this subject to the consideration of the parties most deeply interested.

Before I conclude, it is but justice to remark that a scheme has of late been tried, which appears at first sight to be considerably ingenious I allude to those Novelists, who, despairing of inventing any thing new in the way of fable, adventure, or any of the legitimate characteristicks of a novel, have introduced dialogues or dissertations on contested points of religion or politicks. This, indeed, may be said to be opening a very wide field; but how far it is likely to contribute to amusement, is not quite so certain. We can be at no loss, from recent events, to find a reason why certain writers should endeavour to poison the sources of amusement by interweaving in a novel the infidel sentiments of Voltaire or Rousseau; but their imitators must forfeit all pretensions to ingenuity if they adopt a plan so obviously calculated to interrupt the business of the scene. Nor will our political contests appear more out of place in such compositions, if they are intended as imitations of life and Few readers of novels, impatient for the denouement, will be much pleased if detained, at a critical moment, with a discussion on parliamentary reform; nor will they

manners.

take time to trace any connexion between the revolution of France, and the caprice of a young lady about to fix a ladder of ropes to her window, and throw herself into the arms of a seducer. Dissertations on the hardness of the times, and the weight of taxes, come with a sorry grace from the pen of a writer who knows that in his last volume he is to dispense riches in the utmost profusion among all his characters. Upon the whole, therefore, although an intermixture of politicks and religion has been attempted, because it is very easy, and may be carried to any length; it can answer no purpose in rescuing the manufacture of novels from public disregard. In one case only it may afford surprize. The incident of a Novelist's taking precedence of a political writer in the pillory may be somewhat new.

THE PROJECTOR. N° 32.

"My head and heart thus flowing through my quill, Verse-man and Prose-man, term me which you will."

POPE.

June 1804.

Ат a time when the alarm of Invasion has become so general as to rouse the most torpid feelings, and when threatenings are issued against every nation that pretends to a will of its own, and to an exclusion from foreign influence; it surely becomes those who belong to that great nation, usually known by the name of the REPUBLICK OF LETTERS, to consider whether they are not menaced by an invasion which threatens to destroy the independence that has hitherto subsisted between the two classes of which the said republick is composed, and to introduce such anarchy as may eventually sink both into a state of gaudy insignificance, splendid uselessness, and preposterous absurdity. I need not tell my readers that the Republick of Letters has long been composed of two distinct, and, as was usually thought,

independent and immiscible classes, the PROSE WRITERS and the POETS: and I now allude to the daring attempts of the latter to make inroads on the prose language. I am induced to take this step by the repeated complaints of our periodical criticks, whose vigilance on this occasion is highly praiseworthy. They inform us, in their surveys of particular spots, that the poetical invaders have broken down many of the boundaries, and have effaced so many land-marks, that they find it almost impossible to distinguish prose from verse without the aid of admeasurement, and the application of certain rules in their possession. They also demonstrate that in cases of dispute, the evidence produced before them is such, as can only be examined by the eye or ear, and not always even by these; and that this evil threatens, if not speedily checked, to subject the whole province of understanding to the caprice of imagination, and drown the senses in a torrent of metaphors.

years

much

That this has of late been very the case, I can have no doubt, from observations made by myself; but which party is most to blame, is a point not quite so clear. On the one hand, it is asserted by the plain and simple adherents of Prose, that the Poets have

attempted to inundate their territories by a profusion of tropes and figures, and have abused them in a continued strain of Parnassian language, to which they were totally unaccustomed; and that they have been repeatedly invaded by a host of bombast which has in a great measure destroyed their natural simplicity, and made them most affected, romantic, and coxcomical in their speech and writings, destroying all familiarity, and weakening many so much that they are obliged to have recourse to stilts. On the other hand, it has no less obstinately been contended, that the Prose men, not satisfied with what their own province afforded, and conceiving, some how or other, a foolish notion of its barrenness, began to run into Poetry in quest of flowers and metaphors, and even were eager to borrow every ornament they could to decorate common-place and trite thoughts, in order to make them pass for original. Some have even gone so far as to insult the lawful government of Verbs, to create dissentions among the Genders, and to despise the Articles that have hitherto bound sentences together; and others have betrayed such symptoms of extravagance and derangement, that certain eminent criticks, at a loss