NOCTES ATTICE.

Ultra Sentimentalist.

A very tender-hearted lady, before whom the proposal was made of sweeping a chimney with a larged-sized goose let down from the top of it, exclaimed against the cruelty of the scheme with a violence bordering on an hysteric rage; but recovering herself, said, in a sweet tone of voice, that "she thought two ducks might be more properly employed."

Conversation.

How few persons possess the gift of using this faculty with pleasure to others, or of using it at all. Mr. *** is a perpetual talker or soliloquist. Dr. *** absolutely extends his talk into ample dissertations. Some deal in stories, and pile them up one upon another, and remind me of the builders of Babel. To converse is to fall in with the former speaker's sentiments, or rationally and modestly to produce opposite sentiments; and thus a various

and pleasing discussion is the result. Talk may be the product of memory; conversation requires talents. Dr. S. Johnson very justly appreciated a man's faculties by his powers of conversing.

David Hume.

The predominance of cant over candour and reason is strongly exemplified in the praises bestowed on David Hume. He is said by some to have been a benevolent and good man. Yet this writer endeavoured to overturn the hopes of a life hereafter, and to reconcile mankind to the practice of suicide. Surely many a man has been sent to Botany Bay, or suffered at the drop in Newgate, for a less outrageous abuse of his talents than this eminent historian and philosopher. The difference between the evils produced by a robber, nay a murderer, and such a mischievous writer, is incalculable, from its duration and publicity.

Lopez de Vega.

Though this voluminous Spanish writer of plays and poems is often obscure and puerile in his conceits, yet he has an ingenious thought in one of his poems, on the similitude between a brother and sister of remarkable beauty. "Nature," he says, "though generally rich in invention, and productive

of endless variety in her portraits, is yet sometimes contented to be only a copyist."

The " divine" Dante,

As he is ridiculously styled by his countrymen, shews so much virulence and love of satire in his poems, that he may rather be said to hate his species than to disapprove their vices. His correction savours more of the voluntary executioner, than of the pitying and offended angel who drove our parents from the confines of Paradise. From such a display of a diabolic disposition in the poet himself, neither the genius of a Dante or a Byron can justify him.

Sonnets.

I have thought that the writers of sonnets much debase themselves by making their own cares and sorrows the subjects of their poems. If they complain of their poverty and want, what is this but mumping and mendicity? If they complain of the frowns and cruelty of their mistresses, at the same time do they not proclaim their own impudence, and the wisdom of their favourites, who refuse the presumptuous aspiration of these poor swains to beauty and opulence? In prose these complaints would not be listened to for a moment; and these bardlings avail themselves of a poetical licence for aumping and begging,