Of our old poets the minuter shades of character have not been preserved. Of those of our days, of most of whom the curiosity of modern literature has drawn forth a more familiar and private account, all the existing memorials furnish ample demonstration of the truth of my remarks. I have learned from several who knew him intimately, that the sensibility of Gray was even morbid; and often very fastidious, and troublesome to his friends. He seemed frequently overwhelmed by the ordinary intercourse, and ordinary affairs of life. Coarse manners, and vulgar or unrefined sentiments overset him; and it is probable that the keenness of his sensations embittered the evils of his frame, and aggravated the hereditary gout which terminated his life at a middle age. He perhaps gave his feelings too little vent through the channels of composition, and brooded in too much indolence over the unarrested workings of his mind.

The sensibility of Rousseau was indulged to a selfish and vicious excess. But still it would be a narrow and despicable prejudice to deny, that it exhibited in its ebullitions a high degree of genius. Burke, flaming with resentment at the political evils produced by this eloquent writer's delusive lights, has drawn a just but most severe character of him. Yet Burke himself, whose radiant mind was illuminated by all the rich colours of the rainbow, had nerves tremulous at every point with incontrolable irritability.

.

There are many, who require to be convinced of these important truths; who ought to be shamed out of their mean censures of the singularities or the weaknesses of genius; and who should learn, if they

draw

draw comfort, to suppress their triumph, at the mingled qualities of the most exalted of human beings!

August 8, 1807.

ART. XX. On the fanciful additions to the new Edition of Wells's Geography of the Old Testament.

[CONTINUED FROM P. 330.]

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR OF CENSURA LITERARIA.

Although the examples already produced may be sufficient to shew the unsolid foundation, upon which the new principle of the Editor of Wells's Geography rests, concerning symbols found on medals, as being memorials of the origin of cities from other distant countries; particularly that, where a bull is found, it indicates an origin from Mount Taurus; yet since all illustrations any way connected with scripture acquire some importance from that connection, and ought likewise to be accompanied with greater veracity, instead of being liable to censure as the eccentricities of human fancy and fable, I shall therefore guard students of scriptural geography against some more of the delusions contained in the work under consideration. And this also, more especially, because I would wish my censures of this author to be considered as equally applicable to many other learned romances of the present age, with which we have been favoured by Warburton, Bryant, Maurice, Wilford, and others: all of whom have, like this author, intermixed so much. of their own theoretic imaginations with the few relics

of real truth, which they have presented to their readers; that it may be difficult to many persons to separate again the inventions of the writer and the artifices of the reasoner from the facts collected by the historian and antiquary. Warburton was, I believe, the original archetype of this new mode of literature, which has been followed by many others; who, although they have agreed in the mode, yet have applied it to a great variety of different subjects And it seems to have had its origin hence, that they observed the public to neglect all instruction in solid truths as too dry for the taste of the age, and not sufficiently amusing for a vacant hour; as well as also, that writers themselves had got to the utmost extremity of the line of truth, so that they could find nothing new to say; hence they both of them agreed to enter into the region of fable. Warburton led the way into this new mode, by connecting together a series of learned romances, interspersed, indeed, with many curious episodes on various subjects, and put together in the very epic manner of Herodotus, himself the father of authorized fable. This was rendered more engaging by a sufficient quantity of satire, sneer, and criticism, on the opinions of other authors, so that it was read by men of ability as being the current and fashionable tale of the day. This Jewish and religious romance was succeeded by Mr. Bryant's etymological romance, containing a rich medley, concerning both religious and profane subjects. To these Priestly added a Christian romance, in his history of early opinions. Mr. Wilford and Maurice compiled Indian romances; Young, agricultural romances; various authors their several travelling ro

mances;

mances; and now, at length, we have got a geographical and antiquarian romance concerning the first travels of the descendants of Noah from Mount Taurus. Upon the whole, they have verified the observation of Aristotle, that men evidently love hyperbolic exaggeration in every thing much more than the mere naked truth; as is plain, he says, from the commen conversation of mankind, in which they always relate every thing accompanied with fabulous circumstances beyond the real truth, on purpose to gratify their hearers the more. Hence it is, that writers of this class are in so much favour with the public, and those who teach men nothing but truths can never hope to rise up to a level with these builders of castles in the air, but must rather expect, with Icarus, to fall down headlong to their native and groveling plain ground.

We need then now no longer to wonder, that the Editor in question undertook, as mentioned in my last letter, to prove that three different things were one and the same; that is, the constellation of the stars, Taurus in the heavens, the huge mountain Taurus upon the surface of the earth in Asia, and the bull Apis in Egypt, beyond the Mediterranean sea. I had not sufficient paper left in my last to shew how ingeniously, by the help of antiquarian rhetoric and etymological logic, he proves, that a bull on a medal was intended to denote all those three objects at the same time; but I will now attempt to supply that deficiency; hoping, however, that it will at the same time be considered as an example of the ingenuity and strict mode of reasoning employed by all those of his predecessors, above mentioned, in this new species of literature; whenever they wish to connect together a mountain,

i

in one part of the world with a bull in another beyond the sea, and with a third as far distant as the heaven is from the earth. He says then, in addition to the passage quoted before "it is expressly said by Eustathius, that the region of [Tauric Chersonesus]|was de nominated from the animal Taurus, or bull; which was considered as a memorial of 'O-Siris, the great husbandman, in Egypt, who first taught agriculture. Now this seems to imply, that Siris signified a bull as well as Taurus; or else Taurus the bull would have no relation in its name to the person of whom it was a memorial: but if Siris was one way of pronouncing Taurus (such as results from comparing the Hebrew and Chaldee pronunciation of Syr and Tur), then Taurus had a direct verbal allusion to its primary object for the Chaldee word tur or tyr was, by the Hebrews, pronounced Sur, shur, or syr. This simple principle accounts for such variations at once, and only leads to remark further, that the Chaldee pronunciation tur seems to have prevailed most among the Asiatic nations we are acquainted with, therefore Taurus was the name of the mountain among them, and was commemorated under the figure of a bull.” P. 26 and 27. Hence it becomes very plain, that the Hebrew pronunciation of the word by Syr and Siris, and, consequently, 'O-Siris, means a bull, like tur or Taurus; for the Egyptian bull Apis was sacred to Osiris, the great husbandman, and he had proved before, at fig. 21, that the Zor-aster, or sacred bull of Egypt, there shews the sun on the head of Taurus [the constellation.] Thus all the names of these three objects are proved to mean, in fact, the very same; and hence the same symbol of a bull on a medal denotes

them