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LXVIII. On natural and acquired tafte. Virgil's
Æneid confidered. A paffage compared with
one in Claudian. Ben Jonfon's opinion of Shake-
fpear. The fituation of a more modern poet de-
scribed

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LXIX. A delineation of Shakespear's characters of
Macbeth and Richard. A parallel between him
and Æfchylus

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LXXXI. Obfervations on the various forts of file.
Examples adduced, and fome hints fuggefted to
young,ftudents

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THE

OBSERVER.

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All to the fame last home are bound;
Time's never-weary wheel runs round;
And life at longeft or at shortest date:

Snaps like a thread betwixt the fhears of Fate.

REMEMBER to have been told of a certain humourist, who fet up a very fingular doctrine upon the fubject of death, afferting that he had discovered it to be not a neceffary and inevitable event, but an act of choice and volition; he maintained that he had certain powers and refources within VOL. III. himself

B

himself sufficient to fupport him in his refolution of holding out against the fummons of death, till he became weary of life; and he pledged himself to his friends, that he would in his own person give experimental proof of his hypothesis.

What particular address death made ufe of, when this ingenious gentleman was prevailed upon to step out of the world, I cannot take upon myself to fay; but certain it is, that in fome weak moment he was overperfuaded to lay his head calmly on the pillow and furrender up his breath.

Though an event, fo contrary to the promife he had given, must have been a staggering circumftance to many, who were interested in the fuccefs of his experiment, yet I fee good reason to fufpect that his hypothefis is not totally difcredited, and that he has yet fome furviving difciples, who are acting fuch a part in this world as nobody would act but upon a strong prefumption, that they fhall not be compelled to go out of it and enter upon another.

Mortality, it must be owned, hath means of providing for the event of death, though none have yet been discovered of preventing

it:

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