and her performance.

This was Anna Seward; and as her remarks, in a letter to a friend, give a fair specimen of the spirit of rivalship, the following extract will amuse, if not edify the reader.

"Miss More's poems," says the gentle critic, "have spirit and genius, but contain a pedantic display of knowledge and erudition, especially the Bas Bleu. In the Florio we find many brilliant passages, many just and striking observations, and some admirable portraits in satiric traits. Not Hayley himself has drawn a modern beau better. Florio is the rival of Fillagree, in the Triumphs of Temper, with sufficient difference to avert the charge of plagiarism from the female author; but the versification in Florio is, at times, strangely inharmonious, often alliterating with the hardest consonants, and sometimes disgraced by vulgarism: instances,

And,

"For face no mortal could resist her,"

"He felt not Celia's powers of face."

These face-expressions put me in mind of an awkward pedantic youth, then resident, for a little time, at Litchfield. He was asked how he liked Miss Honora Sneyd. Almighty powers!' replied the oddity, 'I could not have conceived that she had half the face she has?" Honora was finely rallied about this imputed amplitude of face. The oval elegance of its delicate and beauteous contour made the exclamation trebly absurd. How could Miss More so apply a phrase always expressive of effrontery! and how could so learned a lady suffer the pleonasm of the following line to escape her pen!

"With truth to mingle fables feign'd." The character of Celia is pretty, but in the satirical strokes lie all the genius of the work.

"As for the Bas Bleu:-You have heard me sigh after the attainment of other languages with hopeless yearning; yet I had rather be ignorant of them, as I am, if I thought their acquisition would induce me to clap my wings, and crow in Greek, Latin, and French, through the course of a poem, which ought to have been written in an unaffected and unmingled English. I am diverted with its eulogies on Garrick, Mason, and Johnson, who all three hated each other heartily. Not very pleasantly, I trow, would the two former have sat in the presence of old Cato, as this poem oddly terms the arrogant Johnson, surrounded by the worshipful and worshipping Blue Stocking. Had the cynic lived

to hear his Whig title, Cato, I could fancy him saying to the fair author, 'You had better have called me the First Whig, Madam,-the father of the tribe, who got kicked out of heaven for his republican principles.' To the lady-president herself, I fancy the cynic would not now, were he living, be the most welcome guest. Since the publication of Mr. Boswell's_Tour, Miss More puts him to bed to little David. Their mutual opiates are pretty powerful, else her guardian friend, Garrick, would not thank her for his companions, - but misery, matrimony, and mortality make strange bed-fellows.'"

Much might be said upon this wretched piece of hypercriticism, and the sarcasms with which it is mixed up against the several persons who come in for a share of the writer's scurrility. But it is not worth while to notice what originated in envy. When, however, the learning of the author of the is stigmatized as pedantry by poem one of the most pedantically conceited women that ever set up any pretensions to literature, it cannot but provoke a remark

on the critic herself.

Though the censorious lady, in writing to a friend who knew the extent of her

acquirements, confessed her limited powers, and affected to undervalue classical learning; the case was different when she wrote designedly for the press.

The late Mr. Canon Bailey, of Litchfield, in a letter to Mr. Polwhele, says of Miss Seward, "I was conducted, the other day, to her blue region,' as Andre calls it. She was there busy in translating, or rather in transposing, an Ode of Horace, without understanding a single word of the original. She had three different translations before ber-Francis's-Smart's-and Bromick's,-out of which she compounds her own."

Now, if this was not pedantry, it would be difficult to define the word so as to give a just idea of its meaning. That Hannah More understood Latin and Greek was more honourable to her, as those languages were acquired by her own application, than the ignorance of Anna Seward was creditable to her, considering the advantages which she possessed, and the other wanted. But enough of this; and more, perhaps, than the subject required, where the malignity was too obvious to produce any injury.

The next publication of our author was "A Poem on the Slave Trade," printed in 1788, when the cause of the Africans had begun to rouse the spirit of philanthropy throughout the kingdom. Situated, as the

poet had long been, in one of the principal marts for carrying on this nefarious traffic, it was next to impossible that she could be indifferent to what was no less offensive to morality than repugnant to the precepts of Christianity.

In the same year appeared a small Tract entitled " Thoughts on the Manners of the Great." Though the piece was anonymous, and had no external attractions, but was thrown off, as it were, carelessly, to make its way by intrinsic merit, and the importance of the subject, it had a rapid sale, and was soon traced to the author by those who were best acquainted with her other works and sentiments.

On the 10th of December, this year, Dr. Stonhouse lost his second wife. His first died at Northampton above forty years before, and was buried in the church of All Saints, in that town. On the present melancholy occasion, the Doctor erected a monument in the chapel at the Hotwells, where the deceased was interred; and his amiable friend supplied the following epitaph :

Come, Resignation! wipe the human tear
Domestic anguish drops on virtue's bier;
Bid selfish sorrow hush the fond complaint,
Nor from the God she lov'd detain the saint.

Truth, meekness, patience, honour'd shade! were thine,

And holy hope, and charity divine:

Tho' these thy forfeit-being could not save,
Thy faith subdued the terrors of the grave.
Oh! if thy living excellence can teach,
Death has a loftier emphasis of speech:
In death thy last, best lesson still impart,
And write,' Prepare to die,' on every heart.

The Doctor himself died December the 8th, 1795, in the eightieth year of his age, and then the following epitaph, by the same pen, was added :

Here rests awhile in happier climes to shine,
The Orator, Physician, and Divine :
'Twas his, like Luke, the double task to fill,
To heal the natural and the moral ill.

You, whose awakened hearts his labour bless'd,
Where every touch by every grace was dress'd:
Oh! let your lives evince that still you feel
The effective influence of his fervent zeal.
One spirit rescued from eternal woe
Gives nobler fame than marble can bestow:
That lasting monument shall brave decay,
And stand triumphant at the last great day.

When the last mentioned publication of our author came out, there was something in the aspect of the times, which rendered such a performance peculiarly seasonable. The indisposition of the king of England called for a serious reflection on the part of the people; and the incipient revolution in France could not but tend to alarm the fears of every well-wisher to his native country. The mind of Hannah More, imbued with the soundest principles, was not

easily depressed; but in her long, intimate, and extensive acquaintance with those circles which give an impression to the general mass of society, she could not avoid observing, how much moral evil was spread abroad, with every prospect of increasing, for the want of example to check it, among the influential ranks of life. She and her sisters had now terminated their honourable labours in the education of young ladies, and, having acquired a competency with which to retire from that employment, they purchased a house at Bath; between which city and Cowslip Green, a small but elegant cottage near Wrington, their time was divided. This was in 1791, and the same year our author, whom we shall now call Mrs. Hannah More, published one of her best works, "An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World, by one of the Laity." Though the present volume had no name to recommend it, the discerning public, as in the preceding instance, immediately traced its parentage.

"The general design of these pages," says the author, "is to offer some cursory remarks on the present state of religion among a great part of the polite and the fashionable; not only among that description of persons who, whether from disbelief, or whatever other cause, avowedly neglect the duties of Christianity; but among that more decent class also, who, while they acknowledge their belief of its truth by a public profession, and are not inattentive to any of its forms, yet exhibit little of its spirit in their general temper and conduct; -to shew that Christianity, like its divine Author, is not only denied by those who in words disown their submission to its authority, but betrayed by still more treacherous disciples, even while they say, Hail, Master!"

The volume is divided into seven chapters, the last of which is "A view of those who acknowledge Christianity as a perfect system of morals, but deny its divine authority."

"But," says our pious author, "if God has thought fit to make the gospel an instrument of salvation, we must own the necessity of receiving it as a divine institution, before it is likely to operate very effectually on the conduct. The great Creator, if we may judge by analogy from natural things, is so wise an economist, that he always adapts, with the most accurate precision, the instrument to the work, and never lavishes more means than are necessary to accomplish the proposed end. If, therefore, Christianity had been intended

for nothing more than a mere system of ethics, such a system surely might have been produced at an infinitely less expense. The long chain of prophecy, the labours of apostles, the blood of saints, to say nothing of the great and costly Sacrifice which the Gospel records, might surely have been spared. Lessons of mere human virtue might have been delivered by some suitable instrument of human wisdom, strengthened by the visible authority of human power. A bare system of morals might have, been communicated to mankind with more reasonable prospect of advantage, by means not so repugnant to human pride. A mere scheme of conduct might have been delivered, with far greater probability of success, by Antoninus the emperor, or Plato the philosopher, than by Paul the tent-maker, or Peter the fisherman."

The open avowal of atheism in revolutionary France, accompanied in the natural course of things by a savage persecution of all that love the name of Christian, induced Mrs. More to print, for the benefit of the refugees of that country, and a warning to the people of this land, "Remarks on the Speech of M. Du Pont, in the National Convention, on Religion and Education."

The speech which gave occasion to this energetic performance was delivered in the Convention, on the 14th of December, 1792, on the subject of establishing public schools for the education of youth. It was received with such loud and long acclamations of applause, as shewed that the assembly perfectly concurred in its sentiments; of which this is a specimen-"The tyranny of kings was confined to make their people miserable in the present life: but those other tyrants, the priests, extend their dominion into another, of which they have no other idea than of eternal punishments; a doctrine which some men have hitherto had the good nature to believe. But the moment of the catastrophe is come, when all these prejudices must fall at the same time. We must destroy them, or they will destroy us. —For myself, I honestly avow to the Convention-I am an atheist !"

In all her literary productions, Hannah More had studiously avoided the briars of controversy; but she deemed it her duty, in this instance, to take up the cause of insulted truth, for the purpose of guarding her countrymen from the contagion of infi. delity, which was to be dreaded from the pernicious example of the republicans and philosophists of France. Her appeal to the good sense of Englishmen was not without effect; and the sale of her pamphlet, de2D. SERIES, No. 35.-VOL. III.

voted to the relief of the suffering emigrants, was such as to answer, in a considerable degree, her benevolent wishes.

(To be concluded in our next.)

CICERO'S WORK ON THE REPUBLIC.

CICERO's work on the Republic was diligently sought at the revival of letters, but no manuscript of it could be found, and, after several fruitless investigations, the search was given over, and all expectations of its discovery were abandoned. But in the present age it has been found in a most fortunate manner, of which the Aldi and Budæi never thought, and we have had the happiness of perusing it, when we had given up all hope.

We know that it was the custom, even in the times of the Roman republic, to erase the original writing on parchment, in order to substitute something new; and a manuscript of this kind was called a pulimpsestus. Cicero had received a letter from one of his friends, an eminent lawyer, written on a palimpsestus; and in his reply, he jokes him on the subject. "I certainly praise your economy for writing on a pulimpsestus; but I cannot imagine what were the first contents of that slip of paper, which you destroyed rather than you would neglect writing to me; unless it were one of your own formularies of law. For I do not suspect you of destroying my letter in order to replace it by yours.' This practice was frequently adopted from contempt of the original composition, a desire of economy, or a want of paper. And if illustrious Romans were accustomed to do this in all their wealth and opulence, it can very easily be imagined, that, in the fall of the empire, and in the destruction of every thing noble by the barbarians of the north, these causes would operate with greater force. For as the compositions of the ancients were only preserved in the monasteries, where the nature of their asylum secured them from hostile depredations, the monks being unable to procure parchment to transcribe their own works, and deeming the orations of Cicero, or the histories of Livy, to be far inferior to the books of the church, erased, without scruple, the compositions of the ancients, and replaced them by the wonderful miracles, and the extraordinary legends of some favourite saints. The manuscripts were generally written in a large strong hand, and thus it was difficult for the

* Ad Fam. vii. 18. See Martial xiv. 7. 3 V 179.-VOL. XV.

transcriber to remove all traces of the original composition, and in many cases it might be read, though of course with considerable difficulty. Till the last few years these have not been sufficiently examined, and it was reserved to a learned Italian of the present day, Angelo Maii, to investigate several of these double manuscripts. He thus discovered many works hitherto concealed from the learned, and which had peacefully reposed for ages in the Ambrosian library at Milan. He successively published fragments of the Orations of Cicero, several letters of Marcus Aurelius the Roman emperor, many epistles of Fronto, and various other works of the Greeks and Romans,

In recompense for these labours, he was called to Rome; where he carried on new researches in the Vatican. About the year 1820 he discovered the treatise of Cicero on the Republic,' under a Commentary of Saint Augustine on the Psalms. This was his grand discovery, and Maii was occupied for many months in deciphering the original letters in this palimpsestus. The tracing of characters nearly effaced was indeed a laborious task. "They were obliged to be inspected," to use Maii's own words, "on a clear day, and when the sun was shining in his meridian splendour." But from the nature of the discovery, we cannot expect to have the work complete; for when the transcriber copied the second work, he was not careful of preserving every part of the parchment on which the original composition was written; he often used one part of it for one purpose, and another part for quite a different object; sometimes he would completely erase whole sentences, and would even cut the manuscript to reduce it to the size which pleased him.

Unfortunately for us, the Republic of Cicero has met with many losses and mutilations from these causes. The work is divided into six books. Maii has discovered the greater part of the first and second books, of the third not nearly so much, and of the fourth and fifth only a few fragments. There is no trace in the palimpsestus of the sixth book, to which belongs that beautiful fragment called the Somnium Scipionis, which we obtained from the writings of Macrobius.

This work, though so sadly mutilated, still contains very many eloquent passages, and profound reflections on the government and constitutions of states. We certainly think that it is by far the finest of Cicero's philosophical works, and in this opinion we are supported by the concurrent testi

mony of antiquity. Cicero himself seems to have considered it his master-piece, and often refers to it with that complacency which an author bestows upon his favourite work. His other philosophical treatises were written in the last times of the Republic, when the noble orator was debarred from all affairs of state, and deprived of his influence and power. They were composed, as he tells us, to console him in his adversity, and to divert his mind from the contemplation of his ruined fortunes, and the oppression of his unhappy country. But the treatise on the Republic was written while he was in all his palmy influence, courted by the great, and solicited by the poor; and engaged continually in defending the innocent, and accusing the guilty. He was also in the prime of life, with his faculties matured by deep learning and long experience. The subject also roused all the energies of the Roman orator. Plato and Aristotle had preceded hin with similar works, and it was an arduous undertaking to rival the poetical speculations of the former, and the profound arguments of the latter. He retired in the summer season to his Cumæan villa, and there, surrounded by all that could please the eye, and gratify the senses, and attune the mind in finest harmony, he composed this magnificent work, a noble monument of his eloquence and philosophy.

We regret that it has not been suffi. ciently studied in this country. In Germany it has been often reprinted, and is used in many of the schools. Its object is to shew what form of government is best adapted for the administration of a state. This was a very favourite subject with the philosophers of antiquity; and the framing of ideal republics, governed by their own laws, amused the leisure, or occupied the serious attention, of the schools of Athens. In modern times, More's Utopia, and Harrington's Oceana, have been written on a similar plan. But Cicero did not frame an ideal republic; his work is of a more practical nature. He endeavours to prove that a mixed form of government is the best adapted for the security and stability of states; and he exemplifies his arguments by the Roman constitution, which he considers a happy union of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and shews, that while each order maintained its due ascendancy in the state, Rome flourished and prospered; but as soon as the balance of power was destroyed, she fell from her high estate, and rapidly lost her liberty and glory.

He frames his work in the form of a

dialogue, which is supposed to have occurred in the most glorious times of the Republic, after the termination of the Punic wars, when the exorbitant power of the aristocracy was humbled, and the licentiousness of the democracy still restrained. The speakers are the most eminent men of the time,Scipio Africanus, and his friend Lælius, the illustrious lawyer; Scævola, Philus Manilius, and others of the same rank. But Scipio is the Socrates of the party. To his decisions every one yields with submissive deference.

The first book contains many long and beautiful disquisitions on each of the three forms of government, and the arguments in their favour are successively brought forward and canvassed. They at last come to the conclusion, that none of them can be approved separately, but only the union of the three. If Cicero had lived in our days, he would have seen his ideas on government more completely exemplified in the beauteous fabric of the British constitution, where each order has (at least theoretically) its due influence, and where all are happily blended in that proportion which has deservedly called forth the admiration of philosophers and politicians from the times of Fortescue to the present day.-Long may it flourish! and never may the undue preponderance of any one of the estates destroy its beauty, and annihilate its existence.

This work has never been translated in this country, and perhaps a few extracts from it may, therefore, be acceptable to our readers. The following is an eloquent defence of democracy by Scipio.*

66

Liberty never has any domicile but in the state in which the sovereign power resides in the people; and, certes, nothing can be sweeter; though if it be not equality, it ceases to be liberty. But how can equality exist, I will not say in a monarchy where slavery is openly professed, and its existence is not disputed, but how can it exist where the people have only a name to be free? They give their votes, they delegate their commands, they are canvassed and solicited by the candidates for the government; but these gifts must be given, even if their inclinations opposed it; and they who are solicited do not themselves possess what they bestow, for they are deprived of all civil and military commands, and of the rank of judges which are obtained by the antiquity of families, and the influence of wealth.

"But let the people preserve their own rights, and they say that nothing can be more free, happy, or excellent; since they are the masters of the laws, of the courts of justice, of war, and of peace, of treaties, and of the life and fortune of every citizen. This alone they think deserves to be called the commonwealth; that is, the weal of the community. It is for this reason that the commonwealth often breaks from the domination of kings and of senates, and asserts its right to liberty, and that her people do not demand kings, and the power and wealth of an aristocracy. They say that this scheme of popular liberty ought not to be rejected on account of the crimes of a wild ungovernable people, that nothing is more immutable, nothing more durable, than a people unanimous in their sentiments, and performing every act with reference to their security and liberty; that concord is most easily obtained in a commonwealth, where every thing is of the same advantage to all; that discord is produced by a variety of conflicting interests, when the same thing does not equally benefit every citizen. Thus, when an aristocracy has obtained the supreme power, the commonwealth has never retained its splendour; and far less in monarchies, in which, as Ennius says,

Nor faith nor holy friendship e'er exist. Therefore, since law is the bond of civil society, and equality' the principle of law, by what principle of law can citizens be kept united, unless their condition is equal? For if wealth cannot be equalized, if intellect cannot be equalized, those who are citizens in the same republic ought certainly to possess equal rights."

*

*

"As to the other political constitutions, these philosophers do not think they ought even to be called by those names which they arrogate to themselves. For why should I designate a man desirous of domination, or of sole power, and lording it over an oppressed people, by the appellation of a king, and not rather by that of a tyrant? For a tyrant can be as merciful as a king is cruel; so that the people have principally to consider whether they are the slaves of a kind or a severe master; but to become slaves, that ought never to happen. How could Lacedæmon, even at the time when her administration of the commonwealth was universally considered a master-piece of government, ensure to herself the possession of good and just kings, when he was to be reverenced as king who happened to be descended from the roval family? Who can endure an aristoc