The baron, who sat secure without the vortex of this tumult, was not at all displeased at seeing his companions involved in such a calamity as that which he had already shared; but the doctor was confounded with shame and vexation. After having prescribed an application of oil to the count's leg, he expressed his sorrow for the misadventure, which he openly ascribed to want of taste and prudence in the painter, who did not think proper to return and make an apology in person; and protested that there was nothing in the fowls which could give offence to a sensible nose, the stuffing being a mixture of pepper, lovage, and assafoetida, and the sauce consisting of wine and herring-pickle, which he had used instead of the celebrated garum of the Romans; that famous pickle having been prepared sometimes of the scombri, which were a sort of tunny fish, and sometimes of the silurus or shad fish; nay, he observed, that there was a third kind called garum hoemation, made of the guts, gills, and blood of the thynnus.

The physician, finding that it would be impracticable to re-establish the order of the banquet by presenting again the dishes which had been discomposed, ordered everything to be removed, a clean cloth to be laid, and the dessert to be brought in.

Meanwhile he regretted his incapacity to give them a specimen of the alicus or fish meals of the ancients; such as the jusdiabaton, the conger eel, which, in Galen's opinion, is hard of digestion; the cornuta or gurnard, described by Pliny in his Natural History, who says the horns of many of them were a foot and a half in length; the mullet and lamprey, that were in the highest estimation of old, of which last Julius Cæsar borrowed six thousand for one triumphal supper. He observed that the manner of dressing them was described by Horace in the account he gives of the entertainment to which Maecenas was invited by the epicure Nasiedenus,

Affertur squillos inter Murena natantes, &c. And told them that they were commonly eaten with the chus Syriacum. a certain anodyne and astringent seed, which qualified the purgative nature of the fish. Finally, this learned physician gave them to understand that though this was reckoned a luxurious dish in the zenith of the Roman taste, it was by no means comparable in point of expense to some preparations in vogue about the time of that absurd voluptuary Heliogabalus, who ordered the brains of six hundred ostriches to be compounded in one

mess.

The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle.

JOSEPH WARTON, D.D., born 1722, second Master of Winchester School, 1755-66, and Head Master, 1766-93, Prebendary of London, 1782, died 1800, published Odes, Lond., 1746. 4to; The Works of Virgil in Latin and English, by C. Pitt and J. Warton, 1753, 4 vols. 8vo; an Essay on Pope, 1756-62, 2 vols. 8vo; and an edition of Pope's Works, 1797, 9 vols. 8vo; was author of twenty-four numbers of The Adventurer, 1753-56, etc. See Rev. John Wooll's Memoirs of J. Warton, 1806,

4to.

"Warton's translation [of the Georgics] may in many instances be found more faithful and concise than Dryden's; but it wants that elastic and idiomatic freedom by which Dryden reconciles us to his faults, and exhibits rather the diligence of a scholar than the spirit of a poet."-THOMAS CAMPBELL: Specimens, 664.

CRITICS AND MORALISTS OF FRANCE.

The character of the scholars of the present age will not be much injured or misrep resented by saying that they seem to be superficially acquainted with a multitude of subjects, but go to the bottom of very few. This appears in criticism and polite learning, as well as in the abstruser sciences; by the diffusion of knowledge its depth is abated. Eutyches harangues with wonderful plausibility on the distinct merits of all the Greek and Roman classics, without having thoroughly and attentively perused or entered into the spirit and scope of one of them. But Eutyches has diligently digested the dissertations of Rapin, Bonhours, Felton, Blackwall, and Rollin : treatises that administer great consolation to the indolent and incurious, to those who can tamely rest satisfied with second-hand knowledge, as they give concise accounts of all the great heroes of ancient literature, and enable them to speak of their several characters, without the tedious drudgery of perusing the originals. But the characters of writers, as of men, are of a very mixed and complicated nature, and are not to be comprehended in so small a compass such objects do not admit of being drawn in miniature, with accuracy and distinetness.

To the present prevailing fashion for French moralists and French critics may be imputed the superficial show of learning and abilities of which I am complaining. And since these alluring authors are become not only so fashionable an amusement of those who call themselves the polite world, but also engross the attention of academical students. I am tempted to inquire into the merits of the most celebrated among them of both kinds.

That Montaigne abounds in native wit, in quick penetration, in a perfect knowledge of the human heart, and the various vanities and vices that lurk in it, cannot justly be denied. But a man who undertakes to transmit his thoughts on life and manners to posterity, with the hopes of entertaining and amending future ages, must be either exceedingly vain or exceedingly careless, if he expects either of these effects can be produced by wanton sallies of the imagination, by useless and impertinent digressions, by never forming or following any regular plan, never classing or confining his thoughts, never changing or rejecting any sentiment that occurs to him. Yet this appears to have been the conduct of our celebrated essayist: and it has produced many awkward imitators, who, under the notion of writing with the fire and freedom of this lively old Gascon, have fallen into confused rhapsodies and uninteresting egotisms.

But these blemishes of Montaigne are trifling and unimportant compared with his vanity, his indecency, and his scepticism. That man must totally have suppressed the natural love of honest reputation which is so powerfully felt by the truly wise and good, who can calmly sit down to give a catalogue of his private vices, and publish his most secret infirmities, with the pretence of exhibiting a faithful picture of himself, and of exactly portraying the minutest features of his mind. Surely he deserves the censure Quintilian bestows on Demetrius, a celebrated Grecian statuary, that he

was

"nimius in veritate, et similitudinis quam pulchritudinis amantior;" more studious of likeness than of beauty.

Though the maxims of the Duke de la Rochefoucault, another fashionable philosopher, are written with expressive elegance, and with nervous brevity, yet I must be pardoned for affirming that he who labours to lessen the dignity of human nature destroys many efficacious motives for practising worthy actions, and deserves ill of his fellow-creatures, whom he paints in dark and disagreeable colours. As the opinions of men usually contract a tincture from the circumstances and conditions of their lives, it is easy to discern the chagrined courtier in the satire which this polite misanthrope has composed on his own species.

According to his gloomy and uncomfortable system, virtue is merely the result of temper and constitution, of chance or of vanity, of fashion or the fear of losing reputation. Thus humanity is brutalized; and every high and generous principle is repre sented as imaginary, romantic, and chimerical reason, which by some is too much aggrandized and almost deified, is here de

graded into an abject slave of appetite and passion, and deprived even of her just and indisputable authority. As a Christian, and as a man, I despise, I detest, such debasing principles.

Rochefoucault, to give smartness and shortness to his sentences, frequently makes use of the antithesis, a mode of speaking the most tiresome and disgusting of any, by the sameness and similarity of the periods. And sometimes, in order to keep up the point, he neglects the propriety and justness of the sentiment, and grossly contradicts himself. "Happiness," says he, " consists in the taste, and not in the things: and it is by enjoying what a man loves that he becomes happy; not by having what others think desirable." The obvious doctrine contained in this reflection, is the great power of imagination with regard to felicity: but, adds the reflector in a following maxim, "We are never so happy or so miserable as we imagine ourselves to be;" which is certainly a plain and palpable contradiction of the foregoing opinion. And of such contradictions many instances might be alleged in this admired writer, which evidently shew that he had not digested his thoughts with philosophical exactness and precision. But the characters of La Bruyere deserve to be spoken of in far different terms. They are drawn with spirit and propriety, without a total departure from nature and resemblance, as sometimes is the case in pretended pictures of life. In a few instances only he has failed, by overcharging his portraits with many ridiculous features that cannot exist together in one subject: as in the character of Menalcas, the absent man, which, though applauded by one of my predecessors, is surely absurd, and false to nature. This author appears to be a warm admirer of virtue, and a steady promoter of her interest: he was neither ashamed of Christianity, nor afraid to defend it: accordingly, few have exposed the folly and absurdity of modish infidels, of infidels made by vanity and not by want of conviction, with so much solidity and pleasantry united: he disdained to sacrifice truth to levity and licentiousness. Many of his characters are personal, and contain allusions which cannot now be understood. It is, indeed, the fate of personal satire to perish with the generation in which it is written: many artful strokes in Theophrastus himself, perhaps, appear coarse or insipid, which the Athenians looked upon with admiration. A different age and different nation render us incapable of relishing several beauties in the Alchymist of Jonson and in the Don Quixote of Cervantes.

Saint Evremond is a florid and verbose trifler, without novelty or solidity in his re

flections. What more can be expected from one who proposed the dissolute and affected Petronius for his model in writing and living?

As the corruption of our taste is not of equal consequence with the depravation of our virtue, I shall not spend so much time on the critics, as I have done on the moralists, of France.

How admirably Rapin, the most popular among them, was qualified to sit in judgment upon Homer and Thucydides, Demosthenes, and Plato, may be gathered from an anecdote preserved by Menage, who affirms upon his own knowledge that Le Fevre of Saumur furnished this assuming critic with the Greek passages he had occasion to cite, Rapin himself being totally ignorant of that language. The censures and the commendations this writer bestows are general and indiscriminate; without specifying the reasons of his approbation or dislike, and without alleging the passages that may support his opinion: whereas just criticism demands, not only that every beauty or blemish be minutely pointed out in its different degree and kind, but also that the reason and foundation of excellencies and faults be accurately ascertained.

Bossu is usually and justly placed at the head of the commentators on Aristotle's Poetics, which certainly he understood and explained in a more masterly manner than either Beni or Castelvetro: but in one or two instances he has indulged a love of subtilty and groundless refinement. That I may not be accused of affecting a kind of hatred against all the French critics, I would observe that this learned writer merits the attention and diligent perusal of the true scholar. What I principally admire in Bossu is the regularity of his plan and the exactness of his method; which add utility as well as beauty to his work.

Brumoy has displayed the excellencies of the Greek Tragedy in a judicious and comprehensive manner. His translations are faithful and elegant; and the analysis of those plays which, on account of some circumstances in ancient manners, would shock the readers of this age, and would not therefore bear an entire version, is perspicuous end full. Of all the French critics, he and the judicious Fénelon have had the justice to confess, or perhaps the penetration to perceive, in what instances Corneille and Racine have falsified and modernized the characters, and overloaded with unnecessary intrigues the simple plots of the ancients.

Let no one, however, deceive himself in thinking that he can gain a competent knowledge of Aristotle or Sophocles from Bossu or Brumoy, how excellent soever

these two commentators may be. To contemplate these exalted geniuses through such mediums is like beholding the orb of the sun, during an eclipse, in a vessel of water. But let him eagerly press forward to the great originals: juvet integros accedere fontes ;"his be the joy t' approach th' untasted springs." Let him remember that the Grecian writers alone, both critics and poets, are the best masters to teach, in Milton's emphatical style, "What the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric; what decorum is; which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and playwrights be; and shew them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things."

The Adventurer, No. 49, Tuesday, April 24, 1753.

ON GOOD-BReeding.

There are many accomplishments which, though they are comparatively trivial, and may be acquired by small abilities, are yet of great importance in our common intercourse with men. Of this kind is that general courtesy which is called Good-breeding; a name by which, as an artificial excellence, it is at once characterized and recommended.

Good-breeding, as it is generally employed in the gratification of vanity,-a passion almost universally predominant,-is more highly prized by the majority than any other; and he who wants it, though he may be preserved from contempt by incontestable superiority either of virtue or of parts, will yet be regarded with malevolence, and avoided as an enemy with whom it is dangerous to combat.

...

It happens, indeed, somewhat unfortunately, that the practice of good-breeding, however necessary, is obstructed by the possession of more valuable talents; and that great integrity, delicacy, sensibility, and spirit, exalted genius, and extensive learning, frequently render men ill-bred.

Petrarch relates that his admirable friend and contemporary, Dante Alighieri, one of the most exalted and original geniuses that ever appeared, being banished his country, and having retired to the court of a prince which was then the sanctuary of the unfortunate, was held at first in great esteem; but became daily less acceptable to his patron by the severity of his manners and the freedom of his speech. There were at the same court many players and buffoons, gamesters and debauchees, one of whom, distinguished by his impudence, ribaldry, and obscenity, was greatly caressed by the

rest; which the prince suspecting Dante not to be pleased with, ordered the man to be brought before him, and having highly extolled him, turned to Dante, and said, "I wonder that this person, who is by some deemed a fool, and by others a madman, should yet be so generally pleasing, and so generally beloved; when you, who are celebrated for wisdom, are yet heard without pleasure, and commended without friendship."-"You would cease to wonder," replied Dante, "if you considered that conformity of character is the source of friendship." This sarcasm, which had all the force of truth, and all the keenness of wit, was intolerable; and Dante was immediately disgraced and banished.

But by this answer, though the indignation which produced it was founded on virtue, Dante probably gratified his own vanity as much as he mortified that of others; it was the petulant reproach of resentment and pride, which is always retorted with rage; and not the still voice of reason, which is heard with complacency and reverence: if Dante intended reformation, his answer was not wise: if he did not intend reformation, his answer was not good.

Great delicacy, sensibility, and penetration do not less obstruct the practice of good-breeding than integrity. Persons thus qualified not only discover proportionably more faults and failings in the characters which they examine, but are more disgusted with the faults and failings which they discover the common topics of conversation are too trivial to engage their attention: the various turns of fortune that have lately happened at a game of whist, the history of a ball at Tunbridge or Bath, a description of Lady Fanny's jewels and Lady Kitty's vapours, the journals of a horse-race or a cock-match, and disquisitions on the gameact, or the scarcity of partridges, are subjects upon which men of delicate taste do not always choose to declaim, and on which they cannot patiently hear the declamation of others. But they should remember that their impatience is the impotence of reason and the prevalence of vanity; that if they sit silent and reserved, wrapped up in the contemplation of their own dignity, they will, in their turn, be despised and hated by those whom they hate and despise; and with better reason, for perverted power ought to be more odious than debility. To hear with patience, and to answer with civility, seems to comprehend all the goodbreeding of conversation; and in proportion as this is easy, silence and inattention are without excuse.

He who does not practise good-breeding

will not find himself considered as the object of good-breeding by others. There is, however, a species of rusticity which it is not less absurd than injurious to treat with contempt; this species of ill-breeding is become almost proverbially the characteristic of a scholar; nor should it be expected that he who is deeply attentive to an abstruse science, or who employs any of the great faculties of the soul, the memory, the imagination, or the judgment, in the close pursuit of their several objects, should have studied punctilios of form and ceremony, and be equally able to shine at a rout and in the schools. That the bow of a chronologer, and the compliment of an astronomer, should be improper or uncouth, cannot be thought strange to those who duly consider the narrowness of our faculties and the impossibility of attaining universal excellence.

Equally excusable, for the same reasons, are that absence of mind, and that forgetfulness of place and person, to which scholars are so frequently subject. When Louis XIV. was one day lamenting the death of an old comedian, whom he highly extolled, " Yes," replied Boileau, in the presence of Madam Maintenon [Scarron's widow, and afterwards wife of Louis XIV.], "he performed tolerably well in the despicable pieces of Scarron, which are now deservedly forgotten even in the provinces."

As every condition of life, and every turn of mind, has some peculiar temptation_and propensity to evil, let not the man of uprightness and honesty be morose and surly in his practice of virtue; let not him whose delicacy and penetration discern with disgust those imperfections in others from which he himself is not free, indulge perpetual peevishness and discontent; let not learning and knowledge be pleaded as an excuse for not condescending to the common offices and duties of civil life; for as no man should be well-bred at the expense of his virtue, no man should practise virtue so as to deter others from imitation.

The Adventurer, No. 87, Tuesday, September 4, 1753.

ADAM SMITH, LL.D., born at Kirkaldy, Scotland, 1723, studied at the University of Glasgow, 1737-40, and at Balliol College, Oxford, 1740-47, Professor of Logic in the University of Glasgow, 175152, and Professor of Moral Philosophy, 175263, a Commissioner of his Majesty's Customs in Scotland, 1778, Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1787, died 1796. He was the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, etc., Lond., 1759, 8vo, late editions, Edin.,

1849, 1854, p. 8vo, Lond., 1853, p. 8vo; An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Lond., 1776 (some 1777), 2 vols. 4to; best edit., by J. R. MacCulloch, Lond., 1828, 4 vols. 8vo, and 1839, '46, '50, '57, 8vo; Essays on Philosophical Subjects, with Account of the Author by Dugald Stewart, Lond., 1795, 4to. The Works Complete of Adam Smith, with Life by Dugald Stewart, Lond., 1811-12, 5 vols. 8vo.

"The great name of Adam Smith rests upon the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states."-SIR J. MACKINTOSH: Dissert. on Progress of Ethic. Philos., Encyc. Brit. "The Wealth of Nations' combines both the sound and enlightened views which had distinguished the detached pieces of the French and Italian Economists, and, above all of Mr. Hume, with the great merit of embracing the whole subject, thus bringing the general scope of the principles into view, illustrating all the parts of the inquiry by their combined relations, and confirming their soundness in each instance by their application to the others."-LORD BROUGHAM: Lives of Philos. Time of George III., ed. 1855, 263.

DIVISION OF LABOUR.

Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-labourer in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the number of people of whose industry a part, though but a small part, has been employed in procuring him this accommodation exceeds all computation. The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carter, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others, who often live in a very distant part of the country! How much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sailmakers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labour, too, is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen! To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor, the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us consider only what a variety of labour is requisite in order to form that very simple machine, the shears,

with which the shepherd clips the wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the brick-layer, the workmen who attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith, must all of them join their different arts in order to produce them. Were we to examine in the same manner all the different parts of his dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him, perhaps, by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other utensils of the kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention, without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all the different workmen employed in producing those different conveniences; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that, without the assistance and co-operation of

many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to, what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of a European prince does not always

so much exceed that of an industrious and

frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.

An Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, born 1723, educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, entered the Middle Temple, 1741, Bachelor of Civil Law, 1745, called to the bar, 1746, Doctor of Civil Law, 1750, Vi