Form of a Warrant of a Commander in Chief for holding a General Court-Martial; 5. Warrant for holding a Court of Enquiry, iffued by his late Majefty George II. in 1757; 6. Statue palled in Ireland, Anno 1798, for the Enactment of Martial Law. To the whole is added a copious and useful Index. From this analyfis of Mr. Tytler's Effay on Military Law, our readers will perceive what they have to expect from a perufal of the work. As a fpecimen of the author's style and reafoning, we fhall extract from Chap. VII. the following obfervations on the fentences of General Courts-Martial, not because we confider them as peculiarly valuable to military men, but becaufe fome of them at leaft are applicable to the fentences of all courts whatever. "As by the tenor of the oaths administered to all the members of e court, they are fworn, at no time whatfoever, nor upon any account, to difclofe or difcover the particular vote or opinion of any particular member, unless required to give evidence of the fame in a court of juftice; fo it is evidently not proper that the fentence of the courtmartial fhould exprefs by what majority of the members it has been pronounced, becaufe that might lead to the difcovery of particular votes or opinions; nor although the court be unanimous in its judgment, is it proper to exprefs that circumftance in the fentence; for this in fact is disclosing the votes and opinions of all the members: yet there feems to be no impropriety if there should be an unanimous concurrence of the members for a recommendation to the mercy of the fovereign, that this circumftance fhould therein be mentioned, as giving the greater weight to the application, and at the fame time not leading to any difcovery of particular opinions refpecting the fentence iffelf by which the prifoner has been condemned. "The opinions and fentences of the court may be either general in their tenor, that is, declaring the prifoner guilty or not guilty of the articles of charge; or they may be fpecial, finding certain facts proved or not proved; in confequence of which, they declare him guilty or not guilty on thofe articles: for, in all cafes, the guilt or innocence of the prifoner with refpect to the particular charges, muft be pointedly found and declared; otherwife the jurors do not difcharge the whole of their duty, which requires, that they should not only decide whe ther the facts are proved or not proved; but likewife pronounce their judgment on the criminality of those facts. was formerly a very ufual custom, to exprefs in the sentences of courts-martial the particular articles of war of which the sentence declared the prisoner to be guilty of a breach or violation; but the more recent, and the better practice, is to omit all fuch reference to the artisles of war, as being in itfelf unneceflary, and frequently affording handle to cavilling, and fophiftical objections of irregularity or incongruity with the articles referred to. If the fentence fhould be called in question, as not warranted by any pofitive enactment of the military law, it is the province of the party who thus arraigns the judgment, to prove his objection by pointing out that incongruity; for the prefumption is, that the decrees and judgments of all courts are warranted by law, "For a reafon much a-kin to the above, it would feem moft advifable for courts-martial in their opinions and fentences, to avoid all unneceffary minutenefs in detailing or fpecifying the grounds of thofe opinions and judgments, and in particular to avoid all argument in juftification of their fentences; for it is unwife in any court to hold forth to the public a challenge to impugn their judgments, or purpofely to invite to a difcuffion of the grounds on which they have proceeded. If a fentence is general, and without the affignment of fpecial reafons, it may be defended by all the good reasons which are applicable to the matter; but if it affigns its fpecial grounds, it must Hand or fall by thefe alone. It muft at the fame time be observed, that in cafes of a circumftantial nature, and where the fentence of the court is not general upon the whole matters of charge, but fpecial, finding the prifoner of fome points of accufation, and acquitting him of others; as the punishment to be awarded ought to be in ftrict proportion to the measure of guilt, fo it may be extremely proper, in fuch cafes, to fpecify in the fentence the particular grounds of the opinion and judgment of the court. It is not cuftomary in the fentences of courts-martial to adjudge or direct the particular mode of the punishinent where it is a capital one, nor the time or place of its execution, but only in general terms to adjudge the prifoner to fuffer death; leaving to the power by whofe authority the fentence is executed, the manner, the time, and place of its infliction. The appropriate capital punishment of a foldier is to be fhot to death; but capital crimes, when attended with peculiar infamy, are expiated by the more infa mous punishment of hanging by the neck." ART. V. Confiderations on Milton's early Reading, and the prima Stamina of his Paradife Loft; together with Extracts from a Poet of the Sixteenth Century. In a Letter to William Falconer, M. D. from Charles Dunfter, M. A. £48 PP. THE 5s. Evans, Pall-Mall, &c. 1800. 12mo. HE paradoxical authors who wrote the praise of the Gout, and other eccentric commendations, might have found fomething to fay, even in favour of an ill tate of health, which has often incidentally promoted the cause of literature, by engaging active minds in calm and fedentary purfuits. It will be regretted very justly that Mr. Dunster should have this occafion for confinement; but the confequences of it, his editions of valuable Poems, and the illuftrations it has led him to bestow. on fome of our native claffics, will be hailed by many readers. The advice of the Friend and Physician to whom this pleafing volume is addressed, produced this double advantage to the author and the public. It may be ufeful, therefore, to others fimilarly fituated, to fee the patient's grateful acknowledgment in his own words. It is no quack noftrum which is thus recommended, but a judicious and effectual prescription, in the line of regular practice. Mr. Dunfter thus opens his book: "My dear Sir, Among the various obligations which I owe to your friendship, the advice you gave me, when I first became an invalid, to have always fome literary object in purfuit, but not of a fatiguing kind, is not one of the leaft. 1 have found the best effects from it; and in forming from defultory reading collections for illuftrating the works of our great claffic and divine poet, I am confident, that I have paffed through many hours of invalid languor and morbid oppreffion with infinitely lefs fenfibility of them, than 1 fhould have done if devoid of fome mental occupation-" P. 1. The attempt made in this publication, and made with great foceefs, is to trace fome leading Reps of our admirable poet, Milton, in the path through which he walked to eminence and immortality to obferve where he enriched his ftores of language, gained or confirmed his habit of applying poetry to facred fubjects, and probably first viewed with eyes of poetic partiality, that grand topic of celebration on which he ultimately formed his Paradife Loft. These things Mr. D. Has difcovered in the works of Joshua Sylvester, and chiefly in those tranflated from the French of Du Bartas, a poet then in high repute. The probabilities on which this opinion is founded are of great ftrength. The tranflations were published at the time when Milton was beginning to write poetry, and certainly was an affiduous reader of it; they were publifhed in the very Street in which he then lived with his father. That he was well acquainted with them, is in itself fufficiently probable from these circumftances, and is rendered certain by a variety, of quotations, in which the language of his early poems is fhown to exhibit ftrong and frequent coincidences with that of this author. Sylvefter's Du Bartas could not well have escaped the notice of Milton, had he been at a much greater distance from the place of its publication. It was a work, in its day, of fingular popularity. There had been at least two quarto editions of it in 1613, and it was printed in folio in 1621 and 1633. Another folio edition, dated 1641, is now before us, which, whether it was the third or fourth of that form, indicates a very extraordinary demand for the work. The complimentary verfes prefixed to it were furnished by the very first wits of the age, Ben Johnfon and others, and are very warm in their commendations. In fhort, it is a work which could not not poffibly have been overlooked by Milton, and, though it is in point of ftyle far from polished or correct, it abounds fufficiently in the moft genuine beauties of poetry and poetic language, to have made a forcible impreffion on a young and ardent mind, "fmit with the love of facred fong." Let us now hear Mr. D. himself upon the fubject. "I am not indeed without an opinion, that the true origin of Paradife Loft is, in this refpect, to be traced primarily to Sylvefter's Du Bartas; and I would precifely reverfe Dr. Farmer's obfervation, by fuppofing that this "led to Milton's great poem," not only by awakening his paffion for facred poefy, but by abfolutely furnishing what Dr. Johnfon, in his Preface to Lauder's pamphlet, terms the prima ftamina of Paradife Left. This idea occurred to me, before I had obferved by whom the book in queftion was printed. And it certainly corroborated it, when I found it recorded, at the end of the book, to have been printed by Humphrey Lownes, develling on Bread-freet Hill. At this time Milton was actually living with his father in Bread-ftreet; and it is very poffible that his early love of books made him a frequent vifitor to his neighbour the printer, who, from his addrefs to the reader, appears to have been a man of poetical tafte; and who, as fuch, was probably much ftruck with our young poet's early attention to books, and his other indications of genius. "I have never feen Du Bartas's poems in their original French. They have been much condemned by fome critics; and it has been faid, on ne trouve dans fes ouvrages ni invention ni genie poetique. The ftyle of them has alfo been cenfured as ampoulé. By others they have been as much applauded and approved. It is probable that Milton, before he wrote his great poem, had feen them in the original, but this is a very immaterial confideration. To the English Du Bartas we cer tainly must trace him, in fome of his earlieft poetry, as well as in his lateft. "The English Du Bartas reads with a high fpirit of originality; and I am fully perfuaded that it ftrongly caught the willing attention of the young poet." P. 6. Mr. Dunfter then juflifies himself against the idea of making any such attack upon Milton as was made by Lauder, and indeed the whole plan of his book has a very different tendency. "Nothing can be further from my intention than to infinuate that Milton' was a plagiarift, or fervile imitator; but I conceive that, having read thefe facred poems of very high merit, at the immediate age when his own mind was juft beginning to teem with poetry, he retained numberlefs thoughts, paffages, and expreffions therein, fo deeply in his mind, that they hung inherently on his imagination, and became as it were naturalized there. Hence many of them were afterwards infenfibly transfufed into his own compofitions." P. 11. "That the fubject of Milton's great poem muft naturally have led him to read in Sylvefter's Du Bartas." P. 3. The The body of this little work confifts chiefly of inftances of this kind, taken in order from the juvenile poems of Milton, Among these fome will be found of courfe to have more, and fume lefs individual weight; but the whole forms together a very curious illuftration of the early ftudies of our great poet. A few of the moft remarkable of these inftances we will produce. In his paraphrase of Psalm 136, Milton fays, The horned moon to fhine by night, . Amongst her fpangled fifters bright. On this Mr. D. remarks, This expreffion is alfo admired by Mr. Warton as very poetical. But Sylvefter had before termed the ftars And He has alfo And thofe bright pangles that the heav'ns adorn. P. 13. the twinkling Spangles of the firmament. P. 72. -heav'n's ftar-Spangled canopy. P. 43. -the bright far Spangled regions. P. 143. He befpangles indeed the ftars, upon various other occafions." P. 27. The beautiful expreffion in the Allegro, - foft Lydian airs Married to immortal verfe, is thus alfo traced to Sylvefter: "This expreffion, of marrying words and mufic, is most abundant in Sylvefter's Du Bartas. Thus, where the birds in Paradife are defcribed accompanying with their fongs the hymns of the angels, Where thousand forts of birds, both night and day, Sung Adam's blifs, and their great Maker's praife. And when the Ifraelites are rejoicing, after having passed through the Red Sea; They skip and dance, and marrying all their voices To timbrels, hautboys, and loud cornets' noifes, Make all the fhores refound, and all the coafts, With the fhrill praifes of the Lord of Hofts. P. 364. BRIT, CRIT, VOL. XVI, AUGUST, 1800. |