It is not sufficient to say that a poet has his characters in his power, and can fashion incidents according to his own discretion; he must do no violence to nature and probability for the purposes of his plot. Maskwell having in this manner escaped with success, begins next to put in execution his plot for obtaining Cynthia, and this constitutes the intrigue and catastrophe of the fifth act: his plan is as follows-Having imparted to Lord Touchwood his love for Cynthia by the vehicle of a soliloquy, which is to be overheard by his lordship, he proposes to himself to carry off Cynthia to St. Alban's with the chaplain in the coach, there to be married; this she is to be trepanned into by persuading her that the chaplain is Mellafont, and Mellafont is brought to co Cynthia under that disguise, and that the chaplain shall be made to follow on the day after and then marry him to Cynthia; with this view Mellafont is appointed to meet Maskwell in one chamber, and Cynthia in another; the real chaplain is to be passed upon the lady for Mellafont, and Mellafout is to be left in the lurch; this plot upon Cynthia, Maskwell confides to Lord Touchwood, telling him there is no other way to possess himself of her but by surprise. Touchwood's favour, bound lady Touchwood to concealment of his villany, and been as able to lay his train for the possession of Cynthia, as by any other mode he could choose for obtaining her; but if he put it to the issue of a surprise upon Lady Touch wood, when she was not prepared for the management of that surprise, what was he to expect from the introduction of Lord Touchwood, but discovery and defeat? Was it not natural to suppose Mellafont would seize the opportunity of reproaching her with her criminality with Maskwell? It was for that very purpose he brings him thither: he tells him "it will be hard if he cannot then bring her to any conditions ;"--and if this was to pass under the terror of his own reproaches, how could Maskwell set Lord Touchwood upon listening to their conversation, and not appre-operate, by a promise that he shall elope with hend for a consequence apparently so unavoidable? He puts every thing to risk by proposing to Mellafont to conceal himself in Lady Touchwood's bed-chamber whilst she is in the closet; he then meets Lord Touchwood, appoints him to come to the lobby by the bed-chamber in a quarter of an hour's time; he keeps his assignation with the lady, Mellafont starts from his hiding place, and Maskwell escapes, but soon returns, secretly introducing Lord Touchwood to listen to the dialogue between his lady and nephew: she accidentally discovers him without his being seen by Mellafont, and turns that accidental discovery against Mellafont. What a combination of improbabilities is here fortuitously thrown together to produce this lucky incident! Could Maskwell reasonably presume upon a chance so beyond expectation? Every thing is made to turn upon the precarious point of a minute: if Lord Touchwood, who was appointed for a quarter of an hour, had anticipated that appointment, if Lady Touchwood had been less punctual to her assignation, if Mellafont had appointed to have dropped one word in his uncle's hearing, charging her with his discovery, as had been agreed, or if either she had happened not to have seen Lord Touchwood, or Mellafont had seen him; in short, if any one thing had turned up, which ought not to have come to pass, or otherwise than it was made to come to pass by the greatest violence to probability, Maskwell was inevitably undone: it must be owned he laid a train for his own destruction, but stage incident rescued him; and this, with the lady's adroitness, effaces the improbability, when it passes in representation, and keeps nature out of sight. Had Mellafont told the plain story to his uncle, after Lady Touchwood had so unexpectedly turned it against him, it would at least have put the plot to risk, and of this the author seems so conscious that he does not suffer him to attempt a single word in his defence: to save his villain, he is compelled to sacrifice his hero. Though the author undoubtedly meant his villain should in the end outwit himself, yet he did not mean him to attempt impossibilities, and the absurdities of this contrivance are so many that I know not which to mention first. How was Maskwell to possess himself of Cynthia by this scheme? By what force or fraud is he to accomplish the object of marrying her? We must conclude he was not quite so desperate as to sacrifice all his hopes from Lord Touchwood by any violence upon her person; there is nothing in his character to warrant the conjecture. It is no less unaccountable how Mellafont could be caught by this project, and induced to equip himself in the chaplain's gown to run off with a lady, who had pledged herself to him never to marry any other man: there was no want of consent on her part; a reconciliation with Lord Touchwood was the only object he had to look to, and how was that to be effected by this elopement with Cynthia ? The jealousy of Lady Touchwood was another rock on which Maskwell was sure to split: it would have been natural for him to have provided against this danger by binding my lord to secrecy, and the lady's pride of family was a ready plea for that purpose; when he was talking to himself for the purpose of being overheard by Lord Touchwood, he had nothing to do but to throw in this observation amongst the rest to bar that point against discovery. The reader will not suppose I would suggest a plan of operation for The Double Dealer, to secure him against discovery; I am only for add ing probability and common precaution to his perhaps I have added to the elegance of its conprojects: I allow that it is in character for him struction, and something to the harmony of ita to grow wanton with success: there is a moral in cadence." I hope our language hath gained all villain outwitting himself; but the catastrophe the profit which the labours of this meritorious would in my opinion have been far more bril-writer were exerted to produce; in style of a liant, if his schemes had broke up with more force of contrivance: laid as they are, they melt away and dissolve by their own weakness and inconsistency; Lord and Lady Touchwood, Careless and Cynthia, all join in the discovery; every one but Mellafont sees through the plot, and he is blindness itself. Mr. Congreve, in his dedication above-mentioned, defends himself against the objection to soliloquies; but I conceive he is more open to criticism for the frequent use he makes of listening; Lord Touchwood three times has recourse to this expedient. tion. Of the characters in this comedy Lady Touchwood, though of an unfavourable cast, seems to have been the chief care of the poet, and is well preserved throughout; her elevation of tone, nearly approaching to the tragic, affords a strong relief to the lighter sketches of the episodical persons, Sir Paul and Lady Pliant, Lord and Lady Froth, who are highly entertaining, but much more loose than the stage in its present state of reformation would endure: nothing more can be said of Careless and Brisk than that they are the young men of the theatre, at the time when they were in representaOf Maskwell enough has been said in these remarks, nor need any thing be added to what has been already observed upon Mellafont and Cynthia. As for the moral of the play, which the author says he designed in the first place, and then applied the fable to it, it should seem to have been his principal object in the formation of the comedy, and yet it is not made to reach several characters of very libertine principles, who are left to reform themselves at leisure; and the plot, though subordinate to the moral, seems to have drawn him off from executing his good intentions so completely as those professions may be understood to engage for. certain description he undoubtedly excels; but though I think there is much in his essays for a reader to admire, I should not recommend them as a model for a disciple to copy. Simplicity, ease and perspicuity should be the first objects of a young writer: Addison and other authors of his class will furnish him with examples, and assist him in the attainment of these excellences; but after all, the style, in which a man shall write, will not be formed by imitation only; it will be the style of his mind it will assimilate itself to his mode of thinking, and take its colour from the complexion of his ordinary discourse, and the company he consorts with. As for that distinguishing characteristic, which the ingenious essayist terms very properly the harmony of its cadence, that I take to be incommunicable, and immediately dependent upon the ear of him who models it. This harmony of cadence is so strong a mark of discrimination between authors of note in the world of letters that we can depose to a style, whose modulation we are familiar with, almost as confidently as to the handwriting of a correspondent. But though I think there will be found in the periods of every established writer a certain peculiar tune (whether harmonious or otherwise), which will depend rather upon the natural ear than upon the imitative powers, yet I would not be understood to say that the study of good models can fail to be of use in the first formation of it. When a subject presents itself to the mind, and thoughts arise, which are to be committed to writing, it is then for a man to choose whether he will express himself in simple or in elaborate dietion, whether he will compress his matter or dilate it, ornament it with epithets and robe it in metaphor, or whether he will deliver it plainly and naturally in such language as a well bred person and scholar would use, who affects no parade of speech, nor aims at any flights of fancy. Let him decide as he will, in all these cases he hath models in plenty to choose from, which may be said to court his imitation. For instance, if his ambition is to glitter and surprise with the figurative and metaphorical brilliancy of his period, let him tune his ear to some such passages as the following, where Doctor Johnson in the character of critic and biographer is pronouncing upon the poet Congreve. "His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery, or passion; his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike; the contest of smartness is never intermitted; bis wit is a meteor playing to and fro, with alter- | rather than such as address the ear in humbler nate coruscations." If he can learn to embroider with as much splendour, taste, and address as this and many other samples from the same master exhibit, he cannot study in a better school. On the contrary, if simplicity be his object, and a certain serenity of style, which seems in unison with the soul, he may open the Spectator, and take from the first paper of Mr. Addison the first paragraph that meets his eye-the following for instance-" There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is great or uncommon: the very first discovery of it strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight through all its faculties." Or again in the same essay: "We no where meet with a more glorious or pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light that show themselves in clouds of a different situation.' A florid writer would hardly have resisted the opportunities which here court the imagination to indulge its flights, whereas few writers of any sort would have been tempted, on a topic merely critical, to have employed such figurative and splendid diction as that of Doctor Johnson; these little samples, therefore, though selected with little or no care, but taken as they came to hand, may serve to exemplify my meaning, and in some degree characterize the different styles of the respective writers. Now as every student who is capable of copying either of these styles, or even of comparing them, must discern on which side the greater danger of miscarrying lies, as well as the greater disgrace in case of such miscarriage, prudence will direct him in his outset not to hazard the attempt at a florid diction. If his ear hath not been vitiated by vulgar habitudes, he will only have to guard against mean expressions, while he is studying to be simple and perspicuous; he will put his thoughts into language naturally as they present themselves, giving them for the present little more than mere grammatical correction: afterwards, upon a closer review, he will polish those parts that seem rude, harmonize them where they are unequal, compress what is too diffusive, raise what is low, and attune the whole to that general cadence which seems most grateful to his ear. But if our student hath been smitten with the turbulent oratory of the senate, the acrimonious declamation of the bar, or the pompous eloquence of the pulpit, and shall take the lofty speakers in these several orders for his models, tones, his passions will in that case hurry him into the florid and figurative style, to a sublime and swelling period; and if in this he excels, it must be owned he accomplishes a great and arduous task, and he will gain a liberal share of applause from the world, which in general is apt to be captivated with those high and towering images that strike and surprise the senses. In this style the Hebrew prophets write, "whose discourse," to use the words of the learned Doctor. Bentley, "after the genius of the Eastern nations, is thick set with metaphor and allegory; the same bold comparisons and dithyrambic liberty of style every where occurring-For when the Spirit of God came upon them,' and breathed a new warmth and vigour through all the powers of the body and soul: when by the influx of divine light the whole scene of Christ's heavenly kingdom was represented to their view, so that their hearts were ravished with joy, and their imaginations turgid and pregnant with the glorious ideas; then surely, if ever, their style would be strong and lofty, full of allusions to all that is great and magnificent in the kingdoms of this world." (Commencement Sermon.)—And these flights of imagination, these effusions of rapture and sublimity, will occasionally be found in the pulpit eloquence of some of our most correct and temperate writers: witness that brilliant apostrophe at the conclusion of the ninth discourse of Bishop Sherlock, than whom few or none have written with more didactic brevity and simplicity-" Go," says he to the Deists, " go to your natural religion: lay before her Mahomet and his disciples arrayed in armour and in blood, riding in triumph over the spoils of thousands, and tens of thousands, who fell by his victorious sword: show her the cities which he set in flames, the countries which he ravaged and destroyed, and the miserable distress of all the inhabitants of the earth. When she has viewed him in this scene, carry her into his retirements; show her the prophet's chamber, his concubines and wives; let her see his adultery, and hear him allege revelation and his divine commission to justify his lust and oppression. When she is tired with this prospect, then show her the blessed Jesus, humble and meek, doing good to all the sons of men, patiently instructing both the ignorant and perverse; let her see him in his most retired privacies; let her follow him to the mount, and hear his devotions and supplications to God; carry her to his table to view his poor fare, and hear his heavenly discourse: let her see him injured but not provoked; let her attend him to the tribunal, and consider the patience with which he endured the scoffs and reproaches of his enemies: lead her to his cross, and let her view him in the agony of death, and hear his last prayer for his persecutors- Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'" This is a lofty passage in the high imperative tone of declamation; it is richly coloured, boldly contrasted, and replete with imagery, and is amongst the strongest of those instances, where the orator addresses himself to the senses and passions of his hearers: but let the disciple tread this path with caution; let him wait the call, and be sure he has an occasion worthy of his efforts before he makes them. Allegory, personification, and metaphor will press upon him his imagination at certain times, but let him soberly consult his judgment in those moments, and weigh their fitness before he admits them into his style. As for allegory, it is at best but a kind of fairy form; it is hard to naturalize it, and it will rarely fill a graceful part in any manly composition. With respect to personification, as I am speaking of prose only, it is but an exotic ornament, and may be considered rather as the loan of the muses than as the property of prose; let our student therefore beware how he borrows the feathers of the gay, lest his unnatural finery should only serve to make him pointed at and despised. Metaphor, on the other hand, is common property, and he may take his share of it, provided he has discretion not to abuse his privilege, and neither surfeits the appetite with repletion, nor confounds the palate with too much variety: let his metaphor be apposite, single, and uncònfused, and it will serve him as a kind of rhetorical lever to lift and elevate his style above the pitch of ordinary discourse; let him also so apply this machine as to make it touch in as many points as possible; otherwise it can never so poise the weight above it as to keep it firm and steady on its proper centre. To give an example of the right use and application of this figure, I again apply to our learned author already quoted-“ Our first parents having fallen from their native state of innocence, the tincture of evil, like an hereditary disease, infected all their posterity; and the leaven of sin having once corrupted the whole mass of mankind, all the species ever after would be soured and tainted with it: the vicious ferment perpetually diffusing and propagating itself through all generations." -(Bentley Comm. Sermon.) There will be found also in certain writers a profusion of words, ramifying indeed from the same root, yet rising into climax by their power and importance, which seems to burst forth from the overflow and impetuosity of the imagination resembling at first sight what Quintilian characterizes as the "Abundantia Juvenilis." but which, when tempered by the hand of a master, will upon closer examination be found to bear the stamp of judgment under the ap pearance of precipitancy. I need only turn to the famous "Commencement Sermon" before quoted, and my meaning will be fully illustrated-" Let them tell us then what is the chain, the cement, the magnetism, what they will call it, the invisible tie of that union, whereby matter and an incorporeal mind, things that have no similitude or alliance to each other can so sympathize by a mutual league of motion and sensation. No: they will not pretend to that, for they can frame no conceptions of it: they are sure there is such a union from the operations and effects, but the cause and the manner of it are too subtle and secret to be discovered by the eye of reason: 'tis mystery, 'tis divine magic, 'tis natural miracle.” NUMBER LXXXII. Defunctus jam sum, nihil est quod dicat mihi. TERENT. I am now out of danger, he can say nothing to me. IN all ages of the world men have been in habits of praising the time past at the expense of the time present. This was done even in the Augustan era, and in that witty and celebrated period the laudator temporis acti must have been either a very splenetic or a very silly character. Our present grumblers may perhaps be better warranted; but, though there may not be the same injustice in their cavilling complaints, there is more than equal impolicy in them: for if by discouraging their contemporaries they mean to mend them, they take a very certain method of counteracting their own designs: and if they have any other meaning, it must be something 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 his contemporaries? Who would not prefer to live in an enlightened and a rising age, rather than in a dark and declining one? It is natural to take a pride in the excellence of our free constitution, in the virtues of our sovereign; is it not as natural to sympathize in the prosperity of our arts and sciences, in the reputation of our countrymen? But these splenetic dampers are for ever sighing over the decline of wit, the decline 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 criticism, so far as they have to do with it. As I was passing from the city the other day, I turned into a coffee-house, and took my seat at a table, next to which some gentlemen had assembled and were conversing over their coffee. | but dust in the scale, while thus Brennus directs the beam. All that I have admired and applauded in my zeal for those with whom I have lived and still 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 these departed worthies, whom though I revere, I cannot love and cherish with that sympathy of soul, which I feel towards you, my dear but degenerate contemporaries. There was a young man sitting at the elbow of the little crestfallen fellow, with a round clerical curl, which betokened him to be a son of the church. Having silently awaited the full time for a rally, if any spirit of resurrection had been left in the fallen hero, and none such appearing, he addressed himself to the challenger with an air so modest, but withal so impressive, that it was impossible not to be prejudiced in his favour before he opened his cause. "I cannot wonder," said he, "if the gentleman 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 those illustrious characters: their fame, though the age in which they lived did not always ap A dispute was carried on between a little prattling volatile fellow and an old gentleman of a sullen, morose aspect, who in a dictatorial tone of voice was declaiming against the times, and treating them and their puny advocate with more contempt than either one or the other seemed to deserve: 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 perceive he had an interest with the junior part of his hearers, whilst the sullen orator was no less popular amongst the elders of the party: the little fellow, who seemed to think it no good reason why any work should be decried only because the author of it was living, had been descanting upon the merit of a recent publication, and had now shifted his ground from the sciences to the fine arts, where he seemed to have taken a strong post and stood resolutely 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 skirmishing argument, and tauntingly cried out - "What tell you me of a parcel of gewgaw artists, fit only to pick the pockets of a dissipated trifling age? You talk of your painters and por-preciate it as it ought, hath yet been rising day trait-mongers, what use are they of? Where are the philosophers and the poets, whose countenances might interest posterity to sit 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 wasted upon them. Will they or you find me a Shakspeare, a Milton, a Dryden, a Pope, an Addison? You cannot find a limb, a feature, or even the shadow of the least of them: these were men worthy to be recorded; poets, who reached the very topmost summits of Parnassus; our moderns are but pismires crawling at its lowest root."-This lofty defiance brought our little advocate to a nonplus; the moment was embarrassing; the champion of time past was echoed by his party with a cry of " No, no! there are no such men as these now living."- "I believe not," he replied, "I believe not: I could give you a score of names more, but these are enough: honest Tom Durfey would be more than a match for any poetaster now breathing!" In this style he went on crowing and clapping his wings over a beaten cock, for our poor little champion seemed dead upon the pit: he muttered something 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 these Goliaths in the lists, or none were present to his mind at this moment. Alas! thought I, your cause, my beloved contemporaries, is desperate: va victis! You are by day in the esteem of posterity, till time hath stamped a kind of sacredness upon it, which it would now be a literary impiety to blaspheme. There are some amongst those, whom their advocate hath named, I cannot speak or think of but with a reverence only short of idolatry. Not this nation only, but all Europe hath been enlightened by their labours: the great principle of nature, the very law upon which the whole system of the universe moves and gravitates, hath been developed and demonstrated by the penetrating, I had almost said the preternatural powers of our immortal Newton. The present race of philosophers can only be considered as his disciples; but they are disciples who do honour to their master: if the principle of gravitation be the grand desideratum of philosophy, the discovery is with him, the application, inferences, and advantages of that discovery are with those who succeed him; and can we accuse the present age of being idle or unable to avail themselves of the ground he gave them? Let me remind you that our present solar system is furnished with more planets than Newton knew; that our late observations upon the transit of the planet Venus were decisive for the proof and confirmation of his system: that we have circumnavigated the globe again and again; that we can boast the researches and discoveries of a Captain Cook, who, though he did not invent the compass, employed it as no man ever did, and left a map behind him, compared to which Sir Isaac Newton's was a sheet of nakedness and error; it is with gravitation therefore |