men and manners.
A human creature, in a simple unimproved state, is naturally
generous and benevolent; but when he comes abroad into the
world, and observes the universal depravity of morals, and
the narrow selfishness that every where prevail, according
to his particular temper or circumstances, he is either
contaminated by the example, or contracts a misanthropical
disposition, and hates or despises the greatest part of his
species. There may be, and no doubt there are, men who have
seen the world, who have been conversant, even in courts,
during their whole lives, who yet have retained and
exercised humane and benevolent dispositions; but such
characters are very rare, and, for the reasons above
specified, never can be poetically probable. Such, Sir, is
your Grandison; he seems never to have enjoyed retirement,
to have been abroad almost all his life-time, to have seen
all the courts in Europe, and been conversant, with the
great, rich, and powerful, in all nations. You represent him
likewise to be a man universally learned, and tell us, at
the same time, in capital letters, that SIR CH. GRAN. is a
CHRISTIAN; and that too, in the strictest and most bigotted
sense of the word; for he refuses the woman he loves, for a
difference in religious principles. This, in my humble
opinion, is likewise an inconsistency, for universal
learning naturally leads to scepticism, and the most useful,
as well as solid branch of human knowledge, consists in
knowing how little can be known. There are several other
inconsistencies in his character, particularly in some of
his duelling stories; besides, at any rate, his benevolence
has something showy and ostentatious in it; nothing in short
of that graceful and beautiful nature which appears in
Fielding's Allworthy.

The character of Lovelace is yet more inconsistent, still
more deficient in poetical probability, and indeed intirely
contradictory to Homer and nature. In all Homer's works,
there are not two characters between whom there is a greater
contrast and opposition, than between those of Achilles and
Ulysses. They enjoy no quality in common, but that of
valour; and the valour of the one is as different from that
of the other, as can well be imagin'd; for they all along
partake of their general characters, and are consistent with
them. But you, Sir, who, in the mouth of Harriet Byron and
that _dear flighty creature_ Lady G. sometimes take upon you
to criticize that great mast