sufficiently roomy, and in a healthy situation. All men are equal. The labours of luxury are at end. And the necessary labours of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The number of persons, and the produce of the island, we suppose to be the same as at present. The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice, will divide this produce among all the members of the society according to their wants. Though it would be impossible that they should all have animal food, every day, yet vegetable food, with meat occasionally, would satisfy the desires of a frugal people, and would be sufficient to preserve them in health, strength, and spirits.' With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ⚫ ever yet been known. But to be quite sure that we do not go beyond the truth, we will only suppose the period of doubling to be twenty-five years, a ratio of increase, which is well known to have taken place throughout all the Northern States of America. To answer the demands of a population increasing so rapidly, Mr. Godwin's calculation of half an hour a day for each man, would certainly not be sufficient. It is probable that the half of every man's time must be employed for this purpose. Yet with such, or much greater exertions, a person who is acquainted with the nature of the soil in this country, and who reflects on the fertility of the lands already in cultivation, and the barrenness of those that are not cultivated, will be very much disposed to doubt, whether the whole average produce could possibly be doubled in twenty-five years from the present period. The only chance of success would be the ploughing up all the grazing countries, and putting an end almost entirely to the use of animal food. Yet a part of this scheme might defeat itself. The soil of England will not produce much without dressing; and cattle seem to be necessary to make that species of manure, which best suits the land. In China, it is said, that the soil in some of the provinces is so fertile, as to produce two crops of rice in the year without dressing. None of the lands in England will answer to this description. Difficult, however, as it might be, to double the average produce of the island in twenty-five years, let us suppose it effected. At the expiration of the first period therefore, the food, though almost entirely vegetable, would be sufficient to support in health, the doubled population of fourteen millions. During the next period of doubling, where will the food be found to satisfy the importunate demands of the increasing numbers, Where is the fresh land to turn up? where is the dressing necessary to improve that which is already in cultivation? There is no person with the smallest knowledge of land, but would say, that it was im possible that the average produce of the country could be increased during the second twenty-five years by a quantity equal to what it at present yields. Yet we will suppose this increase, however improbable, to take place. The exuberant strength of the argument allows of almost any concession. Even with this concession, however, there would be seven millions at the expiration of the second term, unprovided ३ vided for A quantity of food equal to the frugal support of twenty. one millions, would be to be divided among twenty-eight millions, Reasoning in this way, the author proves that, before the end of the first century, there would exist several millions for whom there would be no provision; though, all this time, the yearly Increase of the produce of the earth is supposed to be greater than the boldest speculator can imagine. Want, rapine, and murder, he infers, would be paramount through the world; or Mr. Godwin's system must be given up, and an administration of property established, not very different from that which prevails in civilized states at present; as the best, though inadequate, remedy for the evils which would press on the society. Having thus given a general view of the author's reasoning against the systems of Condorcet and Godwin, our limits will not permit us to enter into a detail of the arguments by which he refutes their subordinate parts, the supposed extinction of the passion between the sexes-mental stimulants, &c. &c. We cannot, however, take our leave of this ingenious and re spectable writer, and pass in silence some very interesting positions which he offers, with great modesty, in the conclusion of his work. They relate to the moral situation of man in this life with respect to a future existence; and he endeavours to prove that it is inconsistent with our ideas of the foreknow. lege of God, that man should here be in a state of trial. It is more probable, he thinks, that this life is but a mighty process for awakening matter into mind, and that moral evil is probably necessary to the production of moral excellence. The agents of moral evil, he conceives to be instruments in the hands of the Deity, for the production of moral good; and the future and eternal punishments denounced against them by revelation, he believes to mean nothing more than a simple annihilation by death, while the agents of moral good shall flourish in immortality for ever. We shall give two extracts, in which these opinions are exactly stated (p. 351--354 and 388--391): 5. Infinite power is so vast and incomprehensible an idea, that the mind of man must necessarily be bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the crude and puerile conceptions which we sometimes form of this attribute of the Deity, we might imagine that God could call into being myriads, and myriads of existences; all free from pain and imperfection; all eminent in goodness and wisdom; all capable of the highest enjoyments; and unnumbered as the points throughout infinite space. But when from these vain and extravagant dreams of fancy, we turn our eyes to the book of nature, where alone we can read God as he is, we see a constant succession of sentient beings, rising apparently from so many specks of matter, going through a long and sometimes painful process in this world; but many of them, attaining, ere the termination of it, such high qualities B4 ties and powers, as seem to indicate their fitness for some superior state. Ought we not then to correct our crude and puerile ideas of Infinite Power from the contemplation of what we actually see exist. ing? Can we judge of the Creator but from his creation? And, unless we wish to exalt the power of God at the expence of his goodness, ought we not to conclude, that even to the Great Creator, Almighty as he is, a certain process may be necessary, a certain time, (or at least what appears to us as time) may be requisite, in order to form beings with those exalted qualities of mind which will fit them for his high purposes? • A state of trial seems to imply a previously formed existence, that does not agree with the appearance of man in infancy, and indicates something like suspicion and want of foreknowledge, inconsistent with those ideas which we wish to cherish of the Supreme Being. I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before in a note, to consider the world, and this life, as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind; a process necessary, to awaken inert, chaotic matter, into spirit; to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul; to elicit an æthereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life, may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man, is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter, in which he may be said to be born.' • When we reflect on the temptations to which man must necessarily be exposed in this world, from the structure of his frame, and the operation of the laws of nature; and the consequent moral certainty, that many vessels will come out of this mighty creative fur. nace in wrong shapes; it is perfectly impossible to conceive, that any of these creatures of God's hand can be condemned to eternal suffering. Could we once admit such an idea, all our natural con. ceptions of goodness and justice would be completely overthrown; and we could no longer look up to God as a merciful and righteous Being. But the doctrine of life and immortality which was brought to light by the gospel, the doctrine that the end of righteousness is everlasting life, but that the wages of sin are death, is in every respect just and merciful, and worthy of the Great Creator. Nothing can appear more consonant to our reason, than that those beings which come out of the creative process of the world in lovely and beautiful forms, should be crowned with immortality; while those which come out mis-shapen, those whose minds are not suited to a purer and happier state of existence, should perish, and be condemned to mix again with their original clay. Eternal condemnation of this kind may be considered as a species of eternal punishment; and it is not wonderful that it should be represented, sometimes, under images of suffering. But life and death, salvation and destruction, are more frequently opposed to each other in the New Testament, than happiness and misery. The Supreme Being would appear to us in a very different view, if we were to consider him as pursuing the creatures. creatures that had offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely condemning to their original insensibility those beings, that, by the operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to a purer state of happiness. • Life is, generally speaking, a blessing independent of a future state. It is a gift which the vicious would not always be ready to throw away, even if they had no fear of death. The partial pain, therefore, that is inflicted by the Supreme Creator, while he is forming numberless beings to a capacity of the highest enjoyments, is but as the dust of the balance in comparison of the happiness that is communicated; and we have every reason to think, that there is no more evil in the world, than what is absolutely necessary as one of the ingredients in the mighty process.' With respect to the first of these propositions, it is obvious that it leads to difficulties as great as those which it is adopted to evade; for is it not as difficult to conceive an Almighty Being bound to a certain process and a certain time in his work of creation or production, as to conceive a just and beneficent Being creating existences embittered by pain and debased by imperfection?-The question between the two opinions seems only to be which attribute shall be sacrificed. On the theory respecting the punishment of moral evil, we leave the decision to the divines. We are not inclined to think, however, that the general adoption of such an idea would much diminish the quantity of moral evil in the world. ART. II. Dr. Anderson's Edition of the British Poets. [Article concluded from Vol. XXVI. p. 397.] W ITH pleasure we resume the account of this comprehensive, though not complete, collection of British Poetry, and again direct our attention to the consideration of the biography; which shews great diligence and judgment in collecting and arranging the various materials that many volumes have supplied. In the former parts of the work, which we have already noticed, and in some of the remaining volumes, Dr. Anderson has evinced his knowlege and skill as a compiler: but, before we take leave of him, we shall introduce him to the notice of the public in the more arduous and respectable character of an original author, -as the writer of those Lives which had not passed under the previous review of Dr. Johnson. In the Eighth Volume, are contained the works of Pope, Gay, Tickell, Somerville, Pattison, Hammond, Savage, Hill, Broome, Pitt, and Blair.-In the first four Lives, we observe little оссаsion for comment, former accounts having been implicitly followed; and we by no means feel satisfied that the merits of Pattison, 5 Pattison, an unhappy and ill-advised young man, who died at the early age of twenty-one, (in penury almost amounting to absolute want, occasioned by his own indiscretions,) entitled him to a place in this collection. He appears to us to be one of who "Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land," In the Life of Hammond, we find an erroneous statement of that poet's birth, by Dr. Johnson, corrected; he was the second son of Anthony Hammond, Esq. of Somersham-Place in the county of Huntingdon, and Member in Parliament for Shoreham in Sussex, and not the son of " the silver-tongued Hammond" who was of Wotton in the county of Norfolk, and married to a sister of Sir Robert Walpole. -To his poetical exertions Dr. A. is more kind, if not more candid, than his former biographers. In the Life of Aaron Hill, we observe nothing of importance which has not been transcribed from the piece of biography inserted in the fifth volume of Cibber's Lives, and furnished, as that book informs us, by an unknown hand. Of this work, Dr. A. following Dr. Johnson's account of it, says in his Life of Thomson that Robert Shiels was the real author of the "Lives of the Poets," published under the name of Theophilus Cibber. For a true statement of this literary circumstance, we refer Dr. Anderson and our readers to our 65th volume, p. 409. In the account of Pitt, we are presented with the following very happy instance of " apt alliteration's artful aid."-Speaking of Wolsey, the poet says, "Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred, How high his honour holds his haughty head." In the Life of Blair, we were much surprised to find that the character which we had given of Cowper in our 74th vol. p. 416. was copied with very little variation, and applied to the author of "the Grave." Without inquiring into the propriety of the application, or the similarity subsisting between the powers of the two poets, we cannot but think that Dr. A. has in this, as well as in many other instances, acted a disingenuous part in thus adorning himself with borrowed plumes. With such resources and expedients, it is difficult to trace him 'to his hiding-places. The Ninth Volume presents us with the poetical productions of Swift, Thomson, Watts, Hamilton, A. Phillips, G. West, Collins, Dyer, Shenstone, Mallet, Akenside, and Harte. Collins, |