody can eat it. Being asked who invented the game of bowls, he replied: No doubt, the philofopher Bias. As a specimen of this writer's poetry, take two anagrams, written during con. finement: I. ARRESTING very well with this agrees, It is A STINGER worse than wafps or bees, The very word includes the prisoner's fates Arresting briefly claps them up IN GRATES. II. To all good verses PRISONs are great foes And many poets they keep fast IN PROSE: And thus a prison truly doth NIP SORE. ABOUT CORNEILLE, CATULLUS, AND PARNELL. Hume's Effay on Simplicity and Refinement, contains, no doubt, delicate obfervations and useful warnings; furely it alfo infinuates some very peculiar, if not indefensible, critical opinions. I. Corneille and Congreve, who carry, fays Home, their wit and refinement fomewhat further than Mr. Pope. Does Corneille carry his wit or his refinement further than Pove, or even approach him in eicher? Has Pope a rival for sprightliness, for condensation, for urbanity of wit, in Horace, in Martial, in Boileau, or elfewhere? Has Corneille advanced any pretenfions to wit, even in his Menteur? As to refinement, the character of Corneille's versification is negligence, not neatness ; his energy is equal to great occafions, but exertion is not habitual to him. In the grand narration of Rodrigue, in the Cid, Pope would not have allowed himself fuch a blunder as Combien d'exploits celebres Soon after twelve at noon, one asked me what it was o'clock. I answered him: it Sont demeurés fans gloire au milieu des téne was little or nothing. On his wondering MONTHLY MAG. No. 93. bres! Tt |