N° CXLVII.

Defunctus jam fum, nihil eft quod dicat mihi.

(TERENT.)

IN all ages of the world men have been in habits of praifing the time paft at the expence of the time prefent. This was done even in the Auguftan æra, and in that witty and celebrated period the laudator temporis acti must have been either a very splenetic, or a very filly character.

Our prefent grumblers may perhaps be better warranted; but, though there may not be the fame injuftice in their cavilling complaints, there is more than equal impolicy in them; for if by discouraging their contemporaries they mean to mend them, they take a very certain method of counteracting their own defign; and if they have any other meaning, it must be fomething worse than impolitic, and they have more to answer for than a mere mistake.

Who but the meanest of mankind would wish to damp the spirit and degrade the genius of the country he belongs to? Is any man lowered by the dignity of his own nation, by the talents of his contemporaries? Who would not prefer to live in an enlightened and a rifing age rather than in a dark and declining one? It is natural to take a pride in the excellence of our free conftitution, in the virtues of our Sovereign; is it not as natural to fympathize in the profperity of our arts and fciences, in the reputation of our countrymen? But thefé fp'enetic Dampers are for ever fighing over the decline of wit, the decline of genius,

genius, the decline of literature, when if there is any one thing that has declined rather than another, it is the wretched ftate of criticism, fo far as they have to do with it.

As I was paffing from the city the other day I turned into a coffee-house, and took my feat at a table, next to which fome gentlemen had affembled, and were converfing over their coffee. A difpute was carried on between a little prattling volatile fellow and an old gentleman of a fullen, morofe afpect, who in a dictatorial tone of voice was declaiming against the times, and treating them and their puifny advocate with more contempt than either one or the other feemed to deserve: Still the little fellow, who had abundance of zeal and no want of words, kept battling with might and main for the world as it goes against the world as it had gone by, and I could perceive he had an interest with the junior part of his hearers, whilft the fullen orator was no less popular amongst the elders of the party: The little fellow, who feemed to think it no good reafon why any work fhould be decried only because the author of it was living, had been defcanting upon the merit of a recent publication, and had now fhifted his ground from the fciences to the fine arts, where he feemed to have taken a strong poft and stood refolutely to it; his opponent, who was not a man to be tickled out of his fpleen by a few fine dafhes of arts merely elegant, did not relish this kind of fkirmishing argument, and tauntingly cried out-"What tell you me of a parcel of gew-gaw artists, fit only to pick the pockets of a diffipated trifling age? "You talk of your painters and portrait-mongers, "what use are they of? Where are the philofo

phers

"phers and the poets, whofe countenances might "intereft pofterity to fit to them? Will they paint

me a Bacon, a Newton or a Locke? I defy them? "There are not three heads upon living fhoulders "in the kingdom worth the oil, that would be "wafted upon them. Will they or you find me a Shakespear, a Milton, a Dryden, a Pope, an "Addifon? You cannot find a limb, a feature, or even the fhadow of the leaft of them: Thefe "" were men worthy to be recorded; poets, "who reached the very topmost fummits of Par"naffus; our moderns are but pifmires crawling "at its lowest root."-This lofty defiance brought our little advocate to a nonplus; the moment was embarraffing; the champion of time paft was echoed by his party with a cry of" No, No! "there are no fuch men as thefe now living." "I believe not," he replied, "I believe not. I "could give you a fcore of names more, but thefe are enough: Honeft Tom Durfey would be 566 more than a match for any poetafter now "breathing."

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In this ftile he went on crowing and clapping his wings over a beaten cock, for our poor little champion feemed dead upon the pit: He muttered fomething between his teeth, as if ftruggling to pronounce fome name that stuck in his throat; but either there was in fact no contemporary, whom he thought it fafe to oppose to these Goliahs in the lifts, or none were prefent to his mind at this

moment.

Alas! thought I, your caufe, my beloved contemporaries, is defperate: Ve Victis! You are but duft in the fcale, while this Brennus directs the beam. All that I have admired and applauded VOL. IV.

L

in

it my zeal for thofe with whom I have lived and fill live; all that has hitherto made my heart expand with pride and reverence for the age and nation I belong to, will be immolated to the manes of thefe departed wo thies, whom, though I re"vere, I cannot love and cherifh with that fympathy of foul, which I feel towards you, my dear but degenerate contemporaries!

There was a young man, fitting at the elbow of the little creft-fallen fellow, with a round clerical curl, which tokened him to be a fon of the church. Having filently awaited the full time for a rally, if any spirit of refurrection had been left in the fallen hero, and none fuch appearing, he addressed himfelf to the challenger with an air fo modest, but withal fo impreffive, that it was impoffible not to be prejudiced in his favour, before he opened his cause.

"I cannot wonder," faid he, "if the gentleman, who has challenged us to produce a parallel to any one of the great names he has enumerated, "finds us unprepared with any living rival to "thofe illuftrious characters: Their fame, though "the age in which they lived did not always ap

preciate it as it ought, hath yet been rifing day by day in the esteem of pofterity, till time hath flampt a kind of facrednefs upon it, which it "would now be a literary impiety to blafpheme. "There are fome amongst thofe, whom their ad"vocate hath named, I cannot fpeak or think "of but with a reverence only fhort of idolatry. Not this nation only but all Europe hath been enlightened by their labours: The princi"ple of nature, the very law, upon which the "whole fyftem of the univerfe moves and gra

"vitates,

"vitates, hath been developed and demonftrated "by the penetrating, I had almost faid the præter"natural, powers of our immortal Newton. The "prefent race of philofophers can only be confi"dered as difciples; but they are difciples, who "do honour to their master: If the principle of gravitation be the grand defideratum of philofophy, the discovery is with him, the application, inferences and advantages of that discovery are "with thofe, who fucceed him; and can we accuse "the prefent age of being idle or unable to avail "themselves of the ground he gave them? Let "me remind you that our prefent folar fyftem is

furnished with more planets than Newton knew; "that our late obfervations upon the tranfit of the "planet Venus were decifive for the proof and "confirmation of his fyftem; that we have cir"cumnavigated the globe again and again; that КС we can boast the researches and difcoveries of

a Captain Cook, who, though he did not invent "the compafs, employed it as no man ever did,

and left a map behind him, compared to which "Sir Ifaac Newton's was a fleet of nakedness and

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error: It is with gravitation therefore as with "the loaditone; their powers have been difcover"ed by our predeceffors, but we have put them to "their noblett ufes.

"The venerable names of Bacon and Locke were, if I mistake not, mentioned in the fame "clafs with Newton, and though the learned "gentleman could no doubt have made his felec"tion more numerous, I doubt if he could have "made it ftronger or more to the purpofe of his "own affertions.

"I have always regarded Bacon as the father of philofophy in this country, yet it is no breach