swell these interrogatories by pursuing them through all the qualifications of a poet? I will close them by one emphatic question. It has been foolishly demanded, where does Mr. Scott differ from our greatest poets, but in the structure of his verse? I ask-where does he resemble them? Let this be satisfactorily answered, and Mr. Scott's fame will then find that level now which it will certainly find hereafter.

I am not Mr. Scott's enemy. I know nothing of him but his works. Them I have read, and I I suppose have read them with as little delight as any man in the kingdom. He is too far elevated by fortune and by popularity to be susceptible of any pain from the opinions of one so far distant from both as myself, or I would not tell him, that having read the first two cantos of his Lady of the Lake, from necessity, shortly after it appeared, I have never since been able, by any efforts of resolution, by any determinations of prudence, to finish that work. Whether this may be reckoned my happiness or my misfortune, I will not say; but I am very certain that the world (I mean Mr. Scott's world-his admirers), will ascribe it to something I may not name, because I would rather it should come from them than from me.

3.

Yet I can be pleased with some things that he has written, and have been particularly so, with what, perhaps, is the best thing he ever did write ; I mean those stanzas, in his last poem of Don

Roderick, which begin with this line: "A various host, from kindred realms they came;" and which contain a spirited and poetical delineation of the English, Scotch, and Irish characters.

When I consider the rapidity with which Mr. Scott has produced his poems, I am sometimes tempted to think that he has formed a much juster notion of his own talents than his applauders have; and that, finding himself popular without inquiring how he became so, he wisely resolves to profit by the lucky chance before the infatuation subsides, and his commodities lose that accidental value which fashion now bestows upon them. I may be wrong in this conjecture; but I can divine no other motive for a man's writing so many verses in so short a time. Were lasting fame his object I think he would know better how to seek it,

This is not the place to analyse the causes of Mr. Scott's popularity, or the peculiarities which distinguish his compositions; but, as I have censured those compositions with that freedom which I think becomes every man who means fairly (and which any man may exercise towards me with equal sincerity, or with less if he prefer it, without provoking the slightest emotion of resentment), I will not disdain to derive confidence in my opinions from the authority of others, and shall therefore seek to propitiate the reader (if he happen to admire Mr. Scott's poetry something more than I do), by shewing him that I do not stand quite alone.

The following are the lines of Cumberland to which I referred, and to which, indeed, must be ascribed all the displeasure which this digression may excite:

"And was there then no patron to be found,
But one as base and needy as thyself?

Ah thou, the muse of Marmion and the Lake,
Rich as Pactolus' stream, dost thou not blush,
To see thine elder, worthier, sister sit
In tatter'd raiment over Goldsmith's grave,
With that sweet village poem' in her hand,
Sad emblem of her poor deserted' bard?
Thou in thy banner'd hall, with kilted knights
And elfin page, array'd in painted vest,
Scrawl'd o'er with magic characters, devis'd
To puzzle and surprise the gaping crowd-
She, with no other canopy but Heav'n,
No trophy but the amaranthine wreath,
That binds her brow, in contemplation rapt,
Waiting the award of ages yet to come.
Conscious of all the peril I incur,

I must now leave my cause to future time,
And rest in humble hope, that what I have said,
Posterity will sanction. Sixty years

I've worn the livery of the true-born muse;

She is my rightful mistress; her I serve:
Witches and goblins must be chas'd away,
And truth and nature, and the genuine taste,
For classic purity must be restor'd,

Ere men shall listen to the measur'd strains
Of her melodious heav'n-strung harp again."

Had Miss Seward lived to peruse these lines, methinks how she would have poured forth her wrath and indignation in a letter to some friend, (hereafter to be published), perhaps to Mr. Scott himself; and she would have felt no hesitation in

pronouncing them a fresh proof that Cumberland was Sir Fretful Plagiary. A periodical critic, indeed, has insinuated that he wrote them from the mingled feelings of disappointment, poverty, and envy. I think otherwise: I think that he penned them with sincere regret to see our classic models disregarded, and from a real wish to rouse the public taste from that lethargy which makes it slumber over the strains of our ancient and approved bards, while it is patiently receiving the fetters which a new race of versifiers are forging for it.

CHAP. XIII.

Cumberland produces the FASHIONABLE LOVER. -A defence of sentimental comedy.-MENANDER and TERENCE.-The passions which predispose to virtue more easily moved by tears than by smiles.-Cumberland's complaints against the critics.--LORD MANSFIELD's opinion of an anonymous defamer.-Examination of the FASHIONABLE LOVER.-Total failure of the author in drawing the Scotch character.—Cumberland's ridicule of the citizens derived from former dramatists, not from actual inspection.-Na wit in this piece. Inconsistency of Cumberland,

THE next drama which the prolific muse of Cumberland produced, was the Fashionable Lover, This play he seems always to have contemplated with much pleasure, as the happiest effort of his pen, and as avowedly superior both in composition and in moral, to the West Indian. In this I very willingly concur; but I do not equally concur in the author's belief, that it approaches very nearly to what the true style of comedy ought to be,-Joca non infra soccum, seria non usque cothurnum.

It is a comedy of intrigue rather than of character, for the chief delight of the reader or spectator arises from the situations of its personages. It is precisely what the French denominate la comedie