weave the character of a Christian among the heroes of Fielding and Smollet, as the shortest way of proving their good men to be worthless fellows; and to shew how little their admired characters rise, in point of morals, above the heroes of the Beggar's Opera.

"Knowledge of the world," continued he, should always be used to mend the world. A writer employs this knowledge honestly when he points out the snares and pitfalls of vice. But when he covers those snares and pitfalls with flowers, when he fascinates in order that he may corrupt, when he engages the affections by polluting them, I know not how a man can do a deeper injury to society, or more fatally inflame his own future reckoning."

"But to return to our more immediate subject," said I, "I cannot relish their singling out the person of a pious clergyman as a peculiarly proper vehicle for the display of humour. Why qualities which excite ridicule should be necessarily

blended

blended with such as command esteem, is what I have never been able to compre hend."

Even where the characters," replied Mr. Stanley," having been so pleasingly delineated as to attract affection by their worth and benevolence, there is always a drawback from their respectability by some trait that is ludicrous, some situation that is unclerical, some incident that is absurd. There is a contrivance to expose them to some awkward distress; there is some palpable weakness to undo the effect of their general example, some impropriety of conduct, some gross error in judgment, some excess of simplicity, which by infallibly diminishing the dignity, weakens the influence of the character, and of course lessens the veneration of the reader."

"I have often," replied I, "felt that though we may love the man we laugh at, we shall never reverence him. We may like him as a companion, but we shall never look up to him as an instructor."

"I know no reason," observed Mr. Stanley," why a pious divine may not have as much wit and humour as any other man. And we have it on the word of the wittiest of the whole body, Dr. South, that "piety does not necessarily involve dullness." An author may lawfully make his churchman as witty as he pleases, or rather as witty as he can but he should never make him the butt of the wit of other men, which is, in fact, making him the butt of his own wit. What is meant to be a comical parson is no respectable or prudent exhibition; nor with the utmost stretch of candour, can I believe that the motive of the exhibitor is always of the purest kind,

"How far," continued Mr. Stanley, authors have found it necessary to add these diverting appendages in order to qualify piety, how far they have been obliged to dilute religion, so as to make it palatable and pardonable, I will not pretend to decide. But whether such a

mixture

mixture be not calculated to leave a lasting effect on the mind, unfavour able to the clerical character; whether these 'associations are not injurious even to religion itself, let those declare, if they will speak honestly, who have been accustomed to be excessively delighted with such combinations."

"I am a little afraid," returned Sir John, that I have formerly in some degree fallen under this censure. But surely, Stanley, you would not think it right to lavish undue praise, even on characters of a better stamp ; you would not commend ordinary merit highly, and above all you would not, I presume, screen the faults of the worthless ??

"I am as far from insisting," replied he,

on the universal piety of the Clergy, as for bespeaking reverence for the unworthy individual; all that I contend for is, that no arts should ever be employed to discredit the order. The abettors of revolutionary principles, a few years ago, had the

acuteness to perceive, that so to discredit it was one of their most powerful engines. Had not that spirit been providentially extinguished, they would have done more mischief to religion by their artful mode of introducing degrading pictures of our national instructors, in their popular tracts, than the Hobbes's and the Bolingbrokes had done by blending irreligion with their philosophy, or to the Voltaires and the Gibbons by interweaving it into their history. Whatever is mixed up with our amusements is swallowed with more danger because with more pleasure, and less suspi-cion than any thing which comes under a grave name and more serious shape." "I presume," said Sir John, "" you do not mean to involve in your censure the exquisitely keen satires of Erasmus on the ecclesiastics of his day: and I remember that you yourself could never read without. delight the pointed wit of Boileau against the spiritual voluptuaries of his time, in his admirable Lutrin. Perhaps you are

not