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operations. Those which remain to be spoken of, are fo manifeftly the offspring of reflection, that their origin, in fome measure, explains itself.

From Reflection, or the power of difpofing of our own attention, arifes the power of confidering our ideas feparately; for the fame consciousness which intimately informs us of the presence of certain ideas, and this is the very characteristic of attention, informs us alfo that they are diftinct. Were we

entirely deftitute of the ufe of reflection, we could not diftinguish different objects, but only in fo far as they fingly made a very strong impreffion on us; all those which acted but weakly, would pafs for nothing.

In diftinguishing our ideas, we sometimes confider those qualities which are most essential to the subject, as entirely feparated from it. This is what we more particularly call, to abstract.

Reflection, from whence is derived the power of diftinguishing ideas, gives us likewife that of comparing them, in order to know their relations. This is done by transferring the attention alternately from one to another, or by fixing it at the fame time on many.

After having diftinguished several ideas, we fometimes confider them collectively, as forming only a fingle notion; at other times we prefcind from a notion fome of its component ideas. And this is what we call, to compound or decompound ideas.

When we compare our ideas, our consciousness of them is the cause of our knowing, that they are the fame in several respects, or that they are not the fame. This twofold operation is what we call judging, and is plainly a confequence of the other.

From the operation of Judging arises that of Reasoning; for reasoning is only a concatenation of judgments, depending one upon the other.

I have confined myself to these analyses, in order to fhew the dependance of the mind's operations, and how they are gradually originated. We firft have perceptions of which we are confcious. We afterwards form a more lively consciousnefs of fome perceptions; this becomes attention. Thence forward these ideas are connected, and confequently we know them again to be the fame we had before, and ourselves the fame who had them; this is Reminifcence. When the mind revives, or retains its perceptions, or only recollects the figns of them; this is Imagination, Contemplation, and Memory: but when it difpofes of its own attention, this is Reflection.

In fine, from this last, all the reft arife. It is properly Reflection which diftinguishes, compares, compounds, decompounds, and analyses; for thefe are only different ways of conducting the attention. Hence too Judgment, Reasoning, and Conception, are formed; and hence refults the understanding.

Thus have we, from Mr. Nugent's tranflation, prefented our Readers with a diftinct view, in miniature, of that ftrong, extenfive, and beautiful chain of reafoning, whereby the Abbé de Condillac, with a happinefs of genius peculiar to himself, entered into the human mind, and unravelled all its mazes. Numberlefs fine paffages, like fo many leffer chains depending from the great one, have we been obliged to omit. We with, indeed, that the Tranflator had been lefs faithful to the words of his original; that there were no French idioms to complain of; no obfcurity thrown upon the work, by fo many English words introduced in a foreign meaning. Yet the Abbé has been fo correct in explaining his terms, that even the mere English reader, tho' he may meet with his own language very unusually applied, will be able, by a small degree of attention, to apprehend the import of the argument, and accompany the Author through all his reasonings. We referve the fecond part of this curious Effay for our next Review.

Conclufion of the Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope. See Review for June last.

IN

N the profecution of this article, we fhall not undertake to analyse the whole of our Author's obfervations. Where he has advanced any thing new, that we shall felect; where any thing may with propriety be added, that we fhall endeavour to fupply: and where we conceive our Critic to be in an error, that we fhall, with due deference, attempt to correct. We shall now begin with the following exquifite lines. In the foul while memory prevails

The folid force of understanding fails:
Where beams of warm imagination play
The memory's foft figures melt away..

There is hardly in any language,' fays the Eflayift, a me taphor more appofitely applied, or more elegantly expreffed, than this of the effects of the warmth of fancy. Although ⚫ experience evinces that memory, underftanding, and fancy ↑ are seldom united in one perfon, yet have there been fome

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• few transcendent geniufes who have been bleffed with all ⚫ three.' Those the Critic recollected were, Herodotus, Plato, Tully, Livy, Tacitus, Galilæo, Bacon, Des Cartes, Malbranche, Milton, Burnet of the Charter-house, Berkley, and Montesquieu. Do not Cæfar, Plutarch, and Pliny the younger, among the antients, and Gaffendi, Peireskius, Picus Mirandola, Erafmus, Buchanan, Scaliger, and Barrow among the moderns, equally deferve that character? If the accounts left us of the admirable Crichton*, may be depended on, (and the authorities are ftrong) was he not a greater prodigy, in all refpects, than any of those we have mentioned? One science only will one genius fit: So vaft is art, fo narrow human wit.

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Upon this hypothefis our Critic gives a pleafing detail of authors and painters, who when they attempted any work out of their own walk, have generally failed. But in what follows, we conceive he lies open to fome objection. The modesty and good fenfe of the antients,' fays he, is, in this particular, as remarkable as in others. The fame poet never prefumed < to understand more than one kind of dramatick poetry, if we except the Cyclops of Euripides. A poet never prefumed to plead in public, or to write hiftory, or, indeed, any • confiderable work in profe. The fame actors never recited tragedy and comedy.-They feem to have held that univerfality, not to say diversity, at which the moderns aim, to be a gift unattainable by man. We, therefore, of Great Britain have, perhaps, the more reason to congratulate ourfelves on two very fingular phænomena: I mean Shakefpear's being able to pourtray characters so very different as • Falstaff and Macbeth, and Garrick's being able to perfonate fo inimitably a Lear or an Abel-Drugger.'

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It is poffible this Gentleman may not allow that Cicero, and Pliny the younger, fhould be ftiled poets, but he will not refuse that title to Ovid, and to Silius Italicus; and yet Seneca tells us, that the former pleaded caufes with great fuccefs, and we know that the latter was an eminent orator. It is notorious, that Afinius Pollio brought feveral tragedies on the Ro

* See Mackenzie's Lives.

+ Lycophron wrote many Critical Effays in profe; and befides his Alexandra, exercised himself, with fair fuccefs, in almost all the fields. of poefy, from the loftiness of tragedy, to the humble fpirit of Anagram. It is allo certain, that the author of the Thebaid wrote tragedy, (vid. Juv.) and that the poet Sidonius Apollinaris compofed feveral volumes of Letters in profe, Vid. Vit.

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man ftage, with general applaufe, and yet we have the teftimony of Horace for his having well nigh completed the Hiftory of the Civil War. Is it certain that Rofcius did not wear the Sock as well as the Buskin?

Although other poetst have excelled equally in tragedy and comedy, yet was Shakespear, perhaps, the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in both: and we readily join iffue with our Author, in the great character he gives Mr. Garrick.

Our Effayift deems Mr. Voltaire the most universal of authors; and thinks, that either the tragedy of Merope, or the Hiftory of Lewis XIV. would alone have immortalized him, as he writes almost equally well both in profe and verfe.

After all, may not the more eafy acquifition of fcience now a-days, by the means of printing, with the impoffibility of a writer's living by any one species of compofition, particularly poetry, be the reafons why many of the moderns have excelled in different walks, and that fome have well nigh completed the circle of univerfal knowlege?-Our Author goes on: Thus Pegafus a nearer way to take

May boldly deviate from the common track,
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And match a grace beyond the reach of art.

Here is evidently, as our Author remarks, a blameable mixture of metaphors, where the attributes of the horfe and the writer are confounded. We come next to the celebrated fimile of the Alps. So pleas'd at firft the tow'ring Alps we try,

Mount o'er the vales, and feem to tread the sky;
Th' eternal fnows appear already past,

And the first clouds and mountains feem the last;
But, thofe attain'd, we tremble to furvey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increafing profpe&t tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arife!

This Comparison, the Critic obferves, is often mentioned as an inftance of Pope's ftrength of fancy; but, in his opinion, the images are too general and indistinct; and he thinks the laft line conveys no new idea to the mind. Here we beg leave to diffent from him; for as the poet has traced the most exact refemblance between things which, in appearance, are utterly unrelated to each other, fo alfo does he, in the laft line, really add a new idea, by making that particular, which before was general. In fine, we fhall not eafily be prevailed on, not to look upon this as one of the beft fimiles in our language.

Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben. Johnson, and Dryden.

After

After all, however, we queftion if Mr. Pope was not indebted for the thought, to the very ingenious Drummond of Hawthornden: our readers will not be displeased with us if we cite the paffage.

Ah! as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass;
Or Atlas temples crown'd with winter-glass ;
The airy Caucafus, the Apennine,

Pyrenes cliffs, where fun doth never shine;
When he fome craggy hills hath over went,
Begins to think of reft, his journey spent:
Till mounting fome tall mountain he doth find
More heights before him than he left behind.*

We fhall next proceed to confider what our Author hath fubjoined to the following lines.

Falfe eloquence, like the prifmatic glafs,
Its gaudy colours fpreads on every place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without diftinction gay.

< The naufeous affectation of expreffing every thing pomp⚫oufly and poetically, is no where more visible than in a poem • lately published, entitled Amyntor and Theodora.'

We can by no means fubscribe to this cenfure of Mr. Mallet's Hermit. Without attempting to particularize what may be deemed the more poetical parts of this poem, we shall only add, that whoever can read the Discovery in the fecond canto, and especially the Recovery of Theodora in the third, without tears, has not the feeling of a man: in these, Nature fpeaks her own language. Does our Critic afcertain the circumstances when poetry or plain language should be used?

The poem from whence these picturefque lines are extracted, being addreffed to the Deity, the fimile is thus applied.

So while I wou'd me raise

To the unbounded limits of thy praise,

Some part o' th' way I thought to have o'er-run,
But now I fee how fcarce I have begun;
With wonders new my fpirits range poffeft,

And wandering wayless in a maze, them reft.

Drummond was not only an excellent verfifier, for thofe times, but has as much poetical thought in him as any of his cotemporaries in England. His poems intitled Forth-Feafting and Mæliades, not to mention his famous Macaronic piece Polemo-Middina, and many others, are proofs of this. Ben Johnson walked from London to Drummond's feat in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, to pay our northern bard a vifit, The topics of their discourse are still preserved in the Eding burgh edition of Drummond's works, folio, 1711.

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