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is not difficult to be accounted for! Faultless mediocrity industry can preserve in one continued degree; but excellence is only to be attained, by human faculties, by starts.

Our poets who possess the greatest genius,. with, perhaps, the least industry, have at the same time the most splendid and the worst passages of poetry. Shakspeare and Dryden are at once the greatest and the least of our poets.

The imitative powers of Pope, who possessed more industry than genius-though his genius was nearly equal to that of the greatest poetshas contrived to render every line faultless: yet it may be said of Pope, that his greatest fault consists in having none.

Carrache sarcastically said of Tintoret-Ho veduto il Tintoretto hora eguale a Titiano, hora minore del Tintoretto-" I have seen Tintoret now equal to Titian, and now less than Tintoret."

Trublet very jusly observes-The more there are beauties, and great beauties, in a work, I am the less surprised to find faults, and great faults. When you say of a work-that it has many faults; that decides nothing: and I do not know by this, whether it is execrable, or excellent. You tell me of another-that it is without any faults; if your account be just, it is certain the work cannot be excellent.

CONCEPTION AND EXPRESSION.

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THERE are men who have just thoughts on every subject; but it is not perceived, because their expressions are feeble. They conceive well, but they produce badly.

Erasmus acutely observed alluding to what then much occupied his mind-that one might be apt to swear that they had been taught, in the Confessional Cell, all they had learnt; so scrupulous are they of disclosing what they know. Others, again, conceive ill, and produce well; for they express with elegance, frequently, what they do not know.

It was observed of one pleader, that he knew more than he said; and of another, that he said more than he knew.

The judicious Quintillian has observed, that we ought to be solicitous at first more about our conceptions than our expressions-and that we may attend to the latter afterwards. While Horace conceives that the expressions will never fail us, provided we have luminous conceptions. Yet they seem to be different things, for a man may have the clearest conceptions, and at the same time be no pleasing writer; while conceptions of no eminent merit may be very agreeably set off by a warm and colouring diction.

Lucian happily describes the works of those, who abound with the most luxuriant language, but void of ideas. He calls their unmeaning verbosity, anemony-words; (anemonæ verborum) for anemonies are flowers, which however brilliant, can only please the eye, leaving no fragrance. A certain writer of flowing, but nugatory verses, has been compared to the daisy; a flower, indeed, but without the fragrance.

BOOKS OF LOVE AND DEVOTION.

MENAGE has this acute observation on the writings of Love and Religion." Books of Devotion, and those of Love, are alike bought. The only difference I find is, that there are more who read books of Love, than buy them; and there are more who buy books of Devotion than read them."

GEOGRAPHICAL DICTION.

THERE are many Sciences, says Menage, on which we cannot, indeed, compose in a florid or elegant diction-such as Geography, Music, Algebra, Geometry, &c. When Atticus requested Cicero to write on Geography, the latter excused himself, observing, that its scenes were more adapted to please the eye than susceptible of the rich ornaments of a polished style. However,

in these kinds of sciences, we may give an ornament to the simplicity and baldness of our style, by some elegant allusion or remark.

Thus when we notice some inconsiderable place: for instance, Woodstock, in adding that it was the residence of Chaucer, the parent of our poetry, this kind of erudition pleases even more than all the flowery ornaments of rhetoric.

The slightest description becomes interesting, and forms a picture to the fancy. Sir William Jones in some village discovered the house of Milton; and from its topographical delineation illustrates a passage in one of the poet's delicious descriptions in the Allegro.

The same principle of composition may be carried with the happiest effect into some investigations, though the profound antiquary may not approve of these sports of wit or fancy. Thus Dr. Arbuthnot in his Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures. "A topic extremely barren of amusement takes every opportunity of enlivening the dulness of his task; even in these mathematical calculations he betrays his wit; and observes that the polite Augustus, the Emperor of the World, had neither any glass in his windows, nor a shirt to his back!" Those uses of glass and linen were, indeed, unknown in his time.

LEGENDS.

THOSE gross, wild, and ludicrous fables, or histories, which have been entitled LEGENDS, originated in this circumstance

Before colleges were established in the monasteries where the schools were held, the professors in rhetoric frequently gave their scholars the life of some saint for a trial of their talent at amplification. The students, being constantly at a loss to furnish out their pages, invented these wonderful adventures. Jortin observes, that the Christians used to collect out of Ovid, Livy, and other pagan poets and historians, the miracles and portents to be found there, and accommodated them to their own monks and saints. The good fathers of that age, whose simplicity was not inferior to their devotion, were so delighted with these flowers of rhetoric, that they were induced to make a collection of these miraculous compositions; not imagining that, at some distant period, they would become matters of faith. Yet, when James de Voraginus (so nick-named from a whirlpool, as one who absorbs every thing) Peter Nadal, and Peter Ribadeneira, wrote the Lives of the Saints, they sought for their materials in the libraries of the monasteries; and, awakening from the dust these manuscripts of amplification, imagined they made an invaluable present to the world, by laying before

VOL. I.

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