please, from the aptness and pleasantry of their conceits. His wit is so predominant, that, if we may be allowed the expression, it is discovered in his silence. A most striking example of this is where he uses the rhetorical figure called the Aposiopesis, or suppression, in displaying the head of a prostitute: he introduces it with saying, "This is the head of a woman of the town, or a ———; but, whatever other title the lady may have, we are not entitled here to take notice of it." Nothing can be more delicate than this suppression: it displays a tenderness and liberality to the frailty of female nature, which does as much credit to his feelings as to his genius.

   We know not a more happy instance of giving expression to silence, or giving an idea without verbal assistance, than is contained in the above character.

   The humour of this Lecture is grotesque, lively, and delicate; it varies its form with the character it ridicules. Nothing can surpass the humorous whimsicality of his situations and expressions; for they please as much from the fanciful manner in which he places the ridiculous to our view, as from the resemblance with which he so naturally describes the prototype. His description of a London Blood cannot fail to excite laughter in the features of the greatest cynic. The natural propensity which mankind has to laugh at mischief never was more happily gratified than from his describing this character

    pushing a blind horse into a china-shop

   . Had he chosen any other animal, the effect would not have been so great on his audience. If it had been an ass, it would have been attended with an idea of the obstinacy and the reluctance of this animal, which would have suggested its being too difficult; it would not, therefore, have excited, in any manner, the risible faculty. Had it been an ox, it would have

   connected with it the idea of too much fury and devastation to entertain with the picture. But choosing a blind horse, who, from his loss of sight and natural docility, may be easily supposed to be led into such a situation; the mind adopts the credibility, and enjoys the whimsical and mischievous consequence, while it condemns the folly and puerility of the Blood who occasioned it. It is this peculiar faculty of choice of subjects, situation, and assemblage, which constitutes the excellence of a humorist, which Stevens possessed in a most eminent degree; for he displays it in almost every line of his Lecture. Indeed, in this art we know of none superior to him, except it be Shakespeare in some of his 

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