exceptionable qualities interwoven with the most lovely dispositions and dignified so excusable do his widest aberra

virtues

tions appear―so spontaneously and innocently to arise out of his characteristic goodness, or out of the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed-and so happy are they in the incidents to which they lead, that to have been free from these improprieties appears impossible if desirable, and undesirable if possible. To have represented him less wild, incautious, and susceptible, would have been to render him less interesting to his readers," and apparently less happy eventually in himself. This serious evil attends many of the admirably drawn and highly instructive characters produced by this masterly hand, and it will demand from the reader considerable sagacity and caution.

On the subject of his politics, it must on all hands be admitted, Sir Walter has laid himself open to the severest animadversions. He has incessantly endeavoured

to poison the truth of history, to cast ridicule and opprobrium on men, who, with all their faults and extravagancies, were some of the noblest spirits that have ever adorned our nature, and, above all, to whitewash the tyrannic and worthless Stuarts, whose memory can escape oblivion only to receive the odium and execration of all who possess the smallest love of liberty, or hatred of oppression and arbitrary power. For so strange an obliquity in the character of this virtuous and amiable writer it is not easy to account. It certainly forms a dark spot in the sun of his glory, and exhibits an humiliating truth in connexion with human nature— how inseparable is infirmity from man; how prejudice has power to warp the finest judgments, and to sully the purity of the most amiable hearts.

With these views of the nature and tendency of novels in general,* as well as

* The writer regrets that the limits of the present

on some other accounts, the opinion is, without hesitation, expressed, that the productions of the poet rather than those of the novelist are to be recommended. Poetry appears to be the purer offspring of the imagination, at least it is the more intellectual. The object of the novelist is to interest by a series of felicitously combined incidents. On these the mind of the reader is likely to be so much fixed as to lose sight of the moral of the tale. The design of the poet, on the other hand, is to impart vividness, brilliancy, and force, to sentiment; a higher order of imagery is employed, and the gratification is more pure and intellectual. The productions of the novelist, moreover, must

chapter forbid him to enter into a projected discussion on the subject of religious novels. If, without stating his reasons, he may be allowed to advance an opinion, by no means formed without deliberation, he will say, that these productions belong to a very questionable class of reading. It is to be feared that they engage on the side of religion, feeling rather than principle, and substitute sentimental for practical piety.

be more or less dangerous from the circumstance of their embodying so constantly those incidents of human life, which, however natural and conceivable in their individuality, can, in their series, have no counterpart in the history of the reader.

If a recommendation may be allowed, we will venture the assertion, that there is no poet who has a stronger claim to attention on the part of youth, especially of the fair sex, than the amiable Cowper. Without ranking him among poets of the first order, he may be justly pronounced, in some respects, inimitable. As long as simple elegance of language, chaste imagery, manly spirit, and pure sentiment, are sufficient to give any poet a claim to general esteem, so long will the author of "The Task" continue to be read with admiration and delight; and his memory will be cherished with gratitude and honoured with praises, when more illustrious names shall have perished from the records of fame, and the laurels which grace far loftier brows shall have faded and fallen.

CHAPTER VI.

CONCLUSION.

What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do;

This teach me more than hell to shun,
That more than heaven pursue.

POPE.

HUMILIATING as may be the concession, it cannot be withheld, that to convince and to persuade are essentially different, and by no means necessarily connected. The judgment may be led irresistibly to a conclusion, which the heart refuses to embrace, and the inclination perversely prescribe and pursue a course, which reason disapproves and conscience condemns. "To perceive the good and approve it, but to choose the evil," is the strange though common inconsistency of