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whatever might have been her pretenfions to abfolute virginity. Notwithstanding her exaggerated habits of dignity and ceremony, and a certain affectation of imperial feverity, fhe did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty, to be an idle and unpardonable levity, totally inconfiftent with her high station and character. As the conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what confequence was the complexion of the mistress of the world? Not lefs vain of her person than her politics, this ftately coquet, the guardian of the proteftant faith, the terror of the fea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the fcourge of Spain, was infinitely mortified, if an embaffador, at the first audience, did not tell her fhe was the finest woman in Europe. No negocia tion fucceeded unless fhe was addressed as a goddess. Encomiaftic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the fuppofition of youth and beauty, were furely fuperfluous, unfuitable, and unworthy; and were offered and received with an equal impropriety. Yet when the rode through the streets of the city of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and aldermen, advancing from a groupe of gods who had left Olympus to grace the proceffion, gave her a golden arrow, the most effective weapon of his well-furnished quiver, which under the influence of fuch irrefiftible charms was fure to wound the most obdurate heart. "A gift, fays honest Hollinshed, which her majefty, now verg ing to her fiftieth year, received very. thankfullie." In one of the fulfome interludes at court, where fhe was prefent, the finging-boys of her chapel prefented the story of the three rival goddeffes on mount Ida, to which her majefty was ingenioufly added as a fourth and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus, which was due to the queen alone.

This inundation of claffical pedantry foon infected our poetry Our writers, already trained in the fchool of fancy, were fuddenly dazzled with thefe novel imaginations, and the divinities and heroes of pagan antiquity decorated every compofition. The perpetual allufions to ancient fable were often introduced without the leaft regard to propriety. Shakspeare's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or an affected lady, laughing at the camberfome courtship of her corpulent lover Falftaffe, fays, "I had rather be a giantefs and lie under mount Pelion." This familiarity with the pagan ftory was not, however, so much owing to the prevailing ftudy of the original authors, as to the numerous English verfions of them, which were confequently made. The tranflations of the claffics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celebrity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffufing them among the people. No fooner were they delivered from the pale of the fcholaftic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's Metamorphofes juft tranflated by Golding, to inftance no farther, disclosed a new world of fiction, even to the illiterate. As we had now all the ancient fables in English, learned allufions, whether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer obfcure and unVOL. LII. Aug. 1781. intelligible

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intelligible to common readers and common fpectators. here we are led to obferve, that at this reftoration of the claffics, we were first struck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of defign and juftnefs of fentiment. A rude age, beginning to read thefe writers, imitated their extravagancies, not their natural beauties. And thefe, like other novelties, were pursued to a blameable excefs.'

Another capital fource of the poetry peculiar to this pe riod, confifted in the numerous tranflations of Italian tales into English. Thefe narratives, not dealing altogether in romantic inventions, but in real life and manners, and in artful arrangements of fictitious yet probable events, afforded a new gratification to a people which yet retained their ancient relish for taletelling, and became the fashionable amufement of all who pro feffed to read for pleasure. They gave rife to innumerable plays and poems, which would not otherwife have existed; and turned the thoughts of our writers to new inventions of the fame kind. Before thefe books became common, affecting fituations, the combination of incident, and the pathos of cataltrophe, were almost unknown. Diftrefs, especially that arifing from the conflicts of the tender paffion, had not yet been fhewn in its most interesting forms. It was hence our poets, particularly the dramatic, borrowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complication of facts neceffary to conftitute a flory either of the comic or tragic fpecies. In proportion as knowlège encreased, genrus had wanted fubjects and materials. These pieces ufurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical fongs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic enterprife, and ftrong touches of rude delineation, yet they failed in that multiplication and difpofition of circumftances, and in that de fcription of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more diteerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gothic romance were foftened by this fort of reading: and the Italian paftoral, yet with fome mixture of the kind of incidents defcribed in Heliodorus's Ethiopic hiftory now newly tranflated, was engrafted on the feudal manners in Sydney's Arcadia.'

In the three volumes now published of this work, the ingenious author has traced only the rudeft efforts of poetical genius in England. He is, at length, however, arrived at à period when the British Mufe begins to affume a nobler and moré claffical appearance, when refinement of tafte corrects the extravagance of imagination, and a profpect opens to the attainment of perfection in English poetry. We congratulate Mr. Warton on an epoch that offers for his inveftigation the most beautiful productions in our language, and which will afford fubjects more worthy the exertion of thofe critical talents, fo eminently difplayed in this history; a history abounding with the strongest proofs of attentive enquiry, of the moft potifhed tafte, and moft judicious obfervation,

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Two Letters to Dr. Newcome, Bishop of Waterford. On the Duration of Our Saviour's Miniftry. By Jofeph Priestley, LL.D. F. R. S. 800. 2s. 6d. jerved. Johnson.

THIS publication confifts of two letters. The first was annexed to the author's English Harmony of the Evangelift; but not being large, is now reprinted, that the reader may have the whole correfpondence, in a more convenient form.

The fecond contains an answer to the arguments advanced by the bishop of Waterford, in his tract on the Duration of our Lord's Ministry *

The Chriftian fathers, in general, fuppofed, that our Lord's public miniftry extended no farther than one complete year. Their teftimony, our author conceives, is of great importance. And he obferves, that even Eufebius, the first who extended our Lord's miniftry beyond two years and a half, and, as far as appears, all other writers, till the very moderns, fuppofed, that the three first evangelifts related only the events of one year; that is, they go upon the idea, that only one year intervened between the imprifonment of John, and the death of Christ. But this fpace, fays he, by your lordship's own confeffion, includes all the events, that Mr. Mann and myfelf endeavour to bring within the compafs of a year. So that whatever the ancients thought of that part of our Lord's miniftry, which preceded the imprisonment of John the Baptift (which they fuppofe to be recorded by John) they all agreed with me in every thing, that your lordship finds the hardest to be reconciled to, in my hypothefis.

Admitting what Eufebius and all the ancients fuppofed (and on what good authority can we difpute it) that the three first evangelifts related the events of only one year of our Lord's life, can your lordship think it credible, that they fhould all confine themfelves to the last of three or four, when the whole was equally before them? Was there no event in the whole compafs of the two or three preceding years, that they thought worth fingling out and recording? This would be more especially extraordinary in the cafe of Luke, who relates the circumftances of our Saviour's birth so very minutely, and his vifits to Jerufalem at twelve years of age. A total filence in fuch a writer as this, to the two or three first years of the opening of our Lord's miniftry, is altogether unaccountable.'

See Crit. Rev. vol. 1. p. 181.

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It is obfervable, that long after the opinion began to be formed, that our Saviour's miniftry must have continued at least two years, all the fathers, even fo late as Jerom, stil fpeak of our Lord's fuffering in the fifteenth of Tiberius, which is really inconfiftent with it. For what could Chriftian writers mean by the fifteenth of Tiberius, but the fame year that Luke meant by it? In fact, it must have been copied from Luke. But this is the very year, in which that evangelift fays, that John began to preach. There is no room therefore for the extenfion of our Lord's miniftry beyond one year.

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It cannot indeed be ftrictly true, that our Saviour died in the fame year, in which John began to preach. But the early Chriftians, having a general idea, that the whole subject of Luke's gofpel, beginning with the preaching of John, was comprized within the space of little more than a year, they might, writing not as chronologers, but only mentioning facts incidentally, give the date, that Luke begins with, to all the events comprised within it promifcuously.

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Or, fince all the moft early writers, who mention any date of the death of Chrift according to the confuls, fay that it happened when the Gemini were in that office, and their confulhip was the fifteenth of the complete years of Tiberius *, they might omit that part of the year after Auguft, in which Auguftus died, and give it to Auguftus.-Either of thefe fuppofitions will tolerably well account for the flight inaccuracy.'

There is fomething remarkable in the conduct of Luke's fixing with great circumftantiality the time of the commencement of John's preaching; but affigning no date to the death of Chrift, an event of much more confequence. Our author thinks, that his conduct is not confiftent, but on the fuppofition of one of thefe events being in his idea, fo connected with the other, in the courfe of his narrative, as that the date of it might eafily be inferred from the date of the other, which he afferts, from the tenor of his gospel, to be the cafe and in this, he prefumes, he has the fanction of all

the ancients.

It was, he obferves, their unanimous opinion, that only one year intervened between the imprisonment of John and the death of Jefus. And what is there, he asks, in the hiftory of Luke, from the commencement of the preaching of

* That is, from the time of his being fole emperor, not from the time when he was admitted partner in the empire by Auguftus.

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John to his imprisonment, that is, to Jefus's journey to Galilee, which followed immediately upon it, that can be fuppofed by any reasonable conftruction, to take up more than a few months? It is all related in his third chapter, and the thirteen first verfes of the fourth, which contains an account of nothing more than the preaching of John before the baptifm of Jefus, and the temptation.

In the next fection the author reconfiders and corroborates his argument, derived from the ignorance of Herod concerning Jefus, at the time of the death of John the Baptift.

Upon the bishop's hypothefis, Jefus had preached publicly almost two years, and the greatest part of the time alone, John being in prifon; and this ignorance of Herod, our author thinks, is unaccountable. But upon his own hypothefis, Jefus had not been fo much expofed to public notice, more than between four and five weeks; and therefore he supposes, that Herod being probably, like other kings and great men, engaged in a multiplicity of bufinefs or pleafure, he might not have heard of Jefus.

In the fourth fection the author fhews, that the word warya John vi. 4. is an interpolation, and does not appear to have been in the text, in the time of Irenæus, nor probably in that of Eufebius, nor yet in that of Epiphanius; as thefe writers take no notice of that expreffion, though it was of importance to them in fome of their writings.

The bishop, in order to reprefent the hurry, which he thinks our Saviour muft have been in, on Dr. Priestley's hypothefis, has drawn a plan of all his journeys from the firft passover to the next pentecoft, and then computes the number of miles he must have travelled every day. Our author reviews this computation, and finds, that there is no occafion, on his hypothefis, to have fuppofed our Lord to have travelled quite four miles per day; and where, fays he, is the great im probability in this? Few men of an active life walk lefs, and many perfons three or four times as much the whole year through. It is befides by no means certain, though it seems to be generally taken for granted, that our Saviour always tra velled on foot.'

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In the remaining part of this letter, the author confiders the fuppofed references to more than two paffovers in the gofpels of the three firft evangelifts, the argument for the probable duration of our Saviour's miniftry from the objects of it, the tranfactions at the firft paffover, his various journeys, the harmony of the gofpels according to the ancients, with feveral incidental circumftances. る

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