of the dear me and bless me ! kind; and other little rumplings and rumpusses, which have a tendency to draw people's attention, and make one be talked of. It is plain that, for want of a due management of the tonnish scream,some people have lost their lives, and others their limbs, which is not a very pleasant circumstance; and however we may speculate on such matters, there is really no affectation, and nothing graceful in dislocations, or compound fractures. How horrid, Mr. Editor, to think! instead of a gay Colonel, or a dozen of Bond-street beaux, hanging over one with hartshorn, eau-de-luce, and burnt feathers to have a filthy Coroner, and his dozen of jurymen, pawing one about, nobody knows where, to find out a verdict !

I would therefore, Sir, recommend it to those Governesses, who teach frights by the quarter, to consider, whether it may not be possible to reduce the science of screaming to some decent regulations: for example, to teach their pupils that an ear-wig may be killed without ringing the family tocain, and that a mouse may be caught without a posse comitatus of ushers, teachers, nurses, and servants roused from their four-pairof-stairs beds, and armed with flat candlesticks, pokers, and pewter pots. They may also, while they preserve the privilege of screaming in full force, hint to their pupils, that it would be as well, if violent outcries, and sentimental timidities, were confined to domestick circles, or ladies' routs at farthest. Among friends such things are very becoming, and added to the equally genteel accomplishment of fits, faintings, &c. give a grace, and a Je ne sçai quoi to the young votaries of artificial manners. But in publick places, where

there are always a great many of that class, whom nobody knows, there is less room for the display of graceful timidity; and the scream, or even a chorus of screams, has too much the appearance of what passes among the vulgar, when they see a man just going to be hanged, or to leap out of a window, or fall from a scaffold, or any of these things, which are performed without an attention to the laws of etiquette, the musick of the voice, or the graces of attitude.

I beg, however, that in thus endeavouring to limit the practice of screaming, I may not be thought to argue against that genteel cowardice and beautiful timidity, those captivating fears, and interesting alarms, which have long been the privilege of well-bred persons. I would not for the world strip them of such terrours, as create a pleasing variety in the display of beauty, which are so ingeniously taught at schools, and encouraged by the perusal of novels, containing long galleries, blue lights, dark chambers, deep dungeons, and ghastly spectres. I argue against nothing of the kind, from a shriek to a convulsion, that can be practised with eclat in company, and graced by the usual accomplishments of chalked floors, and variegated lamps, displayed in festoons with infinite taste, and glimmering among evergreens. All I contend for is, that where there is real danger, they will sit still and reserve the scream, the shriek, and the higher octaves of exclamation, for the amusement of confidential parties, where the sudden shutting of a door, the falling of a screen, the approach of a ravisher, or other,such elegant timidities may be worked up into a fit, heightened by vociferation, and decorated with all the attitudes of the Grecian costume.

Yours,&c. A QUIET SOUL.

VIDA.

In the pontificate of Leo X. a small band of Latin poets appeared, whose productions some have ventured to pronounce worthy of the Augustan age. Among this number was Vida. His Art of Poetry contains many excellent precepts, founded in genuine criticism, and entitles him to a high rank among those bards,who sang so sweetly after the revival of letters in Italy.

Every one recollects the lines of Pope on Leo's golden days,' in which

A Raphael painted and a Vida sung. Immortal Vida; on whose honour'd brow

The poet's bays and critick's ivy grow: Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!

:

It would not appear wonderful if Pope should pilfer a little from one whom he has praised so much. I have never seen it suggested that he was particularly indebted to Vida; and not many palpable instances can be found of the plagiarism direct but there are certain features of resemblance between his Essay on Criticism, and Vida's Art of Poetry, which indicate a degree of consanguinity. The directions to study the ancients, particularly Homer and Virgil, and especially to draw from nature; the deprecating of harmony acquired at the expense of meaning; and the advice respecting the choice of words, are prominent topicks in each; though there is no correspondence in the arrange

ment.

The plan of giving examples to shew the adaptation of the sound

It appears highly probable, that in these, and in some other examples which might be selected, Pitt was in some degree, as well an imitator of Pope, as the translator of Vida. There is in some couplets of the two poems, a coincidence in the rhymes, in the combination of words, and in the character of the verse, which could scarcely have occurred, if he had received no impressions from Pope.

Pitt has sometimes exceeded his duty as a translator, has refined upon the materials of his author, and become extremely artificial in his exemplifications. But his poem, considered both as a translation and a polished composition, ensures to him the reputation of fidelity and taste.

THE chief purposes of the illuminated author of this play evidently are to dazzle and seduce a romantick fancy, to raise delightful and exalted notions of a savage state of nature, and, by partial delipeation and false colouring, degrade and calumniate the mild doctrines of christianity. Elvira, to excuse her prostitution to Pizarro, tells us, it was the superiour fame and glory of his character that first gained and afterwards held her affections to him; when no one can discover the least spark. of true glory either in his mind or his achievements, as he is drawn by the author: nothing appears in him but selfish meanness, gloomy revenge, brutal ferocity, and unmanly cruelty; and from the character of this particular individual, thus distorted and exaggerated, is drawn a general conclusion against christians and christianity.

But

this character of Pizarro is not a true one; he had vices, it is true, and great ones, but he had some good qualities, though not one is here mentioned to set against the black catalogue of his crimes; while the Indians, it seems, have not a speck of vice or folly to dim the lustre of their blazing virtues. The conduct of the Spaniards to the Mexicans can never be defended, but it was what will always result from bigotry and superstition, stimulated by ambition and avarice, and not the offspring of christianity; whose genuine principles were then much corrupted by the innovations of popery, and the Spaniards were, perhaps, the most bigotted, superstitious, and intolerant of papists. To draw conclusions from the abuse of a system against the use of it, is that kind of flimsy but audacious sophistry, which, though a thousand times exposed, is still reiterated by the sceptical babblers of the day, who know, that notwithstanding a few read and are convinced, yet that many more remaia who never read, or think, or investigate for themselves, and may therefore casily be made the dupes of plausible artifice.

That strong friends!ips exist among savages, we have often been informed, and we know that their state is peculiarly calculated to call forth such feelings; but we also know that love, with them, is merely a sensual appetite, which never rises to a refined and generous sentiment we know that all their pleasures, propensities, and habits, are gross and brutish; their passions ungovernably violent, their revenge most cruel, and their notions of morality and religion such as naturally flow from ignorance and caprice, working upon inconruous and imperfectly transmit

ted traditions. The Mexicans and Peruvians were cruel almost beyond belief, for not a rite of their religion was celebrated without human blood, and prisoners were offered up by thousands in sacrifice to their infernal deities! Yet it is for such a people, and such a state of things, that we are to give up all we possess; to abandon our religion, laws, and civilization; all that we have proved by solid reasoning and long experience, all we know of certain good, for the hypothetical possibility of extravagant and spurious virtues, for a vain, new-fangled, and Proteuslike philosophy.

Kotzebue (the author) has not the temerity to avow his purpose ; he dares not openly attack, but he undermines; he pretends to allow the position, that we are not to do evil that good may come of it,' yet he insidiously endeavours not only to destroy the axiom he allows, but even to bring about the worst end by the worst means; he prostitutes his talents to the basest purposes; he operates powerfully upon the strongest passions and tenderest feelings of the human heart; he enlists all the energies and sympathics of our nature, in the cause of fallacy and deceit, against established reason and eternal truth. Such is the nature and tendency of this pernicious composition.