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quite inoffensive in a moral view, though necessarily mixing something of the flimsy texture of the opera with the severer graces of Melpomene. His muse possesses an equable and steady pinion: if she seldom soars into sublimity, she never sinks to meanness; she is rather elegant and pleasing, than vigorous or lofty. His sacred dramas are particularly excellent, and are scarcely less interesting to the reader of taste than of piety. They are also exempt from a certain monotony, which makes his other pieces too much to resemble each other.

It is with no small regret that, persuaded as we are that England is the rich native soil of dramatic genius, we are driven to the painful necessity of recommending exotics in preference to the indigenous productions of our own fruitful clime. The truth is, that though we possess in our language admirable single pieces, yet our tragic poets have afforded scarce any instances, except Milton in his exquisite Comus and Samson Agonistes, and Mason* in his chaste and classic dramas, in which we can conscientiously recommend their entire, unweeded volumes, as never deviating from that correctness and purity which should be the inseparable attendant on the tragic muse.†

We shall indeed find not only that virtuous scenes, and even pious sentiments, are scattered throughout most of our popular tragedies, but that the general moral also is frequently striking and impressive. Its end, however, is often defeated by the means employed to accomplish it. In how many, for instance, of the favourite tragedies of Rowe and Otway, which are most frequently acted,

The Rev. William Mason, precentor of York, wrote two dramatic poems on the Grecian model; "Caractacus" and "Elfrida."-ED.

+ Thomson's tragedies furnish the best exception to this remark, of any with which the author is acquainted.

do we find passages, and even whole scenes, of a directly contrary tendency; passages calculated to awaken those very passions which it was the professed object of the author to counteract!

First raising a combustion of desire,

With some cold moral they would quench the fire.

When we contrast the purity, and I had almost said the piety of the works of the tragic poets of pagan Greece, and even the more select ones of popish France, with some of the pieces of the most shining bards of protestant Britain, do they not all appear to have been in an inverse ratio with the advantages which their authors enjoyed?

It may be objected that, in speaking of poetic composition, we have dwelt so long, and almost so exclusively, on the drama. It would indeed have been far more pleasant to range at large through the whole flowery fields of the muses, where we could have gathered much that is sweet, and much that is salutary. But we must not indulge in excursions which are merely pleasurable. We have, on all occasions, made it a point not to recommend books because they are pleasant, or even good, but because they are appropriate. And as it is notorious

that gorgeous tragedy

With sceptred pall comes sweeping by,
Presenting Thebes' or Pelops' line-

that she prefers the splendid scenes of royal courts to the retired walks of private life; that she delights to exemplify virtue, to designate vice, or dignify calamity, by chusing her personages among kings and princes; we therefore thought it might not be altogether unuseful, in touching on this topic, to distinguish between such authors as are safe, and such as are dangerous; by mentioning those of the

one class with deserved commendation, and by generally passing over the names of the others in silence.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Books of instruction, &c. Lord Bacon, &c.

IN the "prophet of unborn science," who brought into use a logic almost entirely new, and who rejected the study of words for that of things, the royal pupil may see the way, rarely used before his time, of arguing by induction; a logic grounded upon observation, fact, and experiment. To estimate the true value of lord Bacon, we should recollect what was the state of learning when he appeared; we should remember with what a mighty hand he overthrew the despotism of that absurd system which had kept true knowledge in shackles, arrested the progress of sound philosophy, and blighted the growth of the human intellect.

His first aim was to clear the ground, by rooting out the preconceived errors, and obstinate prejudices, which long prescription had established; and then to substitute what was useful, in place of that idle and fruitless speculation which had so long prevailed. He was almost the first rational investigator of the laws of nature, who made genuine truth and sound knowledge, and not a barren curiosity and an unprofitable ingenuity, the object of his pursuit. His instances are all said to be collected with as much judgment, as they are recorded with simplicity. He teaches the important art of viewing a question on all sides, and of eliciting truth from the result; and he always makes reasoning and experiment go hand in hand, mutually illustrating each other.

One principal use of being somewhat acquainted with this great author is, to learn that admirable method and order which he uniformly observes. So excellent is the disposition he makes, that the reader is not lost, even in that mighty mass of matter in which he arranges the arts of history, poetry, and philosophy, under their three great corresponding faculties of memory, imagination, and understanding. This perspicuous clearness of distribution; this breaking up his subject into parts, without losing sight of that whole to which each portion preserves its exact subordination, enables the reader to follow him, without perplexity, in the wide stretch and compass of his intellectual researches.

With the same admirable method he has also made a distribution of the several branches of history. He separates it into three divisions-chronicles or annals, lives, and relations; assigning, in his luminous way, to each its respective properties. Lives of individuals, he is of opinion, exhibit more faithful and lively narratives of things; and he pronounces them capable of being more safely and advantageously transferred into example, than general history. He assigns also a great degree of usefulness to special relations of actions, such as Catiline's conspiracy, and the expedition of Cyrus; conceiving them to be more pleasant by presenting a subject more manageable, because more limited. And as a more exact knowledge and full information may be obtained of these individual relations, the author, he observes, is not driven, like the writer of general history, to fill up chasms and blank spaces out of his own imagination."

* There is one instance in which even this great author has poorly executed his own ideas. After so ably laying down the outline of history, he has shewn little skill, in an individual instance, in filling it up. Few writers have more remarkably

Politics he arranges with the same methodical order, dividing them into three several parts-the preservation of a state, its prosperity, and its enlargement. Of the two former branches, he allows that preceding authors had already treated, but intimates that he himself was the first who had discussed the latter. As political economy will hereafter form an important branch of study for the royal pupil, we are, happily, not wanting in very able modern authors, who, living in our own time, are likely to be more extensively useful, from their intimate acquaintance with existing circumstances, and with the revolutions which have led to them.

Nothing seems to have been too great or too small for the universal mind of Bacon; nothing too high for his strong and soaring wing; nothing too vast for his extensive grasp; nothing too deep for

failed than Lord Bacon, in his history of Henry VII. It is defective in almost all the ingredients of historic composition; neither possessing majesty nor dignity on the one hand, nor ease and perspicuity on the other. There is a constant aim at wit and pleasantry, with a constant failure in both. The choice of matter is injudicious; great circumstances are often slightly touched, while he enlarges upon trifles. The history is feeble narrative; the style is affected declamation; loaded, as if in defiance of Quintilian's precept, with those double epithets, which, as that noblest of critics observes, when each does not furnish a fresh idea, is as if every common soldier in an army should carry a footman, increasing the incumbrance without adding to the strength. The history of Henry VII. wants perspicuity, simplicity, and almost every grace required of the historic muse. And, what is more strange, we neither discover in this work the deep politician, the man of business, the man of genius, or the man of the world. It abounds with those colloquial familiarities, we had almost said vulgarisms, with which the works of that reign are generally infected, but which we do not expect in this great author. Budgell has published in the Guardian, a collection of numberless passages from this history, exemplifying almost every kind of literary defect; not with an invidious design to injure so great a name, but lest the authority of that name should sanction bad writing. The present criticism is offered, lest it should sanction bad taste.

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