Avarice

therefore fails of producing a malignant effect. will cease to publish, when men are too wife to purchafe; faction and vanity will be filent, when they no longer find an audience: but penal and coercive meafures are known to give weight to the nonfenfe of fedition and impiety, by alarming that attention which it could not otherwise excite, and to occasion the evils intended to be obviated; as the means used to extinguish a flame fometimes increase its violence.

But referring the difcuffion of this complicated fubject to legiflative wisdom, we may venture to exprefs an honeft wifh without danger of prefumption; and furely all the good and enlightened part of mankind will fympathize in the defire, That the time may not be diftant, when the qualities of the heart fhall be cultivated with the fame general ardour as the powers of the understanding; when the affectation of fingularity, and the love of money, fhall no longer multiply treatifes tending to teach the people a falle philofophy, an erroneous belief, or a factious conduct; when the Art of Printing shall no more be perverted to embellish vice and juftify folly, but operating in the accomplishment of its proper purposes, at once promote the intereft, which cannot indeed without natural violence be separate, of found learning and unaffected virtue.

No. CXXXIX.

CURSORY THOUGHTS ON

SATIRE AND SATIRISTS.

HE good reception which that fpecies of poetry, called Satire, has commonly met with in the world, is perhaps owing to fome difpofitions in the human nature not the moft amiable. It derives not its power of pleafing, like other poetry, from its effects on the imagination. It raifes no enchanting profpects; it is not neceffarily employed in fiction.A fpirit of indignation is its effential principle, and by caufing a fimilar fpirit in the reader, it gently gratities the irafcible paffions.

It

It must be owned, that it has feldom anfwered its oftenfible end of reforming the age. Yet allowing it to be of little ufe in reformation, it is often compofed with fuch evident marks of genius às render it interefting to men of tafte. And though fpleen may have given rife to its first production, and the love of cenfure enfured its fuccefs, yet the beauties of the compofition will cause it to be read, even by thofe who difapprove perfonal invective, long after the refentment that occafioned it has fubfided.

Horace, the politeft writer whom the world ever produced, adopted fatirical writing, and fucceeded in it, though there is every reafon to believe that his natural difpofition was not severe. The truth is, he was a man of the world, as well as a man of reflection, and wrote his remarks on men and things in careless verfe; not without cenfuring them indeed, but without indulging the afperity of farcafm. He probed every wound with fo gentle a hand, that the patient fmiled under the operation. The gay friend of Mecenas had lived in courts, and knew too much of the world to think he could reform the gay and voluptuous part of it by abrupt feverity.

Not fo the ftern Juvenal. With all the warmth of a zealot in the cause of virtue, he pours his majeftic verfe, and, amid the moft fpirited invective and the finest morality, emits many a luminous irradiation of poetry beautifully defcriptive.

His predeceffor Perfius had afforded him a noble model. He improved on it in nothing but perfpicuity. Perfius is all fire, fpirit, animation. The frequency of his interrogations roufes the attention of the reader, and it is not eafy to read and understand him without catching the glow with which he evidently wrote. If his obfcurity arofe from fear, it does not indeed depreciate his merit as a writer; but it has caused him to be less read and admired than he deferves. The laft lines of his fecond fatire are alone fufficient to entitle him to immortality.

The English feem to have copied the manner of Juvenal rather than of Horace. Our national fpirit is indeed of the manly and rougher kind, and feels some

thing congenial with itself in the vehemence of the fullen Juvenal.

The Roman is remarkably harmonious. But Donne, his imitator, feems to have thought roughness of verse, as well as of fentiment, a real grace. It is fcarcely poffible, that a writer who did not ftudiously avoid a fmooth verfification, could have written fo many lines without ftumbling on a good one. Pope has revived his fame by attuning his harsh numbers; a work whofe very excellence makes us regret that a genius fo fertile as was the bard's of Twickenham, fhould have wafted its vigour in paraphrafes and tranflations.

This verfatile poet has imbibed the very fpirit of Horace. Nor can the mere English reader obtain, by the translations of Creech or of Francis, fo clear and adequate an idea of the true Horatian manner, as from the liberal imitations of Pope.

Dryden feems to have preferred the model of his favourite Juvenal. His nervous line was well adapted to fatirical compofition. He fays himfelf," he could "write feverely, with more ease than he could write gently." His Abfalom and Achitophel, and his Mac Flecknoe, are mafter-pieces and models in the ferious and vehement kind of fatire.

Boileau seems to have blended with judgment the manner of Horace and Juvenal. Yet whatever degree of elegance he poffeffes, the natural monotony of French verfe tires an ear accustomed to the various harmony of our English poets. The French language never appears fo mean as in the heroic couplet. He who reads the Henriade, and at the fame time thinks of Milton, Dryden, Garth, or Pope, muft clofe the volume with all the loathing of difguft. He who reads Boileau, will find his improving imitator Pope rife in his opinion. Pope roufes the attention by all the changes of mufical modulation; Boileau fooths it to dull repofe by the lullaby of fimilar paufes uniformly repeated.

A poet of our own, little attended to at present, once enjoyed a very high degree of fame as a fatirical writer. Oldham has been called the English Juvenal. His fatire on the Jefuits has indeed much of the spirit of Juvenal. It displays wit, force, pungency, and a

very copious invention; but it is no lefs diftinguished by a vulgarity, which muft prevent Oldham from keeping his place among the claffics of our country. He has lafhed the Jefuits with deferved and unrelenting rigour; but though fevere panifhment is often necesary, yet to fee it inflicted with the wanton cruelty of an afsaffin, is not agreeable. There are fome works of poetry as well as of painting, which, though well performed as pieces of art, lofe the praife their excellence demands, by the fhocking nature of their representations.

A later fatirift, Dr. Young, is ftill read with plea fure. But he has the fault of Seneca, of Ovid, of Cowley; a profufe and unfeafonable application of wit. His fatires have been juftly called a ftring of epigrams. A lover of originality, he did not regard models. Had he endeavoured to imitate Juvenal or Perfius, he would have avoided this fault. Thofe great mafters were too much engroffed by the importance of their fubjects to fall into the puerility of witti cifm. There is alfo fomething in Young's verfification which a good ear does not approve.

But even Young, popular as he was, has been eclipfed by a poet who has fhone with the effulgence and the inftability of a meteor. Churchill poffeffed. merit; a merit which was magnified when feen through the medium of party, beyond that degree which it was able to fupport. When reafon at laft viewed what paffion had exaggerated, fhe was difgufted with the difappointment, and turned away with neglect. Thus the celebrated Churchill, with whofe applaufe the town re-echoed, is finking to an oblivion which he hardly deferves; for though he wrote many carelefs lines and many dull paffages, yet the greater part of his productions difplayed a genuine vein of fatirical genius..

Within a few years Satire has re-affumed her original rude form of fcurrilous and petulant abufe. An im proved verfification has given a glofs to illiberal, calumnious, and anonymous invectives. An undaunted effrontery, recommended by elegant verse, has fupplied the want of every claffical and noble ornament. That it has been well received, is no proof of its folid ex cellence as compofition, fince, to the greater part

af

readers,

readers, the abuse which it lavishly pours on public and private characters, is a fufficient recommendation.

It differs from claffical fatire in this, as well as other circumftances. Horace, Perfius, Juvenal, though fometimes difgraced by obfcenity, yet abound with fine moral fentiments. They not only put vice to fhame, but countenanced virtue, and pointed out the way to attain to it. But the fatirifts of our times feem to have little elfe in view, than to gratify private pique, or party prejudice. It is indeed fcarcely to be expected, that in a degenerate age, many will be found to poffefs dignity of character and folidity of judgment, in a degree fufficient to enable them to ftand forth dif interefted and efficient cenfors of prevailing folly and fashionable vice.

No. CXL. ON LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS.

T%

O falfe and careless reafoning moft of the miffortunes of life are to be attributed. Logic then, as an art, is perhaps fo far useful in the conduct of life, as it fuperinduces a habit of accurate reasoning.

But what fays experience? Is the man who has digefted Burgerfdicius found to be wifer in his actions than others? The beft difputant that ever conquered in the fchools, when he has defcended to the walks of common life, has been found no less prone to deviate into the paths of error, to be involved in the clouds of paffion, and mifled by the falfe lights of imagination, than the busy multitude who never heard the catego

ries.

They who poffefs common fenfe in a competent degree, will difcover, with no other aid, the fallacy of wrong reafoning. They who are deficient in it, will not find a fubftitute in the ufe of a fyllogifin.

The great numbers who fupply civil and commercial offices, in which there is a conftant neceffity for the exertion of reason, and who conduct the most important affairs without the aid of fcholaftic logic, are proofs that vigorous nature wants not this flender affiftance. To imagine