confequence of an ill-judged fcrupulofity and delay, we once lofe fight of any part of that train of ideas with which our own minds were fo warmed and interested, it may be impoffible to recover it and perhaps no other train of ideas, though, feparately taken, they may appear to be better adapted to the fubject, may have the fame power to excite thofe fenfations with which we would with the compofition might be read. Whatever thefe fenfations be, they will be the fame with thofe with which the compofition was written; it being almoft impoffible to counterfeit fuccefsfully in fuch a cafe as this. As, therefore, we wifh to affect and intereft the minds of our readers, we should endeavour, without lofing time in examining every thing with a minute exactnefs, to exprefs the whole ftate of our own minds while they are thus affected and interested. Correction will be employed with more advantage afterwards.

On this occafion it may be of ufe to recollect the precept of lord Rofcommon,

To write with fury, but correct with phlegm.

And the excellent advice of Pliny. After you have finished a compofition, you muft, fays he, lay it afide, till it is no longer fresh in your memory, and then take it up, in order to revise and correct it. You will find feveral things to retain, but still more to reject; you will add a new thought here, and alter another there. Laboriofum iftud et tædio plenum, fed difficultate ipfâ fru&tuofum, recalefcere ex integro, et refumere impetum fractum omiffumque.' It is a laborious and tedious tafk, I own, thus to re-enflame the mind after the first heat is over, to recover an impulse, when its force has been checked and spent; in a word, to interweave new parts into the texture of a compofition, without disturbing or confounding the original plan; but the advantage attending this method will overbalance the difficulty. Ep. vii. 9.

Among other obfervations on Method in narrative difcourfes, our author has the following:

The writer of a fingle hiftory hath no embarrassment in comparison of a perfon, who undertakes to give an account of two, or more nations, whose hiftories are intermixed with one another. The former is at liberty to take as much of any foreign history as he hath occafion for, to illuftrate his own; the other is in a manner under a neceffity, either of making repetitions, or of leaving chafms in one or other of the hiftories. The former expedient is tedious and ungraceful, the latter makes one of the hiftories very imperfect and uninterefting.

The writers of the Univerfal Hiftory found themselves in this dilemma, and their very valuable work bears too many marks of it. To avoid repetitions, they have left almost all the hiftories imperfect, which obliges a reader to look into several,

be

before he can find a perfect account of any. They have likewife made the modern history of the Arabians and Turks, in particular, unneceffarily and exceffively tedious, by inferting in the text feveral different accounts of the fame event; when it would have occafioned no more trouble to the writer, and have been vaftly more agreeable to the reader, to have retained only the most approved account of any event in the text, and have left the other accounts to the notes.

• By the use of notes the moderns have a confiderable advantage over the ancients, who had no idea of fuch a convenience. By the help of notes a history may go on without interruption, and yet a great variety of incidental things, worth recording, and which cannot be introduced with ease into the body of a work, may have a place affigned to them, where they may be attended to at the reader's leifure.

• Bayle hath made the greatest use of notes of any of the moderns. Indeed, the text of his Biographical Dictionary feems to have been compofed for the fake of the notes; which were fuch mifcellaneous remarks upon men and opinions, as could not have been incorporated into any regular work, or have been published conveniently in any other form.'

We agree with our author in thinking that these repetitions are in fome meafure neceffary. If, for example, the transactions of the Carthaginians with the Romans should be omitted in the hiftory of Carthage, the history of that republic will be extremely imperfect, and almost unintelligible. The fecond detail fhould not indeed be fo diffufe as the firft; and the editor's abilities must be exercised in compreffing it into a smaller compafs. Yet even this should be done with great caution, 'where ever two parallel histories are the productions of different writers; and the second happens to be more judicious than the first.-But the Univerfal Hiftory has been put into able hands, and we have reason to think, that these objections, if they are real objections, will be entirely obviated.

The following remarks on particular names and circumftances are worthy of attention.

Every body muft have experienced, in relating any thing that really happened, how difficult it is to avoid mentioning thofe circumftances of time, place, and perfon, which were originally affociated with the particulars of the ftory: and it is evident (notwithstanding it be generally esteemed a mark of greater judgment to generalize ftories, and omit thofe particulars) that stories told with all thofe circumftances, provided they be not fo many as to diftract the mind of the hearer, and too much retard the relation of the principal incidents, are generally heard with more attention. In fact, it cannot be but that these

circumstances excite more determinate and precife ideas; and the more precife and vivid are our ideas, with the greater ftrength do they excite all the emotions and paffions that depend upon them. The mention of thefe particulars makes a relation to refemble real and active life.

So important is this observation, and fo far is it from having been thoroughly attended to, that it may almoft furnish a criterion to diftinguish true history from fable and romance. Even the best of our modern romances, which are a much more perfect copy of human life than any of the fictions of the ancients, if they be compared with true history, will be found to fall greatly fhort of it in their detail of fuch particulars as, because they have a kind of arbitrary, and, as it were, variable connexion with real facts, do not easily fuggeft themselves to thofe perfons who attend only to the connexion and fubordination of the incidents they have invented, and who, therefore, never introduce more perfons or things than are neceffary to fill them up whereas a redundancy of particulars, which are not neceffarily connected, will croud into a relation of real facts.

It may not be improper to add, in this place, that the mention of fo many particular perfons, places, and times, in the books of fcripture affords, to the curious obfervers of nature and probability, no fmall evidence of their genuineness and

truth.'

It is obferved, that Shakespeare's frequent ufe of particular terms, and his attention to the choice of them contributed not a little to his peculiar excellence in diftinguifhing the paffions and characters of human nature. Homer abounds more in the minute details of circumftances than Virgil, and his characters are better diftinguished. Virgil ufes more general terms upon all occafions, and the famenets of his characters is remarkable.

• One reason, fays our author, why philofophers feldom fucceed in poetry may be, that abftract ideas are too familiar to their minds. Philofophers are perpetually employed in reducing particular to general propofitions, a turn of thinking very unfavourable to poetry. One reafon likewife, why poetry is generally fooner brought to perfection than any other branch of polite literature may be, that, in early ages, the ftate of language is moft favourable to poetry, as it then contains fewer abstract terms. On this account a poet in an early age, has the advantage of a later poet, who has equal thare of ima. gination.'

These observations are rather specious than juft. If there be any truth in this vulgar adage," Poeta nafcitur non fit," want of fuccefs in poetry is not owing to men's familiarity

with abstract ideas; but to their natural inability. Cicero's ill fuccefs in poetical compofitions did not arife from his previous study of philofophy: but he studied philofophy, rather than poetry, because it was more fuitable to the natural bent of his genius; and he therefore fucceeded in the former, while he only made himself ridiculous in the latter *. It is not probable, that he would have fucceeded better, if he had never been converfant with abstract ideas. Our author adds, ' that a poet in an early age has the advantage of a later poet, as language then contains fewer abftra&t terms.' This obfervation cannot be true; unless a copia verborum, and the difcovery of arts and fciences, are injurious to a poet's imagination: which is not to be fuppofed.

In explaining the influence of the paffions on each other, he fays:

In order to raife a very lively and tender fentiment, it is of advantage to defcribe the fentiments, which raise it, in as few words as poffible...The following is a moving image in Virgil's defcription of the return of Eurydice to the infernal regions.

• Invalidas tibi tendens, hiu non tud, palmas.

Georg. lib. iv.

• The reader conceives a more lively fenfation of a variety of undiftinguifhed emotions from that short parenthefis, beu non tua, than if the poet had expatiated upon all the circumstances of the difference of Eurydice's prefent relation to Orpheus, and that in which they had ftood to one another, and which, but the moment before, they had both fondly imagined was going to revive.

• The fame author gives his readers a more exquifite fenfation, by means of a fingle epithet, in the following paffage, in which he defcribes the attempt that Dædalus made to describe the mis fortune of his fon, than he could have conveyed in more words, though ever fo proper.

Bis conatus erat cafus effingere în auro,
Bis patria cecidêre manus.

Æneid. lib. vii.

• When, under any affection of mind, ftrong fenfations have been affociated with particular words, it is natural for a perfon under the influence of the correfponding paffion to repeat fuch words. In thefe cafes, fingle words prefent to the mind entire scenes with all their moving circumstances.

Inimitably expreffive of tenderness is the repetition of the name of Eurydice, in the affecting hiftory of Orpheus, both in Virgil and Ovid, thus happily imitated by Mr. Pope.

* Juven. Sat. x. 122. Quint. lib. ix. 4.

« Yet

In all ftrong paffions, fome one idea being present to the mind more eminently than others, perfons under the influence of them naturally exprefs that idea the firit, even though it obliges them to throw. the fentence in which it is introduced into diforder. Thus Nifus, in Virgil, expofing himself to death for Euryalus,

"Me me adfum, qui feci; in me convertite ferrum.
Oh Rutuli, mea fraus omnis.” Eneid, lib. ix..

• Perolla, in Livy, full of horror and aftonishment at the inn tention of his fon to murder Hannibal, begins his fpeech to him. in the utmost diforder, with the most folemn form of adjuration Per, ego, te, fili," &c.

66

It is a direct confequence of the affociation of ideas, that, when a perfon hath fuffered greatly on any account, he connects the idea of the fame caufe with any great diftrefs. This fhews with what propriety Shakespeare makes king Lear, whofe fufferings were owing to his daughters, fpeak to Edgar, disguised like a lunatic, in the following manner:

"What, have his daughters brought him to this pafs?
Could'ft thou fave nothing? Didft thou give them all?"
King Lear.

And Macduff.

• Writers not really feeling the paffions they defcribe, and not being mafters of the natural expreffion of them, are apt, without their being aware of it, to make perfons under the influence of a ftrong emotion or paffion, speak in a manner that is very unfuitable to it. Sometimes, for inftance, they feem rather to be defcribing the paffion of another, than expreffing their own. Sometimes the language of perfons, in interesting circumstances, shows fuch an excurfion of mind from the principal object, as demonftrates that their minds were not fufficiently engroffed with it. And sometimes, aiming to ftrike and aftonish, they make their heroes ufe fuch language as is expreffive of no paffion whatever, but is quite extravagant and abfurd."

The author illuftrates thefe obfervations by examples from Voltaire, Shakespeare, Moliere, &c. from which we have only room to give the reader a very fhort extract.

It is utterly improbable, that king John in the agonies of death, and with his ftomach and bowels inflamed with intenfe heat, would pun and quibble in the manner that Shakespeare

represents