a ball, and loses his heart to her in a minuet; the next, another carries it off in the Mall; and the next day, perhaps, he goes out of town, and lodges it in the possession of all the country beauties successively, till at last he brings it back to town with him, and presents it to the first woman he meets. This class is very numerous, but ought by no means to hold a place among the tribe of true Lovers, since a gentleman, who is thus in Love with every body, may fairly be said not to be in Love at all.

Love is universally allowed to be whimsical; and if whim is the essence of Love, none can be accounted truer Lovers than those who admire their mistress for some particular charm, which enchants them, though it would singly never captivate any body else. Some gentlemen have been won to conjugal embraces by a pair of fine arms; others have been held fast by an even white set of teeth; and I know a very good scholar, who was ensnared by a set of golden tresses, because it was the taste of the ancients, and the true classical hair. Those ladies, whose Lovers are such peacemeal admirers, are in perpetual danger of losing them. A rash or a pimple may abate their affection. All those, the object of whose adoration is merely a pretty face or a fine person, are in the power of the like accidents; and the small-pox has occasioned many a poor lady the loss of her beauty and her Lover at the same time.

But after all these spurious Enamoratos, there are some few, whose passion is sincere and well-founded. True genuine Love is always built upon esteem : not that I would mean that a man can reason and argue himself into Love; but that a constant intercourse with an amiable woman will lead him into a contemplation of her excellent qualities, which will insensibly win his heart, before he is himself aware of it, and beget all those hopes, fears, and other extravagancies, which are the natural attendants on

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a true passion. Love has been described ten thou-. sand times: but that I may be sure that the little picture I would draw of it is taken from nature, I will conclude this paper with the story of honest Will Easy and his amiable wife. Will Easy and Miss became very early acquainted; and, from being familiarly intimate with the whole family, Will might be almost said to live there. He dined and supped with them perpetually in town, and spent great part of the summer with them at their seat in the country. Will and the lady were both universally allowed to have sense; and their frequent conversations together gave them undoubted proofs of the goodness of each other's disposition. They delighted in the company, and admired the perfections of each other, and gave a thousand little indications of a growing passion, not unobserved by others, even while it was yet unknown and unsuspected by themselves. However, after some time, Will, by mutual agreement, demanded the lady of her father in marriage. But, alas! " the course of "true Love never yet run smooth :" the ill-judged ambition of a parent induced the father, out of mere love to his daughter, to refuse her hand to the only man in the world with whom she could live happily, because he imagined that he might, in the Smithfield phrase, do better for her. But Love, grounded on such principles, is not easily shaken; and, as it appeared that their mutual passion had taken too deep a root ever to be extirpated, the father at last, reluctantly, half consented to their union. They enjoy a genteel competency; and Will, by his integrity and abilities, is an honour to a learned profession, and a blessing to his wife; whose greatest praise is, that her virtues deserve such an husband. She is pleased with having " left dross to duchesses;" he considers her happiness as his main interest; and their example every day gives fresh conviction

to the father, that where two persons of strong sense and good hearts conceive a reciprocal affection for each other, their passion is genuine and lasting, and their union is perhaps the truest state of happiness under the sun.

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No. CXXV. THURSDAY, JUNE 17.

Cervius haec inter vicinus garrit aniles
Ex re fabellas...

With Mr. Town, when prose and precepts fail,
His friends supply a poem or a tale.

HOR.

NOTHING has given me a more sensible pleasure in the course of this undertaking, than the having been occasionally honoured with the correspondence of several ingenious gentlemen of both Universities. My paper of to-day gives me unusal satisfaction on this account; and I cannot help looking on it with a great deal of pleasure, as a sort of a little Cambridge Miscellany. The reader will see it is composed of two poems, which I have lately received from a correspondent in that learned University. These little pieces, unless my regard for the writer makes me partial to them, contain many beauties, and are written with that elegant peculiarity of style and manner which plainly speak them to come from the same hand that has already obliged the public with some other pieces of poetry, published in this paper.

SIR, :

TO MR. TOWN.

Trin. Coll. Can. June 6.

YOUR Essay on the abuse of words was very well received here; but more especially that part of it which contained the modern definition of the word Ruined. You must know, Sir, that in the language of our old Dons, every young man is ruined who is not an arrant Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater. Yet it is remarkable, that, though the servants of the Muses meet with more than ordinary discouragement at this place, Cambridge has produced many celebrated poets; witness Spenser, Milton, Cowley, Dryden, &c. not to mention some admired writers of the present times. I myself, Sir, am grievously suspected of being better acquainted with Homer and Virgil than Euclid or Saunderson; and am universally agreed to be ruined, for having concerned myself with Hexameter and Pentameter more than Diame. ter. The equity of this decision I shall not dispute; but content myself at present with submitting to the public, by means of your paper, a few lines on the' import of another favourite word, occasioned by the Essay above-mentioned.

But fearing that so short a piece will not be sufficient to eke out a whole paper, I have subjoined to it another little poem, not originally designed for the public view, but written as a familiar epistle to a friend. The whole is nothing more than the natural result of many letters and conversations that had passed between us on the present state of poetry in these kingdoms; in which I flattered myself, that I was justifiable in my remarks on the barrenness of invention in most modern compositions, as well as in regard to the cause of it. We are now, indeed, all become such exact Critics, that there are scarce any tolerable Poets: what I mean by exact critics

is, that we are grown (I speak in general) by the help of Addison and Pope, better judges of composition than heretofore. We get an early knowledge of what chaste writing is; and even school-boys are checked in the luxuriancy of their genius, and not suffered to run riot in their imaginations. I must own I cannot help looking on it as a bad omen to poetry, that there is now-a-days scarce any such thing to be met with as fustian and bombast: for our authors, dreading the vice of incorrectness above all others, grew ridiculously precise and affected. In short, however paradoxical it may seem, we have now, in my opinion, too correct a taste. It is to no purpose for such prudent sober wooers as our modern bards, to knock at the door of the Muses. They, as well as the mortal ladies, love to be attacked briskly. Should we take a review even of Chaucer's poetry, the most inattentive reader in the very thickest of old Geoffrey's woods, would find the light sometimes pierce through and break in upon him like lightning, and a man must have no soul in him who does not admire the fancy, the strength, and elegance of Spenser, even through that disagreeable habit which the fashion of the times obliged him to wear. To conclude, there is this material difference between the former and the present age of Poetry; that the writers in the first thought poetically; in the last, they only express themselves so. Modern poets seem to me more to study the manner how they shall write, than what is to be written. The minute accuracy of their productions; the bells of their rhymes, so well-matched, making most melodious tincle; and all the mechanism of poetry so exactly finished (together with a total deficiency of spirit, which should be the leaven of the whole) put me in mind of a piece of furniture, generally found in the studies of the learned, in an odd angle of the room,' a mahogany case, elegantly carved and fa