rebellious subjects of the late most christian king crowding into a period of less than one short lustrum, more impiety, oppression, cruelty, rapine and massacre, than can be found in the aggregated enormities of all the rest of Europe for a series of centuries. Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii! Your Dionysius, your Pisander, Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, Domitian, Caracalla, and Commodus, must retire to the back-ground of the picture, and yield an abominable pre-eminence to our more flagitious neighbours. The crimes of these tyrants were chiefly the offspring of frenzy, the guilt of the Gauls is deliberation and system. France has been for four years with little intermission deluged with such torrents of native blood, that in some measure they have diverted our attention from concerns less affecting; and the pernicious effects of her guilt and frenzy spreading to every country in Europe, we have not even the. melancholy consolation to reflect that the conse quences quences of her, wickedness are confined to its authors: yet what friend to genius but must read with affliction the tardy measure of the Convention decreeing, for the first time, in 1793, an imprisonment of two years against the future despoilers of the monuments of the arts dependant on the national property? What devastation must not have preceded it! We have seen their churches defaced, the noblest statues and monuments of their kings and heroes pounded in pieces, and the GOD of the universe proscribed from their constitution, by acts of state and decrees of their legislators. Not even the grave has been sacred. Like the Pyrennean wolves described by Thomson, On church-yards drear (inhuman to relate!) The shrowded body from the grave; o'er which, Mixed with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl. They want no Huns or Visigoths, no Scythians, or Saracens, to cast them back to the ages of darkness and barbarity; for they renew upon them selves the ancient fury of the Atillas, the Gensericks, and the Omars. To the accumulated horrours of their condition is superadded the internal war of religion against atheism, while men who fight for their faith, freedom, and property, by these monsters, audacious in their language as their actions, are called villains, enthusiasts, and madmen. How long the Ruler of all things may be pleased to suffer them to insult his providence, and to afflict his creatures, we cannot presume to conjecture; but of this we may be certain; though divine vengeance may wink, it will not sleep for ever: the bolt is but held back, to come down with double wrath, when it descends to crush them. As to the merit of this work, I am too well acquainted with the disqualifications an author lies under, to presume at offering any leading sentiment to the judgment which the publick may be pleased to form upon it. I will only venture to affirm, that it was no very easy matter to give an air of discrimination crimination to so many different characters of men, who, being of the same country, living under the same laws and customs, and mostly educated in the same manner, must have among them some strong and common features of resemblance. Without departing from the authority of ancient historians and biographers, who seem to me to be the best, if not the only guides on such subjects, I have endeavoured to produce this variety; but with what success the reader must determine. We often find indeed much discrepancy of opinion in the accounts given by contemporary writers of the great statesmen and generals who lived at the same time ; but by discovering to what party each writer adhered, or what principles he espoused, we generally have sufficient grounds for abatement of praise or censure. In this manner we must endeavour to reconcile Tully's adulation of CESAR in the Senate, and the private sentiments which he expressed of him in the closet. As Cicero always speaks from reflection, he frequently writes from feeling; SO so that we can sometimes form a better judgment of the state of his mind at the moment, than of the subject on which his familiar pen is employed. Tacitus with his usual brevity asserts his impartiality sufficiently, when he tells us that he writes of men "nec beneficio, nec injuriâ cognitos;" and after all, this is the best security for truth: through the mists of resentment or interest, she is always seen obscurely. There will be found in the following poem a few rhymes which modern custom, more perhaps than reason, has brought into a sort of disuse; I mean, where the terminating word of one line in a couplet chimes only with the last sound of a polysyllable in the next; as are and similar, &c. but I must acquaint the critick, that this is not the effect of necessity, but choice. We have not improved upon the rich and various versification of Dryden; and to produce authorities from his practice would be to transcribe little less than a third part of his poetry. Pope, who is supposed to be rather more |