Of the preface to The Iron Cheft the reader will be enabled to judge by the following specimen :

I am too callous now to be annoyed by thofe innumerable gnats and infects who daily dart their impotent ftings on the literary traveller; and too knowing to difmount and waste my time in whipping grafshoppers: but here is a cowling, fullen, black ball, right athwart my road; a monfter of magnitude, of the Baotian breed, perplexing me in my wanderings through the entangled labyrinth of Drury!-he ftands fulkily before me, with fides feemingly impenetrable to any lah, and tougher than the dun cow of Warwick! his front outfronting the brazen bull of Perillus! He has bellowed, gentlemen! yea, he hath bellowed a difmal found! a hollow unvaried tone, heaved from his very midriff, and striking the liftener with torpor! Would I could pass the animal quietly, for my own fake! and for his, by Jupiter! I repeat it, I would not harm the bull. I delight not in baiting him. I would jog as gently by him as by the afs that grazes on the common; but he has obftinately blocked up my way. He has already toffed and gored me feverely. I must make an effort, or he batters me down, and leaves me to bite the duft.

Mr. Kemble is a paragon-reprefentative of the lufus natuṛæ; and were Mr. Kemble fewed up in a fkin, to act a bog in a pantomime, he would act a hog with fix legs better than a hog with four.

One third of the play, only, was yet performed; and I was, now, to make up my mind, like an unfortunate traveller, to purfue my painful journey, through two ftages more, upon a broken-down pofter, on whofe back lay all the baggage for my expedition. Miferably, and most heavily in hand, did the pofter proceed! He groaned, he lagged, he coughed, he winced, he wheezed! never was seen so sorry a jade!

Frogs in a marfo, flies in a bottle, wind in a crevice, a preacher in a field, the drone of a bagpipe, all, all yielded to the inimitable and foporific monotony of Mr. Kemble,'

Mr. Colman compares Mr. Kemble to a black feowling bull, and to a few. The writer of this pamphlet fays of Mr. Col man that he is known to be a little, priggish, dusky man, or 'as Shakspeare ludicrously observes,

• A glass-gazing, fuperficial, finical knave,'

that looks, at all events, as much like a fon of Kish as Mr. Kemble, excepting that his ftature is very low; but as to complexion,

If that it any colour has, Iween

'Tis much between an olive and a green.'

As we have never, that we know, feen Mr. Colman, we cannot fay any thing concerning the juftness or unjuftness of this defcription. It is, probably, not altogether defective in truth. A little pot is foon hot. Perhaps we are indebted to that vivacity

Cc4

of

of temperament, which commonly characterifes very little people, for the effufions in the preface, which afford not a little diverfion. There is a maliciousness in human nature that delights in provoking expreffions of choler. Wanton boys tease and vex their puny and peevish fellows, as well as poor old people that fall in their way, if they be in any degree what they call crufty and crabbed. It is fcarcely poffible that Mr. Kemble could have an eye to fuch kind of entertainment: but, in fact, whether the rage of Mr. Colman was produced defignedly or undefignedly, juftly or unjustly, it has produced not a little diverfion; and if he has failed of giving amufement in his play, he has furnished not a little in his preface.

ART. XXIV. Chefs made ealy. New and comprehenfive Rules for playing the Game of Chefs; with Examples from Philidor, Gunningham, &c. To which is prefixed a pleafing Account of its Origin; fome interefting Anecdotes of feveral exalted Perfonages who have been Admirers of it; and the Morals of Chefs, written by the ingenious and learned Dr. Franklin. pp. 72. 12mo. London, 1795.

HESE rules are very good, though not new.

The moral

T of chefs, by Dr. Franklin, like every thing of that original genius, is an excellent little piece. It has been rendered extremely probable, and almost certain, by an Irish gentleman, Mr. O'Connor, if we rightly recollect, in a letter to the Royal Society of Ireland, copied in the New Annual Register for 1795, that the game of chefs was invented, not in India, but China. We confider books that tend to allure, and inftruct people in this noble game as of no little moral importance; for it is of much importance to intereft and employ the mind in an innocent, rational, and inftructive amufement.

ART. XXV. Hints for promoting a Bee Society. pp. 8. 8vo. 6d. Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch Street. London, 1796.

WI VITHIN twenty miles of the metropolis, horticulture has moft extenfively increased; the gardens are enriched with plants of every kind: but the nectarium of the flowers iffues in vain whilft the hive is excluded from a ftation where it might be rendered no lefs an object of ornament than of profit. In the fpace I have mentioned, 50,000 bee

⚫hives at leaft might be maintained; which, upon an average, would produce as many guineas annually in honey and wax, two articles of fingular ufe in every family in the kingdom." The author of the Hints, therefore, viewing this fubject as profitable and entertaining, wishes to turn the attention of every proprietor of a garden to its promotion-to excite patronage to the induftrious bee, by the inftitution of a fociety for promoting its increase. To the hints is added a very elegant and intelligible plan of a hive, that is now actually constructed, and in the poffeffion of Mr. Lover, in which the bees continue to work without fwarming.

There is a Dr. Anderson, well known by his activity in the fervice of Sir John Sinclair, and the British fisheries, who endeavoured, in vain, to reunite the labours of all the literary BEES of Europe in Edinburgh. His periodical BEE, with paper wings, did not produce any honey-he was obliged to abandon her; and fhe died. But the Doctor, who is an ingenious and bustling man, and has bees much in his head, would be a very proper prefident for fuch a fociety as is recommended in this pamphlet, if, after all, fuch a fociety would be of any advantage. There is no difcovery made, no invention found out, but by individuals. There is more pomp and parade, more idle oftentation, in boards and focieties, than utility. Is there any fociety neceffary to induce men to take horses, cattle, fheep, fowls, and other ufeful animals under their protection? Convince a gardener or farmer that, by a little pains, he may make a great deal of money by the culture of bees, and he will foon fet about it, without the influence of a fociety.

ART. XXVI. Poems. By G. D. Harley, of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Pp. 295. 8yo. Martin and Bain. London, 1796.

THE

HE contents of this volume are, An Address to the Reader. -Lubin and Tray.-Old Woman's Petition.-Treacherpus Refreshment.-Night.-Young Anna.-Lines written at Cowes.-Yeoman of Kent.-The Dog.-Parental Reflections. -Epitaph.-Crowded Beach.-The Cat. Plundered Boy.Lines to a Friend.-Love-lorn Anna.-Leander.-Legacy of Love.

These poems are of very unequal merit. That which, is, beyond all comparison, the beft, is, Lubin and his Dog Tray;' than which, indeed, we never read any thing more picturesque, more elegiac, tender, and affecting, or concluded by a more

natural

natural and important moral. But this is not complete juftice to Mr. Harley. We never read a better elegy, feldom, if ever, one fo good. It takes up eight pages of very clofe print. We cannot, therefore, give room to the whole. A few ftanzas, by way of fpecimen, is all that we can afford;

Young LUBIN was a fhepherd boy,
Who watch'd a rigid master's sheep;
And many a night was heard to figh,
And many a day was feen to weep.-

An orphan lad poor Lubin was,
No friend, no relative had he;
His happiest hour was dash'd with woe,
His mildeft treatment-tyranny.'

Lubin fent, in a cold and ftormy winter's night, accompanied by his dog Tray, in queft of a strayed lamb, perishes through cold:

'Dark was the night, and o'er the waste
The whistling winds did fiercely blow,
And 'gainft his poor defenceless head
With arrowy keenness came the fnow.

-Yet thus he left his master's house,
And fhap'd his fad uncertain way,
By man unnotic'd and forfook,

And follow'd but by trufty Tray.'

He found his lambkin, but it was cold and stiff:

• Stretch'd on its bed of glift'ning fhow,
His heart's beft chord was yet in tune,

Unfnapp'd by cold feverity:
Touch'd was that chord-his dim eye
Suffused fenfibility.

beam'd

"Tis juft,' he said, that where thou lieft
The careless fhepherd boy fhould lie.
Thou diedft, poor fool, for want of food;
• I fall for fuffering thee to die.

< My trufty dog-that wistful look

Is all that makes my poor heart heave:
But hie thee home-proclaim me dead,
• Forget to think, and cease to grieve.'
So faying, fhrunk the hapless youth

Beneath the chilling grafp of death;
And, clafping poor Tray's fhaggy neck,
Sigh'd gently forth his parting breath!

H's

His faithful, fond, fagacious dog,

Hung watchful o'er his master's clay;
And many a moan the old fool made,
And many a thing he ftrove to say.

He

paw'd him with his hard-worn foot,

He lick'd him with his scarce warm tongue;
His cold rofe ftrove to catch his breath,
As to his clos'd lips clofe it clung.
But not a fign of lurking life

Thro' all his frame he found to creep:
He knew not what it was to die,

But knew his mafter did not sleep.'

The moral of this admirable elegy confifts in three beautiful Aanzas, which are concluded as follows:

Succour the orphan in diftress,

And fpurp the oppreffor from thy door."

As we have thus reprefented our poet in his happiest mood, fo critical juftice requires that we fhew him in a frame and form Jefs favoured by the mufes; and in fuch a style he appears to us in what we may call a very long-winded poem on a CAT; in which, by dwelling too long on the fubject, by teafing and torturing it, by hunting after poffible fituations and circumstances, and pumping various reflections, he overcrowds his hiftorical picture; and, by attempting to defcribe fo much, defcribes not any thing with due impreffion and effect. Of this Mr. Harley, we doubt not, will himself be fenfible, if he will compare his own poem with that of Molineux on his cat; written in elegant Latin, and not lefs elegantly tranflated by Mr. Cole; of whofe po ms, lately published, we have given an account in our prefent Number.

Mr. Harley is evidently a man of real fenfibility and genius, and, what is of great importance, he has a thorough fenfe and conviction of the beauty of virtue, and the deformity of vice. He has excellent parts, but is not a little deficient, in many of his poems, in just taste. He hints, in a motto on his title-page, that he has not had the advantage of a learned education. The intelligent reader eafily perceives this. His ftyle and manner is not formed on the noblest models of the ancients, nor yet on the beft compofitions of the moderns. It feems to be formed on that of theatrical writers, in which there is, for the most part, too much affectation, and particularly on that of Shakspeare, who, with all his genius, is justly chargeable, in many inftances, of unnatural distortions and inverfions, of an affectation of wit, and far-fetched fimilies and allufions.

ART,