poetical brothers. With respect to Gray, he has received his tribute of applause from a discerning public, and has certainly deserved it. The heart and the imagination have given it him; and they who can see no beauty in his verse, may probably succeed in writing a lampoon; but would probably fall. far short of the poet whom they censure, in lyric. and elegiac poetry.

None can entertain a higher veneration for our late Prefatory Biographer of the poets than myself, and I was therefore greatly concerned to see him exposed to censure by an uncandid, not to say injudicious, piece of criticism on the poems of Gray. He indeed allows the merit of the elegy, but examines and censures the odes with every appearance of wanton malignity. Who but must lament that the solid critic and moralist should have been so much under the influence of envy and jealousy, as to treat the fame of his cotemporary, the illustrious Gray, with singular harshness, in a work which contains very candid accounts of a Sprat and a Yalden, a Duke and a Broome, and of others, with whom, if Gray is compared, he will appear as Shakspeare says, like Hyperion to a Satyr.

The late collection of poets has restored to temporary life many a sickly and dying poet, who was hastening to his proper place, the tomb of oblivion. Why was any more paper wasted on Dorset, Halifax, Stepney, Walsh, and Blackmore? How can a work pretend to the comprehensive title of the Body of English Poetry, in which the works of Spenser and Shakspeare are omitted to make room for such writers as King or Ambrose Philips? The writer of the prefaces is, indeed, sufficiently willing to throw the blame from himself on the compilers, whom he was not permitted, or did not endeavour, to control. A selection, formed under the direc

tion of true taste, would have answered the two great ends of the publication which it has now frustrated; it would have amply paid the booksellers, and reflected honour on English literature. Then should we have seen, in the place of Roscommon and Rochester, Pomfret and Fenton, the works of Goldsmith, of Glover, of Mason, of Aikin, of Carter, of Beattie, of the Wartons, of Anstey, and of many others, who would shine among the Hughes's, Pitts, and Savages, like the moon among the diminished constellations.

Upon the many and excellent living writers of poetry we may observe, that though the distressful times of war and political animosity are unfavourable to the gentle arts of verse; yet the active and polished genius of this nation seems capable of surmounting all obstacles in letters, as its manly spirit has ultimately borne all before it in the unhappy contests of war.

No. CXXX.

On the peculiar Danger of falling into Indolence in a Literary and Retired Life.

It is certain that, as our ancestors were induced to found colleges by religious motives, so they chiefly intended them to answer the purposes of religion. Those pious benefactors to mankind did not mean to establish seminaries to prepare men for the world, but to teach them to despise it. But more enlightened periods than those in which these worthies lived, have discovered, that man best obeys his Maker when he takes an active part in the duties of society.

A long residence in a college is, perhaps, scarcely less unfavourable to devotion than to social activity.

For devotion depends chiefly on lively affections, exercised and agitated by the vicissitudes of hope and fear in the various transactions and events of human intercourse. He, who is almost placed beyond the reach of fortune in the shelter of a cloister, may, indeed, be led by the statutes of the insti– tution to attend his chapel, and doze over his cushion, but he will not feel, in any peculiar manner, the impulse of devotional fervour. The man who is engaged in the busy and honourable duties of active life, flies from the world to the altar for comfort and refreshment; but the cloistered recluse pants, while he is kneeling in all the formalities of religion, for the pleasures and employments of that world from which he is secluded. During several centuries, a great part of mankind was confined in monasteries, solely for the advancement of religion and learning; yet never was the earth more benighted than in those periods by bigotry and ignorance. Nor will any one assert, that in subsequent times, and in modern universities, the improvements in knowledge and religion have been in any degree proportioned to the numbers of those who have been separated from the world to facilitate their cultivation. The truth seems to be, that when the common incentives to industry are removed, and all the natural wants supplied without the necessity of exertion, man degenerates, as the pure waters of the river stagnate and become putrid in the pool. At last, the boasting possessor of reason contents himself with dreaming "the blank of life along," with no other proofs of existence than the wants of the animal nature. Take away love, ambition, the changes and chances of this mortal life, and man will be contented to eat, drink, sleep, and die.

Nor in colleges alone, though they may be considered as the temples of indolence, but in common life also, the human mind becomes torpid, as the

necessity of exertion is diminished. He who, confiding in the possession of a fortune for his happiness, avoids the avocations of a profession, and what he calls the fatiguing parts of study, will soon lose those powers of mental activity which he has not resolution to employ. If he does not gradually degenerate to a level with the irrational creation, he will not long be distant from the vegetable. When the habits are irretrievably confirmed, it might perhaps be happy if his nature would permit him to become at last impassive and quiescent; but as spontaneous fermentation takes place in masses of putrefaction, so in the mind which has ceased to be exercised by its own efforts, emotions and habits will voluntarily arise both offensive and dangerous. Pride and envy, conceit and obstinacy, selfishness and sensuality, are among the ugly daughters of indolence.

It may appear paradoxical but it is certainly an opinion authorized by experience, that an active life is the most friendly to contemplation. The fire of the mind, like culinary fire, has burned with a clear and constant flame when opened and ventilated by perpetual motion, as it has been smothered and extinguished in smoke when suffered to remain long without disturbance. The best and many of the most voluminous writers acted still more than they wrote. What could be more unlike the life of the cloister than the lives of Xenophon, Julius Cæsar, Erasmus, and a thousand others, whose days were so engaged in negotiation, in senates, in battles, in traveling, that it is not easy to conceive how they could find time even to write so great a quantity as they certainly composed? But such are the effects of assiduity, of an uninterrupted accumulation of efforts, that he who has been excited to restless activity by the spurs of honour, interest, and a generosity of nature, has frequently accomplished

more by himself than a thousand of his fellow creatures employed in the same sphere, and furnished by nature with equal abilities for improvement. A hackney writer of catchpenny compilations, the printer of a newspaper, the maker of a magazine, though engaged in a multiplicity of daily and various avocations, will perform, in a few months, a portion of literary labour which shall infinitely exceed that of whole colleges, of those who slumber, or waste their activity on hounds and horses on the borders of the muddy Cam, and the slowly winding Charwell.

But it avails little to point out the disorders of literary indolence without endeavouring to suggest a remedy. It appears then to me, that those whom Providence has blessed with leisure, and the opportunity of spending it in the pursuits of learning, and the liberal pleasures of retirement, too often languish in their pursuits from neglecting to render them the subjects of debate and conversation. It is the warmth of discussion in free and social meetings which invigorates solitary study, and sends the scholar back to his books with fresh alacrity. The hope of making a figure in a subsequent meeting, the fear of a shameful exposure, and of appearing inferior to those who are, in a natural and civil view, our equals, will stimulate all our powers, and engage all our attention, while we sit in those very libraries where we once nodded and slumbered over the page even of a Homer. Meetings should be established in all literary societies for the communication of remarks, and the rehearsal of compositions. But the strictest rules should be prescribed and observed for the preservation of decorum; or else a majority of Masters of Arts would vote away the books, the pens and the ink, and all the moral, philosophical, and tasteful discourses, in order to introduce pipes and tobacco, Joe Miller, and the punch bowl.