common faculties. Of the living, neither their modefty nor the humour of the prefent age, permits me to speak: of the dead, I may fay fomething.

One of them had made the greatest progrefs in the ftudy of the law of nature and nations of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorff. He could refute Hobbes with as much folidity as fome of greater name, and expose him with as much wit as Echard. That noble study, which requires the greatest reach of reafon and nicety of distinction, was not at all difficult to him. 'Twas a national lofs to be deprived of one who understood a fcience fo neceffary, and yet fo unknown in England. I fhall add only, he had the fame honefty and fincerity as the perfon I write of, but more heat: the former was more inclined to argue, the latter to divert: one employed his reafon more; the other his imagination : the former had been well qualified for those pofts, which the modefty of the latter made him refufe. His other dead brother would have been an ornament to the college of

which he was a member. He had a genius either for poetry or oratory; and, though very young, compofed feveral very agreeable pieces. In all probability he would have wrote as finely as his brother did nobly. He might have been the Waller, as the other was the Milton, of his time. The one might celebrate Marlborough, the other his beautiful offspring. This had not been fo fit to defcribe the actions of heroes as the virtues of private men. In a word, he had been fitter for my place; and, while his brother was writing upon the greatest men that any age ever produced, in a ftyle equal to them, he might have ferved as a panegyrist on him,

This is all I think neceffary to fay of his family. I fhall proceed to himself and his writings; which I fhall firft treat of, because I know they are cenfured by fome out of envy, and more out of ignorance.

The Splendid Shilling, which is far the leaft confiderable, has the more general reputation, and perhaps hinders the character of the rest. The ftyle agreed fo well with the burlesque, that the ignorant thought it could become

nothing else. Every body is pleased with that work. But to judge rightly of the other requires a perfect maftery of poetry and criticism, a just contempt of the little turns and witticifms now in vogue, and, above all, a perfect understanding of poetical diction and description.

All that have any tafte of poetry will agree, that the great burlefque is much to be preferred to the low. It is much easier to make a great thing appear little, than a little one great: Cotton and others of a very low genius have done the former; but Philips, Garth, and Boileau, only the latter.

A picture in miniature is every painter's talent; but a piece for a cupola, where all the figures are enlarged, yet proportioned to the eye, requires a master's hand.

It muft ftill be more acceptable than the low burlefque, because the images of the latter are mean and filthy, and the language itself entirely unknown to all men of good breeding. The ftyle of Billingfgate would not make a very agreeable figure at St. James's. A gentleman would

would take but little pleasure in language, which he would think it hard to be accofted in, or in reading words which he could not pronounce without blufhing. The lofty burlefque is the more to be admired, because, to write it, the author must be mafter of two of the most different talents in nature. A talent to find out and expose what is ridiculous, is very different from that which is to raise and elevate. We must read Virgil and Milton for the one, and Horace and Hudibras for the other. We know that the authors of excellent comedies have often failed in the grave style, and the tragedian as often in comedy. Admiration and Laughter are of fuch oppofite natures, that they are seldom created by the fame perfon. The man of mirth is always obferving the follies and weakneffes, the ferious writer the virtues or crimes, of mankind; one is pleased with contemplating a beau, the other a hero: even from the fame object they would draw different ideas: Achilles would appear in very different lights to Therfites and Alexander; the one would admire the courage and greatnefs of his foul; the other would ridicule the vanity and rashness of his temper. As the fatyrift fays to Hanibal :