pardonable. A fidelity to character so mi- | nute, that it seems rather the accuracy of individual history, marking the incidental deviations, and delineating the casual humors of actual life, than the invention of the poet Shakspeare has seized every turn and flexure of the ever-varying mind of man in all its fluctuating forms; touched it in all its changeful shades; and marked it in all its nicer gradations, as well as its more abrupt varieties. He exhibits the whole internal structure of man; uniting the correctness of anatomy with the exactness of delineation, the graces of proportion, and often the highest beauty of colouring.

But with these excellencies, the works of this most unequal of all poets contain so much that is vulgar, so much that is absurd, and so much that is impure; so much indecent levity, false wit, and gross description, that he should only be read in parcels, and with the nicest selection. His more exceptionable pieces should not be read at all; and even of the best much may be omitted. But the qualified perusal here suggested may, on account of his wonderful acquaintance with the human heart, be attended with peculiar advantages to readers of the class in question, one of whose chief studies should be that of mankind, and who, from the circumstance of station and sex, have few direct and safe means of acquiring a knowledge of the world, and an acquaintance with the various characters which compose it.

To the three celebrated Greek tragedians we have already adverted, as uniting with the loftiest powers of genius, a general prevalence of virtuous, and often even of pions sentiments. The scenes with which they abound, of meritorious, of suffering, of imprudent, of criminal, of rash, and of penitent princes; of royalty under every vicissitude of passion, of character, and circumstance, will furnish an interesting and not unprofitable entertainment. And Mr. Potter has put the English reader in possession of these ancient bards, of Eschylus especially, in a man ner highly honourable to his own taste and learning.

Most of the tragedies of Racine are admirably written, and are unexceptionable in almost all respects. They possess, though conveyed in the poor vehicle of French versification.* all the dramatic requisites, and to their author we can safely ascribe one merit, superior even to that of the critical exactness with which he has regulated the unities of his plays by Aristotle's clock; we mean bis constant care not to offend against mod

* It is a curious circumstance in the history of French dramatic poetry, that the measure used by their best poets in their sublimest tragedies is the anapastic, which, in our language, is not only the lightest and most undignified of all the poetic measures, but is still more degraded by being chiefly applied to burlesque subjects. It is amusing to an English ear, to hear the Brutus of Racine, the Cid of Corneille, and the Orosmane and Orestes of Vol. taire, declaim, philosophize, sigh, and rave in the precise measure of

A cobler there was, and he liv'd in a stall.
Vor. II.

12

esty or religion. His Athalie exhibits at
once, a chief d'œuvre of the dramatic art, a
proof of what exquisite poetic beauties the
Bible histories are susceptible; a salutary
warning to princes on the miseries attendant
upon treachery, impiety, and ambition; and
a lively instance of not only the private value
but the great political importance of emi-
nently able and pious ministers of religion.
If the Italian language should form a part
of the royal education, we might name
Metastatio as quite inoffensive in a moral
view, though necessarily mixing some-
thing of the flimsy texture of the opera
with the severer graces of Melpomene.-
His muse possesses an equable and steady
pinion: if she seldom soars into sublimity,
she never sinks to meanness; she is rather
elegant and pleasing, than vigorous or lofty.
His sacred dramas are particularly excel-
lent, and are scarcely less interesting to the
reader of taste than of piety. They are
also exempt from a certain monotony, which
makes his other pieces too much to resemble
each other.

It is with no small regret that, persuaded as we are that England is the rich native soil of dramatic genius, we are driven to the painful necessity of recommending exotics in preference to the indigenous productions of our own fruitful clime. The truth is, that though we possess in our language admirable single pieces, yet our tragic poets have afforded scarce any instances, except Milton in his exquisite Comus and Sampson Agonistes, and Mason in his chaste and classic dramas, in which we can conscientiously recommend their entire, unweeded volumes, as never deviating from that correctness and purity which should be the inseparable attendant on the tragic muse.*

We shall, indeed, find not only that virtuous scenes, and even pious sentiments, are scattered throughout most of our popular tragedies, but that the general moral also is frequently striking and impressive. Its end, however, is often defeated by the means employed to accomplish it. In how many, for instance, of the favourite tragedies of Rowe and Otway, which are most frequently acted, do we find passages, and even whole scenes of a directly contrary tendency; passages calculated to awaken those very passions which it was the professed object of the anthor to counteract?

First raising a combustion of desire,

With some cold moral they would quench the fire.

When we contrast the purity, and I had almost said, the piety of the works of the tragic poets of pagan Greece, and even the more select ones of popish France, with some of the pieces of the most shining bards of protestant Britain, do they not all appear to have been in an inverse ratio with the advantages which their authors enjoyed?

It may be objected, that in speaking of

*Thompson's tragedies furnish the best exception to this remark of any with which the author is acquainted.

poetic composition, we have dwelt so long. | position he makes, that the reader is not lost, and alinost so exclusively on the drama. It even in that mighty mass of matter in which would, indeed, have been far more pleasant he arranges the arts of history, poetry, and to range at large through the whole flowry philosophy, under their three great corresfields of the muses, where we could have ponding faculties, of memory, imagination, gathered much that is sweet, and much that and understanding This perspicuous clearis salutary. But we must not indulge in ness of distribution; this breaking up his excursions which are merely pleasurable. – subject into parts, without losing sight of We have on all occasions made it a point that whole to which each portion preserves not to recommend books because they are its exact subordination, enables the reader pleasant, or even good, but because they are to follow him, without perplexity, in the appropriate. And as it is notorious wide stretch and compass of his intellectual researches.

eral paris, the preservation of a state, its Locke, the most accurate thinker, and the prosperity, and its enlargement. Of the justest reasoner, which this or perhaps any two former branches, he allows that prece- other country has produced, we would parding authors had already treated, but inti- ticularly recommend the short but very valmates that he himself was the first who had uable treatise on the Conduct of the Underdiscussed the latter. As political economy standing. It contains a familiar and popular will hereafter form an important branch of illustration of some important discoveries in study for the royal pupil, we are, happily, not his most distinguished work, the Essay on the wanting in very able modern authors, who, Human Understanding, particularly that living in our time, are likely to be more ex- great and universal law of nature, the suptensively useful, from their intimate ac- port of so many mental powers (that of memquaintance with existing circumstances, and ory under all its modifications) and which with the revolutions which have led to them. produces equally remarkable effects in the Nothing seems to have been too great, or intellectual, as that of gravitation does in the too small, for the universal mind of Bacon; material world, the association of ideas.'nothing too high for his strong and soaring A work of which even the sceptical rhapsowing; nothing too vast for his extensive dist, lord Shaftesbury, who himself possessed grasp; nothing too deep for his profound much rhetoric and little logic, pronounced, spirit of investigation; nothing too minute that it may qualify men as well for business for his microscopic discernment. Whoever and the world, as for the sciences and the dives into the depths of learning, or exam- university.'

ines the intricacies of politics, or explores There are few books with which a roval the arcana of nature, or looks into the mys-person ought to be more thoroughly acquainteries of art, or the doctrines of religion, or ted, than with the famous work of Grotius on the scheme of morals, or the laws of juris- the Rights of War and Peace. In this work prudence, or the decorums of court, or the duties of public conduct, or the habits of domestic life; whoever wanders among the thorns of metaphysics, or gathers the flowers of rhetoric, or plucks the fruits of philosophy, will find that this noble author has been his precursor; and that he himself can scarcely deviate into any path which Bacon has not previously explored.

Nor did the hand which so ably treats on the formation of states, disdain to arrange the plants of the field, or the flowers of the parterre; nor was the statesman, who discoursed so largely and so eloquently on the methods of improving kingdoms, or the philosopher, who descanted on the means of augmenting science, above teaching the pleasing art to select the sheltered spot for the tender exotic, to give minute instructions for polishing the dry smooth-shaven green,' for raising a strawberry, or cultivating a

rose.

His moral essays are fraught with familiar wisdom, and practical virtue. With this intellectual and moral treasure the royal pupil cannot be too intimately conversant. His other writings are too voluminous, as well as too various and too scientific, to be read at large; and it is become the less necessary, the works of Bacon having been the grand seed-plot, out of which all the modern gar dens of philosophy, science, and letters, have been either sown or planted.

the great principles of justice are applied to the highest political purposes; and the soundest reason is employed in the cause of the purest humanity. This valuable treatise owed its birth to the circumstance of the author, a statesman and ambassador, having, as he himself observes, personally witnessed in all parts of the Christian world, such an unbridled licentiousness with regard to war, as the most barbarous nations might blush at.' They fly to arms,' says he on frivolous pretences; and when once they have them in their hands, they trample on all laws, human and divine, as if from the time of their assumption of arms they were authorized so to do."

In the course of the work he inquires, with a very vigorous penetration, into the origin of the rights of war, its different kinds, and the extent of the power of the sovereign. He clearly explains the nature and extent of those rights, the violation of which authorizes the taking up arms. And finally, after having ably descanted on all that relates to war in its beginning, and its progress, he as ably enlarges on the nature of those negociations and treaties of peace which terminate it.*

With an intrepidity worthy of his genius, he was not afraid of dedicating a book containing such bold and honest doctrines to a king of France. This admirable treatise was found in the tent of the great Gustavus

It is with deep regret we add, that after admiring in the works of this wonderful man * The censure frequently expressed in these volto what a pitch the human mind can soar, umes, against princes who inconsiderately engage we may see, from a few unhappy instances in war, can never apply to that in which we are inin his conduct, to what debasement it can volved. A war, which, on the part of the enemy, stoop. While his writings store the mind has levelled the just fences which separated nawith wisdom, and the heart with virtue, we tions, and destroyed the good faith which united may, from his practice, take a melancholy them. A war, which on our part was entered upon, lesson on the imperfection of human excel-not for conquest but existence; not from ambition but necessity; not for revenge but justice; not to lence, by the mortifying consideration of his plunder other nations but to preserve our own. ingratitude as a friend, his adulation as a And not exclusively, even to save ourselves, but for courtier, and his venality as a chancellor. the restoration of desolated nations, and the final Of the profound and various works of safety and repose of the whole civilized world. 1.

after his death. It had been one of the prin- |mitting the oldest crimes the newest kind of cipal objects of his study. The Swedish way,' and uniting the bloody inventions of monarch knew how to choose his books and the most selfish ambition, and the headlong his ministers. He studied Grotius, and he appetites of the most unbridled vices, with employed Oxenstiern. all the exquisite contrivances of gratuitous wickedness. And happily for his fame, all the successive actors in the revolutionary drama took care to sin up to any intemperance of language which even Mr. Burke could supply.

If the royal person would peruse a work, which to the rhetoric of ancient Greece, and the patriot spirit of ancient Rome, unites the warmth of cotemporary interest and the dearness of domestic feeling; in which to the vigour of a rapid and indignant eloquence, is superadded the widest extent of general knowledge, and the deepest political sagacity:-a work

Where old experience doth attain.

To something like prophetic strain:

CHAP. XXXII.

The Holy Scriptures.-The Old Testament. IN speaking of the nature and evidences of a work which first unlocked the hidden revealed religion, it was impossible to avoid springs of revolutionary principles; dived anticipating the subject of this chapter, as it is into the complicated and almost unfathoma- from the Holy Scriptures alone that the nable depths of political, literary and moral ture of our divine religion can be adequatemischief; penetrated the dens and labyrinths, ly ascertained; and as it is only in that sawhere Anarchy who long had been mysteri- cred volume that we can discover those striously brooding, at length hatched her bale-king congruities between Christianity, and ful progeny ;-laid bare to view the dark re- all the moral exigencies of man, which form cesses, where sacrilege, murder, treason, so irresistible an evidence of its coming from regicide, and atheism, were engendered.-- that God, who is above all, and through all, If she would hear the warning voice which and in us all.' first sounded the alarm in the ears of Britain, and which, by rousing to a sense of danger, kindled the spirit to repel it, which, in Englishmen, is always but one and the same act, she should peruse Mr. Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution.

There are, however, some additional points of view in which the Holy Scripture ought to be considered. It is doubtless most deeply interesting, as it contains in it that revelation from heaven which was to give light to them that sat in darkness and the It was the peculiar felicity of this great, shadow of death, and to guide our feet into but often misguided man, to light at last up-the way of peace.' But while we joyfully on a subject, not only singularly congenial follow this collected radiance, we may humto the turn of his genius, but of his temper bly endeavour to examine the apparatus itself also. The accomplished scholar, the wit of by which those beams of heaven are thrown vivid imagination, the powerful orator rich on our path. Let us then consider the diin imagery, and abounding in classic allu- vine volume somewhat more in detail, ension, had been previously displayed to equal deavouring at the same time not to overlook advantage in his other works, but with con- those features which it presents to the critic, siderable abatements, from prejudices which or philologist. We do not mean to him who, sometimes blinded his judgment, from a ve- while he reads, affects to forget, that he has hemence which often clouded his brightness. in his hands the book of God, and therefore He had never wanted genius: it would be indulges his perverse or profligate fancy, as hard to say he bad ever wanted integrity; if he were perusing the poems of Homer or but he had often wanted that consistency of Hafez. But we mean the Christian critic, which is so necessary to make the parts of a and the Christian philologist; characters, it great character cohere to each other A is true, not very common, vet through the patriot, yet not unfrequently seeming to act mercy of God so exemplified in a few nobler against the interests of his country; a sena-instances, even in our own days, as to contor, never heard without admiration, but sometimes without effect; a statesman, often embarrassing his adversaries, without always serving his friends, or advancing his cause. But in this concentration of his powers, this union of his faculties and feelings, the Refections on the French Revolution, his impetuosity found objects which rendered its exercise not only pardonable but laudable. That violence, which had sometimes exhausted itself, unworthily in party, or unkindly on individuals, now found full scope for its exercise, in the unrestrained atrocities of a nation, hostile not only to Britain but to human nature itself. A nation not offending from the ordinary impulse of the passions, which might have been repelled by the ordinary means of resistance, but com

vince us, that in the formation of these volumes of eternal life, no faculty, no taste, no impressible point in the mind of man, has been left unprovided for. They show us, too, what an extensive field the sacred Scriptures furnish for those classical labours, of which they possibly were deemed scarcely susceptible before the admirable Lowth gave his invaluable Prelections.

The first circumstance which presents itself, is the variety of composition which is crowded into these narrow limits. Historical records extending through thousands of years;-poetry of almost every species;biographic memoirs of that very kind which the modern world agrees to deem most interesting; epistolary correspondence which, even for excellence of manner might ctral

lenge a comparison with any composition of sters. The Jews acknowledge, and that that nature in the world; and lastly, that with the mind only, a single Deity. They Singular kind of writing, peculiar to this sa- account those to be profane, who form imacred book, in which the veil that hides futu- ges of God of perishable materials, in the rity from man is penetrated, remote occur-likeness of men There is the one supreme rences so anticipated, as to imply a demonstration that God alone could have communicated such knowledge to man.

eternal Gd, unchangeable, imm rtal. They therefore suffer no statues in their cities, and still less in their temples. They have never shown this mark of flattery to their kings. They have never done this honour to the Cæsars.**

that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.'

In the historic parts, we cannot but be struck with a certain peculiar consciousness of accurate knowledge, evincing itself by its two grand characteristics, precision and What then was zeal for such worship as simplicity. They are not the annals of a na- this, but the purest reason, and the highest tion which are before us, so much as the re- magnanimity? And how wise as well as hecords of a family. Truth is obviously held roic do they appear who made no account of in supreme value, since, even where it is life in such a cause! 'O king,' say they, discreditable, there is not the slightest at- we are not careful to answer thee in this tempt to disguise it. The affections are cor-matter. Our God whom we serve is able to dially at work; but they are more filial than deliver us, and he will deliver us out of thine patriotic, and more devout than filial. To hand! But if not, be it known unto thee, these writers the God of their fathers is of more importance than their fathers themselves. They therefore preserve, with the greatest care, those transactions of their ancestors, which were connected with the most signal interferences of heaven; and no circumstance is omitted, by which additional motives might be afforded for that habitual reverence, supreme love and unshaken conúdence, towards the Eternal Father, which constituted the pure and sublime religion of this singly enlightened people. What Moses magnificently expresses in the exordium of that noble ode, the 90th psalm, contains the central principle which all their history was intended to impress. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place from one generation to another; before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst made the earth and the world; even from everlasting to everlasting, THOU ART God.'

6

Of such a religion as this, what can be more interesting than the simple, the affectionate history? it is not men whom it celebrates; it is Him who only hath immortality, who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto.' And how does it represent him? That single expression of the patriarch Abraham will fully inform us : ilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? That be far from thee! Shall not the judge of all the earth do right.' A sentiment, short and simple as it is, which carries more light to the mind, and more consolation to the heart, than all the volumes of all the philosophers.

But what was the moral efficacy of this religion? Let the youthful Joseph tell us. Let him, at the moment of his victory over all that has most effectually subdued human nature, discover to us where his strength lay. How,' says he, shall I do this great wickedness, and sin against God.'

If the

Other nations have doubtless made their history subservient to their mythology; or rather, being ignorant of the facts; they have at once gratified their national vanity, Of the lesser excellencies of these historic and indulged their moral depravity in ima- records, little on the present occasion can, going offensive and monstrous chimeras. and, happily, little needs be said Bat do these humiliating infatuations of hu-matter is unmixed truth, the manner is unmaa kind, universal as they have been, bear mixed nature. Were the researches of Sir any shadow of analogy to the divinely philo- William Jones, and those who have followed sophic grandeur of Hebrew piety? All other him in the same track, valuable on no other mythologic histories degrade our nature. account, they would be inestimable in this This alone restores its primeval dignity. respect, that through what they have discovThe pious Jews were doubtless the greatest ered and translated, we are enabled to comzealots on earth. But for whom? For no pare other eastern compositions with the grisly terror,'' nor execrable shape,' like all sacred books of the Hebrews; the result of other Orientalists, ancient and modern; no which comparison, supposing only taste and brate like the Egyptians, nor deified mon- judgment to decide, must ever be this, that, ster worse than brute, like the Greeks and in many instances, nothing can recede farRomans. But it was for HIM, whom philo- ther from the simplicity of truth and nature sophers in all ages have in vain laboured to than the one, nor more constantly exhibit discover; of whose character, nevertheless, both than the other. This assertion may be they have occasionally caught some faint applied with peculiar justness to the poetic idea from those very Jews, whom they have parts of the Old Testament. The character despised, and who, in the description even of of the eastern poetry, in general. would the heathen Tacitus, awes our minds, and seem to be that of floridness and exuberance, claims the natural homage of our hearts. with little of the true sublime, and a constant The Egyptians,' says that unbribed evidence, in the midst even of an odious representation of the Jewish nation, venerate various animals, as well as likenesses of mon

endeavour to outdo rather than to imitate nature. The Jewish poetry seems to have

*Tacitus Hist. Lib. v. 5.