Some have associated the names and reigns of Charlemagne and Peter the Great; Anthony de Bandole draws a parallel between Cæsar and Henry IV.; and one of the best portions of De Bury's memoirs of the latter is, where he describes the coincidences in the life, character, and fortune of that prince with those of Philip of Macedon.

Parallels may sometimes be found in States. Thus in the relative rise of Tyre, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa; in rivalships, as in the instances of Persia and Greece, England and France: in confederacies, also, as in those of the Achæan, Helvetic, and Belgic leagues.

CII.

POETS UNJUSTLY APPRECIATED.

VIRGIL Would have been esteemed a necromancer, had our ancestors had no opportunity of correcting the folly of the darker ages *. Some insist, that Virgil has not one attribute of a poet, but a pure and exquisite style: Lucan's beauties, in the opinion of some, are reduced to his love of liberty, generous sentiments, contempt of death, and his sublime personification of Jupiter. Virgil, according to some †, moves like a prelate; Lucan, like a bold, victorious general; and as to Terence, he has no character, no plot, no incident, no wit. Style is his only merit; and his dramas were written only for mathematicians!

*How the folly of esteeming Virgil a necromancer rose, may be seen in Hist. P. Virg. Mar. a Car. Ruæo.

+ Verulanus.

We all remember the persecution Tasso's poem underwent from the circumstance of Boileau's having applied to his style the term 'clinquant;' and some there are who would even reduce the fine passages in Dante to two! one of terror*; the other of pity †.

Shall we turn to our own country? Some rank Pope no higher than the class of ingenious men; and as to Shakspeare, Hume appreciated him in a manner disgraceful only to himself. Napoleon, too, estimated him (and Milton) so entirely after the manner of a Frenchman in the reign of Louis XIV., that it is rather amusing than displeasing. I have read Shakspeare,' said he; there is nothing that approaches Corneille ' and Racine. There is no possibility of reading one of 'his pieces through. They excite pity. As to Milton, 'there is nothing but his invocation to the Sun, and 'two or three other passages. The rest is a mere ' rhapsody §.'

Byron had little admiration of Shakspeare; and Pope almost as little of Milton. The opinion of Salmasius is that of an enemy; hence he could never be induced to regard Milton's Latin poems as worthy any one but a school-boy. In Germany, previous to 1764, the 'Paradise Lost' was so little known, and still more so little appreciated, that one of the most influential critics of that country || presumed to speak of it in the following manner: Paradise Lost had long mouldered in the

• Ugolino.

† Close, v. Canto Inferno.

Vol. ix. 77. § Thibaudeau's Memoirs of the Consulate. Professor Gottscheid of Leipsic, in his Preface to the Arminius' of Baron Crouzeck.

'bookseller's warehouse, so as scarce to be any longer ' remembered, when two persons, not more distin'guished for their rank than literature *, undertook to I convince their countrymen of the excellence of that poem and this they did so effectually, that England, ' for a long time, was brought to believe, or at least to 'say that they believed, what, without such powerful recommendations, they would never have thought of.'

This would seem to be a curious species of impertinence, could we forget, that some even of our own country have overlooked all Milton's beauties for the purpose of enlarging on his digressions, his allusions to heathen fables, his occasional pedantry, his Hebraisms, Grecisms, and Latinisms; his perpetual employment of technical terms; his episode of Sin and Death (the finest allegory in all poetry); the imperfections of his fable; his employment of old words; his elisions; the length of his periods and his idiomatic expressions; the occasional violence of his metaphors; and his obligations to Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Italian poets.

Not only his poetical character has been assailed; but his private one: and by whom? Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester. It thus stands recorded in the Sloane Collection of MSS. (No. 4320); where I have myself seen it, and whence I extracted it: "The character ' of Milton was certainly the most corrupt of any man ' of his age; I do not say so on account of his either ' being a presbyterian, an independent, a republican, for 'the government of one (for many honest men were in

VOL. I.

* Lord Roscommon; Addison.

N

C every one of these ways); but because he was all 'these in their turn, without (from any thing that appears to the contrary) a struggle or a blush. Ima'gine to yourself a thorough time-server, and you could not put him upon any task more completely conformable to that character than what Milton voluntarily ' underwent. It is true, he was steady enough in one 'thing; namely, in his aversion to the court and royal 'family; but this, I suspect, was because he was not ⚫ received amongst the wits there favourably.'

Thus we find men, eminent ones too, instead of calmly estimating the merits or demerits of others, employing the language of senseless encomium, or of extravagant censure; raising them to heaven, as it were, or thrusting them to Hades; not from sound morals, but prejudice; not from reason, but passion.

CIII.

SOME PHILOSOPHERS HOW ESTIMATED.

No objects in nature can be strictly represented as they actually are, in all their parts, relations, and capacities of action or sufferance. We are, therefore, reduced to the miserable expedient of representing them only as they appear. Socrates had passed down to posterity as a knave, had not Plato and Xenophon defaced the picture, and redeemed the malice of Aristophanes. Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, was so lightly thought of by Bayle, that he assigned to him only twelve lines; and Hume esteemed him inferior to Galileo. Some, too, have written lightly of Kepler; but Horrox valued him above all the tribe of philosophers.'

How did Bacon himself regard Copernicus ?-With such contempt, that, in all his works, he never once alludes to him. Newton was regarded by the methodists of his time as guilty of blasphemy, and as pretending to know what never could be true. What says

Gillies in respect to Locke?—That his theory of government is totally impracticable; that it is admirably fitted for producing revolution and sedition; and that, if ever it could be reared, it never could be preserved. Beattie, too (even in his Essay on the Nature and Immortality of Truth'!), regards the Essay on the Human Understanding' as tending to prove that there is no such thing as truth, and that virtue is no better than a human contrivance !

Johnson and Priestley esteemed Hartley's work on Man next to the Bible; but another writer, equally endowed, after quoting two passages from it, boldly exclaims, If I had never read another sentence, I should ' have required no further evidence of the unsoundness ' of Hartley's understanding.' Warburton calls him a visionary. In a letter to Garrick, he also calls Hume 'the essay writer,' and a puppy*.' If such are the judgments of eminent men, what can be hoped from the vulgar?

'

*I think you very insolently treated by Hume, the essay 'writer; nor do I see how Millar can be excused from imperti'nence in showing you the puppy's letter.'-Garrick's Correspond

ence.