Avarice.

It is much the vogue with moral writers to treat this passion (too common indeed in old age) as totally without motive or excuse. They seem to consider it as a mere magpie propensity to steal and hide money. Avarice may plead for its defence, amongst old persons, the potency of gold to ensure respect to aged persons, when no other motive will induce mankind to pay them observance or attention. Men learn by experience that their money is their friend, their only support in the decline of natural pleasures. Old men soon perceive that they owe to gold, and not to their virtues or wisdom, that degree of attention from their fellow creatures that we all wish for. The rich man is secure of it.

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs'd,

And give them title, knee, and approbation

With seuators on the Bench, &c.

Timon of Athens, scene 3.

Friendship.

"Idem velle et idem nolle ea demum fermè est amicitia," though a passage in a classic author of great eminence, is yet a very imperfect delineation of the friendship among the wise and honest.

The sportsman and the sot may call their associates in their different amusements friends, but the illness of any such friends would dissolve the partnership.

Romances.

Though the heroes and heroines in these sublime narratives seem sometimes in their sentiments to soar above humanity, yet when real passions take place of pompous diction and high vaunts, these ladies and gentlemen are contented, like Falstaff, to talk and act like men of this world. When the giant was killed or confined, the lady became very grateful to her knight; and ceased to be a heroine, when her lover became more interesting, as both were now in safety. Our merry and satirical Bard has well described these histories

mock-heroic

There was an ancient sage philosopher,
Who had read Alexander Ross over,
And swore the world, as he could prove,
Was made of fighting and of love.
Just so romances are, for what else
Is in them but loves and battles.

Hudibras, cant. 2.

N.B. A commentator, the least inclined to allegorize, might consider the giant as a crabbed father or guardian to the ladies, and the castles and monsters as so many restraints contained in the Marriage Act.

Poem on the Spleen.

This most humorous and philosophic poem is not sufficiently known. With much of the knowledge, if not of the learning, of Butler, the author of these lines seems to have imbibed with the style of Hudibras a great deal of his wit and humour. As the following paragraphs touch on the subjects in vogue now, we will transcribe a few of them.

Missionaries.

When G-1 P~s and others say,
We're bound our great light to display;
Yet none but drunken watchmen send,
And scoundrel link-boys, to that end:
This view my forward zeal so shocks,
In vain they hold the money-box.
At such a conduct, which intends

By vicious means such virtuous ends,
I laugh off spleen, and keep my pence
From spoiling Indian innocence.

Certain Sectaries.

Nor they, so pure and so precise,
Immaculate as their white of eyes,
Who for the spirit hug the spleen,
Phylactered through all their mien,

Who their ill-tasted home-brew'd prayer
To the state's mellow forms prefer,
Who doctrines as infectious fear

Which are not steep'd in vinegar, &c.

Reformers.

Reforming schemes are none of mine: To mend the world's a vast design, Like their's who tug their little boat To pull them to the ship afloat,

While to defeat their labour'd end

At once both wind and stream contend. Success herein is seldom seen,

And zeal when baffled turns to spleen.

Poets.

Or see some poet pensive sit,
Fondly mistaking spleen for wit;
Who, tho' short-winded, still would aim

To fill the epic trump of fame;
Who still on Phoebus' smiles will doat

Nor learn conviction from their coat.

Critics.

On poem, by their dictates writ,

Critics as sworn appraisers sit,

And, mere upholsterers, in a trice
On gems and painting set a price.
These tayl'ring artists for our lays

Invent cramp rules, and with straight stays
Striving free nature's shape to hit,

Emaciate sense before they fit.

The Spleen: an epistle to Mr. C-J-, by Mr.
Matthew Green, of the Custom-House.
Dodsley's Coll. of Poems, v. i. p. 122.

Dr. Samuel Johnson,

The great author of the Rambler, both in his moral and critical works, exhibits his principal excellencies, ratiocination and common sense. Though many readers object to his language as tumid, and to an ostentatious display of eloquence in his moral essays, yet the latter fault, if it be one, may be defended by what he says of Swift's style of unvaried simplicity. This easy and safe conveyance of meaning it was Swift's desire to obtain, and having attained, he deserves praise. For purposes merely didactic, when something is to be told that was not known before, it is the best mode; but against that inattention by which known truths are suffered to lie neglected, it makes no provision.

Life of Swift, in his Lives of the Poets.