ent and entire monopoly of all
the patronage of the state.

Without undervaluing, then, the effects of the Revolution of 1688; without
discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off
the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II., it may safely be
affirmed, that it was George III., Lord Bute, and Mr Pitt, who put the
British constitution upon its right, and the only durable and beneficial,
basis, and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and
beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English
history during the eighteenth century; this is the conclusion forced on
the mind by the perusal of _Walpole's Memoirs_, and his vehement abuse of
Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power.
Doubtless, they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to
regain his prerogative, the minister to secure his power; but still it
was, on the part of both, a step in the right direction. But for the
resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy--but for their
wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand
its debasement, a domineering party would have become omnipotent, the
people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption,
and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former
experience, in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful
revolution. George III. said, on the first decisive parliamentary division
which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761--"At length, then, we have a
king on the throne in England." Posterity will add--at length the
foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable
basis.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.

NO. II.

DRYDEN AND POPE.

Specimens of the British Critics are unavoidably an irregular history of
Criticism in this island; and such a history of our Criticism is
unavoidably one, too, of our Poetry. The first name in our series is
DRYDEN. See what we have written, and you find half of our paper is on
Shakspeare. POPE is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which
his name as a critic rests, one is his character of the Protagonist. Thus,
for this earlier part of a new Age, the Presidents of Criticism are the
two Kings of Verse.

When the poet is a critic, how shall we sever in him the two Arts? If his
prose is explicit, his verse is implicit criticism; and th