sentiment. His plot is simple, yet sufficient to create interest; his remarks are just, without being too obvious; he always endeavours to please, and he not unfrequently instructs. In our commendation of his performance, however, we must make considerable reserve and limitation. Undoubtedly he has some title to wit, but he weakens that title by his constant endeavours to enforce it; if his ambition of humour and pleasantry had been less, we should have laughed more; if his sprightliness had been less continual, it would have appeared more natural; his reading or learning is too ostentatiously displayed; many of the criticisms that affect wit and cleverness are only puerile and quaint; the language is sometimes incorrect; and the construction of the sentences is often inelegant. As this may appear too much like rigid and illnatured criticism, we would observe that the faults which we have mentioned are over-balanced by striking excellences. We shall therefore dismiss the performance with an honourable judgment, and quote a few passages by which the equity of our decision may be (at least in part) ascertained: CHARACTERS. Martha Dynevawr, sir David's cousin, was fiftytwo years old. Added to that excellent quality of maturity, she was full of flesh, short, and had a face strongly resembling a full moonwith this difference; the colour of the latter is like that of a lilly, while Martha's bore a much nearer analogy to a full-blown rose. Time, therefore, could not be said to have plucked the roses from her cheeks-nor had she, indeed, any thing to fear from him in this respect, as he had also provided her with a greater number of little buds, which promised, in due season, to renew her bloom, and render it perennial. They were, at present, amazingly forward, and seemed not to be of their description that are "born to blush unseen.” What would many puny, pale-faced young ladies, whom I know, give for a little of the charming tint that overspread without partiality, if I except a prominent feature, the glowing visage of the virgin Martha? Perhaps some will say, Nothing! knowing that if such faces do resemble a rose, it is more the damask or purple one than any other. But let them recollect that Æneas was not "in form and looks majestic as a god," PITT. until Venus had breathed over his countenance "the purple light of youth." Very likely it will, and it certainly may be said, that purpuream, or purple, in Virgil, is to be taken for beauteous. To which I agree without reserve; and consequently a purple face and nose must be beautiful. Anarceon also has Agodiτn wogpuga, a purple Venus; and such was Martha. After this elucidation I know well what will immediately suggest itself to many-Believe me, however, that no one ever presumed to say she was in the least addicted to tippling; but that every body body in the house and in the village did not think so, I shall not dare to affirm. Martha, since the age of five-and-twenty, (perilous age for a maid!) had been of almost every religion that had yet any of its order and ceremonies remaining. But she now bid fair to fix for life, having been for two whole years a strong methodist; in which time she had converted a great number of sir David's tenants, farmers' wives, and labourers, who constantly attended at a temporary building, which she had erected, to hear the instructive eloquence of a fellow who had been originally her cousin's gardener; but who having, as she conceived, imbibed more of the spirit than the rest, was deemed worthy of becoming the pastor of the flock. It was whispered about, indeed, by some apostates from and enemies to this, sect, that Martha would, herself, often imbibe the spirit with the preacher until they both got most piously fuddled. But this is a circumstance which, if true, I shall not condemn as wrong: for, not being a methodist, I cannot pretend to say how far inebriation may be necessary to augment the warmth and fervour expected in persons of that persuasion. The conventicle was about three quarters of a mile from sir David's, who would not permit it to be built nearer, nor to have, been built at all, could he have avoided it; but his cousin Martha was so set upon it, that the fear of incurring her displeasure obliged him not only to wink at her absurdity, but to scem in some measure to approve of it. • Lieutenant Llanelthy was a naval officer, who had served during two wars, shared many very hot engagements, and always behaved with the greatest magnanimity and courage. But having little interest, although he had served his country for thirty years, he could never get any higher promotion than that of lieutenant. It being too late for him, who had been outstripped in the vigour and prime of his days, to think of pursuing fortune at so advanced an age, being now fifty-five, he had come with his wife, and a boy, at present on the seas, to spend the evening of his life im a little cottage which sir David had given him upon his estate. His head was quite bald, except a few white hairs that fell in his neck. He had lost one leg, and suffered very much, occasionally, from a violent asthma-yet, with all this, was extremely jovial and good humoured. His cottage he was used to call a cabin, which he would often explain in this pleasant way : "I have heard somewhere or another," said he, "that there was once a philosopher who compared the world to an animal; its rivers were its veins; and so on :-now I liken it to a first rate, in which I am sailing to the other world-I bustled about in it a good deal in the early part of my life; but now my infirmities won't let me visit deck as usual, therefore I have retired to the cabin for the remainder of the voyage." The reader may easily guess why sir David invited the lieutenant to be present at the attack. He will not be suspected of being much biassed in favour of Martha on account of her over righteous ness, against sir David and his good cheer, whom he knew not to be be in the least partial to her religious pursuits. Moreover, he liked all other persuasions better than the methodists. He thought that if a man was honest, and did his duty, he might go to heaven without canting, and even without ever going on his marrow bones; a position he had conceived a terrible antipathy to since he had mounted a wooden leg. "Mrs. Martha," the lieutenant would say, " has often boarded me on the religious tack, but I have as often beaten her off. My wife, though, was not so successful: she got to the windward of her, and took her without firing a gun. Dam'me but it is as much as I can do to keep my station between 'em sometimes! though, spite of me, I can't help laughing when I hear Mrs. Martha talk of making me a new-born babe. She is one, she says; and mayhap she be but it took a d'd deal of grog to make her so." The reverend Mr. Burley was acquainted with sir David's predecessor, and had been educated at Eton, where he had been on the foundation for nine years; when, a vacancy happening, he became a fellow of King's-college, Cambridge. He had, however, long forfeited his fellowship, on accepting a small benefice at a very short distance from sir David's. This was given to him, with a promise of something much better, by a great man of a certain party called the Opposition, also Democrats or Jacobins, for whom he had written several very spirited pamphlets. He had an immoderate thirst for the great world, and longed for nothing so ardently as to leave the country for a living in or near London. But, having no other means of existence, he was at present compelled to live upon his benefice, with the addition of a sum given him by sir David for doing the duty of his church; the living of which he would not part with, as he did not know that he should not marry again himself, or how many children his son might have to provide for when married. Mr. Burley was tall, thin, and wore his own hair. He was serious; and, though not a proud, yet a very obstinate man in conversation with all except sir David, whom, as they seldom had any literary disquisitions together, and as he perhaps expected the living in case his prospects should fail elsewhere, he never contradicted. He was very much disliked by Martha, who looked upon him as a supercilious prelate, existing only to eat up the good things of this world. And in this conclusion she was not entirely mistaken, since few men liked rich dinners, or relished his glass better than Mr. Burley. Martha, however, always treated him with outward respect, fearing lest he should procure the suppression of her meeting, by representing it to the bishop as disorderly.' ་ LITERARY CONTROVERSY. The doctor pretended to prefer Virgil to Homer, contending that his verse was more polished, and that he had very much improved upon his original, whose lines were eked out with expletives, and whose matter often abounded in absurdities. Mr. Burley give it, with great justice, in favour of Homer declaring that the other, had he lived in these days, would have been. considered as little better than a translator, or, at any rate, an enor mous plagiary, than which, in his opinion as an author, nothing worse could attach itself to the character of a literary man. The subject being revived by the parson, he was desired as usual to give an instance of an absurdity or impropriety to be met with in Virgil. Nothing could have pleased the parson more than this request-It was indeed precisely the object he wished to encounter, and for which he had come ready armed into the field. In the sixth Eneid," said he, "you may perhaps recollect this passage: Unde supernè Plurimus Eridani per sylvam volvitur amnis." "Recollect it?" cried the doctor: Hic manus, ob patriam pug➖➖ and would have gone on most likely to the end of the book, (for he had been famous, when at Winchester, for learning half a dozen books either of Virgil or Homer by heart,) had not the parson stopped him, and begged he would fix his attention only to the verse he had quoted. "Your favourite Virgil," continued he, "is here describing the Elysian fields, and I think it sufficiently absurd that he should there introduce a river which laved the fields of Mantua. For Eridanus, sir, is simply the river Po." "Consider, Mr. Burley," said the other, "consider, Mantua was his native land. Take in the amor patriæ, and it will appear very fair, and indeed rather a beauty than a blemish." Nothing can palliate it," replied the parson; "though I will allow that his description at this distance of time loses very little of its effect with most of us, from this circumstance; but let me ask how it would seem, were I in describing Elysium to introduce the New River, because I, the poet, happened to live at Islington? Sir, (he could never bear to call him doctor) I say it is a very improper liberty; and this is the least of a thousand he has taken, which would be too troublesome to repeat." The doctor, who seldom dwelt long on one subject, and particularly when he perceived that he had no more to say on it, immediately began to attack Homer in revenge. "Well, Mr. Burley," said he, "I think that a very venial fault, if you are pleased to call it any, when compared with an oversight which your Oceanus Sapientiæ has been guilty of. To assert one thing in one place, and contradict it in another, is unpardonable.” "Sir," interrupted the parson hastily, "you're wrong, you're wrong, sir. Homer never did such a thing. Prove it, sir; prove it." ぐ "Be patient," said the doctor," and I will. To say nothing of his inability to expound the fisherman's riddle, (which is affirmed to have produced his death, and which looks something like dulness,) you will find that he, the Vinosus or boozer, as Horace calls him, contradicts in the Odyssey what he had formerly asserted in the Iliad -But he had probably taken a little too much at a time." "No jesting, sir," said Mr. Burley peevishly, "but go on." " Be Be calm, and you shall hear. In the first book of the Iliad, Thetis says to her son, Ειμ' αυτή προς Ολυμπον ΑΓΑΝ ΝΙΦΟΝ and in the sixth book of the Odyssey, describing Olympus, which you must acknowledge to be a most tepid and imperfect description, Homer, the best of painters, distinguishes it thus: στε ΧΙΩΝ επιπιλύαται. I do not imagine it necessary to translate either of these passages, as I see my father and the lieutenant are asleep, and I suppose you easily mark the contradiction." Such was the conversation, though not always such the temperate manner in which it was supported, that existed between Mr. Burley and the doctor, whenever they met, and which I as a faithful biographer, even though I lose the favour of the reader, am obliged to relate. He will not, however, find me so minute as either a Piozzi or a Bozzy.' The ingenious author concludes his work with a justification of its tendency, with respect to the interests of morality; justly maintaining that it is the first and foremost duty of every writer to sow the seeds of virtue, whose germ is peace, and whose harvest is happiness," R.Wood....e. ART. III. The Wreath composed of Selections from Sappho, ΤΗΣ If |