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unexpectedly great, he regularly ter. It is in the domestick circle

melted into tears.

SOCIETY.

Man is inconsiderable by his single exertions: it is only by uniting his efforts with those of his species that he produces any thing of consequence. The bee is a small insect, and the ant still smal ler, yet by association they build themselves a name and a monument more valuable, than the solitary lion is able to boast.

CIGARRS.

In face of a host of arguments our literary loungers contumaciously insist on being indulged the gratification of tickling their noses and burning their tongues. If you allege that the practice is vulgar and democratick, you are answered, Sir W. Raleigh is equally famous as a man of fashion and philosopher, as for his habit of smoking. Should you object to them the ladies' dislike to the practice, they tell you, that queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory, was fond of a pipe, and used humorously to say, that all the pleasures of the evening ended in smoke. If lastly you oppose to it kingly authority, urging that James I. wrote a treatise against the smoking of base tobacco, the smokers will reply, we burn none but what is good.

DOMESTICK PLEASURES.

Abroad men sometimes pass for more, and sometimes for less, than they are worth. The politician rolls himself up like a hedge-hog before strangers; but in private he shoots his quills. Tiberius was celebrated by those who did not know him; but his rhetorical tutor hesitated not to pronounce him Luto et sanguine maceratum. Liberty and leisure develope charac

in the family parlour, in his gown and slippers, in giving orders to his servants, that a man is thoroughly seen. Here he acts without disguise or restraint. Here he assumes no unnatural airs of importance, but calmly lays aside his foreign manners, and all his extravagant pretensions. Whether accustomed to rule in the senate, to expound in the desk, or to contend in the field, he claims no privilege from his factitious consequence, when he enters his own mansion. The tenderness of a wife instantly arches his brow, and he gladly exchanges the robe or the sword, the high-toned voice and the stately port, for the prattle of his children, and the puerilities and sports of the hearth. Here, unpinioned by fashion, he acknowledges the dominion of nature, and neither a stranger nor a bachelor intermeddleth with his joy. He will not blush that has a father's

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ART OF READING.

To read, says M. Reytaz, is not to collect letters and syllables; it is not to pronounce words and sentences; it is to represent the thoughts of a discourse in their appropriate colours. It is to blend the different passages in such a manner, as not to injure each other; but, on the contrary, to give to each mutual strength and assistance. It is to distinguish by the accent, what is only argumentative, from what is pathetick and oratorical; it is to discern any important end in a sentence, in order to detach it from the rest, and express it without affectation, and without the appearance of design; it is to convey the idea, rather than the expressions, the sentiments rather than the words; it is to follow the impulse of the discourse in such a manner, that the delivery may be quick or slow, mild or impetuous, according to the emotions it should excite.

POPE.

Attached to the thread of every man's life is a little medal, whereon his name is inscribed, which Time, waiting on the shears of Fate, catches up, as it falls from

the inexorable steel, and bears to the river Lethe; into which, were it not for certain birds, flying about its banks, it would be immediately immerged. But these seize the medals ere they fall, and bear them for a while up and down in their beaks with much noise and flutter; but careless of their charge, or unable to support it, they most of them soon drop their shining prey one after another into the oblivious stream. Nevertheless, among these heedless carriers of fame, are a few swans, who, when they catch a medal, convey it carefully to the temple of Immortality, where it is consecrated. These swans of late have been raræ aves. What innu merable names have been dropped into the dark stream of Oblivion, for one that has been consecrated in the temple of Immortality!The name of Alexander Pope there shines conspicuous.

SWANS.

The swan never frequents the Padus, nor the banks of the Cays ter in Lydia,each of them a stream celebrated by the ancient poets for Horace calls the resort of swans. Pindar Dircæum Cignum, and, in himself another ode, supposes changed into a swan.

Virgil speaks of his poetical brethren in the same manner.

Vere, tuum nomen.

Cantantes sublime ferent ad sidera cygni.

When he speaks of them figuratively, he gives to them a power of melody; but when he refers to them as a naturalist, he gives them their natural uncouth sound.

Dant sonitum rauci per stagna loquacia cygni.

The swan seldom is heard except when on the wing, and its notes

then have no inconsiderable affinity done thus, he will be convinced he to those of the owl. might as well have read it backward.

Milton's description of the swan is as beautiful, as almost any found among the ancient writers, notwitstanding their great partiality to this bird.

The swan, with arched neck Between her white wings mantling, proudly rows

Her state with wary feet.

I find by an act of Edw. IV. c. 6. "no one, possessing a freehold of less clear yearly value than five marks, shall be permitted to keep swans, other than the son of our sovereign lord the king."

And in such high estimation were they then had in England, that by II. Henry VIII. c. 17. the punishment for taking their eggs was "imprisonment for a year and a day, and to be fined at the king's good pleasure."-It seems they are not quite so highly valued by those who resort to Hudson's Bay, and annually kill about three or four thousand, which are salted, pickled, and sold for "very good sea stores."

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MILO OF CROTONA.

The champion who most distinguished himself in the Olympick Games, in the Palé, at wrestling, according to Pausanias, was Milo of Crotona; he gained no less than six Olympick, and as many Pythian crowns. There are so many instances of the prodigious strength of this famous wrestler, and most of them so well known, that it would be as endless as impertinent to cite them. But I cannot forbear

producing one, as remarkable for the singularity, as the issue of the experiment. Milo, to give a proof of his astonishing power, used to take a pomegranate, which, without squeezing or breaking, he held so fast by the mere strength of his fingers, that no person was able to take it from him—“ nobody but his mistress," says Elian. But however weak he may have been with regard to the fair sex, his superiour force was universally acknowledged by men, as will appear in the following

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For the Anthology.

Scribimus indocti,......... HOR. EPIST.

WE should do injustice to our country to deny, that she is prolifick in authors. Were we to judge of the progress of the mind by the number of works, which daily issue from the press, we might congratulate ourselves on living in this enlightened age, when the weakness of humanity no longer presents obstacles to the march of reason, and when authors compose with as much facility as they print their works. We can not complain of want of novelty on any subject. Some quit the loom and spindle to wield the historick pen; others wander from the circle of domestick duties, or the routine of mechanick life, among the illusions of a heated imagination, mistaking her distorted features for the scenery of nature; or are humbly contented to glean the sprigs of laurel, which have fallen from the brow of genius. Even the stall of the cobbler is metamorphosed into the workshop of the muses, and its inhabitant is occupied in the double employment of manufacturing leather and fabricating verses. Conversation, one would imagine, would afford a convenient channel to this superfluity of wit; and that these minds, contented with the homage of a circle of sycophants,more ignorant than themselves, who echo all their thoughts and imitate all their actions, would never burthen the publick with their crude ideas, nor seek to gain a height, which their feeble pinions were never meant to reach. But it is the prerogative of folly to proclaim her character to the world; and, unfortunately, the press is too often made the Vol. III. No. 10. 3T

From

herald of her presence.
this corrupted source daily flow
those streams of false taste and lit-
erary absurdity, which have inun-
dated the republick of letters.
Like the rich ornaments of a
mausoleum, the splendid outside
of their works covers a mere ca-
put mortuum. Mistaking verbosity
of expression for fecundity of
thought, and the strainings of a
witless brain for the deductions of
reason, we may say with the poet,

They write on all things, but on noth-
ing well.

But we leave these authors, and cannot wish them a greater punishment while in this world, than to be continually surrounded by their own works, the monuments of their ignorance and vanity.

Love of method is discoverable in all our actions. This principle is even extended to works of the mind and imagination, and we anticipate with as much pleasure the developement of it in a literary composition, as we expect it illustrated in a piece of mechanism. Fine writing therefore, to produce a permanent interest,must discover that, in the conduct of the whole, order as well as beauty has been consulted. The mind is often amused by the vagaries of the imagination, or hurried along by the aberrations of genius, but she returns with pleasure to dwell on the works of those authors, who gratify the taste without offending the judgment. The art of fine writing is acquired by degrees. Avec quelque talent, says Rous-, seau, qu'on puisse être né, l'art d'écrire ne s'apprend pas tout d'eu

coup. Literary excellence is not the effect of an accidental ray of genius, nor of a momentary glow of enthusiasm; the former must be tempered by industry, the latter by judgment. The mind must struggle with her new ideas, and, by reiterated efforts, reduce them to order and arrange them with taste. Man is born with an unwrought mine within him; and, while he extracts the golden ore and refines the precious metal, he gives acumen to the very instruments, with which he works.

No maxim perhaps has done more injury to the cause of letters, than that, by which a writer is directed to feel his subject, before he attempts its expression. We are led to believe, that if the sacred flame can once be produced, the whole composition will glow with an equal warmth, and that this excitement of mind will naturally be followed by a correct view of the subject, a just arrangement of parts, and a perspicuous and elegant language. Instead therefore of suffering the mind tranquilly to pursue her train of ideas, and by patience and perseverance to arrange them in a lucid order and clothe them in a just expression, an artificial warmth is excited, by which they are expanded into bombast, or dissipated into "thin air." The mind of a writer must ever be at ease and, like the Alps, tower sublime and unmoved amid the conflict of the passions. No modern writer perhaps discovers more warmth of imagination or rapidity of conception than Rous seau. His success in letters however was the consequence of the unwearied exertion of a superiour mind. Je les consacrais, says he in speaking of his works, les insomnies de mes nuits. Je meditais dans mon lit, à yeux fermés et je tournois et rétournois mes pe

It

riodes, dans ma tête,avec des peines incroyables. His works are composed with such spirit and enthusiasm, that we are disposed to imagine he never took up the pen, but when he glowed with those transports, with which he agitates the bosoms of his readers. was, however, only by preserving a free and tranquil mind, that he was able so successfully to combine in his works every circumstance, which could add strength to his ideas, or elegance to his composition. In the imitative and mechanical arts we find that, independent of peculiar talents, success is generally proportional to the degree of labour bestowed on their objects; and may not the observation be extended to the art of writing? Is the exertion of mind in the latter less, because its powers are differently directed? or does it require less genius and industry to perfect a literary work, than is developed in the production of a painting, or a statue? A genius like Raphael, before he commits his images to the canvas, selects from the materials, which his imagination had collected from the works of nature; he contrasts, combines, disposes of his light and shade; he varies with judgment and groups with taste, till having breath'd over the whole the charm of ideal beauty, he seizes the pencil and with patient industry gradually gives to the fleeting vi sions of his imagination the permanence of real existence. But this is not the effect of mere impulse. It is the creation of genius, aided by study and developed by industry. Hence also the writer, ambitious of literary fame, is convinced with Pope, that

True ease in writing comes from art,

not chance, Like the painter, he attends to what may be termed the mechanical part

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