incompatible with the Grecian fable, never fails to give the imperfect pagan moral a tincture of Christian purity. The finest precepts are illustrated by the most instructive examples; and every royal duty is, as it were, personified. His morality is every where founded on the eternal principles of truth and justice. He refers all goodness to God, as its origin and end. He exhibits a uniform lesson of the duty of sacrificing private interest to public good, and of forgetting ourselves in the love of our country. He reconciles the soundest policy with the most undeviating integrity, and puts to shame those, otherwise admirable writers, of our own time, who have laboured to establish the dangerous doctrine of expediency at the expense of immutable justice and everlasting truth. From Telemachus she will learn, that the true glory of a king is to make his people good and happy; that his authority is never so secure as when it is founded on the love of his subjects; and that the same principles which promote private virtue, advance public happiness. He teaches carefully to distinguish between good and bad governments; delivers precepts for the philosophical, the warlike, the pacific, and the legislative king; and shews the comparative value of agriculture, of commerce, of education, and of arts; of private justice, and of civil polity. His descriptions, comparisons, and narratives, instead of being merely amusing, are always made to answer some beneficial purpose. And, as there is no part of public duty, so there is scarcely any circumstance of private conduct, which has been overlooked. The dangers of self-confidence; the contempt of virtuous counsels; the perils of favouritism; the unworthiness of ignoble pursuits; the mischiefs of disproportionate connexions; the duty of inviolable fidelity to engagements; of moderation under the most prosperous, and of firmness under the most adverse

circumstances; of patience and forbearance, of kindness and gratitude; all these are not so much animadverted on, as exemplified in the most impressive instances.

Children love fiction. It is often a misleading taste. Of this taste, Fenelon has availed himself, to convey, under the elegant shelter of the Greek mythology, sentiments and opinions which might not otherwise so readily have made their way to the heart. The strict maxims of government, and high standard of public virtue, exhibited in Telemachus, excited in the jealous mind of the reigning king of France, a dread that if those notions should become popular, that work would hereafter be considered as a satire on his own conduct and government, on his fondness for grandeur, for pleasure, for glory, and for war so that it has been supposed probable, that Fenelon's theological works, for which he was disgraced, were only made the pretext for punishing him for his political writings.

The Cyropædia of Xenophon, it may be thought out of date to recommend; but genius and virtue are never antiquated. This work may be read with advantage, not as an entirely authentic history, which is a more than doubtful point, but as a valuable moral work, exhibiting a lively image of royal virtue, and shewing, in almost all respects, what a sovereign ought to be. The princes of Xenophon and of Fenelon are models. The "prince" of Machiavel is a being elaborately trained in every art of political and moral corruption. The lives of the pupils are the best comment on the works of the respective authors. Fenelon produced Telemaque and the Duke of Burgundy. Machiavel, "il Principe" and Cæsar Borgia!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Of periodical essay writers, particularly Addison and Johnson.

To hardly any species of composition has the British public been more signally indebted than to the periodical essay; and, perhaps, it was only from the British press, that such a publication could have issued. The attempt to excite mental appetite, by furnishing, from day to day, intellectual aliment of such peculiar freshness, must have been fatally obstructed by any jealousy of superintendence, or formality of licensing. The abuse of the press is to be deplored as a calamity, and punished as a crime but let neither prince nor people forget the providential blessings which have been derived to both from its constitutional liberty. As this was one of the invaluable effects of the Revolution in 1688, so, perhaps, no other means more contributed to carry the blessings of that period to their consummate establishment, in the accession of the house of Brunswick.

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The two writers who have most eminently distinguished themselves in this path of literature, are Addison and Johnson. At a period when religion was held in more than usual contempt, from its having been recently abused to the worst purposes; and when the higher walks of life still exhibited that dissoluteness which the profligate reign of the second Charles had made so deplorably fashionable, Addison seems to have been raised by Providence for the double purpose of improving the public taste, and correcting the public morals. As the powers of the imagination had, in the preceding

period, been peculiarly abused to the purposes of vice, it was Addison's great object to shew that wit and impurity had no necessary connexion. He not only evinced this by his reasonings, but he so exemplified it in his own compositions, as to become in a short time more generally useful, by becoming more popular than any English writer who had yet appeared. This well-earned celebrity he endeavoured to turn to the best of all purposes; and his success was such as to prove, that genius is never so advantageously employed as in the service of virtue, nor influence so well directed as in rendering piety fashionable. At this distance, when almost all authors have written the better because Addison wrote first, and when the public taste which he refined has become competent, through that refinement, to criticise its benefactor, it is not easy fully to appreciate the value of Addison. To do this, we must attend to the progress of English literature, and make a comparison between him and his predecessors.

But, noble as the views of Addison were, and happily as he has, in general, accomplished what he intended; the praise which justly belongs to him must be qualified by the avowal, that it does not extend to every passage which he has written. From the pernicious influence of those very manners which it was his object to correct, some degree of taint has occasionally affected his own pages, which will make it necessary to guard the royal pupil from a wholly promiscuous perusal. It is, however, but justice to add, that the few instances referred to, however exceptionable, are of such a kind as to expose him to the charge rather of inadvertence, or momentary levity, than of any unfixedness of principle, much less any depravity of

heart.

Of all the periodical works, those of Johnson, in

point of strict and undeviating moral purity, unquestionably stand highest. Every page is invariably delicate. It is, therefore, the rare praise of this author, that the most vigilant preceptor may commit his voluminous works into the hands of even his female pupil, without caution, limitation, or reserve; secure that she cannot stumble on a pernicious sentiment, or rise from the perusal with the slightest taint of immorality. Even in his dictionary, moral rectitude has not only been scrupulously maintained, but, as far as the nature of the work would admit, it has been assiduously inculcated. In the authorities which he has adduced, he has collected, with a discrimination which can never be enough admired, a countless multitude of the most noble sentences which English literature afforded; yet he has frequently contented himself with instances borrowed from inferior writers, when he found some passage, which at once served his purpose, and that of religion and morality; and also, as he declared himself, lest he should risk contaminating the mind of the student, by referring him to authors of more celebrity but less purity. When we reflect how fatally the unsuspected title of Dictionary has been made. the vehicle for polluting principle, we shall feel the value of this extreme conscientiousness of Johnson.

Still, however, while we ascribe to this excellent author all that is safe, and all that is just, it is less from Johnson than from Addison that we derive the interesting lessons of life and manners; that we learn to trace the exact delineations of character, and to catch the vivid hues and varied tints of nature. It is true, that every sentence of the more recent moralist is an aphorism, every paragraph a chain of maxims for guiding the understanding and guarding the heart. But when John