if not to lust, yet to affections which are equally vile and sordid, the thirst of gold, or the cravings of ambition: for he can never be thought to be sincerely interested in the felicity of his child, who, when some of the means of happiness are lost by indiscretion, suffers his resentment to take away the

rest.

Among friends, sallies of quick resentment are extremely frequent. Friendship is a constant reciprocation of benefits, to which the sacrifice of private interest is sometimes necessary: it is common for each to set too much value upon those which he bestows, and too little upon those which he receives; this mutual mistake in so important an estimation, produces mutual charges of unkindness and ingratitude; each, perhaps, professes himself ready to forgive, but neither will condescend to be forgiven. Pride, therefore, still increases the enmity which it began ; the friend is considered as selfish, assuming, injurious, and revengeful; he consequently becomes an object of hatred; and while he is thus considered, to love him is impossible. But thus to consider him is at once a folly and a fault: each ought to reflect, that he is, at least in the opinion of the other, incurring the crimes that he imputes; that the foundation of their enmity is no more than a mistake; and that this mistake is the effect of weakness or vanity, which is common to all mankind: the character of both would then assume a very different aspect, love would again be excited by the return of its object, and each would be impatient to exchange acknowledgments, and recover the felicity which was so near being lost.

But if after we have admitted an acquaintance to our bosom as a friend, it should appear that we had mistaken his character; if he should betray our confidence, and use the knowledge of our affairs,

which perhaps he obtained by offers of service, to effect our ruin; if he defames us to the world, and adds perjury to falsehood; if he violates the chastity of a wife, or seduces a daughter to prostitution; we may still consider him in such circumstances as will incline us to fulfil the precept, and to regard him without the rancour of hatred or the fury of revenge.

Every character, however it may deserve punishment, excites hatred only in proportion as it appears to be malicious; and pure malice has never been imputed to human beings. The wretch, who has thus deceived and injured us, should be considered as having ultimately intended, not evil to us, but good to himself. It should also be remembered that he has mistaken the means; that he has forfeited the friendship of Him whose favour is better than life, by the same conduct which forfeited ours; and that to whatever view he sacrificed our temporal interest, to that also he sacrificed his own hope of immortality; that he is now seeking felicity which he can never find, and incurring punishment that will last for ever. And how much better than this wretch is he, in whom the contemplation of his condition can excite no pity? Surely if such an enemy hungers, we may, without suppressing any passion, give him food; for who that sees a criminal dragged to execution, for whatever crime, would refuse him a cup of cold water?

On the contrary, he whom God has forgiven must necessarily become amiable to man: to consider his character without prejudice or partiality, after it has been changed by repentance, is to love him; and impartially to consider it is not only our duty but our interest.

Thus may we love our enemies, and add a dignity to our nature of which pagan virtue had no

conception. But if to love our enemies is the glory of a Christian, to treat others with coldness, neglect, and malignity is rather the reproach of a fiend than a man. Unprovoked enmity, the frown of unkindness, and the menaces of oppression should be far from those who profess themselves to be followers of Him who in his life went about doing good; who instantly healed a wound that was given in his defence; and who, when he was fainting in his last agony, and treated with mockery and derision, conceived at once a prayer and an apology for his murderers: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

THE character of the scholars of the present age will not be much injured or misrepresented by saying, that they seem to be surperficially acquainted with a multitude of subjects, but to go to the bottom of very few. This appears in criticism and polite learning, as well as in the abstruser sciences: by the diffusion of knowledge its depth is abated.

Eutyches harangues with wonderful plausibility on the distinct merits of all the Greek and Roman classics, without having thoroughly and attentively perused, or entered into the spirit and scope of one of them. But Eutyches has diligently digested the dissertations of Rapin, Bouhours, Felton, Black

VOL. II.

C

14

wall, and
consolation

who can
knowledge
great hero
to speak
tedious di
the charac
mixed and
comprehe
do not ad
curacy and
To the
moralists
superficial

I am com
thors are
ment of th
but also
dents, I

the most

That M penetratio heart, and it, cannot

takes to t to poster amending

vain or ex these effe the imagin sions, by

plan, never changing him. Ye our celebr awkward

(

26

ADVENTURER.

49.

ACT ndized and almost deified, is here degraded o an abject slave of appetite and passion, and depaved even of her just and indisputable authority. As a Christian, and as a man, I despise, I detest sach debasing principles.

Rochefoucault, to give a smartness and shortness to his sentences, frequently makes use of the antithesis, a mode of speaking the most tiresome and disgusting of any, by the sameness and similarity of the periods. And sometimes, in order to keep up the point, he neglects the propriety and justness of the sentiment, and grossly contradicts himself. Happiness," says he, “consists in the taste, and not in the things: and it is by enjoying what a man loves that he becomes happy; not by having what others think desirable." The obvious doctrine con- . tained in this reflection is the great power of imagination with regard to felicity: but, adds the relector in a following maxim, "We are never so happy or so miserable as we imagine ourselves to be; which is certainly a plain and palpable contradiction of the foregoing opinion. And of such contradictions many instances might be alleged in this admired writer, which evidently show that he had not digested his thoughts with philosophical exact

ness and precision.

But the characters of La Bruyere deserve to be with spirit and propriety, without a total departure spoken of in far different terms. They are drawn from mature and resemblance, as sometimes is the in pretended pictures of life. In a few instavices only he has failed, by overcharging his porauts with many ridiculous features that cannot XISC together in one subject: as in the character Menaicas, the absent man, which, though apmued by one of my predecessors, is surely absurd false to nature. This author appears to be a

Case

warm admirer of virtue, and a steady promoter of her interest: he was neither ashamed of Christianity, nor afraid to defend it: accordingly, few have exposed the folly and absurdity of modish infidels, of infidels made by vanity and not by want of conviction, with so much solidity and pleasantry united: he disdained to sacrifice truth to levity and licentiousness. Many of his characters are personal, and contain allusions which cannot now be understood. It is, indeed, the fate of personal satire to perish with the generation in which it is written : many artful strokes in Theophrastus himself, perhaps, appear coarse or insipid, which the Athenians looked upon with admiration. A different age and different nation render us incapable of relishing several beauties in the Alchymist of Jonson, and in the Don Quixote of Cervantes.

Saint Evremond is a florid and verbose trifler, without novelty or solidity in his reflections. What more can be expected from one who proposed the dissolute and affected Petronius for his model in writing and living?

As the corruption of our taste is not of equal consequence with the depravation of our virtue, I shall not spend so much time on the critics as I have done on the moralists of France.

How admirably Rapin, the most popular among them, was qualified to sit in judgment upon Homer and Thucydides, Demosthenes and Plato, may be gathered from an anecdote preserved by Menage, who affirms upon his own knowledge, that Le Fevre of Saumur furnished this assuming critic with the Greek passages he had occasion to cite, Rapin himself being totally ignorant of that language. The censures and the commendations this writer bestows are general and indiscriminate; without specifying the reasons of his approbation or dislike, and without