Chest.-And did I not endeavour most effectually to serve my son, by pointing out the qualifications necessary to a foreign embassador, for which department I always designed him? Few fathers have taken more pains to accomplish a son than myself. There was nothing I did not condescend to point out to him.

Cic.-True: your condescension was great indeed. You were the pander of your son. You not only taught him the mean arts of dissimulation, the petty tricks which degrade nobility; but you corrupted his principles, fomented his passions, and even pointed out objects for their gratification. You might have left the task of teaching him fashionable vice to a vicious world. Example, and the corrupt affections of human nature, will ever be capable of accomplishing this unnatural purpose. But a parent, the guardian appointed by nature for an uninstructed offspring introduced into a dangerous world, who himself takes upon him the office of seduction, is a monster indeed. I also had a son. I was tenderly solicitous for the right conduct of his education. I intrusted him indeed to Cratippus at Athens; but, like you, I could not help transmitting instructions dictated by paternal love. Those instructions are contained in my book of Offices; a book which has ever been cited by the world as a proof to what a height the morality of the heathens was advanced without the light of revelation. I own I feel a conscious pride in it; not on account of the ability which it may display, but for the principles it teaches, and the good, I flatter myself, it has diffused. You did not indeed intend your instructions for the world; but as you gave them to a son you loved, it may .be concluded that you thought them true wisdom, and withheld them only because they were contrary to

been generally read, and tend to introduce the manners, vices, and frivolous habits of the nation you admired-to your own manly nation, who, of all others, once approached most nearly to the noble simplicity of the Romans.

Chest.-Spare me, Cicero. I have never been accustomed to the rough conversation of an old Roman. I feel myself little in his company. I seem to shrink in his noble presence. I never felt my insignificance so forcibly as now. French courtiers and French philosophers have been my models: and amid the dissipation of pleasure, and the hurry of affected vivacity, I never considered the gracefulness of virtue, and the beauty of an open, sincere, and manly character.

No. CLXVI.

Conjectures on the Difference between Oriental and Septentrional Poetry.

THE productions of the mind, like those of the earth, are found to have different degrees of vigour and beauty in different climates. In the more northern regions, where the nerves are braced by cold, those works are the commonest, and attain to the greatest perfection, which proceed from the exertion of the rational powers, and the painful efforts of the judgment. The sciences, like the hardy pine, flourish on the bleakest mountains; while the works of taste and fancy seem to shrink from the rude blast, with all the tenderness of the sensitive plant, and to require

full luxuriance and maturity. Aristotle, Newton, and Locke, were the natives and inhabitants of temperate regions. Experience indeed seems to prove, that all the mental powers exist in their greatest degree of strength and perfection among those who inhabit that part of the globe which lies between the tropic of Cancer and the Arctic circle. No complete and celebrated work of genius was ever produced in the torrid zone.

But whether the diversity of genius in countries nearer or remoter from the sun proceeds from natural causes, or from the adventitious circumstances of different modes of education, different views, and a different spirit of emulation, it is certain that the productions of Eastern and Northern genius are dissimilar. Some ingenious critics have indeed pointed out a resemblance between the Gothic and Oriental poetry, in the wild enthusiasm of an irregular imagination. And they have accounted for it, by supposing, with great probability, that in an emigration of the Asiatics into Scandinavia, the Eastern people brought with them their national spirit of poetry, and communicated it to the tribes with whom they united. The resemblance, therefore, in works produced since this union, does not prove that the Northern and Oriental genius were originally alike. Those productions of either which are allowed to be original, and to bear no marks of imitation, have perhaps no other resemblance than that which commonly proceeds from the similar operation of similar faculties.

It seems, indeed, that a cause may be assigned for this diversity of Northern and Oriental productions, without attributing it to an essential difference in the original constitution of the human understanding. The imagination is strongly affected by sur

exercise. He who is placed in a climate where the serenity of the weather constantly presents him with blue skies, luxuriant plantations, and sunny prospects, will find his imagination the strongest of his faculties; and, in the expression of his sentiments, will abound in allusions to natural objects, in similes, and in the most lively metaphors. His imagination will be his distinguishing excellence, because it will be more exercised than any other of his faculties; and all the powers both of body and mind are known to acquire vigour by habitual exertion. He, on the other hand, whose lot it is to exist in a less favoured part of the globe, who is driven by the inclemency of his climate to warm roofs, and, instead of basking in the sunshine amidst all the combined beauties of nature, flies for refuge from the cold to the blazing hearth of a smoky cottage, will seek, in the exercise of his reason, those resources which he cannot find in the actual employment of his imagination. Good sense and just reasoning will therefore predominate in his productions. Even in the wildest of his flights, a methodical plan, the result of thought and reflection, will appear, on examination, to restrain the irregularities of licentious fancy.

Consistently with this theory we find Oriental poetry exhibiting the most picturesque scenes of nature, and illustrating every moral sentiment or argumentative assertion by similes, not indeed exact in the resemblance, but sufficiently analogous to strike and gratify the imagination. Strong imagery, animated sentiment, warmth and vivacity of expression, all of which are the effects of a lively fancy, are its constant characteristics. The accuracy of logic, and the subtlety of metaphysics, are of a nature too frigid to influence the Oriental

he pursues not a chain of argument, and he submits to the force of persuasion, rather from the dictates of his feelings than from rational conviction. He endeavours to influence his reader in the same manner, and commonly excites an emotion so violent, as to produce a more powerful effect than would be experienced even from conclusive argumentation.

No. CLXVII.

Cursory Remarks on the Poetry of the Prophets, of Isaiah in particular, and on the Beauties of Biblical Poetry in general.

THE Sibylline oracles owed their solemn air, their credit, and their power over the fancy, to the dark and difficult style in which they were composed. Virgil's Pollio, supposed to have been written from a hint taken from the books of the Sibyls, is the most admired of his Eclogues; and a great share of the pleasure derived from the perusal of it, is justly attributed to the judgment of the poet, in leaving more to be understood than meets the ear. forebodings of Cassandra were not attended to by the Trojans; and perhaps the true reason was, that they were not completely understood. The witches in Macbeth add to the terrible solemnity of prophetical incantation, by its darkness and uncertainty.

The

Obscurity seems to have been the characteristic of all writings pretending to prediction. It cer