the old unpolluted English language, no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed.

Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, for fear of moving a sneer. To our refined forefathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buckinghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to be compositions infinitely superior to the allegory of the preaching tinker. We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say, that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seventeenth century, there were only two minds which possessed the imaginative faculty in a very eminent degree. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pilgrim's Progress.

SADLERS REFUTATION REFUTED.1

(Edinburg Review, January 1831.)

WE have, in violation of our usual practice, tran scribed Mr. Sadler's title-page from top to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a dramatic piece, entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's victory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr. Sadler is, and now as much forgotten as Mr. Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, " as it is phrased," in the second act; but the author, thinking that it had been unfairly and unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to shame, with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the

1 A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No. CII.) entitled "Sadler's Law of Population, and Disproof of Human Superfecundity;" containing also Additional Proofs of the Principle enunciated in that Trea tise, founded on the Censuses of different Countries recently published By MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER, M.P. 8vo. London: 1830.

"Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare myself for a storm coming against it, it being resolved by some men that it was necessary that book of mine should, as it is phrased, be run down" -JOHN LOCI E.

d, you may know him by this mark

that the We

es are all in confederacy against him." mber another anecdote, which may perhaps be table to so zealous a churchman as Mr. Sadler. rtain Antinomian preacher, the oracle of a barn, county of which we do not think it proper to menthe name, finding that divinity was not by itself ficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine it that of dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, ted in several offences of this description, and was nsequence brought before two justices, who, in of the powers given them by an act of parliasentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The ding punishment inflicted on the pastor naturally ed the flock; and the poor man was in danger of ng bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill, nly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferand appealing to the Christian charity of the pubnd to his pathetic address he prefixed this most priate text: "Thrice was I beaten with rods. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians." He did not ve that, though St. Paul had been scourged, no er of whippings, however severe, will of thementitle a man to be considered as an apostle. adler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat r error. He should remember that, though may have been laughed at, so has Sir Claudius er; and that it takes something more than the er of all the world to make a Locke.

e body of this pamphlet by no means justifies the el so modestly insinuated on the title-page. Yet st own that, though Mr. Sadler has not risen to vel of Locke, he has done what was almost as It, if not as honourable - he has fallen below his

own.

He is at best a bad writer. His arrangement is an elaborate confusion. His style has been con structed, with great care, in such a manner as to produce the least possible effect by means of the greatest possible number of words. Aspiring to the exalted character of a Christian philosopher, he can never preserve through a single paragraph either the calmness of a philosopher or the meekness of a Christian. His ill-nature would make a very little wit formidable. But, happily, his efforts to wound resemble those of a juggler's snake. The bags of poison are full, but the fang is wanting. In this foolish pamphlet, all the unpleasant peculiarities of his style and temper are brought out in the strongest manner. He is from the beginning to the end in a paroxysm of rage, and would certainly do us some mischief if he knew how. We will give a single instance for the present. Others will present themselves as we proceed. We laughed at some doggerel verses which he cited, and which we, never having seen them before, suspected to be his own. We are now sure that, if the principle on which Solomon decided a famous case of filiation were correct, there can be no doubt as to the justice of our suspicion. Mr. Sadler, who, whatever elements of the poetical character he may lack, possesses the poetical irritability in an abundance which might have sufficed for Homer himself, resolved to retaliate on the person, who, as he supposed, had reviewed him. He has, accordingly, ransacked some collection of college verses, in the hope of finding, among the performances of his supposed antagonist, something as bad as his own. And we must in fairness admit that he has succeeded retty well. We must admit that the gentleman in question sometimes put into his exercises, at seventeen,

almost as great nonsense as Mr. Sadler is in the habit of putting into his books at sixty.

Mr. Sadler complains that we have devoted whole pagos to mere abuse of him. We deny the charge. We have, indeed, characterised, in terms of just repre hension, that spirit which shows itself in every part of his prolix work. Those terms of reprehension we are by no means inclined to retract; and we conceive that we might have used much stronger expressions, without the least offence either to truth or to decorum. There is a limit prescribed to us by our sense of what is due to ourselves. But we think that no indulgence is due to Mr. Sadler. A writer who distinctly announces that he has not conformed to the candour of the agewho makes it his boast that he expresses himself hroughout with the greatest plainness and freedom and whose constant practice proves that by plainness and freedom he means coarseness and rancour - has no right to expect that others shall remember courtesies which he has forgotten, or shall respect one who has ceased to respect himself.

Mr. Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr. Malthus personally, and has confined himself to attacking the doctrines which that gentleman maintains. We should wish to leave that point to the decision of all who have read Mr. Sadler's book, or any twenty pages of it. To quote particular instances of a temper which penetrates and inspires the whole work, is to weaken our charge. Yet, that we may not be suspected of flinching, we will give two specimens, the two first which occur to our recollection. "Whose minister is 't that speaks thus?" says Mr. Sadler, after misrepre enting in a most extraordinary manner, though, we are willing to believe, unintentionally, one of the posi