WITH manners just the same, as we are told,
Men are effeminate, and women bold 3:
If aught like satire or like ridicule

Should seem to rise, we must apply this rule
To solve the case-and so I think we may-
"It comes froin folly's natural display4."

1

Person and dress is left us to apply,
And little else, to know the sexes by:
Characteristics formerly made out,
Are now confounded by a present rout:
All would be lost if, as the cassoc warm,
With rage as just, the petticoat should arm.

But while men fight, both clergyfi'd and lay,
Who left but women to cry-Let us pray!
While men are marshalling in prose Pindaric
Religion, Virtue, Warburton, and Garrick,
Women must pray, that Heav'n would yet annex
Some little grace to the talk-valiant sex.

Love of our country is the manly sound
That clads in armour all the Virtues round:
Where is this lovely country to be sought?
Why 'tis Great Britain, in their little thought:
And the two states which these divines advance,
The Heav'n of England, and the Heli of France.

Women must pray-and, if divines can reach
No higher a theology-must preach.
This world-this sea bound spot of it-may seem
The central Paradise in men's esteem,
Who have great souls; but women who have none,
Have other realms to fix their hearts upon.

If such there be-the only certain scheme
To guard against each possible extreme,
Is to put on, amidst the world's alarms,
With a good heart, our real country's arms;
Faith, hope, and patience, from the tow'rs above,
All-bearing meekness, and all conqu'ring love.

REMARKS

ON A PAMPHLEt, entitled, ePISTLES TO THE
GREAT, FROM ARISTIPPUS IN RETIREMENT.-
IN A LETTER TO DR. S.-

DOCTOR, this new poetic species
Semel may do; but never decies:

"The sexes have now little other apparent distinction beyond that of person and dress: their peculiar and characteristic manners are confounded and lost: the one sex having advanced into boldness, as the other have sunk into effeminacy," Sect. 5.

For a Chapelle, or a Chaulieu,
The new devis'd conceit may do;

In rambling rhymes, La Farre, and Gresset,
And easy diction may express it;
Or madam's muse, Deshoulieres,
Improve it farther still than theirs:
But in the name of all the Nine,
Will an epistolary line,

In English verse and English sense,
Admit to give them both offence,
The Gaulbred insipiditee

Of this new fangl'd melodee?
Indeed it won't-if Gallic phrase
Can bear with such enervate lays,
Nor pleasure nor pain-pinion'd hours
Can ever suffer them in ours;
Or ivy'crown'd, endure a theme
Silver'd with moonshine's maiden gleam:
Not tho' so garlanded and flow'ry,
So soft, so sweet, so myrtle-bow'ry;
So balmy, palmy-and so on-
As is the theme here writ upon:
Writ in a species that, if taking,
Portends sad future verse unmaking:
Brown's Estimate of times and manners,
That paints effeminacy's banuers,
Has not a proof in its detail

More plain than this, if this prevail;
Forbid it sense, forbid it rhyme,
Whether familiar or sublime;
Whether ye guide the poet's hand
To casy diction or to grand;
Forbid the Gallic namby pamby
Here to repeat its crazy crambe:
One instance of such special stuff,
To see the way on't is enough;
Excus'd for once; if Aristippus
Has any more within his cippus,
Let him suppress;-or sing 'em he
With gentle Muse, sweet Euterpee;
Free to salute her, while they chirp,
For easier rhyming-sweet Euterp:
It is allow'd that verse to please
Should move along with perfect ease;
But this coxcombically mingling
Of rhymes, unrhyming, interjingling,
For numbers genuinely British
Is quite too finical and skittish;
But for the masculiner belles,
And the polite he ma'moiselles;
Whom Dryads, Naiads, Nymphs, and Fauns,
Meads, woods, and groves, and lakes, and lawns,
And loves, and doves-and fifty more
Such jaded terms, besprinkl'd o'er
With compound epithets uncouth,
Prompt to pronounce 'em verse, forsooth!
Verse let 'em be; tho' I suppose
Some verse as well might have been prose,
That England's common courtesy
Politely calls good poetry:

For if the poetry be good,
Accent at least is understood;
Numb of syllables alone,
Without the proper stress of tone,

4" Thus we have attempted a simple delineation of the ruling manners of the times: if any thing like ridicule appears to mix itself with this review, it ariseth not from the aggravation, but the natural display of folly." Sect. 5.

These Epistles were published in the year 1757. The species of poetry," says the editor," in which they are written has been used expressions alluded to in the following verses, with great success among the French, by Chapelle, would but swell out the notes to an unnecessary Chaulieu, La Farre, Gresset, madame Deshou-length. It is thought sufficient therefore to diHeres, and others."-To quote from them all the stinguish such allusions by Italic characters.

60 [prise,

If they were struck with more than mortal awe,
Their very fear was proof of what they saw;
For strength to see, and weakness to sustain,
Made, both alike, the heavenly vision plain:
Nor has he once attempted to devise
What else should strike them with so great sur-
If, overcome with reverential dread,
Th' amaz'd apostle wist not what he said,
10 Unbias'd reason would itself confess
A greater light diminishing its less.
Thus in the sacred books, if we recall
The first recorded presence since the fall,
Themselves from God when our first parents hid,
It might be said, they wist not what they did: 70
Yet were they taught their comfortable creed,
The promise of the woman's conq'ring seed;
As here, th' apostles were empower'd to see
That Jesus, God's beloved Son, was he.

|

1 "This wonderful apparition and heavenly voice might be accompanied with such circumstances as would naturally leave some doubt and perplexity on the mind concerning the precise manner and nature of the whole transaction. For Peter, as we read, was in such a fright and amazement at what he saw and heard, that he The learned prelate, against whose Discourse knew not what he said: and both he and the two This gentleman has aim'd his present force, other apostles then with him, James and John, Thought it absurd in any one to make were so greatly terrified, that they fell upon their St. Peter, for his own conviction's sake, faces to the ground, and durst not so much as Say, that old prophecies should be prefer'd look up, till Jesus, when the vision was over, To God's immediate voice, which he had heard: came to raise and encourage them."-Dr. Mid-Such a comparison, he thought, became dleton's Treatise, p. 55. No sober man-much less the saint--to frame;

And hence th' apostle (is the inf'rence drawn,
"That claims the special notice of the lawn;"
That comes to clear this famous prelate's sight)
With reason good prefer'd prophetic light.
So, introduce an Hebrew, foreign term;

Tho' " 'tis not only possible, it seems,
But weak, moreover," as the doctor deems,
"To doubt it-a comparison so just
Peter not only might have made, but must.-" 120 Take all for true that quoted lines affirm;
And then he cites rabbinical remarks,
To prove the paradox from learned clerks:
Not that he minds what any of them writes,
But most despises whom he chiefly cites.
Lightfoot's authority, to instance one,
Is first, and last, and most insisted on;

And then assume that the apostle too
Just thought and argued, as these critics do;
And we may prove from Peter's own design,
That God the Father's voice was not divine.

[way

131

"The soundness of whose faith he interjects,
And erudition nobody suspects3:"
Or if the reader wants a full display
Of these endowments,-" Lightfoot shows the
How, by assuming liberty to take
For granted, straight, what premises we make;
Whatever notions or opinions tend
To favour that which we would recommend,
We may demonstrate, by such arts as these,
A doctrine true, divine, or what we please."

Concluding it impossible from hence
That this could ever be St. Peter's sense.

But should the prelate think it mere grimace
To talk of fable in St. Peter's case,
Whose words exclude it, and expressly speak
Of heav'nly truth; how frivolous and weak,
In his more sober and sedate esteem,
Must all this patch-work erudition seem!
How will a Christian bishop too conceive
Of what the doctor's margins interweave,
Touching that scripture, where our Saviour
And Heav'n the glorifying answer made! [pray'd,
While from his note, sir, nothing can be learn'd
But casual thunder, or bath-kol concern'd3.
Will he not ask-Is it this author's aim,
Under his bath-kol figments to disclaim
All faith in voices of a heavenly kind?

Is call'd to prove a voice from Heav'n a jest; 140 Is that the purpose of his doubting mind?

The Jews bath-kol, a cunning acted part,
A fable, phantasy, or magic art;
Voice of the devil, or of devilish elves,
To cheat the people and promote themselves:

You see th' apostle is extremely clear,
That such a voice himself did really hear:
He also had such wond'rous proofs beside,
That voice concurrent cannot be deny'd. [came
And, when our Lord had been baptis'd, there
A voice from Heav'n, in words the very same.
Here, in his answer'd prayer, tho', by mistake,
Some said it thunder'd, some, an angel spake,
We have his own authority divine; [mine."
"This voice," said he, " came for your sakes, not
Would not the bishop rightly thus oppose 181
Plain scripture facts to learning's empty shows?
What signifies it then, upon the whole,
How poor blind Jews have talk'd about bath-kol?
What jarring critics of a later day,
Or Lightfoot, here thrice ridicul'd, may say?
Or Middleton himself-whose pious care
For giftless churches prompts him to compare
Voices from Heav'n, in his assuming page,
To miracles beyond th' apostles age":
Taking for granted, without more ado,
His wild hypothesis about them too.

This, sir, is his description of sound faith.Let us now see what argument it hath:

This trusty evidence, amongst the rest,

-

P. 47. "Let us now return to the bishop's Discourses, in which he goes on to demonstrate the inconsistency of the author's (Collins) exposition, by telling us, that it makes Peter to say, in his own person, that the dark prophecies of the Old Testament were a surer and more certain evidence to himself, than the immediate voice of God, which he had heard with his own ears. And is it possible,' adds he, that St. Peter, or any man in his wits, could make such a comparison?' To which question, so smartly and confidently put, I readily answer, that it is not only possible, that St. Peter might make such a comparison, but even weak to imagine that he could make any other."

3 P. 52. "Doctor Lightfoot also, the soundness of whose faith and erudition is allowed by all, speaks more precisely to my present purpose, and says, that If we observe two things, first, that the Jewish nation, under the second temple, was given to magical arts beyond measures; we may safely suspect that those voices, which they thought to be from Heaven, and noted with the name of bath-kol, were either formed by the devil in the air, to deceive the people; or, by magicians with devilish art, to promote their own affairs.' From which he draws this inference, which I would recommend to the special consideration of this eminent prelate: 'Hence,' adds he, the apostle Peter saith with good reason, that the word of prophecy was surer than a voice from Heaven.'"

4 P. 141. "Now by the same method of reasoning, and the liberty which his lordship every where assumes, of supposing whatever premises he wants, and taking every thing for granted, which tends to confirm his hypothesis, we may prove any doctrine to be true, or divine, or whatever we please to make of it. Dr. Lightfoot has shown us the way."

150

Prodigious effort! see obstructed quite
The Gospel promise, and the Christian right;

160

170

190

5 P.48. "N. B. Thus when Jesus, a little before his death, was addressing himself to the Father, in the midst of his disciples and people of Jerusalem, and saying: Father, save me from this hour; Father, glorify thy name.' There came a voice from Heaven, saying: 'I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again. Upon which the people, that stood by and heard it, said that it thundered; others said, that an angel spake to him. (John xii. 28.) That is, part of the company believed it to be nothing more than an accidental clap of thunder; while others took it to be the bath-kol, or the voice of God, or of an angel, which was accompanied always with thunder."

6 P. 142, 145, 171. P. 50. "The reality of this oracular voice (bath-kol) is attested, as I have said, by all the Jewish writers, after the cessation of prophecy, in the same positive manner as the miraculous gifts of the Christian church by the primitive fathers, after the days of the apostles."