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inuendos. He may be as weak, finical and senseless · as possible, but he must not be so ill-bred as even Plato, the great father of polite literature, who introduced crocks and pitchers in discourses on philosophy; nor must he resemble Tucker, who, preferring clearness and aptness to neatness and politeness, fetched comparisons from the stable and the scullery, when none occurred suitable to the purpose in the parlour or the drawing-room. Longinus indeed has said, that a vulgar idea is sometimes more powerful and sublime than a polite one; but the composer must for that very reason not employ it, for the sublimity of vulgarity must be horrible.

It is granted that writers would be more free and bold if not restrained by the petty laws of petits maîtres concerning the high concernments of lightness and delicacy; but freedom and boldness are terrible qualities to the exquisite sensibilities and delicate niceties of a finically refined age. It would shock tender intellects into hysterics to introduce such horrid ghosts as the images of vulgar objects and departed manners. The fond lover of polite literature would faint away in the arms of his mistress if we were at any time, for any purpose, to stir up the sediment at the bottom of language. It would be necessary to fetch the Scotch Doctors and their college smelling bottle to restore the olfactory delicacies of the patient.

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May there not be some risk (says the worthy Professor, Stewart) that by such etymological studies

the taste may lose more in the nicety of its discrimi nation than the understanding gains in useful knowledge." It seems then that taste and the understanding are not twin graces, or two fond lovers. That is certainly a great pity; could the understanding be induced to take a fancy to taste, there might be some grand displays of gallantry between them, and a match might be ultimately accomplished.

But seriously:-the understanding and taste are rivals; in proportion as the understanding is preferred taste is disregarded; in proportion as taste is preferred the understanding is enfeebled and enslaved: the mightiest intellect that ever pulled down the pillars of consecrated absurdity and established error would soon be shorn of its strength in the lap of this Delilah. When our mighty, immortal authors wrote, taste was not even heard of: a century or half a century after (at the Restoration of the vile, foppish Stuarts just come out of the lap of French courtezans) came creeping into literary existence a feeble, finical race, mawkishly puling about taste, as if they had no receptacle but their stomach, and no standard of excellence but their lolling, drivelling tongue, which has long ago indicated their helpless, disgusting fatuity to the whole world.

There never was a true genius either before or af ter Shakespear whom literary artizans and dancingmasters did not condemn as guilty of bad taste when tried by their petty laws; but it is the high prerogative of such a genius to be a law to himself; scorning

every slavish yoke as much as the crutches and leading-strings of infirm and childish minds. His works may contain deformity as well as beauty-rugged wastes and wilds as well as smooth and fertile plains; -but there is every where the simplicity-the fulness-the variety—the sublimity of creation: in the well-cultivated garden of polite literature there is nothing but dull regularity and sickly exotics arranged according to arbitrary rules of propriety and clipped into a stiff or fantastic shape by the finical fingers of laborious dulness.

All the faults of an original writer are amply compensated by great and numerous excellencies; but no virtues can atone for the unpardonable sin of mere roting or repeating instead of inventing. Even the faults of those who give their thoughts fresh from the spring of original thinking are in general preferable to the excellencies of dull imitators; and in speaking of the peculiarity of their faults we ought to say with Montesquieu-" Liberty is the glorious cause it is liberty that gives human nature fair play, and allows every singularity to show itself; and which for one less agreeable oddity it may bring to light, gives to the world ten thousand great and useful examples.

Before arbitrary principles and rules have become despotic original thinkers can be nobly singular without fear and without censure; but after tyranny is fully established and generally acknowledged, even they must submit in the prescribed, the established, the authorised manner. Originality cannot exist un

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der the deadly shade of despotism: slaves can neither think nor feel nor speak as free men.

Mr. Stewart would not only have us abandon etymology, he would refine us out of the best half of our language: he would not only strip words of their original import, when wild in the woods of Germany; he would banish many of them from good composition for rudeness and vulgarity. Handle, he says, has not sufficient lightness and delicacy for fine writing, and ought to be superseded by that fine, smooth Italian word treat, that can nicely touch the finest nerves of the most delicate ears, without causing the slightest jar or discord among their notions.

"In short, (to adopt the words of a writer as sensible as original, when he does not plunge into unexamined depths or strut after Johnson) he would proscribe literary genius from every walk but high life; which, though abounding in fools as well as the humblest station, is by no means so fruitful in absurdity, (or the means and materials of wit and humour.) Among well-bred fools we may despise much, but have little to laugh at; nature [art] seems to present a universal blank of silk, ribbons, smiles and whispers." Our polite literature is a

mere silken blank of thin, polished, worn-out sentiment and expression.

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WHOEVER WOULD WRITE WELL MUST HAVE NO RHYTHMUS OR TUNE OF COMPOSITION.

The rhymers are all pretty singers, who soothe dainty ears with much sweet melody; and in proportion as the art of rhyming is improved and refined, the sense is lost in the sound; for you cannot get the meaning of the song from the mouth of a fine singer. Pope is one of the sweet singers of polite literature; and Wordsworth puts the dear baby to bed with such a sweet and sovereign lullaby, that I should wonder if it waked again before the morning of the resurrection of genius: the mysticism of German and Scotch metaphysics, has been already introduced to give effect to the music of poetry, (for music has most effect in the stillness and darkness of night,) and the mists and clouds have only to thicken round the intellectual horizon, to involve the understanding in eternal night; when the ghosts and dreams of diseased fancy will hold their uninterrupted revellings, masquerades, balls, concerts, or literary converzationes.

The music and harmony of composition are not wholly monopolized by the elegant rhymers-the prosers too have their favourite airs and respective tunes. Most of our historians have rhyme as well as reason in their composition. There is much of the roundelay in the far-famed pages of Robertson; and not a little of the clinkum clankum in the profound