John Gay.

This ingenious fabulist is not enough known, but by very young persons; whilst his wit and good sense entitle him to the praises of every literary man. His "Hare and many Friends,' his "Monkies at Southwark Fair," and the "Court of Death," are fine specimens of the pathetic, the humorous, and the sublime. The word "fables," in the minds of the unthinking many, is a depreciating term, though the most noble lessons of ancient instruction, in morals and religion, assumed the form of fables and tales.

Whether Active or Contemplative Life
is the Better.

This idle question was much agitated among the ancients, implying their incompatibility with each other. Yet surely, he who leads a contemplative life, with any other view than to improve his sources of action, is a truly idle man, and as useless to the public as the miser, who hoards up money without any wish of its entering into circulation. The mere student, who spends his time in his library, may be learned, as the other may be a rich man; but they will be both useless to the world at large. A shrewd rustic, who had often

talled on M. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, in France, on very pressing business, was always repulsed by the Bishop's servant, by saying, “his. master could not see him, for he was busy in his library." "I wish,' said the countryman, the King would send us a Bishop that had finished his studies.'

that

Usurers.

Plutarch says very facetiously of these industrious persons, that they laugh at the doctrine of certain philosophers, who assert that nothing can be made of nothing, and of that which has no existence; for with them, usury is engendered of that, which neither is, nor ever was.

"Use before use, and still more use you'll find."

The same Subject, and Hints to Young Persons.

He proceeds in the above essay to inveigh "against running in debt," in astrain of great moral sublimity. The goddess Diana, in the city of Ephesus, gives such debtors as fly into her temple freedom and protection against their creditors; but the sanctuary of parsimony and moderation in expenses, into which no usurer can enter, to pluck from thence and carry away any debtor *Plutarch's Morals.

prisoner, is always open to the wise, and affords. them a long and large space of joyful and honourable purpose."-Ibid.

Our great poet argues on this subject with all the gravity and force of an ancient stoic

O reason not the need our basest beggars
Are in the poorest things superfluous.

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beasts.

King Lear.

Jests and Jest Books.

What Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, considered as a valuable part of oratory, many dull men treat as frivolous, as if a good joke could subsist without good sense at the bottom of it. A modern professor has written a book on jesting, called the Merry Philosopher, and in his introduction, among the other benefits of his book, he hopes it will be a caution to his brother professors in their lectures, not to vitiate the taste of their audience. Public professors in our universities, says the Merry Philosopher, often disgrace themselves by wretched jests, with a view to divert their hearers, and to relieve the severity of the profound truths they are proposing, by interlarded jests. The intention was kind.-Thoughts on Jesting,

See their Lectures on Rhetoric,

by G. Trederic Meier, Professor of Philosophy at Halle, Member of the Royal Academy at Berlin, &c. London, 1765, 12mo.

N. B. As this treatise of the Merry Philosopher is very dull, and replete with wretched jests, perhaps the title was considered by the author, or the editor, as a facetious misnomer.

Naturalists,

Some of the ancient secretaries of nature often raise a smile of doubt and surprise in their readers, by assuming more knowledge of the habits and dispositions of animals, than cool experience can justify. Pliny, the historian, hazards a singular comment on an occurrence frequent among bees. Nocte deprensa in expeditione excubant supinæ, ut alas a rore protegant. When night overtakes their excursions, the bees are found lying on their backs in a state of watchfulness, in order to protect their wings from the dew. Had the philosopher or his informant been sufficiently awake, they would have found the poor bees were dead.

TheR etort Courteous.

Surprise, say grave philosophers, is very often. a source of pleasure. A play of words is often

surprising and amusing. M. Boileau having heard an indifferent preacher praised in too high terms, "Father *** preached most excellently last Sunday," observed the eulogist. He did better still,' replied the satirist, "Why," returned the eulogist, not preach at all on that day.”

'the

Sunday before." "Father *** did That is exactly

what I meant,' retorted M. Boileau.

Grammar.

66

It is the cant, and perhaps the interest, of blockheads, to decry the importance of the rules of grammar; and it is their constant practice to wander from them. They are not aware, perhaps, that those who break "the head of Priscian," raise a strong suspicion that their own is far from Without those being sound. auxiliaries," conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs, rightly arranged, the logician would not dare to enter the field of controversy, and the orator could not trust his fancy in building the lofty sentence, unless he was assured of the strength of those particles in language, which are as tacks or strong fastenings to his splendid edifice. All the errors in writing which obstruct its great end, perspicuity, arise from the neglect and ignorance of the philosophy of grammar. Bishop Lowth, and Harris in his Hermes, will confirm the praises of these indis