all that occurs to me as either ludicrous, or turgid, or mean. Yet I will select two or three more instances in justification of the opinion I have expressed, (if it can possibly require a further one) and because they are such as may provoke the reader's smiles, if he be not a second Cassius.

I question if the most profound inquirer into the works of nature, ever beheld, or heard of, a phenomenon like the following:

Power supreme!

Whose words can bid the gathering clouds disperse,

And chain the stubborn and contentious winds,

When they unseat the everlasting rocks,

And cast them to the sky.

I am not quite certain whether Miss Edgeworth would not admit these lines into the next edition of her Irish Bulls. To unseat everlasting rocks, appears to me to contain an idea just as philosophically accurate as the following couplet of Pope:

When first young Maro, in his boundless mind,

A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd.

Of new and appropriate metaphors, expressed with a happy felicity of style, the following may serve as a specimen :

Once I was happy:

Clear and serene my life's calm current ran
While scarce a breezy wish provok'd its tide;
Down the smooth flood the tuneful passions fell

In easy lapse, and slumber'd as they pass'd.

From this it may be concluded that they

were somnambulists, for their progressive motion was not hindered by sleep.

One more instance and I have done. Matilda informs her train, that on the following morning they must employ themselves in singing, to the harp, songs of victory: and this she very pointedly enforces by observing, that "they must teach their throats a loftier strain." Now the throat is certainly the organ of sound, and it may be taught how to emit tones harmoniously; but if a metonymy can ever be advantageously employed, I think it might have been so here.

I will not stop to detect other blemishes, such as making his characters eruditely familiar with classical learning, and especially the Lady Matilda. She talks as fluently of Jove, and Minerva, and Apollo, and Janus, as the author's grandfather could have done; nay, I question whether Lady Jane Grey herself, in the plenitude of that knowledge which so astonished honest Roger Ascham, could have exhibited a more commendable proficiency. These acquisitions are remarkable only when we consider the era in which the action of the play is laid; and when, as far as I know, the study of heathen mythology or the Roman poets was not much cultivated in this island. A poet, to be sure, whose imagination is very fervid, may outstrip the tardy pace of time, and exhibit, as the customs of the eleventh century, what belongs to

the fifteenth. Shakspeare has done this, and why not Cumberland?

A spirit of candour, which, though a rare quality in a critic, is one that becomes him more than the most acute severity, induces me to copy the following lines from this tragedy, describing the death of Harold, and in which the reader will find a vigour and animation somewhat remarkable in a writer whose tragic style was so peculiarly feeble without delicacy, or turgid without strength. Had he written always thus, I had been spared the trouble of following him through his inflated imbecility, and the reader would have escaped the perusal of my pursuit.

Matilda inquires the issue of the battle, and Edgar answers:

Hearken:

The hireling troops had fled; one native phalanx
Fatally brave, yet stood; there deep engulph'd,

Within the Norman host I found thy father,

Mounted like Mars upon a pile of slain :
Frowning he fought, and wore his helmet up,
His batter'd harness at each ghastly sluice
Streaming with blood: life gush'd at every vein,
Yet liv'd he, as in proud despight of nature,
His mighty soul unwilling to forsake
Its princely dwelling: swift as thought I flew,
And as a sturdy churl his pole-axe aim'd
Full at the hero's crest, I sprung upon him,

And sheath'd my rapier in the caitiff's throat.

Matilda. Didst thou? then art thou faithful. Open wide,

And shower your blessings on his head, ye heavens.
Edgar. Awhile the fainting hero we upheld;

(For Edwin now had join'd me): but as well
We might have driven the mountain cataract
Back to its source, as stemm'd the battle's tide.
I saw the imperial Duke, and with loud insults
Provok'd him to the combat: but in vain;
The pursey braggart now secure of conquest
Rein'd in his steed, and wing'd his squadron round
To cut us from retreat: cold death had stopp'd
Thy father's heart; e'en hope itself had died:
Midst showers of darts we bore him from the field,
And now, supported on his soldier's pikes,
The venerable ruin comes.

Every thing is great or mean only by comparison; and it is only by comparing Cumberland with himself that this passage can deserve applause. Thus compared, however, it has merit; and slender as it is, its value can be appreciated only by him whose fate it has been to read the tragedy through, and to whom this parting gleam is like the farewell lustre of the setting sun in November after a dull and foggy day. I will now dismiss this play with two questions: if Sheridan laughed at it, who can blame him? and if it were possible for an author to judge his own works dispassionately, could Cumberland have said of it," that it is better written than planned?"

Shortly after the performance of this tragedy, his fisrt patron and master, the Earl of Halifax, died. Cumberland's character of him I have already given. He was succeeded in his office, as secretary for the colonial department, by Lord

George Germain, a nobleman to whom Cumberland was not at all known, and from whom he could hence expect few favours. He prepared himself, therefore, to remain contentedly in his subordinate office of clerk of the reports, when he suddenly and agreeably found, in his new principal, a courtesy and kindness which, as he did not expect it, must have been the more pleasing to him.

"When Lord George had taken the seals," says he, "I asked my friend Colonel James Cunningham to take me with him to Pall-Mall, which he did, and the ceremony of paying my respects was soon dismissed. I confess I thought my new chief was quite as cold in his manner as a minister need be, and rather more so than my intermediate friend had given me reason to expect. I was now living in great intimacy with the Duke of Dorset, and asked him to do me that grace with his uncle, which the honour of being acknowledged by him as his friend would naturally have obtained for me. This I am confident he would readily have done but for reasons, which precluded all desire on my part to say another word upon the business. I was therefore left to make my own way with a perfect stranger, whilst I was in actual negociation with Mr. Pownall for the secretaryship, and had understood Lord Clare to be friendly to our treaty in the very moment, when he ceased to be our first lord, and the power of accommodating us in our wishes was shifted from his hands into those