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Not, however, to purfue the argument metaphyficially, let us confider it in another point of view.

If this life be a state of probation, and we can purchase eternal felicity only by a conformity to certain rules of morality, and if we be doomed to eternal punishments, as the confequence of a deviation from thofe rules of morality, can it for a moment be fuppofed that we are launched upon the ocean of life without a pilot to guide us fafely amid the rocks of guilt, and over the quickfands of impiety? Are we born "an heir to immortality," refulting from our own conduct, without a monitor to tell us what that conduct is?

All human inftitutions are weak and ineffectual, compared to the grand influence of nature. Education is very incompetent to the task of forming the human mind; the utmost of its power is to improve it. Parental folicitude muft have many intermiffions which cannot be fupplied by the watchings of hirelings; and the infant mind, released repeatedly from the warnings of prudence and the dictates of experience, would acquire habits of vice and immorality, which fubfequent endeavours would with difficulty eradicate.

Thus, then, fuppofing our ideas of moral good and evil to be the confequence of education, and of human endeavour, how great is the probability that man would become, beyond reclamation, vicious and immoral! On this fuppofition, too, we must admit, that God has formed the human race, with a certainty of torture hereafter, and a faint chance of happinefs. For, if we have no innate guide, no immutable fenfe of right and wrong, we are certainly born with the most calamitous profpećts which can agonize the human heart. Vice, we are told, leads to the pains of hell-virtue to the felicities of heaven; and (unless we admit the divine origin of our ideas of morality) this is all we are told !---We

know not in what that vice or virtue confifts. We are left to be informed by the weak and fallible judgements of man, who is himself, perhaps, ignorant of what he would teach. We are left to difcover it by experience, but perhaps called from earth before that experience is complete. We are left to difentangle the rude chaos, while our minds are darkened by ignorance, or tinctured with prejudice. Our chance of happiness hereafter rests upon impoffibilities, while our certainty of mifery refults from our ignorance of the means to avoid it.

Again: The paths of virtue are difficult and obfcure. Many facrifices must be made to continue in them; we must frequently combat our ftrongest feelings, and reprefs our warmeft wishes. We must curb the impetuofity of our defires, and diveft ourselves of every inordinate appetite. Thefe, and manifold other facrifices, attend our steps in the purfuit of virtue.

But let us reverse the picture :

Vice presents herself to us, adorned with Circean blandishments and luxurious allurements. Her. paths are, to appearance, the paths of eafe and fecurity. The ready fruit ftands to be plucked by every hand, and the diftributes her favors with a willing generosity. She leads infatuated man to her. groves of never-fading myrtles, and to her roseate bowers; he riots undifturbed in profufion and luxury, and quaffs the intoxicating nectar of intemperance and forgetfulness;: he fees thousands of his fellow-creatures around him diffolved in eafe and debauchery, thoughtless of that felicitous futurity which they know not how to attain, and alive only to the prefent enjoyments--enjoyments which led their uninformed steps from virtue and from heaven. They found vice every where, and always acceffible; and, unable to detect with facility the boundaries of the one from the other, they fell a martyr to destruction,

folely because they knew not how to avoid it.

Such, I confefs, it appears to me, would be the general confequence, were man unpoffeffed of any innate principle of moral action. For though it may be faid, the fcriptures present rules for many of the occurrences of life, yet they are not by any means competent to the one hundredth part of thofe various fituations in which man requires an internal monitor; and, befides, many years must elapfe before the mind is capable of receiving and reducing to practice the doctrines of Holy Writ; and during those years of unprotected youth, the feeds of future depravity might be fown in the heart, which no fubfequent endeavours could afterwards, perhaps, either moderate or expel.

I wish not to be understood but that a right education and correct example are of the first importance, and contribute in a very effential manner to the improving our ideas of virtue, and reducing them to prac tice. But they do not effect all--they only enlarge and direct that capability which is co-existent with us, and without which all our endeavors would be nugatory.

ATTALUS.

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of his houfe into a kind of a theatre, for reciting paffages from various authors, antient and modern. As ufual, he never confidered whether he could pay the expences; but the theatre was finished, and Steele was delighted with the appearance of it. He was anxious to know if it was equally fitted for pleafing the ear, and, therefore, defired the carpenter, who had undertaken and completed, the work, to go to a pulpit at one end of the room, and there pronounce fome fentence, in order that he might judge of the effect. The man in vain infifted on his incapacity for public fpeaking. Steele would admit of no excufe, but defired him to fpeak whatever was uppermoft in his mind. The man at length began, and, in a loud voice, fpoke as follows: " Sir Richard Steele, here is I, and these here men, been doing your work for three months, and never faw the colour of your money: when are you going to pay us? I cannot pay my journeymen without money, and money I must have." ---Sir Richard replied, that he was delighted with the oratory, but did not approve of the subject.

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A moral Pun upon Female Names.

A perfon being lately told, as was the fact, that a man had been feverely punished for an indecorous affault upon a woman whofe furname was Juftice, obferved, "A man may outrage Patience, defpife Prudence, or even trifle with Grace or Mercy; but it feems he will always find it beft not to offend Juftice."

An Example of original Irish Genius.

AN English gentleman was writing a letter in a coffee-house, and, perceiving that an Irishman ftanding behind him was taking that liberty which Parmenio ufed with his friend Alexander, instead of putting his feal upon the lips of the curious impertinent, the English gentleman thought proper to reprove the Hibernian, if not with delicacy, at least with poetical juftice. He concluded writing his letter in these words: "I would fay more, but a damned tall Irishman is reading over my fhoulder every word I write."

"You lie, you fcoundrel," faid the felf-convicted Hibernian.

A Providential Escape.

AT the close of the American war, as a noble lord of high naval character was returning home to his family, after various escapes

from danger, he was detained a
day at Holyhead by contrary
a fummer
winds. Reading in
houfe, he heard the well known
found of bullets whiftling near him;
he looked about, and found that
two balls had just passed through
the door clofe befide him: he look-
ed out of the window, and faw
two gentlemen, who were juft
charging their pistols again; and, as
he gueffed that they had been
fhooting at a mark upon the door,
he rushed out, and very civilly re-
monftrated with them on the im-
prudence of firing at the door of
a houfe, without having previously
examined whether any one
within-fide. One of them imme-
diately answered, in a tone which
proclaimed at once his difpofition
and his country---" Sir, I did not
know you were within there, and I
don't know who you are
but if I've given offence, I am
willing," faid he, holding out the
"to give
ready charged piftols,
you the fatisfaction of a gentleman.
Take your choice."

was

now;

With his ufual prefence of mind, the noble Lord seized hold of both piftols, and faid to his aftonished countryman, "Do me the juftice, Sir, to go into that fummer houfe, fhut the door, and let me have two shots at you; then we fhall be upon equal terms, and I fhall be quite at your fervice to give or receive the fatisfaction of a gentleman."

The Irishman, truck with the drollery of this proposition, immediately adopted another method of fettling the affair.

Equality.

MYSIAS, the brother of Antigonus king of Macedon, defired him to hear a caufe, in which he was a party, in his chamber; "No, my dear brother," anfwered Antigonus, "I will hear it in the open court of juftice, because I must do justice.”

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CRITICISM.

ORIGINAL
For January 1804.

ART. L Life of Geoffrey Chaucer,
the early English Poet, including
Memoirs of his near Friend and
Kinfman, John of Gaunt, Duke of
Lancafter; with Sketches of the
Manners, Opinions, Arts, and
Literature of England, in the
Fourteenth Century. By William
Godwin. 2 vol. 4to. 1803.

IT

Tis a trite though not lefs juft remark, that biography is a fpecies of compofition at once amufing and inftructive. While it excites to deeds of glory and to acts of virtue on the one hand, it often deters from vice and immorality on the other. The effects of reading are however not always, perhaps never, immediately vifible; they frequently take place at a remote period, excited by the operation of other caufes, and are fometimes even obliterated by the agency of more powerful effects. It is therefore impoffible to calculate with certainty the moral confequences that are or may be produced by the ftudy of any particular branch of literature; though if we generalize, it is not perhaps faying too much to affert, that biography, of all others, is the moft fpecifically calculated to generate, in the aggregate, beneficial results.

But thefe refults are occafioned by a clear, connected, and forcible method of treating the life of the perfon, or perfons, who are thus delineated on the canvass by the pen of truth. A diffufive, rambling, and incoherent arrangement of facts and events, perpetually interrupted by irrelevant matter, and amalgamated with a mass of difcordant materials, can only tend to bewilder and confufe the reader, and leave him, after the labour of perufal, without the acquifition of a single

perfpicuous and decifive portion of knowledge. Biography undertakes to delineate the man, and not every correlative fubject connected with him. Who, in reading the life of Burke, of Johnson, or of any eminent character, would look for, or expect to find, a detail of the political events of the period in which he lived, of the prevalent religion, of the ftate of the arts and fciences, of the manners, customs, and amufements, and of the principal perfonages of the court of the fovereign then on the throne? This is more properly the province of the hiftorian, in whom, on the other hand, we do not expect to meet with a critical investigation of the refpective merits of the poets, orators, and learned men, who flourished within the compafs of the period he undertakes to defcribe. We must always regret to fee the line of demarcation broken down, whether in a political or in a literary point of view; for in either it can only produce confufion and difappointment.

After thefe few preliminary obfervations, which were excited by the perufal of the prefent work, we fhall now proceed to give the reader fome idea of its nature and merits.

Mr. Godwin obferves in his preface, p. vii. that the first and direct object of his work is, to "erect a monument to his (Chaucer's) name, and, as far as the writer was capaable of doing it, to produce an interefting and amufing book in modern English, enabling the reader who might fhrink from the labour of maftering the phrafeology of Chaucer to do juftice to his illuftrious countryman." He also hoped, that he might at the fame time be the means of exciting a defire to ftudy the language of our

F

ancestors, and the elements and history of our vernacular speech. Mr. Godwin then proceeds to offer his reafons for that extenfive fpecies of biography, of which his work is a fpecimen; but they are to us by no means conclufive.

At page ix he has entered a moft curious caveat against the confidence of his reader; for he unconditionally avows, that he has written only a "fuperficial work," and adds, with ftill lefs propriety, "that his ftudies have chiefly been engaged upon other fubjects," and that he " came a novice to the prefent undertaking." If this be really the cafe, we can only fay, that both himself and his bookfeller have acted very imprudent: the one, in writing upon a fubject which he knew himself totally incompetent to treat upon; and the other, in publishing what nobody would hence with to read. That it is a fuperficial work, ftrictly speaking, we are by no means inclined to admit; though, confidering its fize,

we would ask Mr. G. of what number of volumes it would have confifted, had he completed according to his with? But perhaps the affertion proceeds from an ingenuous modefty, which would not venture to pre-decide the question of its merits!

Previous to entering upon the work itself, we are ftopped by a differtation upon the period of the birth of Chaucer, which, after a difcuffion of fourteen quarto pages, leaves the fubject juft where it

was.

In chapter I, after the ufual arrangement of our poet's birth, which is rightly fixed in 1328, we are prefented with an account of London, under the Romans, Saxons, Normans, and Plantagenets, in which a vast deal of common information is offered to us, poffeffing no more real connection with the life of Chaucer, than with the life of Homer or Virgil.

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Chapter II defcribes the education of Chaucer, and the state of learning in England under the Norman and Plantagenet princes. Mr. Godwin juftly obferves, that we are "extremely apt to put the cheat upon our imaginations, by the familiar and indifcriminate ufe we make of the terms,---the dark and the barbarous ages." He traces the revival of learning in the weft, and refers, as ufual, our incipient knowledge of the elements of arithmetic, algebra, geometry, phyfic, and other fciences, to the Arabians. He then ftates the difadvantages under which literature laboured in the thirteenth century, and enumerates among these the scarcity of books, the power of papal fuperftition, and the difcredit of the English language.

"The century, however, in which Chaucer lived, and thofe which immediately preceded, laboured under one difadvantage, from which we have hap pily efcaped. The invention of printing has enabled us to multiply books

almoft to the extent of human want, and has rendered them cheap and acceffible to a great portion of our species. In thefe early times it was otherwife. Seven hundred volumes were efteemed to afford a foundation for a national library. But the times of Chaucer did not in this refpect fuffer a difadvantage peculiarly their own. The beft ages of Greece and Rome had no other method for multiplying copies than by the tedious procefs of tranfcription. This undoubtedly prevented literature from being within the reach of fo large a portion of the community as at prefent, but was not incompatible with learning. If we look over the lift of authors

quoted by Chaucer and other writers of that period, we fhall find it confiderably numerous. The libraries of monafteries probably in a great degree fupplied the difadvantage arifing from

the final collections of individuals.

They were prevented from being fo minute and accurate in quotation as fcholars of our own times frequently are, but not from being learned.”

Chapter III contains an account of the fchool-boy amufe

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