when the propriety of the terms is not fully established by the production of facts? The case in truth, is in this instance not stated so strongly as it might be against the author of the Rambler; and it is the prudence of his friends not to provoke any further discussion of the subject, as it must infallibly terminate in his greater confusion. If he was not actually privy to the forgeries of the northern schoolmaster, whose confidence he accepted and abused, he certainly had sufficient reason to suspect them; and with his friend, Cave, he resisted their detection as long as the resistance could be either effectual or safe. In any event, he adopted the whole of Lauder's malignity; and let his partizans first clear him of this offence before they talk bigly of his innocence, and bluster in his cause. Urged as I have been by some, whom I respect and love, to soften what I have said against him, with my conviction of the atrocity of his conduct, to one of the most perfect characters which is to be found in the page of biography, I have not erased a

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syllable respecting him, and have felt more inclined to strengthen than to mitigate the censures, of which I have made him the subject. Even the concluding sentences of my work, which seem to extend their crimination to his general merits as a writer, I have not persuaded myself to omit: and if it be a crime in me, with the fullest sense of the great powers of his mind, to regard him as a corrupter of our style, to affirm that I dislike the fatiguing and laborious monotony of his sentences, and, delighted as I have been with the occurrence of brilliant passages, of vigorous and original thought, to assert that I have never yet read one of his productions with unmingled or even with prevailing pleasure; if this I say be a crime in me, I cannot hesitate to avow it, and I must consent to visit that allotment of future time, which may belong to me, with the brand of guilt flagrant on my forehead.

My preface is already too long: but I must be forgiven if I still lengthen it to touch upon a topic, which stands in connexion with my work.

When I offered the translations of some of Milton's Latin and Italian poetry to the public, I introduced them with a note of civility to Mr. Cowper: and to Mr. Hayley, who has enriched himself by converting the ashes of his friend into gold, I have shewn myself disposed, in more than one instance, to be too liberal rather than too economical of praise. Not regarding the translator's palm as an object worthy of contest, I translated merely for the entertainment of my readers: but I translated also, as I will ingenuously confess, or I would not have translated at all, without a consciousness of inferiority to the writer who had preceded me on the ground. Having published, however, in the course of the last year, the whole of his departed friend's translations from my author, Mr. Hayley has favoured me with notices which are not of a nature to exact my thanks, or to impress me with any strong idea of a just and honourable mind. Of one of my translations alone has he condescended to speak; and of this he has judged

it right to speak in such a manner as strongly to imply that it is the single instance of poetic translation to be discovered in my volume. That this was the persuasion which he intended to communicate to his readers, is manifested by his subsequent conduct: for on occasions which he has improved to display his candour and his taste, by lavishing extravagant commendations on some very subordinate versions of the "Mansus Mansus" and the "Damon," he has carefully buried mine in the profundity of silence. In a few passages, indeed, he has been pleased to couple my name, as a writer, with some civil epithets : but at the same time he has prudently guarded against any possible excitement of my vanity, by throwing me into company, not of a class to corrupt me with improper sensations of my own importance. As Mr. Cowper's translations may now be confronted with mine, I have only to declare that, if the relative merit of the latter should be determined by the general suffrage to be inconsiderable, I shall be happy, whenever another edition of

my work may indulge me with the opportunity, to remove them from the eyes of a judicious public, of which, under this decision, I must pronounce them to be wholly unworthy.

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By one of the public critics I have been referred to a translation of the "Damon" by the pen of the late unfortunate Dermody, with a suggestion that it is superior to that which I have submitted to my readers. Having not, however, been able to find this translation in the place where I was directed to look for it, I am still unacquainted with it otherwise than by this critic's report; and I can therefore only profess with truth, that if it really deserve the preference which he assigns to it, (and I am very well disposed to believe that it may), I shall be honestly gratified by the fact: for desirous as I may be of erecting myself to the stature of higher men, I am far from wishing to depress them to the mediocrity of mine. So that I were permitted to

* See the article in the Cabinet, to which I have before referred.