N° CXLVII.

Defunctus jam fum, nihil eft quod dicat mihi.

(TERENT.)

N all ages of the world men have been in

I habits of praifing the at the expence

habits of praising the time paft at the

of the time present. This was done even in the Augustan æra, and in that witty and celebrated period the laudator temporis acti must have been either a very splenetic, or a very filly charac

ter.

Our present grumblers may perhaps be better warranted; but, though there may not be the fame injuftice in their cavilling complaints, there is more than equal impolicy in them; for if by difcouraging their contemporaries they mean to mend them, they take a very certain method of counteracting their own defigns; and if they have any other meaning, it must be fomething worse than impolitic and they have more to answer for than a mere mistake.

Who but the meanest of mankind would wish to damp the spirit and degrade the genius of the country he belongs to? Is any man lowered. by the dignity of his own nation, by the talents

of

of his contemporaries? Who would not prefer to live in an enlightened and a rifing age rather than in a dark and declining one? It is natural to take a pride in the excellence of our free conftitution, in the virtues of our Sovereign; is it not as natural to fympathize in the profperity of our arts and sciences, in the reputation of our countrymen? But thefe fplenetic Dampers are for ever fighing over the decline of wit, the de'cline of genius, the decline of literature, when if there is any one thing that has declined rather than another, it is the wretched state of criticifin, fo far as they have to do with it.

As I was paffing from the city the other day I turned into a coffee-houfe, and took my feat at a table, next to which fome gentlemen had affembled, and were converfing over their coffee. A difpute was carried on between a little prattling volatile fellow and an old gentleman of a fullen, morofe afpect, who in a dictatorial tone of voice was declaiming against the times, and treating them and their puifny advocate with more contempt than either one or the other feemed to deferve: Still the little fellow, who had abundance of zeal and no want of words, kept battling with might and main for the world as it goes against the world as it had gone by, and I

could

could perceive he had an interest with the junior part of his hearers, whilst the fullen orator was no less popular amongst the elders of the party: The little fellow, who feemed to think it no good reason why any work fhould be decried only because the author of it was living, had been defcanting upon the merit of a recent publication, and had now fhifted his ground from the fciences to the fine arts, where he seemed to have taken a strong post and stood refolutely to it; his opponent, who was not a man to be tickled out of his spleen by a few fine dashes of arts merely elegant, did not relish this kind of fkirmishing argument, and tauntingly cried out"What tell you me of a parcel of gew-gaw ar"tifts, fit only to pick the pockets of a diffipated "trifling age? You talk of your painters and "pourtrait-mongers, what ufe are they of? "Where are the philofophers and the poets, "whofe countenances might intereft pofterity "to fit to them? Will they paint me a Bacon, ❝ a Newton or a Locke? I defy them: There "are not three heads upon living shoulders in "the kingdom worth the oil, that would be "wafted upon them. Will they or you find «me a Shakespear, a Milton, a Dryden, a 4 Pope, an Addison? You cannot find a limb, a "feature,

"feature, or even the fhadow of the leaft of "them: These were men worthy to be record"ed; poets, who reached the very topmost fum"mits of Parnaffus; our moderns are but

pifmires crawling at its loweft root."-This lofty defiance brought our little advocate to a nonplus; the moment was embarraffing; the champion of time past was echoed by his party with a cry of "No, No! there are no "fuch men as these now living."- "I believe "not," he replied, "I believe, not: I could "give you a fcore of names more, but thefe "are enough: Honeft Tom Durfey would be "more than a match for any poetafter now "breathing,"

In this ftile he went on crowing and clapping his wings over a beaten cock, for our poor little champion feemed dead upon the pit: He muttered fomething between his teeth, as if struggling to pronounce some name that stuck in his throat; but either there was in fact no contemporary, whom he thought it safe to oppose to thefe Goliahs in the lifts, or none were present to his mind at this moment.

Alas! thought I, your caufe, my beloved -contemporaries, is defperate Væ Victis! You are but duft in the fcale, while this Brennus

directs

directs the beam. All that I have admired and applauded in my zeal for those with whom I have lived and ftill live; all that has hitherto made my heart expand with pride and reverence for the age and nation. I belong to, will be immolated to the manes of thefe departed worthies, whom, though I revere, I cannot love and cherish with that fympathy of foul, which I feel towards you, my dear but degenerate contemporaries!

There was a young man, fitting at the elbow of the little creft-fallen fellow, with a round clerical curl, which tokened him to be a son of the church. Having filently awaited the full time for a rally, if any spirit of refurrection had been left in the fallen hero, and none fuch appearing, he addressed himself to the challenger with an air fo modeft, but withal fo impreffive, that it was impoffible not to be prejudiced in his favour, before he opened his cause,

"I cannot wonder," faid he, "if the gen"tleman, who has challenged us to produce a

parallel to any one of the great names he has "enumerated, finds us unprepared with any "living rival to thofe illuftrious characters: "Their fame, though the age in which they "lived did not always appreciate it as it ought, "hath yet been rifing day by day in the esteem

"of