thought and diction, merely as machinery to throw off the exuberance of their genius.

In descriptions, omitting that of creation, and the garden of Eden, together with Homer's minor battles, the last grand struggle between the Greeks and Trojans may be contrasted with that of the angels on the plains of Heaven. Homer's gods leave Olympus. Jupiter himself descends to Ida. The foundations of the hills tremble-the mountains shake-Troy totters-Pluto, king of the Infernals, affrighted, leaps from his throne. But mark, how Milton, 'Heaved the ridges of grim war in Heaven when

'Fell the hail of iron globes'-and when by turns were hurled
'Chained thunderbolts and mountains.'

'Down spirits fell by thousands. Shields and helms

'And helmed heads angel on archangel rolled,

'Such contest was in heaven.'

Of the conspicuous characters in the poems before you, a moment's attention is requested to one of the principal, and to two of the most finished in each.-Achilles you find a brave, a cruel, a selfish hero. That he was brave, his exploits testify. is cruelty is seen in attaching Hector to his chariot wheels, and thrice dragging him around the city of Iiium. His destitution of patriotism appears in his withdrawing himself and his troops from the campaign, for the sake of Bryseis. Such was the hero of the Iliad. He had a lion's heart without his magnanimity. But Milton has drawn him,

Who, above the rest, in shape and gesture
Proudly eminent, stood like a tower'-

in colours so interesting, as to excite hatred, horror and admiration. When he assumes an angel's garb to play the hypocrite, or like a cormorant, sits in a tree, meditating our parents' downfall; or descending at night, sits

'Squat, like a toad, close at the ear of Eve
Assaying by his dev'lish art to reach

The organs of her fancy.'

Who does not hate him?-when he exclaims

'Me miserable! which way shall I fly?
Infinite wrath and infinite despair.

Which way I fly, is hell. Myself am hell.

So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear.
All good to me is lost. Evil, be thou my good.'

Whose blood is not chilled with horror? But Milton's lyre responds differently, when the fallen archangel

rears himself upright

From off the billows of the fiery flood,'

throwing his ponderous shield, like the moon, upon his shoulders, while his staff,' to equal which the tallest pine were but a wand,' supported his uneasy steps. When this string is touched, our hearts respond admiration. O! what a picture this of angelic nature, wrecked by the storm of ambition.

It remains only to contrast Hector and Andromache with Adam and Eve. You find Hector, a magnanimous friend; a dutiful son; a kind husband; a tender father-with the bravery of a hero uniting the feelings of a man. The beauteous Andromache is also a loving wife; an affectionate mother.-But from these masterpieces of antiquity, permit me to turn your attention to those

'Two, of far nobler shape, erect and tall,'

who inhabited Eden.

"His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd
Absolute rule.'

‘Grace was in all her steps: Heav'n in her eye,

In every gesture dignity and love.'

When Adam led her to the bower, Milton has described inanimate nature, giving signs of gratulation.

'Fresh gales

And gentle airs whispered it to the woods,

And the evening star hasted to light his
Bridal lamp.'

What lake ever returned so sweet an image to a Naiad of antiquity, as when Eve, bending down to look, saw a shape in the water, bending to look on her.

'She started back.-It started back. But pleas'd,

She soon returned Pleased, it returned as soon.'

In their hymns and adorations, where both sing and call all nature to join them, Milton's verse turns, like the gates of Heaven, on hinges of gold. Oh, had the angels who ministered in Eden, sung half so sweetly as Milton has to us; could our first parents have found under the tree of knowledge a copy of Paradise Lost, surely they could never have fallen. So entertaining, impressive and sublime are his thoughts; so melodious, sweet and harmonious his numbers.

But have these immortal poets no faults? Are there no clouds in the sky? Yes, and behind them the sun illumines the world. We find in the Iliad some tedious speeches and prolix narrations. But these errors have long since been covered by the moss of antiqui ty.-Milton's ideas are also sometimes obscure, but it arises from the barbarous medley of language he found.-In admitting then that Milton and Homer have nodded and sometimes slept, we do injustice to neither. Their nods and their slumbers are the wakings of other men; and when they occasionally descend from their sublime flight in the clouds, it is to afford relief to our minds. But they rest, like the Eagle, only on the highest pine, or the mountain's brow; but this their rest, is lofty repose.

Upon the whole, Homer's verse is more equal than that of Milton's. Milton's is often more melodious and more prosaic than Homer's. So in sentiment, Milton very often rises higher, but Homer never sinks so low as Milton. But then Homer had no divine books, while the Bible is the cupola to Milton's edifice.It must however be remembered that Homer is usually read in a

translation, which, like the statue of Prometheus, however elegant, is a lifeless statue. It is Pope, not Homer, who is admired. Homer's fire was kindled in Greece, and burns only in Greek; and Homer's soul is to be found only in Homer's Iliad.

Milton was a lion who spurned kidling beauties; but Homer polished pebbles with so much skill, they have continued to sparkle for three thousand years; and, to compare small things with small, they are like those firedrops emitted from rockets, after their explosion, high in air, which appear so perfectly pure, and of such crystalline transparency. Homer could embellish his poem, in consequence of the ignorance of early ages, only with the surface of the earth, with plant, fruit or flower;' whereas Milton, aided by the chemist, entered earth's very centre; and, after ransacking her laboratory, brought up gems and gold. Homer painted nature newly dressed from her Creator's hand, tinged with rainbow hues; but Milton, beside the storehouse of nature, which art in England had improved, had recourse to those repositories of knowledge, which have been accumulating for twenty seven hundred years; and, as astronomy among other sciences, had wonderfully improved, Milton could spangle his poem, with more constellations, and richer clusters of stars than Homer.-Homer had no music to en❤ liven his poem; but finer than the notes of Orpheus are the tones of Milton. Those drew earth's created things, rocks, waters, woods;' but, at the song of Milton's spirits, the constellations, a moment, forgot to wheel their courses.

If Homer was the Nile, fertilizing the countries, through which hé passed; Milton was the ocean, surrounding the earth, and receiving the Nile, a tributary to his bosom. If Homer seized the

pencil of the muses, Milton has surely stolen the pen of the angels. Both were indeed the high-priests of nature, admitted to her inmost recesses, and taught her most sacred mysteries.-Homer lit his torch at her lamp; but Milton seized her lamp, and then carried off her lyre.

Well might seven cities dispute the honour of Homer's birth, and Alexander weep at the tomb of his hero! Well might his footsteps be followed by the Grecian youth while he lived; and his grave be covered with lilies and roses, by the same hands when he died. But Milton's birth-place is fixed; and it is a melancholy pleasure to know, where his grave was dug. At the turf, which pillowed his head,' were seen, not the youth of Greece nor Alexander of Macedon; but the Muses themselves hovered around his grave, and strewed the flowers of paradise over his tomb.-Well might the islands of Greece see altars rise to Homer's memory, and sacrifices offered him, as to an Immortal. Our religion forbids us to offer sacrifices, and to build altars to man; but let us thank God for the gift of Milton. S

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The first one of the following Letters was inserted in this Journal about a year ago, but is repeated for the sake of presenting the whole in an unbroken connexion. The rest have never before been in print.

No. I.

Skinner Street, February 12, 1818. MY DEAR SIR.-I inclose to you the letter I proposed to write to you. Having written it, (such is the whimsical result of the habits and self-importance of an author) I cannot be satisfied that it should be your property alone. I shall print it in some form or other. I hope you will forgive me for this. I pay you the same compliment, (to compare small things with great) that Mr. Burke paid to M. Dupont, to whom his Reflections on the Revolution in France were originally addressed. I will therefore request you not to give copies, or suffer copies to be made, of my letter on this side the Atlantic, the consequence of which might be to take the power of printing it in my own way out of my hands.

It appears from yours of the 18th ult. that your plans are still to a considerable degree unfixed for the next two years, after which you propose to return to. I hope, whatever they may be, they will not exclude from the remainder of you European excursion another residence in London, when I shall expect the pleasure of knowing you more fully and more intimately than I have hitherto done. Make my kindest remembrances to Mr. : tell him I will write to him soon.-Believe me to be your very sincere friend, William Godwin. Letter of advice from Mr. Godwin to a young American on the course of studies it might be most advantageous for him to pursue. MY DEAR SIR.I have thought, at least twenty times, since you left London of the promise I made you, and was at first inclined to consider it as you appear to have done, as wholly unconditional, and to be performed out of hand. And I should perhaps have proceeded in that way; but that my situation often draws me with an imperious summons in a thousand different directions, and thus the first heat of my engagement subsided. I then altered my mind, and made a resolution that you should never have the thing you asked for, unless you wrote to remind me of my promise. I thought within myself, that if the thing was not worth that, it was not worth my trouble in performing. *************** And, now that you have discharged your part of the condition I secretly prescribed, I am very apprehensive that you have formed an exaggerated idea of what I can do for you in this respect. I am a man of very limited observation and inquiry, and know little but of those things which lie within those limits. If I wished to form an universal library, I should feel myself in conscience obliged to resort to those persons, who know more in one and another class of literature than I did, and to lay their knowledge in

whatever they understood best, under contribution. But this I do not mean to undertake for you; I will reason but of what I know; shall leave you to learn of the Professors themselves, as to the thing to which I have never dedicated myself.

You will find many of my ideas of the studies to be pursued, and the books to be read, by young persons, in the Enquirer, and more to the same purpose in the Preface to a small book for children, entitled, Scripture Histories given in the words of the Bible,' in two volumes, 24mo.

6

It is my opinion, that the imagination is to be cultivated in education, more than the dry accumulation of science and natural facts. The noblest part of man is his moral nature; and I hold morality principally to depend, agreeably to the admirable maxim of Jesus, upon our putting ourselves in the place of another, feeling his feelings, and apprehending his desires; in a word, doing to others, as we would wish were we they, to be done unto.

Another thing that is a great and most essential aid to our cultivating moral sentiments, will consist in our studying the best models, and figuring to ourselves the most excellent things of which human nature is capable. To this purpose there is nothing so valuable as the histories of Greece and Rome. There are certain coldblooded reasons that say, that the ancients were in nothing better than ourselves, that their stature of mind was no taller, and their feelings in nothing more elevated, and that human nature in all and countries is the same. ages I do not myself believe this. But if it is so, certainly ancient history is the bravest and sublimest fiction that it ever entered into the mind of man to create. No poets, or romance-writers, or story-tellers, have ever been able to feign such models of an erect and generous and public spirited and self-postponing mind, as are to be found in Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. If the story be a falsehood, the emotions, and in many readers, the never-to-be-destroyed impressions it produces, are real: and I am firmly of opinion, that the man that has not been imbued with these tales in his earliest youth, can never be so noble a creature, as the man with whom they have made a part of his education stands a chance to be.

To study the Greek and Roman history it were undoubtedly best to read it in their own historians. To do this, we must have a competent mastery of the Greek and Latin languages. But it would be a dangerous delusion to put off the study long, under the idea that a few years hence, we will read these things in the originals. You will find the story told with a decent portion of congenial feeling in Rollin's Ancient History, and Vertot's Revolutions of Rome. You should also read Plutarch's Lives, and a translation into English or French of Dionysius' Antiquities; Milford for the History of Greece, and Hooke for that of Rome, are writers of some degree of critical judgment; but Hooke has a baleful scepticism about, and a pernicious lust to dispute, the virtues of illustrious men, and Milford is almost frantic with the love