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One of our great Italian theologians, named Piazza, in his Dissertation on Paradise, informs us that the elect will for ever sing and play the guitar: they will have, says he, three nobilities-three advantages, viz. desire without excitement, caresses without wantonness, and voluptuousness without excess:"tres no

bilitates; illecebra sine titillatione, blanditia sine mollitudine, et voluptas sine exuberantià.”*

St. Thomas assures us that the smell of the glorified bodies will be perfect, and will not be diminished by perspiration.-"Corporibus gloriosi serit odor ultima perfectione, nullo modo per humîdum repressus."+ This question has been profoundly treated by a great many other doctors.

Suarez, in his Wisdom, thus expresses himself concerning taste:- "It is not difficult for God purposely to make some sapid humour act on the organ of taste.”—“ Non est Deo difficile facere ut sapidus humor sit intrà organum gustus, qui sensum illum intentionaliter afficere."

And, to conclude, St. Prosper, recapitulating the whole, pronounces that the blessed shall find gratification without satiety, and enjoy health without disease; "Saturitas sine fastidio, et tota sanitas sine morbo."

It is not then so much to be wondered at that the Mahometans have admitted the use of the five senses in their paradise. They say that the first beatitude will be the union with God; but this does not exclude the rest.

Mahomet's paradise is a fable; but once more be it observed, there is in it neither contradiction nor impurity.

Philosophy requires clear and precise ideas, which Grotius had not. He quotes a great deal, and makes a show of reasoning, which will not bear a close examination.

The unjust imputations cast on the Mahometans

* Supplement, part iii. quest. 84. + Page 506.

Book xvi. chap. 22. § No. 232.

would suffice to make a very large book. They have subjugated one of the largest and most beautiful countries upon earth; to drive them from it would have been a finer exploit than to abuse them.

The Empress of Russia supplies a great example. She takes from them Azoph and Tangarok, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Georgia; she pushes her conquests to the ramparts of Erzerum; she sends against them fleets from the remotest parts of the Baltic, and others covering the Euxine: but she does not say in her manifestos, that a pigeon whispered in Mahomet's ear.

ART OF POETRY.

A MAN of almost universal learning-a man even of genius, who joins philosophy with imagination, uses, in his excellent article ENCYCLOPEDIA, these remarkable words" If we except this Perrault, and some others, whose merits the versifier Boileau was not capable of appreciating," &c.*

This philosopher is right in doing justice to Claude Perrault, the learned translator of Vitruvius, a man useful in more arts than one, and to whom we are indebted for the fine front of the Louvre and for other great monuments; but justice should also be rendered to Boileau. Had he been only a versifier, he would scarcely have been known; he would not have been one of the few great men who will hand down the age of Louis XIV. to posterity. His tart Satires, his fine Epistles, and, above all, his Art of Poetry, are master-pieces of reasoning as well as poetry; "sapere est principium et fons." The art of versifying is, indeed, prodigiously difficult, especially in our language, where alexandrines follow one another two by two; where it is rare to avoid monotony; where it is absolutely necessary to rhyme; where noble and pleasing rhymes are too limited in number; and where a word out of its place, or a harsh syllable, is sufficient to spoil a happy thought. It is like dancing on a rope in fetters; the greatest success is of itself nothing.

* Montesquieu.

Boileau's Art of Poetry is to be admired, because he always says true and useful things in a pleasing manner, because he always gives both precept and example, and because he is varied, passing with perfect ease, and without ever failing in purity of language,

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

His reputation among men of taste is proved by the fact, that his verses are known by heart; and to philosophers it must be pleasing to find that he is almost always in the right.

As we have spoken of the preference which may sometimes be given to the moderns over the ancients, we will here venture to presume that Boileau's Art of Poetry is superior to that of Horace. Method is certainly a beauty in a didactic poem; and Horace has no method. We do not mention this as a reproach; for his poem is a familiar epistle to the Pisos, and not a regular work like the Georgics: but there is this additional merit in Boileau, a merit for which philosophers should give him credit.

The Latin Art of Poetry does not seem near so finely laboured as the French. Horace expresses himself, almost throughout, in the free and familiar tone of his other epistles. He displays an extreme clearness of understanding and a refined taste, in verses which are happy and spirited, but often without connection, and sometimes destitute of harmony; he has not the elegance and correctness of Virgil. His work is very good, but Boileau's appears to be still better: and, if we except the tragedies of Racine, which have the superior merit of treating the passions and surmounting all the difficulties of the stage, Despréaux's Art of Poetry is, indisputably, the poem which does most honour to the French language.

It is lamentable when philosophers are enemies to poetry. Literature should be like the house of Maecenas "est locus unicuique suus."

The author of the Persian Letters-so easy to write, and among which some are very pretty, others

very bold, others indifferent, and others frivolous,→→ this author, I say, though otherwise much to be recommended, yet having never been able to make verses, although he possesses imagination and often superiority of style, makes himself amends, by saying that "contempt is heaped upon poetry," that "lyric poetry is harmonious extravagance," &c. Thus do men often seek to depreciate the talents which they cannot

attain.

"We cannot reach it," says Montaigne; "let us revenge ourselves by speaking ill of it." But Montaigne, Montesquieu's predecessor and master in imagination and philosophy, thought very differently of poetry.

Had Montesquieu been as just as he was witty, he could not but have felt that several of our fine odes and good operas are worth infinitely more than the pleasantries of Rica to Usbeck, imitated from Dufréni's Siamois, and the details of what passed in Usbeck's seraglio at Ispahan.

We shall speak more fully of this too frequent injustice, in the article CRITICISM.*

ARTS FINE ARTS.

[Article dedicated to the King of Prussia.]

SIRE, The small society of amateurs, a part of whom are labouring at these rhapsodies at Mount Krapak, will say nothing to your majesty on the art of war. It is an heroic, or- -it may be an abominable art. If there were any thing fine in it, we would tell your majesty, without fear of contradiction, that you are the finest man in Europe. †

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We suspect that many will differ in opinion with Voltaire, in his parallel between Horace and Boileau; and many more agree with Montesquieu on a tendency in poets to decry acquirements which have little congeniality with their own. The article, however, although too local in its interest, is worth retaining as a general reproof to exclusive predilections.-T.

+We here omit some very insipid compliment to Frederick; at least it would be so felt at this time.-T.

You know, Sire, the four ages of the arts. Almost every thing sprung up and was brought to perfection under Louis XIV. after which many of these arts, banished from France, went to embellish and enrich the rest of Europe, at the fatal period of the destruction of the celebrated edict of Henry IV. pronounced irrevocable, yet so easily revoked. Thus, the greatest injury which Louis the XIV. could do to himself, did good to other princes against his will: this is proved by what you have said in your history of Brandenburgh.

If that monarch were known only from his banishment of six or seven hundred thousand useful citizens,from his irruption into Holland, whence he was soon obliged to retreat, from his greatness, which stayed him at the bank,* while his troops were swimming across the Rhine;-if there were no other monuments of his glory than the prologues to his operas, followed by the battle of Hochstet, his person and his reign would go down to posterity with but little eclât. But the encouragement of all the fine arts by his taste and munificence; the conferring of so many benefits on the literary men of other countries; the rise of his kingdom's commerce at his voice; the establishment of so many manufactories; the building of so many fine citadels; the construction of so many admirable ports; the union of the two seas by immense labour, &c. still oblige Europe to regard Louis XIV. and his age, with respect.

And, above all, those great men, unique in every branch of art and science, whom nature then produced at one time, will render his reign eternally memorable. The age was greater than Louis XIV. but it shed its glory upon him.

Emulation in art has changed the face of the continent, from the Pyrenees to the Icy Sea. There is hardly a prince in Germany who has not made useful and glorious establishments.

"Sa grandeur, qui l'attachait au rivage."

BOILEAU.-Passage of the Rhine.

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