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He next described the Essay on Man as a theory of Bolingbroke's expanded into verse; but he said it would prove just as well that every thing is wrong, as that every thing is right.—The Dunciad was described as having splendid passages, but as being in general dull, heavy, and mechanical.—Pope's Satires, said Mr Hazlitt, are not so good as his Epistles. His enmity was effeminate and petulant, from a sense of weakness,—as his friendship was strong and tender, from a sense of gratitude. His characters are not real characters, but what his spleen and malice, refining upon them in his own mind, choose to make them; but his compliments are divine.

After giving various and striking illustrations of the foregoing remarks, the lecturer proceeded to speak of Dryden. He was a bolder and more varied versifier than Pope,—a more vigorous thinker, a more correct and logical declaimer,—and had more strength of mind, without an equal share of refinement and delicacy of feeling. Dryden's Epistles Mr Hazlitt described as inferior to Pope's, but his Satires as greatly superior; and spoke of the Absalom and Ahithophel, and the Hind and Panther, as the best. Dryden's Lyrical Pieces, he said, deserved their reputation as pieces of poetical mechanism fitted for music, but they want loftiness of truth and character. Dryden's alterations from Chaucer and Boccacio were described as exhibiting more knowledge of the taste of his readers and power of pleasing them, than acquaintance with the genius of his authors. Of these the best was said to be the Tancred and Sigismunda. The Honoria has nothing of the bewildered preternatural effect of Boccacio, and the Flower and the Leaf nothing of the simplicity and concentrated feeling of Chaucer.

Mr Hazlitt concluded this lecture by giving some slight notices of the minor poets who flourished about this time; but our limits oblige us to omit them.

Mr Hazlitt began the Lecture with an estimate of Thomson, whom he described as the most kind-hearted and indolent of mortals. He never wrote "a line that dying he would wish to blot;" and, what was better, a line that any one else would have wished him to blot. The same suavity of temper, and warmth of feeling, that were the springs of the better parts of his poetry, were also the causes of the worst parts. He is affected through carelessness, pompous and pedantic from the simplicity of his character, and because he was unconscious of these vices in himself. He uses all the most trite commonplaces of imagery and diction, as if he thought them quite as good, and likely to please the reader, as his own poetry. He neither cared nor knew how to conceal his art, and seemed to think it as good as his nature. The fine part of the Seasons is that emanation of a natural genius, and that sincere love of his subject, which was unforced, and even unbidden. He takes no pains, uses no correction; or when he does, they produce more harm than good. The feelings which he described as connected with, and springing from, the changes of the seasons, existed in his own mind, and he conveyed them to the reader by the mere force of spontaneous expression; but if the right expression did not come of itself, he could not help it—it was not his fault—and he was obliged to put in its place what did come, for he could not take the trouble to seek for any thing better. Thus he pieces out a beautiful half line with a bombastic allusion, or overlays an exquisitely natural image with a mass of pompous painted phrases,—as, in describing Spring descending to the earth, &c. Who, from such a flimsy round-about commencement as that beginning, "Come gentle spring," &c. would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, homefelt descriptions of natural scenery which follow?

Mr H. gave examples of these, and continued—Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets, because he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have surpassed him in the minutiae of his art, in giving the picturesque details of objects, but no one has equalled him in giving the general impression—the sum-total of their effects. His colours seem wet and breathing; we feel the effect of the atmosphere about us; the peculiar impressions which the different seasons