is that of hearing from you, and particularly at this time when I was bid to expect the good news of an increase of your family. Your opinion of Diodorus is doubtless right: but there are things in him very curious, got out of better authorities now lost. Do you remember the Ægyptian history, and particularly the account of the gold mines? My own readings have been cruelly interrupted: what I have been highly pleased with, is the new comedy from Paris by Gresset, called le Mechant; if you have it not, buy his works altogether in two little volumes, they are collected by the Dutch booksellers, and consequently contain some trash; but then there are the Ver-vert, the Epistle to P. Bougeant, the Chartreuse, that to his sister, an Ode on his country, and another on Mediocrity, and the Sidnei, another comedy, all which have great beauties: there is also a poem lately published by Thompson, called the Castle of Indolence, with some good stanzas in it. Mr. Mason is my acquaintance; I liked that ode* much, but have found no one else that did. He has much fancy, little judgment, and a good deal of modesty: I take him for a good and well meaning creature; but then he is really in simpli Ode to a Water Nymph, published about this time in Dodsley's Miscellany. On reading what follows, many readers, I suspect, will think me as simple as ever, in forbearing to expunge the paragraph: but as I publish Mr. Gray's sentiments of authors, as well living as dead, without reserve, I should do them injustice, if I was more scrupulous with respect to myself. My friends, I am sure, will be much amused with this and another passage hereafter of a like sort. My enemies, if they please, may sneer at it; and say, which they will very truly, that twenty-five years had made a very considerable abatement in my general philanthropy. Men of the world will not blame me for writing from so prudent a motive, as that of making my fortune by it; and yet the truth, I be lieve at the time was, that I was perfectly well satisfied, if my publications furnished me with a few guineas to see a play or an opera. city a child, and loves every body he meets with : he reads little or nothing; writes abundance, and that with a design to make his fortune by it. My best compliments to Mrs. Wharton and your family: does that name include any body I am not yet acquainted with? LETTER VIII. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON. Stoke, August 19, 1748. I AM glad you have had any pleasure in Gresset; he seems to me a truly elegant and charming writer; the Mechant is the best comedy I ever read; his Edward I can scarce get through, it is puerile; though there are good lines, such as this for example: "Le jour d'un nouveau regne est le jour des ingrats." But good lines will make any thing rather than a good play however, you are to consider this is a collection made up by the Dutch booksellers; many things unfinished, or written in his youth, or designed not for the world, but to make his friends laugh, as the lutrin vivant, &c. There are two noble lines; which, as they are in the middle of an Ode to the King, may perhaps have escaped you: "Le cri d'un peuple heureux est la seule eloquence, "Qui sçait parler des Rois." Which is very true, and should have been a hint to himself not to write odes to the king at all. As I have nothing more to say at present, I fill my paper with the beginning of an essay; what name to give it I know not; but the subject is the Alliance of Education and Government: I mean to shew that they must both concur to produce great and useful men. I desire your judgment upon it before I proceed any further. The first fifty-seven verses of an ethical essay accompanied this letter, which I shall here insert, with about fifty lines more, all of them finished in his highest manner. Had this noble design been completed, I may, with great boldness, assert, that it would have been one of the most capital poems of the kind that ever appeared either in our own, or any language. I am not able to inform the reader how many essays he meant to write upon the subject; nor do I believe that he had ever so far settled his plan as to determine that point but since his theme was as extensive as human nature, (an observation he himself makes in a subsequent letter on the " Esprit des Loix") it is plain the whole work would have been considerable in point of size. He was busily employed in it at the time when M. de Montesquieu's book was first published: on reading it, he said the baron had forestalled some of his best thoughts; and yet the reader will find, from the small fragment he has left, that the two writers differ a little in one very material point, viz. the influence of soil and climate on national manners.* * See L'Esprit des Loix, Liv. xiv. chap. 2, &c. Some time after he had thoughts of resuming his plan, and of dedicating it, by an Introductory Ode to M. de Montesquieu; but that great man's death, which happened in 1755, made him drop his design finally. On carefully reviewing the scattered papers in prose, which he writ, as hints for his own use in the prosecution of this work, I think it best to form part of them into a kind of commentary at the bottom of the pages; they will serve greatly to elucidate (as far as they go) the method of his reasoning. ESSAY I. -Πόταγ ̓ ὦ 'γαθέ; τὰν γὰρ ἀοιδὰν W Οὔτι πω εἰς Αΐδαν γε τὸν ἐκλελάθοντα φυλαξεῖς. THEOCRITUS. As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, COMMENTARY. The Author's subject being (as we have seen) THE NECESSARY ALLIANCE BETWEEN A GOOD FORM OF GOVERNMENT AND A GOOD MODE OF EDUCATION, IN ORDER TO PRODUCE THE HAPPINESS OF MANKIND, the Poem opens with two similes; an uncommon kind of exordium: but which I suppose the Poet intentionally chose, to intimate the analogical method he meant to pursue in his subsequent reasonings. 1st. He asserts that men without education are like sickly plants in a cold or barren soil, (line 1 to 5, and 8 to 12;) and, 2dly, NOTES. As sickly plants, &c. l. 1.] If any copies of this Essay would have autho rized me to have made an alteration in the disposition of the lines, I would, for the sake of perspicuity, have printed the first twelve in the following manner; So draw mankind in vain the vital airs, Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart: Of nature idly lavishes her stores, If equal Justice with unclouded face COMMENTARY. 10 15 } 20 255 he compares them, when unblest with a just and well-regulated government, to plants that will not blossom or bear fruit in an unkindly and inclement air (1. 5 to 9, and 13 to 22). Having thus laid down the two propositions he means to prove, he begins by examining into the characteristics which (taking a general view of mankind) all men have in common one with another (1. 22 to 39); NOTES. because I think the poetry would not have been in the least hurt by such a transposition, and the Poet's meaning would have been much more readily perceived. I put them down here for that purpose. As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, Whose barren bosom starves her gen'rous birth, So draw mankind in vain the vital airs, Unform'd, unfriended by those kindly cares, Spread the young thought, and warm the opening heart. The soil, though fertile, will not teem in vain, Forbids her gems to swell, her shades to rise, |