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The same sentiment is pourtrayed with exquisite taste and feeling in "The Pleasures of Memory."

"To thee belong

The sage's precept, and the poet's song.

What soften'd views thy magic glass reveals,
When o'er the landscape time's meek twilight steals!

As when in ocean sinks the orb of day,

Long on the wave reflected lustres play:
Thy tempered gleams of happiness resigned
Glance on the darken'd mirror of the mind."

ROGERS.

By Snowdon, the prominent feature of Welsh scenery, the author does not seem to have been placed in a state of agreeable excitement, and we are not surprised, as it is not sufficiently connected: the limbs of this huge giant are too much dispersed, and out of proportion; and it is in truth fitly described as "a bleak dreary waste, without any pleasing combination of parts, or any rich furniture of wood, or well-constructed rock."

"We visited, with Mrs. Wynne, Llyn Badarn and Llyn Beris, two lakes, joined by a narrow strait They are formed by the waters which fall from Snowdon, and the opposite mountains. On the side of Snowdon are the remains of a large fort, to which we climbed with great labour. I was breathless and harassed. The lakes have no great breadth, so that the boat is always near one bank or the other." (p. 115–116.)

Conway Castle attracted a little attention, but the scenery around it is disregarded by our author, although it is con sidered to afford one of the most magnificent views in the circuit of North Wales. The building stands on a knoll of the bay, with a wood in the back-ground, and is on a scale suited to the grandeur of the objects.

"At Conway we took a short survey of the castle, which af forded us nothing new. It is larger than that of Beaumaris, and less than that of Caernarvon. It is built upon a rock so high and steep that it is even now very difficult of access. We found a round pit, which was called the well; it is now almost filled, and therefore dry. We found the well in no other castle." (p. 121.)

The author then quits Wales. To Shrewsbury, where Falstaff's valour was so eminently displayed, only a few lines are devoted. The town derives its name from a Saxon word signifying bushy-hill, but the wood has disappeared;

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yet it retains a venerable character from the marks of antiquity about it. Mr. Gwynn, of whom the doctor speaks so unceremoniously, is an architect of considerable celebrity.

"I sent for Gwynn, and he shewed us the town. The walls are broken, and narrower than those of Chester. The town is large, and has many gentlemen's houses, but the streets are narrow. I saw Taylor's library. We walked in the Quarry; a very pleasant walk by the river. Our inn was not bad." (p. 129-130.)

At Shrewsbury the accommodations were indifferent, and there always was in such cases an unfavourable effect produced on the mind of the doctor. At Worcester he was no doubt better situated; but there were other circumstances to contribute to his gratification in this city. It is one of the neatest and most beautiful places in England. The cathedral, which is a splendid gothic pile, gives occasion to a comparison with the church of Litchfield, in which he with pleasure distinguishes a ground of preference to his native place.

"We went to Worcester, a very splendid city. The cathedral is very noble, with many remarkable monuments. The library is in the chapter house. On the table lay the Nuremberg Chronicle, I think of the first edition. We went to the china warehouse.

"The cathedral has a cloister. The long aisle is, in my opinion, neither so wide nor so high as that of Lichfield." (p. 132-134.)

The doctor, we believe, never in his writings avowed any attachment to the University of Oxford, where he was maintained by Mr. Corbet as a companion to his son. He was entered a commoner at Pembroke when nineteen years of age, but was careless of his character and conduct, whether in regard to discipline or study; and after the departure of his young friend, he was reduced to a condition of great poverty. Yet his mind was not depressed by his circumstances, and he translated Pope's Messiah into Latin hexameters, if not with classic correctness, in a style of extraordinary vigour. His pursuit was general knowledge, and finding it not to be attained in the confined studies of academical establishments, he left Oxford without taking a degree; so that it was not until the lapse of nearly half a century that he obtained the diploma of doctor of laws from the University, and by the interest of Lord North, not gratuitously or voluntarily conferred.*

Johnson had before obtained the same rank from the Dublin University, which he declined to assume.

Yet he was desirous of this distinction, and had then published the whole of those works that raised him to the pinnacle of literary fame, the Lives of the Poets excepted, with which he concluded his labours as an author.

At Oxford he seems to have shut himself up with Mr. Coulson, senior fellow of University College; a man resembling the doctor in appearance, and who is the person designated in the Rambler under the name of "Gelidus the Philosopher." "The ladies," our traveller says, "wandered about the University.' The only conversation he mentions is with Dr. Vansittart, the uncle of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, who communicated to him the particulars of some disorder with which he was afflicted. He now concludes, "Afterwards we were at Burke's (Beaconfield), where we heard of the dissolution of the parliament. We went home.

Such is this Diary of a Journey into North Wales, and if the reader be not satisfied with the justice of the observations we made, as introductory to our extracts from the work, it is, perhaps, because we have neither thought it would be acceptable or amusing to introduce every catch word and evanescent feeling, which could be intended only to assist the recollection of the author, and which might with him reproduce former associations, but would be either wholly unintelligible or utterly useless to the individual whose mind had not been under the same impressions, and indeed to every one but the writer.

No conclusion can be fairly drawn as to the declining strength of the doctor's mind from this short fragment; indeed, at the time of penning these notes he was in the full vigour of his understanding, although sixty-five years of age. He had received his pension in 1762, and published his edition of Shakespeare in 1765; but it was not until 1770, four years prior to this journey, that he interfered ostensibly in any political controversy; and then he wrote "False Alarm," when the constitution was by some supposed to have received a violent shock from the resolutions of the House of Commons in the case of John Wilkes. The next year appeared "Falkland's Island," to shew the folly of going to war on account of the conduct of Spain; and in the same year of the Journey to Wales (1774), he published "The Patriot," on the eve of the general election, of which, as we have seen, he first obtained information at Mr. Burke's, at Beaconfield. "Taxation no Tyranny," which came out in 1775, was directed against the American Congress; and it

was from the utility of such publications to the ministry, and the respect the highest officer in it entertained for an accomplished scholar, that he acquired the degree from Oxford, to which we have already adverted.

To the Diary is subjoined, in the aphoristic method, "Opinions and Observations, by Dr. Johnson ;" and these, equally on account of the authority from which they are derived, the peculiar felicity with which they are stated, and the intrinsic merit they possess, we cannot persuade ourselves to omit.

"1. Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more and better than in time past.

"2. Of real evils the number is great; of possible evils there is no end.

"3. The desire of fame not regulated, is as dangerous to virtue as that of money.

"4. Flashy, light, and loud conversation, is often a cloak for cunning; as shewy life, and a gay outside, spread now and then a thin covering over avarice and poverty.

5. There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful; power is nothing but as it is felt; and the delight of superiority is proportionate to the resistance overcome.

6. Old times have bequeathed us a precept, to be merry and wise; but who has been able to observe it? Prudence soon comes to spoil our mirth.

7. The advice that is wanted is commonly unwelcome, and that which is not wanted is evidently impertinent.

"8. It is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

"9. There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it, cannot be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.

"10. In the world there is much tenderness where there is no misfortune, and much courage where there is no danger.

"11. He that has less than enough for himself, has nothing to spare; and as every man feels only his own necessities, he is apt to think those of others less pressing, and to accuse them of withholding what in truth they cannot give. He that has his foot firm upon dry ground may pluck another out of the water; but of those that are all afloat, none has any care but for himself.

" 12. Attention and respect give pleasure, however late or however useless. But they are not useless when they are late; it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

13. Cool reciprocations of esteem are the great comforts of life; hyperbolical praise only corrupts the tongue of the one, and

the ear of the other.

"14. The fortuitous friendships of inclination or vanity, are at the mercy of a thousand accidents.

"15. A sudden blaze of kindness may, by a single blast of coldness, be extinguished. Esteem of great powers or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a day or a week; but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life. A friend may be often found and lost; but an old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.

"16. Incommunicative taciturnity neither imparts nor invites friendship, but reposes on a stubborn sufficiency self-centred, and neglects the interchange of that social officiousness by which we are habitually endeared to one another. To be without friendship, is to be without one of the first comforts of our present state. To have no assistance from other minds in resolving doubts, in appeasing scruples, in balancing deliberations, is a very wretched destitution. "17. Faith in some proportion to fear." (p. 150-156.)

It is well known, that the venerable scholar who was the author of these aphorisms, was long engaged in the conduct of this Review: to him the learned were, in 1756, indebted for its birth, and for its honourable reception both at home and abroad. The year prior to the undertaking, he had placed himself above all competition by his Dictionary, forming the standard of our language, and the pages of this work were subsequently distinguished as the practical application of that acknowledged test of English composition. If we, his unworthy successors, under the strong impulse of gratitude, have shewn some severity towards Mr. Duppa, we might be excused; but, conscious of our own impartiality, we seek no apology, and ask no justification.

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ART. II.-The Naiad, a Tale; with other Poems. London, Taylor and Hessey, 1816. 8vo. pp. 63.

THE principal poem in this small collection, is of a class which of late has attracted considerable admiration among readers who are satisfied with what may be called poetical prettinesses-little scintillations of beauty, disclosed by a man who inspects and enjoys the minuter delicacies of objects, whether natural or artificial-who will rather smile at the daisy opening in the shade its yellow-fringed eye, than be charmed by the stupendous form and noble sweeps of the foliage of the forest-tree that occasions its seclusionwho if he enter a Gothic cathedral (which is to art what the

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