Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/459

 at one period strongly marked with all the characters of vice and barbarism, by some happy conjuncture emerge to light at another; and distinguish themselves by virtue, by patriotism, by those arts that improve and adorn life; these nations fall again into corruption, vice, and ignorance. Shall it be said that the Romans were the same kind of people in the flourishing times of their commonwealth that they were under Nero, or even under Trajan or Antoninus? or the same that we find them at this day? However, this degeneracy is by no means in an even course, some commonwealths having been most glorious in their beginnings; others after they had long continued.

The work before us no otherwise inclines to the former party, than by a tendency to shew the picture of the present times in the most disadvantageous point of light. It is indeed throughout a most severe invective against the manners and principles of the times in our country. The work discovers reading and reflection; the characters are strongly marked, the stile is elegant, pointed, and lively. But the author seems sometimes too minute in his paintings, sometimes overcharges them; and several have observed that a certain air of arrogance and superiority prevails through the whole work. These were the blemishes which took something from the reputation which this piece had at first generally and justly acquired, on account of those beauties which we have mentioned.

The first volume of this work was printed the year before our design; but as the second cannot be well understood without some knowledge of that to which it chiefly refers, we thought it not amiss to give some account of it.

Our author lays it down as the corner stone of his structure, that a vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy is the character of the present times; and the design is to shew how far the present ruling manners and principles of the nation may tend to its continuance or destruction.

The more fully to delineate the reigning manners, he takes the modern man even in his cradle, where he finds the first seeds of his effeminacy sown, and follows him through his education, his travels, and his appearance in town, and finds every thing in all calculated to form him to folly, effeminacy, and dissipation. Here he considers the frivolous vein of common conversation, the trifling amusements in fashion, and the predominant lust of gaming. From the amusements he passes to the learning of the times.

"A knowledge of books, says he, a taste in arts, a proficiency in science, was formerly regarded as a proper qualification in a man of fashion. The annals of our country have transmitted to us the name and memory of men, as eminent in learning and taste, as in rank and fortune. It will not, I presume, be regarded as any kind of satire on the prefent age, to say, that, among the higher ranks, this literary spirit is generally vanished. Reading is now sunk at best into a morning's amusement; till the important hour of dress comes on. Books are no longer regarded as the repositories of taste and knowledge; but are