tive excellences of Messrs. Paterson and Ogilby, each of whom was extolled by either party as a literary Colossus. This gave the debate another interesting turn; and as I found the heat of the room and the contest likely to endanger my welfare, and produce something more than a war of words, I made as precipitate a retreat as the nature of the case would admit; but before I could gain the door, I found the amicable disputants had laid aside their rhetoric and their coats, and exchanged the fanciful and ideal shafts of wit for the material weapons of pewter pots and oaken sticks. Never was that happy comparison of the grammarians more thoroughly illustrated, by which they liken logic to the clenched fist! My escape from these logicians was a source of comfortable contempla. tion, yet I could not lay aside all my fears for the safety of those I had left behind; however, I had the satisfaction to find the next morning, that no material injury had been sustained. Upon turning into a shop, I bought a pair of gloves of the Patersonian ; and soon after discovered the follower of Ogilby mending the club-room windows.

These and a few other circumstances, which I need not, perhaps, enumerate, have induced me to offer to my patient readers a few observations on that great love of refinement and sentimentality which is daily gaining ground among the lower orders of our fellow-countrymen, of which nothing can I believe radically cure them but a Dutch war. The grand causes of this mischief, I am inclined to suppose, are the above-mentioned pewter-pot spouting clubs, and those rhapsodies of nonsense which are so liberally poured upon the public, under the

title of Sentimental Novels, utterly subversive of common sense, and not very warm friends to common honesty. There is a fascinating power in nonsense, which may sometimes afford relaxation, if not amusement, to a man of sense; but which always meets with something congenial to itself in meaner capacities. For such capacities such compositions are well adapted; and for these the furrow is left unfinished, and "the hammers miss their wonted stroke."

Some of my readers may, perhaps, be not only readers of novels, but writers of them. Though I do not consider myself as qualified in any particular to dictate to so respectable a part of the community, yet I cannot forbear offering a few, perhaps erroneous, remarks upon them and their productions.

While the writers of novels have so many admirable models, upon which their style might be formed, it is not without regret that we turn over the insipid pages which are thrust into our sight in every bookseller's shop. They seem to have forgotten that there are writers better than themselves; that if we wish for delicate and refined sentiment, we can recur tó Grandison and Clarissa; if we would see the world more perhaps as it is, than as it should be, we have Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones; or that we can find the happy mixture of satire and moral tendency in the Spiritual Quixote and Cecilia.

I cannot help noticing the glaring impropriety they are guilty of, who make their nobility and their peasants speak the same language. They de fend themselves, no doubt, by the authority and

example of Virgil's Shepherds, Sanazarius's Fishermen, and the rustics of Mr. Pope. But when they are told, that to copy the deformities of good writers will be no embellishment to bad ones, they may perhaps cease to overwhelm us with the sentimentality of their Abigails, the heroic gallantry of their footmen, and the rhetorical flourishes of their shoemakers. These are more particularly the cha racters which do a material injury to that part of the nation, who, when they have shut up shop, wet their thumbs and spell through a novel. A love-sick chambermaid is enough to ruin half the sisterhood; an intriguing apprentice is the torment of master tradesmen; and the high-flown notions of honour, which are inculcated by "Johnny with his shoulder-knot," will set a couple of tailors a duelling. If the rapid course of these grievances be not checked, we shall have the epicure justly complaining that he can get no lamb to eat with his asparagus, from the sensibility of the Leadenhall-butchers; or that the melting tenderness of the cooks prevents the eels from being skinned, or the lobsters boiled alive. Should delicacy of think ing become too common, we may drive the lawyers from their quibbles, and how then are we to get those little odd jobs done for ourselves and our estates, so convenient for our families, and so be neficial to our landed interests? Suppose, moreover, the Jews (I do not mean particularly those to whom Dr. Priestley's invitation is directed,) but the money-lenders and the proprietors of the crucible, should be infected with this growing sense of honour; the gaming-table must be deserted; there would be no market for stolen watches; and

the triumph of sentiment would be the downfall of the nation.

There is much perhaps to be complained of in other publications which tend to disseminate the glare and tinsel of false sentiment; I mean the works of those imitators of Sterne, whose pages are polluted with ribaldry and dashes; and those compilers of modern tragedies, at which no man weeps, unless in pure friendship for the author.

If I in the playhouse saw a huge blacksmith-like looking fellow blubbering over the precious foolery of Nina, I should immediately take it for granted he came in with an order, and look upon his iron tears as a forgery. Indeed, might I be allowed to dictate upon such an occasion, no man should be permitted to moisten a white handkerchief at the ohs and the ahs of a modern tragedy, unless he possessed an estate of seven hundred a year, clear of mortgage, and every other encumbrance. Such people have a right to fling away their time as they please; the works of the loom receive no impediment from their idleness, and it is at least an innocent though insipid amusement.

While I seem endeavouring to harden the hearts of my country against those attacks which are made upon them from the stage, I am far from wishing to rob them of that prompt benevolence which is a leading feature in our national character. But I am afraid of refinement even in our virtues. I am afraid lest the same eye which is so prone to give its tributary tear to the well-told history of fancied woe, should be able to look upon real misery without emotion, because its tale is told without plot, incident, or ornament. I would only therefore re

mind those fair ladies and well-dressed gentlemen who frequent our theatres because they have nothing else to do, or that they may enjoy the luxury of shedding tears with Mrs. Siddons, that if they will look round among their fellow-creatures, they will find their time rather too short, than too long, for the exercise of their compassion in alleviating the distresses of their neighbours: and they may, by these means, be supplied with luxuries, which will never reproach them with time squandered away, or misspent in idleness or vice.

MONRO.

No. XVI.

SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1787.

Gaudetque viam fecisse ruinâ.

Lucan.

WITH a view, no doubt, of more deeply interesting our attention, it seems the practice of modern tragedy writers to aim at exciting terror by a general, yet indiscriminate recourse to the bowl and the dagger; whilst, after exhausting the whole armory of the property room, the fifth act is frequently accelerated from the mere want of surviving personages to support the play. The modern hero of the drama, seems, as it were, professionally to consider killing as no murder; the rout of armies, the capture of thousands, and the downfall of empires,