of fpeaking; he has literary experience, and tafte. How you would receive it, you have long experienced. When conducted by a fubordinate voice and manner, your pleasure has been changed into disgust.

But harmony of compofition will be beft afcertained from a comparison with the harmony of mufic.* Two notes in the latter, unconnected with each other, will be little less than difcord: two others, which form an octave, or the intermediate parts of a chord, will be productive of harmony. The ear of nature is the leaft erring critic.

We have no inftruments directly con formable with the dvds and pn mentioned in the text. These were, anciently, peculiarly fine, and feem to be placed for inftruments in general. A paffage in St. PAUL'S firft Epiftle to the Corinthians, Ch. xiv. will confirm the opinion.

See the Original..

The

apostle

apostle defcants upon the various languages in the world, and afferts the folly of speaking (or, to give the Catholics their due merit, of praying) in an unknown tongue.

"Even things without life giving found, "whether pipe, or harp; if they have "not a distinction in the founds, how fhall "it be known what is piped, or harped?"

1

Whether the ancients paid a regard to feet in profe, (which I cannot believe to have been the cafe, for the harmony of a fentence will never be formed but on the principles before mentioned) it feems not material to examine. The queftion concerns the order of words, which confiderably constitutes, from the happy, or unsuccessful mode of arrangement, a pleafing, or displeasing writer. Such is the affistance of style!

It is but justice to the present age, to confefs, that elegance of ftyle improves the fentiments, their writings exprefs. An L 3

admirable

admirable correctnefs characterifes the Scots, when they indulge not the labor of pedantry, too ufually the error of their best authors. It is a thistle, which thrives in their foil.

SECTION

THE

XL.

HE critic exhibits another comparison with fuccefs-the compofition of a Literary Performance to the Human Fabric. The fymmetry of features, and the construction of a work, ought to be fimilarly treated. Errors are too frequent in the moft perfect. To examine the whole is to pull it to pieces: this is the province of ́a creature, stigmatized with the appellation of a 'minute critic.' A-thirst for blemishes he affords fufpicions, that he cannot relish beauties. He, who is captivated by genius, ftoops not to the inde· corus pulvis' of mathematical precifion. A comparative judgement is the most candid, and the most natural.

ORIG.-Κάθαπερ ἄλλοι τὲ πολλοὶ, καὶ

Φίλισος.

We seem to have no authentic account of this PHILISTUS. ARISTOPHANES is

mentioned by HORACE, as a virulent comic poet. Some of his pieces remain, which might have been formed to please in the author's days.

"Eupolis, atq; Cratinus, Aristophanesq; poetæ, Atq; alii, quorum comœdia prifca virorum eft, "Si quis erat dignus defcribi,quòd malus, autfur, "Aut mœchus fuit,

"Multâ cum libertate notabant.”

Truth, in those times, had not been pro nounced a libel.

Words have a fingular efficacy, when adapted to the fenfe, which it is intended they should convey.

The languor of flow, dull fyllables would be improper to defcribe ACHILLES rufhing to the field of battle: the verfes, like the hero, fhould be πόδας ώκυες.

And

And here I may be excufed a digreffion, to examine the criticifm of Mr. SAMUEL JOHNSON on thofe famous lines, in Mr. POPE'S Effay on Criticifm, which have been almost univerfally received as confirming the correfpondence of the found with the sense, on which principle they were originally written.

"Soft is the ftrain, when Zephyr gently blows, "And the fmooth ftream in fmoother numbers " flows."

The author of the Rambler remarks, "The verfe intended to represent the whifper of the vernal breeze must be "confeffed not much to excell in foftnefs, "or volubility; and the fmooth ftream runs "with a perpetual clafh of jarring confocc nants; the noife and turbulence of the "torrent," &c.-Rambler, No, 92, Vol. IV. fm. edit.

I must here remark, once for all, that every great man in the republic of letters,

as