And ere the mortal shaft had flown,
He check❜d the approachiug flight of fate »
When thrice the people, all elate

At thy approach, with plausive voice
Bade the throng'd theatre rejoice.
Me too, a falling tree had slain,

Had crush'd the cell that shields the brain,
If Faunus, prompt and faithful still
Mercurial men to guard from ill,
Had not with his right hand reliev'd
The blow, and thus my life repriev❜d.

To Jove erect the votive fane,

His altars let thy victims stain.

To Faunus grateful I've decreed,

Forth with a humble lamb shall bleed.

H******

TRANSLATION OF THE 22d. ODE OF BOOK 1. OF HORACE.

Where ne'er a breeze refreshing strays,

Nor woodlands wave their branches green,
Where lowering clouds, and joyless days
In gloom for ever wrap the scene;

Or where, beneath the burning sun,
No cheerful haunts of man appear,
So near his flaming coursers run,

His glowing chariot rolls so near;

Love my companion still shall be,

And all my wandering steps beguile;

In fancy still my Lalage

Shall sweetly speak, and sweetly smile.

H******

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

REMARKS on our review of Coelebs by "a friend to our miscellany," who desires to unite the spirit with the name of Christian, have been received. He thinks we have been too parsimonious of praise, and have censured in some instances without reason. Let the readers judge. We wish they had his light; but if we give a place to his communication, we shall be obliged, to be "consistent," to admit others to occupy our pages with exceptions to our judgment of books, till our Review is nothing but a mint of controversies.

Our correspondent intimates that our strictures should have been illustrated by extracts. Extracts from a book so much diffused appeared to us unnecessary and even impertinent. In our notice of Coelebs we considered ourselves more as expressing sentiments of a book generally read, than influencing expectation concerning one yet to be known.

The remarks of our friend, signed "Steady Habits," is received with pleasure, and we shall afford it a place in our next number. We regret that it will be necessary to divide it; but we have no fear of injuring its general effect bydivision.

THE

BOSTON REVIEW,

FOR

JANUARY, 1810.

Librum tuum legi, et quam diligentissime potui annotavi quae commutanda, quae eximenda arbitrarer. Nam ego dicere verum assuevi. Neque ulli patientius reprehenduntur, quam qui maxime laudari merentur.

Plin.

ARTICLE 1.

Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, to

which are prefixed notices of his life and character. quod non ornavit. Boston, T. B. Wait and Co. 519 pages.

(Continued from vol. vii-page 410.)

Nihil tetigit

1809. 8vo.

THE detestation, which at all times he expresses against the temporizing, irritating course of policy, which the Jefferson administration chose to adopt towards the British government, and in which, without any essential injury to her, and without any imaginary benefit to the United States, such a state of things was preserved, as was neither friendly nor hostile, neither calculated to obtain redress for past wrongs, nor to attain security against future, gave those who hated, or feared the influence of his genius and virtue, an opportunity to represent him, according to the usual artifices of political animosity, as willing to abandon the interests of the United States to those of Great Britain, and desirous to prostrate our independence at the foot of her supremacy. These calumnies, which assailed him while living, begin to draw away now reluctantly from his sepulchre.

The integrity of his political and the purity of his private life, no man, who has any character to stake, will now dare to take upon himself the responsibility of impeaching. His opinions, such as they were, are open to candid censure or wise reproof. If he mistook the interest or was blind to the

real prospects of his country, they were the errours of a mind zealous, perhaps in over measure, for its prosperity and honour; of a mind that applied to political conduct, possibly, too high and nice a standard of political duty, and that allowed itself in deploring casual and temporary, as though they were necessary and permanent aberrations from patriotick obligations.

The evidence is abundant in every part of this volume, that the noble sentiment, with which he closed his speech against Mr. Madison's resolutions, in 1794, was a predominating principle, at every period of his life.

* "Let us assert a genuine independence of spirit; we shall be false to our duty and feeling as Americans, if we basely descend to a servile dependence on France or Great Britain."

It was ever the aspiration of his heart and struggle of his life to make his countrymen really independent. And for this purpose, he dared to look into all the consequences of political conduct, and to expose them to their contemplation, whether the truth, which he thought he had discovered, was palatable, or disgusting. He perceived that the affairs of the world were involved in an extraordinary crisis, and that the fates of his own country could not be regarded abstractedly from those which awaited the nations, with which it was connected. Of the men, who sat at the helm, he could not forget by what means they had attained power, nor fail to be jealous of such men, in the exercise of it. Of the justice of some of the claims they advanced, he was doubtful; the prudence of asserting others, in all their theoretick extent, he questioned; as the only means proposed of maintaining them were calculated to injure his own countrymen, without materially affecting foreign nations, he was indignant at them. No where does he oppose the augmentation of any efficient means of offence, or defence. On the contrary, the uncertainty of a revenue, solely dependent upon commerce, the insufficiency of our army, the destruction of the hopes of our navy, were the perpetual themes of his regret and censure. And this at a time, when the resources he desired to establish, and the force to be increased, would have tended only to give strength and patronage to an administration, in which he had no confidence and over which he could hope to have no influence. The in

dependence of his country he wished to see resting, not on temporary expedients, on popular excitements or the utterance of vain declamations, but on the basis of pecuniary resources, and on naval and military means and skill, which should be seasonably put in preparation.

That this was without reference to any thing else than the assurance of our liberties and rights against any aggressor, is sufficiently apparent from the general tenour of his writings. We e shall, however, cite only two instances, in one of which he looks definitely at preparation against Great Britain, in the other against France. We know not, in what language patriotism can better express its honest zeal for national independence, or how its truth or impartiality can be less dubiously displayed. In relation to the aggressions of the former upon. our neutral rights, he thus, in 1806, expresses himself.

"A solicitude about the ability of Great Britain to resist France, will be understood by some of the weak, and will be misrepresented by all the base and unprincipled, as implying a desire, that the United States, in respect to maritime rights and national dignity, should lie at the mercy of the mistress of the ocean. On the contrary; let every real American patriot insist, that our government should place the nation on its proper footing, as a naval power. With a million tons of merchant shipping, and a hundred thousand seamen, equally brave and expert, it is the fault of a poorspirited administration, that we are insignificant and despised. It is their fault, that our harbours are blockaded, by three British ships, and that outrages are perpetrated within the waters that form part of our jurisdiction, such as no circumstances can justify. Can there exist a stronger proof, that our insignificance is to be ascribed to a bad administration, than this single fact with the greatest merchant marine in the world, except one, and, of consequence, capable of being soon the second naval power, (in our own seas, the first,) we are utterly helpless: that, in the opinion even of our rulers themselves, our only mode of redress, when our commerce is obstructed, is TO DESTROY OUR COMMERCE !! We have the means for its protection, which our administration, unhappily, think it would prove more expensive to use, than its protection would be worth. They would provide against the violation of our territory by tribute, and of our commerce by non-importation."

:

His views of the duty in relation to French aggressions are perfectly consentaneous with those expressed in the preceding passage, and he thus exhibits them.

"Supposing, then, that the French empire is, in its very structure and principles, a temporary sway, that the causes, whatever they may be, which have made its action irresistible, produce and prolong a re-action sufficient † Page 367.

* Page 342.