BOOK I. tern on the general circle with which he associated *. But, on his side, attachment and real friendship were always the result of a discriminating choice. His familiar companions were men of talents, of wit, and of polished manners, in whose conversation he found a pleasing relaxation from the fatigues of study, or the irksomeness of professional labour ; and whose congenial minds fitted them at once to relish and improve the enjoyments of the social hour. There was a time when, (as we of the present age have heard from our fathers), the fashionable circles in the Scottish metropolis were adorned by a class of men now unknown and utterly extinct; or whom, if their successors in the world of fashion have ever heard of, they seem at least to have no desire to revive, or ambition to emulate: men who, under the distinguishing title of Beaux, or fine gentlemen, united an *To this purpose is the following just remark of an ingenious and learned friend, to whom I owe much valuable information on the subject of these Memoirs. "The influence of Mr Home's conversation upon his friends and "companions who had a turn for letters, was, from all I have been able to "collect, great and powerful. We, who only knew him in the evening of "his life, may easily figure how brilliant and persuasive must have been his "wit and eloquence in the ardour of youth, when he wished to impress "young men, ambitious of treading in his steps, with a passion for Polite “Literature, or what he considered as Divine Philosophy. No man in his time "did more to disseminate the seeds of science among his countrymen, even "at the time when he was immersed in business and professional studies."— Letter from Mr RAMSAY of Ochtertyre. an extensive knowledge of literature, and a cultivated taste, to the utmost elegance of manners, of dress, and of accomplishments: men whose title to be leaders of the mode was founded on an acknowledged superiority, both in exterior graces, and in mental endowments. Such men were Colonel FORRESTER, author of a valuable little tract, entitled, The Polite Philosopher*, and of whom Dr Samuel Johnson emphatically said, "He was himself The Great Polite he drew :" Lord BINNING, who wrote some of the most tender and elegant of the Scottish songs; HAMILTON of Bangour, whose H 2 poetical CHAP. III. Colonel For. rester. *FORRESTER'S Polite Philosopher is of a species of composition of which we have very few examples in the English language. The subject is handled in an easy, rhapsodical, and desultory style, intermixing alternately prose and poetry, in the manner which has been successfully practised among the French by Chapelle and Bachaumont, and in a few instances by Voltaire; and which seems to have been adopted in imitation of the mixed composition of Petronius Arbiter. The Polite Philosopher professes indeed to have taken the latter author for his model : When gay PETRONIUS, to correct the age Gave way, of old to his satirick rage, BOOK I. poctical merits have deservedly assigned him a place among the British Classics; and the Club of Wits who frequented Balfour's Coffeehouse, (the miniature of Will's or Button's), in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. These were the favourite companions of Mr Home; and with some of them, as appears from his correspondence yet preserved, he seems. In prose we read the execrable tale And see the face of sin without a veil : But when his soul, by some soft theme inspir'd His numbers with peculiar sweetness ran, And in his easy verse we see the man, Learn'd without pride, of Taste correct, yet free In fine, by birth a Wit, by trade a Beau. Freely he censur'd a licentious age; And him I copy, though with chaster page; Exhort our erring youth-to mend in time; And lectures give-for memory's sake—in rhime: Pleas'd in ourselves, while all around we please. To the wisdom of the didactic precepts contained in this Essay, we cannot give a praise beyond their merits; for they are the result of much good sense and knowledge of the world: but the style, it must be owned, is rather beneath the importance of the matter, and bears evident marks of a hand unpractised in composition. It is somewhat singular that the poetical parts are more happily turned, and in better taste, than the prose. seems to have maintained the strictest friendship, and to have indulged in the most intimate communication of sentiments and opinions. I know not precisely at what period his acquaintance commenced with Colonel Forrester; but I find, amidst the correspondence I have mentioned, (and from which I shall occasionally draw some valuable materials for these Memoirs), a letter, (without a date, but which I conjecture to have been written between 1730 and 1735), from which I shall make an extract; trusting that my reader will not be displeased to see what were the topics which then engaged the attention of our Scottish men of fashion. CHAP. III. 66 Mr FORRESTER to Mr HOME. My dear Home, I hope, will no longer doubt of his entire command of Forrester, when, to obey him, I quit the alacrity of the Petit-maître for the phlegmatic panegyric of a Dutchman. I shall send you an elaborate poem to prefix to the Opera Homiana, and which I shall conclude with a saying from Apollo himself: Quid fatigas teque nosque? Homio præconium Homium laudare nemo quiverit nisi Homius *. 66 My * The writer had probably in his mind the refined eulogium of Cicero by Livy: "Vir acer, memorabilis, et in cujus laudes persequendas, Ci" cerone laudatore opus fuerit."-LIVII Fragmenta. BOOK I. "My dear Home has rightly pitched on the most flagrant piece of prudery that is to be met with in all story: and I am truly surprised, that we should ever have instanced Lucretia, as the model of chastity, whom you have made appear so very a prude; since she gave the reality to preserve the reputation of it. She has been, I suppose, of opinion with some of our moderns, who say, Reputation is the soul of virtue and indeed, like the soul, I believe it often lives when the body's dead! If this was her notion, she would be acquitted by the Christian system, which teaches the sacrifice of the body for the preservation of the soul. "Your other disquisition, I believe, may lead you farther back; and I am apprehensive you will find coquetry to have been one of the first things discovered even in the first of women. For I think the surprise Eve shews upon seeing herself reflected in the watery mirror, has a strong dash of the coquet: As I bent down to look, just opposite It started back ;--but pleas'd I soon return'd; Pleas'd, it return'd as soon, with answering looks But *Mr Forrester is not the first who has given to female coquetry an origin of such high antiquity. The following epigrammatic sonnet of Sa |