out danger of being pushed, and squeezed, and trod upon, and stifled to death, as sometimes happens to those who follow more fashionable diversions; nay, and I can sit the whole time without being in the least overheated.

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Now, sir, as I have constantly attended to various sorts of pulpit eloquence, I suppose I may pretend, without vanity, to be some judge of it. Do not, however, expect that I shall bring proofs of the justness of my remarks from your Aristotles, your Tullies, or your Quintilians; for I am a plain common man, and if I have any sense, God knows it is only plain common sense.

"Let me premise, that I shall now and then make use of the usual terms of division and subdivision. Such, for instance, as those edifying little words, First, secondly, thirdly, to conclude, to come to my next head, and the like. Consider, sir, I have been long used to this style, and naturally run into it.

"Of preachers, I shall reckon four kinds; the Fine Man, the Pretty Preacher, the Good Textman, and the Humdrum.

"First then of the first (forgive my sermonical style), namely, of the FINE MAN:

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A stentorophonic voice is the fundamental excellence of your Fine Mau, and a powerful excellence it is. No sooner has the Fine Man uttered the pathetic and significant phrase, to conclude,' than I have heard the whole row of matrons, in the middle aisle, with one accord cry, humph,' and immediately second their exclamation with a torrent of tears, which flowed down their withered cheeks, interrupted only by sighs and sobs. The next qualification is flexibility of muscles. From this excellence arise those violent contortions of the body, that wringing of the hands, beating of the breast, rolling of the eyes, foaming of the mouth, and one or two more

VOL. III.

U

symptoms of madness, which never fail to gain the applause of the weeping congregation. The next— but what am I about, sir? In truth I cannot recollect any real excellences; as for sense, learning, argument, these are not to be expected in your Fine Man: but then the want of these is abundantly supplied by noise, nonsense, and grimace.

"To come to my second head. Secondly then, as was before laid down, we treat of the PRETTY PREACHER.

"The Pretty Preacher is an imitator of the Fine Man. As a copy, he is somewhat fainter than the original. He whines, he sobs, he roars, but roars like any nightingale, as Shakspeare has it.

A soft effeminate voice, a pretty face (for look ye, sir, a pretty face is a more powerful persuasive than the arguments of a Chillingworth), and a white handkerchief, are the constituent parts of a Pretty Preacher.

"These two sorts of Preachers are complete masters of the passions, without in the least addressing the understanding. In truth, I cannot help comparing them to a fiddler of old time, I remember to have heard of at school, who made stocks and stones dance minuets, and rivers run the wrong way, and played a hundred such pranks merely by the sound of the fiddlestrings. Just in the same manner a Fine Man and a Pretty Preacher can force the tear from the eye, and the shilling from the inmost recesses of the pocket, by dint of sound, which, in this case, is never the echo of sense.

"To come to my third head. Thirdly then, the GOOD TEXTMAN lays down good plain rules of morality, and confirms every precept by a quotation from Holy Writ. The graces of elocution he never aims at. Rhetorical flourishes, new remarks, or beautiful language, are not to be required of him.

In short, the intelligent part of the congregation will seldom find their understandings enlightened or their fancy amused by him; but the plain soberminded Christian, provided he can distinguish what the preacher says, may carry away something for his edification.

"To conclude with my fourth and last head. The HUMDRUM seems to consider preaching and praying as a kind of work, which if he performs so as to get his wages he is satisfied. He reads the liturgy as he would read a newspaper. He endeavours neither to please, to strike, nor to convince, but thinks the duty sufficiently well done, if it is but done according to the rubric, and at the established seasons. To give him his due, he commonly preaches the best divinity in the language; for as he is too lazy to compose, he has nothing to do but to make choice of the most celebrated compositions of others. He, however, murders every sentence he reads. For the most part he chooses doctrinal rather than practical discourses; but the misfortune is, that while he is making the mysteries as clear as the sun at noonday, his audience is commonly asleep as fast as a church. In a word, you may form some idea of this kind of Preacher, by taking a view of Hogarth's print of the sleepy congregation, where there is a Humdrum holding forth, so as effectually to infuse peace and quietness into the minds of his hearers."

Here the old man's avocations obliged him to conclude the conversation, with expressing a wish, that men of virtue and learning, as the clergy generally are, would not let the effect of their excellent prayers and discourses, which, if well delivered, might reform the world, be in a great measure lost through indifference or affectation.

No. CLXV.

On the superior Value of solid Accomplishments.

A Dialogue between Cicero and Lord Chesterfield.

Cicero.-MISTAKE me not. I know how to value the sweet courtesies of life. Affability, attention, decorum of behaviour, if they have not been ranked by philosophers among the virtues, are certainly related to them, and have a powerful influence in promoting social happiness. I have recommended them as well as yourself. But I contend, and no sophistry shall prevail upon me to give up this point, that, to be truly amiable, they must proceed from goodness of heart. Assumed by the artful to serve the purposes of private interest, they degenerate to contemptible grimace and detestable hypocrisy.

Chest.-Excuse me, my dear Cicero; I cannot enter farther into the controversy at present. I have a hundred engagements at least; and see yonder my little elegant French comtesse. I promised her and myself the pleasure of a promenade. Pleasant walking enough in these elysian groves. So much good company too, that if it were not that the canaille are apt to be troublesome, I should not much regret the distance from the Tuileries. But, adieu, mon cher ami, for I see Madame *** is joining the party. Adieu, adieu!

Cic.-Contemptible wretch!

Chest.-Ah! what do I hear? Recollect that I im a man of honour, unused to the pity or the insults of an upstart, a novus homo. But perhaps your exclamation was not meant of me-If so, why

Cic. I am as little inclined to insult as to flatter

you. Your levity excited my indignation; but my compassion for the degeneracy of human nature, exhibited in your instance, absorbs my contempt.

Chest. I could be a little angry, but, as bienséance forbids it, I will be a philosopher for once.A-propos, pray do you reconcile your, what shall I call it your unsmooth address to those rules of decorum, that gentleness of manners, of which you say you know and teach the propriety as well as myself?

Cic.-To confess the truth, I would not advance the arts of embellishment to extreme refinement. Ornamental education, or an attention to the graces, has a connexion with effeminacy. In acquiring the gentleman, I would not lose the spirit of a man. There is a gracefulness in a manly character, a beauty in an open and ingenuous disposition, which all the professed teachers of the arts of pleasing know not to infuse.

Chest.-You and I lived in a state of manners as different as the periods at which we lived were distant. You Romans, pardon me, my dear, you Romans had a little of the brute in you. Come, come, I must overlook it. You were obliged to court plebeians for their suffrages; and if similis simili gaudet, it must be owned that the greatest of you were secure of their favour. Why, Beau Nash would have handed your Catos and your Brutusus out of the ballroom, if they had shown their unmannerly heads in it; and my Lord Modish, animated with the conscious merit of the largest or smallest buckles in the room, according to the temporary ton, would have laughed Pompey the Great out of countenance. Oh, Cicero, had you lived in a modern European Court, you would have caught a degree of that undescribable grace, which is not only the ornament, but may be the substitute of all