or the good-nature of my enemies, by writing any thing to you, that might expofe you to trouble; for it would fharpen the profecutions begun against me, if you fhould fuffer the leaft inconvenience for your tendernefs to me.

Whatever relates to myfelf gives me no uneafinefs: every virulent vote, every paffionate reproach, and every malicious calumny against me, are fo many real commendations of my conduct; and while you and my fifter Lucy are permitted to live quietly and fecurely, I fhall think our family has met with no misfortune, and has no claim therefore to the compaffion of its truelt friends.

I know your concern and affection for me, and I write chiefly to give you comfort, not to receive any from you; for I thank God, I have an eafy contented mind, and that I want no comfort. I have fome hopes, I have no fears, which is more than fome of your Norfolk neighbours can fay of themfelves. I defire your prayers for the fuccefs of my wishes, and the profperity of my family. I fcorn the falfe pretended compaffion of my enemies, and it would grieve me much more to receive the real pity of my friends. I fhall not wonder if, at first, you be affected with the warmth of the proceedings against me, and thould fhew fome concern at the attempts to strip our family of its title, and to rob them of their eftates; but you will foon change your mind, when you confider, that my real honour does not depend on Walpole, or his mafter's pleafure; that a faction may attaint a inan without corrupting his blood; and that an eftate feized for a time by violence and arbitrary power, is not irrecoverably loft. The word Late is now become the most honourable epithet of the peerage; it is an higher title than that of Grace; and whenever you hear me spoke of in that manner, I beg you to think as I do, that I have received a mark of hoBour, a mark dignified by the Duke of Ormond, Earl Marishal, and others.

You that have often read Lord Claren-, don's Hiftory, muft needs know, that, during the reign of Cromwell, and the Rump Parliament, the whole peerage of England was ftiled the Late Houfe of Lords. There was then no want of Late Dukes, Late Earls, and Late Bishops; and why should that now be reckoned a reproach to a fingle peer, which was then the diftinguishing title to the whole body? Was that impious ufurper Cromwell the

fountain of honour? Had he who murdered one king any more power to taint the blood of his fellow-fubjects, than his illufrious fucceffor, who had fixed the price upon the head of another? For, as Lord Harcourt finely obferves in his speech on Dr. Sacheverel, there is little or no difference between a wet martyrdom or a dry one. Can a high-court at prefent, or a fecret committee, tarnish the honour of a family? Is it a real difgrace to be condemned by Macclesfield, Harcourt, Townshend, or Trevor? Is it a dishonour to be robbed of a private fortune, by thofe who have ftripped the fatherless and widow, who have fold their country, who have plundered the public? No, my dear Lifter, affure yourself that this unjust profecution is a lafting monument erected to the honour of our family; it will ferve to render it illuftrious to after-ages, and to atone for the unhappy mistakes of any of our mifguided ancestors. If it should end with me, it would, however, have out-lived the liberty of England.

Thofe honours which we received at first from the Crown, can never be more gloriously interred than in the defence of the injured rights of the crown, than in the cause of the rightful monarch of Britain, the greatest of princes and the best of maf ters. But I forget myself, by enlarging too far on a fubject that may not be fo con. veniently mentioned in a letter to you. My zeal for my country, my duty to my fovereign, my affection to you, and my refpect to my family, and its true honour, have carried on my pen further than I intended. I will only add, that no change in my circumstances ever fhall leffen my tender concern for you or my fifter Lucy, to whom I defire you would prefent my love; and charge her, as the values my friendship, never to marry without my confent. Be affured, that no distance of place, nor length of time, fhall abate my affection for you and my enemies fhall find, whenever I return to England, it fhall be with honour to myself, and with joy to my friends; to all thofe, I mean, who with well to the Church of England, and to their native country. Neither fhall any thing ever tempt me to abandon that caufe which I have deliberately em. braced, or to forfake that religion wherein I was educated. Wherever I am, I fhall always be, dear filter,

Your fincere friend

which one or two of those authors have given us concerning their Ens or to ov, and their materia prima. Specimens from the ancients above enumerated, I fhall have occafion to quote in a future part of this my treatife. Speaking of being or existence, the great Burgerfdicius afferteth (Inft. Met. 1. 1. c. 2. §. 11.)" Proprius actus Entis eft effe. Nam omne ens eft, et quicquid eft, "Ens eft ; ficuti et quicquid non eft, non elt ens. Intelligitur autem effe, fecundo adjectum, qued eft effe fimpliciter, non effe tertio adjectum, quod eft xara Ti; competit enim id et non enti et r nihil, veluti cum dicitur nihil eft non ens, cæcitas eft privatio. Communio igitur Entium quæ objectum eft, communis illius conceptus eft caufa unitatis in illo conceptu, et ita eft in communi ratione & sivas." All this might indeed, if it were neceffary, be fufficiently expreífed by faying, that all beings agree

in the common circumftance of existence : but how obvious! how naked does this appear, when fet by the fide of the preceding quotation! This author farther obferves, "Deinde cum Ens fumitur ut participium pertinet ad quæftionem 15 at cem fumitur ut nomen, referendum ad quaeftionem ᾖ τι επι. M Hinc fit ut Ens quod aliquid eft, opponàtur TM@ nihil, fed non immediatè. Ut enim Subftantia non eft nihil, et tamen multa funt quæ neque nihil funt neque Subftantia. Ita quoque licet ens non fit nibil, quædam tamen dicuntur quæ nec ens funt nec omnino nihil, fed aliquid inter Ens et nihil interjcctum, ut accidentia inter fubftantiam et nihil funt interjecta." How delightfully unintelligible is this! Nor indeed is it very diffimilar in ftile to the question which young customed to agitate. "An præter effe

Montinus was ac

be "

"More is meant than meets the ear." In conformity to this rule, the fchoolmen, as fir W. Blackstone obferveth†, currently defined their materia prima to quale, neque aliquid eorum quibus ens neque quid, neque quantum, neque determinatur." Adrian Hereboord moreover affures us, that "materia prima non eft corpus neque per formam corpore itatis neque per fimplicum effentiam: eft tamen ens et quidam fubftantia, licet incompleta: habetque actum ex fe entitatiorem, et fimul eft potentia fubjectiva."

The great masters of this art, however, are neither confined to the ancient nor middle ages; they flourish alfo in our own time, and upon various fubjects. Even I myfeif remember, when attending anatomical lectures for the purpofe of difcovering, God willing, whether the infinitefimal particles of the nervous fyltein of the foetus in utero were affected with fynchronous and ifochronous vibratiuncles, our inftructor began with the external teguments of the dead fubject, and the pathology thereof. Fearing we fhould not be able to comprehend, that though corns were a difeafe of the scarfkin, yet warts were nervous excrefcences from the true fkin, he declared that he would fo exprefs himself, that we might never

hereafter be at a lofs to understand the

difference; and to that end affured us, that the veruca or angoxugdwr was none other than a præternatural elongation of the villary process of the derma; while the clavus pedum or ruhe, was entirely incarcerated in the fuperior tegument, and perfectly epidermofe. And now that we are upon the fubject of anatomy, a very admirable paffage in the nebuloje or obumbratory ftile of defcription occurs to my remembrance, which will still farther prove that we are not without fome great mafters in profaic bathos, even in this our day. The late Doctor Fawcett, of Dublin, informs us in his pofthumous Treatife on Midwifery, lately published, §. DVIII. that " upon the fore and ex

ternal part of the thorax, on each fide of the fternum, lies a large conglomerate gland, the interftices of whole lobules being filled with fat, affift in railing it into a beautiful, round, fmooth, projecting, conoid tumour, known by the name of MAMMA." This is doubtless a conveniently good exemplar of the file we are difcourfing of; but I much doubt whether the learned author did not write adipofe fecretion instead of fat, and infert what the negligence of his editor hath certes omitted, that is to fay, the property of compreffibility or clafticity, which, as every one knoweth, is competent thereto in the young subject. But hafte we now to other inftances in other authors, and on other fubjects, that no endeavours of ours may be wanting to inftruct our readers in the perfect know ledge of this important part of fine writing. A nobleman of our day, of great learning, and one of our most perfect examples of the bathos in composition; who, among other things, has perfectly proved to his own fatisfaction, that a ftate of nature among men is a ftate neither pacifical nor bellical, but quadrupe dal and caudal; that a great many gentlemen, well known to his literary acquaintance, never had more than one eye, which they found equally ferviceable with our two; that their progeny also were like. themfelves monopous; that men have conftantly degenerated in mental and bodily faculties ever fince they left off galloping up and down upon all-four, lashing their fides with their tails, and feeding like good king Nebuchadnezzar on the grafs of the field; this great man, I fay, who has been at the pains of instructing the world in thefe important and, indifputable particulars, affures us alfo in a philological treatife," that the man who opines muft opine fomething therefore the fubject of an opinion is not nothing." To render this affertion itill lefs liable to controversy, he gives us the authority of Plato to the fame purpofe. Nota bene, of Authorities I fhall difcourfe more fully hereafter. Another learned gentleman of congenial foul, whofe works undoubtedly furnish the completeft inftances of this fpecies of the profund which modern literature can any where fupply, having to define a conjun&ion and fettle its claffification, tells us," that it is a part of fpeech devoid of fignification itfelf, but fo formed as to help fignification, by making two or more lignincant fentences

6.6 con

to be one fignificant fentence *** Some of them indeed have a kind of obscure fignification when taken alone; and they appear in grammar like zoophytes in nature, a kind of middle beings of amphibious character, which, by fharing the attributes of the higher and lower, con duce to link the whole together." This gentleman had already defined a word (or part of speech) to be " a found fignificant." But what common reader would fuppofe that this collection of highfounding phrafeology and learned allufion means neither more nor less, as Mr. Horne Tooke obferves, when put into common expreffions, than that a junction is a found fignificant, devoid of fignification, having at the fame time an obfcure kind of fignification, and yet having neither fignification nor no fignification, but a middle fomething between fignification and no fignification, fharing the attributes both of fignification and no fignification, and linking fignification and no fignification together." This is, of a truth, truly philofophical language, and "a perfect example of analysis;" but fomewhat too fimilar indeed to the Too and the Tw nihil of Burgerfdicius. Very fkilful alfo was this fame gentleman, Mr. James Harris, in that figure not utterly unknown, but which appertaineth to this diftrict of our treatife on the Art of Sinking in Profe; the "explanatio ignoti per ignotius," or the explanation of a plain word or fentence into an obfcure one. Thus, " 'tis a phrafe often applied to a man, fays he, that he speaks his mind; as much as to fay, that his speech or dif. courfe is a publishing of fome energie or motion of his foul.' So again," for what indeed is to affert, if we confider the examples above alledged, but to publith fome perception either of the fenfes or intellect?" In a ftill more profound file of phrafeology does this author prove that the time prefent is neither the time paft nor the time future. "Let us fuppofe, fays he, for example, the lines AB, BC,

BC. In the fame manner let us fuppofe AB, BC, to reprefent certain times, and let B be a now or inftant. In fuch cafe, I fay, that the inftant B is the end of the time AB, and the beginning of the time BC. I fay likewise of these two times, that with refpect to the now or inftant which they include, the first of them is neceffarily past time, as being previous to it, the other is neceffarily future, as being fubfequent." Highly delighted, as he well might be, with this moft ingenious device for proving fo important a propofition, he introduces in another place of the fame treatise, a variation of this mode of proof." In the first place, fays he, there may be times both paft and future, in which the prefent now hath no exiftence; as for example, in yesterday and

to-morrow."

"Again, the prefent now may fo far belong to time of either fort as to be the end of the paft, and the beginning of the future, but it cannot be included within the limits of either. For if it were poffible, let us fuppofe C the prefent now included

АВ с D E

within the limits of the past time AD. In fuch cafe CD, part of the past time

AD, will be fubfequent to C, the prefent now, and fo of courfe be future. But by the hypothefis it is paft, and fo will be both pait and future at once, which is abfurd. In the fame manner we prove that C cannot be included within the limits of a future time, fuch as BE."Now faving, that by the affiftance of his firft diagram he has proved that the prefent time the o vvv must necessarily, and in the latter diagram that it neceffarily maft not, be included within the limits of the past and the future, nothing can exceed the Bathos excellence of these paffages. Many other appofite examples this rare treatise, which the author in the true nebulofe phrafeology hath entitled Hermes, might eafily furnish; but I content myfelf with one other, which the cafual opening of the book hath just prefented to my eye. Reader," what is it to work and to know what one is about? "Tis to have an idea of what one is doing: to poffefs a FORM INTERNAL, corref pondent to the EXTERNAL; to which EXTERNAL it ferves for an EXEMPLAR or ARCHETYPE." Herein note alfo, the profundity of the capital letters; and if thou needeft other exemplars or archetypes of the true nebulofe or obumbratory ftile of profe-writing, I refer thee to the other treatifes of the faid profund author, of whom more hereafter.

GENTLEMEN,

CT-0.

marks on Imitation, has faid that he has no doubt but that the first stanza of Mr.Mafon's Ode to Memory is taken from Strada Prol. Acad. I. The paffage is, without doubt, particularly in point; but might not Mafon's lines have originated from the following paffage of Thomson ? Mother of Wisdom! thou, whose fway

The throng'd ideal hosts obey ; Who bidft their ranks now vanijh, now appear,

Flame in the van, or darken in the rear.
Malon.

-With inward view,
Thence on th' ideal kingdom fwift fhe turns
Her eye; and inftant at her powerful glance,
The obedient phantoms vanil ar appear ;
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, &C.

Summer, 1774.

Mr. Mafon feems fond of this idea; he has it again in his Isis :

E'en now fond Fancy leads th' deal train, And ranks her troops on Memory's ample plain.

P. Fletcher, in his Purple Island, has this expreffion, Cant. x. Stan. 4.

the World's wide regiment.

Mr. Mafon has an idea of the kind, which he has expanded with great force and fublimity.