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Souvent sa raison même accélère sa chute :
Penser trop ou trop peu, tout sert à l'égarer.
Chaos de passions, sans ordre en son systême,
S'éclairant tour-à-tour, et s'aveuglant lui-même ;
Créé pour s'élever, à tomber destiné;
Dominateur de tout, et toujours dominé ;
Fuge de vérité, chez qui l'erreur abonde;
La gloire, le jouet, l'énigme du monde!

Va donc, être étonnant! va, plein d'un fol espoir,
Jusques où peut te faire atteindre le savoir.
Va mesurer la terre, en sonder les contrées;
Apprends à peser l'air, à regler les marées;
Montre sous quelles loix l'astre doit se mouvoir;
Donne des loix au temps, au soleil une route;
Prends l'essor de Platon à la céleste voûte,
Et pénètre avec lui dans un monde nouveau ;
Vois-y le premier bien, le parfait, le vrai bean;
Où, suivant les docteurs de sa subtile école,
Abstiens-toi de sentir, et crois sur leur parole
T'élever jusqu'à Dieu, devenir son pareil.
Comme un prêtre de l'Inde, en son erreur frivole,
Croit, tournoyant sans cesse, imiter le soleil,
Va, donner des leçons à l'arbitre suprême ;
Puis du trône de Dieu descends jusqu'à toi-même,

Rentre dans ton néant, et dis: L'homme n'est rien.'

The fourth book of Milton's Paradise Lost is rendered with lest felicity. A Fable of Gay, an Oratorio of Metastasio, an Episode of Virgil, another of Ariostso, and several Fragments of Ovid, compose the remaining specimens. We felt most inclined to regret, that the venerable and respectable author had not bestowed more of his time on the interpretation of the Orlando Furioso.

ART. IV. L'Espion de la Révolution Française, &c. i. c. The Spy of the French Revolution. By M. C***, formerly Member of several Academies. 2 Vols. 8vo. Paris, 1797. Imported by Dulau and Co. London. Ss. sewed.

T

HIS work, according to the Preface, was composed in prison during the ascendancy of Robespierre, and was written on scraps of paper in detached fragments, without any view of producing a connected work. These circumstances account for the bitterness of hostility with which the events of the Revolution are discussed; and for the disagreeably desultory and incomplete manner in which the observations are drawn up. They have, however, been revised at leisure: for in the vth chapter, (p. 41.) the author speaks repeatedly of Mont

joye's

3

joye's History, which he describes as full of falsehood, and which was not published until after the death of Robespierre. We shrewdly suspect the present author, also, of indulging his imagination.

At p. 44. it is asserted that the notorious insurrection of the 14th July was planned at Passy some time before; and that the articles of conspiracy, many of which are very atro cious, were publicly distributed at the Palais-Royal.

Chapters XII. to XVI. do not concern the history of the Revolution, but the theory of legislation; and they contain few sound reflections. The author then returns to his improbable narratives and partial anecdotes: he is of opinion. (p. 236.) that La Fayette connived at the flight of the king, and then contrived his arrest.

The xvith caapter contains a ridiculous dialogue between a Wig and a Cravat, which contrasts disgustingly with the stories of massacre and assassination between which it is in. troduced.

The xixth to xx1st chapters, which return to theoretical inquiry, terminate the first volume.

The xxIId chapter, which opens the second volume, characterizes with some vivacity the operations of the Constituting Assembly. The king's intention of flying to Rouen in Normandy, recently authenticated by M. Bertrand, is said by our author to have been laid aside on the 5th of August; that is, only five days before the insurrection which terminated the monarchy-yet there are still persons who talk of the king's fidelity to the Constitution. In the account of the celebrated tenth of August, the author records that

• M. Pisani, the ambassador of Venice, opened his doors to many gentlemen and to some Swiss guards who were threatened by the mob: domiciliary visits were attempted by the police, in order to ascertain the individuals secreted: but his generous firmness and sacred character availed in screening the objects of his hospitality.'

P. 97. The duke de la Rochefoucauld had signed, as president of the department of Paris, the act of suspension of Pethion and Manuel. Such an act would not remain unpunished. The duke was at the mineral springs of Forges, when a commissary brought him an oider to return to Paris. He set off, and stopped to sleep at Gisors. Meanwhile arrived a battalion of national guards, among whom were murderers, who asked for the duke. The mayor interfered to protect him, and conducted him safe out of town: but a carriage, which was overturned at some distance, delayed his progress; and here he wasovertaken, and finally dispatched by an assassin. Such was the vengeance of the virtuous Pethion and of Manuel.'

* See M. Rev. vol. xx. p. 536.

The

The XXIXth chapter contains anecdotes which may be read with advantage; and the xxxth preserves a song, full of wit, written during Turgor's administration in 1776, which well deserves the name of prophetic. We shall insert it:

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ob! gué!

Le bel auf à pondre.

Puis devenus vertueux,
Par philosophie

Les François auront des Dieux

A leur fantaisie;
Nous reverrons un oignon
A Jésus damer le pion;
Ah! quelle harmonie;
ob! gué!
Ah! quelle harmonie.

Ce n'est pas de nos bouquins.
Que vient leur science;
En eux ces fiers paladins

Ont la sapience:
Les COLBERT & les SULLY
Nous paraissent grands; mais fi!
Ce n'est qu' ignorance,
ob! gué!

Ce n'est qu' ignorance.

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Adieu parlemens et loix,

Les princes, les ducs, les rois ; La bonne aventure, ob! gué!

La bonne aventure.

Alors, d'amour sûreté
Entre saurs et frères &

Sacremens et parenté

Seront des chimères.

Chaque père imitera
No', quand il s'enyora.
Liberté plénière,
ab! gué!
Liberté plénière.

Plus de moines langoureux,
De plaintives nones ;

Au-lieu d'addresser aux cieux
Matines et nones,

On verra ces malheureux,
Danser, abjurant leurs vœux
Galante chaconne,
ob! gue!
Galante chaconze.

Puissent des novations,
La fière séquelle,
Nous rendre des nations
Le parfait modèle ;
Et cet honneur nous devrons
A Turgot et compagnons,
Faveur immortelle,
ob! gué!
Faveur immortelle.

A qui devrons nous le plus ?
C'est à notre maître,

Qui, se croyant un abus,

Ne voudra plus l'être.

Ah! qu'il faut aimer le bien, Pour de roi n'être plus rien: Fenverrais tout paître, ob! qué!

J'enverrais tout paître.”

Another piece of wit, more recent and not less lively, occurs

at p. 382. The author is seldom so entertaining as when he

is transcribing the writings of others.

The

The XLIXth chapter concludes the work by recommending a counter-revolution. Some new calumnies against the innovators may be occasionally gleaned from it; it may therefore be of use to the historians of Jacobinism.

ART. V. Refutation du Livre De PEsprit, &c. i. e. A Refutation of the Work On Mind*, delivered at the Republican Lyceum, at the Sittings of the 26th and 29th March, and the 3d and 5th April. By JOHN FRANCIS LA HARPE. 8vo. pp. ioo. Paris, 1797. London, Dulau and Co. Price 2s. 6d.

IN

IN the former patt of his literary career, the author of this Refutation was a candidate for dramatic celebrity. His success was very imperfect; and when the Théatre de la Nation was first finished, and the three streets which lead to it were named Rue-Corneille, Rue-Racine, and Rue-Voltaire, in honor of the three great tragedians of France, a wag contemptuously proposed to call a blind ally in the neighbourhood Cul-de-sacLaharpe. Now, however, that Time and Robespierre have taken off the more eminent heads of literature, this writer shoots up into distinction, and is applauded at the Lyceum as the antagonist of Helvetius.

The first position of that justly celebrated metaphysician, which our author undertakes to refute, is the doctrine that "to judge is to feel" (juger c'est sentir). Nothing can be more loose and trifling than the manner in which he endeavours to contradict this vague but probable position (p. 16, 17, and 18). Our organs of sense appear to consist of bundles of tubulated fibres, of which one extremity communicates with the external world, and the other with the seat of the soul. A sensation is a motion of the external extremity ; an idea, a motion of the internal extremity of these organs. Perception is a motion propagated from without, inwards; volition, a motion propagated from within, outwards. When the mind is attending to motions of the external extremity of the organ, it is said to feel; when to motions of the internal extremity, it is said to think. To feeble or habitual motions, it commonly does not attend at all; it sleeps with respect to them. If one foot be plunged into water painfully hot, and the other into water painfully cold, the too rapid motion of the caloric in the skin, in the first case inwards, in the second case outwards, produces a parching sensation in both feet, not instantaneously distinguishable-but, as soon as the mind has had leisure al ternately to attend to the two sensations, it correctly discri

*Helvetius de l'Esprit. See Rev. June 1759, p. 521.
M m

APP. REV. VOL. XXIV.

minates

minates between them: it has judged, without going through any other process than that of mere sensation. The same analogy holds with respect to ideas. Now, as Helvetius makes no distinction between the motions of the internal and of the external extremity of the organs of sense, but maintains that to think is to feel, he is consistent, and certainly not absurd in the assertion that to judge is to feel.

The next important position, which our author endeavours to controvert, respects the doctrine of ennui; which is defined to mean the uneasiness that prevails during the absence of mental impressions. The aversion from ennui, the desire of intellectual emotion, is described by Helvetius as a very powerful and general spring of conduct. Surely there was some merit in detecting this law of mind; before Fontana had inferred from his experiments the properties of animal irritability, to which that of the mind bears a close analogy,-and before Brown, in his medical theory, had ascertained and applied these laws to the explanation of the phænomena of life. A modern metaphysician would, indeed, express himself with greater precision than the French philosopher: but his observcations on the stimulant nature of the passions, and on the constant tendency of civilized communities to require stronger and stronger topics of consideration and pursuit, bear every stamp of truth and of penetration.

The most paradoxical and improbable of the opinions of Helvetius is the doctrine that all men have an equal aptness for intellectual exertion; and that the inequality of minds is wholly the result of education. It was more easy to accumulate the objections urged by our author,-which, for the most part, are very obvious, than to defend, with a plausibility so fascinating, the original position. Here, however, if any where, M. LA HARPE triumphs.

- The writer next proceeds to refute the doctrine of fatalism, or of the necessity of all human actions--but on this topic the English public has long since heard enough. He then passes on to the question of self-interest: but he appears ignorant of what Hartley and his followers have written, to explain in what manner the perfectly disinterested passions may be generated, without denying self-interest to be the radical principle of action. Finally, he discusses whether all our intellectual pains and pleasures are ultimately deducible from corporeal pain and pleasure; and on this subject again he differs from Hartley and from Helvetius.

We see little reason to recommend this work for translation.

ART.

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