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are to adopt the good and reject the evil. The little stories of his oddities and his infirmities in common life will, after a while, be overlooked and forgotten; but his writings will live for ever, still more and more studied and admired, while Britons shall continue to be characterised by a love of elegance and sublimity, of good sense and virtue. The sincerity of his repentance, the steadfastness of his faith, and the fervour of his charity, forbid us to doubt, that his sun set in clouds, to rise without them: and of this let us always be mindful, that every one who is made better by his books, will add a wreath to his crown.

THE OLLA PODRIDA, No. 13, June 9, 1787.

A character more candid and judicious than this which the late amiable bishop of Norwich has given of Dr. Johnson, cannot well be drawn. Its epitome may be found in the following faithfully descriptive lines of Mr. Cumberland:

ON SAMUEL JOHNSON.

Herculean strength and a Stentorian voice,
Of wit a fund, of words a countless choice:
In learning rather various than profound,
In truth intrepid, in religion sound:
A trembling form and a distorted sight,
But firm in judgment, and in genius bright;
In controversy seldom known to spare,
But humble as, the publican in prayer;

To more than merited his kindness, kind,
And, though in manners harsh, of friendly mind;
Deep ting'd with melancholy's blackest shade,
And, though prepar'd to die, of death afraid.
Such Johnson was; of him, with justice, vain,
When will this nation see his like again?

No. CXXIV.

Gaudetque viam fecisse ruinâ.

LUCAN.

And he rejoiced to have accomplished his purposer by slaughter.

WITH a view, no doubt, of more deeply interesting our attention, it seems the practice of modern tragedy-writers to aim at exciting terror by a general yet indiscriminate recourse to the bowl and dagger; whilst, after exhausting the whole armoury of the property-room, the fifth act is frequently accelerated from the mere want of surviving personages to support the play. The modern hero of the drama seems as it were professionally to consider killing as no murder; the rout of armies, the capture of thousands, and the downfall of empires, forms the nauseous yet perpetual chit-chat of the narrative. However gross may be the deficiencies of of plot, character, style, and language, incident pregnant with devastation and bloodshed is deemed a receipt in full for every excellence; and in proportion as the ordinary standard of human actions is exceeded, the nearer, in the opinion of the author, the piece approaches to

perfection. Such a conduct, however, betrays the greatest poverty of expedient, and, not unfrequently, defeats its own end, by exciting disgust instead of approbation. Nature deals in no such hyperboles: to the credit of herself, and the comfort of her creation, she as rarely shews in the moral world, a Nero, a Borgia, a Cromwell, or a Catiline, as she does in the natural, a comet or a hurricane, an earthquake or an inundation. Whoever has cursorily turned over the dramatic works of Lee and Dryden, will acknowledge the justness of this charge.

With uniform and unexampled characters either of vice or virtue in the extreme, the aggregate of mankind are little affected; as they cannot come under their observation in real life, they have few claims to their notice, and none to their belief, in fictitious representations. Mixed characters alone come home to the minds of the multitude. The angelic quality of a Grandison, or a Harlowe, are reflected but by the hearts of a few solitary individuals, whilst those of Jones finds a never-failing mirrour in the greater part of mankind. At all events, if it is possible to avoid verging to one extreme or the other, the side of virtue, it is hoped, is the most probable, and therefore the most proper of the two; and wherever we are tempted by a

story peculiarly adapted to the tragic muse (carrying with it, at the same time, a sufficiency of the terrible), it is the business of the poet to be most cautious in the selection, and to deal out death and destruction as reluctantly and as seldom as the nature of the incidents will admit; for I cannot help concurring with Jonathan Wild in opinion, that mischief is much too precious a commodity to be squandered.

The judiciously blending the lights and shades of a character, so as to make the one necessarily result from, and fall into the other, constitutes one of the most difficult branches of the art; and, in the works of common writers, it is in vain we look for an effect of the kind. To delineate, with exactness, the temporary lapse of the good from virtue to vice, or those peculiar situations in which the wicked man falters in his career, and blushes to find himself" staggering upon virtue," demands the hand of a master. A character of uninterrupted detestation can scarcely exist; and when it is obtruded upon us, we have a right to question the abilities of him who drew it. The Satan of Milton, though with a heart distended with pride, and rejoicing in disobedience, when marshalling his troops (all of whom had forfeited heaven in his cause) for the express purpose of confronting the Almighty,

betrays emotions almost incompatible with his nature. They are singularly affecting :

Cruel his eye, but cast

Signs of remorse and passion to behold

The fellows of his crimes, the followers rather,
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn'd
For ever now to have their lot in pain;
Millions of spirits, for his faults, amerc'd
Of Heav'n, and from eternal splendours flung
For his revolt

Mark the effect:

To speak

He now prepar'd

Thrice he assay'd, and thrice, in spite of scorn,
Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.

Book I. v. 604, &c.

Nor has Virgil suffered the unnatural and abandoned Mezentius, equally the contemner of the gods and the enemy of man, to leave us without exciting some pity, however undeserved. The grief with which he hears the death of his amiable son Lausus announced, and the eagerness with which he instantly hastens to revenge it, the magnanimity he discovers in his last words in reply to the taunts of Æneas, afford a fine relief to that horror and detestation which the former part of his character had previously

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