opinion, is likewise an inconsistency, for universal learning naturally leads to scepticism, and the most useful, as well as solid branch of human knowledge, consists in knowing how little can be known. There are several other inconsistencies in his character, particularly in some of his duelling stories; besides, at any rate, his benevolence has something showy and ostentatious in it; nothing in short of that graceful and beautiful nature which appears in Fielding’s Allworthy. The character of Lovelace is yet more inconsistent, still more deficient in poetical probability, and indeed intirely contradictory to Homer and nature. In all Homer’s works, there are not two characters between whom there is a greater contrast and opposition, than between those of Achilles and Ulysses. They enjoy no quality in common, but that of valour; and the valour of the one is as different from that of the other, as can well be imagin’d; for they all along partake of their general characters, and are consistent with them. But you, Sir, who, in the mouth of Harriet Byron and that _dear flighty creature_ Lady G. sometimes take upon you to criticize that great master of nature, shew that you have either never studied him, or profited very little by him; for in this one character of Lovelace, you have united these two dissimilar and discordant characters of Achilles and Ulysses; you have given him all the fierceness, cruelty, and contempt of laws, impetuosity, rashness, in short, all the furious ungovernable passions of the one, and have at the same time provided him with all the cunning, craft, dissimulation, and command over his passions, which so much distinguish the other. How to reconcile to probability, or even to possibility, the existence of such opposite and contradictory qualities in one human bosom, is a task which I leave to you.