days must be certainly near at hand, admitting that they commenced when this battle was fought, and that they fignified fo many yeras. And we fay it may be, that they may end in less than 28 years, because we know that the Perfians fent to demand earth and water of the Grecians as tokens of fubmiffion to their monarchy, fome few years before they fought this bloody battle. We think, therefore, that we stand on firm ground, when we affert that there are not 30 years to come ere your restoration will take place. These things then are well worthy of your confideration. And if on this occafion you pay fome attention to the predictions of the Holy Spirit by the pro phet Hofea, it may ferve to enlighten your minds on this fubject. For after the Lord had spoken by him those words which we have quoted in page 113, the Holy Spirit then, in the verses which immediately follow in the fubfequent chapter, puts a word as it were in your mouths, by faying, "Come and let us return unto the Lord, for he hath torn and he will heal us, he hath fmitten and he will bind us up after two days will he revive us in the third day; in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his fight. Then we shall know, if we follow on to know the Lord: His going forth is prepared as the morning, and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth." Where, by one day, it fhould feem the Holy Ghost meant one thousand years; feeing in another place it fays of the great Jehovah, "A thousand years in thy fight are but as yesterday (or one day) seeing that is paffed, as a watch in the night." And if fo, then the Holy Spirit hereby fignified that after two thousand years had expired, your nation fhould again revive in the third thousand, but when these three thousand years were to begin, was to be the fubject of fubfequent revelation; for we have no mention made of their commencement but in that viffon of Daniel of which we have here been speaking, which did not take place till many years after the time of Hofea.' We fear this comfortable profpect will be veiled by an unlucky fuggeftion in our extract; for if prophetic days, as in that inftance, should mean a thousand years, alas! the comforts are far, ftill far distant. Wonderful, however, as our author's prediction is, fomething more extraordinary follows. Britain is the Tarshish whose ships are to convey the Jews; and the prefent war between the Ruffians and the Turks is to be the means of rescuing the holy fepulchre from the hands of the infidels. Rome and the Porte are the fun and moon which Daniel tells us fhall be afhamed and confounded at the restoration of the Jews; and these powers are also the beast and the falfe prophet - Fye, this is abfolute fcurrility! if they must be driven away, it fhould be without abuse. But the times of the commenceVOL. LXIX. Feb. 1790. M ment ment of their power, and its probable duration, are faid entire ly to coincide; and we can no longer refift :-all this is explained at length, and we muft refer for it to our author. Mr. Beere will, we hope, excufe this little pleasantry, at the end of his long feries of calculations, especially as he steps forward on unstable ground with as much confidence as when he was wholly fecure. His work, however, contains many judicious and valuable obfervations, for which we freely commend and thank him. As this volume may be the foundation of fome future controverfy, and as it may afford its readers much information, we have followed our au. thor with fufficient clofenefs to render the one intelligible, and give a fufficient fpecimen of the other. The Art of Criticism; as exemplified in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the most eminent English Poets. 8vo. 4s. in Boards. Hookham. THE HE Art of Criticism,' though restricted to examples adduced from Dr. Johnson's celebrated performance, afforded us much hope of information and instruction. We did not, indeed, expect to find its principles unravelled, its nature defined, and objects difcriminated in a manner unknown and unattempted before. Yet we naturally thought that the products of fo rich a foil, in which weeds were often intermingled with the finest grain, would have afforded ample fubject of examination to a judicious husbandman, and enabled him to point out the diversity of their nature, for the benefit of his fellowlabourers, and fhewn what ought to be preserved and what eradicated. Sorry are we to say that we have reaped but little benefit from the prefent investigation. The doctor's opinions are, indeed, fometimes examined; and our author occafionally differs from, and agrees with him. Like him he is fevere in his ftrictures on Gray, and praises Watts for his happy and almoft incomparable fpirit of verfification." On the other hand, he affirms that Milton's Paradise Loft is a huge, chaotic romance,' and his narrative poems, admired by boys and common people, because they contain wild undigested ftories.' He confiders Johnfon's pathetic apoftrophe on the death of Garrick, as a piece of affected contempt.' His Rambler, in animation and allurement, as inferior to the Adventurer; his Idler inane,' and his morality in the work under his immediate inspection, of an indifferent, vulgar, worldly, and warped into a fufpicious caft.'-Vulgarity is objected to Johnson in more places than one; but the remark certainly does not come with great propriety from this critical annotator, as the following paffages paffages (if we are to understand by the word illiberality of manners, or fentiment) will ferve to evince : As to theology; Milton is any thing or nothing; Trinitarian, Arian, Socinian, or neither, as fuited his poetry; and I know not but he would have been Mahometan, or Diabolian, had Cromwell, the devil's fecretary, Milton being under-fecretary, commanded it.' Again, on the life of Yalden, we have the following remarks: "When Namur was taken by king William, Yalden made an ode. There was never any reign more celebrated by the poets than that of William, who had very little regard for fong himself, but happened to employ minifters who pleased themselves with the praife of patronage." This is a moft pungent fting of contempt; but it is certainly fhameful to attribute good actions to worthlefs motives, and as foolish for Johnfon to declare himfelf a Jacobite in every page. As to his laughing at poetry, he had indeed no relih for any but didactic; and had he been apprehenfive that ever a golden age (let no punfter remind us of his penfion) would be on earth, how fervently would he have prayed to have been delivered from it; and how infipid and wretched must he have deemed the condition of Adam and Eve before their fall, when neither taverns, venifon, nor flander, were in being! The last and in the last paragraph of Yalden's life is fu-* perfluous.' These instances, and many others occur, in which this author fhews how eafy it is to difcover the mote in a brother's eye, how difficult to difcern the beam in our own! In a page immediately preceding, a trifling error as to the meaning of a word, if it may be called one, is pointed out: but faults of a much lefs defenfible nature appear in the aukward fentence which it follows: "His What d'ye call it, a kind of mock tragedy, in which the images were comic, and the action grave." From difproportions always proceed burlesque, not feldom nearly the confe quence of common things invested with pompous diction in the Rambler. "His friends perfuaded him to fell his share."--With all due fubmiffion to the lexicographer, I apprehend that endeavoured to perfuade, would have been more proper; perfuaded to, being nearly tantamount to prevailed with? . Here we intended to conclude our extracts; but,' in turning over the leaves a fecond time, we were fo ftruck and amufed with our author's patriotic panegyric on our English explanatory interjections, that, confidering our readers may be fome-, what of a fimilar difpofition with ourselves, and that it will fur M 2 ther ther explain the nature of the critical difquifitions contained in the prefent volume, we tranfcribe it for their service and emolument. The following tranflation of an infcription in Pope's grotto has fomething inimitably foothing and delightful, and is, I think, fuperior to the Latin; and I fear not to risk my opinion, that our language is fufceptible of more tenderness and pathos than either the Latin or Greek, which have nothing to come up to our ab's! and ob's! I allude to "Nymph of the grot, thefe facred fprings I keep, Ah, fpare my flumbers, foftly tread the cave, I know not whether others, like me, fet their affections on pieces of writing fo as fometimes to difrelifh alterations even for the better, and can thus lay an equal claim to conftancy. It is hence perhaps that I prefer "Whoe'er thou art, ah! gently tread the cave, Ah! bathe in filence, or in filence lave." I have feen it, though bathe and lave are too like; I think it would be better, Ah! fpare my flumbers, foftly tread the cave; Repetitions have fometimes a fweet charm.' A dialogue, fuppofed to take place between Johnfon and J. Warton, concludes this performance. The fame rudeness and illiberality, poffibly not altogether unfuitable to one of the interlocutors, prevails in the fpeeches of both; and likewife a redundancy of inelegant and ungrammatical phrases, that are characteristic of neither. The Deluge. A Poem. By the Rev. John Roberts, M. A. Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. 4to. 15. 6d. Evans. ON N our firft curfory perufal of this poem, we were, on the whole, pleased with it; and confidered it in many places as no unhappy imitation of Milton's forcible and claffic style. On a fecond perufal, however, our opinion was fomewhat altered; many defects occurred, which we fhall proceed to examine and point out, taking likewife due notice of the passages which pleafed us. The philofophical obfervation at the beginning of the poem, and the defcription of the times preceding the flood, are not deftitute of strength or elegance. We object indeed to this • Nor Nor could thy form, or gentle eloquence It cannot be supposed that a man's form, whatever may be thought of his gefture, could have any effect in enforcing his argument. Inftead of or' we should read nor.' The miftake is not very capital, and we might have taken it for an error of the prefs, had not a fimilar one occurred again in the fame page. The figns preceding the Deluge are by no means happily chofen. • White shine the breaking billows, filver foam, To this paffage we have many objections. The bittern is a river bird, that shakes the founding marsh with bill ingulpht,' but never skims low dropping along the brine,' like the mew; nor does the latter, nor any bird that we know, half inclofe,' while flying, her wings in the dark spray.' But why dark? Is not the spray the fame as the foam? and that furely is reprefented as fufficiently luminous in the first line. Spots of fire,' appearing in a blue sky, and edged with darkness, may be a terrible, but does not appear to us a natural phænomenon. Nor are, to fall' and 'dart impetuous,' proper expreffions applied at the fame time, to the fame object. Skimming and low-dropping,' in a preceding line, ftand in the fame predicament. The darkness that enfues is certainly too tenebrous, and the author appears in this and other places to have laboured too much to make his descriptions terrible. Fewer words would have ftruck more forcibly. From this oppreffive night of clouds and thick darknefs, the vollied lightning' that fucceeds, fomewhat relieves us and we have no objection to the different scenes of horror and difmay,' which it difclofes. At thy voice The waters fwift afcend the rough steep cliff; And in the bofom of the vale down fink At once' This, we fuppofe, is meant as an imitation of the 8th verfe in the 104th Pfalm, which fome commentators have supposed M 3 alluded |