parts and separations; but mingling, as they best may, correct the malignity of any single predominance. The analogy holds, I suppose, in the moral world. If all the good people were to ship themselves off to Terra Incognitas, what, in humanity's name, is to become of the refuse? If the persons, whom I have chiefly in view, have not pushed matters to this extremity yet, they carry them as far as they can go. Instead of mixing with the infidel and the freethinker in the room of opening a negociation, to try at least to find out at which gate the error entered-they huddle close together, in a weak fear of infection, like that pusillanimous underling in Spenser

This is the wandering wood, this Error's

den;

A monster vile, whom God and man does

hate:

Therefore, I reed, beware. Fly, fly, quoth

then

The fearful Dwarf.

and, if they be writers in orthodox journals addressing themselves only to the irritable passions of the unbeliever they proceed in a safe system of strengthening the strong hands, and confirming the valiant knees; of converting the already converted, and proselyting their own party. I am the more convinced of this from a passage in the very Treatise which occasioned this letter. It is where, having recommended to the doubter the writings of Michaelis and Lardner, you ride triumphant over the necks of all infidels, sceptics, and dissenters, from this time to the world's end, upon the wheels of two unanswerable deductions. I do not hold it meet to set down in a Miscellaneous Compilation like this, such religious words as you have thought fit to introduce into the pages of a petulant Literary Journal. I therefore beg leave to substitute numerals, and refer to the Quarterly Review (for July) for filling of them up. "Here," say you, as in the history of 7, if these books are authentic, the events which they relate must be true; if they were written by 8, 9 is 10 and 11." Your first deduction, if it means honestly, rests upon two identical propositions; though I suspect an unfairness in one of the terms, which this would not be quite the proper place

for explicating. At all events you have no cause to triumph; you have not been proving the premises, but refer for satisfaction therein to very long and laborious works, which may well employ the sceptic a twelvemonth or two to digest, before he can possibly be ripe for your conclusion. When he has satisfied himself about the premises, he will concede to you the inference, I dare say, most readily.-But your latter deduction, viz. that because 8 has written a book concerning 9, therefore 10 and 11 was certainly his meaning, is one of the most extraordinary conclusions per sultum that I have had the good fortune to meet with. As far as 10 is verbally asserted in the writings, all sects must agree with you; but you cannot be ignorant of the many various ways in which the doctrine of the ********* has been understood, from a low figurative expression (with the Unitarians) up to the most mysterious actuality; in which highest sense alone you and your church take it. And for 11, and that there is no other possible conclusion—to hazard this in the face of so many thousands of Arians and Socinians, &c., who have drawn so opposite a one, is such a piece of theological hardihood, as, I think, warrants me in concluding that, when you sit down to pen theology, you do not at all consider your opponents; but have in your eye, merely and exclusively, readers of the same way of thinking with yourself, and therefore have no occasion to trouble yourself with the quality of the logic, to which you treat them.

Neither can I think, if you had had the welfare of the poor child -over whose hopeless condition you whine so lamentably and (I must think) unseasonably-seriously at heart, that you could have taken the step of sticking him up by nameT. H. is as good as naming him—to the perpetuate an outrage upon parental feelings, as long as the Quarterly Review shall last.-Was it necessary to specify an individual case, and give to Christian compassion the appearance of personal attack? Is this the way to conciliate unbelievers, or not rather to widen the breach irreparably?

I own I could never think so con

siderably of myself as to decline the the same condescending to a boyish society of an agreeable or worthy man sportiveness in both your converupon difference of opinion only. The sations. His hand-writing is so impediments and the facilitations to much the same with your own, that a sound belief are various and in- I have opened more than one letter scrutable as the heart of man. Some of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, believe upon weak principles. Others but it was from you, and have been cannot feel the efficacy of the strong. disappointed (he will bear with my est. One of the most candid, most saying so) at the discovery of my upright, and single-meaning men, I error. L. H. is unfortunate in holdever knew, was the late Thomas ing some loose and not very definite Holcroft. I believe he never said one speculations (for at times I think he thing and meant another, in his hardly knows whither his premises life; and, as near as I can guess, would carry him) on marriage—the he never acted otherwise than with tenets, I conceive, of the Political the most scrupulous attention to Justice, carried a little further. For conscience. Ought we to wish the any thing I could discover in his character false, for the sake of a practice, they have reference, like hollow compliment to Christianity? those, to some future possible con

Accident introduced me to the ac- dition of society, and not to the prequaintance of Mr. L. H.--and the sent times. But neither for these experience of his many friendly qua- obliquities of thinking (upon which lities confirmed a friendship between my own conclusions are as distant us. You, who have been misrepre- as the poles asunder)-nor for his sented yourself, I should hope, have political asperities and petulancies, not lent an idle ear to the calumnies which are wearing out with the heats which have been spread abroad and vanities of youth—did I select respecting this gentleman. I was him for a friend; but for qualities admitted to his household for some which fitted him for that relation. years, and do most solemnly aver I do not know whether I flatter mythat I believe him to be in his do- self with being the occasion, but mestic relations as correct as any certain it is, that, touched with some

He chose an ill-judged sub- misgivings for sundry harsh things ject for a poem ; the peccant humours which he had written aforetime against of which have been visited on him our friend C.,-hefore he left this tenfold by the artsul use, which his country he sought a reconciliation adversaries have made, of an equi- with that gentleman (himself being vocal term. The subject itself was his own introducer), and found it. started by Dante, but better because L. H. is now in Italy; on his debrieflier treated of. But the crime parture to which' land with much reof the Lovers, in the Italian and the gret I took my leave of him and of English poet, with its aggravated his little family-seven of them, Sir, enormity of circumstance, is not of a with their mother--and as kind a set kind (as the critics of the latter well of little people (T. H. and all), as knew) with those conjunctions, for affectionate children, as ever blessed which Nature herself has provided a parent. Had you seen them, Sir, no excuse, because no temptation. I think you could not have looked It has nothing in common with upon them as so many little Jonases the black horrors, sung by Ford and — but rather as pledges of the vessels Massinger. The familiarising of safety, that was to bear such a freight it in tale or fable may be for that of love. reason incidentally more contagious. I wish you would read Mr. H.'s In spite of Rimini, I must look upon lines to that same T. H. “ six years its author as a man of taste, and a old, during a sickness:"poet. He is better than so, he is one of the most cordial-minded men I ever

Sleep breaks at last from out thee, knew, and matchless as a fire-side

My little patient boycompanion. ' I mean not to affront (they are to be found in the 17th or wound your feelings when I say page of “ Foliage")—and ask yourthat, in his more genial moods, he self how far they are out of the spirit has often reminded me of you. There of Christianity. I have a letter from is the same air of mild dogmatism- Italy, received but the other day,

man.

lessened and called in question late visit to the metropolis, presented through these practices to speak himself for admission to Saint Paul's. aloud your sense of them; never to At the same time a decently clothed desist raising your voice against man, with as decent a wife, and them, till they be totally done away child, were bargaining for the same with and abolished; till the doors of indulgence. The price was only Westminster Abbey be no longer two-pence each person. The poor closed against the decent, though but decent man hesitated, desirous low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blame- to go in; but there were three of less devotee, who must commit an them, and he turned away reluctinjury against his family economy, if antly. Perhaps he wished to have he would be indulged with a bare seen the tomb of Nelson. Perbaps admission within its walls. You the Interior of the Cathedral was his owe it to the decencies, which you object. But in the state of his fiwish to see maintained in its impres- nances, even sixpence might reasive services, that our Cathedral besonably seem too much. Tell the no longer an object of inspection to Aristocracy of the country (no man the poor at those times only, in can do it more impressively); inwhich they must rob from their at- struct them of what value these intendance on the worship every mi- significant pieces of money, these nute which they can bestow upon minims to their sight, may be to the fabrick. In vain the public their humbler brethren. Shame these prints have taken up this subject, in Sellers out of the Temple. Show vain such poor nameless writers as the poor, that you can sometimes myself express their indignation. A think of them in some other light word from you, Sir-a hint in your than as mutineers and mal-contents. Journal—would be sufficient to fling Conciliate them by such kind meopen the doors of the Beautiful thods to their superiors, civil and ecTemple again, as we can remember clesiastical. Stop the mouths of the them when we were boys. At that railers ; and suffer your old friends, time of life, what would the imagi- upon the old terms, again to honour native faculty (such as it is) in both and admire you. Stifle not the sugof us, have suffered, if the entrance gestions of your better nature with to so much reflection had been ob- the stale evasion, that an indiscristructed by the demand of so much minate admission would expose the silver !-If we had scraped it up to Tombs to violation. Remember your gain an occasional admission (as we boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, certainly should have done) would of a mob in the Abbey, while it was the sight of those old tombs have free to all ? Do the rabble come been as impressive to us (while we there, or trouble their heads about had been weighing anxiously pru- such speculations ? It is all that you dence against sentiment) as when can do to drive them into your the gates stood open, as those of churches; they do not voluntarily the adjacent Park; when we could offer themselves. They have, alas! walk in at any time, as the mood no passion for antiquities; for tomb brought us, for a shorter or longer of king or prelate, sage or poet. If time, as that lasted ? Is the being they had, they would be no longer shown over a place the same as si- the rabble. lently for ourselves detecting the For forty years that I have known genius of it? In no part of our be- the Fabrick, the only well-attested loved Abbey now can a person find charge of violation adduced, has entrance (out of service time) under been—a ridiculous dismemberment the sum of two shillings. The rich committed upon the effigy of that and the great will smile at the anti- amiable spy, Major Andrè. And is climax, presumed to lie in these two it for this the wanton mischief of short words. But you can tell them, some school-boy, fired perhaps with Sir, how much quiet worth, low raw notions of Transatlantic Freemuch capacity for enlarged feeling, dom-or the remote possibility of how much taste and genius, may co- such a mischief occurring again, so exist, especially in youth, with a easily to be prevented by stationing purse incompetent to this demand:- a constable within the walls, if the A respected friend of ours, during his vergers are incompetent to the duty -is it upon such wretched pre- can you help us in this emergency to tences, that the people of England find the nose?-or can you give are inade to pay a new Peter's Chantry a notion (from memory) of Pence, so long abrogated; or must its pristine life and vigour? I am content themselves with contem- willing for peace' sake to subscribe plating the ragged Exterior of their my guinea towards a restoration of Cathedral? The mischief was done the lamented feature. about the time that you were a

I am, Sir, scholar there. Do you know any

Your humble servant, thing about the unfortunate relic?

ELIA.

A FOURTH LETTER TO THE DRAMATISTS OF THE DAY.

DRAMATI

Neither have all Poets a taste of Tragedy; and this is the rock on which

they are daily splitting. Dryden, Preface to All for Love. GENTLEMEN --Complaints of the severe reprehension. For my own degeneracy which distinguishes Mo- part, 1 beg off (perhaps with superdern Drama, and renders it, as it fluous anxiety) the appellation of a were, a different species of composi- Critic. I have as profound a contion from the ancient Mirror of Na- tempt for that ephemeral tribe of liture, are common amongst the essay- terary atomies, as if I were a trageists of the present day. Indeed, from dist myself ; I profess as unutterable the frequency and vehemence of their a scorn for the whole race of genuine critical animadversions, we are al- critics, the progeny of Grub-street most led to think these persons oc- wherever they are to be found, as if cupy the subject more as a diversion I had the honour of their hatred, or for their spleen, or as a rallying-point were sufficiently illustrious to have of vituperation against cotemporary ensured me the favour of their avergenius, than that they have really at sion. Yet I cannot help, now, addheart the interests of the stage. ing my voice to theirs, in your conWhere lamentation is outrageous and demnation, They now speak the sorrow declamatory, we are probably sense of the nation, and however we justified in supposing them affected; may despise the judgment which it and the grief of our critics hath gratifies these til-wits to pass upon lately become so vociferous, that our works, when we have good reamany people begin to doubt whether

son to suspect that it closes with something besides a pure family con- public opinion, we should on that accern for the death of Tragedy a- count respect it. Now, as in every mongst us, i. e. in plain words, whe- case where they are right, the senther lucre, or the love of noise, the tence of the critics is only the juice practice of impudence, or the exer- of public opinion oozing through cise of hypocrisy, have not had some their quills, so in the present instance, share in convoking the rout of scrib- the gall with which they so plentifulblers to howl at Melpomene's funerally bespatter your tragedies, is but -and at the same time, to revile you the effusion of popular animadveras her murderers. But whatever sion coloured (as usual) with their may have been the true motive of all own venom, and imbued with their the obloquy and abuse which have own deleterious bitterness of spirit. been lavished so munificently upon Public opinion is certainly against you, it must be acknowledged that you, Gentlemen; for, let but one you have afforded the critics but too critic open his mouth in your abuse, many legitimate opportunities for a and as the successive rings of a trumdisplay of their function ; nor is it pet magnify sound, so the spreading absolutely necessary to resort to their circles of society will invigorate the malice or venality, when a sufficient shout of derision against you. This proof is to be drawn from your own must be attended to, Gentlemen; works, that you deserve general and though you might hear unconcerned