This is strong enough, we suspect, for most readers; but we shall venture on a few lines more, to show the tone in which the leading by name and surname in those days. characters in the country might be libelled

"In the porch Briareus stands,

Shows a bribe in all his hands;
Briareus the secretary,
But we mortals call him Carey.
When the rogues their country fleece,
They may hope for pence a-piece.

Such were the libels which a Tory writer | distinguish between a promise and a bargain; for found it safe to publish under a Whig admin- he will be sure to keep the latter, when he has the istration in 1736; and we do not find that any fairest offer."-Vol. iv. pp. 149-152. national disturbance arose from their impunity, though the libeller was the most celebrated and by far the most popular writer of the age. Nor was it merely the exasperation of bad fortune that put that polite party upon the use of this discourteous style of discussion. In all situations, the Tories have been the great libellers and, as is fitting, the great prosecutors of libels; and even in this early age of their glory, had themselves, when in power, encouraged the same licence of defamation, and in the same hands. It will scarcely be believed, that the following character of the Earl of Wharton, then actually Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was publicly printed and sold, with his Lordship's name and addition at full length, in 1710, and was one of the first productions by which the reverend penman bucklered the cause of the Tory ministry, and revenged himself on a parsimonious patron. We cannot afford to give it at full length-but this specimen will

answer our purpose.

"Thomas, Earl of Wharton, Lord Lieutenant

We have not left ourselves room now to say much of Swift's style, or of the general character of his literary genius:-But our opinion may be collected from the remarks we have made on particular passages, and from our introductory observations on the school or class of authors, with whom he must undoubtedly be rated. On the subjects to which he confines himself, he is unquestionably a strong, masculine, and perspicuous writer." He is never finical, fantastic, or absurd—takes advantage of no equivocations in argument—and puts on no tawdriness for ornament. Dealing always with particulars, he is safe from all great and systematic mistakes; and, in fact, reasons mostly in a series of small and minute propositions, in the handling of which, dexterity is more requisite than genius; and practical good sense, with an exact knowledge of transactions, of far more importance than profound and high-reaching judgment. He did not write history or philosophy, but party pamphlets and journals;not satire, but particular lampoons ;—not pleasantries for all mankind, but jokes for a particular circle. Even in his pamphlets, the broader questions of party are always waved, to make way for discussions of personal or immediate interest. His object is not to show that the Tories have better principles of gov ernment than the Whigs, but to prove Lord Oxford an angel, and Lord Somers a fiend, to convict the Duke of Marlborough of avarice or Sir Richard Steele of insolvency;-not to point out the wrongs of Ireland, in the depression of her Catholic population, her want of

of Ireland, by the force of a wonderful constitution, has some years passed his grand climateric, without any visible effects of old age, either on his body or his mind; and in spite of a continual prostitution to those vices which usually wear out both. His behaviour is in all the forms of a young man at fiveand-twenty. Whether he walks, or whistles, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each, beyond a templar of three years' standing.He seems to be but an ill dissembler, and an ill liar, although they are the two talents he most practises, and most values himself upon. The ends he has gained by lying, appear to be more owing to the frequency, than the art of them: his lies being sometimes detected in an hour, often in a day, and al-education, or the discouragement of her inways in a week. He tells them freely in mixed companies, although he knows half of those that hear him to be his enemies, and is sure they will discover them the moment they leave him. He swears solemnly he loves and will serve you; and about him, you are a dog and a rascal. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel-door. He is a presbyterian in politics, and an atheist in religion; but he chooses at present to whore with a papist. He has sunk his fortune by endeavouring to ruin one kingdom, and has raised it by going far

your back is no sooner turned, but he tells those

in the ruin of another.

"He bears the gallantries of his lady with the indifference of a stoic; and thinks them well recompensed, by a return of children to support his family, without the fatigues of being a father. "He has three predominant passions, which you will seldom find united in the same man, as arising from different dispositions of mind, and naturally thwarting each other: these are, love of power, love of money, and love of pleasure; they ride him sometimes by turns, sometimes all together. Since he went into Ireland, he seems most disposed to the second, and has met with great success; having gained by his goverment, of under two years, five-and-forty thousand pounds by the most favourable computation, half in the regular way, and half in the prudential.

"He was never yet known to refuse, or keep a promise, as I remember he told a lady, but with an exception to the promise he then made (which was to get her a pension); yet he broke even that, and, I confess, deceived us both. But here I desire to

dustry; but to raise an outcry against an amendment of the copper or the gold coin, or against a parliamentary proposition for remitting the tithe of agistment. For those ends, it cannot be denied, that he chose his means judiciously, and used them with incomparable skill and spirit. But to choose such ends, we humbly conceive, was not the part either of a high intellect or a high character; and his genius must share in the disparagement which ought perhaps to be confined to the impetuosity and vindictiveness of his temper.

Of his style, it has been usual to speak with great, and, we think, exaggerated praise. It is less mellow than Dryden's-less elegant than Pope's or Addison's-less free and noble than Lord Bolingbroke's-and utterly without the glow and loftiness which belonged to our earlier masters. It is radically a low and homely style-without grace and without affectation; and chiefly remarkable for a great choice and profusion of common words and expressions. Other writers, who have used a plain and direct style, have been for the most part jejune and limited in their diction, and generally give us an impression of the poverty as well as the tameness of their language; but Swift, without ever trespassing into figured or poetical expressions, or ever employing a

In humour and in irony, and in the talent of debasing and defiling what he hated, we join with all the world in thinking the Dean of St. Patrick's without a rival. His humour, though sufficiently marked and peculiar, is not to be easily defined. The nearest description we can give of it, would make it consist in expressing sentiments the most absurd and ridiculous-the most shocking and atrocious

word that can be called fine, or pedantic, has | that except 300l. which he got for Gulliver, he a prodigious variety of good set phrases al- never made a farthing by any of his writings. ways at his command, and displays a sort of Pope understood his trade better, and not homely richness, like the plenty of an old only made knowing bargains for his own English dinner, or the wardrobe of a wealthy works, but occasionally borrowed his friends' burgess. This taste for the plain and sub-pieces, and pocketed the price of the whole. stantial was fatal to his poetry, which subsists This was notoriously the case with three not on such elements; but was in the highest volumes of Miscellanies, of which the greater degree favourable to the effect of his humour, part were from the pen of Swift. very much of which depends on the imposing gravity with which it is delivered, and on the various turns and heightenings it may receive from a rapidly shifting and always appropriate expression. Almost all his works, after The Tale of a Tub, seem to have been written very fast, and with very little minute care of the diction. For his own ease, therefore, it is probable they were all pitched on a low key, and set about on the ordinary tone of aor sometimes the most energetic and origifamiliar letter or conversation; as that from nal-in a sort of composed, calm, and unconwhich there was a little hazard of falling, scious way, as if they were plain, undeniable, even in moments of negligence, and from commonplace truths, which no person could which any rise that could be effected, must dispute, or expect to gain credit by announcing always be easy and conspicuous. A man and in maintaining them, always in the fully possessed of his subject, indeed, and gravest and most familiar language, with a confident of his cause, may almost always consistency which somewhat palliates their write with vigour and effect, if he can get extravagance, and a kind of perverted ingeover the temptation of writing finely, and nuity, which seems to give pledge for their really confine himself to the strong and clear sincerity. The secret, in short, seems to conexposition of the matter he has to bring for- sist in employing the language of humble ward. Half of the affectation and offensive good sense, and simple undoubting conviction, pretension we meet with in authors, arises to express, in their honest nakedness, sentifrom a want of matter, and the other half, ments which it is usually thought necessary from a paltry ambition of being eloquent and to disguise under a thousand pretences-or ingenious out of place. Swift had complete truths which are usually introduced with a confidence in himself; and had too much real thousand apologies. The basis of the art is business on his hands, to be at leisure to in- the personating a character of great simplicity trigue for the fame of a fine writer;-in con- and openness, for whom the conventional or sequence of which, his writings are more ad- artificial distinctions of society are supposed mired by the judicious than if he had bestowed to have no existence; and making use of this all his attention on their style. He was so character as an instrument to strip vice and much a man of business, indeed, and so much folly of their disguises, and expose guilt in all accustomed to consider his writings merely as its deformity, and truth in all its terrors. Inmeans for the attainment of a practical end-dependent of the moral or satire, of which whether that end was the strengthening of a party, or the wounding a foe—that he not only disdained the reputation of a composer of pretty sentences, but seems to have been thoroughly indifferent to all sorts of literary fame. He enjoyed the notoriety and influence which he had procured by his writings; but it was the glory of having carried his point, and not of having written well, that he valued. As soon as his publications had served their turn, they seem to have been entirely forgotten by their author;-and, desirous as he was of being richer, he appears to have thought as little of making money as immortality by means of them. He mentions somewhere,

they may thus be the vehicle, a great part of the entertainment to be derived from works of humour, arises from the contrast between the grave, unsuspecting indifference of the character personated, and the ordinary feelings of the world on the subjects which he discusses. This contrast it is easy to heighten, by all sorts of imputed absurdities: in which case, the humour degenerates into mere farce and buffoonery. Swift has yielded a little to this temptation in The Tale of a Tub; but scarcely at all in Gulliver, or any of his later writings in the same style. Of his talent for reviling, we have already said at least enough, in some of the preceding pages.

(January, 1810.)

Correspondance inédite de MADAME DU DEFFAND, avec D'Alembert, Montesquieu, le Président Henault, La Duchesse du Maine, Mesdames de Choiseul, De Staal, &c. &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809.

Lettres de MADEMOISELLE DE LESPINASSE, écrites depuis l'Année 1773 jusqu'à l'Année 1776, &c. 3 tomes, 12mo. Paris: 1809.

THE popular works of La Harpe and Mar- Where the letters that are now given to the montel have made the names at least of these world have been secreted for the last thirty ladies pretty well known in this country; and years, or by whom they are at last publishwe have been induced to place their corres-ed, we are not informed in either of the works pondence under one article, both because their before us. That they are authentic, we conhistory is in some measure connected, and ceive, is demonstrated by internal evidence; because, though extremely unlike each other, though, if more of them are extant, the selecthey both form a decided contrast to our own tion that has been made appears to us to be a national character, and, taken together, go far little capricious. The correspondence of to exhaust what was peculiar in that of France. Madame du Deffand reaches from the year Most of our readers probably remember 1738 to 1764;-that of Mademoiselle de Leswhat La Harpe and Marmontel have said of pinasse extends only from 1773 to 1776. The these two distinguished women; and, at all two works, therefore, relate to different peevents, it is not necessary for our purpose to riods; and, being entirely of different characgive more than a very superficial account of ters, seem naturally to call for a separate them. Madame du Deffand was left a widow consideration. We begin with the corresponwith a moderate fortune, and a great reputa- dence of Madame du Deffand, both out of tion for wit, about 1750; and soon after gave respect to her seniority, and because the vaup her hotel, and retired to apartments in the riety which it exhibits seems to afford room couvent de St. Joseph, where she continued to for more observation. receive, almost every evening, whatever was most distinguished in Paris for rank, talent, or accomplishment. Having become almost blind in a few years thereafter, she found she required the attendance of some intelligent young woman, who might read and write for her, and assist in doing the honours of her conversazioni. For this purpose she cast her eyes on Mademoiselle Lespinasse, the illegitimate daughter of a man of rank, who had been boarded in the same convent, and was for some time delighted with her election. By and bye, however, she found that her young companion began to engross more of the notice of her visitors than she thought suitable; and parted from her with violent, ungenerous, and implacable displeasure. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, however, carried with her the admiration of the greater part of her patroness' circle; and having obtained a small pension from government, opened her own doors to a society not less brilliant than that into which she had been initiated under Madame du Deffand. The fatigue, however, which she had undergone in reading the old marchioness asleep, had irreparably injured her health, which was still more impaired by the agitations of her own inflammable and ambitious spirit; and she died, before she had obtained middle age, about 1776,-leaving on the minds of almost all the eminent men in France, an impression of talent, and of ardour of imagination, which seems to have been considered as without example. Madame du Deffand continued to preside in her circle till a period of extreme old age; and died in 1780, in full possession of her faculties.

As this lady's house was for fifty years the resort of every thing brilliant in Paris, it is natural to suppose, that she herself must have possessed no ordinary attraction-and to feel an eager curiosity to be introduced even to that shadow of her conversation which we may expect to meet with in her correspondence. Though the greater part of the letters are addressed to her by various correspondents, yet the few which she does write are strongly marked with the traces of her peculiar character and talent; and the whole taken together give a very lively idea of the structure and occupations of the best French society, in the days of its greatest splendour. Laying out of view the greater constitutional gaiety of our neighbours, it appears to us, that this society was distinguished from any that has ever existed in England, by three circumstances chiefly:-in the first place, by the exclusion of all low-bred persons; secondly, by the superior intelligence and cultivation of the women; and, finally, by the want of political avocations, and the absence of political antipathies.

By the first of these circumstances, the old Parisian society was rendered considerably more refined, and infinitely more easy and natural. The general and peremptory proscription of the bourgeois, excluded, no doubt, a good deal of vulgarity and coarseness; but it had a still better effect in excluding those feelings of mutual jealousy and contempt, and that conflict of family pride and consequential opulence, which can only be prevented from disturbing a more promiscuous assembly, by means of universal and systematic reserve.