ments with a heavy lance! and how greatly does it differ from bravery, or from conduct !"

With respect to the present translation, as the gentleman has made an apology for his style in the beginning, we shall not take upon us the invidious task of selecting its faults. Be it sufficient to say, it is better done than could reasonably be expected from a person, a great part of whose life was spent in a foreign country. The grand duke of Tuscany, Cosmo the Third, had invited him to Italy, when but a boy, and there he resided for eighteen years. We could wish to encourage every attempt like this, which serves to make Italian learning better known in England, where it is more generally admired than understood.

IX.-MONTESQUIEU'S MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "Miscellaneous Pieces of M. de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu," 8vo.]

SUCH of our readers as are not in possession of the last splendid French edition of the celebrated Montesquieu, will find this volume a valuable supplement to his other works, as the translation is executed with spirit, though seemingly inaccurate. There is a pleasure arising from the perusal of the very bagatelles of men renowned for their knowledge and genius; and we receive with veneration those pieces after they are dead, which would lessen them in our esteem while living. Sensible that we shall enjoy them no more, we treasure up, as precious relics, every saying and word that has escaped them; but their writings of every kind we deem inestimable. With what eagerness would all the literati of Europe pore over a half-defaced fragment of Plato, Cicero, Homer, or Virgil! Even a trifling poem of

Swift or Pope will make a whole edition of their works sell with rapidity, and we now would purchase a warranted original copy of the worst verses Milton ever wrote, at ten times the price which the original copy of the Paradise Lost brought him.

We love to pursue genius from its serious occupations to its lighter and more airy amusements, and to peruse their unformed sentiments, as well as their finished pieces. Seeing their thoughts rise without order, connexion, or art, and destitute of the embellishments of style, and ornaments of learning, is examining them more closely, entering more intimately into their acquaintances, and more strongly marking their original powers. In the one, they address us with the formal and distant air of the superior; in the other, with the ease and familiarity of the friend, where every thing is uttered as it occurs. Studying the outlines of any work of genius, is like watching the progress of infancy to maturity; we trace it growing under the hands of the artist; we imagine ourselves present at every addition and improvement, and congratulate ourselves as if we had been assisting to its final perfection. Where it is broken off unfinished, we lament it as a promising child cut off in the bloom of youth, to the disappointment of all our hopes and wishes.

Cicero observes, that we behold with transport and enthusiasm the little barren spot, or ruins of a house, in which a person celebrated for his wisdom, his valour, or his learning, lived. When he coasted along the shore of Greece, all the heroes, statesmen, orators, philosophers, and poets of those famed republics, rose in his memory, and were present to his sight: how much more would he have been delighted with any of their posthumous works, however inferior to what he had before seen! In just this manner did we receive pleasure from the volume before us. The detached pieces with which we are here presented fall greatly short of

the merit of all his other performances; yet still they have the spirit of Montesquieu. His defence of the "Spirit of Laws" is close, cool, and judicious; sometimes rising to wit, often shrewdly sarcastic; but generally dry, barren, and of such a kind as indicates that the talents of this great man did not lie in controversy. This, perhaps, may be the reason why his elegant panegyrist, D'Alembert, has so

slightly touched upon this piece. As to the "Temple of Gnidus," we must beg leave to dissent in opinion from that polite encomiast, who, we think, has extolled it greatly beyond its merit, and probably from that sympathetic veneration which men of genius ever feel for each other. In our mind, it proves little more than that Montesquieu, to his other great talents, annexed those of fancy and invention.

X.-MODERN NOVELS.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "Jemima and Louisa; in which is contained several remarkable Incidents relating tỏ Two Ladies of distinguished Families and Fortunes. In a series of Letters, by a Lady." 12mo.]

THE female muse, it must be owned, has of late been tolerably fruitful. Novels written by ladies, poems, morality, essays, and letters, all written by ladies, shew that this beautiful sex are resolved to be, one way or other, the joyful mothers of children. Happy it is, that the same conveyance which brings an heir to a family, shall at the same time produce a book to mend his manners, or to teach him to make love, when ripe for the occasion. Yet, let not the ladies carry off all the glory of the late productions

ascribed to them: it is plain by the style, and a nameless somewhat in the manner, that pretty fellows, coffee-critics, and dirty-shirted dunces, have sometimes a share in the achievement. We have detected so many of these impostors already, that for the future it is resolved to look upon every publication that shall be ascribed to a lady, as the work of one of this amphibious fraternity. Thus by wholesome severity, many a fair creature may be prevented from writing, that cannot spell; and many a blockhead may be deterred from commencing author, that never thought. The plan of the work is as follows:

Two misses, just taken home from the boarding-school, are prodigious great friends, and so they tell each other their secrets by way of letter. It cannot be expected, and truly it would be out of nature, to suppose persons so young, and so very pretty, capable of writing proper English; so they transgress in this particular almost in every sentence, you was, and they is, being frequent expressions between them. In the first letter, Miss Jemima Courtly, or Mima, for shortness sake, lets her old and intimate friend know that her mother died when she was eight years old; that she had one brother and one sister; with several other secrets of this kind, all delivered in the confidence of friendship.

In the progress of this correspondence we find she has been taken home for carrying on an intrigue with Horatio, a gentleman of the neighbourhood, and by means of her sister's insinuations, for she happens to be her enemy, confined to her chamber, her father at the same time making an express prohibition against her writing love-letters for the future. This command Miss Mima breaks, and of consequence is turned out of doors; so up she gets behind a servant without a pillion, and is set down at Mrs. Weller's house, the mother of her friend Miss Fanny. Here then we

shall leave, or rather forget her; only observing that she is happily married, as we are told in a few words towards the conclusion.

We are next served up with the history of Miss Louisa Blyden, a story no way connected with the former. Louisa is going to be married to Mr. Evanion; the nuptials, however, are interrupted by the death of Louisa's father, and at last broke off by means of a sharper, who pretends to be Miss's uncle, and takes her concerns under his direction. What need we tell as how the young lovier runs mad, Miss is spirited away into France; she at last returns; the sharper and his accomplices hang or drown themselves, her lover dies, and she-oh tragical! keeps her chamber? However, to console us for this calamity, there are two or three other very good matches struck up; a great deal of money, a great deal of beauty, a world of love, and days and nights as happy as heart could desire; the old butt-end of a modern romance.

XI.-HAWKINS'S MISCELLANIES.

[From the Critical Review, 1759. "Miscellanies; by William Hawkins, M. A., Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. (1) In Three Volumes.

8vo.]

In this publication Mr. Hawkins appears under the character of a divine, a critic, and a poet; and in his triple capacity we shall beg leave to consider him.

(1) [Son of the author of the "Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown." On the resignation of the poetry professorship by Dr. Lowth, he succeeded him in 1751. He was rector of Little Casterton, in Rutlandshire; and at the time of his death, in 1801, vicar of Whitchurch, Dorsetshire.]