66 PARTY PASSION. WELL, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?"-" Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!"-" Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?" Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't he?"— "Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!" GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a good man. Dedication to the Fox. Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo. Ἡ δὲ (ἀρετὴ) ποιητοῦ συνέζευκται τῇ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου καὶ οὐχ οἷόντε ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ποιητὴν, μὴ πρότερον yevnОévтa avopa ȧyalóv. Lib. I. p. 33. folio. γενηθέντα ἄνδρα MILTON AND BEN JONSON. THOSE Who have more faith in parallelism than "Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation. STATISTICS. WE all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child. MAGNANIMITY. THE following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism : that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted : Dædaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris Nos vero illo donati sumus genio, Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus, Ingrato adsimus pectore. Non curamus stultorum quid opinio Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus ! Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita, Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus, Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet, Versificantis grammatista encomium, Procedat nudus, quem non ornant nubila, Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine, Id vere plus quam satis est. The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race; excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the cognizance of our "sober judicious critics," the men of "sound common sense;" that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c. must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort is," Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your rea son!" By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the design and tendency of Bruno's Bestia Triomphante; the object of which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion, and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual discovery. But the principal and most important truth taught in this allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience; that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which are in God's power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of the |