"THE FIEND DISCRETION."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR."]
SrR,—In your recent review of the new edition of Daniel
Webster's " Speeches," your critic calls attention to a quotation made in it from Sir William Jones's lines :-
" And sovereign Law, the State's collected will, O'er thrones and globes elate,
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill ; Smit by her sacred frown, The fiend, Discretion, like a vapour sinks."
Your critic adds that " Sir William Jones wrote Oppression, and not Discretion;" and consequently calls this "an astound- ing misprint," an incuriosa infelicitas, " which classes a man as an editor," and "a blunder at the genesis of which it might be amusing to guess." I beg leave to call your attention to the fact that in the quarto edition of Jones's Works (IV. 572), and in the duodecimo edition of his Poems (the only editions of whose existence I am aware), the only reading is, "the fiend Dis- cretion."
As a mere question of literary taste, it would surely seem more likely that Sir William Jones, a scholar and politician,. should dwell on the important antithesis between government by the discretion of the Executive and government by general rules, than that he should launch into a common-place about oppression, utterly devoid of relevancy, in the England of the Hanoverian period. It is probable that he had in his mind Lord Camden's then recently-published words, " The discretion of a Judge is the law of tyrants. It is always unknown ; it is different in different men ; it is casual, and depends upon constitution,. temper, and passion ; in the best, it is oftentimes caprice ; in the worst, it is every vice, folly, and passion to which human nature is liable."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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