which characterizes the writings of the only elegiac poet of France.

"Friendship, with fugitive deception kind,
Chases thy image, Emma, from my mind;
Emma, the charming object of my love,
So lately call'd to blissful realms above.
Sweet girl, how momentary was thy sway!
All from thy tomb now turn their eyes away;

The Muse or the poet, to whom we are indebted for Eleonora, indulged in reverie upon the same rocks where Paul, resting his head upon his hand, saw the vessel sail away, which contained Virginia. The cloistered Eloïsa revived all her sorrows and all her love by even thinking of Abelard. Recollections are the echo of the passions; and the sounds, which this echo repeats, acquire, from distance, a vague and melancholy character, which makes them more seductive than the accents of the passions themselves.

It remains for me to speak of religious sadness. Except Gray and Hervey, I know only one protestant writer (M. Necker) who infused a degree of tenderness into sentiments drawn from religion. It is known that Pope was a catholic, and that Dryden was the same at intervals. It is believed too that Shakspeare belonged to the Roman church. A father burying his daughter by stealth in a foreign land-what a beautiful subject for a christian minister! Notwithstanding this, but few affecting passages are to be found in Young's Complaint called Narcissa.. He sheds fewer tears over the tomb of his only daughter than Bossuet over the coffin of Madame Henriette.

Sweet harmonist, and beautiful as sweet!
And young as beautiful, and soft as young!
And gay as soft, and innocent as gay!

And happy (if aught happy here) as good!
For Fortune fond had built her nest on high.
Like birds quite exquisite of note and plume
Transfix'd by Fate (who loves a lofty mark)
How from the summit of the grove she fell,
And left it unharmorious! All its charms
Extinguish'd in the wonders of her song!
Her song still vibrates in my ravish'd ear,
Still melting there, and with voluptuous pain,
(Oh to forget her!) trilling thro' my heart."

This passage, all prejudice apart, I think intolerable, though it is one of the most beautiful in the French translation of Young's Night Thoughts by M. Le Tourneur. Is this the language of a father? Sweet harmonist or musician, as beautiful as sweet, and young as beautiful, and soft as young, and gay as soft, and innocent as gay! Is it thus that the mother of Euryalus deplores the loss of her son, or that Priam utters lamentations over the body of Hector? M. de Tourneur has displayed much taste by converting Young's "birds, transfixed by Fate, who loves a lofty mark," into a nightingale struck by the fowler's shot. It is a prodigious improvement, as may be instantly perceived. The means should always be proportioned to the object, and we ought not to use a lever for the purpose of raising a straw. Fate may dispose of an empire, change a world, elevate or throw down a great man, but Fate should not be employed in killing a bird. It is the durus arator, it is the feathered arrow which should be used to kill nightingales and pigeons.

It is not in this way that Bossuet speaks of Madame Henriette. "She has passed," says he, "from morning to evening like the herbs of the field. In the morning she flourished---oh, with what elegance! You know it, At night we saw her withered, and those strong expressions, by which the Scriptures almost exaggerate the insta

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bility of human affairs, were precisely and literally verified in this Princess. Alas, we composed her memoirs of all that we could fancy most glorious. The past and the present were our guarantees for the future. Such was the history, of which we had formed the outline, and to complete our noble project, nothing was requisite but the duration of her life, which we did not think in any danger. For who could have supposed that years would be refused to one of such vivacity in her youth? By her death our plan is totally destroyed in a moment. Behold her— in spite of her great heart, behold this Princess lately so much admired and beloved! See to what a state death has reduced her; and even these remains, such as they are, will soon disappear."

I should have liked to quote some pages of regularly supported beauty from the Night Thoughts of Young, Such are to be found in the French translation, but not in the original. The Nights of M. Le Tourneur, and the imitation of M. Colerdeau are works in all respects differ. ent to the English one. The latter only possesses beau. ties scattered here and there, and rarely supplies ten irreproachable lines together. Seneca and Lucan may be sometimes traced in Young, but Job and Pascal never. He is not a man of sorrow-he does not please the truly unhappy.

Young declaims in several places against solitude; so that the habit of his soul was certainly not an inclination to reverie.* The saints pursued their meditations

The English reader will probably not have agreed with M. de Chateaubriand on several points discussed in this criticism. Young can never be said to have disliked solitude. Let him speak for himself:

"Oh lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,

Lost to the noble sallies of the soul,

Who think it solitude to be alone!

Communion sweet, communion large and high!" &c.

Editor.

in the deserts, and the Parnassus of poets is also a solitary mountain. Bourdaloue intreated of the superior of his order permission to retire from the world. "I feel," wrote he," that my frame grows feeble, and approaches towards dissolution. I have run my course, and thank Heaven, I can add that I have been faithful to my God.

Let me be allowed to employ the remainder of my days in devotion to the Almighty, and in securing my own salvation. In retirement I shall forget the affairs of this world, and humble myself with contrition every day before my Maker." If Bossuet, living amidst the magnificence of Versailles was able to diffuse a genuine and majestic species of sadness through his writings, it was because he found solitude in religion; because though his body was in the world, his soul was in a desert; because his heart had found a sanctuary in the secret recesses of the tabernacle, because, as he himself said of Maria Theresa of Austria, he ran to the altar to enjoy humble repose with David; because he shut himself, as that Princess did, in his oratory, where, in spite of the tumult of the court, he found the carmel of Elias, the desert of Saint John, and the mountain, which so often witnessed the sorrows of Jesus."

Dr. Johnson, after having severely criticized Young's Night Thoughts, finishes by comparing them to a Chinese garden. For my own part, all I have wished to say is, that if we impartially compare the literary works of other nations with those of France, we shall find an immense superiority in favour of our own country. We always at least equal others in strength of thought, while we are certainly superior in point of taste; and it should ever be remembered that though genius produces the literary offspring, taste preserves it. Taste is the good sense of genius, and without it the latter is only a silly species of sublimity. But it is a singular circumstance that this sure

criterion, by which every thing yields the exact tone it ought to yield, is still less frequently found than the crea tive faculty. Genius and wit are disseminated in about, equal proportions, at all times; but there are only certain nations, and among these only particular moments, at which taste appears in all its purity. Before and after this moment, every thing fails either from deficiency or excess. It is for this reason that perfect works are so rare; for it is necessary that they should be produced in the happy hours of united taste and genius. This great junction, like that of certain heavenly bodies, appears only to take place after the lapse of several ages, and then endures only for a moment.