nor wildom are, at all times, fure defences against the delufions of fuperftition.

Of the mob of Gentlemen who are introduced into the fourth volume, if Denham (their leader) and a few others, be excepted, it may admit of a question how they came intitled to fuch a refpectable fituation. That it may not, however, be attributed to the partiality of the oftenfible Editor, let him fpean for himself,-in the following very short extracts:

SPRAT.

He confidered Cowley as a model; and fuppofed that as he was imitated, perfection was approached. Nothing therefore but Pindaric liberty was to be expected, There is in his few productions no want of fuch conceits as he thought exccellent; and of those our judgment may be fettled by the first that appears in his praise of Cromwell, where he fays that Cromwell's fame, like man, will grow swhite as it old.' grows

OTWAY.

Of the poems which this collection admits, the longest is the Poet's Complaint of his Mufe, part of which I do not understand; and in that which is lefs obfcure I find little to commend. The language is often grofs, and the numbers are harsh.'

Veneration for the author of the Orphan, and Venice Preferved, may be allowed in the prefent cafe to have had its influence.

DUKE.

In his Review, though unfinished, are fome vigorous lines. His poems are not below mediocrity; nor have I found much in them to be praised.'

HALIFA X.

• It would now be efteemed no honour, by a contributor to the monthly bundles of verfes, to be told, that, in ftrains either familiar or folemn, he fings like Montague.'

STEPNEY.

He apparently profeffed himself a poet, and added his name to thofe of the other wits in the verfion of Juvenal; but he is a very licentious tranflator, and does not recompenfe his neglect of the author by beauties of his own. In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may perhaps be found, and now and then a fhort compofition may give pleasure. But there is in the whole little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature.'

HUGHE S.

← The character of his genius I fhall tranfcribe from the correfpondence of Swift and Pope.

"A month ago," fays Swift, "was fent me over, by a friend of mine, the works of John Hughes, Efquire. They are in profe and verse. I never heard of the man in my life, yet I find your name as a fubfcriber. He is too great a poet for me; and I think among the mediocrifts, in profe as well as verfe."

• To

To this Pope returns: "To answer your question as to Mr. Hughes; what he wanted in genius, he made up as an honeft man; but he was of the clafs you think him."

As it was thought neceffary to admit men of fuch flender pretenfions into fuch very reputable fociety, it feems natural to expect that fome reafon had been given for fhewing them a diftinction which has been denied to Sedley, Marvel, and above all to the immortal Spenfer.

To the foregoing extracts we fhall add a paffage or two relating to Butler, from the fecond volume. This author was, by fome accident, omitted in our former Articles.

BUTLER.

Of the great author of Hudibras few anecdotes are handed down to us, and of thofe few not many are authentic. We learn from his prefent biographer, that a life prefixed to the later edition of his poems by an unknown writer, and the account which is incidentally given by Wood, who confeffes the uncertainty of his own narrative, are all the materials that are now to be collected for compofing the hiftory of this fingular poet. Curiofity naturally wishes for fome farther knowledge of him and yet, were curiofity to be gratified, it is to be feared there would be little to relate that humanity could look upon with pleasure. For what could be expected, even from the moft circumftantial narrative of the life of this unfortunate writer, but a more faithful exhibition of genius ftruggling with penury and dependence, an ampler detail of the pangs of difappointed expectation, joined to the melancholy difplay of unrewarded labours and royal ingratitude? Let us turn off our attention from the author to his work.

The poem of Hudibras is one of thofe compofitions of which a nation may justly boaft; as the images which it exhibits are domeftic, the fentiments unborrowed and unexpected, and the strain of diction original and peculiar. We must not, however, fuffer the pride which we affume as the country men of Butler to make any encroachment upon juftice, nor appropriate thofe honours which others have a right to share. The poem of Hudibras is not wholly English; the original idea is to be found in the hiftory of Don Quixote; a book to which a mind of the greatest powers may be indebted with out difgrace.'

Dr. Johnfon very juftly accounts for much of that humour which transported the laft century with merriment being loft upon us, who do not know the four folemnity, the fuller fuperftition, the gloomy morofenefs, and the ftubborn fcruples of the ancient Puritans; or, if we know them, derive our in formation only from books or from tradition.

We have never, fays he, been witneffes of animofities excited b the ufe of minced pies and plum porridge; nor feen with what ab horrend

horrence thofe who could eat them at all other times of the year would fhrink from them in December. An old Puritan, who was alive in my childhood, being at one of the fealls of the church invited by a neighbour to partake his cheer, told him, that, if he would treat him at an alehoufe with beer, brewed for all times and feafons, he fhould accept his kindness, but would have none of his fuperftitious meats or drinks.

One of the puritanical tenets was the illegality of all games of chance; and he that reads Gataker upon Lots, may fee how much learning and reafon one of the first scholars of his age thought neceffary, to prove that it was no crime to throw a die, or play at cards, or to hide a fhilling for the reckoning.'

The arguments he produces to prove that were another Butler to arife, another Hudibras would not obtain the fame regard," feem to be conclufive:

Burlefque, fays he, confifts in a disproportion between the style and the fentiments, or between the adventitious fentiments and the fundamental fubject. It therefore, like all bodies compounded of heterogeneous parts, contains in it a principle of corruption. All difproportion is unnatural, and from what is unnatural we can derive only the pleasure which novelty produces. We admire it awhile as a strange thing; but, when it is no longer ftrange, we perceive its deformity. It is a kind of artifice, which by frequent repetition detects itfelf; and the reader, learning in time what he is to expect, lays down his book, as the fpectator turns away from a fecond exhibition of thofe tricks, of which the only use is to fhew that they can be played.'

With

ART. V. Ancient Metaphyfics; or, the Science of Univerfals. an Appendix, containing an Examination of the Principles of Sir Ifaac Newton's Philofophy. Vol. I. 4to. burgh printed, for Cadell, &c. 1779

A

15 s. Boards. Edin

S to the defign of this work, the Author fays in his preface, 'I frankly own that it was for my own fake that I compofed it. I lay up like the bee for the winter of old age, which is coming faft upon me, when I could not have made fuch a collection as this; but even then I hope to enjoy it, and to spend the last years of my life in the ftudy of all others the moft befitting a man who is foon to enter into the world of fpirits,' &c.

In this paffage there is a little ambiguity of expreffion, the Author having mentioned the winter of old age as coming fast upon him,' and then adding in the past tenfe, when I could not have made fuch a collection as this,' which fuppofes it already come. This much however we may decipher, by comparing the Author with himself, that it is not for the benefit of the prefent age, for which he uniformly profeffes the moft fovereign contempt, that he has published the present work. He is indeed fo little anxious that his book should be generally

read

read or known, that he has given it a title which he believes will not be properly understood. Thofe, fays he, who ridicule the nobleft of all sciences under the name of metaphyfic, not only do not know the nature of the science, but appear to me not to understand even the title of Ariftotle's books which treat of it, but to imagine that it has fome connection with what we call in English phyfic.' We are apprehensive that the prefent performance of Lord Monboddo's will add confiderable force to this erroneous opinion; and that the ignorance of the age may at length become fo great, that our experimental men †, as his Lordship calls them, who judge of things by their effects, may prescribe a fheet of Ariftotle on the Categories, or Monboddo on Ancient Metaphyfics, instead of a dofe of fenna or rhubarb.

The part of his Lordship's work which has any connection with the title, appears to us, after a moft attentive perufal, a very confused and inaccurate explanation of the fcience taught at all our univerfities under the name of metaphyfics; of which there are feveral very good accounts in Latin, French, and English. As to the grand idea of his Lordship, that ftones and earths have fouls, as well as plants and animals, it appears at firft fight too ridiculous to deferve a ferious examination. But after he has spent fome hundred pages (in quarto) in confirming this doctrine, it turns out that all he contends for is the introducing of a new mode of expreffion equally unknown to the ancients and moderns. For the foul or mind which animates the rock of Gibraltar and the peak of Teneriff, poffeffes neither intelligence nor confcioufnefs, nor any of the principal qualities which are generally afcribed to mind, and means nothing more than the properties of gravitation, corpufcular attraction, &c. which we know from experience to belong to matter. Left we should be accused of miftaking the Author's meaning, which, from his careless and incorrect manner of writing is very liable to be misunderstood, we shall give the paffage at large, in his own words:

Having faid fo much of mind in general, and the human mind in particular, I will, in this chapter, explain more particularly the difference that I apprehend there is betwixt the feveral minds I have mentioned, beginning with the lowest kind, but which is abfolutely neceffary for carrying on the business of nature, and even for the existence of a material world.

And, firft, this fo powerful principle is that which unites and keeps together all the feveral bodies; in fo much that, without it, there would be no fuch thing as body in the univerfe. It is therefore the principle of union in body; and, as it is only mind that unites, or is active in any way, it is for that reafon, I think, if there

were

were no other. to be claffed under mind. It is by it that bodies are difcriminated from one another, and receive different appellations, fuch as earth, ftone, wood, &c.; for, without this principle, nothing could be called any thing, but all things would be mixed with all, according to the philofophy of Anaxagoras.

Secondly, It is this principle which gives the feveral motions to body, by which it may be faid to live, and to be animated. Of thefe motions Ariftotle has made a general divifion, and which I think full and compleat, into fuch as are in a straight line, fuch as are in a curve revolving into itself, and fuch as are mixed of thefe two; or, as I would rather chufe to express it, are neither the one nor the other. But I will divide them more particularly, beginning with those that are in a straight line.

And, first, there is that motion well known under the name of gravitation, by which bodies here below tend towards the centre of the earth. This motion, as I have obferved, cannot be accounted for from any material impulfe. It cannot be, as I think I have demonftrated, the matter itself which moves itself; and, therefore, it only remains, that it must be produced by mind. And, indeed, as gravitation does not operate in proportion to the furface of bodies, but to their mass or folid contents, it is impoffible to conceive how it fhould be produced by any material power, as matter acts only upon the furface of matter. The only question, then, is, Whether it be mind operating externally upon the body, or internally, that is, refiding in the body, and animating it? And I find that appears to have been a doubt concerning the motion of the celestial bodies in the days of Plat; for, though all the philofophers of thofe days, who were not Atheists, believed the motion of thefe bodies to be carried on by mind, fome appear to have thought, that it was by mind externally operating upon them, and, as it were, pufhing them on, while others thought that it was mind internal animating them, and moving them, as our minds move our bodies t. And, among the modern philofophers, I find one that has written an excellent book upon the human foul, viz. Mr. Baxter, who afcribes this motion of gravitation, as well as every other natural motion of body, to the immediate agency of the Deity. But, though I am forry to differ from an author whom I think the moft perfect Theist of any that has written in this century, I cannot help thinking it more agreeable to the analogy of nature, that the motive principles of thefe bodies should be internal. It is fo undoubtedly in our bodies; and every philofopher, in Britain at least, believes it to be fo likewife in the bodies of the brutes. Neither do I fee that there is any good reafon for stopping at the vegetable, betwixt which and the brutes there is no other difference but what fen

See this argument very well enforced by Dr. Clarke, in his Demonftration of the Being and Attributes of God, p. 83.'

+ Plato, in the 10th Book of Laws (p. 954. edit. Ficini), propofes three opinions upon this fubject. Two of them are thofe mentioned in the text; the third is, that mind external to the celeftial body did not immediately move it, and push it on, but did it by the intervention of another body of fire or air, which it affumed to itself, and fo moved body by body.'

REV. Sept. 1779.

fation