the generality of the sect to which we suppose Mr. Davies belongs, to have been haunted with a continual melancholy and fear of reprobation: a stranger to the real comforts of religion, she passed the greater part of her time in praying, and personally visiting and relieving the distressed. These actions, the source of real pleasure to the truly religious, were in her productive only of anxiety and uneasiness. By her death the poor seem to have lost a valuable friend, and as such we sincerely lament her. We are sorry to add that, by the publication of this rhapsody, Mr. Davies has returned but a paltry recompence for the encou ragement he may have met with; and we would advise him to be content with the fee he may receive for any future eulogy, without seeking profit from the press. We think, however, on this occasion his gains will be small, and that he must sit down contentus paucis lectoribus.

POLITICS.

ART. 19.-A Political and Military Survey. 8vo. Carpenter. 1805.

This pamphleteer begins his preface by remarking that every politician has his own project for the new organization of Europe: and this observation seems to justify him, in his own opinion, for bringing forward his shallow project. The extravagance of his plan is most ridiculous: high at one bound he overleaps all bound. It is inconceivable with what facility he disposes of armies, cities, states, kingdoms, and empires! totally forgetting that in all discussions, most of all in political ones, it is proper to reason, not to assert. But our author has disclaimed reasoning. If Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Prussia, and the Porte, will coalesce, then Sweden and Denmark are to have compensations in the East and West Indies. Russia is to have Sardinia and Elba, or perhaps Elba and Sicily. Prussia should take Hanover; and Holland, with all her dependencies, except the Cape of Good Hope. Austria should have Polish. Prussia and Silesia, with the exclusion of the port of Dantzic; in Italy advance her right to the lake of Como, and appuy her left upon Ferrara, occupying the fortresses of Mantua, Peschiera, &c. The king of Sardinia should have Piedmont, the Milanese, Parma, and Piacenza: Naples be extended to Ferrara, and receive the kingdom of Etruria: the pope be indemnified by revenue from Austria and Russia; Spain by Trinidad, St. Domingo (if she can acquire it), Sardinia, and our mediation with America. The republic of the Seven Islands to be declared independent: Malta to be given up to the inhabitants, after the fortifications are destroyed; or to Austria, in case of Russia obtaining Sicily; and if Austria should decline garrisoning the fortress, to Portugal. The Ottoman Porte should surrender Crete and Alexandria to England; who moreover should have Dantzig, or some other port in the Baltic equally contiguous to the Austrian states. But if the above-mentioned

powers will not coalesce, then England is to-do a number of things too absurd for us to enumerate. Sic vult, sic jubet, the author of the pamphlet before us.

ART. 20.-Sketch of a Plan for the Salvation of England, and the Emancipation of Europe. 8vo. Ridgway. 1805.

The title of this pamphlet led us to expect something very similar to the last; but it is much more moderate and rational, and altogether of an infinitely better cast.

ART. 21.-A brief Appeal to the Honour and Conscience of the British Nation, upon the Necessity of an immediate Restitution of the Spanish Plate Ships. 2d edit. 1s. 6d. Ginger. 1804.

This writer is extremely zealous in the cause he undertakes. to defend. He conceives the honour of the whole nation, and of every individual, to be at stake. He is ready to allow, for the sake of argument, that a war with Spain is both politic and just; but entirely disapproves of the mode and time of commencing it. He maintains that it is a great crime, an atrocious violation of the laws of nations, that a friendly power should be attacked by the public force during a time of pro found peace, while the king's person was represented at Madrid, and while our court was receiving assurances of amity from a Spanish resident in London. He dwells much upon the cir cumstance of ministers' having sent an exact parity of force: thereby striking at the proud sentiments of Castilian honour; and, as it were, compelling the Spanish commander to fight. Hence he argues that ministers wished him to do so. He exhorts every city, town, borough, &c. throughout the empire, to present a petition to his majesty:

What sublimer spectacle' (he asks), what picture so touching and so grand, as a great and virtuous people spontaneously assembling in all its districts-not to worship at an usurper's throne, nor to draw the car of a faction--not to demand some speculative good, or to remonstrate against even real suffering and hardships-but to do justice to the weak, to disclaim oppression, to restore ill-gotten treasure to the true proprietor, though an enemy! To separate their name and their conscience from profitable acts of robbery and violence, to vindicate their innocence, and the integrity of their country, before God and man!—I am sure the old time has no better example-history shews nothing more worthy of imitation, nor will posterity, in all the age to come, revere a brighter and a holier deed!' P. 29.

We shall leave our readers to judge of this author as a politician; as a writer, they will see from the above extract that he is not despicable. He seems to have written rather too nuch in haste: his language is irregular, and not always perfectly correct; but for the most part nervous and spirited. He is evidently a thinking, well-informed man; and, we doubt not,, an honest one.

ART. 22.-The Justice and Policy of a War with Spain demonstrated. 8vo. Hatchard. 1804.

This pamphleteer brings forward the common and obvious arguments to demonstrate the policy of a war with Spain; and adduces the opinions of Grotius, Puffendorff, Vattel, Buddæus, and Barbeyrac, to prove that it is just. He says nothing which does not naturally occur to every person's mind; some few things excepted, which show that he is but a shallow politician. He takes great pains to prove that the colonies of Spain have not tended in any degree to accelerate the decline of her power. That man must have but ill weighed the causes and effects of those events to which the rise and downfal of empires may be traced, who does not know that the possession of South America has operated upon Spain with more fatal and extensive influence than either the expulsion of the Jews under Ferdinand, or of the Moors under Philip III.; than either the numerous monastic orders, or the union of civil and religious despotism. Our author himself enumerates among the causes of her decay, the discouragement of manufac tories, and consequently of industry. When did industry, when did manufactories, begin to droop in Spain? Not till she became mistress of the riches of the western world: and why? because gold was obtained without exertion.-One poor effort is made in this pamphlet to rise above the pedestrian style. It is when an assertion is made that that British minister will have reached the pinnacle of human glory, who shall wrest Peru and Mexico from the hands of the Spaniards by means of an English force! This man, he thinks, will be entitled to the thanks of his country, and to the benediction of the world. He will be able to say on his death-bed, Exegi monumentum, &c.!!!

ART. 23.-A Letter to John Foster, Esq. Chancellor of the Ezchequer for Ireland, on the best Means of educating and employing the Peor in that Country. By Joseph Lancaster. 8vo. 1s. Darton dnd Harvey. 1805.

This is the effusion of a benevolent and pious quaker, who has established a free-school for the education of one thousand poor children in the Borough-road, Southwark. We wish every success to his institution; and to every other which tends to diffuse useful knowledge, and to promote the cause of virtue and religion. His observations in this letter, however, do not at all accord with the title. They have no peculiar application to the circumstances of the poor in Ireland; but recommend generally the establishment of central schools for training up young men as teachers, who are to become the superintendants of other schools to be established in the neighbourhood. Nothing satisfactory is added to point out the means or obviate the difficulty of carrying so extensive a plan into execution.

CRIT: REV. Vol. 4. February, 1805.

Р

DRAMA.

ART. 24.The Blind Bargain, or Hear it out; a Comedy in Fice Acts, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. By Frede rick Reynolds. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Longman. 1805.

If Mr. Reynolds were to be tried by the rigid laws of a critical jury, their verdict, we fear, would pronounce him guilty. Comedy may be defined the representation of real life, reflecting a faithful and exact image of the original-the imago veritatis of Cicero. Such exhibitions serve to the highest moral uses, in exciting our approbation of virtue, or provoking our abhorrence of vice: but the comedy before us, transgressing the limits of common nature, is overcharged with extravagances and excesses of every kind ;-so that it may properly come under the denomination of farce, whose prime intention, according to Dryden, ia the entertainment of citizens, country gentlemen, and Covent Garden fops; all of whom, we make no doubt, have been highly gratified with the representation of the Blind Bargain.' We will present a sketch of the plot, almost in the author's words (Vide Act V).—About a year and a half ago, one sir Andrew Analyse, a good natured, credulous, old dictionary-maker, consigns from India an adopted infant, to the care of one Paul Pliable, a cunning apologizing apothecary. The child dying, the doctor employs a certain gipsey to procure him another (for the doctor received a handsome stipend from sir Andrew): and this other most unexpectedly prov ing to be the son of a certain Mr. Villars, the doctor naturally wishes to get his own neck out of the halter; and whom should he fix on for his basket-carrier, but a certain facetious young Oxonian of the name of Tourly? who strikes a bargain blindfold, to carry off a basket for one hundred guineas, and promises not to look into it. Intending to mark the door of the doctor's house, that he may know where to return his load if he did not relish the contents, he marks by mistake the door of miss Gurnet, an old maid, the intended wife of the poor dictionary-maker, who during his absence in India had been flirting with a certain “alderman, from whom she had received, and to whom she had sent, presents; but on sir Andrew's arrival the presents are mutually returned. Miss Gurnet, in hourly expectation of a marmozet, dènominated Little Peter, receives from Tourly the basket containing the child of Villars, which leads to the denouement of Pliable's villainy; who, in the morn style of theatrical punishment, walks off in a sound skin. Mr. Villars is a melancholy man, who has suffered misfortunes; and is thought to have been extravagant in his youth, and to have spent a large fortune received from his wite, from whom he conceals the real cause of his grief: the mys tery at last is solved, by a declaration that he never received a halfpenny from his wife's father: but his love was too ardent to reproach her with her father's dissipation; neither bondage, menaces, nor death, could shake an atom of his love for her who, giving him her heart, gave him what monarchs might account a rich inheritance!!!-Poor soul !

Such are the outlines of this much admired comedy. We sincerely wish Mr. Reynolds would either write things worth reading, or not write at all.

ART. 25.-The Land we live in a Comedy in 5 Acts; written by Francis Ludlow Holt, Esq. first represented at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, on Saturday, December 29th, 1804. ad Edition.8vo. 2s. 6d. Wilks. 1805.

Francis Ludlow Holt, Esq. may be, for any thing we know to the contrary, a very good lawyer, but he certainly is a very bad play-wright: he would have acted wisely, if he had abided by the decision of the audience; who, though they do not judge critically, yet always are favourable when there is any thing to excite their mirth, even though the piece be destitute of genuine dramatic merit, of real wit, of plot, or of instruction. This play certainly does not possess any of the abovementioned recommendations. It is destitute of incident and of morality; it abounds with the language of grooms, inn-keepers, and chamber-maids, and is as complete a farrago as ever received damnation from the hisses of a wearied audience. We are not ignorant that there are two opinions about it; but

Victrix causa Diis placuit.

ART. 26.-Memoirs of the Life of William Henry West Betty, known by the Name of the Young Roscius, with a general Estimate of his Talents, and a Gritique on his principal Characters. 2d Edition. 12mo. Wright. Liverpool. 1804.

The painter, the sculptor, the author, live each in his respective performance; the fame of the actor alone is circumscribed within the narrow limits of human life. The pathetic tones of ensibility; the voice of pity and of terror; the various emotions of love, jealousy, and all the other passions; which are the peculiar characteristics of excellence in the histrionic art, can never be transmitted to posterity; a just conception of the accuracy of their delineation can be formed only by the spectator.

The subject of the present Memoirs seems, like a second Crich ton, to be endowed with that superiority both of genius and person which cannot fail of attracting the admiration and applause of an intelligent and unbiassed public.

Of the numerous accounts of this extraordinary youth, this is in our opinion written with the least partiality. His excellences Mr. Merritt has honoured with due encomiums: his defects he has described in a manner free from that virulence which indicates a spirit of party or prejudice; we might add, that his defects are represented in such liberal and gentlemanlike terms, as to increase rather than diminish the admiration we entertain of this ' theatrical phenomenon.

The critiques on the parts which he has performed are in general correct; yet we are inclined to think the discrimination censured in page 94 judicious. It should be remembered that Bora tio is Hamlet's most intimate friend: