and welfare, of our fellow subjects; but Dramatic Authors are fo circumstanced at prefent, that this invaluable bleffing is withdrawn from them: the Muses are enflaved in a land of liberty, and this at least should excuse the Poets of the age for not rifing to nobler heights, till the weight is taken off, which now depreffes their strongest efforts. It must be allowed, that in reftraining the licentioufnefs of the theatre our legislature very wifely imitated the good fenfe of the Athenian magiftracy, who by law interdicted the freedoms of the MIDDLE COMEDY; but it is to be wished that they had also imitated the moderation of the Greek law-givers, who, when they refolved to give a check to indecorum, yet left a free and unbounded scope to the New Comedy, which confifted in agreeable and lively reprefentations of manners, paffions, virtues, vices, and follies from the general volume of nature, without giving to any part of the tranfcript the peculiar marks or fingularities of any individual. Thus Poets were only hindered from being libellers, but were left in full poffeffion of useful and general fatire, and all avenues of access to the public were generously thrown open to them. As we have at prefent the happinefs of living in a reign, when Majesty condefcends to look with a favourable afpect on the liberal arts, many are fanguine enough to entertain hopes that the Mufe may be released from her fetters, and restored to the free exercise of the amiable part of her province. When a bee is deprived of its noxious fting, it may be fafely permitted to rove at large among all the flowers of a garden; and it will be no inconfiderable addition to the luftre of the crown, if with an AUGUSTAN REIGN of equity, moderation, victory, and wisdom, which every Briton promifes himself, there be alfo revived an AUGUSTAN AGE OF LETTERS.

"Though the foregoing obfervations may appear digreffive from the main defign of this Effay, yet as the fubject is important, and took its rife in a great measure from the Writings of Mr. Fielding, to advert a while to the confequences which flowed to the community from his actions, cannot be deemed altogether impertinent. It is only like going out of the way a little to trace a rivulet in its progrefs, to mark its windings, to obferve whether it beftows fertility on the neighbouring meadows, and then returning to the ftraight road, to pursue the regular tract of the journey.

"In the Comedy called Rape upon Rape, or the Coffee-house Politician, we have an admirable draught of a character very common in this country, namely, a man who is fmitten with

Bb 3

an

an infatiable thirst for news, and concerns himself more about the balance of power than of his books. The folly of thefe statesmen out of place is there exhibited with a mafterly ridicule; and indeed in all the Plays of our Author, however in fome refpects deficient, there are ftrokes of humour and half-length paintings, not excelled by fome of the ableft artifts. The Farces written by Mr. Fielding were almost all of them very fuccefsful, and many of them are ftill acted every winter with a continuance of approbation. They were generally the production of two or three mornings, fo great was his facility in writing; and to this day they bear frequent repetition, at least as well as any other pieces of the kind.——

The mock Tragedy of Toм THUMB is replete with as fine parody as perhaps has ever been written; the LOTTERY, the INTRIGUING CHAMBERMAID, and the VIRGIN UNMASKED, befides the real entertainment they afford, had on their firft appearance this additional merit, that they served to make early difcoveries of that true comic genius, which was then dawning forth in Mrs. Clive; which has fince unfolded itfelf to a fulnefs of perfection, and continues to this day to be one of the trueft ornaments of the stage.'

As this Effay promifes to treat of the Genius, as well as the Life of Henry Fielding, the Writer deemed it not improper to pause here for an enquiry into his talents, though we are not arrived at that period of his Life, when they difplayed themselves in their full warmth and fplendour. And here, fays he, it is neceffary to caution the Reader not to confine his idea of what is intended by the word genius, to any one fingle faculty of the mind; because it is obfervable that many miltakes have arifen, even among Writers of penetrating judgment, and well verfed in critical learning, by haftily attaching themselves to an imperfect notion of this term fo common in literary differtations. That invention is the first great leading talent of a Poet has been a point long fince determined, because it is principally owing to that faculty of the mind that he is able to create, and be, as it were, a MAKER, which is implied in his original title given to him by the confent of Greece. But furely there are many other powers of the mind as fully cffential to conftitute a fine Poet, and therefore, in order to give the true character of any Author's abilities, it fhould feem neceffary to come to a right understanding of what is meant by GENIUS, and to analyfe and arrange its feveral qualities. This once adjusted, it

6.

might

might prove no unpleafing tafk to examine what are the fpecific qualities of any Poet in particular; to point out the talents of which he feems to have the freeft command, or in the ufe of which he feems, as it were, to be left-handed. In this plain fair-dealing way the true and real value of an Author will be cafily afcertained; whereas in the more confined method of inveftigation, which establishes, at the outset, one giant-quality, and finding the object of the enquiry deficient in that, immediately proceeds to undervalue him in the whole, there feems to be danger of not trying his cause upon a full and equitable hearing. Thus, I think, a late celebrated Poet is likely to fuffer an unjuft fentence from a gentleman, who has already obliged the Public with the first volume of an Effay on his Life and Genius*. The common affertion which has been in every Half-critic's mouth, namely, that Mr. Pope had little invention, and therefore has but a bad claim to the name of Poet, feems to be unguardedly adopted in the very beginning of that ingenious and entertaining work; and from that principle the conclufion will probably decide againft our English Homer. In defence of Mr. Pope's fame, however, our prefent Biographer ftands forth, in oppofition to Mr. Warton's opinion. He enters pretty deeply into the enquiry, What Invention is? And, in our opinion, has clearly fhewn that Pope was (particularly in refpect to the Rape of the Lock) as much a POET, as manifeftly a MAKER, as the great Father of the Epic Fable. This difquifition may, at firft fight, appear fomewhat digreffive from the Life of Henry Fielding; but it was not an unneceffary excurfion. It was expedient, as Mr. Murphy himself obferves, for the true delineation of an eminent Writ er's character, to remove difficulties out of the way, and to explain the terms of art ufed by Critics. And thus having fhewn the different provinces of Invention, we arrive at a jufter idea of what is meant when we talk of an Author's Genius.

See 'Review, Vol. XIV. p. 528, and Vol. XV. p. 52; where the Reader will find an ample account of this elegant and truly cri tical performance.

[This Article will be concluded in our next.]

ACCOUNT of FOREIGN BOOKS.

De la Nature: Or,

A Philofophical Effay on the Syftem of Nature. Concluded.

UR Author, in the third part of this work, wherein, as was before observed, he treats of Moral Instinct, attributes to our age and nation the honour of this important discovery. "The Ancients (fays he) appeared to be ignorant of a Moral Senfe, to which ignorance I readily attribute the changes fo frequently introduced in their science of manners. Cicero has indeed afferted an innate, grateful, difinterested probity in the heart of man. The difcovery of a Moral Instinct may nevertheless be justly attributed to the Moderns, from the great lights which have been thrown on this fubject by two Philofophers of the present age." These Philofophers are Hutchefon and Hume, whofe theory he adopts and endeavours to confirm and elucidate, by a method of reafoning perhaps too mechanical for the subject.

The Author of our Being, fays he, hath implanted in us an innate difpofition, to approve certain actions and qualities, and to blame others; whence we are led to perceive justice and injustice by a natural impulfe, in the fame manner as the palate perceives the difference of taftes, totally inde pendent of reflection. The beauty and deformity of moral actions, thus, are as perceptible as the beauty and deformity of faces; their diftinctions, founded on a natural fenfibility of the fame kind, being intimated to us in the fame manner, Hence, comparing the moral fenfe, in its nature and operations, to the other fenfes of hearing, feeing, &c., he proceeds to enquire into the exiftence and nature of its organ. In this enquiry, however, having proved from analogy the use and neceflity of fuch an organ, he is reduced to confefs the want of experiments to lead us to the discovery of it. But on the fuppofition of there exifting a fyftem of nerves, which, leading from the fenforium, extend themfelves as far as fome certain points of the internal frame of the brain, that com municate with other analogous external filaments; he conceives the moral object may act upon those nerves, in such a manner as to excite in the foul the perception of its qualities of Good and Evil.

"If we examine into the mechanifm of the other fenfations, we shall trace (he fays) clearly the type of this. Ma

terial objects carry with them their colour, favour, &c. or rather that which excites fuch fenfations in the foul. Thus every action or quality carries with it its moral tincture, or at least that which excites a sense of its morality in the foul. When an object is painted on the retina, it is always accompanied by its colour and figure; when a found strikes the ear, it is ever of fome particular tone, grave or acute: thus when I am an eye-witnefs of an action, I fee it with all its moral qualities; if I hear it related, the words convey through my ear, at the fame time, the moral character of the action they exprefs. It is true, the moral Good or Evil of actions is not visible to the eye, nor palpable to the touch; nor do I pretend they are to be touched or felt by means of the organs of vifion or feeling: but this does not hinder them from being perceived by their proper organs. Sound is neither visible nor tangible; but is it therefore lefs perceptible to the foul by means of the auditory nerves? Thus, though moral objects are not perceived as if painted on the eye, nor as impinging on the olfactory nerves, yet they become fenfible by the impreffion they make on the organs of their particular fenfe, called for that reafon the moral sense. What leaves this operation in fome obfcurity is, that we cannot particularly determine what those organs are. Two things, however, respecting this subject, are certain, viz. that the morality of actions and characters is fomething fenfible, and that there is no fenfation excited in the foul, but by fome mechanism corresponding to it in the organical system of the body."

There is yet another obfcurity to which this Writer does not at all attend; and that lies in what relates to the moral qualities which, he supposes, every action or character, when feen or heard, carry along with them, to this moral fenfe. If this fenfe be, as he calls it in fome places, an Instinct, whose difcernment is prompt, eafy, and infallible, fomething that prefuppofes no idea, no knowlege, no reafoning, it must certainly be conceived to discover, at first fight, the Moral Good or Evil of every fuch action or character. But, what is generally understood by the Moral Good or Evil of an action, and Moral Virtue or Vice in the agent, are diftinct things. Actions of generofity, humanity and the like, univerfally called fo, and confeffedly good, may be performed from motives neither generous nor humane; is it then the virtuous quality of the action, or the agent, that is difcovered by this Instinct, or conveyed with fuch action, to this Moral Senfe? As our Author does not pretend that confcience is any thing more