bulous divinity, and every symbol has it's moral; he has been allegorized and enigmatized in innumerable ways; the pen, the pencil and the chiffel have been worn out in his fervice; floods of ink, looms of canvafs, and quarries of marble, have been exhaufted in the boundless field of figurative description. The lover, who finds out fo many ways of torturing himfelf, cannot fail to strike out symbols and devices to exprefs the paffion under which he fuffers; then the verse flows mournfully elegiac, and the bleeding heart, transfixed with an arrow, is emblematically displayed; thus, whilft the poet varies his measure, the painter and the sculptor vary their devices, as joy or forrow, fuccefs or disappointment, influence their fancy. One man's Cupid is fet aftride upon a lion, to exemplify his power; another places his upon a crocodile, to fatyrize his hypocrify; here the god is made to trample upon kingly crowns, there to trifle with a wanton fparrow; the adamantine rock now crumbles at his ftroke, anon we fee him basking on the bofom of Chloe, his arrows broken and his pinions bound.

The Greeks, who had more caprice in their paffions than either nature or morality can excufe, nevertheless bequeathed their Cupid to pofterity

pofterity with a confiderable ftock in hand; but the moderns added more from funds of their own, and every thing they bestowed was honeftly appropriated to the only fex that has any claim upon the regular and folid firme of Venus, Cupid, and Co.

When fuperftition met its final overthrow, and the heathen temples were dismantled of their images and altars, Love alone, the youngest of the deities, furvived the difafter, and still holds his dignities and prerogatives by chriftian courtefy; and though modern ingenuity has not added much to his embellifhments, yet, in the ardour and fincerity of our devotion, we do not yield to the antients: the whole region of romance has been made over to him; our drama, tragic as well as comic, has gone far beyond that of the antients in building its fable and character upon the pasfion of love. Laft in point of time, but not of allegiance, comes the fraternity of novelifts, who are his clients to a man; Love is the effence of every tale, and fo ftudious are our authors not to let the fpirit of that effence become vapid, that few, if any, fail to conclude with the event of marriage: connubial love is of a quality too tame for their purpose.

As the majority of our novels are formed upon domeftic plots, and moft of thefe drawn from the very times in which they are written, the living manners must be charactered by the authors of fuch fables, and we must of courfe make our Love of fuch materials as the fafhion of the age affords: it will not therefore refemble the high-flown paffion of the Gothic knights and heroes of the old romance, neither will it partake of those coarse manners and expreffions, which our old comic writers. adopt; it will even take a different shade from what a novelist would have given it half a century ago, for the focial commerce of the fexes is. now fo very different from what it was then, that beauty is no longer worfhipped with that diftant refpect, which our antiquated beaux paid to their miftreffes.

As the modern fine gentleman ftudies. nothing but his cafe, and aims only to be what he terms comfortable, regarding all those things, that used to be confidered as annoyances and. embarrassments, with cool indifference and contempt, even Love in him is not an active paffion; he expreffes no raptures at the fight of beauty, and if he is haply provoked to fome flight exertion out of courfe, it must be fome

new

new face juft launched upon the public, that can fan his languid fpirit into any emotion ap proaching towards curiofity. Nothing is an object of admiration with him; he covets no gratifications that are to be earned by labour, no favours that are to be extorted by affiduity; his pleasures must court him, and the fair one he affects must forget that fhe is a divinity, and banish from her thoughts the accustomed homage of fighs and tears and bending knees, for all these things give trouble to the performer, and on that account are by general confent exploded and abolished.

Now the writer of novels has not the privilege, which the painter of portraits has, of dreffing modern characters in antique habits;: fo that fome of our beft productions in this clafs are already become, in fome particulars, out of fashion; even the inimitable compofition of The Foundling is fading away in fome of it's tints, though the hand of the mafter as a correct delineator of nature will be traced to all pofterity, and hold it's rank amongst the foremost of that class, which enrols the nameṣ of Cervantes, Rabelais, Le Sage, Voltaire, Rouffeau, Richardfon, Smollet, Johnfon, Sterne, and fome others, whofe pens death F 6. hath

hath not yet stopt, and long may it be ere he does!

Having now allowed the hiftoric muse her customary bait, we shall foon urge her to fresh exertions, by which a certain young lady, whò as yet has barely stept upon the stage, will begin to fupport a more important intereft in the bufinefs of this drama. Ifabella Manstock, in the bloom of youth and beauty, cannot long remain an idle character; though he has flattered herself that filial affection will keep poffeffion of her heart, to the exclufion of that intruding paffion we have been speaking of, yet nature and experience will compel me to exhibit that lovely recufant as one amongst many, who have been fain to truckle to the tyrant they abjure: the time is drawing near, when impreffions, which fhe never felt before, will force their way; when the merits, the misfortunes, the attentions of our hero, will take hold upon her heart; when her eye will dwell upon his person with delight, her ear listen to his praises with rapture, to his fighs with pity, to his fuit with favour: then if Love, who is not to be affronted with impunity, gives a loose to his revenge, and makes her feel the full terrors of his power, the reader will be pleased to bear

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