In wit and humour, in the happiness of having exactly caught Dr Darwin's very peculiar style of versification, the author proves himself worthy to reprehend, by exquisite caricature, the faults of a fine writer; his elaborate and too profuse ornaments; the too lavish frequency of those hyperboles which make rivers laugh, bridges scowl, and shores applaud, &c.—his many affectations;—his eulogiums on the demon of Europe, modern liberty;-the dissimilarity to their subject of those successive trains of passages, which begin with, "So," and "Thus," and which press into the service of illustration a countless number of circumstances from history, fable, romance, and tradition-too charmingly told, it is true, to permit our wishing them away, while we feel that they are open to ridicule. So, also, it must be confessed, is the plan, the Linnean and sexual system of plants and flowers, whose personification, together with that of the elemental properties, is admirably burlesqued in the Loves of the Triangles; where curves, and cubes, lines, circles, fluxions, and tangents, are transformed into nymphs and swains, and are in love with each other. Trochais, the nymph of the wheel, in love with Smoke-Jack. The nymphs Parabola, Hyperbola, and Ellipsis in love with the Cone, &c. &c. Nor

less ably satirized is the hypothetical philosophy of the notes to Darwin's poem.

Those only who have read and understood that composition, will understand and feel this ablespirited and highly-amusing satire upon its faults. Both will be alike caviare to the multitude.

The author, whoever he is, proves himself able to break a poetic-lance with the bard of Derby. It is diamond cut diamond here. After all, the true judges and unenvying admirers of fine poetry, have only to open the Economy of Vegetation, and Loves of the Plants, to forgive their author all his affectations in the verse, all his extravagant theories in the notes—everything, in short, but his irreligion, and encomiums on the terrible and tyrannic democracy of France, in consideration of those exhaustless and genuine beauties and sublimities, which are found in such enchanting preponderance along his fanciful composition. All such readers, however they may be amused with the rare powers of this able and learned satirist, will feel that the plan of Dr Darwin's poem, though not invulnerable to the shafts of burlesque, was yet new and fortunate in the hands of genius so bold, imaginative, and picturesque, that the poetic enchantment of its pages is resistless.

LETTER XVII.

MR SAVILLE.

Lichfield, June 15, 1798.

Ir is unlucky, but I hope to Heaven it will not be more than unlucky, for your short residence in London, that here is a June whose cloudless ardours have not been paralleled during very many past years. The summer-solstice is generally ushered in by winds and showers; but, during the three past weeks, the rivers have shrunk in their banks, the channels of the brooks are dry; the lawns are brown and slippery; the earth wrinkles as in frost; birds sit silent in the centres of the hedge-rows; the cows stand with drooping neck in the reedy brooks; the streets are still vacant and dusty, and silence is over the hills at

noon.

I have passed the glowing hours from breakfast till dinner on the terrace, reading Urry's Life of Chaucer, published 1721, in the eleventh year of Dr Johnson's existence. It surprised me to see three of the sentences turned in John

son's peculiar manner, and following each other thus:

"The court, at that time, consisted of all that was great and splendid. Every thing that could be desired contributed to make it glorious;

-a long and happy reign, successful in victories abroad, filled it with heroes, and a just administration at home supplied it with men of learning. These are so inseparably linked together, that where there are men of valour, there can be no slavery and oppression; and where there are slavery and oppression, there can be no men of learning."

These sentences have a strength of expression, and roundness of construction unlike the loose and involved style of our prose-writers, so early in this century, even of that which was generally esteemed the best, as Addison's. I have been accustomed to consider the rounder and more nervous period to have been introduced by Dr Johnson: but these sentences are strikingly in his style, and not only in their construction, but in that imposing air of decision, which impresses ordinary minds with implicit faith in the veracity of dogmas of such point and antithesis, while rational investigation demonstrates their fallacy. Men of learning, and men of valour, are often the at

The court of Edward III.

tendants of very despotic thrones: as that of Augustus Cæsar evinced in former ages, and that of Louis the XIV. in later times. Thus vanishes the veracity of that assertion;-and thus, before the scrutiny of discerning thought, melts into inanity the first part of one of Johnson's sentences, the nature and style of which is extremely similar. "Where there is emulation there must be envy, and where there is envy, there can be no virtue." It will readily be granted, that where there is envy there can be no true virtue; but to blend and confound a generous with a base passion, by asserting, that where there is emulation there must be envy, ill became the moral philosopher.

It has always been confessed, as it has always been felt, that emulation is the prime source of excellence in every art, in every science, and in every virtue. It is as distinct from envy as true and tender affection is distinct from merely libidinous desire. Emulation loves-envy hates its object; emulation hopes-envy despairs; emulation is ingenuous-envy is deceitful; emulation is energetic-envy is indolent; emulation delights to contemplate its model, and to point out to others its every excellence-envy turns from its object, or examines it only to depreciate; emulation is the health of genius-envy morbid disease. It was his disease who has pro

its