MISCELLANEOUS.

THE POET BURNS.

BURNS had his faults, both as a man and a poet; though the former of these will be " burnt and purged away," from the recollection of posterity, by the intense admiration felt for his genius. As a man, he un

ed, the learned will hail the discoverer as
with a kind of apotheosis; and Fame will
doubtless adorn his head with a garland of
glory.
Broken metaphors are not less laughable
than ludicrous games of cross-purposes; and
the risible public are much indebted to the
editor of a loyal journal, who lately informed

questionably had a proclivity to sensual them that the radicals, by throwing off the pleasures. In his poetry there is much gra- mask, had at last shown the cloven foot; tuitous coarseness; and the independence congratulated his readers that the hydra-⚫ which he displays, though certainly real and head of faction had received a good rap upon sincere, has much the air of dogged and invidious sullenness. His epigrams, too, are far beneath par. We are not aware that any of his biographers have stated, what we

the knuckles; and maintained that a certain reformer was only a hypocritical pretender to charity, who, whenever he saw a beggar, put his hand in his breeches pocket, like a

know to be a fact, that he once conceived a crocodile, but was only actuated by ostentapassion for the writings of Martial, and tion. While we are upon this subject, let hence was led into occasional attempts at us not forget our obligations to the country imitation. But Burns had not the faculty of curate, who desired his flock to admire the wit in any perfection; his humour was rich miraculous force which enabled Sampson to and broad beyond comparison; he could put a thousand Philistines to the sword with flash withering and deadly scorn upon mean- the jaw-bone of an ass: nor let us pass over ness, and lash hypocrisy into mortal agonies the worthy squire, who being asked by his with the thongs of ridicule and sarcasm; cook in what way the sturgeon should be but in wit, as we have said, he was really dressed, which he had received as a present, defective; and hence we find, in his epi- desired her to make it into á-la-mode beef; grammatic poetry, endeavours to communi- and upon another occasion, when interrogacate to it a preternatural strength, by fre- ted whether he would have the mutton boilquent references to subjects which are startling to frail mortality.

ed or roasted, or how? replied, "slow-and

let it be well done."

"When Jupiter solemnized the feast of his nuptials, and all the animals made donations, Juno missed the sheep.

One other remark, regarding the writings of this illustrious man. An action may be highly praiseworthy in itself, and yet attended with some bad, along with many good consequences. The services which Burns rendered to the cause of rational religion, in the war which he waged against his offering?" The dog started up and said,

"Where is the sheep?" inquired the goddess. Why is the pious sheep so tardy in Be not angry goddess, I this day saw the sheep, which grieved and wept bitterly.' ""And wherefore wept the sheep?" exclaimed the goddess, already moved with pity.

pseudo-piety and fanaticism, were invaluable; and, but for him and Byron, hypocrisy and humbug, both political and religious, might, ere this, have been all-triumphant. But, as with some, the outward show and "It thus exclaimed, returned the dog : trappings of piety are mistaken for the sub-Poor as I am, I have at present neither stance, so, by others, a hostility to such show wool nor milk, what shall I offer to Jupiter? and trappings is mistaken for an impious Can I alone appear before him without a spirit; and it has so happened, that, while gift? I will repair to the shepherd, and rethe great body of hypocrites ha have found it quest him rather to offer up myself as a sactheir interest to represent Burns as an antireligionist, the profligate and shallow-minded are well disposed to consider him in that light.

ITALY.-Among other discoveries of a very recent description, which present the beautiful forms of antiquity in their brilliant and vivid varieties, the antiquary enjoys the pleasure of contemplating the first military column placed in the centre of the Roman empire, long sought for, and now only brought to light. This was found in the excavations for exploring the site of the ancient Forum, conducted by the Abbé C. Fea. The Abbé holds out hopes of entirely clearing the Forum. Should this be accomplish

rifice."

"At this moment the smoke of the sacri

ficed sheep ascended with grateful odour to Jupiter, and penetrated through the clouds, bearing the prayers of the shepherd.

"Juno would, for the first time have shed tears could tears bedew immortal eyes."From the German of Lessing.

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FIDE AC FIDUCIA.

No. 6.

NEW-YORK, OCTOBER 15, 1825.

LITERARY.

FELTHAM'S RESOLVES.

Resolves; Divine, Moral and Political. By
Owen Feltham Esq. London 1661.

THIS work passed through twelve editions previously to 1709, afterwards it passed into oblivion until 1806, when Mr. James Cumming brought it again before the public. In 1820 he published a subsequent edition with the addition of some poetic effusions of the author. Feltham's poetry is dull enough, but his prose is admirable. His style is lucid, his metaphors are singularly happy, and his thoughts finely conceived and powerfully expressed. He shows an intimate acquaintance with human character, a deep sense of morality, and a just estimate of the value and importance of things in general. He is a profound reasoner, and an original thinker, as the subsequent specimens will prove.

VOL. I.

it, ought somewhat to be cared for. As those states are likely to flourish, where execution follows sound advisements; so is man, when contemplation is seconded by action. Without the first, the latter is defective; without the last, the first is but abortive, and embryous. I will neither always be busy, and doing; nor ever shut up in nothing but thought. Yet, that which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest. part of my life; and that is, my thinking. Surely, God made so many varieties in his creatures, as well for the inward soul, as for the outward senses; though he made them primarily for his own free-will and glory. He was a monk of an honester age, that being asked how he could endure that life, without the pleasure of books, answered-The nature of the creatures was his library, wherein, when he pleased, he could muse upon God's deep oracles."

"Science by much is short of wisdom. Nay, so far, as I think, you shall scarce find a more fool than sometimes a mere scholar. He will speak Greek to an ostler, and Latin familiarly to women that understand it not. Knowledge is the treasure of the

" I like of Solon's course, in comforting mind, but discretion is the key; without his constant friend, when, taking him up to which it lies dead, in the dulness of a fruitthe top of a turret, overlooking all the piled less rest. The practic part of wisdom is the buildings, he bids him think, how many dis- best. A native ingenuity is beyond the contents there had been in those houses watchings of industrious study. Wisdom is since their framing,-how many are, and no inheritance; no, not to the greatest how many will be; then, if he can, to leave clerks. Men write commonly more formalthe world's calamities, and mourn but for ly than they practise; and they, conversing his own. To mourn for none else were only among books, are put into affectation, hardness and injustice. To mourn for all, and pedantism. He that is built of the were endless. The best way is, to uncon- press, and the pen, shall be sure to make tract the brow, and let the world's mad himself ridiculous. spleen fret, for that we smile in woes.

"Silence was a full answer in that philosopher; that being asked what he thought of human life, said nothing, turned him round and vanished."

"Every age both confutes old errors, and begets new. Yet still are we more entangled; and the further we go, the nearer we approach a sun that blinds us. He that went furthest in these things, we find ending with a censure of their vanity, their vexa

"Meditation is the soul's perspective tion. 'Tis questionable, whether the proglass; whereby, in her long remove, she gress of learning hath done more hurt or discerneth God, as if he were near at hand. good, whether the schools have not made I persuade no man to make it his whole more questions than they have decided."

life's business. We have bodies as well as

souls; and even this world, while we are in

tempt."

ing far in the land, is, at first rising, little, Fruits past maturity grow less to be esteemand easily viewed; but, still as you go, it ed. Beauty itself, once autumned, does not gapeth with a wider bank; not without pleasure and delightful winding, while it is on both sides set with trees, and the beauties of various flowers. But still the further you follow it, the deeper and the broader 'tis; till at last, it inwaves itself in the unfathom

"All that affect things over-violently, do over-violently grieve in the disappointment; which is yet occasioned, by that, the too much earnestness. Whatsoever I wish for

ed ocean; there you see more water, but I will pursue easily, though I do it assiduousno shore, no end of that liquid fluid vast-ly: and if I can, the hand's diligence shall ness. In many things we may sound Nature, go without the leaping bounds of the heart: in the shallows of her revelations. We so, if it should happen well, I shall have

may trace her to her second causes; but, beyond them, we meet with nothing but the puzzle of the soul, and the dazzle of the mind's dim eyes. While we speak of things that are, that we may dissect, and have power, and means to find the causes, there is some pleasure, some certainty. But when we come to metaphysics, to long buried antiquity, and unto unrevealed divinity, we are in a sea, which is deeper than the short • reach of the line of man. Much may be gained by studious inquisition; but more will ever rest, which man cannot discover.

sun.

"What is that man good for, that cannot be trusted in his own voluntary relations? One would break that dial into atoms, whose false lines only serve to mislead--whose every stealing minute attempts to shame the Speech is the commerce of the world, and words are the cement of society. What have we to rest upon in this world, but the professions and declarations that men seriously and solemnly offer? When any of these fail, a ligament of the world is broken; and whatever this upheld as a foundation, falls. Truth is the good man's mistress, whose beauty he dares justify against all the furious tiltings of her wandering enemies: 'tis the buckler under which he lies securely covered from all the strokes of adversaries. It is indeed a deity; for God himself is truth, and never meant to make the heart and tongue disjunctives.

"He that lives long does many times outlive his happiness. As evening tempests are more frequent, so they carry a blacker terror along: youth, like the sun, oft rises clear and dancing; when the afternoon is cloudy, thick, and turbulent.

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Age, like a long travailed horse, rides dull towards his journey's end; while every new setter out gallops away, and leaves him to his melancholic trot. In youth, untamed blood does goad us into folly; and, till experience reins us, we ride unbitted, wild; and in a wanton fling, disturb ourselves, and all that come but near us. In age, ourselves are with ourselves displeased. We are looked upon by others as things to be endured, not courted or applied to. Who is it will be fond of gathering fading flowers?

more content as coming less expected.

"That mind which cannot keep its own determinations private, is not to be trusted either with his own or other's business. He lets in so much light as will not suffer his designs to sleep; so they come to be disturbed, while they should gather strength by repose. If the business be of what is yet to come, 'tis vanity to boast of it; 'tis all one with the almanack, to rove at what weather will happen. We boast of that, which, not being in our power, is none of our own. The bird that flies, I may as well call mine. He digs in sand, and lays his beams in water, that builds upon events, which no man can be master of.

"Irresolution is a worser vice than rashness: he that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark: but he that shoots not at all, shall be sure never to hit it. A rash act

may be mended by the activeness of the penitent, when he sees and finds his error. But irresolution loosens all the joints of state: like an ague, it shakes not this or that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit.

"Servants are usually our best friends, or our worst enemies: neuters seldom. For, being known to be privy to our retired actions, and our more continual conversation, they have the advantage of being believed

before a removed friend. Friends have more of the tongue, but servants of the hand; and actions, for the most part, speak a man more truly than words. Attendants are like to the locks that belong to a house; while they are strong and close, they preserve us in safety; but weak, or open, we are left a prey to thieves. If they be such as a stranger may pick, or another open with a false key, it is very fit to change them instantly. But if they be well warded, they are then good guards of our fame and welfare.

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All families are but diminutives of a court,

where most men respect more their own advancement, than the honour of their throned king. The same thing that makes a lying chambermaid tell a foul lady that she looks lovely, makes a base lord sooth up his ill king in mischief. They both counsel, rather to insinuate themselves by floating with a light, loved humour, than to profit the advised, and imbetter his fame.

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"Few converse so much with persons tended neglect, but an indisposedness, or a abroad, as to show their humours and incli- mind seriously busied within. Occasion nations in public. To their superiors, they reins the motions of the stirring mind. Like put on obsequiousness, and pageant out their men that walk iu their sleep, we are led virtues, but strongly they conceal their vices. about, we neither know whither nor how." To their equals, they strive to show the gratefulness of a condition; to their inferi"We make ourselves more injuries than ors, courtesy and beneficence; to all, there are offered us; they many times pass for is a disguise. Men in this, like ladies that wrongs in our own thoughts, that were nevare careful of their beauty, admit not to be or meant so by the heart of him that speakvisited, till they be dressed and trimmed eth. The apprehension of wrong hurts more to the advantage of their faces. Only in a than the sharpest part of the wrong done. man's retirement, and among his domestics, So, by falsely making ourselves patients of he opens himself with more freedom, and wrong, we become the true and first actors. with less care; he walks there as nature It is not good, in matters of discourtesy, to framed him: he there may be seen not as dive into a man's mind, beyond his own comhe seems, but as he is; without either the ment; nor to stir upon a doubtful indignity deceiving properties of art, or the varnish of without it, unless we have proofs that carry belied virtue: so, as indeed, no man is able weight and conviction with them. Words do to pass a true judgment upon another, but sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart he that familiarly and inwardly knows him, did neither hatch nor harbour. While we and has viewed him by the light of time. think to revenge an injury, we many times When Tiberius had a noble fame among begin one; and, after that, repent our misstrangers, he that read him rhetoric, stuck conceptions. In things that may have a not to pronounce him luto et sanguine mace- double sense, it is good to think the better was intended; so shall we still both keep our friends and quietness."

ratum.

"I like not those that disdain what the world says of them. I shall suspect that woman's modesty, that values not to be accounted modest.

"He that is careless of his fame, I doubt, is not fond of his integrity."

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"Laughter should dimple the cheek not furrow the brow into ruggedness. The birth is then prodigious, when mischief is the child of mirth. All should have liberty to laugh at a jest; but if it throws disgrace upon one, like the crack of a string, it makes a stop

"I never yet knew any man so bad, but some have thought him honest, and afforded in the music. Flouts, we may see, proceed him love; nor any ever so good, but some from an inward contempt; and there is have thought him evil and hated him. Few nothing cuts deeper, in a generous mind, are so stigmatical as that they are not honest than scorn. Nature, at first, makes us all to some; and few, again, are so just, as that equal; we are differenced but by accident, they seem not to some unequal: either the and outwards; and I think it is a jealousy

ignorance, the envy, or the partiality of those that judge, do constitute a various man. Nor can a man in himself always appear alike to all. In some, nature hath invested a disparity; in some, report hath fore-blinded

that she hath infused in man, for the maintaining of her own honour against external causes. And though all have not wit to reject the arrow, yet most have memory to retain the offence; which they will be con

judgment; and in some, accident is the tent to owe awhile, that they may repay it cause of disposing us to love or hate. Or, if both with advantage and ease. It is but an not these, the variation of the body's hu- unhappy wit that stirs up enemies against mours; or, perhaps, not any of these. The the owner. A man may spit out his friend soul is often led by secret motions, and loves, from his tongue, or laugh him into an enemy. she knows not why. There are impulsive Gall in mirth is an ill-mixture, and sometimes privacies, which urge us to a liking, even truth is bitterness. I would wish any man against the parliamental acts of the two to be pleasingly merry; but let him beware Houses, reason, and the common sense. As if that he bring not truth on the stage, like a there were some hidden beauty, of a more wanton with an edged weapon."

magnetic force than all that the eye can see;

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and this, too, more powerful at one time "When thou chidest thy wandering friend thananother. Undiscovered influences please do it secretly; in season, in love; not in the us now, with what we would sometimes con- ear of a popular convention. For, in many temu. I have come to the same man that times, the presence of a multitude makes a hath now welcomed me with a free expres- man take up an unjust defence, rather than sion of love and courtesy, and another time fall into a just shame. Diseased eyes endure hath left me unsaluted at all; yet, knowing not an unmasked sun; nor does the wound him well, I have been certain of his sound but rankle more which is fanned by the pubaffection; and have found this, not an in- lic air. Nor can I much blame a man,