"What has this book," exclaims Sterne of Tristram, "done more than the Legation of to you," says Pope to Congreve, “I am writing a confession. I have got (I cannot tell how) such a custom of throwing myself out upon paper without reserve." The last time Dr. Warton saw Young, he was censuring the inflated style of poetry. He said that such tumultuous writers reminded him of a passage in Milton: Others, with vast Typhæan rage more fell, Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air And yet Sterne must have known that his book was steeped in corruption; Pope, that even his commonest notes of invitation were artificial; and Young, that a swelling extravagance of phrase was the besetting sin of his genius. We have an amazing instance of this selfblindness in Hogarth. Talking to a visitor about his favourite line of beauty, he affirmed that no man who really understood it could, by any accident, be ungraceful in his manners. "I myself," he added, "from my perfect knowledge of it, should not hesitate as to the becoming mode of offering anything to the greatest monarch." And at the very moment when he was enlarging upon the advantages of being familiar with the line of beauty, his own attitude was so unspeakably ridiculous, that his friend struggled, almost in vain, to refrain from laughter. These examples are so many calls to reflection, selfexamination, and knowledge. After the Bible, a man ought to make himself his chief reading. He must not skip a hard page, but work out the meaning. AUGUST 5th.-Taking up again the thread of poetical imitations which I began to unwind the other day, I notice a very pleasing description by Aaron Hill, which, in one or two lines, is even tenderer than the Pleasures of Memory. Southey commends him as deserving respect for his talents and virtues, and "holding the first place for liberality, and beneficence among the literary men of his country." He brought a blush into the cheek of Pope. His versification is often musical and swelling-as upon a lady at her spinnet Fearless with face oblique, her formful hand And sweeps the sounding range with magic ease. But the lines, "Alone in an Inn at Southampton, April 25, 1737," furnish the most favourable evidence of his talents: AARON HILL. Pensive and cold this room in each changed part I view, and shock'd, from every object start. There hung the watch, that, beating hours from day, Told its sweet owner's lessen ing life away; There her dear diamond taught the sash my name; 'Tis gone! frail image of love, life, and fame. That glass she dress'd at, keeps her form no more; Not one dear footstep tunes th' unconscious floor. There sat she,-yet those chairs no sense retain, And busy recollection starts ROGERS. As o'er the dusky furniture I bend, Each chair awakes the feel ing of a friend; The storied arras, source of fond delight, With old achievement charms the wilder'd sight; The screen unfolds its manycolour'd chart. The clock still points its moral to the heart. That faithful monitor 'twas heaven to hear, When soft it spoke a pro mised pleasure near; And has its sober hand, its simple chime, Forgot to trace the feather'd feet of Time ? That massive beam with curious carvings wrought, Where the caged linnet soothed my pensive thought; Those muskets, cased with venerable rust; Those once-loved forms still breathing through their dust, Still from the frame in mould gigantic cast, Starting to life,—all whisper of the Past. The watch ticking in his wife's sickness, and the glass that no longer retained her image, seem to me circumstances of affectionate grief most touchingly conceived. The more we read, the more the original stock of thought dwindles. The famous description, in the Essay on Criticism, of the intermediate heights of literature ascending before the eyes of the climbing pilgrim, which Johnson praised as the most apt, sublime, and proper simile in the English language, has been shown by Warton to be copied, almost literally, from Drummond. The outline having been traced over the glass of memory, the artist laid on the colouring. Pope sought for pearls in some of the prose writers of the seventeenth century, who, in his day, were known to few scholars, and scarcely read by any. In them he found many of those brilliant sayings and axioms of moral wisdom, which, polished by taste and sharpened by skill, present such rows of glittering points in his verse. The ingenious designation of one year - a reservoir to keep and spare: The next a fountain spouting through his heir, has been traced to the Church History of Fuller. The same witty and eloquent writer asks, with reference to the contemptuous neglect with which false and scandalous rumours should be regarded, "What madness were it to plant a piece of ordnance to beat down an aspen leaf!" Pope, in his satire upon Lord Hervey, has the vivacious and cutting interrogation Who breaks a butterfly upon the wheel? Fuller says, that Monica, the mother of Augustine," saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body." Waller, describing the calmness of the mind when the storms of youth and manhood have subsided, introduces the same image into his celebrated lines: The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd Lets in new light, through chinks which time has made. While speaking of these resemblances of thought, I may notice a curious coincidence between Dryden and Lord Bacon. Dryden says of a satirist He makes his desperate passes with a smile. Lord Bacon remarks upon controversial writers upon subjects connected with the church-"To search and rip up wounds with a laughing countenance." Tickell wrote a poem on the death of Addison: |