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fatigues, the real atlas, fupporting the whole weight of the globe on his truly laborious shoulders?'

Several of the pieces in these volumes are much fhorter than that we have given, and feem rather intended to contain the materials of thought, or the substratum of more elaborate compofition. Such is the paper of our author upon facility, which exhibits a confiderable portion of tafte in a few lines.

I like an eafy genius. The ftile of fuch has a gracefulness, a freedom, a certain ftriking, but an animated air. They do not laboriously confume their time confined to a clofet; they look around them, mix with the world, and there imbibe subjects for reflection. The most effential matters furnish a crowd of ideas to their minds; they are not diffufive on extraneous fubjects, they hit rapidly on what fhould please, they have the instinct of the art; and those indefatigable labourers, who put the work twenty times in the loom, are patient workmen, to whom time, at length, brings fome lucky chance, whilft the others have the exterior eafe and brilliancy of men of quality. La Fontaine and Voltaire's verfes, and Fenelon's profe, resemble a clear and copious ftream, which flows with ease. What juft reflection does not produce in an inftant, it will not be able to effect in months; it is luminous and rapid; it compares and combines fpeedily, or remains funk in the clouds that obfcure it.'

The qualities of M. Mercier, which we have already enu-, merated, his imagination, his fenfibility, and his taste, so far as it is the offspring of fenfibility, will be denied him by no reader capable of relishing these departments of excellence. The intrepid and erect turn of his mind has added grace and ornament to his native powers, and which render his performances the favourite amusement of the friend of virtue and humanity. But we are by no means inclined to acquit him of every blemish. The characteristic of the truly great writer is to refpect the public and himself, and to intrude nothing upon the world that has not been the fruit of accurate inveftigation, or of protracted improvement. The inferior author, on the contrary, publishes every thing indifcriminately, and imagines his most crude reflections worthy of the curious eye of literature, or the untainted mind of innocence. If these maxims be true, M. Mercier can by no means be admitted to rank in the very firft clafs. The prefent performance, we are informed, is the collection of his daily effufions, and they feem to have been obtruded upon the prefs without any difcrimination. If fome of his papers are replete with ingenious thinking, accurate reflection, and fpirited beauties, there are others empty and frivolous beyond any thing that can be imagined. His tafte, as we have already hinted, is partial; and in that fpecies of taste, which originates in the more delicate lines of the understanding,

understanding, and the regularity of cultivation, he is deficient. Some of his figures are accordingly far fetched and uncouth; his fictions harfh, naked and difgufting; and his decifions the fruit of ignorance, impertinence, and quackery. This appears in the very title of his performance, which, at the fame time that it is quaint, cabalistical, and unmeaning, fuggefts to us an idea courfe, vulgar, and indelicate.

But the moft accomplished example is to be found in his critique upon Homer. It is true he had never read him in the original; but why then intrude his undigested animadverfions upon the world? He had also never read, if we are to judge from the evidence of this differtation, any thing in the remoteft degree relative to the heroic ages. His favourite chimera js that of the Iliad, being written in two different and diffimilar ages. The ground work, according to our author, was "compofed in the rude and obfcure times that Thefeus lived," that is, about fourfcore years before the fiege of Troy. The difcovery indeed is wonderful, and M. Mercier appears proportionably delighted with its ingenuity. "This, fays he, is plaufible." And then he goes on to confirm it by an interesting story about Thefeus and Gideon. But all this, however plaufible, in favour of the hypothefis of the Iliad being the production of different authors, does not content the vigorous and demonftrative genius of our author. He discovers a great variety of stile in the compofition, and he proves it thus.

• He defcribes old Neftor as the model of wisdom, and the most refpectable of his heroes; and this wife man, with his boafted eloquence, tells his foldiers; My boneft fellows, I believe none of you would chufe to return home, without firft baving lain with the wife of fome Trojan.This fhameful speech is put into the mouth of an old man, infpired by Minerva, the most chafte of goddeffes. His Achilles, whofe majestic wrath punishes the Grecian heroes, by his inaction, after having pardoned the hoary head of Priam, and even relenting over this unhappy father, ftruck with the idea of his own aged parent, fells, as I may fay, to this old man, who kissed his murdering hands, the body of his fon Hector, by meanly accepting the prefents brought him. This fon of Thetis, this demi-god, whofe noble valour disdained to spill vulgar blood, coolly cuts the throats of twelve Trojans on the tomb of Patroclus; and we dare not fathom the principle of his grief or his friendship. In a word, he only ferves his country to revenge the death of Patroclus.

Agamemnon, as brutal, with his own hand kills Adraftus, who had furrendered to Menelaus, who wished to fpare him; and he en dures the reproaches of this haughty chief, who is reprefented as the model of heroifm. Things fo unlike cannot proceed from the fame brain.

How, again, can we reconcile the inftances where Homer pionfly adores his gods, with others where he ridicules them? Did he believe in a Juno, who he inflames with a celeftial jealous wrath; a Jupiter, who ENG. REV. Vol. VI. May 1786.

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fhakes Olympus with knitting his brows, while he laughs at lame Valcan? This unfortunate god had received from his brutal and inhuman father fuch a kick in the hip, that he was lamed for the remainder of his eternal days.

• There must have been many beads employed in framing fuch nonsense, to finish the edifice of this confused fyftem, in which one cannot avoid difcovering the traces and mixture of other worships.'

These arguments are too abfurd to admit of an answer. But there is another argument yet behind. "Add to this," fays he, "the difference of dialect acknowleged by all those who underftand the language." This is excellent indeed. Had M.Mercier understood one word of Greek, had he condefcended to enquire of the most illiterate school-master in Neuchatel, he might have known that this difference of dialect does not lie in different parts of the compofition, but that all the dialects are mixed in almost every fingle verse, and that the simple and majeftic uniformity of Homer's ftile is equal to that of any writer that ever exifted. But perhaps our author imagines, that the gentleman who lived in the days of Thefeus compofed the Iliad in profe, and that the bufinefs of his ingenious fucceffor was to turn it into verse.

We have already found that our author knows nothing of Thefeus, nothing of the ancient mythology, and nothing of the Grecian dialects; and upon all which fubjects he declaims with fo much gravity and compofure. It remains to be seen, that he knows as little of his author, whom he pretends to have read in all his tranflations, as he does of any of thefe fubjects. The following paffage is decifive. The wrath of Achilles is idle, impotent, and unreasonable; he fculks nine years in his tent: there lies his armour; nine years inactivity, for depriving him of Brifeis: pretty employment for a hero fprung from a goddess!" Unfortunately, these nine years do not amount in Homer to as many weeks.

Again," the moral of the Iliad is much praifed, but one muft have the penetrating eye of Horace to fee it." Indeed, Sir! we always thought the moral of the Iliad, the admirable manner in which it expofes the confequences of public difcord, of all things most obvious. But no! fays our author; "for his Jupiter, his Juno, his Venus, his Mercury, as well as the rest of his gods, are always at variance, are in general unjust, mifchievous, and licentious." And what then, Sir? Does the moral of a performance imply any thing else, than the ethical inference deducible from the whole and does it follow, becaufe a performance contains fome things immoral and licentious, that it affords us fuch inference? "We don't even fee the taking of Troy, which is the conftant fubject." If we did, if we were presented with any thing fo foreign to the design of the poet,

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then indeed would the Iliad be deftitute of a moral. What confummate ignorance and mifapprehenfion!" and the real utility of this long work evades fpeculation, unless it is to prove the difcord of princes, brings on dreadful confequences; a truth their people feel without the affiftance of poetry." Admirable! And fo in M. Mercier's opinion the poet and the novelist are to teach no lesson, the morality or the truth of which was obvious before they incalcuted it.

One imagination of our author completes the whole. He demonstrates that the very fact of a poem having furvived for a course of centuries, and efpecially for 3000 years, affords a ftrong prefumption that it has no merit at all.

Perhaps in thirty ages, after the destruction of our arts, of our books, and the Journal of Bouillon, a romance of our days, little read or despised, escaping univerfal ruin, may obtain the honour of fublimity s and the crowd of commentators, with gaping mouths, will pronounce it to poffefs every beauty: the firft learned man will give to the work the name that has furvived, and perhaps feveral volumes will be filled with the life of a poor author, who would have had fome difficulty to obtain a place in a modern bill of mortality. Who knows even if they would not go fo far as to confound commentator and author, and if, for example, they might not attribute Moliere's comedies to M Brett? For indeed his name is for ever tacked to the works of the author of the Milanthropist. Such a mistake might very poffibly happen. In fuch a future academy, fituated in a corner of North America, fome learned academician, if there were any, would perhaps affert, in a language which we should certainly not understand, that M. Brett, in the eighteenth century, compofed the Tartuffe and Gazette of France.'

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We shall conclude our business refpecting this work with two words to the tranflator. We remember to have feen his performance advertised some months previous to its publication, by the epithet of an elegant tranflation of Mercier's Mon Bonnet de Nuit." We had always an inftinctive aversion to this kind of self-proclamation; but we hope that the example before us will put an end to the abufe for ever. Since elegance is the characteristic of the tranflation, we will attempt a receipt for this author's idea of elegance. The most wretched perverfion of grammar, the moft aukward, uncouth, and unintelligible expreffions, are a principal ingredient. If these will not Content the afpiring genius, he has only to tranflate from a Janguage of which he understands not a word, and to metamorphofe an agreeable mifcellany into the moft repulfive and deteftable book that ever exiftéd.

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ART. III. A Treatise upon the Gout, in which the primitive Caufe of that Difeafe, and likewife of Gravel, is clearly afcertained; and an eafy Method recommended, by which both may be with Certainty prevented, or radically cured. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Cadell, London. 1786.

FROM

'ROM the earliest ages of phyfical knowledge, no disease has more exercised inveftigation than that which is the subject of the prefent treatife. Though fucceffively imputed to every fpecies of acrimony in the fluids, and a peculiar affection of the folids, neither one nor the other has hitherto been ascertained upon any established principle of science; and after all the efforts of ingenuity, exhausted in researches, an impartial inquirer is ftill at a lofs to form any fatisfactory and decided opinion concerning the immediate caufe of this complaint. With regard to the predifponent caufe of the gout, the author of the treatise now before us supposes it to exift in a calcareous earth in the fluids; and fuch an hypothefis, he thinks, is strongly fupported by the obfervation, not only that gouty and nephritic complaints are often united in the fame perfon, but that the medicines, ufually recommended in the gravel, have had the effect of preventing the paroxyfms of the gout. This argument however by no means proves that these two diforders originate from one common caufe. For, in the first place, the conjunction of the gout and gravel is not fufficiently frequent to render fuch an inference conclufive; and in the next we can eafily conceive how medicines, which promote the urinary dif charge, may operate, as they certainly often do, towards palliating an arthritic complaint; though the latter fhould proceed from a faline acrimony in the fluids, and not from calcareous earth. Indeed the exiftence of fuch matter, as the cause of difeafe, in any other form than that of concretion, is not fupported by any phyfiological obfervations. Nor can we therefore, from the force of any argument which our author has adduced, fubfcribe to the doctrine that a fufceptibility of the gout is a confequence of any unufual quantity of calcareous earth in the fluids.

The author, after establishing his favourite fyftem upon the foundation of hypothefis, proceeds to confider the circumftances which tend to produce a calcareous habit; and these he afcribes principally, or rather entirely, to acids. We shall lay before our readers the mode of reafoning by which he supports this opinion.

Perhaps the ftomach and inteftines are never free from a mixture of calcareous earth; it may be taken in by accident, with a variety of fubftances which we eat and drink, or it may be formed by the process of digeftion; but this I do not take upon me to affert pofitively,

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