similes, have oftener excited emotions of the tenderest sympathy, than the most laboured composition of Corneille. Ye who would learn how to touch the heart, go not to the schools of France, but become the disciples of Sophocles, Shakspeare, Sterne, and Chatterton. O simplicity! thou captivating simplicity! 'tis thine at once to affect what all the artifices of rhetoric, with all its tropes and figures, tediously and vainly labour to accomplish. 'Tis thine to dissolve the hardest heart, and to force even stubborn nerves to tremble. A few words of simple pathos will penetrate the soul to the quick, when a hundred lines of declamation shall assail it as feebly and ineffectually, as a gentle gale the mountain of Plinlimmon.

A writer of taste and genius may avail himself greatly in pathethic compositions, by adopting the many words and phrases, remarkable for their beautiful simplicity, which are interspersed in that pleasing, as well as venerable book, the Holy Bible. Icannot indeed entirely agree with those zealous critics who pretend to discover in the scriptures all the graces of all the best classics. To please the ear and imagination were very inferior objects in the benevolent mind of Him who caused all holy scripture to be written for our use. But, at the same time, it is certain that they abound in such beauties as never fail to please the most cultivated taste. Besides their astonishing sublimity, they have many a passage exquisitely tender and pathetic. Our admirable translation has preserved them in all their beauty, and an English writer may select from it a diction better suited to raise the sympathy of grief, than from the most celebrated models of human composition.

Sterne, who, though he is justly condemned for his libertinism, possessed an uncommon talent for the pathetic, has availed himself greatly of the

sages, he has imitated the turn, style, manner, and simplicity, of the sacred writers, and in many of them has transcribed whole sentences. He found no language of his own could equal the finely expressive diction of our common translation. There are a thousand instances of his imitating scripture interspersed in all the better parts of his works, and no reader of common observation can pass by them unnoticed. I will quote only one or two instances taken from the most admired pieces in the tender style. Maria, though not tall, was nevertheless of the first order of fine forms. Affliction had touched her looks with something that was scarcely earthly, and so much was there about her of all that the heart wishes, or the eye looks for in woman, that could the traces be ever worn out of her brain, or those of Eliza out of mine, she should not only eat of my bread, and drink of my cup, but Maria should lie in my bosom, and be unto me as a daughter.

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"Adieu, poor luckless maiden! imbibe the oil and wine which the compassion of a stranger as he sojourneth on his way, now pours into thy wounds. The Being who has twice bruised thee can only bind them up for ever." Again, in his description of the captive, "As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon his bundle. He gave a deep sigh. I saw the iron enter into his soul." It is easy, but it is not necessary, to adduce many more instances in which a writer, who eminently excelled in the power of moving the affections, felt himself unequal to the task of advancing the style of pathos to its highest perfection, and sought assistance of the

tender

It is easy to see that the writer of so many and simple passages had imitated the delightful book of Ruth. With what pleasure did a man of his feeling read, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried." Sterne stole the very spirit of this passage, and indeed of all the fine strokes of tenderness, and many an one there is, in a book which is often laid aside as absurd and obsolete. The choice which Sterne has made of texts and of citations from the scriptures in his sermons, are proofs that he (who was one of the best judges) was particularly struck with the affecting tenderness and lovely simplicity of scriptural language.

The poet, therefore, who means to produce a tragedy, which shall be able to stand its ground even after the nine first nights, without the aid of puffing, and without filling the pit and boxes with orders, should sometimes go to the same fountain, and drink the waters of poetical inspiration of which Sterne drank so copiously. He will improve greatly by studying the language and histories of Joseph, Saul, and Jonathan, of Ruth, of Job, of the Psalms, of Isaiah, of Jeremiah, of many single passages every where interspersed, and of the parables in the New Testament. Judgment and taste are certainly necessary to select; but he may depend upon it, that a word or two well selected will gain him the truest applause, that which is conveyed in sighs and tears. Let him fully persuade himself, that the only method of operating powerfully on the feelings of nature, is to renounce art and affectation, and to adhere to truth and simplicity.

Something is necessary to be done to produce an

cannot much longer be supported by fine dresses, painted scenes, music, dancing, and pantomime. We have hearts as well as ears and eyes; if they know not how to touch our passions at Old Drury, let us away to the Opera-house, and see the Vestris.

No. CLV.

On the figure Parrhesia, or on expressing one's Sentiments freely.

THEY, whose wisdom consists in cunning and caution, who consider preferment as the only or most valuable object of human pursuit, and who stand in awe of grandeur independently of personal merit and character, will often shake their heads as they read my essays (if they read them at all), and blame the writer's imprudence, in venturing to express himself on many dangerous subjects without reserve. It is madness, they exclaim, to cut himself off from all chance of ecclesiastical preferment, to exclude himself, and perhaps his children, from the sunshine of patronage; and (to use the words of a celebrated orator) "to create a long, dull, dreary, unvaried visto of despair and exclusion.”

But, O ye wise ones of the world (an honest and independent writer might say), significantly as ye whisper among each other, and hug yourselves on your own profound sagacity, I value not your bastard wisdom; and though I pretend not to despise either honours or emoluments fairly and openly obtained, I think the means ye use in their pursuit base and mean, and that ye purchase all you possess at a price too dear. Ye resign your reason,

your liberty, and, I fear, too often, your truth and honour. Ye are real slaves, and the robes of office and dignity in which ye pride yourselves, are but the liveries of a splendid servitude. From one instance of your spirit and wisdom let the public judge of all. Dare ye, if raised by a long course of mean servility to a seat in the British senate, to give a vote, or express a single sentiment according to your own judgment, and without first religiously consulting the god of your idolatry? Censure me no more for an honest freedom. Blush rather at your own meanness and cowardice. Pity me no more, as excluding myself by temerity from the favours of the great. I am happier in the liberty of ranging, in thought, through all the mazes of human life, and of `uttering my undisguised sentiments on whatever I see and hear, than in gaining favour where favour is to be gained, merely by submitting to the meanness of concealing truth, and speaking according to the dictates of self-interest alone. Blame me no more till you point out the passage in the gospel, where boldness of rebuke is prohibited, and where a professed servant of Jesus Christ is taught to bow the knee to an unbelieving and debauched ruler of this world.

But you are actuated by envy, softly suggests the successful chaplain, the quondam tutor, and traveling companion of a graceless duke. You rail, says he, at what you cannot reach. But, my lord, give me leave to ask, whether you are not actuated by avarice and worldly ambition, vices in a Christian pastor no less culpable than envy. By what were you actuated when you gained the favour of the patron who raised you to your honours, merely by drinking and caballing for him at a contested election. Your patron professes himself a deist, and