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to Britain's sons that noble distinction that certain je ne sçai quoi which Greek or Roman never possessed. M feels diffident in eulogizing himself; but as there are arrogant and empyrical pretenders in his immediate neighbourhood, it is an imperative duty to caution. It is distressing to witness the havoc those voracious and superficial quacks make in a head of hair; for with heads as empty as their wooden blocks, they cut, and cut, and cut-and God knows that is all. M operates on two hundred heads of hair weekly, and pledges his professional reputation, which is dearer to him than life-that others are paid for disfiguring that beautiful ornament which a skilful hand can alone preserve in beautiful and luxu riant tresses; he being the only barberic professor who ever obtained a prize of 2001. for his excellence in his art, and

he now challenges all Europe for 10007.! Come the four quarters of the globe, with comb and scissors, and he will hurl them to the tomb of all the Capulets. The Rubicon is crossed-aut M, aut nullus! M- -'s abilities are amply sufficient to excite the envy of a certain professional calumniator; but as Mis determined never to sacrifice his character for the paltry consideration of money, so he shall say to his disappointed rival, Cease, viper! you bite against a file."Days of Cervantes! did ye ever witness a barber like this?

Should my humble efforts succeed in communicating to the public any portion of the veneration with which I have learned to regard this important art and its professors-I shall not have lived in vain!

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NOCTES ATTICA.-REVERIES IN A GARRET.

CONTAINING SHORT AND ORIGINAL REMARKS ON MEN AND BOOKS, &c.
BY PAUL Ponder, gent.
Nubes et inania captat.

LONGINUS.

How different is this ancient critic from modern artists in the same line! The Greek critic pointed out beauties with a noble spirit and taste. Modern critics seem like flies that fix on the

sore parts of an author. Pope has described a real critic in his praises of Longinus:

"Thee, bold Longinus, all the Nine inspire, And bless their critic with a poet's fire.

ACTION (ORATORICAL.)

Art of Crit.

The praises of gesticulation, so often mentioned by ancient writers, may, perhaps, be fully justified and illustrated by dumb animals, whose language consists of various attitudes and motions, which convey their ideas very significantly. The utility of "action is farther explained, when we consider that the deaf and dumb receive all their instruction by means of "action," which may be properly called a language of which the eye is the interpreter.

07 to ROUND ASSERTIONS.

These random declarations are much used by persons of little intellect and caution; but more prudent persons weigh the particulars of a story before they bring it forward. We seldom see in an attorney's bills lumping sums; but when large ones are inserted, they

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I fear that to prefer the latter as a poet to the former, will be considered by many as a treason against the "majesty" of Virgil; yet I cannot but think that Ovid is a more interesting poet than Virgil, to the generality of readers. Ovid's story of Phaeton, his Contest of Ajax and Ulysses for the Arms of Achilles, would attract more readers than the epic poem of the Mantuan. The correctness of style, the dignity of expression, are all on the side of Virgil; but amusive invention récommends Ovid to the majority of readers of mere poetry.

INFLUENCE OF CIVILIZATION.

Nations and individuals in the same degree in which they are uninstructed and unpolished, are without shame and delicacy in their actions and demeanour. The blush of self-reprobation is unknown in a barbarous age. On iron just extricated from the ore, no visible alteration is perceived by any additional soil it is on polished steel that every spot is discovered that diminishes its lustre.

VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS.

How obvious, in many instances, is the analogy between animal and vegetable beings! We may observe that trees which bear evident marks of disease and decay, are yet found to bear abundance of fruit; and sickly and infirm women are often seen surrounded with a numerous progeny. Bishop Watson, in his ingenious Chemical Essays, has brought forward many examples of these analogies.

DISCRETION.

two, I should look on the former as more agreeable.

ANCIENT SENTIMENTALISTS.

We are told, in Warton's learned and entertaining History of our Ancient Poetry and Manners, that whilst the most splendid theories on the pure and Platonic passion of love were taught by the Troubadours, and greedily perused by the "gentle and simple," the greatest indecencies were practised in these castles of faithful knights, and by the Troubadours themselves.

MILTON.

There is much truth in what Dr. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, has said of this great genius, namely, that the perusal of the Paradise Lost is an effort of the mind from which we willingly recede. Admiration is, indeed, a painful sensation; and the eye, soon fatigued with the stupendous mountain, relaxes by surveying the humble and luxuriant valley. you

The late Lord Mansfield, no less eminent for his great acquirements than the acuteness of his understanding, was once asked by a country gentleman, whether he should take upon himself the office of a justice of peace, as he was conscious of his want of legal knowledge? 'My good friend," replied this sagacious lawyer, "you have good sense, honesty, and coolness of temper; these qualities will enable to judge rightly, but withhold your reasons of decision, for they may be disputable."

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How much false criticism on plays and players has been produced by an error which prevails among many writers and readers, that a dramatic composition is an exact representation of real actions. But poetry, like painting, claims its privileges, and discovers its inabilities: and a sober critic will no more expect life to be exactly represented in a play, than to see nature scrupulously copied in a landscape.

A QUAKER'S DRESS.

I take it for granted, on the clearest principles of human nature, that men who assume a peculiarity of habit, do not thereby mean to disfigure their persons, or to degrade their situations. I cannot, therefore, ascribe the plainness of a Quaker's dress to humility, but rather to a love of distinction. There are gay and grave coxcombs ; and of the

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These are persons of strong lungs and weak intellects, and are more fitted to be town-cryers than orators; and loudness, and not articulation, seems the glory of such self-appointed heralds. It may truly be said of such modern Stentors, that they are so loud that they cannot be heard and to them may be applied, in a direct sense, the proverb, that we cannot see the wood for trees." The ear of a deaf man is more easily penetrated by distinctness than loudness./q

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The many very moral and political, and I wish I could say religious, reflections in this author, adorned by noble cellence, attach our affections to the frespecimens of pathetic and poetical exquent perusal of Euripides, and make us pass by his obsolete subjects, the want of variety in his characters and interest in his dialogues. The "Alcestis" is indeed an exception to the foregoing strictures, as the story is interesting in a high degree, and the conduct of it excellent. Hercules appears in a very amiable light, and an example of most active friendship.

LUCIAN.

writer for the amusement which he has We are not only indebted to this afforded to us by his own powers of playful satire on the vices and follies of mankind, but also for giving rise to many excellent imitators. Rabelais, Fontenelle, and Le Sage, Montesquieu, Dean Swift, and Lord Lyttelton, are indebted for much of their wit and satire to the various parts of the writings of Lucian; and most of these writers have avoided the improprieties of their Pagan original.

ESOP AND M. BUFFON.

When smiling sop endeavours to enlighten our understandings without outraging our pride, and makes dumb creatures interpreters of his counsels, we think the boldness of the fiction can scarcely be countenanced by its utility and ingenuity. When the great M. Buffon goes still farther, and gives to beasts the passions and opinions of men, and calls this natural history, we applaud the writer, and admire his fictions as the science of a philosopher. I cannot help preferring the fables of little Æsop.

CHEMISTRY..

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When this science is carried no farther than decomposition, it claims no other merit but mere analysis, and resembles the play of those children who amuse themselves with pulling their toys in pieces. The synthetical process is the point in which philosophy and real utility concur to recommend this fashionable study.

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THIS is the most daring, wild, and powerful of all the romances of its author. Its ground-work is more awfulits incidents more terrific-and its intrusions on the sanctities of nature more frequent and more startling, than those which have astounded us in his Montorio, Women, or the Milesian. It gives us a higher idea of his powers, and a deeper regret for the uses to which they are often devoted. Its merit is not in the idea, which is compounded from the St. Leon of Godwin and the infernal machinery of Lewis-nor in the plot, which is ill-constructed-nor in the characters, which are for the most part impossible — but in the marvellous execution of particular scenes, and in thickly-clustered felicities of expression, which are spread luminously over the darkness of its tenor, like fire-flies on a tropical ocean.

The tale is professedly, and we doubt not sincerely, written with a moral and even religious purpose. Its author informs us in his preface, that its hint was taken from the following passage in one of his own sermons" At this moment is there one of us present, how ever we may have departed from the Lord, disobeyed his will, and disre

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MELMOTH."*

garded his word-is there one of us who would, at this moment, accept all that man could bestow, or earth afford, to resign the hope of his salvation?-No, there is not one-not such a fool on earth, were the enemy of mankind to traverse it with the offer!" This idea is developed by the story of a being-once human but thralled by alliance with the "king of fiends"-who after death is permitted to traverse the world in his old form of flesh and blood, with supernatural powers, that he may tempt men at their utmost need to purchase immediate relief on condition of eternal torture. He accumulates on his intended victims the most ingenious tortures-and, when their agony is most intolerable, whispers his proposal to them, and is always rejected. We are afraid there is no very elevated moral in all this. The question repeatedly solved in the romance seems to us not one of religion but of nerve. A naked proposition by a direct emissary of Hell to deliver a man from present wretchedness on the terms of his suffering worse anguish for all eternity, is an experiment not on the religious tendencies of the heart, but on its mere strength to bear present pain as balanced air Ladou to bid & „Ji or pillant W014

* Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale. By the author of Bertram, &c. In four volumes, svo. Edinburgh and London

51

1820.

against its capability to anticipate future agonies. Men neglect their salvation, not from a calm choice of present delight and endless woe in preference to self-denial and Heaven, but from a lurking disbelief of eternal punishment, or from a vague idea of the divine mercy, or from an intention to repent at a future period, or from utter thoughtlessness of all beyond the grave; and if these refuges can be taken from them; if things unseen can be forced on their thoughts as assured realities; if they can be made to feel that in committing wilful sin they do in effect make the terrible election to which our author refers; the best moral result may be expected. But is there one step gained towards this end by the wild fiction of "Melmoth?" Needs "a ghost come from the grave to tell us" that if Satan were so infatuated as to tempt by a distinct proposition of which everlasting woe was a part he would be rejected? The position is even put as a truism by the author, who writes four volumes to expound it. A metaphysician might as well compose a folio to demonstrate that whatever is is, or an adept in mathematics attempt to shew in a thousand ways that a part is less than the whole! Á moral, in the technical sense, is not, however, necessary to a good romance. When obtrusively forced on the reader, it defeats its own purpose; and when merely deduced at the end, produces no effect at all. If admiration is excited by excellence whether suffering or triumphant-if the heart is touched by noble pity-if the mind is enriched with pure images and lofty thoughts the tale is truly moral, though no one precept is lectured on through its pages, or forced into its conclusion. We are afraid this praise cannot be rendered to the work before us. Nothing vicious is ever recommended or palliated by its author; but its evil consists in the terrible anatomy of vice-in the exhibition of supernatural depravity-in the introduction of blasphemous expressions, though they are introduced to be hated. Alas! the pollutions of the imagination too soon find their way to the heart of which are the issues of life." The best purity is that of him who thinks no evil. The very sentiment of peculiar detestation fixes black thoughts on the memory the soul recurs to them with a kind of morbid curiosity-till they grow familiar to it, and lose their horFor. "Mr. Maturin has not only put ap

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propriate blasphemies into the mouth of his fiend, but has himself too often borrowed illustrations from objects which ought to be shut out from the soul as infected merchandize from a city. We will not stigmatize these instances as some of them may appear to deserve, because our allusions would assist the evil, and because we believe the author to be entirely innocent of an intention to seduce or to defile. His besetting tendency, as an author, is a love of strength and novelty in thought and expression, for which he appears willing to make any sacrifice. He will ransack the forgotten records of crime, or the dusty museums of natural history, to discover a new horror. He is a passionate connoisseur in agony. His taste for strong emotion evidently hurries him on almost without the concurrence of the will, so that we can scarcely help thinking that his better nature must be now and then shocked when he calmly peruses his own works. We entreat him-when he is about to unveil some dreadful enormity to the gaze of the world-to reflect on that principle which he has so finely developed in his own Montorio, that evil thoughts, repeated even to shuddering souls, may stain and fascinate them for ever!

Melmoth is not so properly a tale as a series of tales very inartificially connected, but relating to the agency of the same being, and having the same purpose. The work opens in the year 1816-a period somewhat too recent for the advent of an emissary of Satan

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with the visit of John Melmoth, student in the university of Dublin, to the mansion of his dying uncle. This uncle is actually sinking into the grave from terror occasioned by the sight of one of his ancestors in palpable form, whose portrait hangs in a chamber of the mansion. After his death, his nephew and heir burns the portrait, and discovers a manuscript in the same room to which he had been directed by his expiring relative. This manuscript relates to the attempts of the original of the portrait, also named John Melmoth, who lived in 1646, to win the soul of an Englishman named Stanton, thirty years after his own apparent decease. Young Melmoth is himself visited twice by this fearful being, but is not subjected to his tortures or his proposals. In a dreadful tempest he rescues a Spanish gentleman, who narrates to him his history. Out of this history, which refers to the same being, and which

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