May 29. him to the practice of it. Whatever carries with it the face of falsehood or injustice, of meannefs and indecency, of unhandsomeness and dishonour, he never can consent to it, without being immediately reproached with it by his conscience. Its first loud cry precedes the bad action. If he then executes his ill purpose, he does it with anxiety; and, if pofsible, in the dark. Or, if the voice of conscience is silenced by the tumult of pafsion that hurries him away, conscience, notwithstanding his apparent contempt of justice at that moment, will soon punish him for it, by reminding him of his past villany. It gnaws him inwardly, by exposing before his eyes the detail of his violations of the Supreme order, his inmost intentions, the true motives he had disguised in his own mind, and every one of his most secret motives and concerns. E This cry of conscience is heard every where; it is the same in all ages, and among all nations. The abhorrence of vice, and apprehension of transgrefsing order, have taken place before all laws, which are only more or less extensive expressions of a common law we all of us carry within ourselves. dicts and rules were as yet unknown at Athens and Rome, when theft, adultery, infidelity, and tyranny were already detested there. All the histories that are now left of the most celebrated nations or men, are a series of upbraidings against vice, and applauses bestowed on virtue. What can that concern be, with which we read the narration of things so very foreign to our manners and affairs? It is, indeed, nothing more than the secret judgement which our conscience pafses upon them. Learning, force, industry, eloquence, and all talents in general, have been every where praised, and have been looked upon by all the world, as an emanation of the divine efsence, or as an happy participation of its favours. But that, which has at all times been thought the imitation and most perfect communication of it, can be nothing but vir tue. Man may improve his several talents separately, and without ruling his affections. He may be a good pilot, or an excellent carpenter, without being a good man; but the love of order regulates the whole man without exception. The rectitude of his will communicates itself to all his faculties; it will not suffer any thing uselefs in him, and steadfastly improves all and every part of his government. The love of order is then what brings him nearer to the perfection of the Almighty; and a constant virtue, (I mean a constant obsequiousnefs to the dictates of our conscience, and our natural sense of right and wrong,) is the most lovely, and the most sublime of all things. Candlemaker Row, I EUSEBIUS. MEMOIRS OF THE LATE DR THOMAS BLACKLOCK. The following biographical sketch is prefixed to a volume of Dr Blacklock's poems just published. It is written by a person of great eminence in the literary world, and will do equal honour to his talents as a writer, and to his dispositions as a man. In this sketch he has evidently been attentive to adopt that mode of writing which he knew would have pleased his friend, had he been to judge of a composition of this nature himself, for it wears that modest unadorned simplicity of drefs, in which truth always appears to the greatest advantage. THE life of Dr Thomas Blacklock, author of the following poems, may, I think, afsert a claim to notice beyond that of most authors, to whose story the public attention has been called by the publication of their works. He who reads these poems with that interest which their intrinsic merit deserves, will feel that interest very much increased, when he fhall be told the various difficulties which their author overcame in their production; the obstacles which nature and fortune had placed in his way to the possession of those ideas which his mind acquired, to the communication of those which his poetry unfolds. He was born in the year 1721, at Annan, in the county of Dumfries, in Scotland. His parents were natives of the bordering English county of Cumberland. His father was by trade a bricklayer; his mother the daughter of a copsiderable dealer in cattle, both respectable in their characters; and it would appear, pofsefsed of a considerable degree of knowledge and urbanity; which in a country where education was cheap, and property a good deal subdivided, was often the case with persons of their station. Before he was six months old he lost his eye sight in the small pox. This rendered him incapable of any of those mechanical trades to which his father might naturally have been inclined to breed him, and his circumstances prevented his aspiring to the higher professions. The good man therefore kept his son in his house, and, with the afsistance of some of his friends, fostered that inclination which the boy early showed for books, by reading, to amuse him, first, the simple sort of publications which are commonly put into the hands of children, and then several of our best authors, such as Milton, Spencer, Prior, Pope, and Addison. His companions, whom his early gentleness and kindness of disposition, as well as their compafsion for his misfortune, strong ly attached to him, were very afsiduous in their good offices, in reading to instruct and amuse him. By their afsistance he acquired some knowledge of the Latin tongue, but he never was at a grammar school till at a more advanced period of life. Poetry was even then his favourite reading; and he found an enthusiastic delight in the works of the best English poets, and in those of his countryman, Allan Ramsay. Even at an age so early as twelve he began to write poems, one of which is preserved in this collection, and is not, perhaps, inferior to any of the premature compositions of boys afsisted by the best education, which VOL. XV. t are only recalled into notice by the future fame of their authors. He had attained the age of nineteen when his father was killed by the accidental fall of a malt kiln belonging to his son-in-law This lofs, heavy to any one at that early age, would have been, however, to a young man pofsefsing the ordinary means of support, and the ordinary advantages of education, comparatively light; but to him, thus suddenly deprived of that support on which his youth had leaned,—destitute almost of any resource which industry affords to those who have the blessings of sight,— with a body feeble and delicate from nature, and a mind congenially susceptible, it was not surprising that this blow was doubly severe, and threw on his spirits that despondent gloom to which he then gavé way in the following pathetic lines, and which sometimes overclouded them in the subsequent period of his life. Dejected prospeet! soon the hapless hour May come!-perhaps this moment it impends, Respite I beg, and in the fhock expire." Though dependent, however he was not destitute of friends; and heaven rewarded the pious confidence, which, a few lines after, he exprefses in its care, by providing for him protectors and patrons, by whose afsistance he obtained advantages, which, |