them. And that she had a mind to make it believed that she did some things from an excessive love to her people, which she was led to more by her own interest.

Avarice is another failing which her own friends reproach her with. I will not deny that she was too parsimonious, and upon some occasions stuck too close to the maxims she had laid down, not to be at any expence but what was absolutely necessary. However, in general I maintain, that if her circumstances did not require her to be covet ous, at least they required that she should not part with her money but with great caution, both in order to preserve the affection of her people, and to keep herself always in a condition to withstand her ene

mies...

It is not so easy to justify her concerning the death of the Queen of Scots. Here it must be owned she sacrificed equity, justice, and it may be her own conscience, to her safety. If Mary was guilty of the murder of her husband, as there is ground to believe, it was not Elizabeth's business to punish her for it. And truly it was not for that she took away her life; but she made use of that pretence to detain her in prison, under the deceitful colour of making her innocence appear. On this occasion her dissimulation was blameworthy. This first piece of injustice drew her in afterwards to use a world of artful devices to get a pretence to render Mary's imprisonment perpetual. From hence arose in the end the necessity of putting her to death on the scaffold. This doubtless is Elizabeth's great blemish, which manifestly proves to what degree she carried the fear of losing a crown. The continued fear and uneasiness she was under on that account is what characterises her reign, because it was the mainspring of almost all her acting. The best thing that can be said in Elizabeth's behalf is, that the Queen of Scots and her friends had brought matters to such a pass, that one of the two queens must perish, and it was natural that the weakest should fall. I don't believe anybody ever questioned her being a true Protestant. But, as it was her interest to be, some have taken occasion to doubt whether the zeal she expressed for her religion was the effect of her persuasion or policy. All that can be said is, that she happened sometimes to prefer her temporal concerns before those of religion. To sum up in two words what may serve to form Elizabeth's character, I shall add, she was a good and illustrious queen, with many virtues and noble qualities and few faults. But what ought above all things to make her memory precious is, that she caused the English to enjoy a state of felicity unknown to their ancestors,

CHARLES ROLLIN,

the College du Plessis, 1687, and of Eloborn in Paris, 1661, Professor of Rhetoric in quence in the Royal College de France, 1694-1696, died 1741, was the author of a 1688; Principal of the University of Paris, work on the Study of Belles-Lettres (Traité de la Manière d'enseigner et étudier les Belles-Lettres, 1726); of an Ancient Hisand of a History of Rome (Histoire Ro tory (Histoire Ancienne, 1730-38, 12 vols.); maine, 1738).

GENERAL REFLECTIONS

upon what is called Good Taste, as it now falls under our consideration, that is, with reference to the reading of authors, and composition, is a clear, lively, and distinct discerning of all the beauty, truth, and justness of the thoughts and expressions which compose a discourse. It distinguishes what is conformable to eloquence and propriety in every character, and suitable in different circumstances. And whilst, with a delicate and exquisite sagacity, it notes the graces, turns, manners, and expressions most likely to please, it perceives also all the defects which produce the contrary effect, and distinguishes precisely wherein those defects consist, and how far they are removed from the strict rules of art and the real beauties of nature.

This happy faculty, which it is more easy to conceive than define, is less the effect of genius than judgment, and a kind of natural reason wrought up to perfection by study. It serves in composition to guide and direct the understanding. It makes use of the imagination, but without submitting to it, and keeps it always in subjection. It consults nature universally, follows it step by step, and is a faithful image of it. Reserved and sparing in the midst of abundance and riches, it dispenses the beauties and graces of discourse with temper and wisdom. It never suffers itself to be dazzled with the false, how glittering a figure soever it may make. Tis equally offended with too much and too little. It knows precisely where it must stop, and cuts off, without regret or mercy, whatever exceeds the beautiful and perfect. 'Tis the want of this quality which occasions the various species of bad style; as bombast, conceit, and witticism; in which, as Quinctilian says, the genius is void of judgment, and suffers itself

to be carried away with an appearance of beauty, quoties ingenium judicio caret, and specie boni fallitur.

Taste, simple and uniform in its principle, is varied and multiplied an infinite number of ways, yet so as under a thousand different forms, in prose or verse, in a declamatory or concise, sublime or simple, jocose or serious style, 'tis always the same, and carries with it a certain character of the true and natural, immediately perceived by all persons of judgment. We cannot say the style of Terence, Phædrus, Sallust, Casar, Tully, Livy, Virgil, and Horace is the same. And yet they have all, if I may be allowed the expression, a certain tincture of a common spirit, which in that diversity of genius and style makes an affinity between them, and the sensible difference also be twixt them and the other writers, who have not the stamp of the best age of antiquity upon them.

I have already said that this distinguishing faculty was a kind of natural reason wrought up to perfection by study. In reality all men bring the first principles of taste with them into the world, as well as those of rhetoric and logic. As a proof of this, we may urge that every good orator is almost always infallibly approved of by the people, and that there is no difference of taste and sentiment upon this point, as Tully observes, between the ignorant and the learned.

The case is the same with music and painting. A concert that has all its parts well composed and well executed, both as to instruments and voices, pleases universally. But if any discord arises, any ill tone of voice be intermixed, it shall displease even those who are absolutely ignorant of music. They know not what it is that offends them, but they find somewhat grating in it to their ears. And this proceeds from the taste and sense of harmony implanted in them by nature. In like manner, a fine picture charms and transports a spectator who has no idea of painting. Ask him what pleases him, and why it pleases him, and he cannot easily give an account, or specify the real

reasons; but natural sentiment works almost the same effect in him as art and use in connoisseurs.

The like observations will hold good as to the taste we are here speaking of. Most men have the first principles of it in themselves, though in the greater part of them they lie dormant in a manner, for want of instruction or reflection; as they are often stifled or corrupted by vicious education, bad customs, or reigning prejudices of the age and country.

But how depraved soever the taste may

be, it is never absolutely lost. There are certain fixed remains of it, deeply rooted in the understanding, wherein all men agree. Where these secret seeds are cultivated with care, they may be carried to a far greater height of perfection. And if it so happens that any fresh light awakens these first notions and renders the mind attentive to the immutable rules of truth and beauty, so as to discover the natural and necessary consequences of them, and serves at the same time for a model to facilitate the application of them, we generally see that men of the best sense gladly cast off their ancient errors, correct the mistakes of their former judgments, and return to the justness and delicacy which are the effects of a refined taste, and by degrees draw others after them into the same way of thinking.

To be convinced of this, we need only look upon the success of certain great orators and celebrated authors, who, by their natural talents, have recalled these primitive ideas, and given fresh life to these seeds, which lie concealed in the mind of every man. In a little time they united the voices of those who made the best use of their reason in their fervour; and soon after gained the applause of every age and condition, both ignorant and learned. It would be easy to point out amongst us the date of the good taste which now reigns in all arts and sciences; by tracing each up to its original we should see that a small number of men of genius have acquired the nation this glory and advantage.

Study of Belles-Lettres.

DANIEL DE FOE, born 1661, died 1731, was the author of more than two hundred works (see Bohn's Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, ii. 612-622), of which Robinson Crusoe, and A Journal of the Plague Year (1665): written by a Citizen who continued all the while in London, Never made publick before, Lond., 1722, 8vo, are the best known. Both are fictitious.

"Perhaps there exists no work, either of instruction or entertainment, in the English language, which has been more generally read, and more universally admired, than the Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It is difficult to say

in what the charm consists, by which persons of all classes and denominations are thus fasci nated; yet the majority of readers will recollect it as among the first works that awakened and interested their youthful attention; and feel, even in advanced life, and in the maturity of their understanding, that there are still associated with Robinson Crusoe the sentiments peculiar to that period when all is new, all glittering in prospect, and when those visions are most bright which the ex

perience of after-life tends only to darken and destroy."-SIR WALTER SCOTT. "Most of our readers are probably familiar with

De Foe's history of that great calamity (the Plague), a work in which fabulous incidents and circumstances are combined with authentic narra

tives with an art and verisimilitude which no other writer has ever been able to communicate to fic

tion."-Edin. Review, xxiv. 321.

THE PLAGUE IN LONDON IN 1665.

The Plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where it happens, can only burn a few houses; or if it begins in a single or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where it begins: but if it begins in a close-built town, or city, and gets a-head, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can reach.

It is true, hundreds, yea thousands, of families fled away at this last Plague, but then of them many fled too late, and not only died in their flight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries where they went, and infected those whom they went among for safety; which confounded the thing, and made that be a propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it; and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others,-I say this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns they went through; and it was by that means that almost all the great towns in England had the distemper among them, more or less; and always they would tell you such a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it down.

It must not be omitted that, when I speak of those people who were really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own condition; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as indeed they were, they must have been a kind | of wilful murderers, if they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue, viz., that the infected people were utterly careless as to giving the infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not; and I believe it was partly from this very thing that they raised that | suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact.

I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general, but I could name several

people within the knowledge of some of their neighbours and families yet living who shewed the contrary to an extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood, having had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some work that he wanted to have finished, and he had some apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman's door, but did not discover it fully, but the next day it discovered itself, and he was taken very ill; upon which he immediately caused himself to be carried into an outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a workhouse, the man being a brazier; here he lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours, but by a nurse from abroad, and would not suffer his wife, nor children, nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be infected, but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a distance, and all this for fear of giving them the distemper, and without which, he knew as they were kept up, they could not have it.

And here I must observe also, that the Plague, as I suppose all distempers do, operated in a different manner on different constitutions: some were immediately overwhelmed with it, and it came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains; others with swellings and tumours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which, till they could be broke, put them into insufferable agonies and torment; while others, as I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it, till they fell into swooning, and faintings and death, without pain. A Journal of the Plague Year.

JONATHAN SWIFT, D.V.,

famous alike for his wit, his genius, his love affairs with Varina, Stella, and Vanessa, and his political warfare, was born in Dublin, 1667, and died in a state of mental imbecility, 1745. Among his best-known works are Tale of a Tub, with an Account of a Battle between the Ancient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, Lond., 1704, 8vo; The Conduct of the Allies, etc., Lond., 1712, 8vo; Law is a Bottomless Pit, Lond., 1712, 8vo; Drapier's Letters, 1724, with Prometheus, etc., Dubl., 1725, 8vo, Lond., 1730, 8vo; Gulliver's Travels, Lond., 172627, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d. ed., Lond., 1727, 2 vols.