own, and afraid that the reader's mind may be injured by so abstruse inquiries, use their rattle to recall them from such studies. I hope, Sir, you are by this time convinced of the utility of the magazines in question. I proceed, now, to another subject of animadversion. You do not treat the Missionary Society with proper respect. Their object, Sir, is glorious; and though their success has not been so great in Otaheite as might have been expected, especially among the ladies, who, by the most authentic reports, are not without a fervent zeal, which has often contributed to easy conversion, yet have done and are doing very great good. The tenets of the Missionary Society, Sir, recall the mind equally from the errors of carnal reason and from the trifling duties and relations of temporal institutions. Add to this, Sir, that the qualifications of a teacher and preacher required by them do not demand the learning and talents of a Bishop Horsley or Watson, or a Principal Hill; their pastors can study their theology on board a ship, and turn their cabin into a divinity-school. * The clergy of the church of Scotland have, in my opinion, acted with great illiberality in discouraging in their General Assembly the theology issuing from those learned seminaries. I understand that some of the leading men in that body are themselves professors of theology, hence I suspect their motive to be jealousy. As many young Scotchmen betake themselves to the sea, they probably fear, that should our ships be converted into theological academies, professors of divinity may issue out in such numbers from Greenock, Leith, Wapping, and the back of the Point at Portsmouth, as to supersede the necessity of instruction from Drs. Hill and Arnot, Gerard and Brown. Envy is a base passion, and I am afraid that by it many of the clergy have been actuated; not professors of divinity only, but numbers of others. You may ask what is it they should envy? why, the compendious mode by which the Missionary teachers can arrive at the requisite knowledge: the Clergy have prepared themselves for the office of teachers by the circuitous and tedious way of study and disquisition; the Missionary teachers have discovered a short cut, which brings them to their journey's end without the trouble of reasoning and induction. Perhaps the writer here alludes to a gentleman who, after having commanded à ship with considerable reputation, has since be taken himself to field-preaching, not a very common amusement among the officers in the Navy or merchant service. ⚫ I admonish your correspondent, Christopher Canthate, that I consider his intended inquiry as licentious, and will probe to the bottom any observation which I think derogatory to the dignity of either the Gospel or Evangelical Magazines, the Missionary Society, Seceders, Methodistical Preachers who have been handicraftsmen, (of whom, I confess, there are not a few) or any others that I approve of as promoters of genuine religion; at the same time I will not undertake to explain either the prose writings or spiritual hymns of the said magazines: the hymns especially, as even my own cause will not make me swerve from the truth, I must confess, are rather unintelligible, and of that kind which boys learn at school, under the name of nonsense-verses, an exercise at which they are required to labour until they learn to write sense; and, although that period, in the case in question, may be still at a great distance, take my word for it, they are well intended, and the composers of them do not write nonsense, knowing it to be such. I am, Sir, AN ENEMY TO ALL LICENTIOUSNESS. Determined to adhere to impartiality, we have inserted the above, which prevents Mr. Canthate's introductory observations on the taste, logic, and morality of certain hymns, sermons, and exhortations, from being admitted this month. In what Mr. Canthate calls his History of Methodism, we suspect he has formed his notions rather at second-hand than from his own observation and knowledge. We can discover plagiarism from the Spiritual Quixote, Bath Guide, Humphrey Clinker, the Minor, and the Adventures of a Guinea, in which works the authors we hope are sometimes rather painters from fancy than from actual history. ON THE GERMAN DRAMA. ALTHOUGH the corrupt taste of the present age for theatrical amusements has been deprecated and attacked from various quarters, yet the mania seems so far to govern the understanding, as to defy the utmost exertions of argument and reason. It would be matter of curious speculation to endeavour to discover by what means, and by what right, the German translations first gained and now keep possession of tl.e stage. Is it owing to their superior plot and incident, or more just delineation of living manners? As to their wit, I will leave the Dutch poets to contend with them for superiority there. Shakspeare is, perhaps, the only remote dramatic writer to whom his country has paid the honour justly due to his memory; yet be must for a time yield to the prevailing passion. I never could account for the total disuse into which Massinger has fallen; except by the retired, unfashionable scholar, he is never read; yet in some of his plays, if he is inferior to any, it is to Shakspeare alone. To the names of Shakspeare and Massinger succeed a catalogue of writers, which would do honour to any age or nation; yet they too are laid upon the shelf, or thrust aside to make room for the writers of jacobinism and infidelity. To one surveying life at a distance, it would appear scarcely possible that a nation could be so far ena moured of absurdity and wickedness, as to prefer to the plays of Shakspeare, Otway, Rowe, Vanbrugh, and Congreve, the immorality of Kotzebue, and the blasphemy of Schiller. When the stage was under the management and direction of Mr. Garrick, the plays of our favourite bard were succeeded in representation by productions of acknowledged merit; and it was his pride to supply the stage with examples of morality and virtue, that ultimately might tend to the propagation of piety. But the theatre is now peopled by such characters as never were seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topics which will never arise in the commerce of mankind.'* With respect to the after-pieces, by whatever name they are distinguished, they are scarcely superior to the drolls of Elkanah Gettle, as performed at Bartholomew Fair. Is this the land Where Johnson rigid gravity beguil'd, Whilst Reason through her critic fences smil'd ; Where Nature list'ning stood whilst Shakspeare play'd, And listen'd to the work herself had made?' I sincerely wish that the people may so far recover their sentimental faculty, or, as it is usually called, taste, as to discover beauty from deformity, and be able to appreciate the real merit of their own dramatic writers. When, Sir, may we expect to see the present system changed; and the stage, which was originally intended for the reformation of vice, upon its former footing? As for the present representations, I think them a disgrace to the age in which we live, and upon the nation. STAMFORD, Sept. 8, 1799. • Preface to Johnson's Shakspeare. OCTAVIUS. libel POETRY. WAR ELEGY. * FLED were the beams that clos'd a lowring day, From Belgian fens the British soldiers move; These plaintive sounds-they pierce the Night's dull ear- Ah! what avails retreat from mortal foes, And save the Soldier from a frozen bed? Lo! Desolation roams the blasted heath! Hark! 'tis the father's, mother's, child's expiring cry! And thick the various lifeless victims lie I As fit the shades of this eventful night What scenes of horror strike the woe-fraught eye! But cold, insensate, 'midst the frozen dead, VOL. I. The subject of this Elegy is taken from a pathetic description of the unparal-leled sufferings of the British troops in their retreat through Holland, in the years 1794 and 1795, in an Accurate and Impartial Narrative of the War by an Officer of the Guards.' Bare is her beauteous bosom, fairer far Stretch'd by her side her late lov'd husband lies; Nor press the playful prattler in his arms! Fall, in soft show'rs, ye hapless pair, for you! O'er thy cold grave may Spring's first verdure bloom, While Elfin bands by night illume thy tomb BENEATH yon lordly oak, whose antique root The poor, sequester'd, dying Stag is laid! * We could not (says the writer of this Narrative) proceed an hundred yards without perceiving the dead bodies of men, women, and children, in every direc tion. One scene made an impression upon my memory which time will never be able to efface. Near another cart, a little further on the common, we perceived a stout looking man, and a beautiful young woman, with an infant about seven months old at the breast, all three frozen and dead. The mother had most certainly expired in the act of suckling her child, as, with one breast exposed, she lay upon the drifted snow, the milk to all appearance in a stream drawn from the nipple by the babe, and instantly congealed. The infant seemed as if its lips had but just then been disengaged, and it reposed its little head upon the mother's bosom, with an o erflow of milk, frozen as it trickled from the mouth; their countenances were perfectly composed and fresh, resembling those of persons in a sound and tranquil slumber.' |