though in both cases depraved by too extreme a subtlety of refinement, are unquestionably, in substance, at once profound and just. For his fulsome adulation of Warburton, for the servile application of his minute and microscopic researches, to justify the casual glances of his patron, he well deserves the burning lashes of Parr: yet, when I estimate his critical achievements, I could wish his fierce assailant had given weight to his censures of them, by having previously asserted to the world the strength of his own powers in this congenial department of literature." P. 40. " May 12, 1800. Read Hurd's Notes on Horace's Epistle to Augustus. In the Dedication, he requires, in a perfect critic, reason, or what he calls a philosophic spirit,' to penetrate the grounds of excellence in every different species of composition; and taste, or what he terms a strong imagination,' to feel those excellencies himself, and to impress them upon others. Aristotle he considers as transcendant in the former department; Longinus, in the latter; and then, (oh, monstrous adulation!) he compliments Warburton as perfect in both, and as exciting jealousy, because great to judge as to invent! How could such a sycophant write the note on v. 15.? On v. 63, he observes that the popular voice, after partialities have had time to die away, is sacred and fixes the unalterable doom of authors. On v. 210, he affirms that all didactic writing is employed in referring particular facts to general principles; and defines criticism, the referring to general rules the virtues and the faults of composition. The perfection of criticism, he thinks, would consist in referring every beauty and blemish to a separate class; and every class, by a gradual progression, to some one single principle. Critics, he continues, are

properly employed in confirming established rules, which can only be done by referring more particulars to them; or by inventing new ones, which implies, 1. a collection of various particulars, not yet regulated; 2. a discovery of those circumstances of resemblance or agreement, whereby they become capable of being regulated; and 3. an arrangement into one class, according to such similitude. When this is done, the rule is completed; and its object is to direct the caprices of taste by an authority, which we call reason. Longinus, Bouhours, and Addison he censures as dwelling too much in generals; not only the genus, to which they refer their species, is too large, but the species themselves are too comprehensive. This is as just and philosophical a view of criticism, as I have anywhere met with." P. 220.

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"Aug. 28, 1797. Read Horace de Arte Poetica: With regard to this celebrated Epistle to the Pisos, if it has any method, I confess I am unable to discover it; and considered as a didactic tractate on the art of poetry, I cannot help regarding it as a miserably lame and defective composition." P. 41. Aug. 29. Read Hurd's Commentary on Horace's Art of Poetry. Hurd's idea is that this Epistle is nothing but a critique on the Roman Drama, and he spins out on this principle, sometimes with difficulty enough, a sort of loose epistolary connection through all its parts. But what must we think of a poem, whose subject, method, and drift, though anxiously investigated by the ablest critics, have defied detection for seventeen centuries and a half? The Annotations, appended to the Commentary, are replete with critical entertainment. On v. 47, he successfully illustrates, from Shakespeare, his idea of Horace's direction, so to order

old words, that they shall have the effect of new.' On v. 94, he justly deduces that poetry is the language of passion; that each passion presents its peculiar images, and suggests its appropriate expression; that these are modified by the situation, habits, age, profession, etc. of the person thus affected; and that the just exhibition of the passions thus modified, constitutes the excellence of dramatic composition. On v. 99, he very ingeniously traces the signification of pulchrum from its original and appropriate sense of 'beauty in visible form,' to 'every species of pleasurable image whatever,' and finally to whatever excites any pleasurable feeling through the imagination;' and he then proceeds to set the sense of the terms pulchra and dulcia, as opposed to each other in this verse, in a very happy light; restricting the former, which might singly have denoted poetical excellence in general,' to 'beautiful imagery,' and assigning the other to 'pathos.” On v. 103, he endeavours to solve the celebrated question, why we are pleased in representation, with what would shock us in reality; but omits the grand cause, which has been justly assigned by Burke, (Subl. and Beaut. 1, 13. 14. 15.) On v. 244, he very happily evolves the charm of pastoral poetry, and traces its progress from the Idyllia of Theocritus to Milton's Comus. On v. 273, he refers the coarseness of antient wit to the free and popular goverment of their States, and to their festal licenses. And on v. 317, he very ably explains and illustrates Horace's recommendation for attaining truth of expression in dramatic poetry, to study the human mind in general, to know what conduct, from the predominancy of certain qualities, the imputed character requires; and, to study real life as it prevails, to know with what degree

of strength that character will, on particular occasions, most probably display itself. How lamentable it is that such erudition and acuteness should be occasionally polluted by a superfluous and crafty semblance of intricacy and depth, by a detestable affectation of quaint expression, and by a pert, provoking petulance, a cool, sly, contemptuous jeering, even of the most respected characters, the intended mischief of which can only recoil in shame and disgrace upon the author!" P. 41. "May 2, 1800. Looked into Hurd's Notes on Horace's Art of Poetry. On v. 94, he remarks that figurative language is not to be rejected in dramatic writing; but only such images to be given to the speaker, as the passion, by which he is affected, naturally suggests to the human mind. This is very just the prevailing fault of dramatic writers in this respect, is the imparting to their characters under the agitation of the passions, not such images as passion rouses in the mind immediately subject to its fervour, but as the observer is prone to indulge on contemplating this spectacle, and aiming to describe it. On v. 244, he ascribes the pleasure derived from pastoral poetry, to its addressing itself to the three leading principles in human nature, the love of ease, the love of beauty, and the moral sense; by exhibiting the tranquillity, the scenery, and the innocence of rural life: a happy example of a solution exact and complete in all its parts; and which leaves nothing wanting, to give absolute and entire satisfaction to the mind of the enquirer. On v. 317, he contends that both in poetry and painting, an artist may confine himself too much to individuals, and thus fail in exhibiting the kind; or, in giving the general idea, he may collect it from an extended view of real life, instead of taking it from

the nobler conception existing only in the mind: and that by deviating from particular, he more faithfully imitates universal truth — on which principle Aristotle affirms fiction to be φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον, more philosophical and instructive than history. On v. 410, he remarks that of Longinus's five sources of the sublime, two,- a grandeur of conception, and the pathetic,-come from nature; three, a just arrangement of figures, a splendid diction, and dignity of composition—are the province of art: but, even in this view of it, it is impossible to conceal that Longinus's division of the subject, is miserably lame and defective." P. 218.

"March 18, 1798. Read Hurd's Dialogue between Cowley and Sprat, on Retirement. Cowley, who is an advocate for retirement, has manifestly the advantage throughout; and Sprat makes but a very sorry figure in defence of mingling with the world. After all, there is something offensive to correct feeling, and just taste, in thus imputing fictitious conversations to real personages; and though Mr. Hurd has executed his task with delicacy and address, I connot help thinking that he has set a mischievous example." P. 69. " March 25. Pursued Hurd's Dialogues. A note in the fourth, ridiculing the reduction of the Church of Christ to its pure and primitive state of indigence and suffering, strongly reminded me of a corresponding passage in Burke's Second Letter on the Revolution in France, addressed to a Member of the National Assembly, where he reprobates, with cutting severity, the entrusting the concerns of the Gallican Church to Mirabeau." P. 70. "March 27. Finished Hurd's Dialogues. In the seventh and eighth, in disfavour of foreign travel, the parts of Shaftsbury and Locke, but particularly of the