of wild abfurdities, decorated with a lively, but fantastic ftyle, and fo little drawn from truth, that the hiftorian degenerates into the mere novelift. VOLTAIRE's want of talents in criticifm is proportioned to his hifto rical defects. Sublimity of conception is: familiarly facrificed to a vein of buffoonery like many an inferior wit, whatever the expence, he must have his jeft. His ftric tures on MILTON and SHAKESPEARE, for whofe beauties his affected difrelish evinces an utter ignorance of English excellence, will forever rank him with fuperficial cavilers, while the lefs partial obferver will im the crime of WILLIAM was the monopoly of a large tract of ground, at the expenfe of the property, and (what was at that time as material as the game laws have fince denied it to be) the national recreation of the people? He pulled down houfes, even whole towns, which depopulated a country, the face of which, from his making choice of this (1) particular spot, may be prefamed to have been more immediately adapted to the chace. (1) New Foreft, Hampshire. impute his exaggerated cenfures to an invidious difpofition, conscious of an incapacity to emulate the worth it condemns. But, of all tyrants, literary tyrants are the moft intolerable; and VOLTAIRE's defpotifm in the press is but an appendix to the defpotism of his clofet. Ferney is the feat of a poffeffor, who in trifles cannot brook control. His more recent rhapsodies, on subjects of morality, grossly patched with ribaldry and profaneness, are the puny offspring of irreverend dotage. Thefe follies are below contempt, having fearce a glimmering of genius to recommend them. -I know not whether it may be allowed, to infert the author of Lexiphanes in the foregoing lift of critics, his rancorous buffoonery excluding all imputation of literary merit. The following lines may serve as a monument to this nameless writer. While While YOUNG, with bold enthusiast raptures fraught, Points the dull cares of fublanary thought; a name. E. B. G. OBSER |