ceeds from a fountain) is modified into a folid mafs-and that too, for aught we perceive to the contrary, without the help of congelation. This folid mafs is erected into fome kind of building, and is fixed upon a rock, and though battered by rain, keeps its ftation.

Another example of mixed metaphors we find in the fame difcourfe. • The recollected pleasures of humanity and virtue fhall maintain their wonted vigour, "flourish in immortal youth," fupport us in the moft critical moments of diftrefs, like hope, be an anchor to the foul both fure and stedfast, make infirmity fmile, fmooth the bed of languishing, and render the evening of life ferene and chearful.' Now what connection is there in the feveral images of this gaudy picture? What is it that acts like an anchor and smooths a bed? This combination of inconfiftent figures of fpeech is fuch a capital fault in language, and withal fo common with thofe orators who are feized with the rage of eloquence-the furor grandifonus-that we think it a duty, which as public Critics we owe to the world, to expose it to the ridicule it deferves, and thus guard, as far as our influence extends, the English tongue from every innovation that the vanity of fome and the folly of others are fo frequently attempting to make on its purity and fimplicity.

To the affectation of a pompous, high-founding, figurative ftyle, we may add another that is equally difgufting to perfons of a chaste and well-regulated taste: and that is, the affectation of introducing scraps of plays in the very body of a sentence which treats of fome grave or awful point of religion. Thefe dramatic fragments are generally gathered from Shakespear: but however excellent they may be in their place, we think they look a little oddly by the fide of a text of fcripture. Take the following example of this abfurd and conceited mixture of fcripture and plays, &c. &c. O hope of immortality! thou art indeed our early, our anticipated heaven. Without thee we can do nothing and with thee animating, fupporting, ftrengthening us, we are enabled to do and to fuffer all things. good diftreft"-I addrefs you in the beautiful language of the moralift ;-"Ye noble few who here unbending ftand beneath life's preffure, yet bear up awhile." Difpute it bravely. Quit your felves like men: "yet bide the pelting of this pitilefs ftorm,' and "lash the faucy waves" of discontent and murmuring, "which throng and prefs to rob you of your prize." ftorms of wintry time fhall quickly pafs, and one unbounded fpring encircle all."-St. Paul, Shakespear and Thomson! Dulce fodalitium! But Dr. Milne hath the art of joining together what good fenfe, decorum, and Chriftian reverence would always keep afunder :-at leaft in the pulpit!

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Dr.

Dr. Milne was not content with Job's own account of himé self-an account fufficiently large and particular; but he must needs make an addition to it by foifting in a quotation from a play. The patriarch defcribing his former profperity makes use of the following beautiful and fimple allufion; "My root was fpread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch." Dr. Milne fpreads out this branch only for the purpofe of blafting it in the end. In fine, fays he, Job diffused his branches like Lebanon; and the fhade of him filled the land yet in one night "a ftorm, a robbery fhook down his mellow hangings, ftript him of his leaves, and left him bare to weather."

We are the more fevere on this puerile affectation of introducing hackneyed paffages from plays, &c. into fermons, as the evil is become a growing one-efpecially among the younger part of the clergy. The gayer tribe amongst the Diffenters too are running very faft into this abfurdity: and as we confider it as a certain mark of a vicious tafle, and a great abuse, not to fay a defecration, of the pulpit, we fhall make no apology for the freedom with which we have cenfured it; and fhall be happy if any, warned by the example of Dr. Milne, attend more seriously to a maxim of the highest authority, viz-" Not to put a piece of new cloth upon an old garment; for that which is put to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worfe!"

It is feldom that a pompous diction can be uniformly fupported even by the greatest mafters. Though it fometimes fwells as if it was ready to burst into blank verfe, and may perhaps take its vent and go off this way; yet we as frequently find an intermixture of low, flat words, which finks the majefty of the fentence, and repreffeth the burning ardour with which it fet out.

For example: Profperous hitherto (fays Dr. Milne), we entertain few apprehenfions that the tide of profperity can ever be changed. We attach ourselves to fecond causes. The great First Cause of all we difcern not. We fee not the Sovereignt Wisdom which rules among the inhabitants of the earth and Sports itself with the affairs of mortals by fubjecting them to perpetual viciffitudes.'

We

We have heard of an impudent fellow's Sporting a face upon an occafion at a table to which he had no invitation. have heard alfo of a knavifh inn-keeper's Sporting off cyder for champaign on his guefts when they have been half-drunk. But never, till Dr. Milne informed us of it, did we either read or hear of Infinite Wisdom's Sporting itfelf on any occafion what

foever.

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1

One low word spoils all the dignity and beauty of the fol-
lowing description of our Saviour's fufferings. Jefus wept :

but when? Was it when he endured the contradiction of fin-
ners against himself? Was it when he was betrayed by one dif-
ciple, denied by another, and abandoned by all? Was it, &c.
&c. &c. &c. His foul difdains the meannefs. He dropt not a
tear. He uttered not a groan. He spoke not a word. Was it
then when scourged, when buffeted, when crowned with thorns,
when arrayed in a ludicrous robe, when fpit upon, when hood-
winked, when addreffed with the mock honours of royalty, or
when ftruck by the very fervants with the palms of their
hands?'

In a difcourfe on the deceitfulness of fin' (for the beginning of which he is indebted, though he doth not acknowledge the obligation, to Yorick's fermon on Confcience), we are prefented with the following cluster of incompatible images. He fofters a viper which eats into his bowels. He drinks of a cup, which though sweet as honey, like the prophet's roll, yet like the book devoured by St. John, is bitter in the belly, nay ftings as a ferpent, and bites as an adder.' Here vipers, ferpents, adders, honey, prophets, apoftles, books, rolls, bowels and bellies, "dance (as Junius obferves of a fimilar mixture of strange figures) through all the mazes of metaphorical confufion!"

Dr. Milne fometimes condefcends to foften the high tone of Ciceronian eloquence, and plays with pretty points and antithefes. Is it (he afks) fo difficult for a man to cross himself, as to take up the cross and follow the Saviour-through the rugged roads of adverfity, as through the "primrofe path" of affluence and fplendor? Take another example of the preacher's delectable manner of sporting with words. Tell me when he began to love you, and I will tell you to what age you are permitted to offend him. He loved you before you had an existence, and fhall you not love him whilft you exift? It was in the flower of his years that the Saviour died for you: and in the flower of your years fhall you difdain to live for him?" Old puritanical Dyer's Golden Chain"-to be worn about the necks of the babes in Chrift, is not ornamented with a prettier toy!

One would imagine that Dr. Milne had been converfant with the writings of Dr. Everard and the myftic preachers of the laft century, by the propenfity which he difcovers of turning to allegory what is related as a fact. Hence he calls our Saviour the "invincible Sampfon, who, if he had pleafed, could have shivered the nails and the chains to atoms.'-By the fame licence of departing from the letter, he talks of flaughtering, like Judith, our fpiritual Holofernes-that mafter-vice, which, though but one in fpecies, produces, cherishes, and fortifies many more."

REV. May4780:

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Dr.

June

Dr. Milne's zeal against infidels and infidelity is so great, that he could not avoid a fort of a back-hand stroke at Mr. Hume, and his manner of quitting the world. He will boast to the last moments (fays the Preacher) of a pretended strength of mind which fhall flatter his vanity; incline to feem fuperior to vulgar errors, to brave the authority of heaven, and view the uncertainty of an hereafter with a fixed and tranquil eye; leave to the fpectators the dreadful pleafure of a witticifm at the expence of his eternal falvation, and talk jocularly of Styx and Charon." (Vid. Serm. On the Deceitfuinefs of Sin, p. 216. comp. with Dr. Adam Smith's Letter to William Strahan, Esq; affixed to Mr. Hume's Life.)

We shall produce ene fpecimen more of the Preacher's zeal; and it will ferve as a farther fpecimen of his happy talent at antithefis Would you take thofe for your models whose names offer themselves with horror to remembrance, the Vaninis, the Spinofas, the Woolftons, the Voltaires? or the Now, gentle Reader, doft thou not expect fome modern champion of the Chriflian church to figure in the contraft?-the Pafcals, the Boyles, the Newtons, the Lockes, the Lytteltons? -Thou art miftaken! Dr. Milne oppofes to the Spinofas, the Woolftons and the Voltaires the Abrahams, the Jofephs, the Jobs, the Elijahs, the Daniels, the apoftolical men, who fhone as lights in the world. Maintain (fays he) if you can this parallel.'It is not our bufinefs, nor the bufinefs of any one's but the Doctor's, to maintain fuch a parallel; and it will require more ingenuity than he is poffeffed of to maintain it with any grace.

Dr. Milne, and the partial friends who perfuaded him to commit his compofitions to the infpection of the public,' will certainly accufe us of great feverity and ill-nature in treating him with fuch freedom as we have in the preceding remarks. But when we think we have discharged an honeft, though harsh and ungrateful duty; and when we know that we have done it without the flightest perfonal prejudice against the Author, or even the most diftant knowledge of the man, any farther than he hath made himself known to us by his publications, we shall acquit ourselves to our own confciences, and confider every fplenetic reflection from partiality and difappointment as a thing of courfe. We confider Dr. Milne as a most dangerous and corrupt model for our young divines-who are too eafily captivated by the charms of a falfe and fpecious eloquence, to the neglect, and perhaps the contempt, of those words of truth and faberness, which aim more at the conviction of the judgment than at the inflammation of the paffions; and gain by a calm and lafting effect, what they mifs by fudden and violent emotions.

ART. IV. Principles of Elearicity, containing divers new Theorems and Experiments, together with an Analysis of the Superior Advan tages of high and pointed Conductors, c. By Charles Viscount Mahon, F. R. S. 4to. 10s. 6d. Boards. Elmly. 1779.

HOUGH the ingenious and noble Author of this performance profeffes to establish in it the fundamental laws of Electricity; the prefent is not an elementary treatise of that fcience. The reader is accordingly fuppofed to be acquainted with the common experiments, and the general properties of electricity, which have been already established by others.

The Author first treats of Electric Atmospheres; and endeavours to fhew that they are conftituted of the particles of air furrounding the electrified body. If, for inftance, the body be pofitively electrified, he maintains that it will depofit, upon all the particles of air that surround it, and come fucceffively in contact with it, a proportional part of its fuperabundant electricity fo that they will become likewife pofitively electrified, and form a pofitively electrified atmosphere. The fame reasoning is applied, mutatis mutandis, to negatively electrified bodies, and their negative atmospheres.

From this principle, and the obfervation that the density of an electrical atmosphere diminishes, in a certain ratio, as the diftance from the electrified body increases, as well as from other confiderations, the Author undertakes to affign the cause, why an electrified body, to which a projecting point is affixed, parts with, or receives, electricity more readily than a fmooth cylindrical or globular body:-Because the fuperabundant electricity of the body, which we will fuppofe to be pofitively electrified, and which, in all cafes, tends to quit it, will, when a point is affixed to it, meet with less refiftance to its escape; as the point projects beyond the denfe part of the electrical atmofphere of the body, into the rarer and, confequently, more unrefifting part of that atmosphere. But the efcape of the electric matter from any part of a fmooth cylindrical body, pofitively electrified, is prevented or impeded; because every part of its furface is in contact with the denfeft part of its own ftrongly refifting electric atmosphere. The furface too of the point being extremely fmall, the lefs will be the refiftance op

We wonder that the Author fhould take no notice of thofe obfervations of Dr. Franklin, that feem to militate against this doctrine; particularly his experiment, in which a large electrified cork ball, fixed to the end of a filk ftring, was whirled fwiftly round a hundred times in the air, like a fling; without fuftaining any fenfible loss of electricity, after having paffed through 800 yards of air. See his Experiments and Obfervations on Electricity, &c. Letter VI.

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