640 
have been enlarged upon, and a compa- 
‘rison to have been made between its 
merits in this and other countries. But 
alas! alas! five and thirty stupid pages 
are employed in telling us that Mr. F— 
who performed Hamlet at Drury-lane 
on the 30th November, 1802, being his 
second appearance on the stage, is a 
young gentleman who stands about five 
feet six inches high, that he went to 
school at » lived with a printer, &c. 
&c. that his gait is awkward, that he 
ranted here, and whined there, and bel- 
lowed somewhere else! that Polonius 
was not done well, the Ghost execrably, 
Mr. Suet’s grave-digger pretty well, and 
that Mrs. Jordan’s Ophelia was far 
beyond all praise. ‘Thus endeth the 
first essay “on the stage!” In the se- 
cond we have a long-winded translation 
of Miss Baillie’s Count Basil into prose : 
this lady, who has the misfortune to 
be a great favourite of our author, is 
threatened with a renewal of his ad- 
dresses on some future occasion. Count 
Basil is the unhappy subject of the pre- 
sent critique ; act after act, scene after 
scene, sentence after sentence are para- 
phrased, and just such remarks intro- 
duced as might have been expected 
from any menial belonging to the theatre. 
Take an example: ex uno disce omnes. 
The following is our author’s criticism on 
the character of Basil, the hero of the 
piece ; Basil is a soldier all over ; mi- 
litary glory is his god; and he had al- 
ways been a wonderful hero till this un- 
fortunate love turned his head the wrong 
way, and he thought to set ail right by 
shooting himself. I beg that I may not 
be imagined to offer the least disrespect 
to the author, by the’ apparently slight- 
ing manner in which I mention this 
pistol affair; but I have always con- 
sidered suicide as so very vile and cow- 
ardly an act, that it never fails to raise 
‘my most sovereign contempt for the 
character that can have recourse to such 
a pitiful expedient, ir. order to sneak off 
from the stage of existence.” 
This will at once serve as a specimen 
of the style and of the criticism. 
The next essay is on marriage, and 
we were vastly consoled by the infor- 
‘mation conveyed -in the first sentence, 
where it is wittily observed, that as mar- 
‘Fiage is in itself a subject of a very pro- 
lific nature, the author does not intend to 
discourse on it much at Pt : he wishes 
that every’ female should have in her 
power, if she chose it, to unite herself in 
PHILOLOGY AND CRITICISM. 
; 
the bands of wedlock at the age of six- 
teen, and every male at that of eighteen. 
Religion is the subject of the third 
essay. One short extract shall suffice; 
our readers will not fail to mark how 
logically the inferences are deduced. 
“Jt is natural for a mind which looks for- 
ward toa future existence, to anticipate with 
anxiety his condition beyond the grave. 
Those whom we love and esteem are placed 
in a state of happiness and enjoyment, whife 
those who have incurred our displeasure are 
condemned to misery : hence the idea of fatu- 
rity becomes accompanied with the hope of 
happiness and the fear of torment ; but those 
ideas of happiness and torment are associated 
with persons from whom we are conscious of 
having received such sentiments. The lover 
connects the idea of happiness with that of 
his mistress, the miserable with those who 
have relieved their wants, and the criminal 
associates torment with those by whom he 
has been punished; hence futurity involves 
the idea of a superior being or beings, capa- 
ble of imparting pleasure or inflicting punish- 
ment. ‘I’o such being, or beings, the human 
passions which prevail in that barbarous state 
of society in which such phantoms are raised, 
are attributed. The Divinity becomes capa- 
bie of anger, pleasure, and all the variety of 
yassious which afilict the human breast : 
Lenore a natural propensity arises to appease 
and propitiate that beingto whom our future 
existence is committed. Religion has thus 
its origin.” 
Was such wretched stuff ever before 
committed to paper! The essayist pro- 
ceeds to trace the progress of natural re- 
ligion from its source im the same style ; 
and having traced it to his own satisfac- 
tion, he begins an attack upon the clergy, 
whose protession he clearly proves, ought 
in this enlightened age, when reason is 
- become adult, and the phantoms of ima- 
gination are no longer mistaken for re- 
alities, to be entirely abolished! Public 
worship, as it has hitherto been carried 
on, is considered as altogether incom- 
patible with true religicn; to the igno- 
rant and superstitious it must be detri- 
mental, and to the enlightened and libe- 
ral, absurd and ridiculous. Music is the 
only rational plan of public worship which, 
as appears to him, can ever be adopted: 
“ music conveys no definite ideas to the 
mind; it imparts a highly pleasurable 
sensation to the ear, and excites the ima- 
gination to call upcorrespondentimages. 
'Thoseideas,” our author contmues in the 
samé unintelligible jargon, “ which in 
each individual are imputed to the Deity 
and his dispensations, would by attend- 
ance on such public worship be called up 
