་ vour to turn this peculiar talent to our advantage, and consider the organs of speech as the instruments of understanding. We should be very careful not to use them as the weapons of vice, or tools of folly, and do our utmost to unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits, which tend to lessen the value of such an inestimable prerogative. It is, indeed, imagined by some philosophers, that even birds and beasts (though without the power of articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter; and that dogs and cats, &c. have each a particular language to themselves, like different nations. Thus it may be supposed that the nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear for their own native wood-notes, as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose, as the inhabitants in HighGerman; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low-Dutch. However this may be, we may consider those whose tongues hardly seem to be under the influence of reason, and do not keep up the proper conversation of human creatures, as imitating the language of different animals. Thus, for instance, the affinity between chatterers and monkeys, and praters and parrots, is too obvious not to occur at once: Grunters and growlers may be justly compared to hogs: snarlers are curs; and the spitfire passionate are a sort of wild cats that will not bear stroaking, but will pur when they are pleased. Complainers are screech owls; and story tellers, always repeating the same dull note, note, are cuckows. Poets, that prick up their ears at their own hideous braying, are no better than asses: Critics in general are venomous serpents, that delight in hissing; and some of them who have got by heart a few technical terms without knowing their meaning, are no other than magpies. I myself, who have crowed to the whole town for near three years past, may perhaps put my readers in mind of a dunghill cock: but as I must acquaint them, that they will hear the last of me on this day fortnight, I hope they will then consider me as a swan, who is supposed to sing sweetly in his dying moments. MOTTO With a Translation by the Editor. QUÆ lenta accedit, quam velox præterit hora! Slow comes the hour: its passing speed how great! Forsitan et nostros ducat de marmore vultus MILTONI MANSUS. I shall but need to say be yet my friend: Shall bind my brows-But I shall rest the while. COWPER'S TRANSLATION. CONCLUSION. THOUGH it seems unnecessary to enumerate the many public compliments, that have been paid, by a variety of writers, to the poetical excellence of Cowper, I must not fail to notice a private tribute to his merit, which the kindness of a distant friend transmitted to me while these volumes were in the press. In the form of a letter to an accomplished author of Ireland, it comprises a series of extensive observations on the poetry of my departed friend; observations so full of taste and feeling, that I hope the judicious writer will, in a season of leisure, revise, extend, and convert them into a separate monument to the memory of the Poet, whom he is worthy to praise. Being favoured with the liberty of using, in this publication, the manuscript I have mentioned, I shall select from it a passage relating both to Milton, and to Cowper, as an introduction to the proposal in honour of the two illustrious and congenial poets, with which I have already promised to close this address to the public. After |