fibly perfuade themselves to fuppofe, a race of beings, with properties and propentities peculiar to themfelves, and all hoftile to literature. In the mean time, what have reviewers been in truth? By turns all the literary men of the age in which they lived-Smollet, Francklin, Goldfinith, Johnson, &c. &c. were reviewers in their day; and in every age wherein reviews are published, ali literary men, who are either friends to the conductors of the work, or not too rich (which few such men have ever been) to lend their fervices for profit, will be occafional reviewers. Whatever Mr. K. may choofe to think of the principal conductors of the British Critic (who, however, are neither afhamed nor afraid to avow their names, or appear in competition with much abler authors than he is) we are proud to fay that, befides the perfons regularly em ployed, there are few eminent fcholars, friendly in their opinions to us, who have not fometimes contributed their affiltance to this review. Even the cenfure, of which Mr. K. has complained, was not written by any profelled reviewer, but by a scholar of great eminence, who kindly gave his pen to the employment. Let fuch felf-fufficient authors, therefore, know, that when they fight the air, and raife fuch phantoms of reviewers, they are, perhaps, contending with the ableft fcholars or critics of the age. To return from this digreffion, and give a brief account of the work, for brief it fhall be in mercy to the reader, who must already have had nearly fample enough of the performance. The author profeffes to follow the fteps of Lucretius, particularly in the fifth book of his great Epicurean poem. Had he carefully tried to imitate the beft paffages of that fublime writer, his production had been much improved; but it is his philofophy which he chiefly afpires to imitate; and, imperfect as the Epicurean fyftem is, his own is greatly worfe. It is the rath impiety of the French fchool without its vivacity. It is the degrading fyftem which claims kindred with the monkey (of which alliance let us give all the benefit to fuch writers) and attempts to derive all the powers of man from a few merely animal instincts. Within the first three hundred lines the author fprings to hail his chattering relations, and, in the fifth book, more completely, and in very worthy terms, afferts the relationship. There too the next gradations of his kind, And And fhow God's image funk into the shape Of a malignant, treacherous, filthy age. Who likes the confanguinity, let him cherish the poet! He begins his poem by telling us that it is folly and pride to feek whether matter was the universal cause, or whether one great all-pervading foul moves throughout the univerfe, &c. The lines that convey this affertion, are an unparalleled mafs of cloudy obfcurity, in which "motion fprings to life from elemental war, and at once confines the mafs inert in central chains, and fublimates matter into mind." Let us, however, he fays, lefs vifionary themes purfue;" he confequently undertakes to give the hiftory of focial order, and this he derives fimply from the defire of pleafure, and the abhorrence of pain, which he attributes to plants as well as to animals. The connection afterwards becomes fo dark, that it is not practicable to purfue it, even with the aid of the laboured arguments prefixed, nor is it worth purfuing; fince the refult of the whole is, that man is a mere animal, that all ideas of religion are a delufion, though a delightful one, which it is the misfortune of philofophy to reject but that all religions are equally good, fo long as they do not dogmatize. With refpect to the Heathen fuperstition, he fays, Hail happy errors of delufive thought, Nor let us feel the curfe to be too wife. . P. 63. Or, as he fays in another place, And through the magic-lantern of the mind, Even fociety, he fays, is founded on delufion, as reafon teaches nothing but felfishness. For ftill delufion muft fupport the plan, And feels no other intereft than its own. P. 46. Miferable, deteftable philofophy! which however is very happily delivered in fuch faulty verfification, that it is next to Is it poffible that the author fhould fuffer fo unjustly? impoffible impoffible for it to be read throughout*. We will not attempt the painful tafk of fpecifying faul's where they exceed all power of enumeration, and must be glaring to every eye, even in the fpecimens we are obliged to give for other purpofes; but will bring forward the author's own account of himself, which, in truth, furnishes the only excuse that can be made, both for his poetry and his philofophy. Urskill'd in verse to climb And ftill where pleafure laid the bait for wealth, For joys unrelifh'd, fhared with thofe I fcorn'd. P. 69. If the author was uneducated, no wonder that he writes fo ill; and if he fet out with being a debauchee, his philofophy, has exactly the profundity and the tendency which fuch a preparation would give. We heartily pity him for both these misfortunes, and with him only the prudence to know, that under fuch circumstances he cannot be qualified either to write or to philofophize. If this article fhould appear to any reader more fevere than our ufual ftyle of criticifm, let him be affured that refentment has no part in it. That feeling might have been reprefied, and would have been; had not a new, and we trust an honeft indignation been kindled at every page of this publication, by feeing dulnefs affume the pride of talents, and fophiftry endeavour to make the most pernicious tenets pafs current, by a confidence almoft beyond example. The only paffages that have the leaft tincture of poetry, throughout the fix books, are thofe that are inspired by fenfuality, and therefore cannot be quoted. The mistakes in grammar are not a few; the faults in verfification innumerable; offences against language, by the introduc The poem (as it is called) is divided into fix books, on the following fubjects. 1. Hunting. 2. Pafturage. 3. Agriculture. 4. Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. 5. Climate and Soil. 6. Government and Conqueft, tion of vulgar or improper terms, occur very frequently*, and other errors are so abundant, that even to allude generally to them, would carry us beyond the limits we defire to obferve. Let the author therefore take warning from this'failure, and not fancy any more, that becaufe he is a virtuofo, he must be a writer or a philofopher; and ftill more let him not defy criticifm, till he has learned to criticize himself. ART. VI. Tithes indefenfible or Obfervations on the Origin and Effects of Tithes, with fame Remarks on the Tithe Laws, addreffed to country Gentlemen. Second Edition, with Addi2s. Cadell, &c. 1795. tions. 8vo. 108 pp. THE preface informs us, that this pamphlet was written by Mr., Thomas Thompfon, a merchant of Hull. The various authors he has cited in the margin, fhow that he has read much upon the fubject; but chiefly for the purpofe of collecting ex parte evidence. Some inftances, and of material confequence, will be given, in which he has not only done this, but, at the fame time, fupprefled the decifions of great writers to whom he refers, becaufe they totally contradict the principal opinions he there, or in other places of his book, has Jaboured to eftablish. By fome calculations, he attempts to fhow the great burthen of tithes we think him as unfortunate upon the fubject of calculation, on commercial principles, as he is in his quotations upon the principles of equity. There is another quality we have to obferve in this effayift: Voltaire, Gibbon, and fome other writers of the French fchool, have attacked religion and priests, and establishments, with a mixture of flippancy and buffoonery, which they varnished over with fomething like crudition: and all this they have fet off with that portion of obfcenity, which would recommend it to a certain fet of readers. We have heard that a joint of veal, when it becomes putrid, becomes fuperficially glittering, and when you are in the dark fhows phofphoric lights. To thofe who are difpofed to call the ftyle we are defcribing brilliant, if we do not difpute the term with them, we fhall fay that it is the glitter of inental putrefcence and corrup tion. The relative rank of the difciples of this school is not In p. 89, the author writes, Like Goffamers, the beings of a day." mistaking the name of the web for the creature that spins it. worth affigning; we therefore only fay, that Mr. Thompson belongs to it. He states the contributions of the primitive Chriftians to their minitters to have been voluntary: and we are to under stand from him, that by a series of frauds and impositions, in later ages, when the corruptions of Chriftianity began, the clergy obtained tenths. As this writer, in the four following pages, quotes Selden's hiftory of tithes, we will borrow an anfwer to this reprefentation, from the fame work. "The liberality formerly ufed had been fuch, that in refpect thereof tenths were a small part*." And with this, all thofe arguments against tithes, drawn from the fuppofed poverty of the minifters of the church in the firft ages, mult fall. It follows from what we have faid in the review of the effay referred to above, that confidering them and their followers as a separate community, the clergy then ranked higher, in point of opulence among them, even if they allotted half the contributions. they received to the poor, than if they had received a full tithe for their own exclufive ufe. The account of the establishment of tithes under Charlemagne, which Mr. Thompfon profefies to give from Montef quieu, is one of the most cenfurable quotations that we have ever examined. Of four paragraphs following each other, in that writer, Mr. T. takes the whole of the firil, leaves out the fecond, which is decidedly against his principles, pafies by the third, as much of the fame tendency, and mutilates the fourth, that he may afcribe the origin of tithes, in modern Europe, to what is generally called a pious fraud, practifed at the fynod of Frankfort. We shall tranflate these paragraphs; giving what is omitted in Italics, and prefixing a tranflation of the laft five lines of the preceding: « *** The Second Council of Mâcon, held in 585, which ordains the payment of tithes, fays indeed, that they had been paid in ANCIENT TIMES†: but it fays alfo, that at the time it was held, they were no longer paid. See Effay on Revenues of the Church of England, p. 95.Rivingtons, 1795. by thefe words the council feem to refer rather to the customs of their own country, Gaul, in the time of the Romans, or after their expulfion, than to thofe of Judea: it, therefore, by no means proves, what M: concludes from it, in the following paragraph. C BRIT. CRIT. VOL. VIII. JULY, 1796. 1. No |