Without undervaluing, then, the effects of the Revolution of 1688; without discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II., it may safely be affirmed, that it was George III., Lord Bute, and Mr Pitt, who put the British constitution upon its right, and the only durable and beneficial, basis, and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English history during the eighteenth century; this is the conclusion forced on the mind by the perusal of _Walpole's Memoirs_, and his vehement abuse of Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power. Doubtless, they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to regain his prerogative, the minister to secure his power; but still it was, on the part of both, a step in the right direction. But for the resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy--but for their wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand its debasement, a domineering party would have become omnipotent, the people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption, and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former experience, in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful revolution. George III. said, on the first decisive parliamentary division which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761--"At length, then, we have a king on the throne in England." Posterity will add--at length the foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable basis.
NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS.
Specimens of the British Critics are unavoidably an irregular history of Criticism in this island; and such a history of our Criticism is unavoidably one, too, of our Poetry. The first name in our series is DRYDEN. See what we have written, and you find half of our paper is on Shakspeare. POPE is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which his name as a critic rests, one is his character of the Protagonist. Thus, for this earlier part of a new Age, the Presidents of Criticism are the two Kings of Verse.