"He has this day admitted the charge, but with great insensibility. "We, therefore, disclaim all connexion with him, and shall for the future sell his Book ONLY as a Master-piece of Fraud, which the Public may be supplied with at 1s. 6d. stitched.

"JOHN PAYNE,
"JOSEPH BOUQUET."

Nor ended his disgrace and humiliation here; for, in "A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Douglas, occasioned by his Vindication of Milton, to which are subjoined several original Letters from the Authors of the Universal History, Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Maclaurin, &c. by William Lauder, A.M." printed in 1761, he admitted not only the forgeries with which he had been charged, but others, wherein he had only escaped detection from the rarity of the books which he pretended to cite. To this confession he is said to have been driven by Dr. Johnson, who was so indignant at the fraud of which he had been the too-ready dupe, that he himself dictated at least a part, if not the whole, of this recantation. In the same year, appeared also from the pen of the unprincipled author of this infamous attack upon the reputation of our immortal poet, "An Apology for Mr. Lauder, in a letter most humbly addressed to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury," in which he solicits mercy and forgiveness in the most abject terms, by a humble suit preferred "before those ears which never yet heard the miserable (provided their case were not beyond remedy) complain in vain." The object of this appeal was, by a futile attempt to palliate his conduct, to induce the Archbishop, and through his mediation, to prevail upon other persons of distinction, to continue their promised patronage of a work, for the publication of which, by subscription, in four vols. 8vo., under the title of "Delectus Auctorum Sacrorum Miltono facem prælucentium," proposals had been issued on the 3d of July, 1750. With the consciousness of detected guilt, he had the meanness to accompany this solicitation by an offer that," to preclude all suspicion of fraud and interpolation for the future, printed original copies, from whence the new edition is made, should be deposited either in the Archbishop's library at Lambeth, or in any other public library his Grace might think proper to name;" and it was perhaps on such assurance that he was enabled to publish two of his five volumes, which he had projected, in 1752 and 1753. In the second of these, he evinces his deep-rooted and unaccountable rancour against Milton, by a list of ninety-eight works from which he charges that immortal writer, whom he designates "Plagiariorum Princeps," with having surreptitiously plundered the chief beauties of his poems. Of those, however, he has printed but six out of the twenty-six enumerated in his prospectus. One of these consists of three of the five books which he proposed printing of the Sacrotis of Masenius, a declamatory, though not inharmonious Jesuit poet of Cologne; but of whose production Lauder was probably prevented from giving the two other promised books, by the very awkward publication of " a new preface" to his Essay on Milton, printed on four pages by his honest booksellers, in which they announce the barefaced insertion of two literal transcriptions, of eight lines each, from Hog's Latin version of "Milton's Paradise Lost," into extracts-one from Masenius, the other from Straphorstius (an obscure poet, even among the Dutch,) with the intention

of proving that Milton stole those passages, word for word, (the Latin only being changed into English) from those comparatively unknown authors. Many of his subscribers having refused him the forgiveness and patronage which the Archbishop of Canterbury (the amiable Dr. Herring) was induced to grant, he was unable to complete his engagement, but revenged his disappointment by a still more outrageous attack upon Milton, published in 1754, under the title of "King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Milton; and Milton himself convicted of Forgery, and a gross imposition on the Public. To the whole is subjoined the judgment of several learned and impartial Authors, concerning Milton's political Writings." A second title-page to this notable production is "The Grand Impostor detected, or Milton convicted of forgery against King Charles the First ;" and that is followed by sixty-four pages of most vulgar and virulent abuse, in which the great father of our epic poetry is termed "a devil incarnate, if any such ever existed, an abandoned monster of mankind, of insatiable avarice, unbounded ambition, implacable malice, unparalleled impudence, shocking impiety, unnatural against the parent that begot him, an arch traytor and rebel against his political father, his rightful sovereign-in short, a murderer, and an approver and abettor of murderers; bogling at no enormity, how flagrant soever, to accomplish his purposes; and, like his master, Cromwell, compleatly versed in all the arts of fraud, falsehood, sophistry, and prevarication; and all the while guilty of the most servile and abject adulation of his despotick sovereigns-a desperate crew of lawless cut-throats; but to all lawful governors, both in church and state, an enemy irreconcileable."

The charge against the celebrated writer, of whom the above character is given, as "the genuine picture, without alteration or exaggeration," is the very improbable one, so often refuted, of his having persuaded a printer to insert, with a few alterations, the prayer of Pamela, from the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney, at the end of the "Icon Basilike," as a prayer of the alleged royal author of that book, in the time of captivity, that he might thence be enabled to charge the king with plagiarism, and of impiety in adopting a heathenish supplication, of another writer, as his own, at such a crisis.

The indignation excited by such an attempt, Lauder here represents as his sole motive in exercising the jus talionis against Milton, by forging similar plagiarisms for him; although, in his letter to Mr. Douglas, (which he there charges Johnson with having written, in his name, though against his sentiments, and published but through an infatuation caused by his fears,) he assigns another, and, if possible, a more ridiculous ground, namely, the revenging an injury done him by Pope, in attacking the Latin Paraphrase on the Psalms, by Andrew Johnston, of which, with a view to their being taught as schoolbooks throughout Scotland, under a recommendation of the General Assembly of the Kirk, in a commission bearing date, at Edinburgh, November 13, 1740, Lauder had published an edition, that found its way but from the printer's warehouse to the shops of the pastrycooks and trunk-makers. What Milton had to do with this he tells us not, and it is impossible to guess; but on Milton he persevered in

avenging all his wrongs, as he closes this pamphlet, the last ebullition of his rancour, with the following fearful threat:-" As for his plagiarisms, I intend shortly, God willing, to extract such genuine proofs from those authors who held forth the lighted torch to Milton, I mean, who illustrated the subject of Paradise Lost, long before that Prince of Plagiaries entered upon it, as may be deemed sufficient, not only to replace the few interpolations (for which I have been so hideously exclaimed against,) but even to re-inforce the charge of plagiarism against the English poet, and fix it upon him by irrefragable conviction, in the face of the whole world, and by the suffrage of all candid and impartial judges, while sun and moon shall endure, to the everlasting shame and confusion of the whole idolatrous rabble of his numerous partizans, particularly my vain-glorious adversary, who will reap only the goodly harvest of disappointment and disgrace, where he anxiously expected to gather laurels." This "vain-glorious adversary" was Mr. Douglas, whom, in the letter addressed to him, three years before, Lauder had bitterly thanked for "the civility with which he had thought proper to treat him, when he (Mr. Douglas) had incontestible superiority." But his threats and vapours, alike against Milton and his vindicator, were mere big swelling words, meaning nothing; for having, by his virulence, malignity, and utter want of principle, made England too hot to hold him, he set sail for Barbadoes, where he was for some time master of the Free School in Bridgetown. From this situation he was, however, discharged for misconduct, and passed the remainder of a life, rendered miserable by his own vices and passions, in universal contempt, dying in very distressed circumstances, in the island to which he had retired about the year 1771.

(g) "Typographical Antiquities," by Herbert, p. 1808.

(h) The text in the Revelations, thus referred to by our author, is-" And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breast-plates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brimstone."

(i) Ure, habit, practice.

(k) Shrivelled, as though they had been in a still, or alembick, of which word limbeck is a vulgar corruption.

A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE STATE OF TRADE IN THE YEARS 1826, 7 & 8.

THE chief danger to which the British Empire is exposed at this moment, by reason of the numerous difficulties that have arisen out of the last war, with all the extravagance and mismanagement incident to it, is, that a leading interest in the State stands still in the midst of improvement; and when every other class of the community is advancing in knowledge, in liberality, and sound principles, according to their several relations, the members of that interest are as firmly attached to bygone policy and obsolete prejudices-that they ignorantly imagine are advantageous to their "Order". -as their ancestors were to feudalism. We are almost satisfied that the question must shortly be brought to an issue between this and the other great interests of the country; and a more beneficial and important duty probably never devolved upon public writers than to argue that question with a temper, a firmness, and moderation, that may prevent the issue we anticipate, from producing a collision that would at once confound all interests and orders of society.

The aristocracy has always viewed with jealousy the progress of commerce, from that important epoch in its history, when it began to make such rapid strides at the commencement of the Revolutionary war. Mr. Pitt then seeing that it would be impossible to support the expenses of that contest without the aid of extensive foreign as well as domestic trade, the energies of his great mind were anxiously and constantly turned towards that object. Circumstances subsequently favoured its accomplishment, and the war left us with the trade of the world in our possession. This fact, to casual observers, was exceedingly dazzling; and hence the remark that is so frequently heard, "This country did better in war than in peace." The truth is, the commercial, like every other interest in the State, at that period, was under an unnatural excitement. Circumstances of a most extraordinary character, and of a duration that, at their commencement, could not have been anticipated by the most discursive fancy, gave us a degree of commercial activity unparalleled in the annals of nations, by every other country being, for the most part, forced out of the markets of the world. Of course, we are now speaking generally, and, in that view, America cannot be looked upon as an exception to this statement. Her commerce, at the period we are noticing, although much national care and individual enterprise were bestowed upon it, was on a comparatively small scale; and the course adopted by belligerents tended materially, at various periods, to cripple and embarrass it. The United States, therefore, cannot fairly be excepted in a discussion that only points to general objects. Trite as is the remark that, without mutual benefit, no arrangement will be long in existence, it cannot be too often repeated in investigations of this nature. By a parity of reasoning, a state of things in which all the benefit is on one side, can exist no longer than the pressing necessity of the case demands. It was not by any unfair means of Englishmen, or of their

government, that they obtained the trade of the world during the last war; circumstances threw it in our way; but it must have been quite obvious to every one capable of thinking upon the subject, even when we were at the very acme of prosperity in consequence of them, that the moment these circumstances ceased which kept down other nations in commercial enterprise, they would take advantage of the alteration, and our trade would be proportionably narrowed. This certain result was not calculated upon by the government of that day, or, at least, no step was taken to guard against it, which would at once have given stability at home and confidence abroad, and have shewn to foreign governments that Great Britain was not more powerful in arms during a war of unprecedented extent, than she was about to render herself at the close of it, by an adherence to sound principles in her pacific relations. This course was neglected. The unfortunate man who was at that day the ministerial leader of the House of Commons could only think of congresses; and British interests were forgotten in the glitter of diplomatique soirées, and the flattery of continental despots and their satellites.

If wasteful expenditure marked the progress of the war, shameless negligence of the finances and commerce of the country marked the first seven years of the peace. The period that followed was distinguished by a change of policy, both foreign and domestic, that was hailed throughout the country with enthusiasm; and that enthusiasm, wild as it was in many instances, and leading to the most insane projects of speculation, was unfortunately encouraged by official authority, whose statements were too often clothed in assertions of the most sanguine expectation as to future prosperity. This want of caution, on the part of individuals whose words are caught at, and tortured by thousands of speculators who wish to make them accord with their own views, increased probably the commercial difficulties that followed the recognition of the South American States, the rash adventures that were consequent upon that measure, and the commencement of a liberal system of navigation and commerce.

We have thus taken a hasty glance at circumstances bearing upon our commercial relations previously to that period, when an entire change of policy took place in them, but which, hasty as it is, we think sufficient to shew in the present instance, that Great Britain could not remain stationary in her system of trade. Not only a political, but a moral revolution, in its largest sense, had occurred; and England. must either have made efforts to maintain her mercantile superiority, or have been contented to take a comparatively humble place as a commercial nation. Whether the proper direction was given to those efforts, is not an enquiry of paramount interest at this time, because those efforts have brought into action a system that has been sanctioned by Parliament, and, although it has met with considerable opposition, has, we should say, been also approved of by the nation at large. No one can deny the soundness of that system upon abstract principles; whether all its details have been well arranged, it is useless now to enquire. That it has also been in accordance with the spirit of the age, we think may likewise be accurately asserted; but whether the liberal commercial policy be right or wrong, it is adopted,