Heliodorus. Turpin, Scudery, Cotterel, Sidney, the countess D'Anois, and
"all such writers as were never read," next pass in review. Boccace and
Cervantes occupy a very principal place. The modern French writers of
fictitious history from Fenelon to Voltaire, close the first epistle.
The second is devoted to English authors. The third to the laws of novel
writing.

We shall present our readers, as a specimen, with the character of that
accomplished writer, John Bunyan, whom the poet has generously rescued
from that contempt which fashionable manners, and fashionable
licentiousness had cast upon him.

"See in the front of Britain's honour'd band,
The author of the Pilgrim's Progress stand.
Though, sunk in shades of intellectual night,
He boasted but the simplest arts, to read and write;
Though false religion hold him in her chains,
His judgment weakens and his heart restrains:
Yet fancy's richest beams illum'd his mind,
And honest virtue his mistakes refin'd.
The poor and the illiterate he address'd;
The poor and the illiterate call him blest.
Blest he the man that taught the poor to pray,
That shed on adverse fate religion's day,
That wash'd the clotted tear from sorrow's face,
Recall'd the rambler to the heavenly race,
Dispell'd the murky clouds of discontent,
And read the lore of patience wheresoe'er he went."

Amidst the spirited beauties of this passage, it is impossible not to
consider some as particularly conspicuous. How strong and nervous the
second and fourth lines! How happily expressive the two Alexandrines!
What a luminous idea does the epithet "murky" present to us! How
original and picturesque that of the "clotted tear!" If the same
expression be found in the Ode to Howard, let it however be considered,
that the exact propriety of that image to wash it from the face (for how
else, candid reader, could a tear already clotted be removed) is a clear
improvement, and certainly entitles the author to a repetition. Lastly,
how consistent the assemblage, how admirable the climax in the last six
lines! Incomparable they might appear, but we recollect a passage nearly
equal in the Essay on History,

"_Wild_ as thy _feeble_ Metaphysic page,
Thy History _rambles_ into _Steptic rage_;
Whose giddy and fantastic _dreams abuse_,
A Hampden's Virtue and a Shakespeare's Muse."

How elevated the turn of this passage! To be at once luxuriant and
feeble, and to lose o