cate with his voice, and support with his vote, measures, which the man, in the relations of private life, would blush to acknowledge. Nor is this want of just sensibility confined to the statesman; with the citizen, to defraud the publick is too often but an achievement of ingenuity; and even the scholar in his closet, while he kindles with indignation at the injustice or cruelty of an individual, reads the aggressions and ravages of nations with hardly a sentiment, that they are crimes.

Here then is much to be done; and there is also somewhat to encourage exertion. On these subjects are not juster views beginning to make their way ? Negotiations are professed to be conducted more in the honourable spirit of frankness and conciliation. The laws, if not the practice, of civilized war have been softened into comparative mildness. Questions of national interest are debated, and the measures of governments examined, upon the broad basis of equity and truth, and statesmen compelled, if not to adopt, certainly to defend their plans of policy, not by reasons of state, but reasons of right. If all this be in pretence, more than in truth, still the necessity of hypocrisy is one proof of the existence of virtue. If the splendid pall be thrown over the bier, it is because men cannot bear the ghastliness of death. pp. 16, 17.

The author next considers, in what manner the objects mentioned by him are most successfully to be pursued ;-and then follows the third and last head of the discourse, in which he treats of the practical influence of moral philosophy. Under this head, after some general observations upon the connexion of knowledge with virtue, he speaks of the effect which the study of moral science is adapted to have upon those by whom it is pursued. The remarks, which immediately succeed, we shall give at length.

If the effect, we have described, be natural, it cannot be confined to the philosopher alone; it will extend itself in his instructions and writings. The same views will be gradually applied in the formation of the dispositions and habits of children; they will become an important branch of liberal knowledge, and thus exert a control over the higher classes of society, over men of letters and the popular authors of the day.

This suggests to us another means of practical influence. Those compositions in poetry and prose, which constitute the literature of a nation, the essay, the drama, the novel, it cannot be doubted, have a most extensive and powerful operation upon the moral feelings and character of the age. The very business of the authors of such works is directly or indirectly with the heart.

Even descriptions of natural scenery owe much of their beauty and interest to the moral associations they awaken, In like manner fine turns of expression or thought often operate more by suggestion than enumeration. But when feelings and passions are directly described, or embodied in the hero, and called forth by the incidents of a story it is then, that the magick of fiction and poetry is complete, that they enter into and dwell in the secret chambers of the very soul, moulding it at will. In these moments of deep excitement, must not a bias be given to the character, and much be done to elevate and refine, or degrade and pollute, those sympathies and sentiments, which are the sources of much of our virtue and happiness, or our guilt and misery? The danger is, that, in such cases, we do not discriminate the distinct action of associated causes. Even in what is presented to the senses, we are aware of the power of habitual combination. An object, naturally disagreeable, becomes beautiful, because we have often seen the sun shine or the dew sparkle upon it, or it has been grouped in a scene of peculiar interest. Thus the powers of fancy and of taste blend associations in the mind, which disguise the original nature of moral qualities. A liberal generosity, a disinterested self devotion, a powerful energy or deep sensibility of soul, a contempt of danger and death, are often so connected in story with the most profligate principles and manners, that the latter are excused and even sanctified by the former. The impression, which so powerfully seizes all the sympathies, is one; and the ardent youth becomes almost ambitious of a character, he ought to abhor. So too, sentiments, from which in their plain form delicacy would revolt, are insinuated with the charms of poetical imagery and expression; and even the coarseness of Fielding is probably less pernicious, than the seducing refinement of writers like Moore; whose voluptuous sensibility steals upon the heart and corrupts its purity, as the moon beams, in some climates, are believed to poison the substances on which they fall.

But in no productions of modern genius is the reciprocal influence of morals and literature more distinctly seen, than in those of the author of Childe Harold. His character produced the poems; and it cannot be doubted, that his poems are adapted to produce such a character. His heroes speak a language, supplied not more by imagination, than consciousness. They are not those machines, that, by a contrivance of the artist, send forth a musick of their own; but instruments, through which he breathes his very soul, in tones of agonized sensibility, that cannot but give a sympathetick impulse to those who hear. The desolate misanthropy of his mind rises and throws its dark shade over his poetry, like one of his own ruined castles; we feel it to be sublime, but we forget, that it is a sublimity it cannot have, till it is abandoned by

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every thing, that is kind and peaceful and happy, and its halls are ready to become the haunts of outlaws and assassins. Nor are his more tender and affectionate passages those, to which we can yield ourselves without a feeling of uneasiness. It is not that we can here and there select a proposition formally false or pernicious; but that he leaves an impression unfavourable to a healthful state of thought and feeling, peculiarly dangerous to the finest minds and most susceptible hearts. They are the scene of a summer evening, where all is tender and beautiful and grand; but the damps of disease descend with the dews of heaven, and the pestilent vapours of night are breathed in with the fragrance and balm, and the delicate and fair are the surest victims of the expo

sure.

Although I have illustrated the moral influence of literature, principally from its mischiefs; yet it is obvious, if what I have said be just, it may be rendered no less powerful, as a means of good. Is it not true that within the last century a decided and important improvement in the moral character of our literature has taken place; and, had Pope and Smollet written at the present day, would the former have published the imitations of Chaucer, or the latter the adventures of Pickle and Random? Genius cannot now sanctify impurity or want of principle; and our criticks and reviewers are exercising jurisdiction not only upon the literary but moral blemishes of the authors, that come before them. We notice with peculiar pleasure the sentence of just indignation, which the Edinburgh tribunal has pronounced upon Moore, Swift, Goethe, and in general the German sentimentalists. Indeed the fountains of literature, into which an enemy has sometimes infused poison, naturally flow with refreshment and health. Cowper and Campbell have led the muses to repose in the bowers of religion and virtue; and Miss Edgeworth has so cautiously combined the features of her characters, that the predominant expression is ever what it should be; she has shown us, not vices ennobled by virtues, but virtues, degraded and perverted by their union with vices. The success of this lady has been great, but had she availed herself more of the motives and sentiments of religion, we think it would have been greater. She has stretched forth a powerful hand to the impotent in virtue; and had she added, with the apostle, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, we should almost have expected miracles from its touch.' pp. 21-25.

It would not be easy to find a passage more distinguished for correctness of sentiment, and beauty of expression, than that which we have quoted. We wish that his subject, and the limits of his discourse, had allowed the author to enlarge somewhat upon the thoughts expressed in the beginning of the last paragraph. It is very gratifying to observe the gradual improvement in the moral character of English literature, since the reign of Charles II. and the period immédiately subsequent. Many of the plays and poems of that day are such as we might fancy to be written in a world, that had been put out of the sphere of God's providence and moral government; among men who had heard of religion and morality indeed, as imposing obligations upon other creatures, but who felt themselves free from these restraints, and thought of them only as matters of ridicule ;-whose main business was to pursue their gross pleasures as long as they were able, and to cheat each other whenever they had an opportunity ; but who at the same time possessed that sort of mischievous ingenuity and quickness of wit, which have been fancied to be properties of evil spirits. Nothing could be more remote from the genius of the writers of this race, than the exhibition of those striking, but most unnatural characters, in which the fierce vices of pirates, and outlaws, and men of desperate wickedness, are united with a prevailing tone of romantick tenderness, of high sentiment, and of over delicate and exasperated sensibility. Their characters have only the hard, impudent, diseased countenance of every day profligacy. They dwelt in their writings upon such vices as they relished, and introduced such personages as they associated with in common life. The literature of the age, in its prevailing character, was like Messalina coming from the stews ;

Obscurisque genis turpis, fumoque lucernæ

Fœda, lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar odorem.'

We have not forgotten that Dryden was a writer of this age; nor have we forgotten his indecency, his immorality, and his profanity. Of Dryden we are almost afraid to say what we think. He versified with great facility, and often with great force and melody, though quite as often in a very incorrect and slovenly style; he has much vigorous language, which gives a bold relief to his thoughts; he possessed not a little of the ingenuity of the metaphysical race of poets, tempered with considerably more good sense; and he was a very powerful, though coarse satirist; occasionally very skilful and acute in the delineation of character, (as in that of the Duke of Buckingham for instance,) for the purpose of ridicule or invective. They say,' he observes in one of his Vol. VII. No. 2.

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prefaces, my talent is satire;' and in this opinion his contemporaries seem to have formed a correct estimate of his abilities. In the enumeration just given, we doubt whether we have not exhausted all his claims to great intellectual superiority as a poet. Nobody looks for pathos, or tenderness, or delicacy of thought or feeling in the writings of Dryden. He has no sublimity of any kind; least of all, any thing that approaches to moral sublimity. He spreads before us no fine views of visible nature; he never carries us forth among the works of God to admire and be delighted. He was unable vividly to conceive and express human passions and feelings. He never seizes on our sympathy; he does not make us intimate with himself, nor interest us in those characters which he embodies and puts in action. Nature never gave to him those keys which open her secret recesses. There is no magick in his verses; they produce no emotion; they are as little allied as possible to that poetry, which stirs a man's heart like the sound of a trumpet.' They discover much intellectual vigour, but possess no moral power. When not seasoned by the noxious stimulant of personal satire, his longer poems in heroick verse are uninteresting and tiresome. Who reads a second time his Palamon and Arcite; except as a mere literary critick, to be satisfied that his first judgment of it was correct? Who now reads through his Hind and Panther? We believe that but few have with us submitted to this unprofitable labour. No one rises from the perusal of his poetry better or wiser; with any thoughts, or feelings, or images, which a good man would wish to retain. In every thing relating to moral sentiment, the mind of Dryden was essentially coarse, vulgar, and depraved.

We regret that Mr. Scott should have given his time and talents to editing a complete edition of the works of this author. The poems of Dryden, which are of any value, were sufficiently known; and it was not worth any one's while to bring together, and attempt to restore to life, those of his writings, which were perishing in their own corruption. We hope, that the passion for collecting and preserving every thing, which has once had notoriety, will sometime or another be succeeded by the exercise of a discriminating judgment, which will reject what is not worth preservation.*

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