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 unharmonious! 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 instability 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 different to the English one. The latter only possesses beauties 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 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

*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.