tead of admitting her petitioners to an immediate audience, ordered the antechamber to be erected, called among mortals, the Hall of Expectation. Into this hall the entrance was eafy to thofe whom IMPUDENCE had configned to FLATTERY, and it was therefore crowded with a promifcuous throng, affembled from every corner of the earth, preffing forward with the utmost eagerness of defire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.

They entered this general receptacle with ardour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy access, under the conduct of FLATTERY, to the presence of PATRONAGE. But it generally happened that they were here left to their destiny, for the inner doors were committed to CAPRICE, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any fettled rule or diftinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants were left to wear out "their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of SUSPICION, who was always whifpering into their ear defigns against them which were never formed, and of ENVY, who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their competitors. INFAMY flew round the hall, and fcattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was ftained; REPUTATION followed her with flower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or feparated of itself, and left the ftains more visible; nor were the spots of INFAMY ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of TIME from a well which fprung up beneath the throne of TRUTH.

It frequently happened that SCIENCE, unwilling to lose the ancient prerogative of recommending to PATRONAGE, would lead her followers into the Hall of Expectation; but they were foon difcouraged from attending, for not only ENVY and SUSPICION inceffantly tormented them, but IMPUDENCE Confidered them as intruders, and incited INFAMY to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but feldom without fome fpots which they could scarcely wash away, and which fhewed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

The reft continued to expect the happy moment, at which CAPRICE fhould beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her, not with Homerical harmony, the reprefentation of great actions, or the recital of noble fentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of PATRONAGE and PRIDE, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

Some were indeed admitted by CAPRICE, when they leaft expected it, and heaped by PATRONAGE with the gifts of FORTUNE, but they were from that time chained to her footstool, and condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods; they feemed proud of their manacles, and feldom complained of any drudgery, however fervile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, nowithstanding their obedience, feized on a fudden by CAPRICE, divefted of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

Here they mingled again with the tumult; and all, except a few whom experience had taught to

VOL. II.

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feek

feek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years, courting the fmile of CAPRICE by the arts of FLATTERY; till at length new crowds preffed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of DISEASE, and SHAME, and POVERTY, and DESPAIR, where they paffed the reft of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and forrows, of hopes and disappointments.

The SCIENCES, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of PATRONAGE, and having long wandered over the world in grief and distress, were led at last to the cottage of Independence, the daughter of FORTITUDE; where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to support themselves in dignity and quiet.

NUMB. 92. SATURDAY, February 2, 1751.

Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perftringis aures, jam litui ftrepunt.

Lo! now the clarion's voice I hear,
Its threat'ning murmurs pierce mine ear;
And in thy lines with brazen breath
The trumpet founds the charge of death.

HOR.

FRANCIS.

T has been long obferved, that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diverfified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to fignify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can juftify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argu

ment,

ment, but example and authority. It is, indeed, fo little fubject to the examinations of reason, that Pafchal fuppofes it to end where demonftration begins, and maintains, that without incongruity and abfurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty..

To trace all the fources of that various pleasure which we afcribe to the agency of beauty, or to difentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of Ariftotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases, apparent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful because they have fomething which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the fame kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge increases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

Much of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore Boileau juftly remarks, that the books which have ftood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has fuffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary cuftoms, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.

It is, however, the task of criticifm to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to diftinguish thofe means of pleafing which depend upon known caufes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which

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which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight, but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantreffes of the foul. Criticifm reduces thofe regions of literature under the dominion of fcience, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.

There is nothing in the art of verfifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the found to the fenfe, or the reprefentation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expreffed. Every student has innumerable paffages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, difcovers fuch refemblances; and fince the attention of the prefent race of poetical readers feems particularly turned upon this fpecies of elegance, Ifhall endeavour to examine how much thefe conformities have been obferved by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far they can be establifhed upon nature and reason, and on what accafions they have been practised by Milton.

Homer, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionyfius of Halicarnaffus, as he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of found; for there are, fays he, innumerable paffages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extreinity of paffion, and ftilnefs of repofe; or in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the found of the fyllables. Thus the anguifh and flow pace with which the blind Polypheme gropped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verfes which defcribe it.

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