there be, in all probability, greater internal peace than we now enjoy. Nothing incites to insurrection so powerfully as a wide-spread opinion of the weakness of the government. And never, assuredly, in modern times, had England a government so universally despised, as that under which we are now living.

We can easily believe that some persons may, at first sight, think this language too strong. But it is not so. Could any proof more convincing be given of the utter want of support to the present government, throughout the country, than the ridiculously abortive attempt lately made to get up addresses to the throne, on Lord Melbourne's resumption of office? Two or three dozen of such documents were indeed easily obtained, from the little knots of Whig-Radicals who have been lifted into a momentry importance, in the borough towns, by the Whig Municipal Reform. But wherever the poor ministerialists ventured out into open day, and called a public meeting, they were, in almost every case, either outvoted by the Conservatives, or outclamoured by the Radicals, or left in the silent stillness of contempt by the whole public. A call, a loud and vehement cry, was made to the people to "support their queen;" and the response which, had the call been a legitimate one, would have uprisen from the hands and hearts of millions, was not joined in by a thousand men, reckoning the whole kingdom! failure so utter, so ludicrous, was certainly never before witnessed.

A

But the evidence of the utter contempt into which the government of England has fallen, need not be drawn from one circumstance or event; it surrounds us on every side. That

government has a policy, or something which it calls by that name. Where, amidst the whole press of England, excepting the organ of the Foreign Office (the Globe), has that "policy" a single defender? We know of none. The Morning Chronicle eschews it; the Advertiser and the Sun cannot tolerate it; nay, even the crawling Courier itself rebels against the ignominy of avouching such a system. What, then, can be expected from a government which persists in holding office, and administering the public affairs, with no support whatever from

utterly impossible that any results can flow from such an attempt, but increasing anarchy and disorder.

This is so obvious, that we cannot help believing that, in the quiet reflection which the coming recess will bring, some of the less guilty and perverse of our present misgovernors will become conscious of their dangerous and disagraceful predicament. They will perceive that, by any longer perseverance in the hopeless struggle, they will be betraying the safety and the honour of their too-confiding sovereign. Already has the monarchical principle been put to a severe test; another year or two's pertinacity would produce more serious consequences, than the National Petition or the Birmingham outbreak. We profess not even to surmise in what shape the evil would approach; but sure we are, that a government wholly destitute of public support or public confidence, is now, in England, impossible; and equally certain are we, that if there were called forth from the people of England, all who disapprove of the present government as too Radical, and all who disapprove of it as too Conservative, there would not be left, to support the Melbourne cabinet, enough men, having any political opinion, to fill Westminster Hall!

We know, indeed, that some of their professional advocates have argued, that, as standing between the Radicals on the one side, and the Conservatives on the other, they may be held to have found the true via media, the nearest approach to perfection. This may be an admirable theory, but it works very ill in practice. The truth is, that these two great parties, the Radicals and the Conservatives, have now drawn into their ranks the whole of those classes of the people of England, who take any interest in political matters. Among the mass of the population, there are none - beyond a few Whig placemen, and a stray man or two, a mere oddity, here and there, to support the Melbournites in their middle course. comes, therefore, to this, Whether the government can be carried on in a line of policy having no supporters outside the walls of parliament? We believe that it cannot; and we believe, also, that the attempt to carry it on after this fashion, is bringing the monarchy and the other institutions of the country

11

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We shall only add, that in speaking of the voluntary retirement of the present ministry as a thing to be desired, we speak with a degree of doubt and hesitation. We can have no personal advantage from a change; we look to such a circumstance merely as a matter of public concern; and we confess that, if the Whigs would conduct themselves somewhat better than they do, we could be well content to leave the Conservatives on the Speaker's left hand for a few months longer. The purer and more bracing air of the opposition benches is working a visible improvement. Mr. Gibson (miserable man!) remarked this at the Ipswich election. He remarked truly, and we are delighted to admit the fact, that the Conservative party were actually retrograding, and becoming less and less "liberal" every hour. He might have said the same thing of the country in general. The fact is, that in the conflict now going on, principles of right and wrong are involved; and, in the course of argument, multitudes, both in parliament and out of it, are learning the truth and importance of many things which, erewhile, they thought doubtful or immaterial. Hence it is, that in what Mr. Gibson and his new friends call "bigotry," both the country at large and its representatives are rapidly increasing; and the longer the struggle continues, the more will this be the case.

And it is because we could be well content to see the Conservative leaders still better schooled in the lessons of "bigotry," that we should not greatly regret their continuance on the opposition benches for some time longer.

But the general interests, and more especially the safety of the monarchy, seem to forbid this. By their various quackeries, the idiots now in power have brought society to the very verge

of dissolution. They raised the masses into a state of dangerous and unnatural excitement, in order, by their aid, to carry the Reform-bill; which Reformbill, they flattered themselves, would make them ministers for life. To pander to the same popular lust of power, they added the further boon of a Municipal Reform, of the most democratic character. By these devices and gifts they have kept up a hope, for seven years past, which they never intended to gratify. But in the end, the millions, whom they have been leading to expect some great gain from all these changes, now begin to find out that they have been utterly and grossly deceived. They are wroth; the Whigs, their deceivers, know not what to do with them. In fact, the Whigs have no fair answer to their clamorous demands. The masses are only acting out the lesson which they have been taught; and it is not for those who taught them to punish them for carrying out the instruction.

Such is the state of things at home; and abroad, as we have already observed, every thing wears a louring aspect. That last and poorest resort, to which the Whigs have fled for these two years past-the favour of the court has now been tried to the utmost,-tried, in fact, so far, as to bring the youthful sovereign herself into a degree of disesteem. This fund, also, is quite expended; and the Whigs have none other to which to fly. A company more utterly bankrupt of all character, and of all resources, it is impossible to conceive. Their predicament would be ludicrous, were it not that their weakness, while at the helm, is the weakness of the kingdom; and their failure, if their temerity holds out much longer, may involve higher and dearer interests than theirs in one common wreck.

Dear Mr. YoRKE,

faithfully yours,

WILLIAM MAGINN.

The

I HAVE always considered Dr. Farmer's "celebrated Essay," as Steevens calls it, on the learning of Shakspeare, as a piece of pedantic impertinence, not paralleled in literature. very style and manner in which this third or fourth-rate scholar, undistinguished by any work of reputation whatever, speaks of "the old bard," as he usually entitles Shakspeare, are as disgusting as the smirking complacency with which he regards his own petty labours. "The rage of parallelisms," he says in his preface, "is almost over; and, in truth, nothing can be more absurd. This was stolen from one classic, THAT from another; and, had I not stepped in to his rescue, poor Shakspeare had been stripped as naked of ornament as when he first held horses at the door of the playhouse." His having ever held horses at the door of the playhouse is an idle fiction, which the slightest consideration bestowed on the career of his fortunes in London would suffice to dispel; but it is introduced here to serve the purpose of suggesting to Farmer's readers that the original condition of

an education fitting him to acquire a knowledge of ancient or foreign learning.

"Had I not come to his rescue," says Dr. Farmer," poor Shakspeare would have been stripped bare," &c. Passing the insolence and self-conceit of this assertion, may we not ask from whom was Shakspeare to be rescued? From some zealous commentators, it appears, who indulged in a rage for collecting parallelisms, i.e. passages in the classical authors, in which they thought they found resemblances to passages in Shakspeare. In this task they sometimes were fanciful, and saw likenesses where none existed, but not one of them accused Shakspeare of theft. There is a vast difference between a thief and an imitator. Who has ever accused Milton or Virgil of stealing from Homer? Who is so insane as to think that Paradise Lost or the Eneid stand in need of "a rescue" from the annotators who point out the passages of the Iliad, or other poems, from which many of the most beautiful and majestic ornaments of the more modern great epics are derived? Nobody, of the thereau ganga can imagine that

naked, or call for the assistance of such rescuers as Farmer.

Elsewhere he says,—

"These critics" (those who maintain Shakspeare's claims on learning)," and many others, their coadjutors, have supposed themselves able to trace Shakspeare in the writings of the ancients, and have sometimes persuaded us of their own learning, whatever became of their author's. Plagiarisms have been dis. covered in every natural description, and every moral sentiment. Indeed, by the kind assistance of the various Excerpta, Sententia, and Flores, this business may be effected with very little expense of time or sagacity; as Addison hath demonstrated in his comment on Chevy Chase, and Wagstaff on Tom Thumb; and I myself will engage to give you quotations from the elder English writers (for, to own the truth, I was once idle enough to collect such), which shall carry with them at least an equal degree of similarity. But there can be no occasion of wasting any future time in this department: the world is now in possession of marks of imitation."

No doubt the world does possess the work, and equally is it doubtless that the world has totally forgotten the boon. A more worthless piece of trumpery criticism, empty parade, and shallow reading, does not exist than this extolled composition of Bp. Hurd, and therefore it is justly entitled to the laboriously fine compliment here paid it by Farmer («).

It would, indeed, be wandering far away from the question which I intend to discuss, if I were to enter upon the distinction between imitation and plagiarism, or attempt to define the line at which one begins and the other ends; but it is not going out of the way to pronounce the sentences just quoted very absurd. Excerpta, Sententia, Flores, will give but little assistance in tracing out imitations; for these compilations are in general nothing more than collections of commonplaces, which suggest themselves to reflective or poetic minds in all ages and countries pretty much in the same manner. We must adopt a very different course of reading if we wish to shew, from the peculiarities of thought or expression which are to be found in one poet, whether he has or has not suggested the phrase or the idea to a successor. When this is judiciously done, it reflects honour on the taste

and the reading of the critic. If the execution of such task be ridiculous, as sometimes it will be, the ridicule surely ought to attach to the commentator, not to the author. Shakspeare is not to be esteemed unlearned, because Upton has sometimes been preposterous; and yet that is the argument which runs throughout this "celebrated Essay."

Addison's critique on Chevy Chase, whether intended as jest or earnest, is in neither department very successful. The ballad poetry of England was, in his time, matter of mock to "the town," the sparkish Templar, the wits of the coffeehouses, and the men of mode; and those who, like Thomas Hearne, applied themselves to the antiquities of English literature, were especial butts of scorn. Addison, deeply imbued with this spirit, determined to be patronising at the expense of the old ballad; but not being altogether delivered over to the demon of goût, he could not refrain from expressing, now and then, genuine admiration of the picturesque touches in Chevy Chase, for some of which he found resemblances in the battle-poems of antiquity. Those resemblances are, in fact, unavoidable; for the poetic incidents of war, either in action or passion, are so few and so prominently striking, that they must occur to every poet, particularly to those who live among the scenes of which they sing : but, on the whole, so little was Addison qualified to perform the task of judging of the merits of the subject he selected for his criticism, that he took as his text, not the real Chevy Chase of Richard Sheale, in the time of Henry VI.- that which stirred the heart of Sir Philip Sidney as with a trumpet-but a modern rifuccimento, made, in all probability, not fifty years before Addison was born, in every respect miserably inferior to the original, and in which are to be found these passages and expressions which excite the merriment of the jocular. He could not have bestowed much attention on our ballad lore, and, consequently, not critically known any thing of its spirit; for if he had, he might have found, as well as Hearne, that the true ballad was "The Persé owt of Northumberlande."

As for Wagstaff's Tom Thumb, that is an avowed joke upon Addison's critique on Chevy Chase, and in many