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thousands, have multiplied the singularities and 'anomalies of human nature to a wonderful extent and as every new circumstance added to the account of human acquisition, though an unit in itself, reckons as hundreds, thousands, or millions, according to its place in the column, it is difficult to say what ages of ages may produce.

I would not say that Bayle's general dictionary could cast up at last from a jumble of types, but I would say, that things may cast up, of which at present we can form no conception.

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On the causes of universal and perpetual reputation in writing and in eloquence.

AUTHORS and orators! I beg of you not

little

to sneer or to shudder at the title of this

paper.

Do not be afraid that I am about to mention your names, your books, or your speeches. A frosty winter, my dear little friends, is at hand to finish our buzzing and stinging; but some of us will fall into amber, and be looked at with admiration for ever.

.

The causes of universal and perpetual reputation in writing and in eloquence are to be looked for, in good sense, in adaption to the inexterminable principles of man's nature, in the grandeur or utility of their ultimate objects, and in the arrangement and ornaments of language and style.

If on this platform ye examine the works of Thucydides, Shakespeare, Adam Smith, and Homer, ye will understand at once what I mean, if our understandings are formed upon the same calibre; if not, my paper will be extremely short, and ye will soon get quit of my babbling.

I do not write for the admirers of meditations upon broomsticks, but for men of plain, ordinary, good sense, unfascinated by sublimity and beauty.

Great beauty of style, with curious arrange. ment, and ardent words applied to the imagination, will preserve books and orations in general esteem no longer than the languages in which they were delivered are living and perspicuous: and I have no doubt that much of the beauty and effect of Cicero's orations are lost, not only from this circumstance, but from the variety of sound, and accent, and intonation, and affecting pauses in the pronunciation, with which we are unacquainted,

But Cicero owes the universality and the permanenoy of his fame so much to the greatness of the theatre upon which he exhibited, that I do not consider his fame as a proper

subject for the exhibition of the principles upon which I proceed. Were it not for this peculiarity in the situation of Cicero, the universality and permanency of his fame would go far to prove, that tinsel is better than gold; and that arrangement of words, and ornament of style, are sufficient to produce the grand effect, without the other requisites of my posi

tion.

For, in the writings of Cicero, exclusive of his essays on moral duties, there is little of high merit in respect of strong good sense, adaption to the perpetual circumstances of human nature, or to the production of a great and ultimate design.

Yet there is so much of this lightly disper sed over his writings, as, with the co-operating enchantment of style, and the great situation and misfortunes of the man, give no leisure to 'the imagination and the passions for sober re flection on the intrinsic value of his genius, and the solidity of his argument.

His essays, however, on moral duties, and his charming letters on friendship and old age, will be dear to men of virtue and genius to the latest posterity. With respect to his other remains, the immense scope that has been given in France and in England for similar exertions, will gradually throw them into the shade, especially if the writers and orators of France and of England shall guard against that prose run mad, that eternity of metaphor, that point and antithesis, and, what is worst of

all, that ridiculous change of argument, upon the same topic, and that political lubricity which has disgraced some of our modern orators, and will render, them illustriously infamous as long as the Americans shall be able to understand the English language.

Of the application of these principles to modern historians, poets, philosophers, and politicans, I shall leave it with those to whom this little paper is addressed.

Literary Olla. No. 9.

(FROM THE BEE,-AUG. 21. 1793.)

On the Character of a Gentleman.

MANY years ago, on the death of a respectable country gentleman of large estate, I found myself remembered by him in his will, with a small legacy for a mourning ring, and a collection of classical books; which last I particularly valued on account of many of them having slips of paper in them with judicious original remarks, not at all in the manner of an author, but in the plain, unaffected manner, of genteel conversation.

Among other detached little pieces I found the following remarks on the indiscriminate appellation of Gentleman, which, from some circumstances, I believe to have been written

soon after the peace of Paris, when, by an immense and sudden influx of wealth, gentlemen, properly so called, were thrown a good deal, and somewhat disagreeably, into the back ground of opulent society.

It is so genuine a transcript of character, and so descriptive of the feelings attending a new era in Britain, that I thought it would be a delicate morsel for the Bee.ï

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Go then, busy Bee! Go, and carry it on your thighs to the uttermost limits of the rational world. Go, and tell every choice spirit on your course, that there is a little spot of earth, not far from the frozen regions of the pole, where Yahoos begin to learn, not only not to say the thing that is not; but boldly to say the thing that is: and give them, O give them to hope, that the time may come, when it shall not be the only deliberation of the virtuous Houynhnms, whether it would not be better that they were exterminated from the face of the Globe."

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Nam propria Telluris rerum natura neque illum, nec me, nec quemquam latuit.

"In this active and busy age, where every one is expected to act a part, there is a class of men who formerly had great sway in the direction of public affairs, but seem now to be fallen into general contempt, and appear

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