opinion of Pausanias. that success in
love depends upon Fortune. "They particularly renounce Celestial
Venus, into whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a
building in AEgina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a
horn of Amalthea; and near her there is a winged Love. The meaning of
this is, that the success of men in love affairs depends more on the
assistance of Fortune than the charms of beauty. I am persuaded, too,
with Pindar (to whose opinion I submit in other particulars), that
Fortune is one of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is
more powerful than her sisters."--See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii.
chap.26. p.246. Taylor's "Translation."

Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies of the
younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel,
and a young English girl of some fortune and family (a Miss
Strafford) runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while
Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to
espouse his chambermaid. If I recollect rightly, this remark was also
repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm's correspondence, seven or
eight years ago.

In regard "to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes
_profane_ levity, which his conduct and language _often_ exhibited,"
and which so much shocks Mr. Bowles, I object to the indefinite word
"_often_;" and in extenuation of the occasional occurrence of such
language it is to be recollected, that it was less the tone of
_Pope_, than the tone of the _time_. With the exception of the
correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of
the period have come down to us; but those, such as they are--a few
scattered scraps from Farquhar and others--are more indecent and
coarse than any thing in Pope's letters. The comedies of Congreve,
Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Cibber, &c., which naturally attempted to
represent the manners and conversation of private life, are decisive
upon this point; as are also some of Steele's papers, and even
Addison's. We all know what the conversation of Sir R. Walpole, for
seventeen years the prime minister of the country, was at his own
table, and his excuse for his licentious language, viz. "that every
body understood _that_, but few could talk rationally upon less
common topics." The refinement of latter days,--which is perhaps the
consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much
as of virtuous civilisati