we see. This idea, though weak and disguised, suffices to diminish the pain, which we suffer from the misfortunes of those, whom we love; and to reduce that affliction to such a pitch as converts it into pleasure. We weep for the misfortunes of a hero, to whom we are attached. In the same instant we comfort ourselves by reflecting, that it is nothing but a fiction; and it is precisely that mixture of sentiments, which composes an agreeable sorrow, and tears, that delight us. But as that affliction, which is caused by exterior and sensible objects, is stronger than the consolation, which arises from an internal reflection, they are the effects and symptoms of sorrow, which ought to prevail in the composition.

It cannot be ill-nature in a critick, to charge this account with verbiage. It conveys no meaning or a false one. It is justly inquired, how much must a merchant's loss of property fall short of his whole fortune, to affect him, like gain, with positive delight. How small must the provocation or affront be, to change resentment into gratitude, and affect us like a mark of respect. The principal truth, which is con. tained in the position that pain moderated becomes pleasure, and pleasure increased, pain, is this, that in a mixture of agreeable and disa. greeable, the former are often height. ened by the latter. This critick says, that in all representatious of human nature in trouble, the grief arises from viewing them as real, and the pleasure from the recollection that they are feigned But it is not only feigned, but actual calamity, which is sometimes attractive. Men are prone to believe that a story which moves them is true, and unwilling to admit evidence that it is a fiction, because it will diminish

their satisfaction. Fiction is contrived, as far as possible, to appear reality. Tragical narratives, and descriptions of orators and historians, on which we rely, are read with delight. Disastrous events, that have come within our knowledge, are related and heard with avidity. All this evinces, that there may be a great interest taken in objects of suffering, without that softening circumstance, which Fontenelle makes the source of the pleasure, viz. the recollection that we are grieving for a creature of fancy.

In respect to all fictitious represensations, especially the drama; the effect does not imply a belief that all which passes before is reality. The mechanical contrivances and other concomitants of a theatrical exhibition never produce a perfect illusion. There can be no answer to the main doctrine of Johnson upon this subject in his preface to Shakespeare. The scene of a play is laid in Athens or Rome, but the place where it is acted is known to be neither Athens or Rome, but a modern theatre. The players are known to be players. The stage is never mistaken for an apartment in a palace, or for a field of battle. Imitations move our passions not because they are conceived to be realities, but because they bring realities to mind. The misery which we lament is such as we apprehend might be, or has been, and not what we believe to exist. There is a consciousness of fiction throughout the representation. If the suffering displayed be extreme and shocking, we do not find relief by thinking it is painted woe; but we feel disgust and horror; and avoid seeing it again, as we should avoid any real distress, which we wanted fortitude to support.

Mr. Hume's theory in his Essay on Tragedy, and which he calls a supplement to the two preceding, is reducible to two positions. The first that tragedy and pathetick eloquence please and move by exhibiting distress with distinctness, force and life. The question is where it was. He has said no more than this, that the picture of a melancholy scene is contemplated with more pleasure, the more perfectly it is executed. The inquiry may still be made, whence arises this pleasure? the other position is, that the delight received from descriptions and addresses that raise the melancholy feelings is admiration of the genius and talent, which the historian or poet, the orator or actor display. The pleasure of criticism, of detecting the ability

and art of a speaker is not only distinct from the pathetick effect of his eloquence, but is in a great degree inconsistent with it. The audience are never more pleased than when they forget the speaker and his art in his subject. When he excites our sympathetick emotions it is rather by concealing than displaying art. A critick may employ himself in judging of the genius, and skill of the orator, but he cannot at the same time be a subject of the passions intended to be raised. The great proportion of hearers approve the person who speaks to their hearts and commend his performance. But how it is accomplished, they neither give themselves the trouble to consider, nor attempt to explain.

RAPPEL DES JUIFS.

THERE was a book with this title published in the year 1643, in small Svo. without the name of printer, or place; but the manuscript was in the possession of the Pere Simon, and the author is known to be Isaac La Peyrere, who seriously maintain ed in a book, entitled Preadamite, that there were men before Adam, and proved it, as he thought, from the 5th Rom. v. 12, 13, 14. The work, of which we now intend to say something, called "Rappel des Juifs," is one of the most rare and curious in the world, for it was suppressed by the magistrates as soon as it appeared. I saw the only complete copy in Paris, and care. fully read the preface twice over. In it he predicts the recal of the Jews, and their restoration to the

holy land; which is to recover its ancient fertility. A temporal christian prince, he predicts, shall be their leader, more just, and more victorious than any of their ancient kings; this king, he says, must be a king of France, and that he shall attain to universal dominion. The reasons which he gives for its being a king of France are curious. 1. Because he is the most christian king, and the oldest son of the church. The second and third reasons are still more fanciful. The 4th is; "because it is probable that France will be the place, where the Jews will be first invited to collect, in order to become christians, and where they will find a retreat from the persecutions, which they suffer under other governments. For France is a land of franchise, (freedom.} It

allows no slavery; whoever steps upon it is free."

This extract from Peyrere's preface might have been shown to the Emperour Napoleon before his decree, for the convocation of Jewish deputies from every part of Europe. Certain it is, that an extract appeared in the Moniteur, during the meeting of the Assembly, and I at first supposed it to be a fabrication, intended to flatter the Emperour, and favour his projects. But upon seeing the rare and extraordinary work, from which it was taken, I made a note of the passage.

The treatise, called "Preadamite," is not rare, though this also was condemned to be burnt, and the author thrown into prison, at Brussels. Menage had requested the author to send him a copy "before it came to light." Peyrere understood the word, and sent him the book, with this verse of Ovid, changing only urbem for ignem. "Parve, nec invideo, sine me, liber ibis in ignem."

This odd man pretended to have recanted his errours, and obtained

absolution from the Pope; but he was at last far from being a papist, and died with his head full of his Preadamitick notions. Here is his epitaph, copied from the Menagiana.

"La Peyrère ici git, ce bon Israélite, Huguenot, Catholique, enfin Pré-adamite.

Quatre religions lui plurent à la fois, Et son indifference étoit si peu com

mune,

Qu'apres quatre-vingt ans qu'il eut à faire un choix,

Le bon homme partit, et n'en choisit pas une."

MILTON.

THE wonderful sublimity of the two first books of Paradise Lost, is, perhaps, the cause of the neglect of

the other parts. We are sooner wearied with following, than Milton with leading us. If no human wing could long continue such flights through the expanse of creation, assuredly the eyes of common men cannot pursue its track.

But when he becomes a metaphysician, we desert him with weariness, and almost with disgust. It is vain to declaim against the prejudice of Dr. Johnson, and to deny the justice of his decision: every man's experience satisfies him of its truth: we lay Milton down, and forget to resume him.

To induce those who have devoured the early books of the Paradise Lost for the twentieth time, before reading the latter ones for the first, to renew their study of Milton and to persevere in it, it is enough to assert, that, if we would read him only for the poetry, and not for the narration, if we would look for placid beauties, as well as astonishing grandeur, contemplate the lawns of pastoral, as eagerly as the fields of epick song, and become as susceptible of delight from Eden, as of terrour from Hell, we may

learn to enjoy in him the same qualities, as charm us in Collins and Thomson, in Goldsmith and Pope.

Our great heroick poet has as much art in his disposition of events, as greatness in his conception of them. None ever introduced so great a compliment to his principal character, as Milton has bestowed upon Eve, and at the most interesting time in her history, one moment before the fall. The ninth book should be perused at one sitting to enjoy it. We see the serpent, winding through the garden, plotting some device to tempt our parents to disobedience, and to destroy all their posterity: fearful of encountering them together, he hoped to meet

the woman alone. We have next the enchanting description of paradise and of Eve, its chief ornament, which a poet of ordinary notions would have employed instantly to inflame the dæmon by contrast with his own feelings and proper habitations. But the mighty magician, who invests supernatural beings with bodily organs, and plays them before our eyes, as he pleases, who exhibits angelick natures under the operation of human passions, who makes Mammon mean spirited, and Beelzebub magnanimous, Moloch fierce and Belial gentle devils, has given us a picture infinitely more interesting. At the first moment of beholding Eve

"the evil one abstracted stood "From his own evil."

The personified and compact essence of malignity is instantly changed. Of such an idea nothing could equal the happiness, except the exclamation, that Satan, recovering himself, immediately utters, "Thoughts! whither have ye led me!" which is unequalled by any passage in the volume for surprise

and dramatick effect.

CONVERSATION.

"READING," says Lord Bacon, "makes the full man, conference the ready man, and writing, the exact man." Conference, as it is here stiled, or social conversation, embraces pleasures and advantages not to be derived either from reading or composing. Properly conducted, therefore, it excludes your "sedentary weavers of long tales," and professional manufacturers of dry dissertations. It is often our lot, however, to fall into a circle, where one of these spoilers of social life has taken his ground without a single rival, or any interlocutor, who is

permitted to reply with his yes or no. I do not object to a pertinent story, if it be not a long one, though it be told for the "nine hundred and ninety ninth time;" but when one is unremittingly persecuted by a prating fellow, who relates, at a single interview, the history of his life, the pedigree of his horse, and the biography of his spaniel, with a thousand particularities, which, probably, never exceedingly interested his own little self; one is disposed to inquire, whether some means might not be resorted to, in order to rid society of such a troublesome member.

The other class of intruders, to which I have alluded, is made up of those reading, speculating, or technical men, who, having acquired in their closets that, of which they seem to apprehend every one else to be ignorant, commence grave discourses on different subjects, without regard to the character of their audience, and address the learned or

ignorant, their superiors, their equals, or their inferiors, as if they imagined themselves a sort of professors, surrounded by pupils who were looking up to them for instruction. I have heard of one of these sage Doctors (not in anatomy) who, having acquired a superficial knowl edge of the humours and structure of the eye, discoursed for some time without notes, to an old lady, that was, probably, experiencing the usual failure of sight at her age: he arrayed his philosophical treatise in all the technical phraseology of the books, and produced a whole, that was equally astonishing to the few spectators present, and to the good, simpering gentlewoman, who did not know opticks from algebra.

I shall mention one other description of character, which interrupts the pleasure of the social circle it

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is the captious man, who claims to be the only one that is able to set you right, under any mistake into which you are supposed to fall. He does not belong to a class that is really the most knowing; for knowledge is generally diffident. This anser inter olores" will often biss with contempt, when the errour is really his own. You may find him triumphing in the detection of a supposed anachronism, when he himself mistakes the date; or sneering at the interpretation of a passage from the sacred writings, which he is compelled afterwards to acknowledge the true exposition.

I propose, that, hereafter, the man

who wishes to give in detail the history of himself, or his companions, or his domesticated animals, should hire his audience, as in some countries they hire mourners to a funeral; that he who delivers his oral dissertations, should be obliged to publish a certain number of copies at his own expense, as candidates for certain degrees are their inaugural dissertations; and that the captious man should, whenever detected in an errour, be liable to a high pecuniary mulct, for the benefit of the modest and good humoured, of whose mortification and embarrassment he may, at any time, have been the occasion.

LORD KAMES AND

Letter 1.

ΤΟ MRS. MONTAGU.

"On no one thing at present is my heart more bent than to have Mrs. Montagu's good opinion; and although I imagined I could write to her with as much ease, as I could make her a visit at her old castle of Denton Hall, yet when it came to the trial, my heart failed me, and I put the business off from day to day, till I came to be troubled in mind with a spectre, that appeared in the shape of neglected duty. Unless for this powerful call, I blush to own, that probably I should have fallen a sacrifice to that contemptible virtue, called bashfulness.

"On the 10th day of Septem. ber last, I saw Mrs. Montagu carried off coporally in a postchaise from Blair-Drummond and yet,

strange to say, she has been the chief of our dramatis persona ever since. In my solitary walks she has never ceased to be my faithful companion, and has inspired me with most valuable hints for my rural embellishments. Follows a sketch of some of them. You will probably remember the long polished walk along the side of the river. That walk is to be extended over a great variety of ground, and to take in a variety of objects, so as to make a circuit of not less than four miles. One part is enchanting: the road sinks imperceptibly into a hollow, originally the bed of a river, lined on both sides with high banks covered with wood, which hides every object from the sight, but the sky. Emerging into open day-light, the first object that strikes the is

eye