divided as I am from all I love. Not a countenance I delight in to joy me, nor any conversation I like to entertain me, I am left wholly to myself and my books, and both, I own, too little to possess me entirely. What's Cicero to me, or I to Cicero? as Hamlet would say; and for myself, though this same little insignificant self be very dear unto me, yet I have not used to make it my sole object of love and delight. Indeed I find my understanding so poor, it cannot live without borrowing. I mistrust my opinion, doubt my judgment, but have no one to set me right in them. I want just such a companion as you would be, and how happy would your kind compliance with that wish make me, if the good old folks here could accommodate you; but they are so fearful of strangers I know it is impossible to persuade them to it. They are not very fine people; they have a small estate, and help it out with a little farming; are very busy and careful, and the old man's cautiousness has dwindled into penuriousness, so that he eats in fear of waste and riot, sleeps with the dread of thieves, denies himself every thing, for fear of wanting any thing. Riches give him no plenty, increase no joy, prosperity no case; he has the curse of covetousness-to want the property of his neighbors while he dare not touch his own; the harpy Avarice drives him from his own meat; the sum of his wisdom and his gains will be by living poor to die rich. To want what one has not, is a necessity must be submitted to; but to want what one has, is strange policy. I would fain write the history of a miser upon his monument, as: "Here lies one who lived unloved, died unlamented; denied plenty to himself, assistance to his friends, and relief to the poor; starved his family, oppressed his neighbors, plagued himself to gain what he could not enjoy; at last, Death, more merciful to him than he to himself, released him from care, and his family from want; and here he lies with the muckworm he imitated, and the dirt he loved, in fear of a resurrection, lest his heirs should have spent the money he left behind, having laid up no 'treasure where moth and rust do not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.'"

SHAKSPEARE AND HIS TIMES.

Shakspeare wrote at a time when learning was tinctured with pedantry, wit was unpolished, and mirth ill-bred. The court of Elizabeth spoke a scientific jargon, and a certain obscurity of style was universally affected. James brought an addition of pedantry, accompanied by indecent and indelicate manners and language. By contagion, or from complaisance to the taste of the public, Shakspeare falls sometimes into the fashionable mode of writing: but this is only by fits; for many parts of all his plays are written with the most noble, elegant, and uncorrupted simplicity. Such

is his merit, that the more just and refined the taste of the nation is become, the more he has increased in reputation. He was approved by his own age, admired by the next, and is revered and almost adored by the present. His merit is disputed by little wits, and his errors are the jests of little critics; but there has not been a great poet, or great critic, since his time, who has not spoken of him with the highest veneration, Mr. Voltaire alone excepted; whose translations often, whose criticisms still oftener, prove he did not perfectly understand the words of the author; and therefore it is certain he could not enter into his meaning. He comprehended enough to perceive that Shakspeare was unobservant of some established rules of composition; the felicity with which he performs what no rules can teach, escapes him. Will not an intelligent spectator admire the prodigious structures of Stonehenge, because he does not know by what laws of mechanics they were raised? Like them, our author's works will remain for ever the greatest monuments of the amazing force of nature, which we ought to view, as we do other prodigies, with an attention to and admiration of their stupendous parts, and proud irregularity of greatness.

SHAKSPEARE'S TRAGIC POWER.

Essay on Shakspeare.

If the mind is to be medicated by the operations of pity and terror, surely no means are so well adapted to that end as a strong and lively representation of the agonizing struggles that precede, and the terrible horrors that follow, wicked actions. Other poets thought they had sufficiently attended to the moral purpose of the drama by making the Furies pursue the perpetrated crime. Our author waves their bloody daggers in the road to guilt, and demonstrates that, so soon as a man begins to hearken to ill suggestions, terrors environ and fears distract him. Tenderness and conjugal love combat in the breasts of a Medea and a Herod, in their purposed vengeance. Personal affection often weeps on the theatre, while Jealousy or Revenge whets the bloody knife: but Macbeth's emotions are the struggles of conscience; his agonies are the agonies of remorse. They are lessons of justice, and warnings to innoI do not know that any dramatic writer, except Shakspeare, has set forth the pangs of guilt separate from the fear of punishment. Clytemnestra is represented by Euripides as under great terrors on account of the murder of Agamemnon; but they arise from fear of punishment, not repentance. It is not the memory of the assassinated husband which haunts and terrifies her, but an apprehension of vengeance from his surviving son: when she is told Orestes is dead, her mind is again at ease. It must be allowed that, on the Grecian stage, it is the office of the chorus to moralize,

cence.

and to point out, on every occasion, the advantages of virtue over vice: but how much less affecting are their animadversions than the testimony of the person concerned! Whatever belongs to the part of the chorus has hardly the force of dramatic imitation. The chorus is in a manner without personal character, or interest, and no way an agent in the drama. We cannot sympathize with the cool reflections of these idle spectators as we do with the sentiments of the persons in whose circumstances and situation we are interested.

The same.

HUGH BLAIR, 1718-1800.

DR. HUGH BLAIR, the son of John Blair a respectable merchant of Edinburgh, was born in that city on the 7th of April, 1718. After having gone through the usual grammatical course at the High School, he entered the University of Edinburgh, in 1730, where he spent eleven years in the study of literature, philosophy, and divinity. Here he commenced a method of study, which contributed much to the accuracy and extent of his knowledge, and which he practised, occasionally, even in the latter part of his life. It consisted in making abstracts of the most important works which he read, and in digesting them according to the train of his own thoughts. In 1739, he received the degree of A. M., and in 1741, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Edinburgh. In the following year, he was settled in the parish of Colessie, in Fifeshire, but was not permitted to remain long in this rural retreat; for a vacancy occurring in the Canongate Church, in Edinburgh, he was elected its minister. In this station, Dr. Blair remained eleven years, discharging with great fidelity the various duties of the pastoral office, and attracting general admiration for the chaste eloquence of his pulpit discourses.

In 1754, he was transferred from the Canongate to Lady Yester's Church, and in 1758 was promoted to the High Church of Edinburgh, the most important ecclesiastical charge in the kingdom. Hitherto his attention was devoted almost exclusively to the attainment of eminence in his own profession; but, in 1759, he delivered a course of Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres with such suecess, that the University instituted a rhetorical class under his direction, and the king founded a professorship, to the chair of which Dr. Blair was appointed. In 1763, he published a "Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian," which, though much overrated, evinced critical taste and learning. In 1777, appeared the first volume of his sermons, which were received with great favor, and had a very extensive circulation. In 1783, he resigned his professorship, and published his celebrated

The question as to the genuineness of Ossian, or rather of the poems which Macpherson attributed to that traditionary personage, has been placed in its true light by Sir James Mackintosh, (History of England, vol. i. 86, 87,) who remarks, however, that "No other im posture in literary history approaches them in the splendor of their course." But the searching investigations and keen analysis of Mr. Laing, in his "History of Scotland,” had before Sir James wrote, stripped these poems of all their pretensions to genuineness,

"Lectures on Rhetoric," which have been a text-book in most of our colleges for half a century. The latter years of his life he spent in literary leisure, giving to the public three more volumes of sermons, and, in the summer of 1800, began to prepare an additional volume; but he did not live to complete it-his death occurring December 27th of that year. He had married, in 1748, his cousin, Miss Bannatine, by whom he had a son and a daughter; but he survived them all.

Though the sermons of Dr. Blair have not the popularity they once enjoyed, they are still very pleasing compositions of the kind; but they may be considered rather as didactic treatises than sermons. Though not profound, they are written with great taste and elegance, and, by inculcating Christian morality, without any allusion to controversial topics, are suited to all classes of Christians. They blend, in a happy manner, the light of argument with the warmth of exhortation; but they never produce deep emotion-never sound the depths of the heart. But it is by his "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres" that Dr. Blair is now chiefly known; and they are deservedly popular. Though not equal to Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric" in depth of thought or in ingenious original research, they are written in a most pleasing style, convey a large amount of valuable information, suggest many most useful hints, and contain an accurate analysis of the principles of literary composition in almost every species of writing, and an able digest of the rules of eloquence as adapted to the pulpit, the bar, or to popular assemblies. In short, they form an admirable system of rules for forming the style and cultivating the taste of youth; and the time will be far distant, if it ever arrives, when they shall cease to be a text-book in every well-devised course of study for a liberal education.

ON THE CULTIVATION OF TASTE.

Belles lettres and criticism chiefly consider man as a being endowed with those powers of taste and imagination which were intended to embellish his mind, and to supply him with rational and useful entertainment. They open a field of investigation peculiar to themselves. All that relates to beauty, harmony, grandeur, and elegance; all that can soothe the mind, gratify the fancy, or move the affections, belongs to their province. They present human nature under a different aspect from that which it assumes when viewed by other sciences. They bring to light various springs of action, which, without their aid, might have passed unobserved; and which, though of a delicate nature, frequently exert a powerful influence on several departments of human life.

Such studies have also this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry nor abstruse. They strew

'Dining with a select company at Mrs. Garrick's, Dr. Johnson said "I love Blair's Sermons, though the dog is a Scotchman, and a Presbyterian, and every thing he should not be. I was the first to praise them. Such was my candor," (smiling.) Mrs. Boscawen.—“ Such his great merit, to get the better of all your prejudices." Johnson." Why, madam, let us rompound the matter; let us ascribe it to my candor, and his merit."-Croker's Boswell, viii. 76.

flowers in the path of science; and while they keep the mind bent, in some degree, and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisition of necessary erudition, or the investigation of abstract truth. The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man, in the most active sphere, cannot be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employments subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How then shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence.

Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labors of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments. of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue.

So consonant is this to experience, that, in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be entertained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favorable to many virtues. Whereas to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to be an unpromising symptom of youth; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life.