fimple and unwary againft the deceits of herefy and error, which the foes of truth have the boldness to diffeminate and propagate in this giddy and volatile age.'

Our author's polemical addrefs feems not a little calculated to defeat the wild and fceptical paradoxes he combats. He wastes no time in quibbling about words, in perfonal abuse, or in bold declamation; but contrafts, in much earneftness and fimplicity, the undifguifed affertions of Chrift and his apoftles, with the artful fabrications of human invention. The radical principles upon which he uniformly argues is the divine authority of fcripture. He feems chiefly folicitous to preserve inviolate the facred and incommunicable properties of those truths which infinite wisdom hath revealed for recovering the miferable, and faving the guilty. His ftate of redemption, exhibits Chriftianity, according to the conftruction of the beft reformed churches, in one compacted and beautiful fyftem of the moft ferious and interefting articles. In confequence of confidering his views of the gofpel as an infallible fource of whatever is moft honourable in life, moft comfortable at death, and moft conducive to the hopes of a happy immortality, he ardently preffes upon his readers a genuine tranfcript of his own convictions; and, like all writers, particularly on ferious fubjects, he will be read with a fatisfaction exactly proportioned to that degree of confidence we have in his judgment and fincerity.

Fine fentiments, flowery language, or elegant compofition, are qualities which our author is by no means folicitous to affect; but his ftyle aud phrafeology are thofe of a perfon impreffed by matters of the laft importance; fervent and earneft in what he fays, and conscious for the truth of whatever he afferts of the highest and most awful refponfibility. The ferious and the good of all denominations will relifh the fenfibility he discovers in a cause fo univerfally interefting; the orthodox will be pleased with his firmness; the liberal and enlightened with his candour and manliness; and even thofe he would refute, with the open and unequivocal manner of his reafoning, the motives which induced him to engage in the controversy, and, above all, the very handsome manner in which he compliments his antagonist.

MONTHLY

ART. 15. The Exiles; or, Memoirs of the Count de Crenfladt. B Clara Reeve, Author of the Old English Baron, Two Mentors, &c. Sc. 12mo. 3 vols. 9s. Hookham. London, 1788.

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HIS performance is dedicated to Peter Pertinax Puff, Efq. who, it seems, is a near relation of the poor Reviewers. Mifs Reeve, if we may truft her, has been unfortunate in the report of the Reviewers. She has been unfortunate in the lofs of a very fine ghost fory, which was sent to London by the Ipswich blue coach; and which she tells us to print at our peril; and the is unfortunate in certain other refpects, upon the fubject of which, if we guess rightly, fhe would have no objection to our being filent.

The ftory of the exiles is extremely meagre; and in reading it we feel a sensation that we can beft defcribe by the idea of walking upon a swampy foil, that quakes and trembles under our feet, and feems continually ready to fink beneath our weight. Every twenty thin-fpun pages excite our wonder what is to become of the next twenty. But the work is drawn out to three volumes, and might, for any thing we perceive, be enlarged to three hundred.

The moral of this production is of the fame value as the compofition. The pity of the reader is chiefly intended to be excited for the poor hero, who, having married one wife fomehow unfortunately, forgets himfelf, and marries another. Between these two wives he is at a terrible lofs. The first dies of grief and a broken heart; and the fecond bids fair to be for ever miferable. If the fmalleft poetical juftice had been obferved, the Count de Cronftadt would have been delivered out of his scrape by the potent inftrumentality of the gallows.

ART. 16. The Penitent Proflitute; or, The Hiftory of Mifs Julia Frank. Written by herself. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Scatchard and Whitaker. London, 1788.

This is the tritical ftory of female feduction, in which a fimple country girl falls a victim to the artifices of an accomplished rake. The unfortunate lady has the disagreeable task of delineating her own fhame, and punishing the reader with feveral dull anecdotes from the experience of her affociates in vice. The narrative is totally deftitute of incident and novelty, confifts of a few facts tacked together in a very flovenly manner, and has neither sentiment nor ftyle to recommend it. Here, however, there is no loose defcriptions, no lewd fcenes, no indecent language. And, for a tale peculiarly heavy, the conclufion is not unhappy. Our heroine, in the adventures ENG. REV, VOL. XII, DEC. 1788.

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adventures of an evening, picks up, as the phrafe is, her own brother, who acknowledges her, receives her into favour, and by whom he is reclaimed from vite.

blime bas

ART. 17. The Doctor and the Apothecary; a Mufical Entertainment, in Two Acts; as performed at the Theatre-Royal, Drury-Lane. 8vo. Is, Dilly. London, 1788.

There is nothing in the pages before us to lead us to fuppofe that the English is not the original; and, if every body be of our mind, the tranflator is welcome to all the reputation of the -performance, which is not deftitute of humour.

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ART, 18. A Treatise on Geography, the Ufe of the Globes, and Aftronomy, in the Order which the mutual Connection and Dependence of the feveral Parts require towards a perfect Understanding of the whole. By William Fairman, Teacher of Mathematics. 8vo. 4s. boards. Johnfon. London, 1788.

This book has been commended by fome schoolmasters, as affording a tolerable introduction to the ufe of the globes and aftronomy. In the geographical part it is lamentably defective. The chief ufe of geography, when regularly taught as a fcience, is to affift the learner in the ufe of maps; but, by a ftrange perverfenefs in the prefent inftance, no towns are mentioned in the feparate geography of each country, except the metropolis; and of confequence the learner will be just as ready in his ufe of maps at the conclufion of his courfe as he was at the beginning.

ART. 19. Manon l'Efcaut; or, The Fatal Attachment. A French Story. 12mo. 2 vols. 6s. Cadell. London, 1787.

This is a fecond tranflation into English of the chef d'œuvre of the Abbe Prevolt, the celebrated novelift. It ought therefore to have been a good one. But the fenfible reader may eafily judge of its merit from the circumftance of the word greve (the Parifian Tyburn) being rendered by the English word grave! It is, indeed, corrected at the end of the fecond volume into gallows;' but this could not have been a mistake of the printer, nor the mistake of a tranflator that understood French. The rest of the performance is - too much of a piece with it.

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ART. 20. A Declaration of my laft Sentiments on the different Doctrines of Religion. By the late Pierre Francois le Courayer, D. D. Author of the Differtation on the Validity of English Ordinations, and Tranflator of the Hipory of the Council of Trent, by Fra. Paolo Sarpi ; and of the Hiftory of the Reformation, by John Sleidan. Published in French from the Manufcript of the Author, by William Bell, D.D. Prebendary of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster. A faithful Tranflation; to which is prefixed an Account of Dr. Courayer. 12mo. 38. Johnfon. London, 1788.

This little piece exhibits an extraordinary fpectacle, a man that was at once a Roman Catholic and a Socinian; and it is published

with commendable integrity by a dignitary of our own church. Le Courayer appears to have been a man of much confcienciousness and confiderable thinking; but he certainly was guilty of a cenfurhe directed that the declaration of his real fenappear till after his death. The tranflation is

able cowardice

timents ho tolerably well executed.

ART. 21. Secular Ode in Commemoration of the Glorious Revolution, 1688. By W. Mafon, M. A. 4to. is. Robfon, and Clarke. Lon don, 1788.

This is a very pious and very constitutional ode, and does honour to the author as a Chriftian and a Briton; as a poet, it will not add to his reputation. We had expected fomething better from Hayley's firft of living bards;' from the writer of the odes in Caractacus. But whether it be that age,' which, as the author informs us, is creative Fancy's foe,

Foe to the finer feelings of the foul,'

has forbid the lyric rapture flow,' or whether the effect be owing to any other caufe, the fact is that the bard does not now fweep the chords' (as he promises) with renovated fire. On the contrary,

The ghost of his departed fong. Anon.

Of this performance the first ftanza is dedicated to Mr. Mafon and his lyre, the three following to King William and the Revolution, the fifth to France and her late ftruggles for liberty, and the five remaining ones exprefs the author's abhorrence to flavery and the flave-trade. By this means only three ftanzas out of ten are occupied with the oftenfible subject of the ode. But this is not the only fault we have to complain of; it is befides laboured and uninterefting, while the common-place cant of every lyric rhymster surfeits us in every page.

ART. 22.
Lines written at Twickenham. By D. O'Bryen.. 4to. Is.
Debrett. London, 1788.

• The following poem,' fays our author, was excited by a conver fation at the house of the amiable lady to whom it is infcribed [Lady Baffett], on the evening of the 29th of laft June at Twickenham, and was written in the courfe of that night, and by the noon of the day after. The motive of publishing it,' he adds, was the re queft of friends. Though, at first fight, this appeared to us but a lame and feeble excufe for préfenting to the public a compofition written in fuch hafte, yet, when we came to perufe the performance, and perceived that his poem, after a few introductory encomiums on the Baffetts, and the delightful fcenery round Twickenham, was little elfe than a very long and high-ftrained panegyric on the virtues of the great leader of oppofition, Mr. Fox, we were lefs furprised at the request of friends to publish, or at our author's being

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induced

induced to comply with that requeft. This poem we should praife and admire in a youth, as the dawnings of an carly genius that promifed better things.

ART. 23. The Mourners; a Sketch from Life, in Memory of his Excellency Charles Manners. Duke of Rutland, late Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Small 8vo. is. Marchbank. Dublin, 1788.

A kind of fhort complimentary elegy on the late Duke of Rutland, written, as our author fays, to cenfure fome marks of difrefpect which were fhewn to his memory in Dublin immediately on his deceafe, but which were afterwards amply compenfated by the indifputable evidence of forrow obferved in all ranks of people."

After the magnificent funeral honours paid to the duke, and the general concern which our author allows to have been teftified on that occafion, we think he should not have noticed the calumny and idle ftories of folly and malignity.

Towards the conclufion of the poem, the two following verfes prefent themselves to us, which we give as a specimen of the author's verfification :

Slow mov'd the long proceffion on

In fad funereal' guife;

And grief thro' tears confpicuous shone
In youth and beauty's eyes:

Even age fubdu'd, tho' rigid grown
To pity and remorse,

Not yet quite hardened into ftone,

Beholds the fabled horfe."

In a performance written upon the fpur of the occafion, and from the best of motives, loyalty and friendship, it would be hard to exercife the feverity of criticifm. The author appears to us to poffefs a feeling heart; and, from the fpecimen before us, we are apt to imagine he would do juftice to any other fubject adapted to his genius, where he was not abridged of the effential requifites, time and attention.

ART. 24. The School Candidates; a Profaic Burlefque: occafioned by a late Election of a Schoolmaster at the Village of Bondinoir. 12mo. Utopia, 1788.

This jeu a'efprit is evidently written in imitation of Rabelais. There is both learning and humour in the performance; but the author has been unfortunate in the choice of his fubject, and in his manner of treating it. The quarrels of petty pedants are unimportant; and the fashion of Rabelais, like other fathions, hath paffed away. The author must therefore not be difappointed if his readers are but few. We have our fufpicions as to the originality of Bragnardo's Soliloquy ;' but we dare fay the real author will not claim it; it is not an object of literary paternal affection.