not disposed to give the same quarter to the pleasant ridicule of Le Sage ?" "We justify ourselves as good pro testants," rejoined Mr. Stanley, " for pardoning the severe but just attacks of the reformer and the poet on the vices of a corrupt church. Though, to speak the truth, I am not quite certain that even these two discriminating and virtuous authors did not, especially Erasmus, now and then indulge themselves in a sharpness which seemed to bear upon religion. itself, and not merely on the luxury and idleness of its degenerate ministers. As to Le Sage, who, with all his wit, I should never have thought of bringing into such good company, he was certainly withheld by no restraints either moral or religious. And it is obvious to me, that he seems rather gratified, that he had the faults to expose, than actuated by an honest zeal, by exposing to correct them."

"I wish I could say," replied Sir John, "that the Spanish Friar of Dryden, and.

the witty Opera of the living Dryden, did not fall under the same suspicion. I have often observed, that as Lucian dashes with equal wit and equal virulence at every religion, of every name and every nation, so Dryden with the same. diffusive zeal attacks the ministers of every religion. monks, and prelates to confirm his favo rite position

In ransacking muftis,

That priests of all religions are the same,

he betrays a secret wish to intimate that not only the priests of all religions, but the religions of all priests are pretty much alike."

"He has, however," said Mr. Stanley, "made a sort of palinode, by his consummately beautiful poem of the good parson. Yet even this lovely picture he could not allow himself to complete without a fling at the order, which he declares, at the conclusion, he only spares for the sake of one exception.".

"Rousseau,"

"Rousseau," said Sir John, "seems to be the only sceptic, who has not, in this respect, acted unfairly. His Savoyard Vicar is represented as a grave, consistent and exemplary character."

"But

"True," replied Mr. Stanley. don't you perceive why he is so represented? He is exhibited as a model of goodness, in order to exalt the scanty faith and unsound doctrines of which he is made the teacher.""

"I would not," continued he, "call that man an enemy to the church who should reprobate characters who are a dishonour to it. But the just though indig nant biographer of a real Sterne, or a real Churchill, exhibits a very different spirit, and produces a very different effect from the painter of an imaginary Thwackum or Supple. In the historian concealment would be blameable, and palliation mischievous. He fairly exposes the individual without wishing to bring any reproach on the profession. What I blame is, employ

ing

ing the vehicle of fiction for the purpose of blackening, or in any degree discrediting, a body of men, who depend much upon the success of their labours on public opini-ons, and on the success of whose labours depends so large a portion of the public virtue."

"I have sometimes," said I, "heard my father express his surprise that the most engaging of all writers, Mr. Addison, a man so devout himself, so forward to do honour to religion on all occasions, should have let slip so fair an opportunity for exalting the value of a country clergyman as the description of Sir Roger de Coverley's chaplain naturally put into his hands*.”

"You must allow," said Sir John, "that he has made him worthy, and that he has not made him absurd."

"I grant it," replied I, "but he has made him dull and acquiescent.

He has made him any thing rather than a pattern."

'But what I most regret," said Mr.

*See Spectator, Vol. ii. No. 107.

Stanley

Stanley is," that the use he has made of this character is to give the stamp of his own high authority to a practice which though it is characteristically recommended by the whimsical knight, whose original vein of humour leaves every other far behind it, yet should never have had the sanction of the author of the Saturday pieces in the Spectator-I mean, the practice of the minister of a little country parish preaching to farmers and peasants the most learned, logical, and profound discourses in the English language.

"It has, I believe," replied Sir John, "excited general wonder that so consummate a judge of propriety should have commended as suitable instruction for illiterate villagers, the sermons of those incomparable scholars Fleetwood, South, Tillotson, Barrow, Calamy, and Sander

"But this is not the worst," said Mr. Stanley, "for Mr. Addison not only clearly approves it in the individual instance,