Bi 
1822.] 
{431 J 
NOVELTIES OF FOREIGN LITERATURE. 
te 
STRICTURES on the PERIODICAL LITE- 
RATURE Of ENGLAND, from ‘‘A SKETCH 
of OLD ENGLAND, by a NEW ENGLAND 
MAN.” — Published in 1822, by 
Charles Wiley, of New York; and 
imported by Millar. 
[The perfection which the arts of compo- 
sition have acquired in America, renders 
it highly proper to consult these rivals 
on topics which involye among ourselves 
too sensitive a personal feeling, and too 
much passion. Of course we do not 
give the opinions of this. Argus-eyed 
New England man as our own. On 
some points he has slightly erred, but 
his arguments stand on their own foun- 
dation. His praise of this Miscellany 
is satisfactory; but we presume our 
readers do not on that subject require a 
higher opinion than their own. Of. the 
knaves who sought to steal our good 
name, and under its cover impose their 
namby-pamby and tinsel wares on the 
world, there can among honest men be 
but one opinion, We could have been 
content with the punishment which has 
attended the crime ; but the Americans, 
like the Macedonians, will call a spade 
a spade, and knavery ought perhaps to 
be branded as wellas punished. ‘The loss 
of many thousand ponnds. of somebody's 
money, and the necessity of scattering, 
in advertisements, eight hundred per an- 
num in reiterated agonies of despair, 
_are however, in our estimation, sufh- 
cient punishment for literary plagiarism 
and theft. The New England critic 
has commented at greater length on 
other literary empirics of the day, and, 
as he writes with great ability, we may 
be induced to give our readers another 
specimen in our next Number, if we 
are not anticipated by the ‘‘ Journal of 
Voyages and Travels.’ 
INGS would at all times, I be- 
lieve, if left to their choice, 
rather govern by opinion than by 
force, by love than by fear. An army 
of pensioned writers, when it will suf- 
fice to support the king’s popularity, 
will, in most cases, be preferred to an 
army of soldiers to maintain his autho- 
rity, for atleast two special reasons. 
‘The former method is by far the 
cheaper; since a few pensions, a pal- 
iry title, a ring, a picture, or a letter 
written by his Majesty’s own hand, 
will very generally neutralize, if not 
correct, the most stubborn literary 
patriot, and so completely alter his 
perception of things, that a country, - 
which only yesterday was the most 
oppressed and miserable, becomes to- 
morrow the happiest in the world- 
For instance, T' C———, whose 
noble and affecting strains on the sub- 
ject of Potish freedom and Irish op- 
pression are remembered by every 
American reader, has dwindled inte 
the nominal editor of a Tory magazine, 
and gone over from the oppressed to 
the oppressor. I do not say this change 
was wrought by a pension of two or 
‘three hundred pounds a-year; but, 
when a man changes his sentiments 
very suddenly, and receives a pension 
immediately afterwards, it is difficult 
to resist the conviction, that there is 
some connexion between the two. 
The laureate was seduced 
from the arms of Wat Tyler, by the 
irresistible attractions of sack and su- 
gar. A hundred a-year, and a butt of 
sack, did his business. They: so 
wrought upon his conscience, that from 
a downright patriot he became, first a 
flatterer of kings, and next a fana- 
tical advocate of every species of pious 
fraud and kingly pretension. I verily 
believe the poor man is sincere now ; 
for hypocrisy is too wary and worldly- 
minded to give into such fantastic 
fooleries as the laureate has lately 
committed. It is often the case, that 
men are inducted intoa great devotion 
for principles, to which they were at 
first but little attached, by the aid of a 
sound drubbing or two, which operates 
like persecution upon new modes of 
faith, making what was before perhaps 
little better than hypocrisy, a confirm- 
ed and obstinate conviction. Few 
persons have been more persecuted in 
this way than the unfortunate laureate. 
When he was a patriot, he was terri- 
bly persecuted by the Anti-jacobin, 
which parodied his Sapphics; and, 
what every body thought impossible, 
made them even more ridiculous than 
they were originally. After he was con- 
verted to loyalty by sack and sugar, 
and a hundred.a-year, his old friends, 
whom he had abandoned, attacked 
him with every weapon of ridicule and 
severity; while his new allies, feeling 
rather ashamed of their new convert, 
left him to the poor consolation of 
praising himself, which he does now at 
every convenient opportunity. As he 
was drubbed into a perfect conviction 
of the truth of his newly adopted 
principles, so in like manner has he 
been convinced of his own great merit 
and 
