tured and frequently dull-and when it is drawn out to a considerable length is absolutely intolerable; it is thus that mediocrity and selfishness revenge themselves, as it were, upon superior genius and sensibility.

It should be observed that this talent for imitating the style and caricaturing the faults of other writers is found often in those, who do not themselves excel in original composition.

We forbear to expatiate farther, or to give farther instances of these different species of poetry lest we should anticipate or destroy the future pleasure which our young readers may some day have, in discovering these beauties for themselves. It is sufficient for our purpose to have pointed out the way, they will

in future follow it, without the assistance, or the incumbrance of a guide. We have been desirous rather to excite the mind, to think and to reflect upon its own feelings than to induce our young readers to adopt implicitly our opinions or tastes.— We do not wish merely to supply them, with ready-made critical observations, but to give them the power and the pleasure of judging for themselves. It would be more satisfactory to us to hear young persons make one observation of their own, it would be more satisfaction to us, to see the pleasure lighten in their eyes, on the discovery of an allusion, an imitation, a parody, on the perception of any beauty of poetry discerned for themselves, and by themselves, than it could possibly give us

to know that every word in this book, that all the criticisms of Warton, or Johnson, or of all the best critics that ever wrote, were merely impressed on the memory of the pupil.

We have often had the pleasure of seeing the sort of delight and triumph with which young people, who have early discerned beauties in literature afterwards discover that what they admired from their own judgment and feelings had been approved by the best critics we have often seen the surprise and satisfaction with which our pupils trace stolen ideas, or allusions, and as they advance in their acquaintance with literature, discover fresh allusions and new beauties in passages or lines of poetry long familiar to them, but of which they had at first perceived only the obvious

sense. We hope our young readers

will in their turn enjoy this sort of pleasure, and that their parents and preceptors will also in their turn enjoy the satisfaction we have felt in seeing this gradual, but certain progress of the mind, and in perceiving that the taste for literature once formed, must be for life a source of continual, independent, unreproved plea

sure.

IN POETRY EXPLAINED

FOR THE USE OF YOUNG PEOPLE.

PAGE 39,

"And every shepherd tells his tale
"Under the hawthorn in the vale."

There is an error in the explanation of this passage: the word tale here means the tally, or the account of the flock which each shepherd numbers or tells in the morning, and not a love tale.

There is another error in explaining the following lines,

"To walk the studious cloisters pale." Page 80-Pale is here explained to mean dim, but this is an error.Pale here is a substantive, not an adjective. It means the pale or inclosure of the cloister.