ever seen; for it ended in the total ruin of the most rapacious and unprincipled man that then disgraced the Roman name.

Mr. Collins, in his "Peerage of England," relates, concerning an Irish nobleman (an ancestor of the Kildare family), that, being concerned in treasonable practices against King Henry VIII. himself and five of his sons were sent prisoners to England. The young gentlemen, in the course of their passage hither, enquired the name of the ship; and on being informed that it was called the Cow, expressed a dread of the consequence, a prediction having formerly been current, that, when five sons of a certain earl should sail to England in a cow's belly, none of them would return. How far so vague a

prophecy was worthy of credit, I will not venture to decide; but that it was followed by a corresponding result, is undeniable, för the unhappy brothers were all executed at Tyburn, February 2, 1535-6.

After Alexander the Great had made himself master of Sardis, he was undetermined, for a while, whether he should push, or delay, his designed attack upon Darius. During this state of suspense, a stream suddenly overflowed its banks, without any apparent cause, and the water having receded to its channel, left behind it, on the ground, a plate of copper, engraved with very old characters, importing that a period would ensue when Persia should be overthrown by Grecians. I only mention this as a remarkable circumstance; for I have my doubts as to (what is commonly called) the accidentality of it. It might be an artifice of Alexander's own contrivance, to keep up the spirits of his men, and to inspire them with an expectation of certain victory.

On the whole what a very celebrated and no less ingenious traveller+ remarks concerning omens in general, fully speaks my hum, ble sentiments of that subject. "I know not what to say. This I know, that many rash and ignorant people disregard and laugh at these things; and that men of great wisdom and learning speak of them with diffidence, and strive rather to encourage others to slight them, than shew any real contempt of them themselves."

Vol. vi. p. 371. Edit. 1768.

* Viz. The person who published his Travels (one of the most sensible and entertaining books in the English language) under the name of Edward Browne, Esq. See P. 38 of that work.

REMARKS ON THE POETS.

BY PHILIP NEVE, ESQ.

DRYDEN.

THE complete collection of the works of Dryden, forms the largest body of poetry, from the pen of one writer, in the English language and the industry of his latter years may be estimated, by his having given no public testimony of poetical abilities till his twentyseventh year. Of works so voluminous, multifarious too as they are, and unequal, every argument, either of encomium or censure, must be partial. Of all our poets he was certainly the most laborious; he performed only tasks; for nearly all he wrote was contracted for before-hand, occasional, or by command. To those who are intimately acquainted with the history of his life, it will be no paradox to say, that his genius was probably greater than his general works shew it to have been. It was commonly overhung with clouds, which either oppressed or threatened him; which shadowed its fullest lustre, and obliged him to a precipitate shelter, and to offer up his first labours, and unfinished and unrevised productions, to avert the storm. In one happy moment, indeed, it broke forth with transcendent sublimity; but, in the generality of his exertions, enslaved by habit, and constrained by necessity, he was allotted to toil without choice, and sometimes without reward.

Dryden seems to have been long deciding upon what was a poetical character; for he was a versifier eight years, before he introduced himself to public notice by his Stanzas on Cromwell's Death ; and he appears at last to have instituted it upon a principle that carries its pretensions too high. Poetry, in its highest character, can be but an imitation. It must imitate the truth of nature, in morals and physiology equally; and to pretend to exceed or supplant that, is hyberbolical. If authority were wanting to confirm so evident a truth, Aristotle, having enumerated the different species of poetical composition, concludes, πασαι τυγχάνεσιν ὅσαι μιμήσεις το σύνολον. Yet Dryden, in his famous Dramatic Essay, tells us, "A poet in the description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow, will please our imagination more than the place itself can our sight." As if that, which has its excellence only from a near re- ́. semblance, could exceed its archetype. The imitative arts may indeed please us merely by a faithful representation of those objects,

of which the sight would disgust us. The representation of the shambles, on the painter's canvas, may be admired; or that of the field of battle, as described by the poet, give us satisfaction: and here the description will please our imagination more than the object itself can our sight." But what words shall describe the beauties of nature, above their own power to please us? Of the subject Dryden has chosen, the poet cannot produce even the nearest resemblance; for the painter or engraver comes in between nature and him, to delight us with beauties of imitation, which certainly no words can convey. But, because he had written this in an early essay, it is not therefore to be concluded that he always believed it. To principles, when they are erroneous, he is not uniformly constant, either in his practice or opinion, because he has once entertained them. He has, in his latter writings, honestly and avowedly given up many of his earlier opinions, as inconsistent and untenable. Others he has virtually renounced, upon better consideration. He first tells us, "that the words of a good writer, which describe it livelily, will make a deeper impression of belief on us, than all the actor can insinuate into us, when he seems to fall dead before us." Yet, a few years afterwards, he says, "One advantage the drama has above an heroic poem, that it represents to view, what the poem does but relate." He forgot, in the first instance, Horace's Segnius irritant animos, &c. which he produces, in the last, with the fatality of quoting against himself. But many of Dryden's errors, in his pages, are found there, only because he always thought with a pen in his hand. His first thoughts were committed to paper, and at once to the press; for he had neither time to revise, compare, nor refer. To keep him a little in countenance this particular, and to shew how difficult it is, even to other great geniuses, to be always right, without reference or comparison, an inadvertency (for it is no more) may be observed, respecting Dryden himself, in the life written of him by the late learned biographer of the poets; and which had easily been detected with common care of revision. He tells us very gravely, "To the censure of Collier, whose remarks may be rather termed admonitions than criticisms, he made little reply; being at the age of sixty-eight attentive to better things than the claps of a playhouse.” Now, exactly in that year, in which Dryden was sixty-eight, viz. in 1699, he wrote the preface to his fables; and he therein tells us, * If it shall please God to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the whole Ilias." Such were the beter things in Dryden's contemplation.

His learning, upon a fair estimation, will perhaps be found not to have been very extensive. In the first edition of his Dramatic Essay, a work wherein he certainly displayed all the learning he was then master of, he has twice used deos, for the catastrophe of a drama; first translating it denouement, and then the untying of the plot. And in the preface to his fables he has shewn, that, even after he had translated the first book of the Ilias, he knew not the contents of the second. But to those who are acquainted with the poetical beauties of this author, even the mention of errors will be thought to be dwelling too long on them. He is the writer, from whom the greatest masters in his art have since taken example. And, though a partial reader may find him (from the hurry and distraction of a necessitous situation) now and then obnoxious even to vulgar censure, the great extent of his knowledge, his unbounded fertility, his careful industry in improving and establishing versification and poetical diction, his ability and wil to teach, and, the crown of all, as a poet, the first example the language boasts, in the sublimest style of composition, will make every lover of English poetry, upon thorough knowledge and intimate acquaintance, end in admiring and honouring him.

TWO SPECIMENS OF FINE WRITING.

THE following letter was written by an usher of a school, as a model for a young gentleman to inform his parents that he should be home at the Christmas vacation.

"It is impossible to verbally declare the sublimity of satisfaction which I experience in the fond anticipation of passing that period of temporal abstraction from scholastic attention, ordinarily cognomenated the vacation; or, as marking the diurnal sanctimonious employment usually directed, emphatically appellated holidays: therefore, in simple and humble dictates I inform you, that the recess is fixed for the 23d of the present duodecimal division of the annual solar revolution. Then shall I hope to experience all those domiciliary delectations usually attendant on that periodical festivity conjungated with the hilarities of those with whom I am fraternally connected. Then those viands vaporially affecting our olfactory organs with their salubrious effluvia, and our stomachs with their invigorating influence, will be abundantly devoured, whether consisting of torrefacted or bulliated quadrupedal carnous substances,

the more delicate fibres of the volant aerial inhabitants, or the submarine piscatory residents concluding with those heterogeneous compositions called puddings, aided by the exhilarating effects of vinous libations!"

To this lexicographical epistle, the following extract from an Irish newspaper is no improper companion. There is this difference, however, between the two. The letter is meant as a burlesque—the paragraph writer is serious.

"Miss Doyle, of the co. Kilkenny, who was the subject of a robbery detailed in our last, is one of those characters whom the spirit of depredation, in its most licentious mood, might be expected to hold sacred,-Her mansion is the very temple of hospitality, herself the high priestess of the divinity, and, to rob her, was an act of sacrilege against the common worship of mankind.—This lady is about 50 years of age, attractive in her manners, highly pleasing in her conversation, and possessed of an independent fortune, which she disposes of in a manner that would disarm the rapacious hostility of the Arab of the Desart, or the more ferocious and plundering Croat. Her house is embosomed in the rude hills that stretch in wild and ragged succession from Graigue on the Barrow, to the beautiful and romantic village of Ennistiogue on the Nore: it seems to be the sole link connecting this remote and sterile tract with the more cultivated and civilized parts of the country; and no stranger, entitled by character or conduct to the rites of hospitality, has for many years passed the foot of lofty Brandon, without experiencing the elegant and friendly hospitalities of Miss Doyle's charming little cottage. Had this lady fallen beneath the hand of ruffian and savage violence, or should the attempt made against her domestic security, have the effect of disgusting her with her present residence, that part of the country will have lost all of polite hospitality and civilized grace, which relieved the general rudeness and barbarity of its features, and made her roof, like the fountain in the desart, the resting place of the traveller, and the object of his hopes and his regrets."

THE TELL TALE.

Trifes light as air."

SHIP-BUILDING. We have a brave new ship, a royal galeon, the like they say did never spread sail upon salt water, take her true and well compacted symmetry, with all dimensions together. For her