NESS, PEDANTRY and ILL-MANNERS. The goddess herself had claws like a cat, her head and ears resembled those of an ass; her teeth had fallen out before; her eyes turned inward, as if she looked only upon herself and her diet was the overflowing of her own gall.

Up rofe the Goddess and said, it is I who give wisdom to infants and idiots; by me children grow wifer than their parents; by me beaux become politicians and School-boys judges of philofophy. By me fophifters debate and conclude upon the depths of knowledge; and coffee-house wits, inftinct by me, can correct an author's ftyle and display his minutest errors, without understanding a fyllable of his matter or of his language. By me ftriplings spend their judgment as they do their eftate, before it comes into their hands. It is I who have depofed wit and knowledge from their empire over Poetry and advanced myself in their stead. But come my aged parents and you my children hear, and thou my beauteous fifter; let us afcend my chariot, and hafte to affift our de

vout votaries, who are now sacrificing to us a hecatomb, as I perceive by that grateful fmell which reaches my noftrils.-SWIFT.

4. LISTEN to the confeffion of an illuftrious finner; the Coryphæus of the amusing and new found art, or artifice, of modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the man of genius; but when Mr. Campbell vindicated his immortal brother with all the inspiration of the family feeling, our critic, who is one of those great artists who acquire at length the utmost indifference even for their own works, generously avowed, that, "a certain tone of exaggeration is incidental we fear to the fort of writing in which we are engaged. Reckoning a little too much on the dulness of our readers, we are often led to overstate our fentiments; when a little controverfial warmth is added to a little love of effect, an excess of colouring steals over the canvas, which ultimately offends no eye fo much as our own." But what if this love of effect in the critic has been too often ob

tained at the entire coft of the literary characters the fruits of whofe ftudious days at this moment lie withering in oblivion, or whofe genius the critic has deterred from pursuing the career it had opened for itself! To have filenced the learned, and to have terrified the modeft, is the barbarous triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary republic departed from us, when the vacillating public blindly confecrated the edicts of the demagogues of literature whoever they may be. -D' Is

RAELI.

Death.

T is impoffible that any thing, fo natural, fo neceffary and fo univerfal as DEATH, fhould ever have been defigned by Providence as

an evil to mankind.-SWIFT.

2. THE more we fink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That ftate is an eternal Spring, ever fresh

and flourishing. Now to pass from midnight into noon on the fudden; to be decrepid one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a defirable change. To call this dying is an abufe of language. - JEREMY COLLIER.

3. THE fublimity* of wisdom is to do thofe things living, which are to be defired when dying. For the death of the Righteous is like the descending of ripe and wholesome fruits from a pleasant and florid tree. Our fenfes entire, our limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures; after provision made for our children, with a bleffing entailed upon pofterity, in the prefence of our friends, our dearest relative clofing our eyes and binding our feet, leaving a good name behind us. JEREMY TAYLOR.

* Hic eft apex fummæ fapientiæ, ea viventem facere, quæ morienti effent appetenda.

F

The Death of Socrates. AVING thus fpoken, he arose and went into an inner room to wafh himself; Crito following him

enjoined us to stay till his return. We therefore waited, difcourfing among ourfelves of the things that had been commemorated by him and conferring our judgments concerning them. And we frequently fpoke of the calamity that seemed to impend over us by his death; concluding it would certainly come to pafs, that as fons deprived of their father, fo fhould we difconfolately spend the remainder of our life. After he had been washed and his children had been brought to him (for he had two fons very young and a third almost a youth) and his wives alfo were come; he fpake to them before Crito, and gave them his last commands: fo he gave orders to his wives and children to retire. Then he came back to us. By this time the day had declined almost to the fetting of the fun; for he had staid long in the room where he washed himself.