Next follows the projection of curved lines and objects, or planes and curved furfaces; as fpheres, cylindrical and conical veifels, &c. interior and exterior; affording examples for projecting fhadows of objects, by candle-light, as before by funfhine. The fixth, and laft fection, of this work, is on the light re-. flected on objects; and on the reflected images of objects on the furface of water, and polished plane furfaces, vertical or inclined... 1 At the clofe of the work, the author makes fomne pertinent temarks on the effects of distance, and, what is called, by Painters, keeping; but, as thefe matters cannot poffibly be reduced to certain rule, and are more properly within the painter's peculiar province, he does not dwell upon them; but adviles, to tudy nature, as the only means to arrive at perfection, in the art. We have now finished our remarks, on this ufeful and truly valuable production, a work of great labour and pro-. portionable expence; in which the fubject of perfpective is treated, in a manner, not calculated merely for the practical delineator, but, in a more fcientific method than fuch fubjects. ufually are; by which means, it is rendered a rational as well. as an entertaining ftudy for a gentleman, who wishes to be poffeffed of fo polite an accomplishment; without attaining' the executive part, which but few have a talent for; though every one, who is a lover of the polite arts, ought to have fome judgment in perfpective; without which, he cannot be a judge of the merits of many excellent perforinances; nor even fee objects with proper difcernment. On the whole, we may venture to recommend this work, to the Public, as the moft Compleat Treatife on Perfpective, in Theory and Practice, yet extant.. It is with regret, therefore, we learn, that its publication is interrupted, by the late unfortunate accident, which so greatly affected ourselves: near half the impreffion, undelivered to the fubfcribers, being burnt among other valuable works at the fire in the Savoy. As the work, however, is reprinting, and the fubfcription kept open till the impreffion be finifhed it is hoped the patronage and encouragement of the Public,' will make the burthen of the prefent lofs lit light on the author. The Spleen or Iflington Spa; a Comic piece, of two Es. As it is per formed at the Theatre-Royal, in Drury-Lane. by George Colman, 8vo. 13. Becket, .. It may be doubted whether Plagiarifm betrays moft an imbecility Dd2 cility of genius or a poverty of fpirit. That it favours of both will not bear a difpute: And, though to rob others be base; it is, when done openly, at least, bold. Carmen arripere Homero is fo difficult a task, that they, who have failed in the defign, have been forgiven for the noble daring of the attempt But there is a meannefs in theft, debafing to the open robber, and fomething fo ridicu lous, in a writer's fealing from his own works, as to be equalled only by the ridicule of the mifer's robbing himfelf, by piltering money out of his leathern purfe to hoard it up in his iron chest. It argues, it is true, fome fign of grace, when the culprit confeffes the fact; but, if this be not done till voluntary evidence appears to convict him, his confeffion but little entitles him to pardon. In an impartial court of literary judicature, therefore, we conceive the critics on the jury, as well as the Ariftarchus on the bench, would be for condemning the author of the Spa in the penalty of the act.-Our readers will judge from a short state of the cafe. The Spleen, or Iflington Spa, is a dramatic fomething in two acts; to which its author has not ventured to give the name of a Comedy, in his ufual ftile; nor condescended to call it a Farce; of which, indeed, it wants fufficient fun to claim the title. It is with fome propriety, therefore, he ftiles this bit of a drama, being neither dull enough for a comedy nor merry enough for a farce, a comic piece. Of a piece with this equivocation is the criminal's confeflion of the fact, in his prefixed Advertisement. "The Malade Imaginaire of Moliere firft fuggefted the idea of The Spleen, the Author of which has however deviated without fcruple from his admirable original. The readers of the agreeable effays under the title of The Idler, will alfo difcover fome traits of D'Oyley in that writer's defcription of Drugget's retirement, as well as feme features of Rubrick in his character of Whirler. Any other gleanings, as the Prologue neatly terms them, I do not recollect, except that I have before exhibited a young Cantabrigian at Newmarket, in one of the numbers of The Connoiffeur; in: which papers, as well as other popular effays, there are alfo frequent allufions to the fhort excurfions and fuburb villas of our citizens." There are, indeed, fo many of thefe allufions in various writers; from whofe works they have been fo often copied and recopied into our maga ines and news-papers, that the fubject is become quite hackneyed, low and vulgar, add to this that times are fo much changed with our London citizens that the picture is no longer a faithful reprefentation of their foibles; unless among thofe of a much lower clafs of life than are the characters, at which the writer aims his, therefore pointlefs, fatire. The Ilington Spa is in fact no better a copy of our New City Minners than is Mrs Lennox's alteration of Old City Manners, written by the trumvirate dramatiits Old Ben, Chapman and Marfton. Oar author's gleaning, therefore, (as the Prologue mathy terms it *) from Nature of yore prevail'd thro' human kind, HIS His own popular effays in the CONNOISSEUR, is a plain proof that the harvest of his wit is, indeed, all boufed, or got into the barn. What a poor devil of a farmer muft he be, who is afterwards under the necefity of pitifully gleaning his own fields! If Parnaffus is to be thus tenanted, the mufes are likely foon to have but a barren estate of it. They may begin to grant away their wafte at pleafure.But now our equivocator ftammers and fhuffles abominably, till he comes even to downright lying. -An' please ye, my lord, "it has (I am told) been afferted in one of our daily prints-the Gazetteer, or Garreteer-I forget the name of it that for the idea of the noon-post I am indebted to my deceafed friend, BONNEL THORNTON." Here's a fellow for you! Not content with the having robbed the dead that have been in their graves these hundred years; but he must rob his deceased and dearest friend, who has, hardly had time to grow cold in his grave!-Here's facrilege! But mind how artfully he comes over the friends of the deceased and impudently denies the fact." Nobody was more capable of giving excellent hints; there was nobody whofe bints I would more readily have embraced, or more chearfully acknowledged. But the affertion is totally FALSE."-With leave of the court, my lord and you, gentlemen of the jury, the culprit's denial of this fact is, to be fure, direct and flat enough: but, if you will give me leave to recite a fhort anecdote, you will probably be better able to determine what degree of credit to give his affurance-When Mr. T. was living and jointly concerned with Mr. C. in penning effays for the St. James's Chronicle, the former being at Oxford tranfmitted, for the next Effay, to this his colleague, in town, a paper replete with that genuine wit and humour for which he was to juftly celebrated. The culprit read it, when an idea fuggefted itself, and he immediately embraced the bint of making it pafs for his own. Repairing accordingly to the printer's and affecting concern at the want of matter for the prefs, he defired Mr. Type would let him have a private room and get him a chicken for fupper; and he would him- 'Twas there the choiceft Dramatists have fought her: 'Twas there Moliere, there Jonfon, Shakefpear, caught her. To pick up fraws, dropt from their harvett home. To pick up fraws, indeed! the deuce a fingle grain of wit is to be found in the whole bundle. A likely ftory that an effay and paragraph writer for the St. James's and the Morning chronicles, thould forget the name of the Daily Gazetteer. But this is an attempt at wit, and a farcafm on fome of his rivals in trade, who, he infinuates, lodge in garrets. But this is a malicious falfehood; it being well known that fome of them fleep on bulks, and many of them in nightcellars. This embracing a bint is a curious figure of fpeech, and, from particular motives, peculiar to this writer's manner of equivocation. Any body may have heard of a man's adopting another's bint, and embracing another's mistress; andnobody fo ready as our author to oblige his friends in both: nay, he is toully belied, if he has not been known, in a fit of extraordinary good-nature, to take the hint of embracing a friend's and adopting his ; and of cbearfully acknowledging them Lis own wife and children, 3 felf felf write an eflay while the bird was roafting,-The propofal ac cepted, Type retired, and the culprit tranfcribed his friend's ma nufcript while the cook difpatched the, fupper; which was ferved up amidst the congratulations and encomiums of Mr. Type and his lady; who were in the highest admiration at the reliness of Mr. C's pen and the fertility of his genius.-It is left to the judgment of the court, whether a man, capable of fuch an impofition, while his friend was living, would make any fcruple of appropriating to himself any part of his reputation or property now he is dead. The matter, to be fure, is of fmall value and amounts to a mere petty larceny, but to an author, whofe whole stock of literary reputation is confined to a few news-paper effays, tranflated plays and pilfered farces, every paltry plagiarifm is of confequence. But to return to his Advertisement. "It is not the first time, that my enemies have paid me a compliment they did not intend, by afcribing my feeble productions to more eminent writers 1 will endeavour not to be vain of their cenfures; though perhaps they will think me fo, in adopting the words of Terence on the occafion. 66 Quod ISTI dicunt MALEVOLI, homines nobiles Eum adjutare, affidueque una fcribere: Quod illi maledictum vebemens effe exiftimant, To be vain of being cenfured, for the faults of others, is an odd fpecies of vanity but indeed, this writer is most uncommonly vain. It is certainly a inere compliment, that has been fo often paid him, in afcribing bis feeble productions to more eminent writers; as it is the mere copy of a countenance in him, to call his productions, (as they truly and characteristically are) feeble, at the fame time as he calls himself an eminent writer; for this he does in admitting, with affected modeity, that he is affifted by fomé ftill more eminent. It is a pity he does not ftrike dumb the ISTI MALEVOLI, by declaring who thefe homines nobiles, the more eminent writers are. The world knows how much this author has been indebted to the friendly affiftance of Bonnel Thornton, Bob Lloyd, David Gar rick and fome others; none of which, however, could even the benevoli, with any kind of propriety, ftile homines nobiles; an appellation, by which Terence refers to Scipio Africanus, Lælius, Publius Furius, &c. Not but that fome limb of our nobility may have contributed to the literary, as it is faid to have done to the personal, existence of this little dramatist; on which account he may poffibly be as vain of the one as the other. A man, poffeffing the leat fpark of laudable pride, however, could never be proud of any connection with those who should be ashamed to own him But to fufpend the lash of personal fatire, however justly merited," and confine ourselves to the piece, comic as it is filed, but in reality and at ref but comical. At the averft, it is charged with being unjuf fably fatirical; intending to expofe to ridicule certain refpeftabie peronages, in the family of a late valuable and worthy member of fociety deceafed. A fpecies of the drama this, at once dapgerous and deteftable, and, however it may have been countenanced by the popular encouragement, given to an ancient or modern Ariftophanes, is too licentious not to deferve the feverest caftigation-As toits literary merit, as a dramatic compofition, it is much in its author's ufual 'ftrain of mediocrity. Good actors may fupport it on the tage; but the best readers will find it infupportable in the clofet. We fhall notice but one of the foibles of this feeble production. The character of Jack Rubrick, whether defigned for any individual or not, is plainly intended to ridicule the Cantabs or Students of Cambridge; at which Univerfity mathematical learning is fuppofed to be more generally cultivated than at Oxford; hence Jack is made to talk, on every occafion, the language of the matheniatics. Unluckily for the author of the piece, it appears that he does not fufficiently understand that language himfell, to make his cantab exprefs himfelf with propriety. "MERTON. For three years, my dear Jack, I have been sta tioned at Gibraltar, from whence I have been returned, with the test of the regiment, little more than fo many months. JACK RUBRICK. So you have been studying the Tacticks at the Hercules Pillars, while I have been cudgelling the Mathematicks at Cambridge. How we diverge, like rays, from the fame centre! We walk through life together indeed, but feem hitherto, like parallel fines, deftined never to meet. But I am heartily glad of this encounter.2 The Straits of Gibraltar having been anciently called Hercules's Pillars, our Oxonian-in-town happens, in his claffical allufion, to be right; but if he had ever ftudied (or as he terms it cudgelled) the mathematics, he might have known that rays, diverging from the fame centre' are, by no means "like parallel lines, destined never to meet." On the contrary the farther they proceed, the farther they depart from each other; and encounter only by converging back to the fame centre.-Merton, therefore, instead of anfwering to this nonfenfe of Rubrick “ By your boots and your language, Jack, I fhould imagine you to be just fresh from the Univerity;" might have more reasonably fuppofed that he had never been at any University at all.*-The fciences are refpectable and not easily turned into ridicule: men of no fcience, therefore, should be cautious how they attempt it. Nulla fcientia habet oforem nifi ignorantem Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, à Comedy, altered from Ben Johnson, as performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane. By George Colman. 870. IS. * Our dramatift makes Rubrick talk with much the fame propriety of Parallelograms, inverfe ratios and Algebraic equations; of all which he feems to know juft as much, as Captain Brazen or Serjeant Kite. So that it is plain he never cudgelled his brains much about "Mathematics at Oxford; or, if he did that he could beat nothing into them. The |