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ethical trains of thought, are accordingly imbued with the colours of those objects in life which had excited his sympathies, and led to the construction of his sketches, anecdotes, and tales.

The next circumstance, worthy of notice in his productions, is the purity of his literary taste. In every form of the essay, and in every variety of description, the same characteristic trait marks the course of his pen. The broadest humour in which he indulges never goes so far as to overleap the bounds of refinement in diction. While his keen perception of the ridiculous, as well as of the beautiful, must have induced him to paint both in the most glowing colours, we find his satire always as chaste as it is pungent, and his irony as playful as it is discriminating.

Another mark of his literary character is versatility. Some appear to imagine, that this consists in an ability to compose with equal success novels, poems, histories, sermons and reviews, but, in truth, in these numerous forms of composition there may be no greater versatility displayed than in the various parts of the same production. The world has seen several works bearing the title of poems, which were in fact nothing more than novels in verse; and the writer who excels in historical romance, may, even when intending to write of sober realities, actually give us only a romance of history. The different strains in which periodical essays alone are composed, exhibit in the hands of MacKenzie, as great and as varied talents as any of the nominal varieties of composition above mentioned.

But evidence that talents of a high order belong to any author, is to be sought as well in the succession, as in the nature or the variety of his productions. The contrary opinion has, I am aware, many practical advocates, who

conceive that one or two felicitous efforts may stamp a character which will endure the ravages of time. But the genius that glitters for a day, will seldom be found to attract admiration for an age. Even military glory, the most deceitful, and of the most uncertain foundation, must, in general, have more than one signal victory to give it enduring eclat. How much more that which rests on the imperishable monuments of mind? It is the persevering effort, or rather it is the power to make such ef fort, that can entitle an author to claim our full confidence; to challenge our unqualified respect. That the chief contributor to the Mirror and the Lounger, had that command of powers which enabled him to concentrate at will the energies of his mind on whatever subject he chose to handle, appears from the fact that of the hundred and ten papers in the former, no less than forty nine, and of the hundred and one of the latter, fifty five bear the name of Mac Kenzie. Both these papers appeared weekly and though some time elapsed between the discontinuance of the former, in 1780, and the commencement of the latter in 1785, yet there is no evidence that the interval was occupied in the preparation of the subsequent series. I do not advert to the frequency of his efforts as unparalleled or superior to that of others who had preceded him in the same walks of authorship, but as placing him among the front ranks, “'m #gquaxaσi” with those gigantic heroes of the pen, among whom to be second is, indeed, vastly more honourable than to be first among the ordinary herd of authors.

The command of one's powers, may, however, according to the dispositions of the individual, be turned either to good or to evil; to the erection of artificial rules of life, and the fostering of literary selfishness, or to the wide and general diffusion of intellectual pleasures. The ties

of humanity may possibly escape the regards of an author, while he fosters the conceit of the cold and the unfeeling. General happiness may vanish from before the sight of him who fixes his eagle gaze only on the dazzling splendours of literary fame. Not such was the course of him whom I have attempted to present to the reader. His bent of mind was towards the generous and heartfelt charities of life. He reproved and satirized the follies of the great, because they weaken the natural ties of brotherhood, that bind our race together; and he discouraged and ridiculed the attempt on the part of persons in moderate circumstances, to render those follies more generally prevalent. The reader will readily recollect as examples of this raillery, the amusing letters* of John Homespun and his daughter, and those of the ingenious Miss Marjory Mushroom.

A deep sense of the value of that practical morality which is founded on just sentiments of piety, is every where apparent in the writings of Mac Kenzie; but we have no prosing lectures on the efficacy of dogmas, or on the value of this or that abstract speculation. He appears to have entertained the rather obsolete notion, that goodness consists in being good. The story of La Roche exemplifies the nature of those principles and feelings, which, according to the views of our author, can give the most certain consolations in adversity and cast into comparative obscurity all the " pleasures of philosophical discovery, and all the pride of literary fame."

The humane and generous spirit of this author will be duly appreciated, when it is considered, that he was among the first to invoke the smiles of public favour

*See "Mirror" Nos. 12 and 25; also "Lounger" Nos. 17, 98, 53, 36, 56 and 62.

upon the early efforts of the poet Burns. At a time when that most extraordinary child of genius was struggling against the frowns of fortune and of former friends, and when he had by great efforts caused a small edition of his early poetical effusions to be put to press, at a country town in the west of Scotland, in order to raise the means of embarking to a foreign land, where his genius would in all probability have soon gone with his bones to the oblivion of a West Indian charnel house; at that time did the amiable Mac Kenzie immediately invite public attention to the simple, natural, and "truly pastoral strains" of the "Ayrshire ploughman.* "The fact that the poet was soon found in all the circles of taste and refinement within the Scotish capital, where he was "universally admired, feasted, caressed, and flattered;" and that his genius and writings became known and appreciated throughout England, is ascribed, and probably with justice, by one of his biographers, to the timely interference of him, who thus proved that the "man of feeling" was not a mere "creature of the brain."

*See Lounger, No. 97.

LOVE ASLEEP.

BY J. N. BARKER.

"Tis said that music is the food of Love,
Light diet, certes, though excess of it,
As the bard sings-THE BARD, par excellence-
May give a surfeit, and the appetite
Sicken and die-the Irish way, perhaps
The poet meant to live a little longer.
If some have died for love, 'tis probably
Not over-eating, but the lack of food

Led to such sad catastrophes. The limners
Have sometimes made this Love a chubby child,
Like Clara Fisher, (who's a little love,

Par parenthese,) in Gobbleton. But who Would think of Cupid, as of one o' the quorum, (Not but that aldermen can love, however,)

Dying of calipash and calipee!

Yet music is the food of love, nay more,

It is the vital air of love, its soul,

It's very essence, love is harmony

Or nothing; love's the music of the mind

(Perhaps that thought is stol'n from Lady Morgan
Whose books I read with pleasure, notwithstanding
Some pigmy critics here, and those they ape,
Those barbarous, one-eyed Polyphemuses,
The Cyclopes of the English Quarterly.)
But to return from rambling-Cupid's movements
Are the true "poetry of motion," (that

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