their dealings. Our factors and traders, having no other purpose in view than immediaté profit, use all the arts of an European counting-house, to defraud the simple hunter of his furs.

These are some of the causes of our present weakness; our planters are always quarrelling with their governour, whom they consider as less to be trusted than the French; and our traders hourly alienate the Indians by their tricks and oppressions, and we continue every day to show by new proofs, that no people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

REVIEW*

OF

AUGU

"MEMOIRS of the Court of AUGUSTUS;

"By THOMAS BLACKWELL, J. U. D.

Principal of MARISHAL-COLLEGE in the University of ABERDEEN.”

HE first effect which this book has upon the

THE

reader is that of disgusting him with the Author's vanity. He endeavours to persuade the world, that here are some new treasures of literature spread before his eyes; that something is discovered, which to this happy day had been concealed in darkness; that by his diligence time had been robbed of some valuable monument which he was on the point of devouring; and that names and facts doomed to oblivion are now restored to fame.

How must the unlearned reader be surprised, when he shall be told that Mr. Blackwell has neither digged in the ruins of any demolished city, nor found out the way to the library of Fez; nor had a single book in his hands, that has not been in the possession of every man that was inclined to read it, for years and ages; and that his book relates to a people who above all others have furnished employment to the Literary Magazine, Vol. I. p, 41.

studious, and amusements to the idle, who have scarcely left behind them a coin or a stone which has not been examined and explained a thousand times, and whose dress, and food, and household stuff, it has been the pride of learning to understand.

A man need not fear to incur the imputation of vitious diffidence or affected humility, who should have forborn to promise many novelties, when he perceived such multitudes of writers possessed of the same materials, and intent upon the same purpose. Mr. Blackwell knows well the opinion of Horace, concerning those that open their undertakings with magnificent promises; and he knows likewise the dictates of common sense and common honesty, names of greater authority than that of Horace, who direct that no man should promise what he cannot perform.

I do not mean to declare that this volume has nothing new, or that the labours of those who have gone before our author, have made his performance an useless addition to the burden of literature. New works may be constructed with old materials, the disposition of the parts may show contrivance, the ornaments interspersed may discover elegance.

It is not always without good effect that men of proper qualifications write in succession on the same subject, even when the latter add nothing to the information given by the former; for the same ideas may be delivered more intelligibly or more delightfully by one than by another, or with attractions that may lure minds of a different form. No writer pleases all, and every writer may please some.

But after all, to inherit is not to acquire; to deco

rate is not to make; and the man who had nothing to do but to read the ancient authors, who mention the Roman affairs, and reduce them to common-places, ought not to boast himself as a great benefactor to the studious world.

After a preface of boast, and a letter of flattery, in which he seems to imitate the address of Horace in his vile potabis modicis Sabinum-he opens his book with telling us, that the "Roman republic, "after the horrible proscription, was no more at "bleeding Rome. The regal power of her consuls, "the authority of her senate, and the majesty of "her people, were now trampled under foot; these

[for those] divine laws and hallowed customs, "that had been the essence of her constitutionwere set at nought, and her best friends were lying exposed in their blood."

These were surely very dismal times to those who suffered; but I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declamation should whine over the commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich grew corrupt, and, in their corruption, sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another.

"About this time Brutus had his patience put "to the highest trial: he had been married to Clodia; but whether the family did not please him, or whether he was dissatisfied with the lady's be"haviour during his absence, he soon entertained "thoughts of a separation. This raised a good deal of talk, and the women of the Clodian family inveighed bitterly against Brutus-but he married

66

"Portia,

"Portia, who was worthy of such a father as M.

Cato, and such a husband as M. Brutus. She had " a soul capable of an exalted passion, and found a "proper object to raise and give it a sanction; she "did not only love but adored her husband; his "worth, his truth, his every shining and heroic quality, made her gaze on him like a god, while "the endearing returns of esteem and tenderness she "met with, brought her joy, her pride, her every "wish to centre in her beloved Brutus.”

When the reader has been awakened by this rapturous preparation, he hears the whole story of Portia in the same luxuriant style, till she breathed out her last a little before the bloody proscription, and "Brutus complained heavily of his friends at Rome, "as not having paid due attention to his Lady in "the declining state of her health.”

nators and their wives are Gentlemen and Ladies, In this review of Brutus's army, who was under the command of gallant men, not braver officers than true patriots, he tells us, "that Sextus the Questor "was Paymaster, Secretary at War, and Commis

sary General, and that the sacred discipline of "the Romans required the closest connection, like "that of father and son, to subsist between the Ge"neral of an army and his Questor. Cicero was "General of the Cavalry, and the next general

officer was Flavius, Master of the Artillery, the "elder Lentulus was Admiral, and the younger rode "in the Band of Volunteers; under, these the tri"bunes, with many others too tedious to name." Lentulus, however, was but a subordinate officer;