In short, the whole collection is such as would by no means have disgraced a Roman in the age of an Augustus. "Time, if it does not cool the fire of imagination, certainly strengthens the powers of the judgment. As our author advanced in life, he cultivated his reason rather than his fancy, and desisted from his efforts in poetry, to exert his abilities in the disquisitions of criticism. His observations on one of the fathers of English poetry need but to be more generally known in order to be more generally admired. "Classical productions are rather amusing than instructive. His works of this kind are all juvenile, and naturally flowed from a classical education. These, however, were but preparatory to his higher designs, and soon gave way to the more important inquiries which were peculiar to his profession. His discourses on the Christian religion, one of the first fruits of his theological pursuits, abound with that sound sense and solid argument, which entitle their author to a rank very near the celebrated Grotius. His dissertations are equally remarkable for taste, learning, originality, and ingenuity. His Life of Erasmus' has extended his reputation beyond the limits of his native country, and established his literary character in the remotest universities of Europe. Erasmus had long been an object of universal admiration; and it is matter of surprise that his life had never been written with accuracy and judgment. This task was reserved for Dr Jortin; and the avidity with which the work was received by the learned, is a proof of the merit of the execution. "His Remarks on Ecclesiastical History' are full of manly sense, acute remarks, and profound erudition. The work is highly beneficial to mankind, as it represents that superstition which disgraced human nature in its proper light, and gives a right sense of the advantages derived from religious reformation. He every where expresses himself with peculiar vehemence against the infatuation of bigotry and fanaticism. Convinced that true happiness is founded on a right use of the reasoning powers, he makes it the scope of all his religious works to lead mankind from the errors of imagination to a serious attention to dispassionate reason. "Posthumous publications, it has frequently been remarked, are usually inferior in merit to those which were published in an author's lifetime. And indeed the opinion seems plausible, as it may be presumed that an author's reason for not publishing his works is a consciousness of their inferiority. The sermons of Dr Jortin were, however, designed by their author as a legacy to mankind. To enlarge on their value would only be to echo back the public voice. Good sense and sound morality appear in them, not indeed dressed out in the meretricious ornaments of a florid style, but in all the manly force and simple graces of natural eloquence. The same caprice which raises to reputation those trifling discourses which have nothing to recommend them but a prettiness of fancy, will again consign them to oblivion: but the sermons of Dr Jortin will continue to be read with pleasure and edification as long as human nature shall continue to be endowed with the faculties of reason and discernment. "The transition from an author's writings to his life is frequently disadvantageous to his character. Dr Jortin, however, when no longer considered as an author, but as a man, is so far from being lessened in our opinion, that he excites still greater esteem and applause. A simplicity of manners, an inoffensive behaviour, an universal benevolence, candour, modesty, and good sense, were his characteristics. Though his genius and love of letters led him to choose the still vale of sequestered life, yet was his merit conspicuous enough to attract the notice of a certain primate who did honour to episcopacy. Unknown by personal acquaintance, and unrecommended by the solicitation of friends or the interposition of power, he was presented by Archbishop Herring to a valuable benefice in London, as a reward for his exertions as a scholar and a divine. Some time after, he became chaplain to a late bishop of London, who gave him the vicarage of Kensington, and appointed him archdeacon of his diocese. This was all the preferment he had, nor had he this till he was advanced in life. While blockheads were made bishops, a man who had been uncommonly eminent in the service of learning and religion was left to pine in the shade of obscurity. Secker has been thought by many to have had only the shadow of piety and learning, but he had the substantial reward of them. Jortin was acknowledged to possess true virtue and real knowledge, but was left to receive his recompense in the suggestions of a good conscience, and the applause of posterity." The following character of Dr Jortin is given in a work attributed to the learned Dr Parr:-" As to Jortin, whether I look back to his verse, to his prose, to his critical, or to his theological works, there are few authors to whom I am so much indebted for rational entertainment or for solid instruction. Learned he was, without pedantry. He was ingenious, without the affectation of singularity. He was a lover of truth, without hovering over the gloomy abyss of scepticism; and a friend to free inquiry, without roving into the dreary and pathless wilds of latitudinarianism. He had a heart which never disgraced the powers of his understanding. With a lively imagination, an elegant taste, and a judgment most masculine and most correct, he united the artless and amiable negligence of a school-boy. Wit without ill-nature, and sense without effort, he could, at will, scatter upon every subject; and, in every book, the writer presents us with a near and distinct view of the real man. -ut omnis Votiva pateat tanquam descripta tabella HOR. Sat. i. lib. 2. "His style, though inartificial, is sometimes elevated; though familiar, it is never mean; and though employed upon various topics of theology, ethics, and criticism, it is not arrayed in any delusive resemblance, either of solemnity, from fanatical cant; of profoundness, from scholastic jargon; of precision, from the crabbed formalities of cloudy philologists; or of refinement, from the technical babble of frivolous connoisseurs. "At the shadowy and fleeting reputation which is sometimes gained by the petty frolics of literary vanity, or the mischievous struggles of controversial rage, Jortin never grasped. Truth, which some men are ambitious of seizing by surprise in the trackless and dark recess, he was content to overtake in the broad and beaten path; and in the pursuit of it, if he does not excite our astonishment by the rapidity of his strides, he at least secures our confidence by the firmness of his step. To the examination of positions advanced by other men, he always brought a mind which neither prepossession had seduced nor malevolence polluted. He imposed not his own conjectures as infallible and irresistible truths, nor endeavoured to give an air of importance to trifles by dogmatical vehemence. He could support his more serious opinions without the versatility of a sophist, the fierceness of a disputant, or the impertinence of a buffoon; more than this, he could relinquish or correct them with the calm and steady dignity of a writer, who, while he yielded something to the arguments of his antagonists, was conscious of retaining enough to command their respect. He had too much discernment to confound difference of opinion with malignity or dullness, and too much candour to insult where he could not persuade. Though his sensibilities were neither coarse nor sluggish, he yet was exempt from those fickle humours, those rankling jealousies, and that restless waywardness, which men of the brightest talents are too prone to indulge. He carried with him, into every station in which he was placed, and every subject which he explored, a solid greatness of soul, which could spare an inferior, though in the offensive form of an adversary, and endure an equal, with or without the sacred name of friend. The importance of commendation, as well to him who bestows as to him who claims it, he estimated not only with justice, but with delicacy; and therefore he neither wantonly lavished it, nor withheld it austerely. But invective he neither provoked nor feared; and as to the severities of contempt, he reserved them for occasions where alone they could be employed with propriety, and where, by himself, they always were employed with effect,-for the chastisement of arrogant dunces, or censorious sciolists, of intolerant bigots in every sect, and unprincipled impostors in every profession. Distinguished in various forms of literary composition, engaged in various duties of his ecclesiastical profession, and blessed with a long and honourable life, he nobly exemplified that rare and illustrious virtue of charity which Leland, in his Reply to the Letter Writer,' thus eloquently describes :- Charity never misrepresents, never ascribes obnoxious principles or mistaken opinions to an opponent, which he himself disavows; is not so earnest in refuting, as to fancy positions never asserted, and to extend its censure to opinions which will perhaps never be delivered. Charity is utterly averse to sneering, the most despicable species of ridicule, that most despicable subterfuge of an impotent objector. Charity never supposes that all sense and knowledge are confined to a particular circle, to a district, or to a country. Charity never condemns and embraces principles in the same breath; never professes to confute what it acknowledges to be just; never presumes to bear down an adversary with confident assertions. Charity does not call dissent insolence, or the want of implicit submission, a want of common respect."" III-LITERARY SERIES. Alexander Pope. BORN A. D. 1688.-DIED A. D. 1744. ALEXANDER POPE was born in Lombard-street, London, on the 22d of May, 1688. His father was a linen-draper, and had acquired considerable property, but, being a conscientious Catholic, he refused to invest any part of it in the public funds of a government he could not uphold, and hence his son succeeded to it much impaired. His mother also was a Catholic. She was the daughter of a Mr Turner of York, two of whose sons died in the service of Charles I. At the age of eight he was placed under the tuition of Taverner, a Roman priest; but it does not appear that his parents were very fortunate in their choice of tutors for their son; for he himself tells us that "he was always losing with his last masters what little he had got under the first." He was indeed sent for a time to a celebrated Catholic seminary at Twyford near Winchester; but he did not long remain there, having got himself dismissed for writing a lampoon upon one of the masters, his first effort in poetry. "I took," he says, "when I had done with my priests, (he had had four,) to reading by myself, for which I had very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. This I did without any design but that of pleasing myself, and got the languages by hunting after the stories in the poets I read, rather than read the book to get the language. I followed anywhere, as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I still look upon as the happiest part of my life." An intelligent inmate of his father's family says of him" He set to learning Latin and Greek by himself, about twelve; and when he was about fifteen, he resolved that he would go to London, and learn French and Italian. We in the family looked upon it as a wildish sort of resolution; for, as his health would not let him travel, we could not see any reason for it. He stuck to it; went thither, and mastered both these languages with a surprising despatch. Almost every thing of this kind was of his own acquiring. He had masters indeed, but they were very indifferent ones, and what he got was almost entirely owing to his own unassisted industry." Ogilby's translation of Homer, and Sandys' Ovid, were his earliest and special favourites; but the boy ultimately became deeply enamoured with Waller, Spenser, and Dryden, and we are told that he entreated a friend to carry him to Button's coffee-house, which Dryden frequented, in order that he might feast his eyes with a sight of the living person of one of the poets whom he worshipped. It does not appear that any of the learned professions were ever pressed upon his choice, or that his father in any way thwarted or restricted his devotion to literature. Before he was sixteen years of age he had attempted poetry in almost every walk of that creative art; he had written odes, satires, a comedy, a tragedy, and even an epic 66 poem, of which Deucalion was the hero; and, to use his own language, thought himself the greatest genius that ever was." At sixteen he wrote his 'Pastorals,' which introduced him to the notice of Wycherley and some of the leading wits of the day. His next performance was his Essay on Criticism,' which no less a critic than Dr Johnson has characterized as displaying "such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest experience." It was written in 1709, and published in 1711; and certainly displays great precocity of intellect, maugre Lady Wortley Montague's observation that it was "all stolen" from the ancient critics. The truth is, its author had studied Quintilian, Rapin, Bossu, and others, and intended that his poem should be a depository of the soundest principles of criticism, as he could glean them from the study of these and other masters. It was in this essay he attacked Dennis, and first provoked that fierce hostility which ever afterwards existed betwixt the bard and the redoubtable critic. Pope had now entered upon a severe course of study, and pursued it with such intensity of application as to endanger his life: "After trying physicians for a good while in vain, he resolved to give way to his distemper, and set down calmly in a full expectation of death in a short time." Dr Radcliffe, however, cured him, by making him ride out every day; but his constitution received a shock from which it never recovered. 6 His next pieces, in the order of their publication, were, 'The Messiah,' which first appeared in the Spectator,' in 1712,-the Ode on St Cecilia's day,'-the beautiful address of The Dying Christian to his Soul,' and the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.' A more remarkable piece than any of these was the Rape of the Lock,' a playful effusion suggested by a frolic of gallantry in which Lord Petre cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair. "There is no finer gem than this poem," says Mr Jeffrey, "in all the lighter treasures of English fancy. Compared with any other mock-heroic in our language, it shines in pure supremacy for elegance, completeness, point, and playfulness. It is an epic poem in that delightful miniature which diverts us by its mimicry of greatness, and yet astonishes by the beauty of its parts, and the fairy brightness of its ornaments. In its kind it is matchless; but still it is but mock-heroic, and depends, in some measure, for effect, on a ludicrous reference in our own minds to the veritable heroics whose solemnity it so wittily affects." The Temple of Fame' was first communicated to Steele in November, 1712, although. it appears to have been written in 1710; and of Windsor Forest,' which followed in the order of publication, the first part was published in 1714. The Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard' was the last of the separate pieces with which the poet delighted the public about this time. It is a highly wrought piece of amatory declamation, founded upon the well-known story of the loves of these two unfortunate personages. Much of it is an imitation of Ovid, and the rest an amplification of part of the original letters. 6 Pope began his translation of the Iliad in 1712, and finished it in 1718. He had only gained a few trifling sums by his original poems; but Lintot, the publisher, offered him a magnificent sum for the pro |