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is no doubt an imperfect, but not a detestable character, with all that honesty, goodnature, and generosity of temper. Though nobody can admire Clarissa more than I do; yet with all our partiality, I am afraid, it must be confessed, that Fielding's book is the most natural representation of what passes in the world, and of the bizarreries, which arise from the mixture of good and bad, which makes up the composition of most folks. Richardson has no doubt a very good hand at painting excellence,but there is a strange awkward. ness and extravagance in his vicious characters. To be sure, poor man, he had read in a book, or heard some one say, there was such a thing in the world as wickedness, but being totally ignorant in what manner the said wickedness operates upon the human heart, and what checks and restraints it meets with to prevent its ever being perfectly uniform and consistent in any one character, he has drawn such a monster, as I hope never existed in mortal shape; for to the honour of human nature, and the gracious author of it be it spoken, Clarissa is an infinately more imitable character,tban Lovelace or the Harlowes."

Young's Night Thoughts.
[From Miss Talbot.]
1744.

"Dr Young has now, I suppose, done with his Night Thoughts: he has given us one for every night in the week. I do not know wheth er you criticks and fine folks will allow them to be poems; but this I am certain of, that they are.excellent in their kind, though they may be of a kind peculiar to themselves. He shews us the mure in her ancient dignity, when she inhabited temples and spoke an immortal lan

guage, long before sing-song came into being.

From Mrs. Carter, in reply.

"I think I am next to proceed upon Dr. Young. who well deserves. the beautiful encomiums you give him: I really regret there are no more than seven nights in a week, instead of exclaiming, as I heard a lady, when she was told of a fifth, "What, will that man never have done complaining?""

"But as greatly as I admire this book, and as trifling as most of the criticisms on it appear, I cannot help making one objection: that the author has given too gloomy a picture of life, and too bad a character of mankind; who, upon the whole, I am much inclined to believe, are a much better set of beings than some moralists, from a partial view, think proper to represent them. Indeed this melanholy turn of thought runs through all Dr. Young's writings, but in no where so much as in what he calls his True Estimate of Life, оде of the most sombre pieces surely, that ever a splenetick imagination drew."

Lord Lyttleton's Monody.

[From Miss Talbot.]

1747.

"Have you seen the Monody? To see it, and admire it, will, I imagine, be, with you, the same thing; if sentiment the most affectionate, images the most natural, expressions elegant and poetical, and all the soft varied harmony of numbers, have charms enough to make you overlook some inequalities. I never saw any thing that seemed to flow more from the heart-though whether the heart would be apt to print and publish, I cannot determine; peo. ple's ways of thinking are so very

different, that in those sorts of things there is no judging others by one's self. For myself, wherever I feel the most, I am incapable of saying any thing."

Montfaucon.

[From Miss Talbot.]

1751.

"I am sick of all human greatness and activity, and so would you be, if you had been turning over with me five great folio's of Moutfaucon's French Antiquities, where warriours, tyrants, queens and favourites have passed before my eyes in a quick succession, of whose pomp, power, and bustle, nothing now remains but quiet gothick monuments, vile prints, and the records of still viler actions. Here and there shines out a character remarkably good or great; but in general I have been forced to take refuge from the absolute detestation of human nature that was coming upon me, in the hope that the unillustrious in every age, the knitters, the triflers, the domestick folks, had quietly kept all that goodness and happiness among themselves, of which history preserves so few traces.

an interest in living excellence as in the characters of his own creation: and this would make him represent a Sydney or a Falkland,as beautiful. ly as he has done a Theodore and Hippolyta. Would it be too refioed or uncharitable to attempt to solve this inconsistency,by the supposition that ideal perfection may seem to leave an entire liberty to people not disposed to regard it; while really existing virtues are such awakening and painful calls to imitation, a8 strongly incline some minds too live. ly not to feel their force, and too lit tle inclined to yield to it, to make use of every art to stifle and obscure them? You will think me out of humour with Mr. W, and so

His going out of his way to indulge a sneering contempt of subjects, which, whatever may be his own unhappy opinion of them, he knows to be held sacred by the greater part of his readers, is (to say no worse of it) such violation of decency, as gives very just cause of offence."

Lord Chesterfield's Letters.
1774.

"Lord Chesterfield's Letters are, I think, the most complete system

Horace Walpole, late Earl of Oxford. of French morality, that ever disgra

1768.

"I fancy you were not greatly edified by the study of Mr. Walpole's book. There is always some degree of entertainment in what he writes; but less, I think, in this than usual; and it is rather more peev. ish and flippant. It is great pity, that he should ever write any thing but Castles of Otranto, in which species of composition he is so remarkably happy. He would, I think, succeed much better as an historian, if he could feel as strong

ced the English language. A sys tem founded neither on principles of virtue, nor sentiments of heart, but upon those selfish motives, which aim at nothing higher than mere bienseance, and which never yet, through the general course of life, procured to any character confidence, or

esteem, or love. It is in vain that Lord Chesterfield would disguise the intrinsick imperfections and defor mities of the composition, which his instructions would produce, by so strongly recommending the graces. The world is always quick-sighted

enough to distinguish between the mere rouge and enamel of artificial good breeding, and those genuine graces which naturally spring from principles and dispositions, of which unhappily his Lordship seems to have been totally ignorant. All this may, I think, be fairly said on many of the most specious and plausible parts of the collection: others are more openly detestable. That a father should seriously, and earnestly counsel a son to endeavour to make his fortune, by betraying the families into which he is admitted, destroying domestick connections, and violating the most sacred rights of society, is a degree of profligacy which it is to be hoped, even in this bad world, is not to be found.

Bryant's Mythology.

1774.

"I do not recollect any late productions in the literary way, except a little volume of very pretty essays by Miss Aiken, and Mr. Bryant's Analysis of Ancient Mythology, of which I have read one volume in quarto. It is a work of immense learning, and very great ingenuity, but has to me the fault of almost all the mythological systems I ever read, the want of sufficient proof. When one is professedly invited into the regions of fiction, the further one travels the better. Imagination has a natural right to take the lead, and reason very quietly falls asleep, and never interferes in the progress. But whenever an address is made to the understanding, and fancies and conjectures take the place of proofs, I know few kinds of reading so unprofitable and teazing, however in. genious the writer may be. Mr. Bryant is a man of excellent character and acknowledged abilities, and the tendency of his studies to

the highest degree respectable: all this I have a pleasure in mentioning; and perhape the fault is in myself that I do not feel more convinced of the truth of his system. I am told the second volume is much more satisfactory than the first. I find it is a fashionable book, from which one would infer that this is an age of most profound literature; and from the very nature of his subject it is scarcely possible to discover what he means but by the as sistance of Greek and Hebrew."

Voltaire.

"I am not surprised at any blunder in Voltair's arguments. Wit is a squint of the understanding, which is mighty apt to set things in a wrong place. I have not seen any of his writings, nor from the character of them do I ever design it. I should as soon think of playing with a toad or a viper, as of reading such blasphemy and impiety, as I am told are contained in some of his works.

Hume and Rousseau.
1766.

"Have you heard of a strange quarrel between David Hume and J. J. Rousseau? Poor Rousseau to be sure was undone by the unmolested repose, to which he had been doomed in England; and it is very fit he should relieve himself by making some bustle, as nobody was charitable enough to disturb him. Hume is extremely angry, and wants to print the correspondence, but is advised to forbear. they were together, he humoured Rousseau like a peevish child, to which certainly he had no right, unless he could have pleaded the understanding of a child in excuse for its humours. Natural infirmities of

When

temper are to be treated with ten derness and compassion; but when people work up perverseness into a philosophical system, and contrive to make themselves as troublesome as they possibly can, they forfeit all claim to indulgence, and every en couragement to their unreasonable humours is an injury to society."

Sterus.

'1768.

"I thought the tone of one paragraph in your letter did not seem your own, even before you gave an intimation that it belonged to the Sentimental Traveller, whom I nei. ther have read, nor probably ever shall; for indeed there is something shocking in whatever I have heard either of the author, or of his writings. It is the fashion, I find, to extol him for his benevolence, a word so wretchedly misapplied, and so often put as a substitute for virtue, that one is quite sick of hearing it repeated either by those who have no ideas at all, or by those who have none but such as confound all differences of right and wrong. Merely to be struck by a sudden impulse of compassion at the view of an object of distress, is no more benevolence than it is a fit of the gout, and indeed has a nearer relation to the last than to the first. Real benevolence would never suffer a husband and a father to neglect and injure those whom the ties of nature, the order of providence, and the general sense of mankind have entitled to his first regards. Yet this unhappy man by his carelessness and extravagance has left a wife and child to starve, or to subsist on the precarious bounty of others. Nor would real benevolence lead a clergyman to ramble about the worid after objects with whom he has no

particular connection, when he might exercise the noblest duties of a benevolent heart in a regular dis charge of his proper function, instead of neglecting and disgracing it by indecent and buffoon writings.

Vicar of Wakefield, by Goldsmith. 1766.

"Be so good to tell Mrs. Hand. cock, that I do like the Vicar ef Wakefield; and likewise that I do not: by which means in any case Į hope I am secure of being of her opinion. Indeed it has admirable things in it, though mixt with provoking absurdities; at which one should not be provoked if the book in general had not great merit. A small alteration in the author's plan might have furnished a very useful lesson. The character of Burchell, as it now stands, is entirely out of nature, whether we suppose him to be guided by good principles or bad, If the author had strongly marked him as acting by po principles at all, every instance of his behaviour would have been natural for every con tradiction and every absurdity is nat ural to a humourist; and the satirizing a character of all others per haps the most destructive to the peace of human society, would have been a very instructive performance."

Swift. 1766.

"I have never read Swift's last published letters; but am glad to find that they help to justify me in always having had a more favourable idea of his character than most people seemed to think he deserved. There always appeared a rectitude and sincerity in him much superiour to the greater number of his cotem

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Gentlemen,

It is well known, that the French Government seat many missionaries, in the early part of the revolution, to different countries for different purposes: some of these were diplomatick and consular agents, openly accredited and acknowledged; others were scavans, who travelled as private individuals, but who furnished memoirs and information on persons and things, which have aided that government in their intercourse with foreign nations. Many visited the United States, and some of their writings have been published; those of Talleyrand, Volney, &c. are familiar to the publick. The singular felicity, which the French writers possess, of furnishing a memoir on every subject, has often been remarked and envied, and is exemplified in the one, I now offer for your miscellany. It has never been published in the United States. Some persons may remark an anachronism, for which I do not pretend to account; in speaking of the lobster, the author cites the regulation of the Board of Health, to prevent their being eaten in the sum mer months, which, it is believed, is posteriour to the period,at which the writer visited this country, but which may possibly have been in

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NOTHING excites the sensibility of a Frenchman more strongly, on his first landing in the United States, than the raw and simple state of their culinary preparations. If the supposition, which has been made by some philosophers, be not too fanciful, that the progress of a nation in civilization and refinement may be ascertained by the degree of skill they have attained in cooking, this infant nation are still in the most barbarous situation. A general consideration of this subject cannot enter into the present memoir; but some notion may be formed of. their rude state, when it is known, that soups, so common in France, are but little used, and that they substitute for them. a composition,

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