Now the emotion which this picture excites, results not merely from the images of touch and motion, conveyed by the epithets warm cheek, and rising bosom, which are of course inapplicable to the canvas; but from the charming associations enveloped in the phrases of the second line, including ideas of youth, health, fragrance, lightness, ardour, grace, and lustre, with which this celestial being is instantly encircled in the imagination of every reader of taste and feeling.

If you seriously inquire for the propriety or meaning of the epithet liquid in the line you have quoted, you will see, by reading the language of the aerial forms in the next stanza, that it means smooth, melodious, worthy of the skies; and this indeed is neither remarkably poetical, nor is it vulgar. But what shall we think of that criticism, which, to depreciate the force of Gray's numbers, resorts to 'examples taken from the little jeu d'esprit on the drowning of a cat, and searches several odes for false rhymes, when more than half as many may be produced from the single ode of Dryden on Alexander's feast. Once more; either you or I have mistaken the mode of referring to

the ode on the progress of poesy; for the passage to which I referred is the third stanza of the first ternary, and not of the third; which you may still think however no better than doggerel. There are some ears, which cannot distinguish be tween a jig and the movements in an oratorio; or, in American phrase, between Old Hundred and Yankee Doodle.

The admirers of Gray will not only consent to be laughed at, but will even join in the luugh, when you shall produce your parody of the Bard. But they are not now first to learn that the highest sublimity is most susceptible of being burlesqued. Even the passage in Genesis, which extorted the admiration of Longinus, might be "successfully imitated," at least in his own opinion, by the man, who should say, make a fire in my chamber, and the fire was made." You have closed your letter with a benevolent wish, which I beg leave to reciprocate with a little variation; that instead of employing your acknowledged talents as a poet, in burlesque imitations of Gray, you would have the goodness to give us an ode equal to the Bard.

THE AUTHOR OF THE REMARKER, NO.34

A DESCRIPTION of the several classes of talkers, as in a former number of the different kinds of thinkers, might afford the readers of the Remarker no small share of entertainment. The man

he who is silent on topicks with which he is familiar, and he who aims to be learned on those of which he is ignoraut; the long story teller, and the artificial wit, might all have their places assigned in the new classification of talkers. But certain circumstances have led me, instead of a scientifick arrangement and analysis, to offer, in the present number, such loose hints as have occurred to me, and have been suggested by others.

Taciturnity is often interpreted as a mark of wisdom; and its opposite is estimated according to the ability of the loquacious to please or instruct. It is singular, that we should often discover the most positive significancy in silence, aad brand him for a blockhead, who, in his social intercourse, sometimes overleaps the bounds of discretion. A wise man, however, while he is too proud to expose his ignorance, is generally willing to impart his knowledge; and if he become a mere listener, when the discourse turns on subjects that are familiar to him, we are authorised to class him among those captious cynicks, who delight to prey upon the absurdities of mankind. But, there is in some, a reserve that cannot be accounted for, either from pride or affectation; a reserve wholly constitutional, and which, if it can ever be entirely subdued, cannot be overcome without effort. This natural disposition is often cherished and confirmed by habits of seclusion; and hence it is, that we sometimes find the scholar, who has never relished the beauties of ancient or modern literature, except in his study, unable, at the literary fair, to hold competition with those, who have been accustomed to bring their wares to market. Still less can he expect to rival the literary fop, who knows precisely what

is in demand, and who, though he has as few changes of dialogue as the finical gentleman has of dress in his wardrobe, is very knowing in what will certainly please.

The Remarker thinks it proper to communicate to his readers, certain complaints, from different correspondents, of the awkward situa tion, in which they have severally been placed by the pedantry, affec tation, or ignorance of those with whom they have occasionally associated.

Mr. Remarker,

I am one of your plain, sedentary scholars, read my Latin and Greek, and am not altogether insensible to the pleasures arising from the study of modern belles-lettres. But I seldom commit to memory the fine sayings of the ancients, and cannot repeat two couplets from any modern poet. What I would chiefly complain of is, that a shallow fellow of my acquaintance, who has procured a gradus ad sententiolas, Dodd's beauties of Shakespeare, and several other excellent books to abridge the labour of reading, is continually, wherever I meet with him, interlarding his discourse with passages drawn at second hand from great writers, by means of his scholar's as-, sistants. Sometimes he will pretend to forget whence he has procured those treasures, which he lavishes with such profusion. "It is Horace, Sir," he has said to me more than once, when justifying the levi. ties of which he has been guilty, "it is Horace, I think, who says; dulce est desipere in loco." "Is it not Virgil, who observes, in speaking of the happiness of agricultural life; O fortunatos nimium, &c." venal, if. I remember rightly, has, what I would apply to this remark. able genius (such for instance as a

"Ju

juggler or rope dancer,) “rara avis in terris, c." Such rattle may be very well borne once; but my misfortune is, that, apprehending me to be a scholar, he persecutes me with this same sort of entertainment, in whatever company we meet. It is true, he always gives warning of the attack to be made on my patience; for, like a certain Italian poet I have read of, he invariably has the same exordium. Now, Sir, is it right, that these superficial coxcombs, who have acquired a small, jumbled miscellany, should be suffered at pleasure to retail the little atories of their memory to the annoyance of those, who have some relish for the intercommunity of so cial and literary discourse. The gentleman will probably know this sketch of his picture; though he has set for it so often, that it might have been drawn much nearer to perfection. With this conviction, I shall neither expose his name, nor subscribe my own.

I am a widowed lady, who have been persuaded by my female friends, to send my daughter to a boarding school, to learn what are called the accomplishments I had the good fortune to receive a tolerable education under the care of my parents; but I was utterly astonished at the novelty, exhibited by the directress of the institution, in the use of terms and in the application of her knowledge. At my first interview, she placed such a host of "tall opaque words" between me and her meaning, that I was more than once on the point of making my escape. Having occasion to speak of some of that class of misses, commonly

called romps, and the vexation they caused her, she exclaimed with infinite dignity," O, that I could revive the ostracism !" In relating to me, the stupidity of a pupil in performing a problem on the globe, she burst into a sublime apostrophe to the immortal Newton, and lamented that prodigious disparity of intellect, in consequence of which, few could learn even a small portion of all that he discovered.

I am no enemy, Sir, to a modest display of the little learning that our sex is permitted to acquire; but I would pray to be delivered from such a wanton misapplication of it, as I have witnessed in the lady I have mentioned. In truth nothing is more disgusting to those of either sex, who have any knowledge or taste, than a female pedant. She is entitled to more praise, who apples her philosophy to improvements in domestick economy, than the woman, who acquires just learning enough to expose herself to the ridicule of a satirist; who stores her memory with trite axioms of the ancients, which she finds in magazines, with the chistory of institutions for which she makes some absurd parallels; or with that mere scum of science, which serves only to excite the contempt of the learned.

I am, Sir, Yours,

SOPHIA. My friend Mythologes has examined every niche in the Pantheon, and is perfectly acquainted with the genealogy of every God and Goddess acknowledged by the ancients. He often complains of the ignorance of his associates in the fabulous history of Greece and Rome, and has more than once felt a glow of shame upon his cheek for the ludicrous blunders he has witnessed. The following letter to the Remarker shews how much a man of his sensi

bility is wounded by that stupidity, which, to ordinary men, is a source of diversion.

SIR,

I was the other day paying a vis. it to a good neighbour of mine, who had a son just returned from college. The young gentleman took the liberty to compliment his sisters by telling them they were "the very pictures of Hygeia herself." The father, not willing to appear ignorant of that personage, said, hastily, "Ah, that was the fellow that had a hundred heads!" "Oh,no my dear,"replied his gentle wife," that monster was the Hydra." My good humoured friend was by no means discompos. ed, and contented himself with exclaiming, "How much education is improved since my time !" It may not be entirely useless to give this a place in one of your future numbers. It may tend to check some in the impertinent and ill-timed use of what learning they have, and prevent those who have none, from a needless and ridiculous confession of their igno

It is not the pedantick, the superficial, and the ignorant only, who evince sometimes that they know not when to speak, and when to be silent. There is a sort of men in all professions, who are desirous of appearing to be profound in every thing. You will sometimes hear a lawyer or physician imparting to divines what he considers a novel explanation of a text of scripture, with which the mere catechumen in biblical criticism is better acquainted than he; and the clergyman laying down with no small parade political Vol. V. No. IX.

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axioms, as trite as the common appellations of contending parties. Such men, in their particular voçations, where they excel, are very calm and unobtrusive, and are willing to see their inferiours contending for victory. But bring them to the ground where their compe tency is questionable, to a contest in which they are thought to have an inferiour, or at most but an equal chance for the prize, and, no longer remaining careless spectators, they enter the lists with all the zeal of youthful combatants.

This is a topick on which the Remarker might enlarge; but he has answered the intention of this number, if he have brought into view, by the aid of his correspondents, without aiming at personality, certain characters who shall recognise themselves, and take a friendly hint.

Advice, though when administered gratuitously to individuals it is seldom palateable, when offered at random, can neither be offensive in itself, nor impertinent in him who bestows it.

The Remarker, therefore, would recommend to all gentlemen who are in the habit of enlivening every subject with a quotation, to repeat, according to the best of their recollection, and seldom to appeal to another for their verbal correctness, for the work whence the passage is taken, or the name of the author. His fair sisters he would guard equally against an excessive or affected timidity in the use of their knowledge, and a needless, pedantick display of it. The ignorant he would advise to listen with apparent wisdem to the learned; and the learn ed to acknowledge, what may otherwise be discovered to their mortification, that in some things they have their superiours.