nonly called a life of pleasure, much in the manner of Young, itrongly delineated.

• Who call we gay? that honor has been long
The boast of mere pretenders to the name.
The innocent are gay-the lark is gay
That dries his feathers saturate with dew
Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beains
Of day-spring overshoot his humble neit.
The peasant too, a witness of his song,
Himself a longfter, is as gay as he.
But save me from the gaiety of those
Whose head-aches nail them to a noon-day bed,
And save me too from theirs whose haggard eyes
Flash desperation, and betray their pangs
For property ftripp'd off by cruel chance ;
From gaiety that fills the bones with pain,

The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.' Our innate defire of novelty is then considered, and the expediency of changing the scene proved, as objects, though not fo beautiful in themselves as those we have been long accustomed to, will please by being less familiar. The inclosures of the valley; the rock that hides the fea-mew in his hollow clefts ;' the common overgrown with fern ;' the haunt of a melancholy maiden crazed with love, are next exhibited. An assembly of gypsies is introduced, and their manners described. This leads the author to pass fome encomiums on a civilized ftate, which he looks upon as equally conducive to happiness and virtue. He expresses his compassion for the islanders in the South Sea, particularly Omiah, whose situation, as it appears to the author, when restored to his own country, is well imagined. But, though he allows a civilized state to promote virtue, he remarks that great cities are inimical to it. He bestows fome encomiums on London ; but concludes the book with arraigning its effeminacy of manners, its seves rity in punishing petty offenders, and lhameful lenity towards those of superior rank.

From the ketch we have given of the first book, an idea may be formed of the manner in which the others are conducted. The subject matter is sometimes serious, and some. times comic. The transitions are in many places happily con. trived : in others, too abrupt and desultory. Sometimes ous author News himself rather too much the laudatur temporis acti, Our follies and vices are sufficiently numerous, but those of our forefathers, if we judge from the writers of their days, were little or nothing inferior. We are censured for wearing • habits costlier than Lucullus ware.'

Qur

Our mutability in fashions is justly ridiculed; but out modes of dress are not, in general, remarkably costly. Our anceftors flowing wigs, in the reign of good queen Anne, was probably a more expensive and absurd fashion than any in modern days. In another place, our author having expressed his strong attachment to his native country, his participation of its joys and sorrows, observes,

. And I can feel
Thy follies too, and with a just disdain
Frown at effeminates, whose very looks
Reflect dishonour on the land I love.
How, in the name of soldiership and senfe;
Should England prosper when such things, as smooth-
And tender as a girl, all essenced o'er
With odors, and as profligate as sweet,
Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath,
And love when they should fight; when such as these
Presume to lay their hand upon the ark
Of her magnificent and awful cause?
Time was when it was praise and boast enough
In ev'ry clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her children. Praise enough
To fill th' ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,

And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.” We consider this reflection on our military gentlemen as too pointed, if not unjuft; particularly if he means to intimate that our public misfortunes are owing to their misconduct. To a deficiency, indeed, of Wolfes and Chathams, to the diffenfions of commanders, to internal divisions, and latterly to the superior force of our enemies, the ill-success of the late unfortunate war might juftly be attributed : during the continuance of which, we apprehend, no officers ever bore faa tigue with greater patience, or encountered danger with more, resolution than our's. If the charge of effeminacy against them while at home be allowed, the zeal and fortitude they manifested while abroad should have exempted them from unqualified censure.- If some few of Mr. Cowper's satiric oba servations are trite and threadbare, the generality are no less juftly conceived than torcibly expressed. In proof of which, though numbers might be adduced, we shall select a passage that ftigmatizes a well-known divinity quack; whose public addresses to the clergy imply the meanest opinion of, and convey the greatest infult to their order, it possibly ever experienced.

• But hark the doctor's voice--fast wedg'd between
Two empyrics he ftands, and with fwoln cheeks

Inspires

Inspires the news, his trumpet. Keener far
Than all invective is his bold harrangue,
While through that public organ of report
He hails the clergy; and defying shame,
Announces to the world his own and theirs.
He teaches those to read, whom schools dismiss’d,
And colleges untaught; sells accent, tone,
And emphasis in score, and gives to pray'e
Th’adagio and andante it demands.
He grinds divinity of other days
Down into modern use; transforms old print
To zig-zag manufcript, and cheats the eyes
Of gall’ry critics by a thousand arts.-
Are there who purchase of the doctor's ware !
Oh name it not in Gath ;-it cannot be,
That grave and learn'd clerks should need such aid.
He doubtless is in sport, and does but droll,
Assuming thus a rank unknown before,

Grand caterer and dry.nurse of the church.' Our author's excellency, in faithfully delineating the scenes of nature, has been already mentioned. A striking instance of it is to be found in his description of a winter's morning. The objects are brought immediately before our view: and the village cur, with which we hall close our extract, is peculiarly, excellent, and painted from the life.

• 'Tis morning; and the fun with ruddy orb
Ascending fires the horizon. While the clouds
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the dik emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His flanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity and fage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye alkance
I view the muscular proportioned limb
Transform'd to a lean thank. The shapeless pair
As they designed to mock me, at my side
Take step for step, and as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plaister'd wall
Prepoft'rous fight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge, and the bents
And coarser grass upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now thine

Con

1

Conspicuous, and in bright apparel clad
And Hedged with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder, not like hung'ring man
Fretful if unsupplied, but filent, meek,
And patient of the flow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load,
Deep-plunging and again deep plunging oft
His broad keen knife into the solid mals.
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away. No needless care,
Lelt storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight.
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned
The chearful haunts of man, to wield the axe
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear,
From morn to eve his solitary tak.
Shaggy and lean and shrew'd, with pointed cars
And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he flow, and now with many a frik
Wide-scampering snatches up the drifted snow
With iv'ry teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;

Then shakes his powder'd coat and barks for joy.' What follows, for several pages of the same kind, possesses equal merit; but we refrain from transcribing any farther. It is but justice, however, to observe, before we conclude our review of this poem, that the religious and moral reflections with which it abounds, though sometimes the diction is not sufficiently elevated, in general possess the acuteness and depth of Young, and are often expressed with the energy of Shakfpeare. The Epistle to Mr. Hill exposes the false pretenders to friendship, and concludes with a handsome compliment to that gentle

In the poem entitled Tirocinium, we meet with some severe strictures on the mode of education in our public schools; and we fear the author's censure is too juftly founded. The facetious ballad of John Gilpin, concludes the volume, and is too well-known to need our recommendation.

man.

A General Synopsis of Birds. Vol. Ill. 410. 21. 125. 6d. in

Boards. Leigh and Sotheby. OUR attentive

and industrious author has now completed his design, viz. of giving a concise account of all the birds hitherto known ;' yet, as information constantly accu..

mulates in this enterprising age, we are promised, what must have long fince become necessary, an Appendix. Mr. Latham's former conduct convinces us, that the additions which have claimed his attention, will deserve our's ; for he is as much fuperior to the professed book-maker as his work exceeds the crude compilations which we have sometimes received under the title of Natural Histories. In our fifty-fourth and fifty-seventh volumes, we gave some account of his plan, and specimens of his execution. The volume before us contains the grallæ, and the anseres of Linnæus, described with the same care, and etched with the same precision. Mr. Latham speaks with diffidence of the execution of the etchings, which are his own ; but, as they are exact representations, and the attitudes not deficient either in accuracy or fpirit, they contain all that we ought to desire. If he had done more, in our opinion his fuccess would have been les complete. The colouring is also juít; but it is not always carefully laid on; for, when etchings of this kind are properly coloured, they are the truelt representations of nature. This is the whole secret of the effect of those beautiful views of Switzerland and the Glaciers, now publishing with so much delerved applause on the continent.

This - volume contains the order ' ftruthius, composed of the dodo, didus Linnæi, from the gallinæ; the ostrich and the caffowary, (ftruthio, camelus, and casuarius, of Linnæus.) The grallæ and anseres of Linnæus are comprehended under the class of water-birds, and divided into, first, those with cloven feet ; fecondly, pinnated feet; and thirdly, web feet.

There is no department in natural history, where we find more changes from the establiihed system of Linnæus than in birds. They arise partly from the inany new discoveries, and partly from the attention of natural historians being more fixed on other fyftems belides that of the Swede : on the cons trary, the united diligence of botanists has been almost ex. clusively employed in perfecting the sexual arrangement. This uncertainty, perhaps caprice, has occasioned great varieties; and, while they are more important in the orders of the grallæ and anseres, they are also more numerous on account of the many additions to the species, from the observations of later, voyagers. This last volume, as well as the Arctic Zoology, is a very satisfactory account of the kinds of birds which occurred to captain Cook and his companions : perhaps it is more fam tisfactory than the work just mentioned, because it is confined by no imaginary limits, and comprehends every degree of la. citude in each hemisphere. VOL. LX. 08. 1785.

S

Th.