The following is offered as a mere playful illustration : "Women have no souls, says Prophet Mahomet." Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave? I said, you had no soul, 'tis true: 125. Party Passion. "Well, Sir!" (exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory-and during the broad blaze of his patriotism,) • Well, Sir! and will you dare deny, that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man? Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents.-Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?-Why, Madum! he squints—doesn't he? Squints! yes, to be sure, he does, Sir! but not a bit more, than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!! 126. Goodness of Heart indispensable to a Man of Genius. "If men will impartially and not asquint look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a great poet without being first a good man." Ben Jonson's Dedication to Volpone. Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo, lib. 1. Ουκ οιον αγαθόν γενέσθαι ποιητην, μη προτερον γενηθεντα ανδρα αγαθον. 127. Milton and Ben Jonson. Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's address to the Sun in Paradise Lost to the first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster: "Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness!" But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation. 128. Statistics. We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the city of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis the 15th, seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were " 50,000 incorrigible ATHEISTS in the city of Paris!! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child. 129. Magnanimity. The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: i. e. as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots, and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest ob ject, which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines, which pourtray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work, from which they are extracted, is exceedingly rare, (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan Philosopher,) and I have never seen them quoted. Dædalias vacuis plumas nectere humeris Nos vero illo donati sumus genio, Ut fatum intrepidi objectasque umbras cernimus, Naturæ voces surdi, ad Divum munera Non curamus stultorum quid opinio Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus, Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore, Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus, Non sensus vegetans, non me Ratio arguet, Sed perfidi Sycophantæ supercilium Absque Lance, Staterâ, Trutinâ, Oculo, Versificantis Grammatistæ encomium, Procedat nudus, quem non ornant Nubilæ, Quæsita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat! Si cum Naturâ sapio, et sub Numine, The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle Kant, and in truth |