played, in refpect to himself as an individual, and to his countrymen as a collected body of people,

Britons, the most favoured people under the heavens, may truly adopt the language of the Fraimit, and fay, "Happy is the niton that is in our cafe, bleffed are the lands which have the Lord for their God!" Fer, as under the Almighty's wings

we have been fheltered from the peftilence which walketh in dark-. nefs, and from the fickaefs which deftroyeth at noon-day; though. our offences have called for judgements, we have experienced nothing but mercies at the hands of our God. Though his promife is only that, our water fhall not fail, and our bread fhall be fure; yet we have enjoyed the good things of this life, if not in affluence, yet in that degree which was neceiiary for our fituation; and, whilst other. countries have experienced the devaftations of deftructive war, we have peace in our borders, profperity in our lands, and the arm of our God for our lafting defence! And do not thefe bleflings demand a tribute of praife? Hard, indeed, muit be the heart, that is not impreffed with the moft lively fenfations of gratitude, when it meditatés on these things. And when it confiders how thefe general mercies have been increated, by the particular favours beftowed on each individual, the obligations to thankfulness exceed all comprehenfion.

Mr. URBAN, Lichfield, Jan. 5. N Vol. LXIX. p. 797, a strange question is afked concerning one of the lines in Dr. Johnfon's imitation, of Juneval,

Hear Lydia's life and Galileo's end." That the enquirer fhould not feel affured the name Lydia muft Was it likely that Dr. Johníon, inbe a prefs error, is wonderful *. fancing the miferies which have awaited diftinguished intellects and learning, thould have introduced any female character? Was it

poble that, even doing that, he thould, with the real appellations Galileo and Laud, have given to fuch an extraordinary woman a romantic love-name, of the tribe of

the Colias and Chloes? In all the Human Withes, the line ftands thus, correct editions of The Vanity of

Hear Lydiat's life and Galileo's end." We are diverted with a grave enquiry who the gentlewoman was.

Of that firft-mentioned author, thus oddly be-petticoated, a copious account may be seen in vol. II. p. 45, of Wood's Athenæ Oxonienfes. It is there obferved, that he not only foiled Chriftopher Clavius, and the whole college of mathematicians, but alfo that Go liah of literature, Scaliger. It is farther obferved in the fame paragraph, that the men of letters on the Continent "worthily ranked Lydiat with the Lord Bacon, of Verulam, and with Mr. Jofeph Mede; and confidered the neglect he met. and the indigence in which he lived, as the difgrace of his country. When, in his old age, the civil wars broke out between Charles I. and the Parliament, the perfecutions and perfonal violence inflicted upon him by the army of the latter, for his avowed attachment to a Monarch and Court to which he owed fo little, completed the long feries of his calamities. Too well do they illuftrate, in the learned department, that pofition which gives the poem Its title he tame blunder has been already corrected in our vol. LXVIlI. p. 951; and ome curious anecdotes of Lydiat are given, ib. p. 1927. EDIT,

Let us therefore determine, in the enfuing year, to manifeft a due fenfe of the bellings which we have received in that which is past; by rendering that allegiance to our Sovereign, and that obedience to Goel, which, become is as Britons and Chriftians. in proportion as we are faithful to thefe our engagements, we fhall enjoy the fimiles of our Maker, and be bleffed with the tranquillity and profperity which are ever attendant on a wife, equitable, and well-ordered Government.

T. Mor, F. S. M.

4

too

too well do they justify its author's
exclamation:

"O mark what ills the Scholar's life affail,
Toil, Envy, Want, the Patton, and the Jail
See nations, flosly wife, and meanty juft,
To buried merit raife the tardy buit !"

There is an honorary monument to Lydiat in New College Cloifters, Oxford. The record above mentioned gives a long lift of his publications.

We meet with one line in Johnfon's Vanity of Human Withes, where, perhaps, the inftance felected to exemplify the betraying tendency of beauty might have been happier. It is the fecond of the following couplet:

Yet Vane can tell what ills from beauty
fpring,

And Sedley curs'd the Form that pleas'd a King.
I never could learn who was
meant by Sedley, not even from Dr.
Johnfon himfelf, of whom I en-
quired, when he was at Lichfield,
a few months before his death.
He replied,
"I knew at the time I
wrote the poem; but the hiftory has
pow escaped my recollection *"

By the answer it appears, that no great notoriety attaches to that fecond inftance of the dangers of lovelincis. It appears to me that Madam le Valiere's deftiny would have formed a more judicious illuftration; fince it is well known that the expiated her criminal compliance with the wishes of Louis XIV. by devoting herself to the rigours of the Carmelite monaftery, while her youth was yet in its flower; that, when informed of the death of her fon by the King, the faid, "I will not mourn his death, whofe birth I have wept a thoufand times." Inflead therefore of Sedley's more obfcure fate, the verfe had been of lefs doubtful allufion had it run thus, And Valiere mourn'd the Form that pleas'd a King."

Re-perufing this very fine com pofition of Johnfon's, and obferving how it teems with epithets, from which not one could be judicioufly fubftracted, I fimile that our critics fhould attribute what they term feebleness of modern poetry to its redundancy of epithets. If by modern poetry they mean that fwarm of indifferent verfifiers, which are the ephemera of every period, the deficiency of fuch writers lies much deeper than in their abundance of epithets; even in that poverty of ideas which obliges them to eke out their measure by feeble adjectives. Abridge thofe adjectives, and the radically meagre compofition would not be improved by that abridgement: but what able critic would give to the poetry of his age the water-mark of fuch verfitiers, rich as it is, and has been through the whole century, in genuine poetic writing of every fpecies, the dramatic alone excepted? and even in that we boast a Sheridan and a Jephfon.

Every epithet which gives neither life, nor ftrength, nor grace, nor appropriation to its noun, will be rejected by an author of judgement while all that poffeis any one of thofe properties he will accept; and recollecting how liberally they are found in the works of Homer, Virgil, Spenser, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Malon, Collins, Chatterton, and Samuel Johnfon, contemn the charge of exuberance.

ANNA SEWARD.

Mr. URBAN, hire, Nov. 20, 1799.
Chisholme, Roxburgh-
TAVING had a wen of the

H

fteutomatous kind, of large fize and long ftanding, upon the fide of my face, immediately before and below my right ear, I was informed by different people that, if

This is the most remarkable inftance we have met with of the failure of Dr. Jot.nfon's memory. It is strange, indeed, that the lovely Mufe of Lichfield should not herfelf have remembered, that Catharine, only child of Sir Charles Sedley, though not very handfome, had unfortunately captivated King James ; who created her Barogefs of Darlington, and Countefs of Dorchefter. EDIT.

I would apply falt and water to it, Ifhould get rid of it. In August 1798, I put a quantity of falt and water into a faucepan, and boiled it for 4 minutes; with which I bathed the whole furface frequently while it continued warm, as alfo after it became cold, fo often as 10 or 12 times daily; always ftirring up the falt depofited at the bottom of the bafon, and incorporating it again with the water, before I applied it. On the 11th day from the firft application, while having, 1 obferved a fmall difcharge; which affifting, by a gentle preffure, the whole concents were foon emptied, without the fmallest pain, and without blood. Being informed of fome others who had been benefited in like. manner from the fame application, and knowing myself of fome late inftances under my own immediate direction, I feel it a duty thus to make it public; being convinced it can produce no bad effect, and every perfon having it in their power to make the trial. At the fame time, I beg leave to caution that no one. fhould be disheartened from the length of time it may be neceffary to continue the application; as, in fome cafes, it has required 3 or 4 months, though in the laft only 30 days; but in all, without pain or inconveniences of any kind, or any previous notice of the difcharge, til it actually took place.

fray the expences of publication, appears, however, to be a matter of confiderable doubt: because, on the one hand, Novels are not regarded as objects of fo much importance, as moft ferioufly belongs to them; and, on the other, it is notorious that with right-earneft Novel-readers every rank fool goes down." K. Jan. 14.

Mr, URBAN,

TELE

HE Afiatics have a faying, that. it is not good to jeft with God;" and it was enjoined by Plato and other heathen authors, that the Name of Gop be not used lightly, rafhly, irreverently, or without weighty and fufficient caufe. Under the Mofaic law (which the Founder of Chriftianity came not to defroy, but to fulfil) a folemn ordinance was delivered to all generations, that "the Name of the LORD their GOD fhould not be ta ken in vain." It appears, notwithftanding this, that we cherifh lefs veneration for what was commanded to be held facred, than did the Oriental or the Pagan philofophers; or, how could we fit in crowds to hear the Name of the Most HIGHEST profaned in our public affemblies? We cannot (to ufe the late expreflion of a British critic,) we cannot evince aftronger fymptom of a want of habitual and due reverence for the Deity,' than by this quiefcent endurance of what we know, nay, of what we feel to be wrong. For I am perfuaded, Jan. 12. that numbers who mingle in the NE of your correfpondents, audience of our Theatres, for the in a recent Number, has ex- purpose of harmless recreation, are preffed a with that a Review exift-touched with fecret compunction, ed, in which the merits and demerits of thofe publications which rank under the name of Novels were particularly examined. Give me leave to inform the gentleman, that fuch a publication has been for fome time projected, and will make its appearance this month. Whether criticism on this fubject will be patronized to an extent which may give it any influence, or even de

WILLIAM CHISHOLME.

Mr. URBAN,

O

6

when they hear that ballewed Name, at which angels tremble while they utter, familiarly put into the moutlis of our mimic heroes and heroines.

In the age of Elizabeth, this grofs impropriety was loudly cenfured by contemporary writers; and, in the reign of James, a prohibitory fta tute was enacted, which impofed proper penalties on all who fhould profanely ufe the Name of Gop in

any

Parker died on July 14, 1730, in of fome reflexions, on a subject which

his fiftieth year; leaving a widow has been often contemplated and and children, by whom the fifth difcuffed-the with and ftudy, fo volume of the "Bibliotheca Biblica" almoft generally poffeffed, to obtain is "moft humbly and moft grate- long life. Even thofe apparently enfully intcribed to the generous fub- joying the falleft portion, not only fcribers, and other encouragers of of the luxuries, but even of the this work." In pp. 142, 143, of bareft comforts of this life, and whofe the third volume, was firft printed only chance for happiness feems to the metrical paraphrate of Leviticus be in a future ftate, are still unwilxi. 13, &c. which was written by ling to quit it; a fymptom, I fear, the Rev. Thomas Warton, fellow that we are not quite fo good Chrifof Magdalen college; in whofe tians as we ought to be, did we conPoems, Lond. 178," it is infert- fider this life, as we are taught to ed by his fon, the prefent eminent do, principally as a flate of probaJofeph Warton, whofe "Ode on tion, and paffage to "another and the Death of the Author" ckdes a better." Bat, Sir, could we atthe volume; which is dedicated by tain this, defire, let us confider a the editor to Fulwar Craven, Lord moment, whether it would be atCraven, as a memorial of the tended with advantage to us. In friendship with which his Lordfhip the firft place, the whole order of condefcended to honour" his father; nature, in this point, muft be who died vicar of his college-living changed; a with for which is a of Basingstoke, and had been pro- prefumption; not in itself, perhaps, feffor of poetry, as his other mi- innocent; for no religious, no ranent fon, Thomas, alfo was, in tional man could be defirous of the Univerfity of Oxford. See your greater length of life, unaccompavol. LX. pp. 480, 481. Mr. Parker, nied by the health and the faculin p. 410 of his fourth volume, in ties to enjoy it. But it must be at1728, has printed " A Fragment of tended with, furely, the moft seHippolytus, taken out of two Ara- rious inconveniencies and miferies ; bick MSS in the Bodleian Library; for, could life be extended to doufound and tranflated by my very ble its prefent period, population learned friend the Rev. Mr. Tho. must be increafed to a degree whichi Hunt, of Hart-hall, in Oxford;" muit cause univerfal diftrefs, renwho died Oct. 31, 1774, aged 78, dering fubfiftence, in moft cafes, and was buried in the cathedral of difficult; in many, impoffible. The · Chrift Church, where he was the divifion of property, alfo, extendcelebrated Regius profeffor of He-ing to five or six generations, must brew, and Abp. Laud's profeffor of mevitably generate envy, malevoArabic. In your vol. XLV. a poft-dence, and poverty, increafing inhumous publication of this amiable Divine is recorded in p. 92, col. 2; though his death feems to have been omitted in your then feanty Obituary. Memoirs of him, if they can how be furnished, would be highly acceptable to the learned world.

I am,

&c. ACADEMICUS.

finitely the prefent portion of general unhappiness. Nothing can be more rational, or natural, than tơ with, and endeavour to render, our prefent life as happy and as comfort→ able as poflible; but to defire, or aim, at an extenfion of the prefent duration of it, appears to me to be equally contrary to religion and to reafon. The prefent day, the first of a new-year, having excited the above thoughts, I fshall be gratified by your thinking them worthy of a place in your Mifcellany R. E. R. GARTHMILL