not too severe. Whatever there is of this kind I shall gladly strike out: for though I have had provocation enough, I can assure you, I have no resentment. I perhaps may not be thought the best judge of my own temper in this matter, and reasonably. But why I say I have so little resentment I collect from hence, that there is not one word in this volume against them, which I could not with the greatest indifference strike out, either with reason or without. I do not expect the world should do me this justice, because they are to judge by appearances, and appearances are against me, for there are caustic strokes enough against the ignorance and ill faith of my adversaries. But if this be resentment, it is the resentment I should shew against vice and folly in the case of any other honest man.” As a farther specimen of his epistolary style, and of the ease with which he delivered his opinions to his confidential friend, on every subject that occurred, we shall copy entire the 187th Letter: Prior-Park, November 15th, 1766. ⚫ I have your kind letter of the 11th. As to Rousseau, I entirely agree with you, that his long letter to his brother philosopher, Hume, shews him to be a frank lunatick. His passion of tears-his suspicion of his friends in the midst of their services-and his incapacity of being set right, all consign him to Monro. You give the true cause too, of this excess of frenzy, which breaks out on all occasions, the honest neglect of our countrymen in their tribute to his importance. For all that Hume says of him on this head, seems to be the truth; and as it is a truth easily discoverable from his writings, his patron could have but one motive in bring ing him over (for he was under the protection of Lord Mareshal), and that was cherishing a man whose writings were as mischievous to society as his own. Walpole's pleasantry upon him had baseness in its very concep tion. It was written when the poor man had determined to seek an asylum in England; and is therefore justly and generously condemn ed by D'Alembert. This considered, Hume failed both in honour and friendship, not to shew his dislike: which neglect seems to have kindled the first spark of combustion in this madman's brain. The merits of the two philosophers are soon adjusted. There is an immense distance between their natural genius; none at all in their excessive vanity; and much again in their good faith. Rousseau's warmth has made him act the madman in his philosophic enquiries, so that he oft saw not the mischief which he did: Hume's coldness made him not only see, but rejoice in his. But it is neither parts nor lagic that has made either of them philosophers, but infidelity only: for which, to be sure, they equally deserve a PENSION.-Had the givers considered the difference between what became them to do in charity, by way of protection, and what became them to do as a reward, by way of pension, they never had been reduced to the low and ignoble expedient of having what they did kept a secret. However, the contestation is very amusing; and I shall be very sorry if it stops now it is in so good a train. 1 should be well pleased, pleased, particularly, to see so seraphic a madman attack so in sufferable a coxcomb as Walpole; and I think they are only fit for one another. I could not but laugh at your archness, in what you say about Antichrist. You may think, perhaps, and not amiss, that a Discourse on the great whore, like that on the little one in Terence, can be, at best, but teaching the spiritual inamorato, cum ratione insanire; but this may be something; and not so useless as Parmeno thought it ;for the madness, consult the prophet, Whiston; and for the reason, the interpreter, Mede. The Dormitory is already filled; but what inspirations, as a library, it may give to the forty little sleepers therein, must be left to time,, which reveals all things. As to news, when you send me any, I had rather you would consider yourself as my Purveyor, than my Intelligencer. It is a kind of daily-bread one can hardly do without; eaten to day with appetite, and gone, one does not care where, to-morrow. I am a great reader of History; but a greater still of professed Romances so that you see nothing comes amiss to a man who consults his appetite more than his digestion. town. I suppose you have got our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mason, to hope.' We must finish our extracts with the accounts which the Bishop of Gloucester gives, first, of his visit to the Court, and then of his preaching before and dining with the Lord Mayor: I brought, as usual, a bad cold with me to town; and this being the first day I ventured out of doors, it was employed, as in duty bound, at Court, it being a levee-day. A buffoon Lord in waiting (you may guess whom I mean) was very busy marshaling the circle and he said to me, without ceremony-" Move forward; you clog up the door-way."—I replied, with as little, " Did nobody clog up the King's door-stead more than I, there would be room for all bonest men.” This brought the man to himself. When the King came up to me, he asked "why I did not come to town before?" I said, "I understood there was no business going forward in the House, in which I could be of service to His Majesty." He replied, "He supposed the severe storm of snow would have brought me up." I replied, "I was under cover of a very warm house." You see, by all this, how unfit I am for Courts; so, let us leave them.' From various passages, indeed, it appears that Warburton's constitution was not suited to the air of a court, and that his haughty spirit could not bend even at the footstool of his sovereign. Nobody ever saw him without being impressed with the loftiness of his character; and we remember to have heard an anecdote from good authority, which is not generally known, known, but which is illustrative of this fact. Warburton was once in conversation with his bookseller, when Churchill came. into the shop, and silently observed the Right Reverend speaker. When the latter departed, Churchill, affecting not to know who he was, asked the bookseller what was the name of the clergyman who had just gone out, and on being told that it was Dr. Warburton, the Bishop of Gloucester, he exclaimed, "Dr. Warburton! why he looks as if he would say to the Apostle Paul, if he should meet him, D-n you, hold my horse.” Another indication of Warburton's dislike of sycophancy occurs, in a passage which also attributes a similar manly spirit to our present venerable sovereign. We find it in a letter dated November 29, 1760. Nichols, Potter, and T. Wilson, of Westminster, preaching one after another, bedaubed the new King, who, as Lord Mansfield, tells me, expressed his offence publicly, by saying, that he came to Chapel to hear the praises of God, and not his own. There will be some remove of Chaplains; if he should turn out these three, it would give a general satisfaction.' His conversation with the King of the city was more sprightly than the St. James's dialogue: I preached my Propagation Sermon; and ten or a dozen Bishops dined with my Lord Mayor, a plain and (for this year at least) a munificent man. Whether I made them wiser than ordinary at Bow, Í can't tell. I certainly made them merrier than ordinary at the Mansion-house; where we were magnificently treated. The Lord Mayor told me," the Common Council were much obliged to me, for that this was the first time he ever heard them prayed for." I said, "I considered them as a body who much needed the prayers of the Church."-But, if he told me in what I abounded, I told him in what I thought he was defective that I was greatly disappointed to see no Custard at table." He said, "that they had been so ridi. culed for their Custard, that none had ventured to make its appearance for many years." I told him, "I supposed that Religion and Custard went out of fashion together." It is impossible to glance even in the most cursory manner at all the various topics which are introduced into these letters, or to advert to all the circumstances of literary history to which a great part of the correspondence alludes. Indeed, scholars who are acquainted with the controversies of the last age need not any hints on these heads, and to others the details would be uninteresting. No readers, however, can avoid respecting the steadiness of Warburton's friendship as exhibited in this correspondence, and his earnestness in push ing the fame and fortune of his friend; nor can we contemplate the strength and vivacity of his intellect, without at the same time painfully recollecting the state of imbecility to which it was was reduced before his death. Such mournful examples are calculated to suppress all literary vanity and pride. Ad calcem, are subjoined five letters from the Honourable Charles Yorke to Mr. Warburton, some use having been made of them by the editor in Bishop Warburton's Life, Portraits of the two Bishops properly introduce and characteristically illustrate this volume. ART. II. Caledonian Sketches, or a Tour through Scotland in 1807: to which is prefixed an Explanatory Address to the Public, upon a recent Trial. By Sir John Carr. 4to. pp 560, and 12 Plates. 21. 28. Boards. Matthews and Leigh. 1809. WHEN WHEN the good-natured friends of the late Sir John Hill, of quacking celebrity, occasionally reminded him of the illnatured sarcasms on him in the newspapers of the day, he would reply with a smile, "What! do they talk of me? I care not what they say if they do but notice me, for this is a proof that I am worth talking about." Had Sir John Carr possessed the happy feelings of his brother Knight, "My Pocket Book" would never have provoked him to appeal to the Court of King's Bench; nor would his failure before Lord Ellenborough bave induced him to enlarge his mortification, by appealing to the public on the result of his trial. What demon could have possessed him, to make him gratify his enemies by an exposure of his irritability, and by now attempting to distinguish between the liberty of the literary press, and that of the caricature press? Surely he thus intimates that, if he be proof against the satirist's pen, he is to be annoyed by the pencil. As, however, the Knight is himself a proficient with both instruments, we think that he would have acted a part more becoming a traveller and a man of the world, if he had treated with equal contempt the ridicule of pamphlets and that of the print-shops; and had smiled at the short-lived malignity which, though it may gratify the spleen of a few, is always sure to die away before a fair and well earned reputation. The rapidity with which Sir John runs over and describes countries might induce the remark, that he had a machine for making tours; and though no one would be weak enough to take the allusion literally, it would probably excite a suspicion that the Knight was driving his Pegasus at an unmerciful rates or, in plain English, was writing himself down. We, however, who have never obtained the character of ill-natured critics, and who had rather "cut up" a fine haunch of venison than any poor author who ever wrote, are happy to observe on the *See his Stranger in France-Stranger in Ireland-Northern Summer-and Tour through Holland. present present occasion, that the merit of the volume before us is equal to encounter a few prejudices; and that, with whatever sentiments its readers open it, the impression with which they close it will be favourable to the author. He carries us on agreeably his Caledonian Sketches, both with the pencil and with the pen, are spirited; and the native Scot, as well as the general reader, will be gratified by the exhibition. Like another Howard, Sir John makes a point of visiting and reporting the state of the prisons; like a traveller fond of comforts, he notices the many good inns which are now to be found in the northern part of this island; and like an agreeable collector, he Looks sharp after anecdotes and bon mots. He improves as he proceeds in the career of authorship; the present volume betrays less of the trick of book-making than his former publications; and if he continues thus to amuse as well as to instruct, he needs not feel sore on being lashed with pictures.' Caledonia must rejoice on finding a tourist who labours to obliterate the impressions excited by the surly and illiberal Johnson, and to present a portrait of her which is well-drawn and correctly coloured. The flourishing state and growing population of her towns, the diffusion of literature, the comforts which industry and commerce are gradually introducing, the facilities of conveyance, the state of roads and internal navigation, the progress of agriculture and manufactures, the modes and habits of private life, are detailed, with many other particulars "too tedious to enumerate;" as well as the scenery which is afforded by her coasts, mountains, lochs, rivers, and forests, Sir John does not appear to have been solicitous to reach the ultima Thule of the antients, nor even the Johny Groat's house of the moderns, since he proceeds no farther north than Inverness, and then diverges to the Western Isles. Passing over that part of the Tour which does not properly belong to the record, as being descriptive of the author's route from London through Cambridge, York, and Newcastle, to the professed scene of his inquiries, we shall observe that he arrives in Scotland, by Jedburgh through the debateable land; and he laments that Dr. Johnson had not entered Caledonia in this direction, because the sweetness and luxuriance of the scene might perchance have mitigated, if they would not entirely have charmed away, the severity of prejudices which were conceived and cherished by a long residence in the metropolis of England, and which he appears to have quitted (London) for the sole purpose of endeavouring to confirm.' A great portion of this volume is occupied by a description of Edinburgh; which, while it instructs the arm-chair traveller, must be highly satisfactory to the Scottish nation: |