THE LIBRARY 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 CERF LIBRARY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 REBECCA CERF '02 
 
 IN THE NAMES OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE CERF '95 
 
 MARCEL E. CERF '97 
 
 BARRY CERF '02 
 
^ 
 
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■% *- 
 
 *ti 
 
NEW BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 OF 
 
 ILLUSTRIOUS MEN. 
 
 B T 
 
 MACATJLAY, ROGERS, MARTYN, 
 
 AND OTHERS. 
 
 FROM THE EIGHTH EDITION OF THE ENCYCLOP/EDIA BRITANNICA. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 J. M. WHITTEMORE & CO, 
 
Entered according to Act of Congp*sg, in the year 1857, by 
 
 WHITTEMORE, NILES, AND HALL, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Jdassachusetts 
 
 CAMBRIDGE : 
 
 ALLBN AND FARKHAM, BtlKXOTTPBBS AND PBINT15R8. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 1 
 
 BT wniJAM BPAixusa. 
 
 FRANCIS ATTERBURY » 
 
 BT THOMAS BABINGTOH HACAUI^T. 
 
 FRANCIS BACON 87 
 
 BT WHiLIAM SFAIJ)INa. 
 
 JOSEPH BUTLER ' 61 
 
 BT BSKBT BOGKBS. 
 
 JOHN HOWARD / 85 
 
 BT HSFWOBTH DIZOH. 
 
 JOHN BUNYAN . 106 
 
 BT THOMAS BABIHGTOH UAOAUZiAT. 
 
 HORACE 128 
 
 BT THEODOBK MABTIK. 
 
 ROBERT HALL . . . . * . . . . . .144 
 
 BT HEKTKT BOGKBS. 
 
 (iii) 
 
 Si57G890 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 SCR JOHN FRANKLIN W6 
 
 BT SIB JOHN BICHABDSON. 
 
 HOMER . • • 186 
 
 BT JOHN STUAKT BLACKIB. "^^ 
 
 OUVER GOLDSMITH 224 
 
 BY THOMAS BABINGTON MAOAUIiAT. 
 
 EDWARD GIBBON .......... 242 
 
 BT HENBT BOOESS. 
 
 GASSENDI 289 
 
 BT HENBT BOOEB8. 
 
 JAMES CRICHTON 805 
 
 BT DAVID IBVINO. 
 
 SAMUEL JOHNSON 819 
 
 BY THOMAS BABINGTON MAOAULAT. 
 
 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 861 
 
 BT JAMES DAVID FOBBES. 
 
 DAVID HUME 8T9 
 
 BT HENBT B0OEB8. 
 
NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 Joseph Addison was the eldest son of Dean Addison. 
 He was born at his father's rectory of Milston in "Wiltshire, 
 on the first day of May, 1672. After having passed through 
 several schools, the last of which was the Charter-house, he 
 went to Oxford, when he was about fifteen yeare old. He 
 was first entered of Queen's College, but after two years 
 was elected a scholar of Magdalen College, having, it is 
 said, been recommended by his skill in Latin versification. 
 He took his master's degree in 1693, and held a fellowship 
 from 1699 to 1711. 
 
 The eleven years extending from 1693, or his twenty- 
 first year, to 1704, when he was in his thirty-second, may be 
 set down as the first stage of his life as a man of letters. 
 During this period, embracing no profession, and not as yet 
 entangled in official business, he was a student, an observer, 
 and an author ; and though the literary works which he then 
 produced are not those on which his permanent celebrity 
 rests, they gained for him in his own day a high reputation. 
 He had at first intended to become a clergyman ; but his 
 talents having attracted the attention of leading statesmen 
 belonging to the Whig party, he was speedily diverted from 
 
 1 (1) 
 
2 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 his earlier views by the countenance which these men be- 
 stowed on him. His first patron (to whom he seems to 
 have been introduced by Congreve) was Charles Montague, 
 afterwards Earl of Halifax, who was himself a dabbler in 
 literature, and a protector of literary men ; and he became 
 known afterwards to the accomplished and excellent Somers. 
 While both of them were quite able to estimate justly his 
 literary merits, they had regard mainly to the services which 
 they believed him capable of rendering to the nation or the 
 party ; and accordingly they encouraged him to regulate his 
 pursuits Avith a view to public and official employment. 
 For a considerable time, however, he was left to his own 
 resources, which cannot have been otherwise than scanty. 
 
 His first literary efforts were poetical. In 1G93, a short 
 poem of his, addressed to Dryden, was inserted in the third 
 volume of that veteran writer's Miscellanies. The next 
 volume of this collection contained his translation, in tolerable 
 heroic couplets, of " all Virgil's Foui-th Georgic, except the 
 story of Aristaeus." Two and a half books of Ovid were 
 afterwards attempted; and to his years of early manhood 
 belonged also his prose Essay on VirgiVs Georgics, a per- 
 formance which hardly deserved, either for its style or for 
 its critical excellence, the compliment paid it by Dryden, in 
 prefixing it to his own translation of the poem. The most 
 ambitious of those poetical assay-pieces is the " Account of 
 the Greatest English Poets," dated April, 1G94, and ad- 
 dressed affectionately to Sacheverell, the poet's fellow col- 
 legian, who afterwards became so notorious in the party 
 quarrels of the time. This piece, spirited both in language 
 and in versification, is chiefly noticeable as showing that 
 ignorance of old English poetry which was then universal. 
 Addison next, in 1695, published one of those compositions, 
 celebrating contemporary events, and lauding contemporary 
 great men, on which, during the half century that succeeded 
 the Revolution, there was wasted so much of good writing 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. O 
 
 and of fair poetic ability. His piece, not very meritorious 
 even in its own class, was addressed " To the King," and 
 commemorates the campaign which was distinguished by 
 William's taking of Namur. Much better' than the poem 
 itself are the introductory verses to Somers, then lord 
 keeper. This production, perhaps intended as a remem- 
 brancer to the writer's patrons, did not at once produce any 
 obvious effect ; and we are left in considerable uncertainty 
 as to the manner in which about this time Addison contrived 
 to support himself. He corresponded with Tonson the 
 bookseller about projected works, one of these being a 
 Translation of Herodotus. It was probably at some later time 
 that he purposed compiling a Dictionary of the English 
 Ian"-uage. In 1699 a considerable collection of his Latin 
 verses was pubhshed at Oxford, in the " Musce Anglicanae." 
 These appear to have interested some foreign scholars ; and 
 several of them, show curious symptoms of his characteristic 
 humor. 
 
 In the same year, his patrons, either having still no office 
 to spare for him, or desiring him to gain peculiarly high 
 qualifications for diplomatic or other important business, 
 provided for him temporarily by a grant, which, though be- 
 stowed on a man of great merit and promise, would not pass 
 unquestioned in the present century. He obtained, on the 
 recommendation of Lord Somers, a pension of three hundred 
 pounds a year, designed (as Addison himself afterwards said 
 in a memorial addressed to the crown) to enable him " to 
 ' travel, and otherwise qualify himself to serve His Majesty." 
 In the summer of 1699 he crossed into France, where, chiefly 
 for the purpose of learning the language, he remained till 
 the end of 1700 ; and after this he spent a year in Italy. 
 In Switzerland, on his way home, he was stopped by receiv- 
 ing notice that he was to be appointed envoy to Prince Eu- 
 gene, then engaged in the war in Italy. But his Whig 
 friends were already tottering in their places ; and, in March, 
 
4 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 1702, the death of King William at once drove them from 
 power and put an end to the pension. Indeed, Addison as- 
 sei-ted that he never received but one year's payment of it, 
 and that all the other expenses of his travels were defrayed 
 by himself. He was able, however, to visit a great part of 
 Germany, and did not reach Holland till the spring of 1703. 
 His prospects were now sufficiently gloomy ; he entered into 
 treaty, often er than once, for an engagement as a travelling 
 tutor ; and the correspondence in one of these negotiations 
 lias been preserved. Tonson had recommended him as the 
 best person to attend in this character the son of the Duke 
 of Somerset, commonly called " The Proud." The Duke, a 
 profuse man in matters of pomp, was economical in ques- 
 tions of education. He wished Addison to name the salary 
 he expected ; this being declined, he announced, with great 
 dignity, that he would give a hundred guineas a year ; 
 Addison accepted the munificent offer, saying, however, that 
 he could not find his account in it otherwise than by relying 
 on his Grace's future patronage ; and his Grace immedi- 
 ately intimated that he would look out for some one else. 
 Towards the end of 1703 Addison returned to England. 
 
 Works which he composed during his residence on the 
 continent, were the earliest that showed him to have at- 
 tained maturity of skill and genius. There is good reason 
 for believing that his tragedy of Gato, whatever changes it 
 may afterwards have suffered, was in great part written 
 while he lived in France, that is, when he was about twenty- 
 eight years of age. In the winter of 1701, amidst the stop* 
 pages and discomforts of a journey across the Mount Cenis, 
 he composed, wholly or partly, his Letter from Italy, which 
 is by far the best of his poems, if it is not rather the only 
 one among them that at all justifies his claim to the poetical 
 character. It contains some fine touches of description, and 
 is animated by a noble tone of classical enthusiasm. While 
 in Gcrmuny, he wrote his Dialogueson Medals, which, how 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. O 
 
 ever, were not published till after his death. These have 
 much liveliness of style, and something of the gay humor 
 which the author was afterwards to exhibit more strongly ; 
 but they show little either of antiquarian learning or of crit- 
 ical ingenuity. In tracing out parallels between passages 
 of the Roman poets and figures or scenes which appear in 
 ancient sculptures, Addison opened the easy course of in- 
 quiry which was afterwards prosecuted by Spence ; and 
 this, with the apparatus of spirited metrical translations from 
 the classics, gave the work a likeness to his account of his 
 travels. This account, entitled Remarks on Several Parts of 
 Italy, etc., he sent home' for publication before his own 
 return. It wants altogether the interest of personal narra- 
 tive ; the author hardly ever appears. The task in which 
 he chiefly busies himself is that of exhibiting the illustra- 
 tions which the writings of the Latin poets, and the antiqui- 
 ties and scenery of Italy, mutually give and receive. Many 
 of the landscapes are sketched with great loveliness ; and 
 there are not a few strokes of arch humor. The statistical 
 information is very meagre ; nor are there many observa- 
 tions on society ; and politics are no further meddled with 
 than to show the moderate liberality of the writer's own 
 opinions. 
 
 With the year 1704 begins a second era in Addison's 
 life, which extends to the summer of 1710, when his age 
 was thirty-eight This was the first term of his official ca- 
 reer; and though very barren of literary performance, it 
 not only raised him from indigence, but settled definitely his 
 position as a public man. His correspondence shows that, 
 while on the Continent, he had been admitted to confidential 
 intimacy by diplomatists and men of rank : immediately on 
 his return he was enrolled in the Kitcat Club, and brought 
 thus and otherwise into communication with the gentry of 
 the Whig party. Although all accounts agree in represent- 
 ing him as a shy man, he was at least saved from all risk 
 
 1* 
 
b NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 of making himself disagreeable in society, by his unassuming 
 manners, his extreme caution, and that sedulous desire to 
 oblige, which his satirist Pope exaggerated into a positive 
 fault. His knowledge and ability were esteemed so highly, 
 as to confii-m the expectations formerly entertained of his 
 usefulness in public business ; and the literary fame already 
 acquired soon furnished an occasion for recommending him 
 to public employment. Though the Whigs were out of 
 office, the administration which succeeded them was, in all 
 its earlier changes, of a complexion so mixed and uncertain, 
 that the influence of their leaders was not entirely lost. Not 
 long after Marlborough's great victory at Blenheim, it is 
 said that Godolphin, the lord treasurer, expressed to Lord 
 Halifax a desire to have the great duke's fame extended by 
 a poetical tribute. Halifax seized the opportunity of rec- 
 ommending Addison as the fittest man for the duty ; stipu- 
 lating, we are told, that the service should not be unre- 
 warded, and doubtless satisfying the minister, that his pro- 
 teg*^ possessed other qualifications for office besides dexterity 
 in framing heroic verse. The Campaign, the poem thus 
 written to order, was received with extraordinary applause ; 
 and it is probably as good as any that ever was prompted 
 by no more worthy inspiration. It has indeed neither the 
 fiery spirit which Dryden threw into occasional pieces of the 
 sort, nor the exquisite polish that would have been given by 
 Pope, if he had stooped to make such uses of his genius : 
 but many of the details are pleasing ; and in the famous 
 passage of the Angel, as well as in several others, there is 
 even something of force and imagination. 
 
 The consideration covenanted for by the poet's friends 
 was faithfully paid. A vacancy occurred by the death of 
 another celebrated man, John Locke ; and in November, 
 17G4, Addison was appointed one of the five commissioners 
 of appeal in Excise. The duties of the place must have 
 been as light for him as they had been for his predecessor; 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. / 
 
 for he continued to hold it with all the appointments he 
 subsequently received from the same ministry. But there 
 is no reason for believing that he was more cai-eless than 
 other j)ublic servants in his time ; and the charge of incom- 
 petency as a man of business, which has been brought so 
 positively against him, cannot possibly be true as to this first 
 period of his official career. Indeed the specific allegations 
 refer exclusively to the last years of his life ; and, if he had 
 not really shown practical ability in the period now in ques- 
 tion, it is not easy to see how he, a man destitute alike of 
 wealth, of social or fashionable liveliness, and of family in- 
 terest, could have been promoted, for several years, from 
 office to office, as he was, till the fall of the administration to 
 which he was attached. In 170G, he became one of the 
 under-secretaries of state, serving first under Hedges, who 
 belonged to the Tory section of the government, and after- 
 wards under Lord Sunderland, Marlborough's son-in-law, and 
 a zealous follower of Addison's early patron, Somers. The 
 work of this office however, like that of the comraissionership, 
 must often have admitted of performance by deputy. For 
 in 1707, the Whigs having become stronger, Lord Halifax 
 was sent on a mission to ^e Elector of Hanover ; and, 
 besides taking Vanbrugh the dramatist with him as king-at 
 arms, he selected Addison as his secretary. In 1708, ho 
 entered parliament, sitting at first for Lostwithiel, but after 
 wards for Malmesbury, which, being six times elected, he 
 represented from 1710 till his death. Here unquestionably 
 he did fail. What part he may have taken in the details of 
 business we are not informed ; but he was always a silent 
 member, unless it be true that he once ^Tttempted to speak 
 and sat down in confusion. In 1709, Lord Wharton, the 
 fiither of the notorious duke, having been named Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland, Addison became his secretary, receiving 
 also an appointment as keeper of records. This event hap- 
 pened only about a year and a half before the dismissal of 
 
8 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the ministry ; and the Irish secretary would seem to have 
 transacted the business of his office chiefly in London. But 
 there are letters showing him to have made himself ac- 
 ceptable to some of the best and most distinguished persons 
 in Dublin ; and he escaped without having any quarrel with 
 Swift, his acquaintance with whom had begun some time 
 before. In the literary history of Addison, those seven 
 years of official service are almost a blank, till we approach 
 their close. He defended the government in an anonymous 
 pamphlet on The Present State of the War ; he united com- 
 pliments to the all-powerful Marlborough, with indiffisrent 
 attempts at lyrical poetry in his opera of Rosamond ; and, 
 besides furnishing a prologue to Steele's comedy of The 
 Tender Husband, he perhaps gave some assistance in the 
 composition of the play. •Irish administration, however, 
 allowed, it would seem, more leisure than might have been 
 expected. During the last few months of his tenure of 
 office, Addison contributed largely to the Tatler. But his 
 entrance on this new field does nearly coincide with the 
 beginning of a new section in his history. 
 
 Even the coalition ministry of Godolphin was too whig- 
 ^sh for the taste of Queen Anne ; and the tories, the favor- 
 ites of the court, gained, both in parliamentary power and 
 in popularity out of doors, by a combination of lucky acci- 
 dents, dexterous management, and divisions and double- 
 dealing among their adversaries. The real failure of the 
 prosecution of Addison's old friend, Sacheverell, completed 
 the ruin of the whigs; and in August, 1710, an entire revo- 
 lution in the ministry had been completed. The tory admin- 
 istration, which succeeded, kept its place till the queen's 
 death in 1714; and Addison was thus left to devote four of 
 the best years of his life, from his thirty-ninth year to his 
 forty-third, to occupations less lucrative than those in which 
 his time had recently been frittered away, but much more con- 
 ducive to the extension of his own fame, and to the benefit of 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. if 
 
 English Kterature. Although our information as to his pecun- 
 iary affairs is very scanty, we are entitled to believe that he 
 was now independent of literary labor. He speak?, in an 
 extant paper, of having had (but lost) property in the "West 
 Indies; and he is understood to haye inherited several 
 thousand pounds from a younger brother, who was governor 
 of Madras. In 1711, he purchased for ten thousand pounds, 
 the estate of Bilton, near Eugby ; the same place which, in 
 our own day, became the residence of Mr. Apperley, better 
 known by the assumed name of " Nimrod." 
 
 During those four years he produced a few political writ- 
 ings. Soon after the fall of the ministry, he contributed 
 five numbers to The Whig Examiner, a paper set up in 
 opposition to the tory periodical of the same name, which 
 was then conducted by the poet. Prior, and afterwards 
 became the vehicle of Swift's most vehement invectives 
 against the party he had once belonged to. These are cer- 
 tainly the most ill-natured of Addison's writings ; but they 
 are neither lively nor vigorous. There is more spirit in his 
 allegorical pamphlet. The Trial and Conviction of Count 
 Tariff. 
 
 But from the autumn of 1710 till the end of 1714, his 
 principal employment was the composition .of his celebrated 
 Periodical Essays. The honor of inventing the plan of 
 such compositions, as well as that of first carrying the idea 
 into execution, belongs to Richard Steele, who had been a 
 schoolfellow of Addison at the Charter-house, continued to 
 be on intimate terms with him afterwards, and attached him- 
 self with his characteristic ardor to the same political party. 
 When, in April, 1709, Steele pubHshed the first number of 
 the Tatler, Addison was in Dublin, and knew nothing of the 
 design. He is said to have detected his friend's authorship 
 only by recognizing in one of the early papers, a critical 
 remark which he remembered having himself communicated 
 to Steele. He began to furnish essays in a few weeks 
 
10 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 assisted occasionally while he held office, and afterwards 
 wrote oftener than Steele himself. He thus contributed in 
 all, if his literary executor selected his contributions cor- 
 rectly, more than sixty of the two hundred and seventy-one 
 essays which the \\9i'k contains. The Tatler exhibited, in 
 more ways than one, symptoms of being an experiment. 
 The projector, imitating the news-sheets in form, thought it 
 prudent to give, in each number, news in addition to the 
 essay ; and there was a want, both of unity and correct 
 finishing, in the putting together of the literary materials. 
 Addison's contributions, in particular, are in many places as 
 lively as any thing he ever wrote ; and his style, in its more 
 familiar moods at least, had been fully formed before he 
 returned from the Continent. But, as compared with his 
 later pieces, these are only what the paintei^s loose studies 
 and sketches are to the landscapes which he afterwards con- 
 structs out of them. In his inventions of incidents and 
 characters, one thought after another is hastily used and 
 hastily dismissed, as if he were putting his own powers to 
 the test, or trying the effect of various kinds of objects on 
 his readers ; his most ambitious flights, in the shape of alle- 
 gories and the like, are stiff and inanimate ; and his favorite 
 field of literary criticism is touched so slightly, as to show 
 that he still wanted confidence in the taste and knowledge 
 of the public. 
 
 The Ihtler was dropped at the beginning of 1711 ; but 
 only to be followed by the Spectator, which was begun on 
 the first day of March, and appeared eveiy weekday till 
 the 6th day of December, 1712. It had then completed 
 the five hundred and fifty-five numbers usually collected in 
 its first seven volumes. Addison, now in London and 
 unemployed, cooperated with Steele constantly from the 
 very opening of the series ; and the two contributing 
 almost equally, seem together to have written not very 
 much less than five hundred of the papers. Emboldened 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 11 
 
 , by the syccess of their former adventure, they devoted their 
 whole space to the essays. They relied, with a confidence 
 which the extraordinary popularity of the work fully justi- 
 fied, on their power of exciting the interest of a wide audi- 
 ence by pictures and reflections drawn from a field which 
 embraced the whole compass of ordinary life and ordinary 
 knowledge ; no kind of practical themes being positively 
 excluded except such as were political, and all literary top- 
 ics being held admissible, for which it seemed possible to 
 command attention from persons of average taste and 
 information. A seeming unity was given to the undertak- 
 ing, and curiosity and interest awakened on behalf of the 
 conductors, by the happy invention of the Spectator's Club, 
 in which Steele is believed to have drawn all the characters. 
 The figure of Sir Roger de Coverley, however, the best even 
 in the opeffing group, is the only one that was afterwards 
 elaborately depicted ; and Addison was the author of all the 
 papers in which his oddities and amiabilities are so admira- 
 bly delineated. To him, also, the Spectator owed a very 
 large share of its highest excellences. His were many, 
 and these the most natural and elegant, if not the most 
 original, of its humorous sketches of human character and 
 social eccentricities, its good-humored satires on ridiculous 
 features in manners, and on corrupt symptoms in public 
 taste ; these topics, however, making up a department in 
 which Steele was fairly on a level with his more famous 
 coadjutor. But Steele had neither learning, nor taste, nor 
 critical acuteness, sufficient to qualify him for enriching the 
 series with such literary disquisitions, as those which Addi- 
 son insinuated so often into the lighter matter of his essays, 
 and of which he gave an elaborate specimen in his cele- 
 brated and agreeable criticism on Paradise Lost. Still 
 further beyond the powers of Steele were those specula- 
 tions on the theory of literature and of the processes of 
 thought analogous to it, which, in the essays On the Pleas- 
 
12 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ures of the Imagination, Addison prosecuted, not, indeed, 
 with much of philosophical depth, but with a sagacity and 
 comprehensiveness which we shall undervalue much, unless 
 we remember how little of philosophy was to be found in 
 any critical views previously propounded in England. To 
 Addison, further, belong those essays which (most frequently 
 introduced in regular alternation in the papers of Saturday) 
 rise into the region of moral and religious meditation, and 
 tread the elevated ground with a step so graceful as to allure 
 the reader irresistibly to follow ; sometimes, as in the Walk 
 through Westminster Ahhey, enlivening solemn thought by 
 gentle sportiveness ; sometimes flowing on with an uninter- 
 rupted sedateness of didactic eloquence ; and sometimes 
 shrouding sacred truths in the veil of ingenious allegory, as 
 in the majestic Vision of Mirza. While, in a word, the 
 Spectator, if Addison had not taken part in it, would proba- 
 bly have been as lively and humorous as it was, and not less 
 popular in its own day, it would have wanted some of its 
 strongest claims on the respect of posterity, by being at 
 once lower in its moral tone, far less abundant in literary 
 knowledge, and much less vigorous and expanded in think- 
 ing. In point of style, again, the two friends resemble 
 each other so closely as to be hardly distinguishable, when 
 both are dealing with familiar objects, and w^riting in a key 
 not rising above that of conversation. But, in the higher 
 tones of thought and composition, Addison showed a mas- 
 tery of language raising him very decisively, not above 
 Steele only, but above all his contemporaries. Indeed, it 
 may safely be said, that no one, in any age of our litera- 
 ture, has united, so strikingly as he did, the colloquial grace 
 and ease which mark the style of an accomplished gentle- 
 man, with the power of soaring into a strain of expression 
 noble and eloquently dignified. 
 
 On the cessation of the Spectator, Steele set on foot the 
 Guardian, which, started in March, 1713, came to an end in 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 13 
 
 October, with its one hundred and seventy-fifth number. 
 To this series Addison gave fifty-three papers, being a very 
 frequent writer during the latter half of its progress. None 
 of his essays here aifn so high as the best of those in the 
 Spectator ; but he often exhibits both his cheerful and well- 
 balanced humor, and his earnest desire to inculcate sound 
 principles of literary judgment. In the last six months of 
 the year 1714, the Spectator reached its eighth and last vol- 
 ume ; for which Steele appears not to have written at all, 
 and Addison to have contributed twenty-four of the eighty 
 papers. Most of these form, in the unbroken seriousness 
 both of their topics and of their manner, a contrast to the ma- 
 jority of his essays in the earlier volumes ; but several of 
 them, both in this vein and in one less lofty, are among the 
 best known, if not the finest of all his essays. Such are the 
 Mountain of Miseries ; the antediluvian novel of Shallum 
 and liilpa ; the Reflections hy Moonlight on the Divine Per- 
 fections. • 
 
 In April, 1713, Addison brouglit on the stage, very reluc- 
 tantly, as we are assured, and can easily believe, his tragedy 
 of Cato. Its success was dazzling : but this issue was mainly 
 owing to the concern which the politicians took in the exhi- 
 bition. The Whigs hailed it as a brilliant manifesto in fa- 
 vor of constitutional freedom. The Tories echoed the ap- 
 plause, to show themselves enemies of despotism, and pro- 
 fessed to find in Julius Ca;sar a parallel to the formidable 
 Marlborough. Even with such extrinsic aids, and the 
 advantage derived from the estabhshed fame of the author, 
 Cato could never have been esteemed a good dramatic work, 
 unless in an age in which dramatic power and insight were 
 almost extinct. It is poor even in its poetical elements, and 
 is redeemed only by the finely solemn tone of its moral 
 reflections, and the singular refinement and equable smooth- 
 ness of its diction. 
 
 The literary career of Addison might almost be held as 
 2 
 
14 - 1*EW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 closed soon after the death of Queen Anne, Avhich occurred 
 in August, 1714, when he had lately completed his forty- 
 second year. His own life extended only five years loitger ; 
 and this closing portion of it offers little that is pleasing or in- 
 structive. We see hira attaining the sumrait of his ambition, 
 only to totter for a little and sink into an early grave. We 
 are reminded of his more vigorous days by nothing but a 
 few happy inventions interspersed in political pamphlets, 
 and the gay fancy of a trifling poem on Kneller's portrait 
 of George I. 
 
 The Lord Justices who, previously chosen secretly by the 
 Elector of Hanover, assumed the government on the Queen's 
 demise, were, as a matter of course, the leading Whigs. 
 They appointed Addison to act as their secretary. He next 
 held, for a very short time, his former office under the Irish 
 Lord-Lieutenant ; and, early in 1715, he was made one of 
 the Lords of Trade. In the course of the same year oc- 
 curred the first of the only two quarrels with friends, into 
 which the prudent, good tempered, and modest Addison is 
 said to have ever been betrayed. His adversary on this 
 occasion was Pope, who, only three years before, had re- 
 ceived, with an appearance of humble thankfulness, Addi- 
 son's friendly remarks on his Essay on Criticism ; but who, 
 though still very young, was already very famous, and 
 beginning to show incessantly his literary jealousies, and 
 his personal and party hatreds. Several little misunder- 
 standings had paved the way for a breach, when, at the same 
 time with the first volume of Pope's Iliad, there appeared 
 a translation of the first book of the poem, bearing the name 
 of Thomas Tickell. Tickell in his preface, disclaimed all 
 rivalry with Pope, and declared that he wished only to be- 
 speak favorable attention for his contemplated version of the 
 Odyssey. But the simultaneous publication was a^vkward ; 
 and Tickell, though not so good a versifier as Pope, was a 
 dangerous rival, as being a good- Greek scholar. Further, 
 
JOSEt»H ADDISON. 15 
 
 he was Addison's under-secretary and confidential friend ; 
 and Addison, cautious though he was, does appear to 
 have said, quite truly, that Tickell's translation was more 
 faithful than the other." Pope's anger could not be re- 
 strained. He wrote those famous lines in which he de- 
 scribes Addison under the name of Atticus ; and, as if to 
 make reconciliation impossible, he. not only circulated these 
 among his friends, but sent a copy to Addison himself. 
 Afterwards, he went so far as to profess a belief that the 
 rival translation was really Addison's own. It is pleasant 
 to observe that, after the insult had been perpetrated, Addi- 
 son was at the pains, in his Freeholder, to express hearty 
 approbation of the Iliad of Pope : who, on the contrary, 
 after Addison's death, deliberately printed the striking but 
 malignant lines in the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. In 
 1715, there was acted, with little success, the comedy of 
 The Drummer, or the Haunted House, which, though it ap- 
 peared under the name of Steele, was certainly not his, and 
 was probably written in whole or chiefly by Addison. It 
 contributes very little to his fame. From September 1715, 
 to June 1716, he defended the Hanoverian succession, and 
 the proceedings of the government in regard to the rebellion, 
 in a paper called The Freeholder, which he wrote entirely 
 himself, dropping it with the fifty-fifth number. It is much 
 better tempered, not less spirited, and much more able in 
 thinking, than his Examiner. The finical man of taste does 
 indeed show himself to be sometimes weary of discussing 
 constitutional questions ; but he aims many enlivening 
 thrusts at weak points of social life and manners ; and 
 the character of the fox-hunting Squire, who is introduced 
 as the representative of the Jacobites, is drawn with so much 
 humor and force that we regret not being allowed to sec 
 more of him. 
 
 In August, 1716, when he completed his forty-fourth year, 
 Addison married the Countess Dowaerer of Warwick, a 
 
16 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 widow of fifteen years' standing. She seeras to have for- 
 feited her jointure by the marriage, and to have brought her 
 husband nothing but the occupancy of the Holland House 
 at Kensin*ton. We know hardly any thing positively in 
 regard to the affair, or as to the origin or duration of his 
 acquaintance with the lady or her family. But the current 
 assertion that the courtship was a long one, is very probably 
 erroneous. There are better grounds for believing the as- 
 sertion, transmitted from Addison's own time, that tlic mar- 
 riage was unhappy. The Countess is said to have been 
 proud as well as violent, and to have supposed that, in con- 
 tracting the alliance, she conferred honor instead of receiv- 
 ing it. To the uneasiness caused by domestic discomfort, 
 the most friendly critics of Addison's character have attrib- 
 uted those habits of intemperance, which are said to have 
 grown on him in his later years to such an extent as to have 
 broken his health and accelerated his death. His most re- 
 cent biographer, who disbelieves his alleged want of matri- 
 monial quiet, has called in question, with much ingenuity, the 
 whole story of his sottishness ; and it must at any rate be 
 allowed, that all the assertions which tend to fix such charges 
 on .him in the earlier parts of his life, rest on no evidence 
 that is wortliy of credit, and are in themselves highly im- 
 probable. Sobriety was not the virtue of the day ; and the 
 constant frequenting of coffee-houses, which figures so often 
 in the Spectator and elsewhere, and which v/as really prac- 
 tised among literary men as well as others, cannot have 
 had good effects. Addison, however, really appears to have 
 had no genuine relish for this mode of life ; and there are 
 curious notices, especially in Steele's correspondence, of his 
 having lodgings out of town, to which he retired for study 
 and composition. But whatever the cause may have been, 
 his health was shattered before he took that which was the 
 last, and certainly the most unwise step, in his ascent to po- 
 litical power. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 17 
 
 Foi* a considerable time dissensions had existed in the 
 ministry ; and these came to a crisis in April, 1717, when 
 those who had been the real chiefs, passed into the ranks of 
 opposition. Townshend was dismissed ; and Walpole antici- 
 pated dismissiod by resignation. There was now formed, 
 under the leadership of General Stanhope and Lord Sun- 
 derland, an administration which, as resting on court influ- 
 ence, was nicknamed the " German ministry." Sunderland, 
 Addison's former superior, became one of the two principal 
 secretaries of state, and Addison himself was appointed as 
 the other. His elevation to such a post had been contem- 
 plated on the accession of George I., and prevented, we are 
 told, by his own refusal ; and it is asserted, on the authority 
 of Pope, that his acceptance now was owing only to the in- 
 fluence of his wife. Even if there is no ground, as there 
 probably is not, for the allegation of Addison's inefficiency in 
 the details of business, his unfitness for such an oflSce in such 
 circumstances was undeniable and glaring. It was impos- 
 sible that a government, whose secretary of state could not 
 open his lips in debate, should long face an opposition headed 
 by Robert Walpole. The decay of Addison's health, too, 
 was going on rapidly ; being, we may readily conjecture, 
 precipitated by anxietyj if no worse causes were at work. 
 Ill health was the reason assigned for retirement, in the 
 letter of resignation which he laid before the King in March* 
 1718, eleven months after his appointment. He received a 
 pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. 
 
 Not long afterwards, the divisions in the Whig party 
 alienated him from his oldest friend. The Peerage bill, in- 
 troduced in February, 1719, was attacked, on behalf of the 
 ojiposition, in a weekly paper, which was called the Plebeian, 
 and written by Steele. Addison answered it temperately 
 enough in the Old Whig ; provocation from the Plebeian 
 brought forth angry retort from the Whig ; Steele cliarged 
 Addison with being so old a whig as to have forgotten his 
 2* 
 
18^ NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 principles ; and Addison sneered at Grub Street, and called 
 his friend " little Dickey." How Addison felt after this pain- 
 ful quarrel we are not told directly ; but the Old Whig was 
 excluded from that posthumous collection of his works, for 
 which his executor Tickell had received from him authority 
 and directions. In that collection was inserted a treatise on 
 the evidences of the faith, entitled Of the Christian Re- 
 ligion. Its theological value is very small ; but it is pleasant 
 to regard it as the last effort of one who, amidst all weak- 
 nesses, was a man of real goodness as well as of eminent 
 genius. 
 
 The disease under which Addison labored appears to 
 have been asthma. It became more violent after his retire- 
 ment from office ; and was now accompanied by dropsy. 
 His death-bed was placid and resigned, and comforted by 
 those religious hopes which he had so often suggested to 
 others, and the value of which he is said, in an anecdote of 
 doubtful authoi'ity, to have now inculcated in a parting in- 
 terview with his step-son. He died at Holland House, on 
 the 17th day of June, 1719, six weeks after having com- 
 pleted his forty-seventh year. His body, after lying in state, 
 was interred in the Poets' corner of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 The Biographia Britannica gives an elaborate memoir of 
 him ; particulars are well collected in the article under his 
 name in the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 
 diffusion of Useful Knowledge ; and a good many new ma- 
 terials, especially letters, will be found in The Life of Joseph 
 Addison, by Lucy Aiken, 1843. 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 
 
 Francis Atterbuey, a man who holds a conspicuous 
 flace in the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of 
 England, was boiui in the year 1662, at Middleton, in Buck- 
 inghamshire, a parish of which his father was rector. 
 Francis was educated at Westminster School and carried 
 thence to Christ Church a stock' of learning which, though 
 really scanty, he through life exhibited with such judicious 
 ostentation that superficial observers believed his attain- 
 ments to be immense. At Oxford, his part^, his taste, his 
 bold, contemptuous, and imperious spirit soon made him con- 
 spicuous. Here he pubUshed at twenty, his first work, a 
 translation of the noble poem of Absalom and Ahithopel 
 into Latin verse. Neither the style nor the vei-sification of 
 the young scholar was that of the Augustan age. In 
 English composition he succeeded much better. In 1687 
 he distinguished himself among many able men who wrote 
 in defence of the Church of England, then persecuted by 
 James II., and calumniated by apostates who had for lucre 
 quitted her communion. Among these apostates none was 
 more active and malignant than Obadiah Walker, who was 
 master of University College, and who had set up there 
 under the royal patronage, a press for printing tracts against 
 the established religion. In one of these tracts, written ap- 
 parently by Walker himself, many aspersions were thrown 
 
 (19) 
 
20 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 on Martin Luther. Atterbury undertook to defend the 
 great Saxon reformer and performed that task in a manner 
 singukirly characteristic. Whoever examines his reply to 
 Walker will be struck by the contrast between the feebleness 
 of those parts which are argumentative and defensive, and 
 the vigor of those parts which are rhetorical and aggressive. 
 The Papists were so much galled by the sarcasms and in- 
 vectives of the young polemic, that they raised the cry of 
 treason, and accused him of having, by implication, called 
 King James a Judas. 
 
 After the Revolution, Atterbury, though bred in the doc- 
 trines of non-resistance and passive obedience, readily swore 
 fealty to the new government. In no long time he took 
 holy orders. He occasionally preached in London with an 
 eloquence which raised his reputation, and soon had the 
 honor of being appointed one of the royal chaplains. But 
 he ordinarily resided at Oxford, where he took an active 
 part in academical business, directed the classical studies of 
 the undergraduates of his college, and was the chief adviser 
 and assistant of Dean Aldrich, a divine now chiefly remem- 
 bered by his catches, but renowned among his contempo- 
 raries as a scholar, a Tory, and a high-church man. It was 
 the practice, not a very judicious practice, of Aldrich, to 
 employ the most promising youths of his college in editing 
 Greek and Latin books. Among the studious and well- 
 disposed lads who were, unfortunately for themselves, in- 
 duced to become teachers of philology when they should 
 have been content to be learners, was Charles Boyle, son of 
 the Earl of Orrery, and nephew of Robert Boyle, the great 
 experimental philosopher. The task assigned to Charles 
 Boyle was to prepare a new edition of one of the most 
 worthless books in existence. It was a fashion among those 
 Greeks and Romans who cultivated rhetoric as an art, to 
 compose epistles and harangues in the names of eminent 
 men. Some of these counterfeits are fabricated with such 
 
FBAKCIS ATTERBURY. 21 
 
 exquisite taste and skill, that it is the highest achievement of 
 criticism to distinguish them from originals. Others are so 
 feebly and rudely executed that they can hardly impose on 
 an mtelligent school-boy. The best specimen which has 
 come down to us is perhaps the oration for Marcellus, such 
 an imitation of TuUy's eloquence as TuUy would himself 
 have read with wonder and deUght. The worst specimen is 
 perhaps a collection of letters purporting to have been writ- 
 ten by that Phalaris who governed Agrigentum more than 
 500 years before the Christian Era. The evidence, both 
 internal and external, against the genuineness of these letters 
 is overwhelming. When, in the fifteenth century, they 
 emerged^ in company with much that was far more valuable, 
 from their obscurity, they were pronounced spurious by 
 Politian, the greatest scholar of Italy, and by Erasmus, the 
 greatest scholar on our side of the Alps. In truth it would 
 be as easy to persuade an educated Englishman, that one of 
 Johnson's Ramblers was the work of AVilliam Wallace, as 
 to persuade a man like Erasmus, that a pedantic exercise, 
 composed in the trim and artificial Attic of the time of Julian, 
 was a despatch written by a crafty and ferocious Dorian 
 who roasted people alive many years before there existed 
 a volume of prose in the Greek language. But though 
 Christ Church could boast of many good Latinists, of many 
 good English writers, and of a greater number of clever 
 and fashionable -men of the world than belonged to any 
 other academic body, there was not then in the college a 
 single man capable of distinguishing between the infancy 
 and the dotage of Greek literature. So superficial indeed 
 was the learning of the rulers of this celebrated society, 
 that they were charmed by an essay which Sir William 
 Temple published in praise of the ancient writers. It now 
 seems strange that even the eminent public services, the de- 
 served popularity, and the graceful style of Temple should 
 have saved so silly a performance from universal contempt. 
 
22 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Of the books which he most vehemently eulogized his eulo- 
 gies proved that he knew nothing. In fact, he could not 
 read a line of the language in which they were written. 
 Among many other foolish things, he said that the letters of 
 Phalaris were the oldest letters and also the best in the 
 world. Whatever Temple wrote attracted notice. People 
 who had never heard of the Epistles of Phalaris began to 
 inquire about them. Aldrich, who kncAV very little Greek, 
 took the word of Temple who knew none, and desired Boyle 
 to prepare a new edition of these admirable compositions 
 which, having long slept in obscurity, had become* on a sud- 
 den objects of general interest. 
 
 The edition was prepared with the help of Atterbury, who 
 was Boyle's tutor, and of some other members of the col- 
 lege. It was an edition such as might be expected from 
 people who would stoop to edit such a book. The notes 
 were worthy of the text ; the Latin version worthy of 
 the Greek original. The volume would have been forgotten 
 in a month, had not a misunderstanding about a manuscript 
 arisen between the young editor and the greatest scholar 
 that had appeared in Europe since the revival of letters, 
 Richard Bentley. The manuscript was in Bentley's keep- 
 ing. Boyle wished it to be collated. A mischief-making 
 bookseller informed him that Bentley had refused to lend it, 
 which was false, and also that Bentley had spoken contempt- 
 uously of the letters attributed to Phalaris, and of the critics 
 who were taken in by such counterfeits, which was perfectly 
 true. Boyle, much provoked, paid, in his preface, a bitterly 
 ironical compliment to Bentley's courtesy. Bentley re- 
 venged himself by a short dissertation, in which he proved 
 that the epistles were spurious, and the new edition of them 
 worthless : but lie treated Boyle personally with civility as 
 a young gentleman of great hopes, whose love of learning 
 was highly commendable, and who deserved to have had 
 better instructors. 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBURT. 23 
 
 Few things in literary history are more extraordinary 
 than the storm which this little dissertation raised. Bentley 
 had treated Boyle with forbearance ; but he had treated 
 Christ Church with contempt; and the Christ Churchmen, 
 wherever dispersed, were as much attached to their college 
 as a Scotchman to his country or a Jesuit to his order. 
 Their influence was great. They were dominant at Oxford, 
 powerful in the Inns of Court and in the College of Physi- 
 cians, conspicuous in Parliament and in the literary and 
 fashionable circles of London. Their unanimous cry was, 
 that the honor of the college must be vindicated, that the 
 insolent Cambridge pedant must be put down. Poor Boyle 
 was unequal to the task and disinclined to it. It was there- 
 fore assigned to his tutor, Atterbury. 
 
 The answer to Bentley, which bears the name of Boyle, 
 but which was, in truth, no more the work of Boyle than 
 the letters to which the controversy related were the work of 
 Phalaris, is now read only by the curious, and will in all 
 probability never be printed again. But it had its day of 
 noisy popularity. It was to be found not only in the studies 
 of men of letters, but on the tables of the most brilliant 
 drawing-rooms of Soho Squai'e and Covent Garden. Even 
 the beaus and coquettes of that age, the Wildairs and the 
 Lady Lurewells, the Mirabels, and the Millamants, con- 
 gratulated each other on the way in which the gay young 
 gentleman, whose erudition sat so easily upon him, and who 
 Wrote with so much pleasantry and good breeding about the 
 Attic dialect and the anapaestic measure, Sicilian talents and 
 Thericlean cups, had bantered the queer prig of a doctor. 
 Nor was the applause of the multitude undeserved. The 
 book is, indeed, Atterbury's masterpiece, and gives a higher 
 notion of his powers than any of those work? to which he 
 put his name. That he was altogether wrong on the main 
 question, and on all the collateral questions springing out of 
 it, that his knowledge of the language, the literature, and 
 
24 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the history of Greece, was not equal to what many fresh- 
 men now bring up* every year to Cambridge and Oxford, 
 and that some of his blunders seem rather to deserve a flog- 
 ging than a refutation, is true ; and therefore it is that his 
 performance is, in ttie highest degree, interesting and valu- 
 able to the judicious reader. It is good by reason of its ex- 
 ceeding badness. It is the most extraordinary instance that 
 exists of the art of making much show with little substance. 
 There is no difficulty, says the steward of Moliere's miser, 
 in giving a fine dinner with plenty of money ; the really 
 great cook is he who can set out a banquet with no money 
 at alL That Bentley should have written excellently on 
 ancient chronology and geography, on the development of 
 the Greek language, and the origin of the Greek drama, is 
 not strange. But that Atterbury should, during some years, 
 have been thought to have treated these subjects much better 
 than Bentley, is strange indeed. It is true that the cham- 
 pion of Christ Church had all the help which the most cele- 
 brated members of that society could give him. Smalridge 
 contributed some very good wit; Friend and others some 
 very bad archaeology and philology. But the greater part 
 of the volume was entirely Atterbury's ; what was not his 
 own Avas revised and retouched by him ; and the whole bears 
 the mark of his mind, a mind inexhaustibly rich in all the 
 resources of controversy, and famihar with all the artifices 
 which make falsehood look like truth, and ignorance like 
 knowledge. He had little gold ; but he beat that little out 
 to the very thinnest leaf, and spread it over so vast a sur- 
 face, that to those who judged by a glance, and who did not 
 resort to balances and tests, the glittering heap of worth- 
 less matter which he produced seemed to be an inestimable 
 treasure of massy bullion. Such arguments as he had he 
 placed in the clearest light. Where he bad no argu- 
 ments, he resorted to personalities, sometimes serious, gen 
 erally ludicrous, always clever and cutthig. But whether he 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBURT. 25 
 
 was grave or merry, whether he reasoned or sneered, his 
 style was always pure, polished, and easy. 
 
 Party spirit then ran high ; yet though Bentley ranked 
 among Whigs, and Christ Church was a strong-hold of Tory- 
 ism, Whigs joined with Tories in applauding Atterbury's 
 volume. Garth insulted Bentley and extolled Boyle in lines 
 which are now never quoted except to be laughed at. 
 Swift, in his Battle of the Books, introduced with much 
 pleasantry Boyle, clad in armor, the gift of aU the gods, and 
 directed by Apollo in the form of a human friend, for whose 
 name a blank is left which may easily be filled up. The 
 youth, so accoutred and so assisted, gains an easy victory 
 over his uncourteous and boastful antagonist Bentley, 
 meanwhile, was supported by the consciousness of an im- 
 measurable superiority, and encouraged by the voices of the 
 few who were really competent to judge the combat. " No 
 man," he said, justly and nobly, " was ever written down but 
 by himself." He spent two years in preparing a reply 
 which will never cease to be read and prized while the liter- 
 ature of ancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. 
 This reply proved not only that the letters ascribed to 
 Phalaiis were spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, 
 his eloquence, his skill in controversial fence, was the most 
 audacious pretender that ever wrote about what he did not 
 understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter of 
 indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about 
 matters far more important and exciting than the laws of 
 Zaleucus and the laws of Charondas. The rage of relig- 
 ious factions was extreme. High-church and low-church 
 divided the nation. The great majority of the clergy were 
 on tbe» high-church side; the majority of King William's 
 bishops were inclined to latitudinarianism. A dispute arose 
 between the two parties touching the extent of the powers 
 of the Lower House of Convocation. Atterbury eagerly thrust 
 himself into the front rank of the high-churchmen. Those 
 
 3 
 
26 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 who take a comprehensive and impartial view of his whole ca- 
 reer, will not be disposed to give him credit for religious zeal. 
 But it was his nature to be vehement and pugnacious in the 
 tause of every fraternity of which he was a member. He had 
 defended the genuineness of a spurious book simply because 
 Christ Church had put forth an edition of that book ; but 
 now stood up for the clergy against the civil power, simply 
 because he was a clergyman ; and for the priests against the 
 Episcopal order simply because he was as yet only a priest. 
 He asserted the pretensions of the class to which he be- 
 longed in several treatises written with much wit, ingenuity, 
 audacity and acrimony. In this, as in his first controversy, 
 he was opposed to antagonists whose knowledge of the sub- 
 ject in dispute was far superior to his ; but in this, as in 
 his first controversy, he imposed on the multitude by bold 
 assertion, by sarcasm, by declamation, and, above all, by his 
 peculiar knack of exhibiting a little erudition in such a 
 manner as to make it look like a great deal. Having passed 
 himself off on the world as a greater master of classical learn- 
 ing than Bentley, he now passed himself oiF as a greater mas- 
 ter of ecclesiastical learning than Wake or Gibson. By the 
 great body of the clergy he was regarded as the ablest and 
 most intrepid tribune that had ever defended their rights 
 against the oligarchy of prelates. The Lower House of Convo- 
 cation voted him thanks for his services ; the University of 
 Oxford created him a doctor of divinity ; and soon after the 
 accession of Anne, while the Tories still had the chief weight in 
 the government, he was promoted to the deanery of Carlisle. 
 Soon after he had obtained this preferment, the Whig 
 party i*ose to ascendency in the state. From that party he 
 could expect no favor. Six years elapsed before sr cliange 
 of fortune took place. At length, in the year 1710, the 
 prosecution of Sacheverell produced a formidable explosion 
 of high-church fanaticism. At such a moment Atterbury 
 could not fail to be conspicuous. His inordinate zeal for 
 
FEANCIS ATTEEBURY. 27 
 
 the body to which he belonged, his turbulent and aspiring 
 temper, his rare talents for agitation and for controversy 
 were again signally displayed. He bore a chief part in 
 framing that artful and eloquent speech which the accused 
 divine pronounced at the bar of the Lords, and which pre- 
 sents a singular contrast to the absurd and scurrilous sermon 
 which had very unwisely been honored with impeachment. 
 Ihiring the troubled and anxious months which followed the 
 trial, Atterbury was among the most active of those pamph- 
 leteers who inflamed the nation against the Whig ministry 
 and the Whig parliament. When the ministry had been 
 changed and the parliament dissolved, rewards were show- 
 ered upon him. The Lower House of Convocation elected 
 him prolocutor. The Queen appointed him Dean of Christ 
 Church on the death of his old friend and patron Aldrich. 
 The college would have preferred a gentler ruler. Never- 
 theless, the new head was received with every mark of 
 honor. A congratulatory oration in Latin was addressed to 
 him in the magnificent vestibule of the hall ; and he in 
 reply professed the warmest attachment to the venerable 
 house in which he had been educated, and paid many gra- 
 cious compliments to those over whom he was to preside. 
 But it was not in his nature to be a mild or an equitable 
 governor. He had left the chapter of Carlisle distracted by 
 quarrels. He found Christ Church at peace ; but in three 
 months his despotic and contentious temper did at Christ 
 Church what it had done at Carlisle. He was succeeded in 
 both his deaneries by the humane and accomplished Smal- 
 ridge, who gently complained of the state in which both had 
 been left. " Atterbury goes before and sets every thing on 
 fire. I come after him with a bucket of water." It was 
 said by Atterbury's enemies that he was made a bishop 
 because he was so bad a dean. Under his administration 
 Christ Church was in confusion, scandalous altercations took 
 place, opprobrious words \vere exchanged ; and there was 
 
28 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined 
 by the tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon 
 removed to the bishopric of Rochester, which was then 
 always united with the deanery of "Westminster. Still 
 higher dignities seemed to be before him. For, though 
 there were many able men on the episcopal bench, there 
 was none who equalled or approached him in parliamentary 
 talents. Had his party continued in power, it is not im- 
 probable that he would have been raised to the archbishop- 
 ric of Canterbury. The more splendid his prospects, the 
 more reason he had to .dread the accession of a family which 
 was well known to be partial to the Whigs. There is every 
 reason to believe that he was one of those politicians who 
 hoped that they might be able, during the life of Anne, to 
 prepare matters in such a way that at her decease there 
 might be little difficulty in setting aside the Act of Settle- 
 ment and placing the Pretender on the throne. Her sud- 
 ' den death confounded the projects of these conspirators. 
 Atterbury, who wanted no kind of courage, implored his 
 confederates to proclaim James III., and offered to accom- 
 pany the heralds in lawn sleeves. But he found even the 
 bravest soldiers of his party irresolute, and exclaimed, not, 
 it is said, without interjections which ill became the mouth 
 of a father of the church, that the best of all causes and 
 the most precious of all moments had been pusillanimously 
 thrown away. He acquiesced in what he could not jirevent, 
 took the oaths to the House of Hanover, and at the corona- 
 tion officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his 
 best to ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his 
 servility was requited with cold contempt. No creature is 
 so revengeful as a proud man who has humbled himself in 
 vain. Atterbury became the most factious and pertinacious 
 of all the opponents of the government. In the House of 
 Lords, his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with 
 every grace of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBUKY. 29 
 
 attention and admiration even of a hostile majority. Some 
 of the most remarkable protests which appear in the 
 journals of the peers were drawn up by him ; and in some 
 of the bitterest of those pamphlets which called on the Eng- 
 lish to stand up for their country against the aliens who had 
 come from beyond the seas to oppress and plunder her, 
 critics easily detected his style. When the rebellion of 
 1715 broke out, he refused to sign the paper in which the 
 bishops of the province of Canterbury declared their attach- 
 ment to the Protestant succession. He busied himself in 
 electioneering, especially at Westminster, where as dean he 
 possessed great influence; and was, indeed, strongly sus- 
 pected of having once set on a riotous mob to prevent his 
 Whig fellow-citizens from polling. 
 
 After having been long in indirect communication with 
 the exiled family, he, in 1717, began to correspond directly 
 with the Pretender. The first letter of the correspondence 
 is extant. In that letter Atterbury boasts of having, during 
 many years past, neglected no opportunity of serving the 
 Jacobite cause. " My daily prayer," he says, " is that you 
 may have success. May I live to see that day, and live no 
 longer than I do what is in my power to forward it." It is 
 to be remembered that he who wrote thus was a man bound 
 to set to the church of which he was overseer an example 
 of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance 
 to the House of Brunswick ; that he had assisted in placing 
 the crown on the head of George I., and that he had ab- 
 jured James III., " without equivocation or mental reserva- 
 tion, on the true faith of a Christian." 
 
 It is agreeable to turn from his public to his private life. 
 His turbulent spirit, wearied with faction and treason, now 
 and then required repose, and found it in domestic endear- 
 ments, and in the society of the most illustrious of the 
 living and of the dead. Of his wife little is known : but 
 between him and his daughter there was an affection singu- 
 3* 
 
30 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 larly close and tender. The gentleness of his manners 
 when he was in the company of a few friends was such as 
 seemed hardly credible to those who knew him only by his 
 writings and speeches. The charm of his "softer hour" 
 has been commemorated by one of those friends in imper- 
 ishable verse. Though Atterbury's classical attainments 
 were not great, his taste in English literature was excellent ; 
 and his admiration of genius was so strong that it over- 
 powered even his political and religious antipathies. His 
 fondness for Milton, the mortal enemy of the Stuarts and 
 of the church, was such as to many Tories seemed a crime. 
 On the sad night on which Addison .was laid in the chapel 
 of Henry VH., the Westminster boys remarked that Atter- 
 bury read the funeral service with peculiar tenderness and 
 solemnity. The favorite companions, however, of the great 
 Tory prelate were, as might have been expected, men whose 
 politics had at least a tinge of Toryism. He lived on 
 friendly terms with Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. "With 
 Prior he had a close intimacy, which some misunderstand- 
 ing about public affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in 
 Atterbury not only a warm admirer, but a most faithful, 
 fearless, and judicious adviser. The poet was a frequent 
 guest at the episcopal palace among the elms of Bromley, 
 and entertained not the slightest suspicion that his host, now 
 declining in years, confined to an easy chair by gout, and 
 apparently devoted to literature, was deeply concerned in 
 criminal and perilous designs against the government. 
 
 The spirit of the Jacobites had been cowed by the events 
 of 1715. It revived in 1721. The failure of the South 
 Sea project, the panic in the money market, the downfall of 
 great commercial houses, the distress from which no pai't 
 of the kingdom was exempt, had produced general discon- 
 tent. It seemed not improbable that at such a moment an 
 insurrection might be successful. An insurrection was 
 planned. The streets of London were to be barricaded ; 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 31 
 
 the Tower and the Bank were to be surprised; King 
 George, his family and his chief captains and councillors 
 were to be arrested, and King James was to be proclaimed. 
 The design became known to the Duke of Orleans, regent 
 of France, who was on terms of friendship with the House 
 of Hanover. He put the English government on its guard. 
 Some of the chief malcontents were committed to prison ; 
 and among them was Atterbury. No bishop of the Church 
 of England had been taken into custody since that memora- 
 ble day when the applauses and prayers of all London had 
 , followed the seven bishops to the gate of the Tower. The 
 
 Opposition entertained spme hope that it might be possible 
 to excite among the people an enthusiasm resembling that 
 of their fathers, who rushed into the waters of the Thames to 
 implore the blessing of Sancroft. Pictures of the heroic con- 
 fessor in his cell were exhibited at the shop windows. Verses 
 in his pi'aise were sung about the streets. The restraints by 
 which he was prevented from communicating with his accom- 
 plices were represented as cruelties worthy of the dungeons 
 of the Inquisition. Strong appeals were made to the priest- 
 I hood. Would Ihey tamely permit so gross" an insult to be 
 
 ' offered to their cloth ? Would they suffer the ablest, the 
 
 most eloquent member of their profession, the man who had 
 so often stood up for their rights against the civil power, to 
 be treated like the vilest of mankind? There was con- 
 siderable excitement ; but it was allayed by a temperate 
 and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability, 
 of Bishop Gibson, who stood high in the favor of Walpole, 
 and shortly after became minister for ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 Atterbury remained in close confinement during some 
 months. He had carried on his correspondence with the 
 exiled family so cautiously that the circumstantial proofs of 
 his guilt, though sufficient to produce entire moral convic- 
 tion, were not sufiicient to justify legal conviction. He 
 could be reached only by a bill of pains and penalties. 
 
S2 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Such a bill the Whig party, then decidedly predominant in 
 both houses, was quite prepared to support. Many hot- 
 headed members of that party were eager to follow the pre- 
 cedent which had been set in the case of Sir John Fenwick, 
 and to pass an act for cutting off the bishop's head. Ca- 
 dogan, who commanded the army, a brave soldier, but a 
 headstrong politician, is said to have exclaimed, with great 
 vehemence : " Fling him to the lions in the Tower." But 
 the wiser and more humane Walpole was always unwilling 
 to shed blood; and his influence prevailed. When par- 
 liament met, the evidence against the bishop was laid be- 
 fore committees of both houses. . Those committees re- 
 ported that his guilt was proved. In the Commons a res- 
 olution, pronouncing him a traitor, was carried by nearly 
 two to one. A bill was then introduced which provided that 
 he should be deprived of his spiritual dignities, that lie 
 should be banished for life, and that no British subject 
 should hold any intercourse with him except by the royal 
 permission. 
 
 This bill passed the Commons with little difiiculty. For 
 the bishop, though invited to defend himself, chose to re- 
 serve his defence for tlie assembly of which he was a mem- 
 ber. In the Lords the contest was sharp. The young 
 Duke of Wharton, distinguished by his parts, his dissolute- 
 ness, and his versatility, spoke for Atterbury with great 
 effect; and Atterbury's own voice was heard for the last 
 time by that unfriendly audience which had so often listened 
 to him with mingled aversion and dehght. He produced few 
 witnesses, nor did those witnesses say much that could be 
 of service to him. Among them was Pope. He was 
 called to prove that, while he was an inmate of the palace at 
 Bromley, the bishop's time was completely occupied by lit- 
 erary and domestic matters, and that no leisure was left for 
 plotting. But Pope, who was quite unaccustomed to speak 
 in public, lost his head, and, as he afterwards owned, 
 
FRANCIg ATTERBURY. 83 
 
 though he had only ten words to say, made two or three 
 blunders. 
 
 The bill finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes to 
 forty-three. The bishops, with a single exception, were ia 
 the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharp taunt 
 from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of Atterbury and a 
 zealous Tory, " The wild Indians" he said, "give no quartfer, 
 because they believe that they shall inherit the skill and 
 prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. Perhaps 
 the animosity of the right reverend prelates to their brother, 
 may be explained in the same way." Atterbury took leave 
 of those whom he loved with a dignity and tenderness 
 worthy of a better man. Three fine lines of his favorite 
 poet were often in his mouth : — 
 
 " Some natural tears he dropped but wiped them soon : 
 The world was all before him, wliere to choose 
 His place of rest, and Providence his guide." 
 
 At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with 
 a disingcnuousness of which no man who had studied the 
 Bible to much purpose would have been guilty : " If ever 
 you learn that I have any d^lings with the Pretender, I 
 give you leave to say that my punishment is jiist." Pope, 
 at this time, really believed the bishop to be an injured man. 
 Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same opinion. Swift, 
 a few months later, ridiculed with great bitterness in the 
 Voyage to Laputa, the evidence which had satisfied the two 
 houses of parhament. Soon, however, the most partial 
 friends of the banished prelate ceased to assert his innocence, 
 and contented themselves with lamenting and excusing what 
 they could not defend. . After a short stay at Brussels, 
 he had taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the 
 leading man among the Jacobite refugees who were as- 
 sembled there. He was invited to Rome by the Pretender, 
 who there held his mock court under the immediate protec- 
 
34 NEW BIOGU^PHIES. 
 
 tion of the Pope. But Atterbury felt that a bishop of the 
 Church of England would bfe strangely out of place at the 
 Vatican, and declined the invitation. During some months, 
 however, he miglit flatter himself that he stood high in the 
 good graces of James. The correspondence between the 
 master and the servant was constant. Atterbury's merits 
 were warmly acknowledged, his advice was respectfully 
 received, and he was, as Bolingbroke had been before him, 
 the prime minister of a king without a kingdom. But the 
 new favorite found, as Bolingbroke had found before him, 
 that it was quite as hard to keep the shadow of power under 
 a vagrant and mendicant prince as to keep the reality of 
 power at Westminster. Though James had neither terri- 
 tories nor revenues, neither army nor navy, there was more 
 faction and more intrigue among his courtiers than among 
 those of his successful rival. Atterbury soon perceived 
 that his counsels were disregarded, if not distrusted. His 
 proud spirit was deeply wounded. He quitted Paris, fixed 
 his residence at Montpelier, gave up politics, and devoted 
 himself entirely to letters. In the sixth year of his exile he 
 had so severe an illness, thq,t his daughter, herself in very 
 delicate health, determined to run all risks that she might 
 see him once more. Having obtained a license from the 
 English govei'nment, she went by sea to Bordeaux, but 
 landed there in such a state that she could travel only by 
 boat or in a litter. Her father, in spite of his infirmities, 
 set out from Montpelier to meet her; and she, with the 
 impatience which is often the sign of approaching death, 
 hastened towards him. Those who were about her in vain 
 implored her to travel slowly. She said that every hour 
 was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to 
 die. She met him at Toulouse, embraced him, received 
 from his hand the sacred bread and wine, and thanked God 
 that they had passed one day in each other's society before 
 they parted for ever. She died that night. 
 
FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 85 
 
 It was some time before even the strong mind of Atter- 
 bury recovered from this cruel blow. As soon as he was 
 himself again, he became eager for action and conflict : for 
 grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inac- 
 tion, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more rest- 
 less. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, had found 
 out that he had not acted wisely in parting with one who, 
 though a heretic, was, in abilities and accomplishments, the 
 foremost man of the Jacobite party. The bishop was 
 courted back, and was without much difficulty induced to 
 return to Pai'is and to become once more the phantom min- 
 ister of a phantom monarchy. But his long and troubled 
 life was drawing to a close. To the last, however, his intel- 
 lect retained all its keenness and vigor. He learned, in the 
 ninth year of his banishment, that he had been accused by 
 Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any 
 that has been saved from oblivion by the Dunciad, of hav- 
 ing, in concert with other Christ Churchmen, garbled Clar- 
 endon's History of the Rebellion. The charge, as respected 
 Atterbury, had not the slightest foundation ; for he^as not 
 one of the editors of the History, and never saw it till it 
 was printed. He published a short vindication of himself, 
 which is a model in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dig- 
 nified. A copy of this little work he sent to the Pretender, 
 with a letter singularly eloquent and graceful. It was im- ' 
 possible, the old man said, that he should write any thing on 
 such a subject, without being reminded of the resemblance 
 between his own fate and that of Clarendon. They were the 
 only two English subjects that had ever been banished from 
 their country, and debarred from all communication with 
 their friends by act of parliament. But here the resem- 
 blance ended. One of the exiles had been so happy as to 
 bear a chief part in the restoration of the Royal house. 
 All that the other could now do was to die asserting the 
 rights of that house to the last. A few weeks after this let- 
 
36 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ter was written Atterbury died. He had just completed 
 his seventieth year. 
 
 His body was brought to England, and laid with great 
 privacy under the nave of Westminster Abbey. Only 
 three mourners followed the coffin. No inscription marks 
 the grave. That the epitaph with which Pope honored the 
 memory of his friend does not appear on the walls of the 
 great national cemetery, is no subject of regret : for nothing 
 worse was ever written by CoUey Gibber. Those who wish 
 for more complete information about Atterbury, may easily 
 collect it from his sermons and his controversial writings, 
 from the report of the parliamentary proceedings against 
 him, which will be found in the State Trials ; from the five 
 volumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr. Nichols, and 
 from the first volume of the Stuart papers, edited by Mr. 
 Glover. A very indulgent, but a very interesting account 
 of the Bishop's political career will be found in Lord 
 Mahon's valuable History of England. 
 
FKANCIS BACON, 
 
 VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS AND BARON VERULAM. 
 
 This illustrious man was born in London on the twenty- 
 second of January, 1561. His father. Sir Nicholas Bacon, 
 a courtier, a lawyer, and a man of erudition, stood high 
 in the favor of Queen Elizabeth, and was lord-keeper 
 during twenty years of her reign. Anne, the second wife 
 of Sir Nicholas, and the philosopher's mother, was the 
 daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, Edward the Sixth's tutor, 
 and was herself distinguished among the learned females of 
 the time. One of her sisters became the wife of Elizabeth's 
 celebrated treasurer. Lord Burleigh. Delicate in health, 
 and devoted to sedentary employment, Francis Bacon ex- 
 hibited in early boyhood the dawning of those powers whose 
 versatility afterwards became not less remarkable than their 
 strength. As a child he delighted the queen with his pre- 
 cocious gravity and readiness of speech ; and before he had 
 completed his twelfth year we see him investigating the 
 cause of a singular echo in a conduit, and endeavoring to 
 penetrate the mystery of a juggler who performed in his 
 father's house. At the age of thirteen he was matriculated 
 at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which Whitgift was then 
 master ; but his residence at the University lasted scarcely 
 three years, and his writings contain many expressions of 
 4 (37) 
 
38 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 dissatisfaction with the current system of academical educa- 
 tion. In his sixteenth year he was sent abroad, and lived 
 for some time at Paris, under the charge of the English am- 
 bassador. Sir Amias Paulett ; after wiiicli he visited the 
 French provinces, and added to his literary and philosoph- 
 ical studies an acquaintance with foreign policy and statis- 
 tics, the fruit of which soon appeared in his tract upon the 
 state of Europe. In February, 1580, his father died, and 
 he immediately returned to England. ^ 
 
 Sir Nicholas left but a scanty fortune ; and his son Fran- 
 cis, the youngest of a large family, found himself obliged, in 
 his twentieth year, to devise the means of earning a liveli- 
 hood. It might have been thought that friends could not 
 have been wanting to one who, besides his own acknowledged 
 merit, had it in his power to urge the long and honorable 
 services of his father, while his uncle was the prime minister 
 of the kingdom. Of the patronage which thus seemed to 
 be at his command. Bacon attempted to avail himself, desir- 
 ing to obtain such a public employment as might enable him 
 to unite political activity in some degree with literary study. 
 But his suit was received neglectfully by the queen, and 
 harshly repulsed by his kinsman. Although all the causes 
 of this conduct may not be discoverable, a few lie at the 
 surface. The lord-keeper had, in the later years of his life, 
 lost the royal favor. Burleigh, besides his notorious con- 
 tempt for men of letters, had to provide for sons of his own, 
 to whom their accomplished cousin might have proved a dan- 
 gerous rival. From the Cecils, indeed, Bacon never derived 
 any efficient aid, till he had forced his way upwards in spite 
 of them ; and there are evident traces of jealousy and dis- 
 like in the mode in which he was treated both by the old 
 treasurer, and by his second son, Robert. 
 
 Obliged, therefore, to betake himself to the law. Bacon was 
 admitted at Gray's Inn, where he spent several years ob- 
 scurely in the study of his profession, but with increasing 
 
FUANCIS BACON. 39 
 
 practice at the bar. The friendship of his fellow lawyers, 
 earned by his amiable disposition and his activity in the 
 affairs of the society, bestowed on him offices in his inn of 
 court ; but his kinsmen were still cold and haughty. Lord 
 Burleigh continued to write him letters of reproof; and 
 Robert Cecil, already a rising statesman, sneered at specula- 
 tive intellects, and insinuated their unfitness for the business 
 of life. In 1590, when Bacon was in his thirtieth year, he 
 was visited for the first time with court favor, receiving then 
 an honorary appointment as queen's counsel extraordinary ; 
 and to this was added a grant of the reversion of a clerk- 
 ship in the star-chamber, which did not become vacant for 
 eighteen years. But the lawyer's heart was not in his task. 
 His brilliant professional success, and the awakening friend- 
 ship of his relations, merely suggested to him renewed 
 attempts to escape from the drudgery of the bar. His 
 views are nobly expressed in a letter which he addressed to 
 the lord-treasurer the year after his appointment.' We 
 
 1 " I was now somewhat ancient ; one and thirty years is a great 
 deal of sand in the hour-glass. My health, I thank God, I find con- 
 firmed, and I do not fear that action shall impair it ; because I account 
 my oi'dinary course of study and meditation to be more painful than 
 most parts of action are. I ever bear a mind, in some middle place 
 that I could discharge, to serve her majesty ; not as a man born under 
 Sol that loveth honor, nor under Jupiter that loveth business, for the 
 contemplative planet carrieth me away wholly ; but as a man born un- 
 der an excellent sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of all men's 
 
 abilities Again, the meanness of my estate doth somewhat move 
 
 me ; for, though I cannot accuse myself that I am either prodigal or 
 slothful, yet my health is not to spend, nor my course to get. Lastly, 
 I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate 
 civil ends ; for I have taken all knowledge to be mi/ province ; and if I could 
 purge it of two sorts of rovers — whereof the one with frivolous dispu- 
 tations, confutations, and verbosities, the other with blind experiments, 
 and auricular traditions and impostures, have committed so many 
 spoils, — I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded 
 conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries ; the best state 
 of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vainglory, or 
 nature, or (if one take it more favorably) philauthropia, is so fixed 
 
40 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 lingei" with melancholy pleasure over these abortive efforts 
 made by one of the finest and most capacious of intellects 
 to extricate itself from that labyrinth of worldly turmoil, in 
 which its owner was destined to purchase rank and splendor 
 at the expense of moral degradation and final ruin. 
 
 We are henceforth to behold Bacon actively engaged in 
 political life, as well as in the duties of his profession. Two 
 parties then divided the court, equally remarkable in differ- 
 ent ways on account of those who headed them. Burleigh 
 was the chief of the queen's old counsellors, on whom, 
 amidst all her caprices, she always had the prudence to rely 
 for the real business of the state : the young and gay, who 
 aspired to be ranked as the personal friends or adorers 
 of the withered sovereign of hearts, were led by the high- 
 spirited and imprudent Earl of Essex. To the party of this 
 nobleman Bacon decidedly attached himself, and soon indeed 
 shared with his own elder brother Anthony, the earl's most 
 private confidence. Valuable advisers were they to their rash 
 patron, and a valuable servant of the nation did Francis Bacon 
 bid fair to become, when, in November, 1592, he entered 
 parliament as one of the knights of the shire for Middlesex. 
 His first speech, in February following, contained an urgent 
 pleading for improvements in the law ; in another address, 
 delivered in March, he resisted, with exceeding boldness as 
 well as force of reason, the immediate levying of an unpopu- 
 lar subsidy to which the House had already consented. 
 The young lawyer's exposition of unpleasant truths gave 
 deep offence to the queen. His uncle and the lord-keeper 
 were both commissioned to convey to him the assurance of 
 
 ill my mind, as it cannot be removed And if your lordship 
 
 will not cairi/ me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras did, who reduced 
 himself with contemplation into voluntary poverty ; but this I will 
 do, — 1 will sell the inheritance that I have, and purchase some lease of 
 quick revenue, or some office of gain, that sliall be executed bi/ deputy ; and 
 so give over all care of service, and become some sorry bookmaker, or a true 
 pioneer in that mine of truth, which, he said, lay so deep." — (Calaba, p. 18. 
 Bacon's Works, Vol. XII. p. 6, 7, Montagu's edit.) 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 41 
 
 the royal displeasure ; and the two humble, nay, crouching 
 letters of apology, still extant, in which he entreated those 
 ministers to procure his pardon, did not forbode much inde- 
 pendence in his subsequent conduct. We do not, indeed, 
 hear Bacon named as a champion of popular rights. 
 
 In the year 1594, Sir Edward Coke being made attorney- 
 general, the solicitorship became vacant ; and Bacon's appli- 
 cation for the office was strenuously supported by Essex. 
 But all efforts were in vain. The powerful kinsmen were 
 colder than ever towards one who had chosen another patron. 
 The lord-keeper, Puckering, acted in a manner which drew 
 on him a spirited rebuke from the candidate. The queen 
 hesitated, coquetted, told Essex that his friend, though witty, 
 eloquent, and in some branches learned, Avas a showy lawyer 
 rather than a profound one. After a delay of many months 
 the place was given to a plodding sergeant, and Bacon's 
 generous patron, vexed at the disappointment of his hopes, 
 sought to console both him and himself by a gift equally 
 munificent and delicate. Bacon received from him an estate 
 at Twickenham, worth about eighteen hundred pounds. The 
 present, in all likelihood, came very seasonably ; for he ap- 
 pears to have been already involved in those pecuniai-y 
 embarrassments from which he was never afterwards com- 
 pletely able to extricate himself. He was obliged to sell 
 the land which Essex had given him ; two years later he 
 was arrested in the street for a debt of three hundred 
 pounds; and among the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere's pa- 
 pers, recently published, there is a curious acknowledg- 
 ment, granted in 1604, for a pledge in security of an ad- 
 vance of fifty pounds to him. These reasons offer the only 
 apology for the addresses which, about the time of his arrest, 
 he paid to a wealthy and shrewish widow, who, fortunately 
 for him, preferred his professional brother and personal 
 enemy, Sir Edward Coke. In the mean time his legal repu- 
 
 I tation continued to increase, and his parliamentary exertions 
 
 f 4* 
 
42 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 were unremitted, though altogether free from that independ- 
 ence which once characterized them. We thus trace Bacon 
 down to his thirty-ninth year, pausing only to remark, that 
 two years earlier, that is, in 1597, his celebrated Essuys 
 were first published. Although merely the skeleton of what 
 they afterwards became, these compositions gained high i-ep- 
 utation for their author, not only at home, but also on the 
 continent. 
 
 After this, the first step in Bacon's literary career, we 
 approach what is the most painful task of his biographer, a 
 dark page of his history, over which no ingenuity has ever 
 been able to throw a veil thick enough to disguise its foul- 
 ness. We have seen him the friend, the adviser, the grate- 
 ful vassal of Essex; we are now to behold him deserting 
 his benefactor, assisting to destroy him, standing forth in the 
 face of the world as his enemy and accuser. The philoso- 
 pher's latest biographer has pronounced his conduct in this 
 matter to be honorable and praiseworthy ; and to his pages 
 we must refer those who are curious to canvass arguments 
 of which we ourselves are unable to discover the force. 
 Bacon, unfortunately for himself, had lately risen much in 
 royal favor, and been greatly trusted and employed. Ac- 
 cordingly, in the first stages of Essex's decline, he had to 
 act a double part, — now offering to his patron advices 
 which were but seldom followed, now seeking excuses to 
 pacify the queen's rising displeasure. His natural inclina- 
 tion for temporizing, the success which had hitherto attended 
 liis cautious policy, the honest wish to serve his generous 
 friend, — all these reasons may have concurred in tempting 
 him to embark in the dangerous channel. But the sunken 
 rocks soon encompassed him, and shipwreck was unavoidable. 
 Alienation either from Elizabeth or from Essex speedily ap- 
 peared to be the necessary result of the position into which 
 the parties were coming. Bacon had not the courage to take 
 the nobler part, and place himself by the side of his falling 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 43 
 
 friend, at the probable expense of all his worldly prospects. 
 Suspicion and estrangement soon took the place of affection- 
 ate confidence ; and the trust reposed in him by the Queen 
 was purchased by the bitter consciousness that Essex re- 
 garded him as treacherous and hostile. A more degrading 
 task was yet to come. The first trial of the earl, in ref- 
 erence to his conduct in Ireland, was determined upon ; 
 and Bacon's enemies asserted that he offered himself to act 
 as one of the counsel for the prosecution. In that memoir 
 in defence of his conduct which he wrote in the next reign, 
 and which proves satisfactorily nothing but his own humili- 
 ating consciousness of guilt, he states as to this matter what 
 wa^ doubtless the truth. It had been resolved that the 
 proceedings against the rash earl should not be carried out 
 to his destruction, but should only disarm and discourage 
 him ; and, a hint being conveyed to Bacon that the Queen 
 had not determined whether he should be employed pro- 
 fessionally in the affair or not, he thought proper to address 
 to her " two or three words of compliment," intimating that 
 if she would dispense with his services he would consider it 
 as one of her greatest favors, but that otherwise he knew 
 his duty, and would not allow any private obligations to 
 interfere with what he owed to her majesty. All this was, 
 he adds, " a respect no man that had his wits could have 
 omitted." Bacon, in short, still wished to serve two masters ; 
 but he had now placed himself at the mercy of those from 
 whom he had no forbearance to expect. The Queen, 
 suspicious and moody, was jealous of his attachment to 
 Essex, and bent on compelling him to do her service unre- 
 servedly ; her advisers, or some of them, were glad to have 
 the odium of the earl's destruction shared with them by one 
 so distinguished, who had, likewise, been the victim's friend. 
 It was intimated that Bacon's services could not be dis-' 
 pensed with ; but he tells us, (and he probably repeats only 
 what his masters tried to make him believe,) that it was 
 
44 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 resolved his share in the prosecution should be confined to 
 matters which could not do his unfortunate patron any- 
 serious harm. Essex's private censure by the privy-council 
 followed ; and, while he was committed to custody-at-large, 
 Bacon incurred, by his appearance against him, an obloquy 
 of which his letters show him to have been painfully sen- 
 sible. In a few months the earl's open rebellion took place ; 
 he was seized, and put upon his trial in February, 1601, 
 along with Lord Southampton ; and on this occasion, when 
 his life was at stake, Bacon again appeared as one of the 
 counsel for the prosecution, and delivered a speech of which 
 there is extant an imperfect account. The language is 
 harsh, but less so than addresses of the kind used to be. in 
 those days. The topics are oratorical, and, as it has been 
 justly remai-ked, are less calculated for insuring conviction, 
 (which indeed was certain,) than for placing the conduct of 
 the prisoner in an odious light, and hardening the Queen's 
 heart against him; and, although it would be rash to judge 
 of the real temper of the harangue without knowing more 
 of its contents, yet what w^e possess contains much that 
 cannot possibly be explained so as to do credit to the 
 speaker. We know, likewise, how the object of the attack 
 received it. At one place Essex interrupted his treacherous 
 friend, and called upon him to say, as a witness, whether he 
 had not, in their confidential intercourse, admitted the truth 
 of those excuses which he now affected to treat as frivolous 
 and false. Essex was convicted ; and between his sentence 
 and execution. Bacon admits in his exculpatory memoir that 
 he made no attempt to save him ; seeing the queen but once, 
 as he says, and on that occasion venturing to do nothing 
 further than pronouncing a few commonplaces on the bles- 
 sed uses of mercy. But not even here was the disgrace to 
 end, in which the timid man of the world had steeped him- 
 self. The act which had cost Elizabeth's own heart so 
 much, had also made her unpopular ; a defence of the royal 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 45 
 
 policy in regard to Essex was thought necessary ; and the 
 pen that drew it up, under the direction of the Queen's 
 advisers, was, we are grieved to find, no other than Bacon's. 
 The " Declaration of- the Practices and Treasons attempted 
 and committed by Robert Earl of Essex " was printed, and 
 is extant : " a performance," says a late writer, " in defence 
 of which, in the succeeding reign. Bacon had not a word to 
 say; a performance abounding in expressions which no 
 generous enemy would have employed respecting a man 
 who had so dearly expiated his offences." With this humili- 
 ating act of service we may consider Bacon's public life 
 under Elizabeth as closed. 
 
 The reign of her successor was, from its commencement, 
 a more auspicious era for men of letters and philosophy, 
 with whom James, amidst all his imbecility and coldheart- 
 edness, was not by any means ill fitted to sympathize. 
 Bacon's learning was no longer open to sneers and con- 
 tempt ; his uncle was dead ; his hunchback cousin, Robert 
 Cecil, who soon became Earl of Salisbury, was kept in 
 check by his hereditary prudence; and Coke, who had 
 insulted our philosophic lawyer grossly, as he insulted every 
 one who was defenceless and within his reach, was in a few 
 years removed to the head of the Court of Common Pleas. 
 From the first hour of James's reign. Bacon lost no oppor- 
 tunity of recommending himself to favor ; but the first 
 mark of it which he received, was one of which he neither 
 was nor could have been proud, and which, nevertheless, he 
 thought proper to solicit. When the king called upon all 
 persons possessing forty pounds a year in land to be 
 knighted, or to compound for a dispensation from the honor, 
 one effect of this scheme for filling the royal coffers was, 
 that three members of Bacon's mess at Gray's Inn ap- 
 peared among the new knights. That love of external dis- 
 tinctions which was the fatal weakness of his nature, was 
 called into play, and the philosopher was disconcerted by 
 
46 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the titles of his companions, beside whom he sat untitled. 
 At the same time, likewise, he had, in his own words, 
 " found out an alderman's daughter, a handsome maiden, to 
 his liking ; " and the alderman's daughter was likely to be 
 more easily won if her admirer could offer her a showy 
 accession of rank. Accordingly, Bacon wrote to his cousin 
 Cecil, stating his desire to obtain, for these reasons, " this 
 divulged and almost prostituted title of knighthood." The 
 request was granted, but was immediately followed by 
 another. Bacon, heartily ashamed of the company in which 
 he was to appear, entreated that he might be knighted 
 alone ; " that," as he says, " the manner might be such as 
 might grace one, since the matter will not." This petition 
 was refused ; and, on the day of the coronation, Francis 
 Bacon was one of three hundred who received the empty 
 honor. Soon afterwards, being forty-two years old, he was 
 married to the alderman's daughter, Alice Barnham, who 
 brought him a considerable fortune, but seems, in the latter 
 part of his life at all events, to have contributed little to 
 his domestic happiness. 
 
 These details are in themselves trifles ; but they are 
 strange illustrations of the mixed character of one who, 
 while thus soliciting honors of which he was half ashamed, 
 and eager for public distinctions, which, though more solid, 
 were likewise more dangerous, was not only respected and 
 distinguished as a lawyer and a statesman, as an orator, a 
 scholar, and an author, but was occupied, during his few 
 hours of leisure, in completing the most valuable system of 
 philosophy that had ever been expounded in modern Eu- 
 rope. Smaller compositions, submitted to his friends, 
 showed from time to time the progress of the great work 
 which he had marked out as the business of his life ; and 
 among these was the treatise on the Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, published in 1605, in its author's forty-fiftli year. 
 Political tracts alteniated with these philosophical specula- 
 tions. 
 
FBANCIS BACON. 47 
 
 In the mean time his public reputation, and his favor 
 with the king increased and kept pace with each other. In 
 parliament he was actively useful in forwarding favorite and 
 really good measures of the court, such as the union of 
 England and Scotland, and the proposed consolidation of 
 the laws of the countries. Nor was he less usefully em- 
 ployed in taking a prominent part in the select committee 
 of the house upon grievapces ; and in his skilful hands, the 
 report became all that the rules could have wished, without 
 exciting any general feeling against the framers. In 1604, 
 he was made king's counsel in ordinary, with a salary of 
 loi'ty pounds, to which was added a pension of sixty pounds. 
 In 1607, upon Coke's promotion to the bench. Bacon was 
 appointed solicitor-general ; and he became attorney-gen- 
 eral in 1612. His treatises concerning improvements in 
 the law, and the principles of legislation, are more credita- 
 ble testimonies to the value of his official services, than some 
 others of his acts ; such as the scheme, first tried in the 
 session of 1614, for securing majorities in the House of 
 Commons by organized corruption, the invention of which 
 has been recently traced to him, although in his place in 
 parliament he ridiculed those who asserted that such a pro- 
 ject had ever been formed. Bacon was likewise officially 
 the prosecutor of Oliver St. John, of Owen and Talbot, and 
 of the old clergyman, Peacham, who was examined in the 
 Tower under torture, the. founder of modern philosophy 
 being present, and putting the questions. In Peacham's 
 case there was even an attempt, actively promoted by 
 Bacon, for securing a conviction by previous conference 
 with the judges ; a plot which, though at length successful, 
 was defeated for a time by the sturdy resistance of Coke, a 
 tyrant to his inferiors, but a staunch opponent of encroach- 
 ments upon judicial independence. Bacon's last remarkable 
 appearance as attorney-general, was in the noted trial of the 
 earl and countess of Somerset, and their accomplices, for 
 
48 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury; and, whatever the 
 foul secret may have been, which was involved in that 
 fiendish intrigue, Bacon's letters to the king leave little 
 reason for doubting that he at least was in possession of it. 
 His conduct in this matter, however, gained him great and 
 deserved credit. 
 
 The fall of Somerset was followed by the rise of the new 
 favorite, Villiers, who had already profited by his intimacy 
 with the attorney-general, and by the sound advices with 
 which the cautious statesman endeavored to fortify his youth 
 and inexperience. The worthless Buckingham, destined in 
 a few years to be the instrument of retribution for Bacon's 
 past desertion of Essex, did not for some time forget obliga- 
 tions, of which he was probably wise enough to desire a 
 continuance. In 1616, Bacon having been sworn of the 
 privy-council, relinquished the bar, but retained his chamber 
 practice. In the spring of 1617, the Lord Chancellor 
 Ellesmere resigned the seals, which were immediately deliv- 
 ered to Bacon, with the title of lord-keeper. In January of 
 the succeeding year, he was made lord high chancellor of 
 England, and in July was raised to the peerage as Baron of 
 Verulam. His higher title of Viscount St. Albans was not 
 conferred on him till 1621. Without neglecting his political 
 duties, he proceeded zealously to the judicial functions of 
 his office, in which arrears of business had accumulated 
 through the infirmities of his . aged predecessor. " This 
 day," wrote he to Buckingham in June, 1617, "I have 
 made even with the business of the kingdom for commoc 
 justice ; not one cause unheard ; the lawyers drawn dry of 
 dU the motions they were to make ; not one petition unan- 
 swered. And this, I think, could not be said in our age 
 before. Thus I speak, not out of ostentation, but out of 
 gladness, when I have done my duty. I know men think I 
 cannot continue, if I should thus oppress myself with busi- 
 ness ; but that account is made. The duties of life are 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 49 
 
 more *than life ; and if I die now I shall die before the 
 world be weary of me." And the man who wrote in this 
 solemn, moral strain, the man whose writings throughout 
 are an echo of the same lofty expression of the sense of 
 duty, was also the man who, in less than four years after his 
 elevation to the seat of justice, was to be hurled from it in 
 disgrace, branded as a bribed and dishonest man. " At York 
 House," says Mr. Montague, " on the 22d of January, 1621, 
 he celebrated his sixtieth birthday, surrounded by his ad- 
 mirers and friends, among whom was Ben Jonson, who 
 composed a poem in honor of the day. 
 
 Hail, happy genius of this ancient pile ! 
 How comes it all things so about thee smile — 
 The fire, the wine, the men — and in the midst 
 Thou stand'st, aS if some mystery thou didst ? 
 
 •' Had the poet been a prophet, he would have described 
 the good genius of the mansion not exulting, but dejected, 
 humble, and about to depart forever." 
 
 He had now arrived at the conviction that his worship of 
 the powers of this world had made it impossible for him to 
 consummate the great sacrifice which, during his lifetime, 
 he had hoped to lay upon the altar of philosophy. Aged 
 sixty years, and immersed in difficult and anxious business, 
 he felt that his great Restoration of Science, his Instauralio 
 Magna, could not be completed ; and he therefore hastened 
 to give to the world an outline of its plan, coupled with a 
 filling up of one section of the outline. " I number my 
 days," wrote he, " and would have it saved." The Novum 
 Organum, the result of this determination, was published in 
 October, 1 620 ; and the fame which it earned for its author 
 throughout Europe, was in its rising splendor when his fall 
 took place. 
 
 The tempest which was soon to overturn the throne was 
 already lowering on the horizon ; and its earliest mutterings 
 
 5 
 
50 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 •were heard in the important parliament which met on the 
 30th of January, 1621. With most of the complaints, whose 
 investigation the king and Buckingham feared so much, we 
 have here little to do : but two gross abuses there were, in 
 which the lord chancellor was personally implicated. He had 
 passed the infamous patents of monopoly, of which the worst 
 were those held by Sir Giles Mompesson, (Massinger's 
 Overreach,) and by Sir Francis Michell, and shared by 
 Buckingham's brothers and dependents : and he had allowed 
 himself to be influenced in his judicial sentences by recom- 
 mendations of the favorite. The first of these faults admit- 
 ted of palliation ; the second was susceptible of none ; but 
 both were real and heavy ofiences. Yet neither was made 
 an article of charge against Bacon. He was attacked upon 
 a different ground. Buckingham, by the advice of his new 
 counsellor Williams, then dean of Westminster, abandoned 
 the monopolists to their fate, contenting himself with send- 
 ing his own brothers out of the country, and with afterwards 
 publicly denying that he had any hand in assisting their 
 escape. But the storm was not allayed. In March, the 
 pai'liamentary committee appointed to inquire into the exist- 
 ence of abuses in the courts of justice, reported that abuses 
 did exist, and that the person against whom they were 
 alleged, was the lord chancellor himself. Two cases were 
 specified, of suitors named Aubrey and Egerton, of whom 
 the one had given the chancellor one hundred pounds, the 
 other four hundred pounds, and against whom he had de- 
 cided, notwithstanding these presents. Two days after this 
 report was presented. Lord St. Albans presided in the House 
 of Lords for the last time. New accusations accumulated 
 against him ; and, alarmed in mind, and sick in body, he 
 retired from the house, and addressed to the peers a letter, 
 praying for a suspension of their opinion, until he should 
 have undergone a fair trial. In no long time the charges 
 against him amounted to twenty-three ; and Williams, again 
 
FBANCIS BACON. 51 
 
 called to the councils of Buckingham and his master, advised 
 that no risks should be incurred upon his account. A pro- 
 rogation of parliament ensued, during which an interview 
 took place between the king and the chancellor ; and James, 
 instead of encouraging his accused servant in the resolution 
 he had expressed of defending himself, recommended " that 
 he should submit himself to the House of Peers, and that 
 upon his princely word he would restore him again, if they 
 in their honors should not be sensible of his merits." On 
 the 24th of April there was presented to the Lords, by the 
 Prince of Wales, a supplication and submission of the lord 
 chancellor, in which the most important passage is the fol- 
 lowing : " It resteth, therefore, that, without fig leaves, I do 
 ingenuously confess and acknowledge that, having under- 
 stood the particulars of the charge, not formally from the 
 house, but enough to inform my conscience and memory, I 
 find matter sufficient and full, both to move me to desert my 
 defence, and to move your lordships to condemn and cen- 
 sure me. Neither will I trouble your lordships by singling 
 those particulars, which I think may fall off. 
 
 Quid te cxempta juvat spinis de pluribus unal 
 
 Neither will I prompt your lordships to observe upon the 
 proofs, where they come not home, or the scruples touching 
 the cx'edits of the witnesses ; neitlier will I represent unto 
 your lordships how far a defence might, in diverse things, 
 extenuate the offence, in respect of the time or manner of 
 the gift, or the like circumstances ; but only leave these 
 things to spring out of your own noble thoughts, and obser- 
 vations jof the evidence and examinations themselves, and 
 charitably to wind about the particulars of the charge here 
 and there, as God shall put it in your minds ; and so submit 
 
 myself wholly to your piety and grace And, there 
 
 fore, my humble suit to your lordships is, that my penitent 
 submission may be my sentence, and the loss of the seal my 
 
52 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 punishment ; and that your lordships will spare any further 
 sentence, but recommend me to his majesty's grace and par- 
 don for all that is past." But not even thus was the humili- 
 ation complete. The house resolved that the submission 
 was not specific, nor unequivocal enough to be satisfactory; 
 and that he should be required to furnish categorical an- 
 swers to the several articles of charge, which accordingly 
 were sent to him, being numbered under twenty-three heads. 
 The specific answers which he returned were prefaced and 
 followed by these declarations : " Upon advised considera- 
 tion of the charge, descending into my own conscience, and 
 calling my memory to account, so far as I am able, I do 
 plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corrup- 
 tion, and do renounce all defence, and put myself upon the 
 
 grace and mercy of your lordships This declaration 
 
 I have made to your lordships with a sincere mind ; humbly 
 craving that, if there should be any mistake, your lordships 
 would impute it to want of memory, and not to any desire 
 of mine to obscure truth, or palliate any thing. For I do 
 again confess, that in the points charged upon me, although 
 tliey should be taken as myself have declared them, there is 
 a great deal of corruption and neglect, for which I am 
 heartily and penitently sorry, and submit myself to the 
 judgment, grace, and mercy of the court. — For extenua- 
 tion, I will use none, concerning the matters themselves : 
 only it may please your lordships, out of your nobleness, to 
 cast your eyes of compassion upon my person and estate. 
 I was never noted for an avaricious man, and the apostle 
 saith, that covetousness is the root of all evil. I hope also 
 that your lordships do the rather find me in the state of 
 grace ; for that, in all these particulars, there are few or 
 none tliat are not almost two years old, whereas those that 
 have a habit of corruption do commonly wax worse and 
 worse ; so that it hath pleased God to prepare me, by pre- 
 cedent degrees of amendment, to my present penitency. 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 53 
 
 And for my estate, it is so mean and poor, as my care is 
 now chiefly to satisfy my debts." 
 
 This declaration being read, a deputation of the lords was 
 appointed to wait on the unfortunate man in tlie chamber 
 where he sat deserted and alone, and to demand whether it 
 was his own hand that was subscribed to it. Among them 
 was Shakespeare's friend Lord Southampton, who had been 
 condemned to death along with Essex. Bacon replied to 
 them, " it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your 
 lordships be merciful to a broken reed." Again the fallen 
 judge prayed the king to intercede for him ; and again the 
 king, his haughty son, and their thankless favorite, refused 
 to interfere. On the 3d of May, 1621, the lords pronounced 
 a sentence which, stamping him at all events with indeUble 
 disgrace, was terrible even in the punishment which it actu- 
 ally inflicted. Bacon, found guilty upon his own confession, 
 was sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, and to 
 confinement in the Tower during the King's pleasure ; he 
 was pronounced incapable of public employments and of sit- 
 ting in parliament, and prohibited from coming within the 
 verge of the court. His judges indeed knew that the harsher 
 part of the sentence would not be executed. Accordingly, 
 though committed immediately to the Tower, he was re- 
 leased after two days' imprisonment ; and the fine was re- 
 mitted in the course of the autumn, although it is a fact dis- 
 honorable (in the circumstances) to his enemy and succes- 
 sor, Bishop Williams, that the pardon was stayed at the seal, 
 • till the king in person ordered it to be passed. 
 
 Fi'om the whole tenor of this afflicting history, it is plain 
 that Bacon's memory cannot be cleared from very heavy 
 imputations. Indeed, the case against him may be stated, 
 if we push it to the utmost, in an alternative form which ad- 
 mits of no honorable solution. Convicted of corruption, as 
 he was, upon his own confession, we must either believe the 
 confession, and pronounce him a corrupt judge, or we must 
 6* 
 
54 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 disbelieve it, and pronounce him a liar. Most of his biogra- 
 phers adopt the former alternative. Mr. Montagu's elabo- 
 rate defence is really founded on something which is not 
 very far distant from the latter. And humiliating as either 
 supposition is, we have, for our own part, no hesitation in 
 believing that the truth lies nearest to that theory which im- 
 putes to the unhappy chancellor insincerity and cowardice, 
 rather then wilful corruption. "We cannot indeed go so far 
 as his enthusiastic biographer, who insists that the acts 
 charged and confessed, were in themselves, if not quite free 
 from moral blame, yet palUated, not only by general usage, 
 but by intentions strictly honest ; — that he was sacrificed 
 by the king and the king's minion, although, if he had stood 
 a trial, he could have obtained a full acquittal. This, we 
 must venture to think, is a position which, if maintained 
 to its whole extent, cannot be even plausibly defended. 
 Neither, as we must also believe, is justice done by that other 
 view, which has been stated more recently with such force 
 and eloquence, that the case was one of gross bribery, gross 
 and glaring even when compared with the ordinary course 
 of corruption in these times ; a case so bad, that the court, 
 anxious, for their own sakes, to save the culprit, dared not 
 to utter a word in extenuation. ^ 
 
 The fact which possesses the greatest importance for the 
 elucidation of this unfortunate story, is that which has been 
 founded on so elaborately by Mr. Montagu, and lately illus- 
 trated further by another writer for a different purpose.'' 
 The custom of giving presents was then general, not to say , 
 universal in England. It extended much further than the 
 epices of the French parliament ; for the gifts were not 
 fixed in amount, nor, though always expected, were they 
 
 1 Montagu's Life of Bacon, Works, "Vol. XVI. part I. p. 313-377, 
 note. Edinburgh Review, Vol. LXV. page 50-63. (Mr. Macaulay.) 
 
 '^ Edinburgh Review, No. 143, p. 38, 39. Life of Raleigh (Professor 
 Napier.) 
 
FRANCIS BACON. 55 
 
 recognized as lawful perquisites. The advisers of the crown 
 I • received presents from those who asked for favors : the sover- 
 
 eign received presents from those who approached the 
 throne on occasions of pomp and festivity. Both these im- 
 proprieties were not only universal but unchallenged. Fur- 
 ther, judges received presents; and under certain conditions, 
 — when, for instance, the giver had not been, and was not 
 likely to be, a suitor in the judge's court, or even when, 
 though he had been a suitor, the cause was ended, — this 
 dangerous abuse was scarcely less common than the other, 
 and scarcely regarded in a more unfavorable liglit. That it 
 was wrong, all men felt ; but we fear there were few indeed, 
 who, like Sir Thomas More, refused absolutely to profit by 
 it. High as Coke himself stood for honesty, and well as 
 he deserved praise for this (almost his only redeeming vir- 
 tue), we doubt whether his judicial character could have 
 emerged quite untainted from a scrutiny led by common in- 
 formers, discarded servants, and disappointed litigants, like 
 that to which his unfortunate rival was subjected. Pure 
 Bacon was not ; purer than he, several of his contempora- 
 ries probably were ; but we believe him to have been merely 
 one of the offenders, and very far indeed from being the worst, 
 in an age when corruption and profligacy, senatorial, judicial, 
 and administrative, were almost at the acme of that excess 
 which an indignant nation speedily rose to exterminate and 
 avenge. 
 
 A comparison of the charges in detail, and of the evi- 
 dence adduced, with Bacon's articulate answers, as to the 
 candor of which there is no reason to doubt, would really ex- 
 hibit little or nothing which, after fair allowances are made 
 for imperfect information and other causes of obscurity, 
 would afford a distinct contradiction to the chancellor's 
 own solemn averment, made in a letter to the king at an 
 early stage of the investigation. " For the briberies and 
 gifts wherewith I am charged, when the book of hearts 
 
56 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 shall be opened, I hope I shall not be found to have the 
 troubled fountain of a corrupt heart, in a depraved habit of 
 taking rewards to perfect justice ; howsoever I may be frail, 
 and partake of the abuses of the times." While he lay in the 
 Tower, he addressed to Buckingham a letter containing 
 these expressions : " However I have acknowledged that 
 the sentence is just, and for reformation sake fit, I have 
 been a trusty, and honest, and Christ-loving friend to your 
 lordship, and the justest chancellor that hath been in the 
 five changes since my father's time." This last sentence, 
 indeed, when carefully weighed, will be found to contain 
 more of truth than the writer himself perhaps intended. 
 A judge not altogether unjust he may have been, if we com- 
 pare him with his contemporaries ; but he was also a trusty, 
 and trusting, and servile friend of the royal favorite, and of 
 other men in power. He was a lover of the pomp of the 
 world, to an extent highly dangerous for one who had but 
 little pi-ivate fortune, insufficient official remuneration, and 
 habits which disqualified him for exercising a strict superin- 
 tendence over the expenses of his household, or the conduct 
 of his dependents generally. His emoluments as chancellor 
 did not amount to three thousand pounds a year; and, im- 
 mediately on his appointment, he had used vain endeavors 
 to have the office put on a more independent footing. His 
 servants habitually betrayed both him and the suitors ; but 
 there can be no doubt that, continually embarrassed in cir- 
 cumstances, he himself was only too glad to receive the 
 customary gifts when they could be taken with any sem- 
 blanee of propriety. As to his confession, while we believe 
 it to be true in every particular instance, we believe it also 
 in its general admission of corruption ; but we likewise be- 
 lieve that the general admission ought to have been quali- 
 fied by certain references, which would have established the 
 truth of the remark made by Bacon in his hour of deepest 
 Buffering, that " they upon whom the wall fell were not the 
 
FEANCIS BACON. 57 
 
 greatest offenders in Israel." And this, as we conceive it, 
 was the danger which the court were so eager to avert, the 
 danger which filled the king and Buckingham with such dis- 
 may. This was their reason for insisting that Bacon should 
 sacrifice his own character, and abandon that line of defence 
 which might not improbably have precipitated the revolu- 
 tion. Upon this assumption, their conduct throughout is 
 intelligible and consistent ; and although one is reluctant to 
 believe it, the assumption is not contradicted by any thing 
 in the chancellor's character. Lofty as may still have been 
 his abstract notions of morality, his practical views were 
 darkened and debased by his long servitude to public ofliice 
 in a corrupt age. The stain which, as he well knew, the 
 sentence of the parliament would affix upon his name, may 
 have seemed a light thing to one who was aware how the 
 same brand might have been justly imprinted on almost every 
 eminent name in the kingdom. And again, neither Bacon 
 nor his master, nor those others who were the royal advisers, 
 were able to comprehend, in this instance, any more than 
 elsewhere, the spirit whichjiti^dready gone abroad. They 
 did not anticipate the severity of the sentence pronounced 
 by the House of Lords ; still less did they anticipate (Bacon 
 at least did not, nor perhaps did Williams) the universal 
 indignation which was aroused by the fact that the highest 
 judge in the realm had been displaced for bribery. The court 
 gained its immediate purpose, in removing to a subsequent 
 time the fatal struggle ; but there soon arrived the fulfil- 
 ment of Bacon's prophecy, that the successful attack on him 
 would be but an encouragement and strengthening to those 
 who aimed at the throne itself. 
 
 After his release from the Tower, Bacon, although 
 strangely anxious to continue in London, was obliged to 
 retire to his paternal seat in Gorhambury, near St. Albans. 
 There he immediately commenced his History of Henry the 
 Seventh, a work displaying but too unequivocal proofs of the 
 
58 NEW BIOGRArHIES. 
 
 dejected lassitude which had crei)t upon his mind. Early 
 next year he offered himself unsuccessfully for the Provost- 
 ship of Eton College, and proceeded with other literary 
 undertakings. These included the completion of the cele- 
 brated treatise De Augmentis, an improvement of the 
 older work on the Advancement of Learning. This was 
 the last philosophical treatise which he published ; although 
 the few remaining years x)f his life were incessantly devoted 
 to study and composition, and gave birth to the New Atlan- 
 tis, the Sylva Sylvarum, and other works of less conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Shortly before the king's death, he I'cmitted the whole of 
 the sentence on Bacon, who, however, did not again sit in 
 Parliament. His health was already broken ; and in De- 
 cember of that year, 1625, he made his will, in which, 
 although his affairs were really in extreme confusion, he 
 writes as if he considered himself a wealthy man. In the 
 spring of 1626, on his way from Gray's Inn to Gorhambury, 
 he exposed himself to a sudden chill, by performing in a 
 cottage an experiment whic#had suggested itself to him, 
 regarding the fitness of snow or ice as a substitute for salt 
 for preserving dead flesh. Unable to travel home, he was 
 carried to the earl of Arundel's house at Highgate, where, 
 after seven days' illness, he died early in the moniing of 
 Easter Sunday, the 9th of April, in the sixty-sixth year of 
 his age. In obedience to his will he was buried in the same 
 grave with his mother, in St. Michael's Church, near St. 
 Albans. 
 
 It is sad beyond expression to turn to those reflections 
 which are suggested by the life of this great man, however 
 leniently one may be disposed to regard his weaknesses. Pie 
 who founded the philosophy of modern Europe, — he who 
 brought down philosophy from heaven to earth, disentan- 
 gling it from airy abstractions, and anchoring it on practical 
 truth, — he who aided science alike by his improvements on 
 
FRANCIS BACON. • 59 
 
 its procedure, and his enlarged views of its end and aim, 
 indicating observation of individual truths as the only sure 
 guide to universal conclusions, and practical utility as the only 
 qfuality which makes such conclusions worth the labor they 
 cost, — he who did all this, was destined to furnish, by his 
 own pitiable example, a pregnant illustration of the great 
 principles which his writings * taught ; a slave to the world 
 and its vanities, he was betrayed by the evil genius whom he 
 served. Unable to subject reason, and passion, and imagina- 
 tion, to the stern control of the moral sense, he expiated, by 
 a life of discomfort and dependence, ending in an. old age of 
 sorrow and disgrace, the sin of having misapprehended the 
 mighty rule, which alone can save the empire of the mind 
 from becoming a scene like ancient chaos. 
 
 Bacon's philosophy has been analyzed in other parts of 
 this work,^ and on his literary character we have left our- 
 selves no space to enlarge. We can only remark the power- 
 ful effect which his singular versatility of talents exercised 
 over the dissemination of his scientific views. • " The reputa- 
 tion which Bacon had acquired from his Essays," says a 
 late writer, " a work early translated into various foreign^ 
 languages, — his splended talents as an orator, — ' and his 
 prominent place in public life, — were circumstances strongly 
 calculated to attract the curiosity of the learned world to his 
 philosophical writings." And these writings in themselves 
 partake admirably of the character belonging to their 
 author's works of a different class. Philosophy has seldom 
 made herself more attractive ; never has she made herself 
 equally so in communicating lessons of sterling value. If 
 the works of this wonderful man were worthless as reposi- 
 tories of scientific thought and knowledge, they would still 
 demand reverential study. A masterly eloquence, a union 
 of diversified qualities of style in the highest sense of the 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
 
60 NEW BIOGKAPHIES. 
 
 word, distinguished even the earlier among them, and entitled 
 those which were produced in the writer's mature years, to 
 rank, notwithstanding the faults they share with all prose 
 compositions of their time, as monuments nowhere excelled 
 in the compass of English literature.^ 
 
 1 Montagu's Life of Bacon, Worh, Vol. XVI. parts 1 and 2, 1834. 
 Edinburgh Review, Vol. LXV., No. 132, Art. 1. Stewart and Play- 
 fair, in the Preliminary Dissertations to the Encyc. Britan. Napier 
 on the Scope and Influence of the Philosophical Writings of Lord 
 Bacon ; in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol 
 VIIL part 2, 1818. 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 
 
 Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham — one of the most 
 profound and original thinkers this or any other country 
 every produced — well deserves a place among the dii 
 majores of English philosophy ; with Bacon, Newton, and 
 Locke. , 
 
 The following brief sketch will comprise an outline of his 
 life and character, some remarks on the peculiarity of his 
 genius, and an estimate of his principal writings. 
 
 He was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, May 18, 1692. 
 His father, Thomas Butler, had been a linen-draper in that 
 town, but before the birth of Joseph, who was the youngest 
 of a family of eight, had relinquished business. He con- 
 tinued to reside at Wantage, however, at a house called the 
 Priory, which is still shown to the curious visitor. 
 
 Young Butler received his first instructions from the Rev. 
 Philip Barton, a clergyman, and master of the grammar- 
 school at Wantage. The father, who was a Presbyterian, 
 was anxious that his son, who early gave indications of ca- 
 pacity, should dedicate himself to the ministry in his own 
 communion, and sent him to a Dissenting academy at Glou- 
 cester, then kept by Mr. Samuel Jones. " Jones," says Pro- 
 fessor Fitzgerald with equal truth and justice, " was a man 
 of no mean ability or erudition ; " and adds, with honorable 
 
 6 (61) 
 
62 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 liberality, " could number among his scholars many names 
 that might-confer honor on any university in Christendom." ^ 
 He instances among others Jeremiah Jones, the author of 
 the excellent work on the Canon ; Seeker, afterwards Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ; and two of the most learned, acute, 
 and candid apologists for Christianity England has produced 
 — Nathaniel Lardner and Samuel Chandler. 
 
 The academy was shortly afterwards removed to Tewkes- 
 bury. While yet there, Butler first displayed his extraordi- 
 nary aptitude for metaphysical speculation in the letters he 
 sent to Clarke on two supposed flaws in the reasoning of the 
 recently published a 'priori demonstrations ; one respecting 
 the proof of the Divine omnipresence, and the other respect- 
 ing the proof of the unity of the "necessarily existent 
 Being." It is but just to Clarke to say that his opponent 
 subsequently surrendered both objections. Whether the 
 capitulation be judged strictly the result of logical necessity, 
 will depend on the estimate foi-med of the value of Clarke's 
 proof of the truths in question, — truths which are happily 
 capable of being shown to be so, independently of any such 
 a priori metaphysical demonstration. In this encounter, 
 Butler showed his modesty not less than his prowess. He 
 was so afraid of being discovered, that he employed his 
 friend Seeker to convey his letters to the Gloucester post- 
 office, and to bring back the answers. 
 
 About this time he began to entertain doubts of the pro- 
 priety of adhering to his father's Presbyterian opinions, and 
 consequently, of entering the ministry of that communion ; 
 doubts which at length terminated in his joining the Church 
 of England. His father, seeing all opposition vain, at length 
 consented to his repairing to Oxford, where he was entered 
 
 * Life of Butler, prefixed to Professor Fitzgerald's very valuaMe 
 edirion of the Analogy, Dublin, 1849. The memoir is derived ciiiefly 
 from Mr. Bartlett's more copious " Life ; " it is very carefully com- 
 piled, and is frequently cited iu the present article. 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 63 
 
 as a commoner of Oriel College, March 17, 1714. Here he 
 early formed an intimate friendship with Mr. Edward Talbot, 
 the second son-of Bishop of Durham, a connection to which 
 his future advancement was in a great degree owing. 
 
 The exact period at which Butler took orders is not 
 known, but it must have been before 1717, as by that date 
 he was occasionally supplying Talbot's living, at Hendred, 
 near Wantage. In 1718, at the age of twenty-six, he was 
 nominated preacher at the Rolls, on the united recommenda- 
 tion of Talbot and Dr. Samuel Clarke. 
 
 At this time the country was in a ferment. What is 
 called the " Bangorian Controversy," and which originated 
 in a sermon of Bishop Hoadley, " On the Nature of Christ's 
 Kingdom," (a discourse supposed to imperil " all ecclesiastical 
 authority,") was then raging. One pamphlet which that 
 voluminous contx'oversy called forth has been attributed to 
 Butler. " The external evidence, however is," as Mr. Fitz- 
 gerald judges, "but slight; and the internal for the negative 
 at least equally so." This writer says, " On the whole, I 
 feel unable to arrive at any positive decision on the subject." 
 Readers curious respecting it may consult Mr. Fitzgerald's 
 pages, whei'e they will find a detail of the circumstances 
 which led to the publication of the pamphlet, and the evi- 
 dence for and against its being attributed to Butler. 
 
 In 1721, Bishop Talbot presented Butler with the living 
 of Haughton, near Dorkington, and Seeker, (who had also 
 relinquished nonconformity, and after some considerable 
 fluctuations in his rehgious views, had at length entered the 
 church,) with that of Haughton-le-Spring. In 1725, the 
 same liberal patron transferred Butler to the more lucrative 
 benefice of Stanhope. 
 
 He retained his situation of preacher at the Rolls till tlie 
 following year (1726) ; and before quitting it published the 
 celebrated Fifteen Sermons delivered there ; among the 
 most profound and original discourses which phUosophical 
 
C4 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 theologian ever gave to the world. As these could have 
 been but a portion of those he preached at the Rolls, it has 
 often been asked what could have become of the remainder ? 
 We agree with Mr. Fitzgerald in thinking that the substance 
 of many was afterwards worked into the Analogy. That 
 .many of them were equally important with the Fifteen 
 may be inferred from Butler's declaration in the preface, — 
 that the selection of these had been determined by " circum- 
 stances in a great measure accidental." At his death, But- 
 ler desired his manuscripts to be destroyed ; this he would 
 hardly have done, had he not already rifled their chief 
 treasures for his great work. Let us hope so at all events ; 
 for it would be provoking to think that discourses of equal 
 value with the Fifteen had been wantonly committed to the 
 flames. 
 
 After resigning his preachership at the Rolls, he retired to 
 Stanhope, and gave himself up to study and the duties of a 
 parish priest. All that could be gleaned of his habits and 
 mode of life there has been preserved by the present Bishop 
 of Exeter, his successor in the living of Stanhope eighty 
 years after; and it is little enough. Tradition said that 
 " Rector Butler rode a black pony, and always rode very 
 fast ; that he was loved and respected by all his parishoners ; 
 that he lived very retired, was very kind, and could not 
 resist the importunities of common beggars, who, knowing 
 his infirmity, pursued him so earnestly, as sometimes to drive 
 him back into his house as his only escape." The last fact 
 the bishop reports doubtful ; but Butler's extreme benevo- 
 lence is not so. 
 
 In all probability, Butler in this seclusion was meditating 
 and digesting that great work on which his fame, and what 
 is better than fame, his usefulness, principally rests, the 
 Analogy. " In a similar retirement," says Professor Fitz- 
 gerald, " The Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker, The Intel- 
 lectual System of Cudworth, and The Divine Legation of 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 65 
 
 Warburton — records of genius ' which posterity will not 
 willingly let die ' — were ripened into maturity." Queen 
 Caroline once asked Archbishop Blackburne whether Butler 
 was not " dead ? " " No," said he, " but he is buried." It 
 was well for posterity that he was thus, for a while, en- 
 tombed. 
 
 He remained in this meditative seclusion seven years. At 
 the end of this period, his friend Seeker, who thought But- 
 ler's health and spirits were failing under excess of solitude 
 and study, succeeded in dragging him from his retreat. 
 Lord Chancellor Talbot, at Seeker's solicitation, appointed 
 him his chaplain in 1733 ; and in 1736 a prebendary of 
 Rochester. In the same year. Queen Caroline, who thought 
 her court derived as much lustre from philosophers and 
 divines as from statesmen and courtiers — who had been the 
 delighted spectator of the argumentative contests of Clarke 
 and Berkeley, Hoadley and Sherlock — appointed Butler 
 clerk of the closet, and commanded his "attendance every 
 evening from seven till nine." 
 
 It was in 1736 that the celebrated Analogy was pub- 
 lished, and its great merits immediately attracted public at- 
 tention. It Avas perpetually in the hands of his royal pat- 
 roness, and passed through several editions before the 
 author's death. Its greatest praise is that it has been al- 
 most universally read, and never answered. "I am not 
 aware," says Mr. Fitzgerald, "that any of those whom it 
 would have immediately concerned, have ever attempted a 
 regular reply to the Analogy ; but particular parts of it 
 have met with answers, and the whole, as a whole, has been 
 sometimes unfavorably criticized." Of its merits, and pre- 
 cise position in relation " to those whom it immediately con- 
 cerns," we shall speak presently. 
 
 Some strange criticisms on its general character in Tho- 
 luck's Vermischte Schriften, shov>ring a singular infelici'y in 
 
 6* 
 
66 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 missing Butler's true ^^ stand-puiikt" as Tholuck's own* 
 countrymen would say, and rather unreasonably complaining 
 of obscurity, considering the quality of German theologico- 
 2)hilosophical style in general, are well disposed of by 
 Professor Fitzgerald, (pp. 47-50). 
 
 About this time Butler had some correspondence with 
 Lord Kaimes, on the Evidences of Natural and Revealed 
 Religion. Kaimes requested a personal interview, which 
 Butler declined in a manner very characteristic of his mod- 
 esty and caution. It was, "on the score of his natural 
 diffidence and reserve, his being unaccustomed to oral con- 
 troversy, and his fear that the cause of truth might thence 
 suffer from the unskilfulness of its advocate." 
 
 Hume was a kinsman of Lord Kaimes, and when pre- 
 paring his treatise of Human Nature for the press, was rec- 
 ommended by Lord Kaimes to get Butlers judgment on it. 
 " Your thoughts and mine," says Hume, " agree with respect 
 to Dr. Butler, and I should be glad to be introduced to him." 
 The interview, however, never took place, nor was Butler's 
 judgment obtained. One cannot help speculating on th<? 
 possible consequences. Would it have made any difference ? 
 
 In the year 1737, Queen Caroline died, biit on her death- 
 bed recommended her favorite divine to her husband's care. 
 In 1738, Butler was accordingly made Bishop of Bristol, in 
 place of Dr. Gooch, who was translated to Norwich. This 
 seems to have been a politic stroke of Walpole, " who prob- 
 ably thought " says Fitzgerald, " that the ascetic rector of 
 Stanhope was too unworldly a person to care for the pov- 
 erty of his preferment, or perceive the slight which it im- 
 plied." In the reply, however, in which Butler expresses 
 his sense of the honor conferred, he shows that he under- 
 stood the position of matters very clearly. The hint he 
 gave seems to have had its effect, for in 1740 the King 
 nominated him to the vacant Deanery of St. Pauls, where- 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 67 
 
 apon he resigned Stanhope, which he had hitherto held in 
 commendam. The revenues of Bristol, the poorest see, did 
 not exceed £400. 
 
 A curious anecdote of Butler has been preserved by his 
 domestic chaplain, Dr. Tucker, afterwards Dean of Glou- 
 cester. He says : " His custom was, when at Bristol, to 
 walk for hours in his garden in the darkest night which the 
 time of year could afford, and I had frequently the honor to 
 attend him. After walking some time, he would stop sud- 
 denly and ask the question, ' what security is there against 
 the insanity of individuals ? The physicians know of none, 
 and as to divines, we have no data, either from Scripture or 
 from reason, to go upon in relation to this affair.' ' True, 
 my Lord, no man has a lease of his understanding any more 
 than of his life ; they are both in the hands of the Sovereign 
 Disposer of all things.' He would then take another turn, 
 and again stop short : ' Why might not whole communities 
 and pubhc bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as 
 individuals ? ' ' My Lord, I have never considered the case, 
 and can give no opinion concerning it.' ' Nothing but this 
 principle, that they are liable to insanity, equally at least 
 with private persons, can account for the major part of those 
 transactions of which we read in history,' I thought little of 
 that odd conceit of the bishop at that juncture ; but I own I 
 could not avoid thinking of it a great deal since, and ap- 
 plying it to many cases." 
 
 In 1747, on the death of Archbishop Potter, it is said that 
 the primacy was offered to Butler, who declined it, with the 
 remark that "it was too late for him to try to support a 
 falling church." K he really said so, it must have been in 
 a moment of despondency, to which his constitutional melan- 
 choly often disposed him. No such feeling, at all events, 
 prevented his accepting the bishopric of Durham in 1750, 
 on the death of Dr. Edward Chandler. About the time of 
 his promotion to this dignity, he was engaged in a design for 
 
08 , NEW BIOGRAPHIKS. 
 
 consolidating and extending the Church of England in the 
 American colonies. With this object he drew up a plan 
 marked by his characteristic moderation and liberality ; the 
 project, however, came to nothing. 
 
 Soon after his translation to the see of Durham, Butler 
 delivered and published his charge on the Use and Impor- 
 tance of External Religion, which gave rise, in conjunction 
 with his erection of a " white marble cross " over the com- 
 munion table in his chapel at Bristol, and one or two 
 other slight circumstances, to the ridiculous and malignant 
 charge of popery ; — a charge, as Mr. Fitzg,erald observes, 
 " destitute of a shadow of positive evidence, and contra- 
 dicted by the whole tenor of Butler's character, life, and 
 writings." 
 
 The revenues from his see were lavisftly expended in the 
 support of public and private charities,^ while his own mode 
 of life was most simple and unostentatious. Of the frugality 
 of his table, the following anecdote is proof: — " A friend of 
 mine, since deceased, told me," says the Rev. John Newton, 
 " that when he was a young man, he once dined with the late 
 Dr. Butler, at that time Bishop of Durham ; and, though 
 the guest was a man of fortune, and the interview by ap- 
 pointment, the provision was no more than a joint of meat 
 and a pudding. The bishop apologized for his plain fare, 
 by saying, that it was his way of living ; ' that he had long 
 been disgusted with the fashionable expense of time and 
 
 1 Butler must have been of a naturally munificent as well as benev- 
 olent disposition. He was extremely fond, it appears, of planning 
 and building ; a passion not always very prudently indulged, or with- 
 out danger, in early days, of involving him in difficulties ; from 
 which, indeed, on one occasion Seeker's intervention saved hjm. He 
 spent large sums in improving his various residences. It was prob- 
 ably in the indulgence of the love of ornamentation to which this 
 passion led, tliat the "marble cross "and other imprudent symbols 
 which were so ridiculously adduced to support the charge of popery 
 originated. 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 69 
 
 money in entertainments, and was determined that it should 
 receive no countenance from his example.'" No prelate 
 ever owed less to politics for his elevation, or took less part 
 in them. If he was not " wafted to his see of Durham," as 
 Horace Walpole ludicrously said, "on a cloud of meta- 
 physics," he certainly was not carried there by political in- 
 trigue or party manceuvres. He was never known to 
 speak in the House of Peers, though constant in his at- 
 tendance there. 
 
 He had not long enjoyed his new dignity before symp- 
 toms of decay disclosed themselves. He repaired to Bath 
 in 1752, in hope of recovering his health, where he died, 
 June 16, in the sixtieth year of his age. 
 
 His face was thin, and pale, but singularly expressive of 
 placidity and benevolence. " His white hair," says Hutch- 
 inson,^ "hung gracefully on his shoulders, and his whole 
 figure was patriarchal." He was buried in the cathedral of 
 Bristol, where two monuments have been erected to his 
 memory. They record in suitable inscriptions (one in Latin 
 by his chaplain. Dr. Foster, and the other in English by the 
 late Dr. Southey) his virtues and genius. Thougli epi- 
 taphs, they speak no more than simple truth. 
 
 A singular anecdote is recorded of his last moments. As 
 . Mr. Fitzgerald observes, " it wants direct testimony," but is 
 in itself neither uniustructive nor incredible, for a dying 
 hour has often given strange vividness and intensity to truths 
 neither previously unknown nor uninfiuential. It is gen- 
 erally given thus: — "When Bishop Butler lay on his 
 death-bed, he called for his chaplain, and said, ' though I 
 have endeavored to avoid sin, and to please God, to the 
 utmost of my power ; yet, from the consciousness of per- 
 petual infirmities, I am still afraid to die.' ' My Lord,' said 
 the chaplain, 'you have forgottpn that Jesus Christ is a 
 
 1 History of Durham, vol. I. p. 578 ; cited in Filzgorald's "Life." 
 
70 , NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Saviour.' ' True,' was the answer, ' but how shall I know 
 that he is a Saviour for me ? ' ' Mj Lord, it is written, him 
 that Cometh unto me, I will in nowise cast out.' 'True,' 
 said the bishop, * and I am surprised, that though I have 
 read that Scripture a thousand times over, I never felt its 
 virtue till this moment ; and now I die happy.' " 
 
 The genius of Butler was almost equally distinguished by 
 subtilty and comprehensiveness, though the latter quality 
 was perhaps the most characteristic. In his Juvenile cor- 
 respondence with Clarke — already referred to — he dis- 
 plays an acuteness which, as Sir James Mackintosh ob- 
 serves, "neither himself nor any other ever surpassed;" an 
 analytic skill, which, in earlier ages, might easily have 
 gained him a rank with the most renowned of the schoolmen. 
 But in his mature works, though they are everywhere char- 
 acterized by subtle thought, he manifests in combination with 
 it qualities yet more valuable ; — patient comprehensiveness 
 in the survey of complex evidence, a profound judgment 
 and a most judicial calmness in computing its several ele- 
 ments, and a singular constructive skill in combining the 
 materials of argument into a consistent logical fabric. This 
 "architectural power" of mind may be wholly or nearly 
 wanting, where the mere analytic faculty may exist in 
 much vigor. The latter may even be possessed in vicious 
 excess, resulting in Uttle more than the disintegration of the 
 subjects presented to its ingenuity. Synthetically to recoh- 
 ■ struct the complex unity, when the task of analysis is com- 
 pleted, to assign the reciprocal relations and law of subor- 
 dination of its various parts, requires something more. 
 Many can take a watch to pieces, who would be sorely 
 puzzled to put it together again. 
 
 Butler possessed these powers of analysis and synthesis 
 in remarkable equipoise. What is more, he could not only 
 recombine, and present in symmetrical harmony, the ele- 
 ments of a complex unity when capable of being subjected 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 71 
 
 to an exact previous analysis, — as in his remarkable sketch 
 of the Moral Constitution of Man, — but he had a wonder- 
 fully keen eye for detecting remote analogies and subtle 
 relations where the elements are presented intermingled or 
 in isolation, and insusceptible of being presented as a single 
 object of contemplation previous to the attempt to combine 
 them. This is the case with the celebrated Analogy. In, 
 the Sermons on Human Nature, he comprehensively sur- 
 veys that nature as a system or constitution; and after a 
 careful analysis of its principles, aflfections, and passions, 
 views these elements in combination, endeavors to reduce 
 each of these to its place, assigns to them their relative 
 importance, and deduces from the whole the law of subordi- 
 nation, — which he finds in the Moral Supremacy of Con- 
 science, as a keystone to the arch — the ruling principle of 
 the " Constitution." In the Analogy, he gathers up and 
 combines from a wide survey of scattered and disjointed 
 facts, those resemblances and relations on which the argu- 
 ment is founded, and works them into one of the most 
 original and symmetrical logical creations to which human 
 genius ever gave birth. The latter task was by far the 
 more gigantic of the two. To recur to our previous illus- 
 tration, Butler* is here like one who puts a watch together 
 without having been permitted to take it to pieces — from 
 the mere presentation of its disjointed fragments. In the 
 former case he resembled the physiologist who has an entire 
 animal to study and dissect ; in the latter he resembled 
 Cuvier, constructing out of disjecta membra — a bone scat- 
 tered here and there — an organized unity which man had 
 never seen except in isolated fragments. 
 
 All Butler's productions — even his briefest — display 
 much of this " architectonic " quality of mind ; in all he not 
 only evinces a keen analytic power in discerning the " differ- 
 ences," (one phase of the philosophic genius, according to 
 Bacon, and hardly the brightest,) but a still higher power 
 
72 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 of detecting the " analogies " and " resemblances of things," 
 and thus of showing their relation and subordination. 
 These peculiarities make his writings ■difficult ; but it makes 
 them profound, and it gives them singular completeness. 
 
 It is not difficult to assign the precise sphere in which 
 Butler, with eminent gifts for abstract science in general, 
 felt most at home. Facts show us, not only that there are 
 peculiarities of mental structure which prompt men to the 
 pursuit of some of the great objects of thought and specula- 
 tion rather than others — peculiarities which circumstances 
 may determine and education modify, but which neither 
 circumstances nor education can do more than determine or 
 modify ; but that even in relation to the very same subject 
 of speculation, there are minute and specific varieties of 
 mind, which prompt men to addict thismselves rather to 
 this part of it than to that. This was the case with Butler. 
 Eminently fitted for the prosecution of metaphysical science 
 in general, it is always the philosophy of the moral nature 
 of man to which he most naturally attaches himself, and on 
 which he best loves to expatiate. Neither Bacon nor Pas- 
 cal ever revolved more deeply the phenomena of our moral 
 nature, or contemplated its inconsistencies — its intricacies 
 — its paradoxes — with a keener glance oi* more compre- 
 hensive survey ; or drew from such survey reflections more 
 original or instructive. As in reading Locke the young 
 metaphysician is perpetually startled by the palpable appa- 
 rition, in distinct sharply-defined outline, of facts of con- 
 sciousness which he recognizes as having been partially and 
 dimly present to his mind before — though too fugitive to 
 fix, too vague to receive a name ; so in reading Butler, he 
 is continually surprised by the statement of moral facts and 
 laws, which he then first adequately recognizes as true, and 
 sees in distinct vision face to face. It is not without reason 
 that Sir James Mackintosh says of the sermons preached at 
 the Rolls, "that in them Butler has taught truths more 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 73 
 
 capable of being exactly distinguished from the doctrines 
 of his predecessors, more satisfactorily established by him, 
 more comprehensively applied to particulars, more rationally 
 connected with each other, and therefore more worthy of the 
 name of discovery, than any with which we are acquainted." 
 
 His special predilections for the sphere of speculation we 
 have mentioned are strikingly indicated in his choice of the 
 ground from which he proposes to survey the questions of 
 morals. " There are two ways," says he in the preface to 
 his three celebrated sermons on Human Nature, " in which 
 the subject of morals may be treated. One begins in- 
 quiring into the «bstract relations of things ; the other, 
 from a matter of fact, namely, what the particular nature 
 of man is, its several parts, their economy or constitu- 
 tion; from whence it proceeds to determine what course 
 of life it is, which is correspondent to this whole nature." 
 As might be expected, from the tendencies of his mind, he 
 selects the latter course. 
 
 The powers of observation in Butler must have been, in 
 spite of his studious life and his remarkable habits of ab- 
 straction, not much inferior to his keen faculty of introspec- 
 tion, though this last was undoubtedly the main instrument 
 by which he traced so profoundly the mysteries of our 
 nature. There have doubtless been other men, fai* less 
 profound, who have had a more quick and more vivid per- 
 ception of the peculiarities of character which discriminate 
 individuals, or small classes of men (evincing, after all, how- 
 ever, not so much a knowledge of man as a knowledge of 
 men) ; still, the masterly manner in which Butler often 
 sketches even these, shows that he must have been a very 
 sagacious observer of those phenomena of human nature 
 which presented themselves from without, as well as of 
 those which revealed themselves from within. In general, 
 however, it is the characteristics of man, the generic phe- 
 nomena of our nature, in all their complexity and subtilty, 
 
 7 
 
74 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 that he best loves to investigate and exhibit. The spirit of 
 his profound philosophy is meantime worthy both of the 
 Christian character and the ample intellect of him who ex- 
 cogitated it. It is the very reverse of that of the philo- 
 sophical satirist or caricaturist; however severely just the 
 foibles, the inconsistencies, the corruptions of our nature, it 
 is a philosophy everywhere compassionate, magnanimous, 
 and philant'hropic. Its tone, indeed, like that of the phi- 
 losophy of Pascal (though not shaded with the same deep 
 melancholy), is entirely modulated by a profound conviction 
 of the frailty and ignorance of man, of the little we know 
 compared with what is to be known, Snd of the duty of 
 humility, modesty, and caution in relation to all those great 
 problems of the universe, which tempt and exercise man's 
 ambitious speculations. His constant feeling, amidst the 
 beautiful and original reasonings of the Analogy, is iden- 
 tical with that of Newton, when, reverting at the close of 
 life to his sublime discoveries, he declared that he seemed 
 only like a child who had been amusing himself with pick- 
 ing up a few shells on the margin of the ocean of universal 
 truth, while the infinite still lay unexplored before him. 
 In a word, it is the feehng, not only of Pascal and of New- 
 ton, but of all the profoundest speculators of our race, whose 
 grandest lesson from all they learned, was the vanishing 
 ratio of man's knowledge to man's ignorance. Hence the 
 immense value (if only as a discipline) of a careful study 
 of Butler's writings, to every youthful mind. They cannot 
 but powerfully tend to check presumption, and teach mod- 
 esty and self-distrust. 
 
 The feebleness of Butler's imagination was singularly 
 contrasted with the inventive and constructive qualities of 
 his intellect, and the facility with which he detected and 
 employed "analogies" in the way of argument. He is, 
 indeed, almost unique in this respect. Other philosophic 
 minds (Bacon and Burke are illustrious examples), which 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 75 
 
 have possessed similar aptitudes for " analogical " reasoning, 
 have usually had quite sufficient of the kindred activity of 
 imagination to employ " analogies " for the purpose of poeti- 
 cal illustration. If Butler possessed this faculty by nature 
 in any tolerable measure, it must (as has been the case with 
 some other great thinkers) have been repressed and ab- 
 sorbed by his habits of abstraction. His defect in this 
 respect is, in some respects, to be regretted, since unques- 
 tionably the illustrations which imagination would have sup- 
 plied to argument, and the graces it would have imparted to 
 style, would have made his writings both more intelligible 
 and more attractive. It is said that once, and once only, 
 he " courted the muses," having indited a solitary " acrostic 
 to a fair cousin " who for the first, and as it seems, the only 
 time, inspired him with the tender passion. But, as one of 
 his biographers says, we have probably no great reason to 
 lament the loss of this fragment of his poetry. 
 
 Butler's composition is almost as destitute of the vivacity 
 of wit as of the graces of imagination. Yet is he by no 
 means without that dry sort of humor, which often accom- 
 panies very vigorous logic, and, indeed, is in some sense 
 inseparable from it ; for the neat detection of a sophism, or 
 the sudden and unexpected explosion of a fallacy, produces 
 much the same effect as wit on those who are capable of 
 enjoying close and cogent reasoning. There is also a kind 
 of simple, grave, satirical pleasantry, with which he some- 
 times states and refutes an objection, by no means without 
 its piquancy. 
 
 As to the complaint of obscurity, which has been so often 
 charged on Butler's style, it is difficult to see its justice in 
 the sense in which it has been usually preferred. He is a 
 difficult author, no doubt, but he is so from the close pack- 
 ing of his thoughts, and their immense generality and com- 
 prehensiveness ; as also from what may be called the breadth 
 of his march, and from occasional lateral excursions for the 
 
76 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 purpose of disposing of £ome objection which he does not 
 formally mention, but which might harass his flank ; it 
 certainly is not from indeterminate language or (ordinarily) 
 involved construction. All that is i-eally required in the 
 reader, capable of understanding him at all, is to do just 
 what he does with lyrical poetry (if we may employ an odd, 
 and yet in this one point, not inapt comparison) ; he must 
 read sufficiently often to make all the transitions of thought 
 familiar, he must let the mind dwell with patience on each 
 argument till its entire scope and bearing are properly ap- 
 preciated. Nothing certainly is wanting in the method or 
 arrangement of the thoughts ; and the diction seems to us 
 selected with the utmost care and precision. Indeed, as 
 Professor Fitzgerald justly observes, a collation of the first 
 with the subsequent editions of the Analogy (the vari- 
 ations are given in Mr. Fitzgerald's edition) will show, by 
 the nature of the alterations, what pains Butler bestowed 
 on a point on which he is erroneously supposed to have 
 been negligent. In subjects so abstruse, and involving so 
 much generality of expression, the utmost difficulty must 
 always be experienced in selecting language which conveys 
 neither tnore nor less than what is intended ; and this point 
 Butler must have labored immensely ; it may be added, suc- 
 cessfully, since he has at least produced works which have 
 seldom given rise to disputes as to his meaning. Though 
 he may be difficult to be understood, few people complain 
 of his being liable to be wwunderstood. In short, it may 
 be doubted whether any man of so comprehensive a mind, 
 and dealing with such abstract subjects, ever condensed the 
 results of twenty years meditations into so small a compass, 
 with so little obscurity. No doubt greater amplification 
 would have made him more pleasing, but it may be ques- 
 tioned whether the perusal of his writings would have been 
 so useful a discipline ; and whether the truths he has deliv- 
 ered would have fixed themselves so indelibly as they now 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 77 
 
 generally do in the minds of all who diligently study him. 
 Tt is the result of the very activity of mind his writings 
 stimulate and demand. But, at any rate, if precision in the 
 use of language, and method and consecutiveness in the 
 thoughts, are sufficient to rebut the charge of obscurity, 
 Butler is not chargeable with the fault in the ordinary 
 sense. We must never forget what Whately in his Rhetoric 
 has so well illustrated — that perspicuity is a " relative qual- 
 ity." To the intelligent, or those who are willing to take 
 sufficient pains to understand, Butler will not seem charge- 
 able with obscurity. The diction is plain, downright Saxon- 
 English, and the style, however homely, has, as the writer 
 just mentioned observes, the great charm of transparent 
 simplicity of purpose and unaffected earnestness. 
 
 The immortal Analogy has probably done more to 
 silence the objections of infidelity than any other ever 
 written from the earliest "apologies" downwards. It not 
 only most critically met the spirit of unbelief in the author's 
 own day, but is equally adapted to meet that which chiefiy 
 pranrails in all time. In every age some of the principal, 
 perhaps the principal, objections to the Christian Revelation, 
 have been those which men's preconceptions of the Divine 
 character and administi'ation — of what God must be, and 
 of what God must do — have suggested against certain facts 
 in the sacred history, or certain doctrines it reveals. To 
 show the objector then (supposing him to be a theist, as 
 nine tenths of all such objectors have been), that the very 
 same or similar difficulties are found in the structure of the 
 universe and the divine administration of it, is to wrest 
 every such weapon completely from his hands, if he be a 
 fair reasoner and remains a theist at all. He is bound by 
 strict logical obligation either to show that the parallel diffi- 
 culties do not exist, or to show how he can solve them, 
 while he cannot solve those of the Bible. In default of 
 7* 
 
78 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 doing either of these things, he ought either to renounce all 
 ' such objections to Christianity, or abandon theism altogether. 
 It is true, therefore, that though Butler leaves the alterna- 
 tive of atheism open, he hardly leaves any other alternative 
 to nine tenths of the theists who have objected to Christian- 
 ity. 
 
 It has been sometimes said by way of reproach, that 
 Butler does leave that door open ; that his work does not 
 confute the atheist. The answer is, that it is not its object 
 to confute atheism ; but it is equally true, that it does not 
 diminish by one grain any of the arguments against it. 
 It leaves the evidence for theism — every particle of it — 
 just where it was. Butler merely avails himself of facts 
 which exist, undeniably exist (whether men be atheists or 
 theists), to neutralize a certain class of objections against 
 Christianity. And as the exhibition of such facts as form 
 the pivot on which Butler's argument turns, does not im- 
 pugn the truth of theism, but leaves its conclusions, and the 
 immense preponderance and convergence of evidence which 
 establish them just as they were, so it is equally true that 
 Butler has sufficiently guarded his argument from any per- 
 version ; for example, in Part I. chap. VI. and Part II. 
 chap. VIII. He has also with his accustomed acuteness and 
 judgment shown that, even on the principles of atheism 
 itself, its confident assumption that, if its principles be 
 granted, a future life — future happiness — future misery — 
 is a dream — cannot be depended on ; for since men have 
 existed, they may again ; and if in a bad condition now 
 in a worse hereafter. It is not, on such an hypothesis, a 
 whit more unaccountable that man's life should be renewed 
 or preserved, or perpetuated forever, than that it should have 
 been originated at all. On this point, he truly says, " That 
 we are to live hereafter is just as reconcilable with the 
 scheme of atheism, and as well to be accounted for by it, as 
 
JOSEPH BUTLEK. 7i) 
 
 that we are now alive, is ; and therefore nothing can be 
 more absurd than to argue from that scheme, that there can 
 be no future state." 
 
 It has been also alleged that the analogy only " shifts the 
 difficulty from revealed to natural religion," and that " athe- 
 ists might make use of the arguments and have done so." 
 The answer is, not only (as just said) that the arguments of 
 Butler leave every particle of the evidence for theism just 
 Avhere it was, and that he has sufficiently guarded against all 
 abuse of them ; but that the facts, of which it is so foohshly 
 said that the atheist might make iU use, had always been the 
 very arguments which he had used, and of which Butler only 
 made a new and beneficial application. The objections with 
 which he perplexes and baffles the deist, he did not give to the 
 atheist's armory ; he took them from thence, merely to make 
 an unexpected and more legitimate use of them. The athe- 
 ist had never neglected such weapons, nor was likely to do 
 60, previous to Butler's adroit application of them. The 
 charge is ridiculous ; as well might a man, who had wrested 
 a stiletto from an assassin to defend himself, be accused of 
 having put the weapon into the assassin's hands ! It was 
 there before ; he merely wrested it thence. It is just so 
 with Butler. 
 
 • Further ; we cannot but think that the conclusiveness of 
 Butler's work as against its true object The Deist, has 
 often been underrated, by many even of its genuine admir- 
 ers. Thus Dr. Chalmers, for instance, who gives such glow- 
 ing proofs of his admiration of the work, and expatiates in 
 a congenial spirit on its merits, affirms that " those overrate 
 the power of analogy who look to it for any very distinct or 
 positive contribution to the Christian argument. To repel 
 objections, in fact, is the great service which analogy has 
 rendered to the cause of Revelation, and it is the only service 
 which we. seek for at its hands." * This, abstractedly, is true ; 
 1 Prelections on Butler, etc. p. 7. * 
 
80 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 but, in fact, considering the position of the bulk of the ob- 
 jectors, that they have been invincibly persuaded of the 
 truth of theism, and that their objections to Christianity have 
 been exclusively or chiefly of the kind dealt with in the 
 Analogy, the work is much more than an argumentum ad 
 hominem ; it is not simply of negative value. To such ob- 
 jectors it logically establishes the truth of Christianity, or it 
 forces them to recede from theism, which the bulk will not 
 do. If a man says, " I am invincibly persuaded of the truth 
 of proposition A, but I cannot receive proposition B, be- 
 cause objections a, ^, y are opposed to it ; if these were 
 removed, my objections would cease;" then, if you can show 
 that a, ^, y equally apply to the proposition A, his recep- 
 tion of which, he says, is based on invincible evidence, you 
 do really compel such a man to believe that not only B may 
 be true, but that it is true, unless he be willing (which few 
 in the parallel case are) to abandon proposition A as well as 
 B. This is precisely the condition in which the majority of 
 deists have ever been, if we may judge from their writings. 
 It is usually the a priori assumption, that certain facts fe 
 the history of the Bible, or some portions of its doctrine, are 
 unworthy of the Deity, and incompatible with his character 
 or administration, that has chiefly excited the incredulity of 
 the deist ; far more than any dissatisfaction with the posi- 
 tive evidence which substantiates the Divine origin of Cliris- 
 tianity. Neutralize these objections by showing that they 
 are equally applicable to what he declares he cannot relin- 
 quish — the doctrines of theism ; and you show him, if he 
 has a particle of logical sagacity, not only that Christianity 
 may be true, but that it is so ; and his only escape is by 
 relapsing into atheism, or jesting his opposition on other ob- 
 jections of a very feeble character in comparison, and which, 
 probably, few would have ever been contented with alone ; 
 for apart from those objections which Butler repels, the 
 •historical evidence for Christianity — the evidence on be- 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 81 
 
 half of the integrity of its records, and the honesty and sin- 
 cerity of its founders, showing that they could not have 
 constructed such a system if they would, and would not, 
 supposing them impostors, if they could — is stronger than 
 that for any fact in history. 
 
 In consequence of this position of the argument, Butler's 
 book, to large classes of objectors, though practically an 
 argumentum ad hominem, not only proves Chi-istianity may 
 be true, but in all logical fairness proves it is so. This he 
 himself, with his usual judgment, points out. He says : 
 " And objections, which are equally applicable to both nat- 
 ural and revealed religion, are, properly speaking, answered 
 by its being shown that they are so, provided the former be 
 admitted to be true." 
 
 The praise which Mackintosh bestowed on this great 
 work, is alike worthy of it and himself. " Butler's great 
 work, though only a commentary on the singulai'ly original 
 and pregnant passage of Origen, which is so honestly pre- 
 fixed to it as a motto, is, notwithstanding, the most oi'iginal 
 and profound work extant in any language, on the Philoso- 
 phy of Religion." ^ The favorite topics of the Sermons 
 are, of course, largely insisted on in the Analogy ; such 
 as the " ignorance of man ; " the restrictions which the lim- 
 itations of his nature and his position in the universe should 
 impose on his speculations ; his subjection to " probability as 
 the guide of life ; " the folly and presumption of pronounc- 
 ing, a priori, on the character and conduct of the Divine 
 Ruler from our contracted point of view, and our glimpses 
 of but a very %mall segment of his universal plan. These 
 topics Butler enforces with a power not less admirable than 
 
 1 A far different and utterly inconsistent judgment in all respects 
 is reported, in his " Life," to have fallen from him. But as Professor 
 Fitzgerald shows, it is so strangely, and, indeed, amusingly con- 
 trary to the above, that it must have been founded on some mistake 
 of something that mast have been said in conversation. 
 
82 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the Sagacity with which he traces the analogies between the 
 " Constitution and Course of Nature," and tlie disclosures of 
 " Divine Revelation." These last, of course, form the staple 
 of the argument ; but to enforce the proper deductions from 
 them, the above favorite topics are absolutely essential. 
 
 It has been sometimes, though erroneously, surmised, that 
 Butler was considerably indebted to preceding writers. 
 That in the progress of the long deistical controversy many 
 theologians should have caught glimpses of the same line of 
 argument, is not wonderful. The constant iteration by the 
 English deists of that same class of difficulties to which the 
 Analogy replies, could not fail to lead to a partial percep- 
 tion of the powerful instrument it was reserved for But- 
 ler effectually to wield. It has been here as with almost 
 every other great intellectual achievement of man ; many 
 minds have been simultaneously engaged by the natural 
 progress of events about the same subject of thought ; there 
 have been " coming shadows " and " vague anticipations," 
 perhaps even simultaneous inventions or discoveries ; and 
 then ensues much debate as to the true claimants. Thus it 
 was in relation to the calculus, the analysis of water, the in- 
 vention of the steam-engine, and the discovery of Neptune. 
 
 In the present case, however, there can be no doubt that 
 the merit of the systematic construction of the entire argu- 
 ment rests with Butler. Nor would it have much detracted 
 from his merit, even if he had derived far larger fragments 
 of the fabric from his contemporaries than we have any 
 reason to believe he did. They would have been but single 
 stones ; the architectural genius which broi^ht them from 
 their distant quarries and polished them, and wrought them 
 into a massive evidence, was his alone. 
 
 Professor Fitzgerald has truly remarked, that the work of 
 Dr. James Foster against Tindal (an author Butler evi- 
 dently has constantly in his eye), presents some curious 
 parallelisms with certain passages of the Analogy ; we 
 
JOSEPH BUTLER. 88 
 
 have ourselves noted in Conybeare's reply to the same infi- 
 del writer (published six years before the Analogy), other 
 parallelisms not less striking. But it seems quite improba- 
 ble that Butler should have derived aid from any such 
 sources, since his work was being excogitated for many years 
 before it was published ; nay, as we have seen, it may be 
 conjectured that he largely transfused into it portions of the 
 sermons delivered so long before at the Rolls, and of which 
 a far greater number must have been preached than the 
 fifteen he published ; so that, perhaps, it is more near the 
 truth to say, that contemporary writers had been indebted 
 to him than he to them. 
 
 The " pregnant sentence " from Origen, however, is not 
 the only thing which may have suggested to Butler his 
 great work. Berkeley, in a long passage of the " Minute 
 Philosopher," cited by Mr. Fitzgerald, clearly lays down 
 the principle on which such a work as the Analogy might 
 be constructed. 
 
 The spirit of the Analogy is admirable. Though 
 eminently controversial in its origin and purpose ; and 
 though the author must constantly have had the ^eistical 
 writers of the day in his eye, his work is calm and dignified, 
 and divested of every trace of the controversial spirit. 
 He does not even mention the names of the men whose 
 opinions he is refuting ; and if their systems had been 
 merely some new minerals, or aerolites di'opped upon the 
 world from some unknowa sphere, he could not have ana- 
 lyzed them with less of passion. 
 
 Of Butler's ethical philosophy, as expounded especially in 
 the Sermons on Human Nature Sir James Mackintosh's 
 remarks prefixed to this Encyclopaedia, ^ supersede further 
 notice in the present brief article. But it may be remarked 
 in general of the sermons preached at the Rolls, that though 
 
 1 Encyclopedia Britannica. 
 
84 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 not so much read (if we except, perhaps, the three just 
 mentioned) as the Analogy, they are to the full as worthy 
 of beLag read ; they deserve all that is so strikingly said of 
 them in the Preliminary Dissertation. Some of them fill 
 one with wonder at the sagacity with which the moral para- 
 doxes in human nature are investigated and reconciled. 
 Take, for example, the sermon on Balaam. The first feel- 
 ing in many a mind on reading the history in the Old Tes- 
 tament is, that man could not so act in the given circum- 
 stances. We doubt if ever any man deeply pondered the 
 sermon of Butler, in which he dwells on the equally unac- 
 countable phenomena of human conduct, less observed, in- 
 deed, only because more observable — and questioned any 
 longer man's powers of self-deception, even to such feats of 
 folly and wickedness as are recorded of the prophet. 
 
 The editions of Butler's writings, separately or altogether, 
 have been numerous, and it is impossible within the limits of 
 this article to specify them ; still less to do justice to the liter- 
 ature which they have produced. His commentators have 
 been many and most illustrious; seldom has a man who 
 wrote so little, engaged so many great minds to do him 
 homage, by becoming his exponents and annotators. It 
 may be permitted, however, to mention with deserved honor 
 the Remarks of Sir James Mackintosh prefixed to this En- 
 cyclopaedia ; the " Prelections " of Dr. Chalmers on the 
 Analogy, the valuable "Essay" of Dr. Hampden on the 
 " Philosophical Evidence of Christianity ; " some beautiful 
 applications of Butler's principle in Whately's " Essays on 
 the Peculiarities of Christianity ; " and the admirable edi- 
 tion of the Analogy by Professor Fitzgerald, which is 
 enriched by many very acute and judicious notes, and by a 
 copious and valuable index. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 John Howard, the philanthropist, belongs to the rare 
 order of men who have won from- the world special titles of 
 distinction. Many persons have earned the title of Great, 
 from Macedonia's madman to"the Swede ; but mankind has 
 endowed only one man with the appellative Just. In How- 
 ard's case the complimentary addition of the Philanthropist 
 is not a mere figure of speech. 
 
 Howard was born at Enfield, (not at Hackney, as the 
 monument in St. Paul's asserts,) where his father, a retired 
 London merchant, had a country house. He was born on 
 the 2d of September, 1726. His father was wealthy, and 
 was elected to serve as sheriff; but the Test Act being then 
 in force, he paid the fine usually paid by Dissenters to 
 escape that honor, a policy which his son afterwards, happily 
 for the world, refused to follow. Howard was a sickly 
 child, and country air was found necessary to his health. 
 He was removed to Cardington, a village in Bedfordshire, 
 near to Woburn, where his father had a small estate. The 
 fiacts of his early life are few, and are soon told. He grew 
 in years and strength, a quiet, simple, original boy; not 
 bright, not vigorous, not ambitious. From his two school- 
 masters, the Rev. John Horselcy, (author of a Latin Gram- 
 mar and translator of a version of the New Testament,) and 
 8 (85) 
 
86 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Mr. John Eames, F. E. S., he learned but little Latin and 
 less Greek ; yet even in his early years he acquired some 
 knowledge of living languages, and a fair acquaintance with 
 natural science, geography, and medicine. At sixteen, he 
 was apprenticed to a grocer in the city, paying seven hun- 
 dre4 pounds as a premium. But his father now died, and 
 he was his own master. He therefore bought off his 
 apprenticeship, travelled into France and Italy, bought pic- 
 tures, visited famous churches and cities, and after an ab- 
 sence almost of two years' duration, during which he per- 
 fected himself in French, so as to speak the language like a 
 native, he returned to England. Here he lodged at Stoke- 
 Newington, studied medicine and meteorology, put himself 
 on a diet of bread and tea, fell seriously ill, and married his 
 nurse, an old woman, who was also a confirmed invalid. 
 He was twenty-five, she was'about fifty-three. He married 
 her because he believed that she had saved' his life, and 
 that no other return for her motherly kindness was sufficient. 
 She lived three years as a wife, when her malady wore 
 her out, and she w^as buried in the churchyard of St. 
 Mary's, Whitechapel. A plain tombstone marks the spot. 
 At her death Howai-d broke up his house. The earthquake 
 at Lisbon had just occurred ; that earthquake, the effect of 
 which on the minds of men Goethe has so powerfully de- 
 scribed in his Wahrheit und Dichtung. Philanthropic 
 impulse was stirred in Howard ; he believed that he could 
 help to alleviate the calamity, and he took a berth in the 
 " Hanover." But the Seven Years' War was then raging. 
 French, Austrian, and Prussian armies were fighting in 
 various parts of Europe, and English and French cruisers 
 swept the seas in every direction. Providence threw the 
 " Hanover " in the way of a French privateer ; she and her 
 passengers were carried into Brest. The crew and passen- 
 gers were treated with extreme cruelty, were hurried from 
 place to place, starved, and cast into loathsome dungeons. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 87 
 
 Howard's heart almost broke with indignation at the treat- 
 ment suffered by his gallant and unhappy countrymen, " I 
 had evidence," he says, " of their being treated with such 
 barbarity that many hundreds had perished, and that thirty- 
 six were buried in a hole in J)inan in one day." When he 
 obtained his release on parol, he went to the government, 
 described in powerful language the scenes he had witnessed, 
 and compelled the Commissioners of Sick and Wounded 
 Seamen to take measures for securing an exchange of pris- 
 oners. A naval officer replaced himself; and in a few days 
 he had the satisfaction to hear of the release of his fellow- 
 captives in Brittany. 
 
 Howard still retreated from public life. His scientific 
 studies were continued, and on May 13, 1756, he was 
 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to the Transactions 
 of which he contributed thi'ee papers. Two yeai's later he 
 married again. "My second wife was Henrietta Leeds, 
 whom a good God gave me the second of May." Such are 
 his own words. They lived together in the seclusion of a 
 country house for nine years, when their only child, a son, 
 was born, and the mother died in the exhaustion of nature. 
 Howard's public career began after her death. During her 
 life his energies were chiefly confined to the village of Car- 
 dington, in which he commenced a reform, then new and 
 startling, but which has, since his age, and greatly through 
 his example, received a happy development. He was the 
 first builder of model cottages. 
 
 When Howard went to reside at Cardington, that village 
 was about as filthy, wretched, and unwholesome as any spot 
 in England. The neighboring gentry followed the hounds, 
 and exacted their rents. The poor were idle, dirty, im- 
 moral ; the men passed their days in the ale-house, and 
 their nights in the preserves ; the women were ill-used, the 
 children ignorant and neglected. Howard's property was 
 small in the district compared with that of his neighbors, 
 
88 NEW B10GKA.PHIES. 
 
 and before he began his plan, he wisely added to his estate 
 by two purchases, at once to increase his influence in the 
 place, and to obtain a larger field for operations. H6 then 
 built a school for boys and a school for girls, procured good 
 teachers, and invited the villagers (not merely his own 
 tenants) to send their children, his only conditions being 
 regularity, cleanliness, and attendance at some place of wor- 
 ship on the Sunday. At the same time he pulled down the 
 wretched hovels in which his poorer tenants lived — hovels 
 of a single room in which father, mother, and grown up 
 children had to eat and sleep — and erected larger and more 
 commodious cottages to replace them. With the sure instinct 
 of a reformer, he saw that such hovels were not, never 
 could be happy homes, — residences in which men with any 
 sense of shame, any feeling of self-respect, could live con- 
 tentedly while the ale-house offered its cheerful lights and 
 jovial company as a change. He therefore undertook to 
 remove them. His model cottages were occupied as fast as 
 they were raised. They cost more money, yet he did not 
 raise the rent ; for, in spite of his commercial training, he 
 had scruples about putting out money at interest, and looked 
 upon wealth as a sacred and moral deposit placed in his 
 hands for the benefit of mankind, not for his own private 
 use and pleasure. In a few years some of his rich friends 
 and neighbors, especially Samuel Whitbread, (the famous 
 brewer, and father of the celebrated politician, Whitbread,) 
 seeing the success of his scheme, lent a hand in the good 
 work. The schools flourished ; the children grew clean and 
 rosy ; poaching became rare ; the chapels and churches 
 were filled ; little patches of garden rose at the cottage 
 doors ; ale-houses lost some of their strong attractions ; and 
 Cardington began to strike the stranger's eye as a pretty, 
 clean, and prosperous village. 
 
 After his second wife's death Howard busied himself with 
 his books, his schools, and cottages. He travelled into Hoi- 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 89 
 
 land. He went to France, to Switzerland, to Italy ; but he 
 found no rest for the sole of his foot. He returned as far as 
 Holland (his favorite country next to his own), and went 
 back thence to Rome and Naples. He admired the Apollo 
 and the Gladiator, and he felt the usual raptures before the 
 paintings of Titian, Guido, and Raphael. He saw the Pope 
 and the Pretender ; the first " a worthy good man ; " the 
 second " a mere sot, very stupid, dull, and bending double." 
 He went up the mountain to Vesuvius, and down the lagune 
 to Venice. He came home through Munich, Augsburg, and 
 the Rhine — came home to find himself unexpectedly named 
 Sheriff of Bedford, and to begin his public career. This 
 was in 1773. He accepted the office of Sheriff, though a 
 Dissenter, resolved not to take the usual sacraments, but to 
 brave a bad law, and, if prosecuted, defend himself in the 
 courts. No one prosecuted him. When the assizes opened 
 he sat in the court, and when the trials of the day were 
 over he descended into the jail to see in what state the pris- 
 oners were. It was the prison into which Bunyan had been 
 thrown, and in which lie wrote his immortal Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress. Howard found it, like all the jails of the time, 
 dirty and close, Avithout decent accommodation for the wo- 
 men, and with scarcely any practical separation of the two 
 sexes. The air was bad, the food worse, the water intoler- 
 able. The fees were high, and rigorously exacted ; the 
 iailer and his subordinates living on the wretched wages 
 they could wring from the misery of the poor prisoners. 
 What most of aU astonished his humane heart, and vioiated 
 his sense of right, was the fact that some of the accused 
 who had been freed by judge and jury, and who had left 
 the court without a stain, were kept in the horrid jail (for 
 longer or shorter periods, according to their circumstances, 
 but in some cases for years) until they paid the fees of jail 
 delivery. Howard instantly brought this monstrous form of 
 wrong before the county magistrates, and proposed that an 
 
90 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 order should be issued for the discharge of these innocent 
 suiFerers, and that a rule should be adopted in future for the 
 instant liberation in open court of all such persons as were 
 found not guilty. The magistrates were startled at such 
 bold reforms ; the jailer protested against the loss of his fees, 
 which were his income, his means of life, as he had no salary 
 from the county. The clerk of assize put in a similar pro- 
 test. Howard proposed to redeem these fees by paying reg- 
 ular salaries to these servants of the public ; but the magis- 
 trates knew of no precedent for such a course, and without 
 a precedent they could not act. Howard undertook to find 
 it, if such existed in any neighboring county. He went to 
 Cambridge, to Huntingdon, to Northampton, to Leicester, 
 and to Nottingham, and this journey gradually extended to 
 every town in England where was then a prison. The 
 object of his search eluded inquiry. He could find no pre- 
 cedent for charging the county with the wages of its servants ; 
 but he discovered so many abuses in the management of 
 prisons which imagination had never conceived, and so many 
 sufferings of which the general public knew nothing, and of 
 which the law took no account, that he determined to devote 
 to the examination of these wrongs, and the reform of these 
 abuses, whatever time and money might be needful. The 
 task cost him a fortune, and the remaining years of his life. 
 Tiie inquiry now attracted public attention. At the close 
 of his first rapid survey of our prisons, the House of Com- 
 mons resolved itself into a committee, and heard his report 
 at the bar of the House. Popham, member for Taunton, 
 had already forced the unwilling legislature to discuss the 
 propriety of paying fixed salaries out of the county rates ; 
 but the House had dropped the bill. Howard's revelations 
 completed Popham's arguments. Nearly fifty years before 
 that time the House had appointed a committee to inquire 
 into the state of Newgate, the Marshalsea, and other London 
 jails, when abuses came to light which caused the House to 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 91 
 
 order the arrest of several governors of jails, who were 
 tried for high misdemeanors.^ 
 
 But the public, as well as the parliament, shrank from the 
 investigation of scenes so horrid, so that after an explosion 
 of virtue on the part of Mr. Oglethorpe, magnificently re- 
 warded by a couplet in Pope, the subject was allowed to die 
 out of recollection until the researches of Howard and the 
 zeal of Popham raised it in a more favorable age. When 
 the House resumed. Sir Thomas Clavering, at the instance 
 of the committee, moved " that John Howard, Esq., be called 
 to the bar, and that Mr. Speaker do acquaint him that the 
 House are very sensible of the humanity and zeal which 
 have led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and 
 to communicate to the House the interesting observations 
 which he has made upon that subject." This vote put the 
 seal of pubhc sanction on his inquiries, so that his subse- 
 quent investigations had a sort of semi-oflBcial character, of 
 vast use to him in dealing with morose jailers and impracti- 
 cable magistrates of the very old school. 
 
 From St. Stephen's Howard went to the Marshalsea; 
 afterwards to each of the London prisons, which he minutely 
 examined. From London he passed to the north of Eng- 
 land, whence he was recalled by the passing of two new bills, 
 based on Popham's abandoned measure of the previous ses- 
 sion and on his own communications to the House. The first 
 bill provided for the liberation, free of ail charges, of every 
 nrisoner against whom the grand-jury failed to find a true 
 Dill, giving the jailer a sum from the county rate in lieu of 
 the abolished fees. The second bill required justices of the 
 peace to see that the walls and ceiUngs of all prisons within 
 their jurisdiction were scraped and whitewashed once a 
 year at least ; that the rooms were regularly cleaned and 
 ventilated ; that infirmaries were provided for the sick ; and 
 
 1 Reports of the Committee appointed to inquire into the State of 
 the Gaols, 1729. 
 
92 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 proper care taken to get them medical advice; that the 
 naked should be clotlied ; that underground dungeons should 
 be used as little as could be ; and generally that such courses 
 should be taken as would tend to restore and preserve the 
 health of the prisoners. That such simple provisions should 
 have been denied in Christian England, and in the days of 
 Addison and Johnson, is not easy to conceive, after the 
 changes of eighty years, brought about through the exer- 
 tions of one strong man. Yet the corroborative evidence of 
 the state of prisons leaves no room for doubt. Defoe and 
 Fielding have both left descriptions of jail life, which, though 
 relieved by gross humor, and animated by studies of eccen- 
 tric character, are not less revolting than the plain and tragic 
 revelations of Howard. Men were callous to sufferings 
 which seemed inevitable to misfortune, as well as to crime. 
 Even horrible catastrophes, when they occurred, excited no 
 more than a passing interest. The jail distemper always 
 raged more or less in the county town, and especially during 
 assizes. Judges and juries were sometimes swept away by 
 the awful pest ; ^ and yet no one cared to remove the causes 
 of the jail distemper, until the Howard-Popham bill was 
 carried on the 2d of June, 1774. 
 
 It was one thing to have the bill carried in the House of 
 Commons ; it was another to have it carried into the jails. 
 Most of the jailers were ignorant, rapacious fellows ; and 
 some of them were women — as a rule more ignorant and 
 rapacious than the men. ♦The new law struck at their 
 interests, and cordial feeUng towards it was not expected 
 from human frailty. Howard resolved to see it executed 
 with his own eyes ; he caused the provisions of the act to be 
 printed at his private cost, in large type, and he sent a copy 
 to every jailer and warden in the three kingdoms, so that no 
 one could be able to plead ignorance of the law, if detected 
 
 1 Barker's Chronide, 353. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 93 
 
 in the flagrant violation of its provisions. He then recom- 
 menced his inspections — travelled into the west of Eng- 
 land, into Ireland and Scotland. Beyond the special cause 
 to which he had given up his time, he took little interest in 
 politi'cal matters, though he entertained strong opinions about 
 the unjust aggression of the government in America, and 
 expressed these opinions in a way to render the possibility 
 of his appearance in the House of Commons as an indepen- 
 dent member extremely distasteful to ministers. When, 
 therefore, an election took place for Bedford, and Howard's 
 friends proposed him as a candidate, all the arts of corrup- 
 tion, were used to keep him out. He was nevertheless 
 elected. On the return being disputed, the election com- 
 mittee, which was completely under the minister's hand, 
 allowed a number of pauj^er votes which had been bought up 
 and recorded in favor of the opposition candidates, though 
 these votes had been refused before — just enough to unseat 
 Howard by a minority of four votes. " I was made a vic- 
 tim by the ministry," he writes to a friend ; " most surely I 
 should not have fallen in with their severe measures relative 
 to the Americans; and my constant declaration tl^t not one 
 emolument of five shillings, were I in parliament, would I 
 ever accept of, marked me out as an object of their aversion." 
 It was a fortunate decision, as it left him to his own peculiar 
 work. Set free from all other occupations, instead of em- 
 bodying his observations on English prisons at once in a 
 book, he thought it better to make a tour of France, the 
 Austrian Netherlands, Holland, and Germany, to see the 
 most famous and infamous prisons on the continent of 
 Europe, collect their various laws and regulations, and com- 
 pare their structure, their action, and results with those of 
 our own. In Paris he was denied access to the prisons ; but 
 looking over the old legislation on the subject, he found a 
 provision in an act of 1717, that any person wishing to dis- 
 tribute alms to the prisoners was to be admitted to the inte- 
 
94 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 rior, and allowed to dispense his bounty with his own hand. 
 The law had fallen into disuse, and was unknown to the 
 keepers. Howard appealed to higher authority, and the 
 validity of the old act was allowed. At some expense in 
 charities, he inspected the Bicetre, the Force I'Eveque, and 
 other places of confinement ; but neither money nor interest 
 could open the Bastile to his inspection. He once stepped 
 inside its gates at some personal risk. A suppressed pamphlet, 
 describing the interior, written by a man who had suffered 
 confinement, he obtained after much trouble, brought back 
 to England, translated, and gave it to the world in his own 
 book, an offence which the French government never forgot 
 and never forgave. At Ghent he examined with deep 
 interest the Great Reformatory Prison, a model for all 
 Europe, combining the elements of industiy and privation, 
 which are still esteemed the most efficacious means of refor- 
 mation. At Amsterdam he was struck with the slight 
 amount of crime in the Dutch cities, contrasting it as he did 
 so fearfully with the crime in his own country. For one 
 hundred years then past, the executions in Amsterdam, a 
 city of 250,000 inhabitants, had averaged no more than one 
 in twelve months. London with its 750,000 inhabitants, had 
 an average of twenty-nine and a half executions a year, or, 
 reckoning population against population, ten in London to 
 one in Amsterdam.^ In the United Provinces he found that 
 the industrial system penetrated the jail. In England we 
 thought only of punishing offences ; there they sought to 
 reclaim offenders for society. We put them into dungeons ; 
 they put them into workshops. They made the criminals 
 work their way back to Freedom. Their professed max- 
 ims was — " Make them dihgent and they will be honest." 
 Howard did not forget the hint. In Germany he found 
 little that was useful, much that was disgusting. In Hano- 
 
 1 Janssen's Tables, 1772. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 95 
 
 ver and Osnaburgh, under English rule, he found traces of 
 torture. Hamburgh was less revolting, as were generally 
 the commercial cities. He returned to England with his 
 papers, plans, and rules, a voluminous collection, as original 
 in character as it was humane in purpose ; but before put- 
 ting his materials in the printer's hands, he undertook 
 another comprehensive tour through England, revising his 
 former observations, adding new notes to the record, reliev- 
 ing distress, liberating poor debtors, superintending the oper- 
 ation of the new jail act ; and when these enormous labors 
 were completed after seven months of daily toil, the gains 
 from this cai'cful revision seemed so important to his mind, 
 that he resolved to give his continental experiences the bene- 
 fit of a similar collation, and also extend his researches into 
 some countries the prisons of which he had not yet seen. He 
 set out for Lyons, crossed to Geneva (where he was rejoiced 
 as a republican to find only five persons in confinement), 
 whence he passed on to Berne, through cantons in which 
 there was not a single prisoner ; he went on to Soleure and 
 Basle, delighted with the cleanliness, the Christian disci- 
 pline, and considerate government of all the jails of Swit- 
 zerland, and struck into Germany and Holland, visiting or 
 revisiting the most celebrated prisons. He returned to Lon- 
 don, and published his remarkable book. The State of 
 Prisons in England and Wales, in 1777. In collecting his 
 materials he had spent between three and four years, travel- 
 ling not less than 13,418 miles. He contrasted in its pages 
 the condition of our own and of foreign prisons, very much 
 to the disadvantage of the former. " The reader," he says, 
 " will scarcely feel from my narrative the same emotion of 
 shame and regret as the comparison excited in me on be- 
 holding the difference with my own eyes ; but from the ac- 
 count I have given him of foreign prisons he may judge 
 whether a design of reforming our own be merely visionary 
 — whether idleness, debauchery, disease, and famine be the 
 
96 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 necessary attendants of a prison, or only connected with it 
 in our own ideas, for want of a more perfect knowledge 
 and more enlarged views." 
 
 The book made a sensation. One of the first results was 
 to give a new impulse to the question — "What to do with 
 our convicts ? America refused to take them any longer ; 
 Australia had not yet offered itself as a receptacle for the 
 rascality of England. Government was at its wit's end; 
 and crotchety people were urging every kind of scheme on 
 its attention. A hulk (the " Justicia ") had been already 
 stationed in the river, off the arsenal of Woolwich, for the 
 reception of convicts, who were treated as in the worst 
 prisons of the old school, so that every kind of disorder 
 existed in the ship. Howard hoped for no success without 
 a change of system ; but his continental experience con- 
 vinced him that home discipline was better for the criminal 
 than deportation to a new country ; and, after much con- 
 sideration by ministers, his idea of trying the discipline of 
 hard work was adopted, and Sir William Blackstone and 
 Mr. Ed^n were requested to make out the draft of a bill for 
 the creation of a fitting establishment. A new prison was 
 needed for the new plans ; no jail in the country could 
 answer for a trial ; and Howard volunteered to go abroad 
 and collect plans and other precise information. 
 
 He went to Amsterdam, and carefully examined the spin- 
 houses and rasp-houses for which that city was famous. He 
 passed into Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, and Austria, through 
 the lines of the German armies commanded by the Great 
 Frederick and the Emperor Joseph II. His fame had gone 
 before him, and he was received with the greatest distinc- 
 tion in Berlin and Vienna. He spent a morning with the 
 Prince of Prussia, and dined witli Maria Theresa. From 
 Vienna he went to Italy, which he traversed from Venice to 
 Naples, inspecting prisons, hospitals, and workhouses, and 
 carefully hoarding up the peculiar merit or fault of each, for 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 97 
 
 the use of Sii" William Blackstone and his colleague. On his 
 return from Naples towards Leghorn, he encountered a vio- 
 lent storm, which raged for three days with great fury. The 
 little shallop, unmanageable, was driven on the Tuscan coast, 
 but the inhabitants, fearful of plague, refused to allow the 
 passengers to land. Driven back again upon the storm, they 
 were carried by its force to the African shore, to be again 
 driven off by the same fears. They had started from Civita 
 Vecchia while the pest was raging there, and their foul bill 
 of health alarmed Christian and Mohammedan alike. How- 
 ard suffered fearfully in health by this trial ; and, after his 
 prison labors were accomplished, and his health fuUy restored, 
 he turned to the new and fearful enemy, and finally lost his 
 life in an attempt to discover the cause and the remedy for 
 plague. 
 
 During this rapid continental tour he travelled 4,600 
 miles. While in France his attention was again drawn to 
 his old subject — the infamous neglect and unchristian treat- 
 ment of prisoners of war. He was told that these prisoners 
 were treated worse in England than elsewhere ; that their 
 loyalty was tampered with ; and that they were systemati- 
 cally ill-used in order to compel them to forswear their 
 allegiance, and enter the English service. Burning with 
 indignation, he went to the Commissionei'S of Sick and 
 Wounded Seamen, who expressed their astonishment at such 
 assertions ; and, on his saying that he meant to look into this 
 affair for himself, they offered to assist his inquiries. Our 
 prisoners of war had reason to be grateful for his interference. 
 
 The information obtained during his foreign tour was 
 placed at the service of the House of Commons. A bill 
 was introduced and passed for building two penitentiary 
 houses in Middlesex, Sun-ey, Kent, or Essex (as might be 
 determined afterwards), in which to try the experiment of 
 a discipline of work. Howard was appointed first super- 
 visor of this Act ; Mr. Whatley of the Foundling Hos- 
 
 9 
 
§8 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 pital, second ; and Howard was allowed to name the third, 
 Dr. Fothergill.^ The scheme, however, under official re- 
 straints, proceeded slowly ; Howard felt that his life was 
 being wasted in small quarrels and unimportant discussions 
 with Mr. Whatley as to the sites of the proposed peniten- 
 tiaries ; and both Sir William Blackstone and Dr. Fother- 
 gill dying while Mr. Whatley was disputing, he wrote to 
 Lord Bathurst, president of the council, begging the king's 
 permission to resign his office. An impulse, however, had 
 been given. Howard's ideas were adopted in many places. 
 In all the new prisons erected from that time provision was 
 made for setting the criminals at work. He turned his face 
 to the continent, with a view to collect whatever might be 
 useful to his counti-ymen in those lands which he had not yet 
 visited ; and began a new and longer journey, which gradu- 
 ally embraced the whole circle of Europe, his route lying 
 through Holland, Schleswig, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, 
 Russia, Poland ; thence back to London, and so on to Por- 
 tugal, Spain, and France, and the Austrian Netherlands. 
 This journey was full of curious and romantic incidents. At 
 its completion Howard gave his collections to the 2>ublic in 
 a new edition of his State of Prisons, with appendices. 
 
 Being now free from serious responsibility as regards the 
 subject of prisons, and being determined not to enter parlia- 
 ment (as he was again requested to do), he reverted to the 
 terrible idea of the Plague. English commerce with the 
 Levant was rapidly extending, and serious thoughts were 
 entertained in official circles of establishing a regular quar- 
 antine (as at Marseilles and Venice) against all vessels 
 arriving from the East. But nothing was known in Eng- 
 land about lazarettos and quarantine establishments ; and 
 the plague itself (from vague historical recollections of the 
 I(Ondon' pests of 1603 and 1665, when the disease swept 
 
 1 Stat. 19 Geo. III. Cap. 74. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 99 
 
 away each time one fifth of the population) ^ was regarded 
 with a terror more superstitious than rational. Government 
 desired information ; Howard offered to procure it, and 
 equipped himself for the journey. He proposed to begin 
 his studies at Marseilles with the newest of the lazarettos ; 
 afterwards to visit those of Venice and Leghorn ; and_, hav- 
 ing gained all preliminary information in these cities, to 
 proceed to Smyrna and Constantinople, the proper home of 
 the plague, and there study its symptoms and modes of 
 treatment. The French government, however, mindful 
 of the Bastile pamphlet, refused him a passport ; so that, 
 instead of gaining facilities for inspecting the lazaretto at 
 Marseilles, he was peremptorily forbidden to set foot in 
 the territory of France. Lord Carmarthen, our ambassador 
 iu Paris, tried in vain to remove the ban ; but, as Howard 
 considered that his journey would lose much of its interest, 
 and its chief use as regarded his own country, if he missed 
 the fine lazaretto at Marseilles, he defied the threats held 
 out, put himself in a good disguise, and entered France in 
 the usual way among travellers in a diligence. A police 
 agent attended him to Paris, for the French ambassador at 
 the Hague had received intelligence from the M. Le Noir, 
 director of police in Piiris, to keep watch over his move- 
 ments ; and it was by a miracle of rapid and courageous 
 action that he escaped a dungeon in the Bastile. Some- 
 times as a French physician, sometimes as an exquisite of 
 the Faubourg St. Germain, he traversed France as far as 
 Marseilles, obtained admission to the lazaretto, and shelter 
 in the house of a Huguenot pastor, although the police were 
 on the look-out for him, with a description of \^g person in 
 their hands. His courage, his disguise, and his perfect 
 manners, threw them off their guai'd ; yet the risks he ran 
 were very serious, and he breathed more freely when he 
 
 1 Fetty's Political Arithmeiic, 1686. 
 
100 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 had crossed the frontier. " I have now taken a final leave 
 of France," he wTote to a friend from Leghorn ; -" I am sen- 
 sible that I ran a great risk, but I accomplished ray object. 
 Happy was I to arrive at Nice, out of the country of a 
 deceitful, jealous, and ungenerous people." He went to 
 Florence, Rome (where he had an interview with Pope 
 Pius), and Naples ; and thence to Smyrna, where his skill 
 as a doctor opened all the prisons and hospitals to his in- 
 spection. He remained at Smyrna, performing a few simple 
 cures which rumor vastly magnified, until a fatal form of 
 the plague broke out, and he had first-rate opportunities of 
 studying it. He went on to Constantinople, whither the 
 fame of his cures had gone before, and as soon as he arrived 
 he was called in by a great pasha to treat the case of his 
 daughter, who had been given over, it was said, by all the 
 Italian doctors. She recovered ; and of course Howard's 
 fame rose with his wonderful work. He confined his visits, 
 however, to the pest-houses, the prisons, and hospitals ; he 
 said he was only a physician to the poor. Our ambassj^dor. 
 Sir Robert Ainslie, aware of his patriotic and humane 
 object, offered him a home at the embassy. This he de- 
 clined, as being unwilling to expose another to the fearful 
 risk of contagion, and took up his residence in the house of 
 a physician, to whom he could communicate the course of 
 his daily experience, as well to receive sound advice as to 
 prepare his host for prompt action in case he brought the 
 plague home. But he bore a charmed life. The smitten 
 fell dead at his feet. He went into infected caravansaries 
 and into pest-houses whither physician, guide, and drago- 
 man all revised to follow him. From these fearful vfsits he 
 returned with a scorching pain across the temples, though 
 an hour of fresh air and vigorous exercise served to carry 
 it away. At length his researches were complete. With 
 a trunk full of papers — plans of lazarettos, opinions of 
 celebrated physicians living in the Levant, and copies of 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 101 
 
 regulations and instructions — he prepared to return, and 
 wrote to inform his friends of his intention to cross overland 
 to Vienna. But while his preparations for departure were 
 in pi-ogress, the idea flashed across his mind that all his 
 acquired knowledge, various as it was, had been obtained 
 from others — was second-hand, not original ; that he had 
 seen not suffered the discipline of a European Lazaretto ; 
 and that, possibly, something of material import to the prac- 
 tical working of the scheme (the want of which would be 
 felt as soon as the system was commenced, if it ever 
 were commenced, in England) had escaped his notice. The 
 fear was enough. Altering his plan, he resolved to return ; 
 to find a foul ship, make the voyage in her to Venice, and 
 there undergo the usual confinement of the suspected in the 
 famous lazaretto of that city. Such a plan was full of peril. 
 A late ambassador, Mr. Murray, had died of the plague in 
 that very lazaretto ; but nothing would deter him from his 
 purpose, and he departed. Plague broke out in the ship, 
 and a strong man died in a few hours ; yet he went on to 
 Smyrna, deliberately sought out a foul vessel, took his berth 
 and started for Venice. On the way they were attacked by 
 pirates, when Howard astonished the Venetian sailors by 
 his courage and by a lesson which he gave them in the 
 noble art of gunnery. They acknowledged that the English 
 physician had saved them from the slave market of Tunis 
 or Tripoli. On the sixtieth day of the voyage they arrived 
 in Venice, and were all transferred to the lazaretto, where 
 Howard's health suffered severely from the confinement, 
 though he was supported. with the thought that he was gain- 
 ing precious experience. His minute account of the disci- 
 pline of this famous Lazaretto is most interesting.^ 
 
 Howard came out of his confinement reduced to a skele- 
 ton, and flushed with fever. However anxious to get home 
 
 1 Lazarettos of Europe, pp. 16-22. 
 9* 
 
102 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 (for a dreadful domestic calamity had occurred ; his only 
 child, now a young man, had lost his reason, and was under 
 the charge of a keeper), he was too weak to travel for some 
 days. He went to Trieste and Vienna, where he held a 
 long and exceedingly curious interview with the Emperor, 
 Joseph II., himself a reformer, or rather an innovator, dur- 
 ing which the English gentleman told the German ruler 
 some very unusual truths. He reached England in Feb- 
 ruary, 1787, having been absent on his extraordinary mis- 
 sion sixteen months. 
 
 As soon as his domestic concerns were put into such order 
 as they admitted, and his great work on the Lazarettos of 
 Europe was published, Howard began a fresh and final 
 review of the prisons of the three kingdoms. He visited all 
 with care, and presented a Bible to each of those in the 
 county towns. Vast improvements had already taken place 
 in the management and discipline of the prisons, in the 
 food, clothing, work, and Christian teaching of the prison- 
 ers. Foremost among the magistrates who adopted the 
 new system were those of Manchester. They built on the 
 banks of the Irwell a large prison, with an express view to 
 carrying Howard's ideas into effect ; and on the foundation- 
 stone of the edifice they set this inscription, — " That there 
 may remain to posterity a monument of the affection and 
 gratitude of this country to that most excellent person, who 
 has so fully proved the wisdom and humanity of the sepa- 
 rate and solitary confinement of offenders, this prison is 
 inscribed with the name of John Howaku." This final 
 tour of the English jails occupied bini for eighteen months ; 
 and the results of his inspection were recorded in a new 
 edition of his State of Prisons. 
 
 "While in the Levant he had enjoyed many opportunities 
 of hearing the opinions of merchants and consular agents 
 on the prospects of our trade with the East. It was said, 
 that were it. 'not for fear of the plague, that trade might be 
 
JOHN HOWARD, 103 
 
 at once (doubled. As we were without quarantine establish- 
 ments, the people were afraid of any ships from infected 
 districts ; the consequence of which fear was, that the 
 Dutch ran away with the traffic, without taking sufficient 
 care about the plague. So we lost the profits without 
 escaping the risks, as the Dutch ships might as easily intro- 
 duce the pest at second-hand as our own at first. This idea 
 settled in Howard's mind, and helped to shape towards a 
 more practical end those purposes which he pursued from 
 purer and more romantic motives. In the postscript to his 
 new book on Lazarettos, he told the public of his intention 
 to follow up the new inquiries. " To my country," he said 
 in a few noble and simple words, the last he addressed to it 
 in print, " I commit the result of my past labors. It is my 
 intention again to quit it for the purpose of revisiting Rus- 
 sia, Turkey, and some other countries, and extending my 
 tour into the East. I am not insensible of the dangers Ihat 
 must attend such a journey. Should it please God to cut 
 off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not my 
 conduct be imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a seri- 
 ous conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty." These 
 words were prophetic. 
 
 From London he went to Riga, thence to St. Petersburg 
 and Moscow, from which place he proposed to travel to 
 Warsaw, and through Vienna to Constantinople. But the 
 war overruled his plans. Russia and Turkey were strug- 
 gling fiercely on the Dneiper and the Pruth. Bender had 
 just fallen, and the Muscovites were hurrying their forces 
 to the south. Sad as had been his experiences, Howard had 
 seen nothing to compare in atrocity with the reckless waste 
 of life in time of war. The roads were almost choked with 
 dead bodies. Raw recruits, most of them too young to 
 bear privation, were hurled by forced marches, and at every 
 sacrifice, towards the theatre of war. They dropped, and 
 were left to die. Hunger, hardship, fever, thinned their 
 
104 NEW BIOGUAPHIES. 
 
 ranks as they staggered on towards the Black Sea. How- 
 ard had no sympathy with military glo)y ; and the sicken- 
 ing sights which he witnessed on the roads from Moscow to 
 Kherson, disgusted him with the hypocrisy of Russia's boast 
 of having become a civilized power. Even the great ques- 
 tion of the plague was laid aside for a while, in presence of 
 all these horrors to be brought to light, all these miseries !o 
 be assuaged. In his portmanteau he had carried out, for 
 the use of his expected plague patients, a quantity of James's 
 powders, a medicine believed to possess all save miraculous 
 powers; and he thought he should do wisely in placing 
 these powders at the service of the poor Russian serfs who 
 were falling in crowds around him, the victims of an in- 
 fernal military system. So he went down to the coasts of 
 the Black Sea, visited the hospitals of Crement-schouk, 
 Otschakow, St. Nicholas, Kherson, and other places. Ilis 
 letters and his notes in his journal are heart-rending. " They 
 are dreadfully neglected. A heart of stone would almost 
 bleed ! The abuses of office are glaring, and I want not 
 courage to tell them so." Russian officials, with the cunning 
 of an Asiatic race, so soon as they saw that Howard would 
 expose their cruelties, and disabuse the western public of its 
 false estimate of Russian civilization, an estimate drawn 
 from the splendid misrepresentations of Voltaire and those 
 French theorists who were willing to depose Providence in 
 favor of the Czars — began to throw dust in his eyes. 
 They prepared the hospitals for his reception, removed the 
 more unsightly objects, pretended that he had inspected all 
 where he had seen only a few prepared wards ; but his ex- 
 perience defeated these attempts at imposition, and his con- 
 ductor gained nothing save the dishonor attaching to a mean 
 trick. Whoever wishes to see the military system of Rus- 
 sia in its true character, as conducted in the villages and 
 cities of the Muscovite empire, must study the memorials of 
 Howard's last visit to Russia. 
 
JOHN HOWARD. 
 
 105 
 
 He died in the midst of his labors. He caught the camp 
 fever at Kherson, from a young lady whom he attended as a 
 physician, and died in that city on the morning of January 
 20, 1790, and was buried on the road to St. Nicholas. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 
 
 John Buntan, the most popular religious writer in 
 the English language, was born at Elstow, about a mile 
 from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said to have 
 been bom a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary 
 caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were 
 generally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded 
 with the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. 
 Bunyan's father was more respectable than most of the 
 tribe. He had a fixed residence and was able to send his 
 son to a village school where reading and writing were 
 taught. 
 
 The years of John's boyhood were those during which the 
 puritan spirit was in the highest vigor all over England ; 
 and nowhere had that spirit more influence than in Bedford- 
 shire. It is not wonderful, therefore, that a lad to whom 
 nature had giten a powerful imagination and sensibility 
 which amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted 
 by religious terrors. Before he was ten his sports were 
 interrupted by fits of remorse and despair; and his sleep 
 was disturbed by dreams of fiends trying to fly away with 
 him. As he grew older, his mental conflicts become still 
 more violent. The strong language in which he described 
 them has strangely misled all his biographers except Mr. 
 Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with pious 
 
 (106) 
 
JOHN BUNTAN. 107 
 
 writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural 
 power of divine grace to rescue the human soul from the 
 lowest depths of wickedness. He is called in one book the 
 most notorious of profligates ; in another, the brand plucked 
 from the burning. He is designated in Mr. Ivimey's His- 
 tory of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan, the wicked 
 tinker of Elstow. Mr. Ryland, a man once of great note 
 among the Dissenters, breaks out into the following rhap- 
 sody : " No man of common sense and common integrity 
 can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a worthless 
 contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a 
 common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a soul- 
 damning, thoughtless wretch as could exist on the face of 
 the earth. Now be astonished, O heavens, to eternity ! and 
 wonder, O earth and hell ! while time endures. Behold 
 this very man become a miracle of mercy, a mirror of 
 wisdom, goodness, holiness, truth, and love." But whoever 
 takes the trouble to examine the evidence will find that the 
 good men who wrote this had been deceived by a phrase- 
 ology which, as they had been hearing it and using it all 
 their lives, they ought to have understood better. There 
 cannot be a greater mistake than to infer from the strong 
 .expressions in which a devout man bemoans his exceeding 
 sinfulness, that he had led a worse life than his neighbors. 
 Many excellent persons, whose moral character from boy- 
 hood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to 
 their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and 
 diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, 
 epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Gates or Mrs. 
 Brownrigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan was, at eighteen, 
 what, in any but the most austerely puritanical circles, would 
 have been considered as a young man of singular gravity and 
 innocence. Indeed, it may be remarked that he, like many 
 other penitents who, in general terms, acknowledged them- 
 selves to have been the worst of mankind, fired up and 
 
108 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Stood vigorously on his defence, wlienever any particular 
 charge was brought against him by others. He declares, 
 it is true, that he had let loose the reins on the neck of 
 his lusts, that he had delighted in all transgressions against 
 the divine law, and that he had been the ringleader of the 
 youth of Elsfow in all manner of vice. But when those 
 who wished him ill accused him of licentious amours, he called 
 on God and the angels to attest his purity. No woman, 
 he said, in heaven, earth, or hell, could charge him with hav- 
 ing ever made any improper advances to her. Not only 
 had he been sti-ictly faithful to his wife ; but he had, even 
 before his marriage, been perfectly spotless. It does not 
 appear from his own confessions, or from the railings of his 
 enemies, that he ever was drunk in his life. One bad habit 
 he contracted, that of using profane language ; but he tells 
 us that a single reproof cured him so effectually that he 
 never offended again. The worst that can be laid to the 
 charge of this poor youth, whom it has been the fashion to 
 represent as the most desperate of reprobates, as a village 
 Rochester, is that he had a great liking for some diversions, 
 quite harmless in themselves, but condemned by the rigid 
 precisians among whom he lived, and for whose opinion he 
 had a great respect. The four chief sins of which he was. 
 guilty were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, 
 playing at tipcat, and reading the History of Sir Bevis of 
 Southampton. A Rector of the school of Laud would have 
 held such a young man up to the whole paiush as a model. 
 But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in 
 a very different school ; and he was made miserable by the 
 conflict between his tastes and his scruples. 
 
 When he was about seventeen, the ordinary course of his 
 life was interrupted by an event which gave a lasting color 
 to his thoughts. He enlisted in the parliamentary army, 
 and served during the decisive campaign of 1 645. All that 
 we know of his military career is that, at the siege of Leices- 
 
JOUN BUNYAN. 109 
 
 ter, one of his comrades, who had taken his post, was killed 
 by a shot from the town. Bunyan ever after considered 
 himself as having been saved from death by the special 
 interference of Providence. It may be observed that his 
 imagination was strongly impressed by the glimpse which he 
 had caught of the pomp of war. To the last he loved to 
 draw his illustrations of sacred things from camps and for- 
 tresses, from guns, drums, trumpets, flags of truce, and regi- 
 ments arrayed, each under its own banner. His Great Heart, 
 his Captain Boanerges, and his Captain Credence, are evi- 
 dently portraits, of which the originals were among those 
 martial saints who fought and expounded in Fairfax's army. 
 In a few months Bunyan returned home, and married. 
 His wife had some pious relations, and brought him as her 
 only portion, some pious books. And now his mind, excit- 
 able by nature, very imperfectly disciplined by education, 
 and exposed, without any protection, to the infectious viru- 
 lence of the enthusiasm which was then epidemic in Eng- 
 land, began to be fearfully disordered. In outward things 
 he soon became a strict Pharisee. He was constant in 
 attendance at prayers and sermons. His favorite amuse- 
 ments were, one after another, relinquished, though not 
 without many painful struggles, iflthe middle of a game 
 of tipcat he paused, and stood staring wildly upwards with 
 his stick in his hand. He had heard a voice asking him 
 whether he would leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep 
 his sins and go to hell ; and he had seen an awful counte- 
 nance frowning on him from the sky. The odious vice of 
 bell-ringing he renounced ; but he still for a time ventured to 
 go to the church-tower and look on while others pulled the 
 ropes. But soon the thought struck him that, if he per- 
 sisted in such wickedness, the steeple would fall on his head ; 
 and he tied in terror from the accursed place. To give up 
 dancing on the village green was still harder; and some 
 months elapsed before he had the fortitude to part with this 
 10 
 
110 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 darling sin. When this last sacrifice had been made, he 
 was, even when tried by the maxims of that austere time, 
 faultless. All Elstow talked of him as an eminently pious 
 youth. But his own mind was more unquiet than ever. 
 Having nothing more to do in the way of visible reforma- 
 tion, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the place 
 of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, he 
 began to apprehend that he lay under some special maledic- 
 tion ; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies 
 which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. 
 
 At one time he took it into his head that all persons of 
 Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that 
 he partook of that blood ; but his hopes were speedily 
 destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition 
 to be regarded as a Jew. 
 
 At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange 
 dilemma : " If I have not faith, I am lost ; if I have faith, 
 I can work miracles." He was tempted to cry to the pud- 
 dles between Elstow and Bedford, " Be ye dry," and to stake 
 his eternal hopes on the event. 
 
 Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bed- 
 ford and the neighboring villages was passed ; that all who 
 were to be saved in thaPpart of England were already con- 
 verted ; and that he had begun to pray and strive some 
 months too late. 
 
 Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks 
 were not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong. Then 
 he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted him 
 to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull. As 
 yet, however, he was only entering the valley of the Shadow 
 of Death. Soon the darkness grew thicker. Hideous forms 
 floated before him. Sounds of cursing and wailing were in 
 his ears. His way ran through stench and fire, close to the 
 mouth of the bottomless pit. He began to be haunted by 
 a strange curiosity about the unpardonable sin, and by a 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. Ill 
 
 morbid longing to commit it. But the most frightful of all 
 the forms which his disease took was a propensity to utter 
 blasphemy, and especially to ^enounce his' share in the 
 benefits of the redemption. Night and day, in bed, at table, 
 at work, evil spirits, as he imagined, were repeating close 
 to his ear the words, " Sell him, sell him." He struck at 
 the hobgoblins; he pushed them from him; but still they 
 ■were ever at his side. He cried out in answer to them, 
 hour after hour, " Never, never ; not for thousands of 
 worlds ; not for thousands." At length, worn out by this 
 long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, " Let 
 him go, if he will." Then his misery became more fearful 
 than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He 
 bad forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he 
 bad sold his birthright ; and there was no longer any place 
 for repentance. " None," he afterwards wrote, " knows the 
 terrors of those days but myself." He has described his 
 sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. He 
 envied the brutes, he envied the very stones in the streets, 
 and the tiles on the houses. The sun seemed to withhold 
 its light and warmth from him. His body, though cast in a 
 sturdy mould, and though still in the highest vigor of youth, 
 trembled whole days together witb the fear of death and 
 judgment. He fancied that this trembling was the sign set 
 on the worst reprobates, the sign which God had put on 
 Cain. ■ The unhappy man's emotion destroyed his power of 
 digestion. He had such pains that he expected to burst 
 asunder like Judas, whom he regarded as his prototype. 
 
 Neither the books which Bunyan read, nor the advisers 
 whom he consulted, were likely to do much good in a case 
 like his. His small library had received a most unseasona- 
 ble addition, the account of the lamentable end of Francis 
 Spira. One ancient man of high repute for piety, whom 
 the sufferer consulted, gave an opinion which might well 
 have produced fatal consequences. " I am afraid," said 
 
112 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Bunyan, " that I have committed the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost." " Indeed," said the old fanatic, " I am afraid tliat 
 you have." « 
 
 At length the clouds broke ; the light became clearer and 
 clearer ; and the enthusiast, who had imagined that he was 
 branded Avith the mai-k of the first murderer, and destined 
 to the end of the arch traitor, enjoyed peace and a cheerful 
 confidence in the mercy of God. Years elapsed, however, 
 before his nerves, which had been so perilously overstrained, 
 recovered their tone. When he had joined a Baptist society 
 at Bedford, and was for the first time admitted to partake 
 of the Euchai'ist, it was with difficulty that he could refrain 
 from imprecating destruction on his brethren while the cup 
 was passing from hand to hand. After he had been some 
 time a member of the congregation, he began to preach-; 
 and his sermons produced a powerful effect. He was indeed 
 illiterate ; but he spoke to illiterate men. The severe train- 
 ing through which he had passed had given him such an 
 experimental knowledge of all the modes of religious mel- 
 ancholy as he could never have gathered from books ; and 
 his vigorous genius, animated by a fervent spirit of devotion, 
 enabled him not only to exercise a gi'cat influence over the 
 vulgar, but even to extort the half contemptuous admiration 
 of scholars. Yet it was long before he ceased to be tor- 
 mented by an impulse which urged him to utter words of 
 horrible impiety in the pulpit. 
 
 Counter-irritants are of as great use in moral as in physi- 
 cal diseases. It should seem that Bunyan was finally 
 relieved from the internal sufferings which had embittered 
 his life by sharp persecution from without. He had been 
 five years a preacher, when the Restoration put it in the 
 power of the Cavalier gentlemen and clergymen all over the 
 country to oppress the Dissenters ; and, of all the Dissent- 
 ers whose history is known to us, he was perhaps the most 
 hardly treated. In November, 1660, he was flung into Bed- 
 
JOHN BUNYAX. 113 
 
 ford gaol ; and there he remained, with some intervals of 
 partial and precarious liberty, during twelve years. His 
 persecutors tried to extort from him a promise that he would 
 abstain from preaching ; but he was convinced that he was 
 divinely set apart and commissioned to be a teacher of right- 
 eousness, and he was fully determined to obey God rather 
 than man. He was brought before several tribunals, laughed 
 at, caressed, reviled, menaced, but in, vain. He was face- 
 tiously told that he was quite right in thinking that he ought 
 not to hide his gift ; but that his real gift was skill in repair- 
 ing old kettles. He was compared to Alexander the copper- 
 smith. He was told that, if he would give up preaching, 
 he should be instantly liberated. He was warned that, if he 
 persisted in disobeying the law, he would be liable to banish- 
 ment, and that, if he were found in England after a certain 
 time, his neck would be stretched. His answer was, " If 
 you let me out to-day, I will preach again to-morrow." 
 Year after year he lay patiently in a dungeon, compared 
 with which the worst prison now to be found in the island is 
 a palace. His fortitude is the more extraordinary, because 
 his domestic feelings were unusually strong. Indeed, be 
 was considered by his stern brethren as somewhat *too fond 
 and indulgent a parent. He had several small children, 
 and among them a daughter who was blind, and whom he 
 loved with peculiar tenderness. He could not, he said, bear 
 even to let the wind blow on her ; and now she must suffer 
 cold and hunger ; she must beg ; she must be beaten ; " yet," 
 he added, " I must, I must do it." While he lay in prison 
 he could do nothing in the way of his old trade for the sup- 
 port of his family. He determined, therefore, to take up a 
 new trade. He learned to make long tagged thread laces ; 
 and many thousands of these articles were furnished by him 
 to the hawkers. While his hands were thus busied, he had 
 other employment for his mind and lips. He gave religious 
 insti'uction to his fellow-captives ; and formed among them a 
 10* 
 
114 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 little flock, of which he was himself the pastor. He studied 
 indefatigably the few books which he possessed. His two 
 chief companions were the Bible and Fox's Book of Mar- 
 tyrs. His knowledge of the Bible was such that he might 
 have been called a living concordance ; and on the margin 
 of his copy of the Book of Martyrs are still legible the 
 ill-spelt lines of doggerel in which he expressed his reverence 
 for the brave sufferers, and his implacable enmity to the 
 mystical Babylon. 
 
 At length he began to write, and, though it was some time 
 before he discovered where his strength lay, his writings 
 were not unsuccessful. They were coarse, indeed, but they 
 showed a keen mother-wit, a great command of the homely 
 mother-tongue, an intimate knowledge of the English Bible, 
 and a vast and dearly bought spiritual experience. They 
 therefore, when the corrector of the press had improved the 
 syntax and the spelling, were well received by the humbler 
 class of Dissenters. 
 
 Much of Bunyan's time was spent in controversy. He 
 wrote sharply against the Quakers, whom he seems always 
 to have held in utter abhorrence. It is, however, a remark- 
 able fact, that he adopted one of their peculiar fashions : his 
 practice was to write, not November or December, but 
 eleventh month and twelfth month. 
 
 He wrote against the liturgy of the Church of England. 
 No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the 
 form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said 
 with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer, are 
 all to be found in gaol ; and those who have most zeal for 
 the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house. 
 The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he warmly praised, 
 and defended against some Arminian clergymen who had 
 signed them. The most acrimonious of all his works, is his 
 answer to Edward Fowler, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, 
 an excellent man, but not free from the taint of Pelagian- 
 ism. 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 115 
 
 Bunyan had also a dispute with some of the chiefs of the 
 sect to which he belonged. He doubtless held with perfect 
 sincerity the distinguishing tenet of that sect, but he did not 
 consider that tenet as one of high importance ; and willingly 
 joined in communion with pious Presbyterians and Inde- 
 pendents. The sterner Baptists, therefore, loudly pro- 
 nounced him a false brother. A controversy arose which 
 long survived the original combatants. In our own time 
 the cause which Bunyan had defended with rude logic and 
 rhetoric against Kiflfin and Danvers was pleaded by Robert 
 Hall with an ingenuity and eloquence such as no polemical 
 writer has ever surpassed. 
 
 During the years which immediately followed the Res- 
 toration, Bunyan's confinement seems to have been strict. 
 But as the passions of 1660 cooled, as the hatred with 
 which the Puritans had been regarded while their reign 
 was recent gave place to pity, he was less and less harshly 
 treated. The distress of his family, and his own patience, 
 courage, and piety, softened the hearts of his persecutors- 
 Like his own Christian in the cage, he found protectors 
 even among the crowd of Vanity Fair. The Bishop of the 
 diocese, Dr. Barlow, is said to have interceded for him. At 
 length the prisoner was sujQfered to pass most of his time 
 beyond the walls of the gaol, on condition, as it should 
 seem, that he remained within the town of Bedford. 
 
 He owed his complete liberation to one of the worst acts of 
 one of the worst governments that England has ever seen. 
 In 1671 the Cabal was in power. Charles II. had concluded 
 the treaty by which he bound himself to set up the Roman 
 Catholic religion in England. The first step which he took 
 towards that end was to annul, by an unconstitutional exer- 
 cise of his prerogative, all the penal statutes against the 
 Roman Catholics ; and, in order to disguise his real design, 
 he annulled at the same time the penal statutes against 
 Protestant non-conformists. Bunyan was consequently set 
 
116^ NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 at large. In the first warmth of his gratitude he publislied 
 a tract in which he compared Charles to that humane and 
 generous Persian king who, though not himself blessed with 
 the light of the true religion, favored the chosen people, 
 and permitted them, after years of captivity, to rebuild their 
 beloved temple. To candid men, who consider how much 
 Bunyan had suffered, and how little he could guess the 
 secret design of the court, the unsuspicious thankfulness 
 with which he accepted the precious boon of fi'eedom will 
 not appear to require any apology. ' 
 
 Before he left his prison he had begun the book which 
 has made his name immortal. The history of that book is 
 remarkable. The author was, as he tells us, writing a trea- 
 tise in which he had occasion to speak of the stages of the 
 Christian progress. He compared that progress, as many 
 others had compared it, to a pilgrimage. Soon his quick 
 wit discovered innumerable points of similarity which had 
 escaped his predecessors. Images came crowding on his 
 mind faster than he could put them into words, quagmires 
 and pits, steep hills, dark and horrible glens, soft vales, 
 sunny pastures, a gloomy castle of which the couit-yard 
 was strewn with the skulls and bones of murdered prison- 
 ers, a town all bustle and splendor, like London on the 
 Lord Mayor's Day, and the narrow path, straight as a rule 
 could make it, running on up hill and down hill, through 
 city and through wilderness, to the Black River and Shin- 
 ing Gate. He had found out, as most people would have 
 said, by accident, as he would doubtless have said, by the 
 guidance of Providence, where his powers lay. He had no 
 suspicion, indeed, that he was producing a masterpiece. 
 He could not guess what place his allegory would occupy 
 in Enghsh literature ; for of Enghsh literature he knew 
 nothing. Those who suppose him to have studied the 
 Fairy Queen might easily be confuted, if this were the 
 proper place for a detailed estimation of the passages in 
 
JOHN BUNYAJf. 117 
 
 which the two allegories have been thought to resemble 
 each other. The only work of fiction, in all probability, 
 with which he could compare his Pilgrim, was his old favor- 
 ite, the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton. He would 
 have thought it a sin to borrow any time from the serious 
 business of his life, from his expositions, his controversies, 
 and his lace tags, for the purpose of amusing himself with 
 what he considered a mere trifle. It was only, he assures 
 us, at spare moments that he returned to the House Beauti- 
 ful, the Delectable Mountains, and the Enchanted Ground. 
 He had no assistance. Nobody but himself saw a line till 
 the whole was complete. He then consulted his pious 
 friends. Some were pleased, others were much scandal- 
 ized. It was a vain story, a mere romance, about giants, 
 and lions, and goblins, and warriors, sometimes fighting 
 with monsters, and sometimes regaled by fair ladies in 
 stately palaces. The loose atheistical wits of Will's might 
 write such stuff to divert the painted Jezebels of the court ! 
 but did it become a minister of the Gospel to copy the evil 
 fashions of the world ? There had been a time when the 
 cant of such fools would have made Bunyan miserable. 
 But that time was passed ; and his mind was now in a firm 
 and healthy state. He saw that, in employing fiction to 
 make truth clear and goodness attractive, he was only fol- 
 lowing the example which every Christian ought to propose 
 to himself; and he determined to print. 
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress stole silently into the world. Not 
 a single copy of the first edition is known to be in exist- 
 ence. The year of publication has not been ascertained. 
 It is probable that, during some months, the little volume 
 circulated only among poor and obscure sectaries. But 
 soon the irresistible charm of a book which gratified the 
 imagination of the reader, with all the action and scenery 
 of a fairy tale, which exercised his ingenuity by setting him 
 to discover a multitude of curious analogies, which inter- 
 
118 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ested his feelings for human beings, frail like himself, and 
 struggling with temptations from within and from without, 
 which every moment drew a smile from him by some stroke 
 of quaint yet simple pleasantry, and nevertheless left on his 
 mind a sentiment of reverence for God and of sympathy 
 for man, began to produce its effect. In puritanical circles, 
 from which plays and novels were strictly excluded, that 
 effect was such as no work of genius, though it were supe- 
 rior to the Iliad, to Don Quixote, or to Othello, can ever 
 produce on a mind accustomed to indulge in literary luxury. 
 In 1678 came forth a second edition with additions; and 
 then the demand became immense. In the four following 
 years the book was reprinted six times. The eighth edi- 
 tion, which contains the last improvements made by the 
 author, was published in 1682, the ninth in 1684, the tenth 
 in 1685. The help of the engraver had early been called 
 in ; and tens of thousands of children looked with terror 
 and delight on execrable copperplates, which represented 
 Christian thrusting his sword into Apollyon, or writhing in 
 the grasp of Giant Despair. In Scotland, and in some of 
 the colonies, the Pilgrim was even more popular than in his 
 native country. Bunyan has told us, with very pardonable 
 vanity, that in New England his dream was the daily sub- 
 ject of the conversation of thousands, and was thought 
 worthy to appear in the most superb binding. He had 
 numerous admirers in Holland, and among the Huguenots 
 of France. With the pleasures, however, he experienced 
 some of the pains of eminence* Knavish booksellers put 
 forth volumes of trash under his name, and envious scrib- 
 blers maintained it to be impossible that the poor ignorant 
 tinker should really be the author of the book which was 
 called his. 
 
 He took the best way to confound both those who counter- 
 feited him and those who slandered him. He continued to 
 work the Gold-field which he had discovered, and to draw 
 
JOHN BUNYAN. 119 
 
 from it new treasures, not indeed with quite such ease and 
 in quite such abundance as when the precious soil was still 
 virgin, but yet with success which left all competition far 
 behind. In 1684 appeared the second part of the Pilgrim'' s 
 Progress. It was soon followed by the Holy War, which, if 
 the Pilgrim's Progress did not exist, would be the best alle- 
 gory that ever was written. 
 
 Bunyan's place in society Avas now very different from 
 what it had been. There had been a time when many Dis- 
 senting ministers, who could talk Latin and read Greek, had 
 affected to treat him with scorn. But his fame and influence 
 now far exceeded theirs. He had so great an authority 
 among the Baptists that he was popularly called Bishop 
 Bunyan. His episcopal visitations were annual. From 
 Bedford he rode every year to London, and preached there 
 to large and attentive congregations. From London he 
 went his circuit through the country, animating the zeal of 
 his brethren, collecting and distributing alms, and making up 
 quarrels. The magistrates seem in general to have given 
 him little trouble. But there is reason to believe that, in 
 the year 1685, he was in some danger of again occupying 
 his old quarters in Bedford gaol. In that year the rash and 
 wicked enterprise of Monmouth gave the government a pre- 
 text for prosecuting the non-conformists ; and scarcely one 
 eminent divine of the Presbyterian, Independent, or Baptist 
 persuasion remained unmolested. Baxter was in prison ; 
 Howe was driven into exile; Henry was arrested. Two 
 eminent Baptists, with whom Bunyan had been engaged in 
 controversy, were in great peril and distress. Danvers was 
 in danger of being hanged ; and -Kiffin's grandsons were 
 actually hanged. The tradition is that, during those evil 
 days, Bunyan was forced to disguise himself as a wagoner, 
 and that he preached to his congregation at Bedford in a 
 smockfrock, with a cart whip in his hand. But soon a 
 great change took place. James the Second was at open 
 
120 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 war with the church, and found it necessary to court the 
 Dissenters. Some of the creatures of the government tried 
 to secure the aid of Bunyan. They probably knew that he 
 had written in praise of the indulgence of 1672, and there- 
 fore hoped he might be equally pleased with the indulgence 
 of 1687. But fifteen years of thought, observation, and 
 commerce with the world had made him wiser. Nor were 
 the cases exactly parallel. Charles was a professed Prot- 
 estant: James was a professed Papist. The object of 
 Charles's indulgence was disguised ; the object of James's in- 
 dulgence was patent. Bunyan was not deceived. He ex- 
 horted his hearers to prepare themselves by fasting and 
 prayer for the danger which menaced their civil and reHg- 
 ious liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier who 
 came down to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, 
 as was supposed, had it in charge to offer sorpe municipal 
 dignity to the Bishop of the Baptists. 
 
 Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. In the sum- 
 mer of 1688, he undertook to plead the cause of a son with 
 an angry father, and at length prevailed on the old man not 
 to disinherit the young one. This good work cost the be- 
 nevolent intercessor his life. He had to ride through heavy 
 rain. He came drenched to his lodgings on Snow Hill, was 
 seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days. He was 
 buried in Bunhill Fields ; and the spot where he lies is still 
 regarded by the non-conformists with a feeling which seems 
 scarcely in harmony with the stern spirit of their theology. 
 Many puritans to whom the respect paid by Roman Catho- 
 lics to the reliques and tombs of saints seemed childish or 
 sinful, are said to have begged with their dying breath that 
 their coffins might be placed as near as possible to the coffin 
 of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 The fame of Bunyan during his life, and during the cen- 
 tury which followed his death, was indeed great, but was 
 almpst entirely confined lo religious families of the middle 
 
JOHN BUNTAN. 121 
 
 and lower classes. Very seldom was he during that time 
 mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary emi- 
 nence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the 
 wretched D'Urfey. In the Spiritual Quixote, the adven- 
 tures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant- 
 Killer or John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the 
 great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It is a 
 significant circumstance that, till a recent period, all the nu- 
 merous editions of the Pilgrim's Progress were evidently 
 meant for the cottage and the servant's hall. The paper, 
 the printing, the plates, were all of the meanest description. 
 In general, when the educated minority and the common 
 people differ about the merit of a book, the opinion of the 
 educated minority finally prevails. The Pilgrim's Progress is 
 perhaps the only book about which, after the lapse of a 
 hundred years, the educated minority has come over to the 
 opinion of the common people. 
 
 The attempts which have been made to improve and to im- 
 itate this book are not to be numbered. It has been done into 
 verse ; it has been done into modern English. The Pilgrimage 
 of Tender Conscience, the Pilgrimage of Good Intent, the 
 Pilgrimage of Seek Truth, the Pilgrimage of Theophilus, the 
 Infant Pilgrim, the Hindoo Pilgrim, are among the many 
 feeble copies of the great original. But the peculiar glory of 
 Bunyan is that those who most hated his doctrines have tried 
 to borrow the help of his genius. A Catholic version of his 
 parable may be seen with the head of the Virgin in the title- 
 page. On the other hand, those Antinomians for whom his 
 Calvinism is not strong enough, may study the pilgrimage of 
 Hephsibah, in which nothing Avill be found which can be 
 construed into an admission of free agency and universal 
 redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of 
 vandalism by which a fine work of art was ever defaced, 
 was committed so late as the year 1853. It was determined 
 to transform the Pilgrim's Progress into a Tractarian book. 
 U 
 
122 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 The task was not easy ; for jt was necessary to make the two 
 sacraments the most prominent objects in the allegory ; and 
 of all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers excepted, 
 Bunyan was the one in whose system the sacraments held 
 the least prominent pliace. However, the "Wicket Gate be- 
 came a type of baptism, and the House Beautiful of the 
 Eucharist. The effect of this change is such as assuredly 
 the ingenious person who made it never contemplated. For, 
 as not a single pilgrim passes through the Wicket Gate in 
 infancy, and as Faithful hurries past the House Beautiful 
 without stopping, the lesson which the fable in its altered 
 shape teaches, is that none but adults ought to be baptized, 
 and that the Eucharist may safely be neglected. Nobody 
 would have discovered from the original Pilgrim's Progress 
 that the author was not a Paedobaptist. To turn his book 
 into a book against Paedobaptism was an achievement re- 
 served for an Anglo- Catholic Divine. Such blunders must 
 necessarily be committed by every man who mutilates parts 
 of a great work, without taking a comprehensive view of 
 the whole. 
 
HORACE. 
 
 QuiNTUS HoRATius Flaccus, the most popular, and 
 next to Catullus and Virgil, the greatest of the Roman 
 poets, was born VI. Id. Dec. A. u. c. 689, (Dec. 8, b. c. 
 65), during the consulship of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. 
 Manlius Torquatus, and died November 27, A. u. c. 746, 
 (b. c. 8). Horace is his own biographer. All the mate- 
 rial facts of his personal history are to be gathered from the 
 allusions scattered throughout his poems. A memoir attrib- 
 uted to Suetonius, of somewhat doubtful authority, furnishes 
 a few additional details, but none of material moment, either 
 as to his character or career. His father was a freedman,* 
 and it was long considered that he had been a slave of some 
 member of the great family of the Horatii, whose name he 
 had assumed, in accordance with the common usage in such 
 cases. But this theory has latterly given place to the sug- 
 gestion, based upon inscriptions, that he was a freedraan of 
 the town of Venusia, (the modern Venosa,) the inhabitants 
 of which belonged to the Horatian tribe. ^ The point is, 
 however, of little importance, as the name, distinguished as 
 
 1 Satires, I. vi. 6, 46-47. 
 
 ^ G. F. Grotefend, Encydopddie von Ersch und Gruber, 2d sec. Vol. 
 X. p. 497, Leipzig, 1833 ; and C. L. Grotefend, Epkemerid. Literar., 
 Darmstadt, 1834, p. 182; and Mommsen's Inscriptiones Regni Nea- 
 politini, LipsisB, 1852. 
 
 (12.3) 
 
124 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 it was, has derived more lustre from the poet than from any 
 of the patriots and heroes by whom it had previously been 
 borne. The elder Horace had received his manumission 
 before his son was born.^ He had realized a moderate in- 
 dependence in the vocation of coactor, a nanjte borne indif- 
 ferently by the collectors of public revenue, and of money at 
 sales by public auction. To which of these classes he be- 
 longed is uncertain, but most probably to the latter,^ With the 
 fruits of his industry he had purchased a small property near 
 Venusia, upon the banks of the Aufidus, the modern Ofanto, 
 in the midst of the Apennines, upon the doubtful boundai'ies 
 of Lucania and Apulia. Here the poet was born, and in 
 this picturesque region of mountain, forest, and stream, the 
 boy became imbued with the love of nature, which distin- 
 guished him through life. The third ode of the fourth book 
 affords a pleasing glimpse of the child, wandering out of 
 bounds along the slopes of Mount Vultur, and being found 
 after an anxious search, asleep under a covering of laurel 
 and myrtle leaves, which the wild pigeons had spread to 
 shield this special favorite of the gods from the snakes and 
 wild animals. The augury of the future poet, said to have 
 been drawn from the incident at the time, was no doubt an 
 after-thought of the poet's own, but the picture which the 
 lines present of the strayed child asleep, with his hands full 
 of spring flowers is welcome, whatever may be thought of 
 the omen. In his father's house, and in those of the Apulian 
 peasantry around him, Horace had opportunities of becom- 
 ing familiar with the simple virtues of the poor, — their in- 
 dependence, integrity, chastity, and homely worth, which he 
 loved to contrast with the luxury and vice of imperial Rome. 
 Of his mother no mention occurs, directly or indirectly, 
 throughout his poems, and it is reasonable to infer from this 
 circumstance, taken in connection with the indications which 
 
 1 Satires, I. vi., 8. 2 Satires, 1. vi., 86. 
 
HORACE. 125 
 
 they present of strong natural affection, that she died during 
 his infancy. He appears also to have been an only child. 
 No doubt he had at an early ag6 given evidence of superior 
 powers, and to this it may have been in some measure owing 
 that his father thought him worthy of a higher education than 
 could be obtained under a provincial schoolmaster/ and, 
 although but ill able to afford it, carried him to Rome when 
 about twelve years old, and gave him the best education 
 which the capital could supply. No expense was spared to 
 save the boy from any sense of inferiority among his fellow- 
 scholars of the highest ranks. He was waited on by numer- 
 ous slaves, as though he were the heir to a considerable for- 
 time. But at the same time he was not allowed to enter- 
 tain any shame for his own 5rder, or to aspire to a position 
 which he was unequal to maintain. His father taught him 
 to look forward to filling some situation akin to that in which 
 he had himself acquired a competency, and to feel that in 
 any sphere culture and self-respect must command iufluence, 
 and afford the best guarantee for happiness. Under the 
 stern tutorage of Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian of high 
 standing, richer in reputation than gold, whom the poet has 
 condeau^|d to a bad immortality for his flogging propensi- 
 ties, he learned grammar, and became familiar with the 
 earlier Latin writers, and with Homer. He also acquired 
 such other branches of instruction as were usually learned 
 by the sons of Romans of the higher ranks. But what was 
 of still more importance, during this critical period of his 
 first introduction to the seductions of the capital, he enjoyed 
 the advantage of his father's personal superintendence, and 
 of a moral training, which kept him aloof, not merely from 
 the indulgence, but even from the contact of vice. His father 
 went with him to all his classes,'^ and being himself a man 
 of shrewd observation and natural humor, he gave his son's 
 
 1 Satires, I. vi., 71, et seq. 2 Satires, I. vi., 18, et seq. 
 
 11* 
 
126 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Studies a practical bearing, by directing his attention to the 
 follies and vices of the luxurious and dissolute society around 
 him,^ and showing their incompatibility with the dictates of 
 reason and common sense. From this admii-able father, 
 Horace appears to have inherited that manly independence 
 for which he was remarkable, and which, while assigning to 
 all ranks their due influence and respect, never either over- 
 estimates or compromises its own. 
 
 Under the homely exterior of the Apulian freedman, we 
 see the soul of the gentleman. His influence on his son was 
 manifestly great. In the full maturity of his powers Horace 
 penned a tribute to his worth,^ with a fervor manifestly 
 prompted by the full heart of a man who had often had 
 cause to feel the blessings of 'that influence throughout the 
 vicissitudes of a chequered life. It had given tone and 
 strength to his character, and in the midst of manifold temp- 
 tations had kept him true to himself and his genius. 
 
 At wjiat age Horace left his father is uncertain. Most 
 probably this event occurred before he left Rome for Athens 
 to complete his education, as was then the practice, in the 
 Greek literature and philosophy, under native teachers. 
 This he did some time between the age of seventeen and 
 twenty. At Athens he found many young men of the 
 leading Roman families — Bibulus, Acidinus, Messala, and 
 the younger Cicero — engaged in the same pursuits with him- 
 self. His works prove him to have been no careless student 
 of tlie classics of Grecian literature, and with a natural en- 
 thusiasm he made his first poetical essays in their flexible and 
 noble language. With his usual good sense, however, he 
 soon abandoned the hopeless task of emulating the Greek 
 writers on their own ground, and directed his efforts to 
 transfusing into his own language some of the grace and 
 melody of these masters of song.® In the political lull be- 
 
 1 Satires, I. vi., 105, et seq. ^ Satires, I. vi., 68, et seq. 
 
 8 Satires, I. x., 31-35. 
 
HORACE. 127 
 
 tween the battle of Pharsalia, A. u. c. 706 (b. c. 48), and 
 the death of Julius Caesar, a. u. c. 710 (b. c. 44), Horace 
 was enabled to devote himself without interruption to 
 the tranquil pursuits of the scholar. But when after the 
 latter event Brutus came to Athens, and the patrician youth 
 of Rome, fired with zeal for the cause of republican liberty, 
 joined his standard, Horace was infected by the general en- 
 thusiasm, and accepted a military command in the army 
 which was destined to encounter the legions of Anthony 
 and Octavius. His rank was that of tribune, equivalent to 
 a colonelcy of foot in our own army, and for this he must have 
 been indebted either to the personal friendship of Brutus or 
 to an extraordinary dearth of officers, seeing that he was not 
 only without experience or birth to recommend him, but 
 possessed no particular aptitude, physical or moral, for a 
 military life. His appointment excited jealousy among his 
 brother officers, who considered that the command of a Ilo- 
 man legion should have been reserved for men of nobler 
 blood.^ It was probably here that he first came into direct 
 collision with the aristocratic prejudices which the training 
 of his father had taught him to defy, and which, at a subse- 
 quent period, grudged to the freedman's son the friendship 
 of the emperor and of Mascenas. At the same time he had 
 doubtless a strong party of friends, who had learned to ap- 
 preciate his genius and attractive qualities. It is certain 
 that he secured the esteem of his commanders, and bore an 
 active part in the perils and difficulties of the campaign, 
 which terminated in a total defeat of the republican party 
 at Philippi, a. u. c. 712 (b. c. 42). A playful allusion by 
 himself to the events of that disastrous field ^ lias been 
 turned by many of his commentators into an admission of his 
 own cowardice. This is absurd. Such a confession is the 
 very last which any man, least of all a Roman, would 
 
 1 Satires, I. yi., 46, et seq. 2 Qdes, II. vi., 9, et seq. 
 
128 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 make. Horace says, addressing his friend Pompoius 
 Varius : — 
 
 " With thee I shared Philippi's fiery flight. 
 My shield behind me left, which was not well, 
 When all that brave array was broke, and fell 
 In the vile dust full many a towering wight." 
 
 Such an allusion to the loss of his shield could only have 
 been dropped by a man who felt that he had done his duty, 
 and that it was known that he had done it. The lines may 
 thus be safely regarded, according to the views of Lessing 
 and others, as a not ungraceful compliment to his friend, 
 who continued the struggle against the triumvirate with the 
 party who threw themselves into the fleet of Sextus Pom- 
 peius. This interpretation is confirmed by the lat5guage of 
 the next verse, where, in the same spirit, he applies the 
 epithet " paventem " (craven) to himself. 
 
 " But me, poor craven, swift Mercurius bore, 
 Wrapp'd in a cloud through all the hostile din, 
 While war's tumultuous eddies, closing in, 
 Swept thee away into the strife once more." 
 
 It was no shame in Horace to have despaired of a cause 
 which its leaders had given up. After the suicide of 
 Brutus and Cassius the continuance of the contest was 
 hopeless ; and Horace may in his short military career have 
 seen, in the jealousy and selfish ambition of many of his 
 party, enough to make him suspicious of success, even if 
 that had been attainable. Republicans who sneered at the 
 treedman's son were not likely to found any system of 
 liberty worthy of the name. 
 
 When Horace found his way back to Italy it was to find 
 his paternal acres confiscated. His life was spared, but 
 nothing was«left him to sustain it but his pen and his good 
 spirits. He had to write for bread — Paupertas impulit 
 
HORACE. 129 
 
 audax ut versus facer em ^ — and in so doing he appears to 
 have acquired not only considerable repute, but also suffi- 
 cient means to purchase the place of scribe in the Qutestor's 
 office, a sort of sinecure Clerkship of the Treasury, which 
 he continued to hold for many years, if not to the close of 
 his life.^ It was upon his return to Rome that he made the 
 acquaintance of Virgil and Varius, who were already famous, 
 and to them he was indebted for his introduction to M«- 
 cenas. The particulars of his first interview with his patron 
 he has himself recorded.' It is a curious circumstance in 
 the history of a friendship, among the closest and most 
 affectionate on record, that nine months elapsed after their 
 meeting before Maecenas again summoned the poet to his 
 house, and enrolled him in the list of his intimate friends. 
 The event took place in the third year after the battle of 
 Philippi ; and as the only claim of Horace, the man of 
 hjimble origin and the retainer of a defeated party, to the 
 notice of the minister of Augustus must have been his 
 literary reputation, it is obvious that even at this early 
 period he had established his position among the wits and 
 men of letters in the capital. The acquaintance rapidly 
 ripened into mutual esteem. It secured the position of the 
 poet in society, and tlie generosity of the statesman placed 
 him above the anxieties of a literary life. Throughout the 
 intimate intercourse of thirty years which ensued there was 
 no trace of condescension on the one hand, nor of servility 
 on the other. Maecenas gave the poet the place next his 
 heart. He must have respected the man who never used 
 his influence to obtain those favors which were within the dis- 
 posal of the emperor's minister, who cherished an honest 
 pride in his own station, and who could be grateful without 
 being obsequious. Horace is never weary of acknowledg- 
 
 1 Epistles, II. ii., 51. a Satires, II. vi., 36. 
 
 ^ Satires, I. vi., 55, et seq. 
 
ISO NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ing how much he owes to his friend. When lie praises him, 
 it is without flattery. When he soothes his anxieties, or 
 calms his fears, the sincerity of Ills sympathy is apparent in 
 the warmth of his ,words. When he resists his patron's 
 wishes, he is firm without rudeness. When he sports with 
 his foibles, he is familiar without the slightest shade of im- 
 pertinence. 
 
 By Maecenas Horace was introduced to Octavius, most 
 probably soon after the period just referred to. In A. u. 
 c. 717, a year after Horace had been admitted into the 
 circle of his friends, Maecenas went to Brundusium, charged 
 by Octavius to negotiate a treaty with Marcus Antonius. 
 On this journey he was accomjjanied by Horace, who has 
 left a graphic record of its incidents.^ It is probable that 
 on this occasion or about this time the poet was brought to 
 the notice of the future emperor. Between the time of his 
 return from this journey and the year 722, Horace, who had 
 in the mean time given to the world many of his poems, in- 
 cluding the ten Satires of the first book, received from Mae- 
 cenas the gift of the Sabine farm, which at once afforded 
 him a competency and all the pleasures of a country life. 
 The gift was a slight one for Maecenas to bestow, but he no 
 doubt made it as the fittest and most . welcome which he 
 could have offered to his friend. It made Horace happy. 
 It gave him leisure and amusement, and opportunities for 
 that calm intercourse with nature which he " needed for his 
 spirit's health." Never was a gift better bestowed or better 
 requited. It at once prompted much of that poetry which 
 has made Maecenas famous, and has afforded ever new 
 delight to successive generations. The Sabine farm was sit- 
 uated in a romantic valley about fifteen miles from Tibur 
 (Tivoli), and among its other charms, possessed the valuable 
 attraction for Horace, that it was within an easy distance of 
 
 1 Satires, I. v. 
 
HORACE. 
 
 131 
 
 Rome. When his spirits wanted the stimulus of society or 
 the bustle of the capital, which they often did, his ambling 
 mule could speedily convey him thither; and when jaded 
 on the other hand by 
 
 " The noise, and strife, and questions wearisome, 
 And the vain splendors of imperial Rome," 
 
 he could by the same easy means of transport, in a few 
 hours bury himself among the hills, and there, under the 
 shadow of his favorite Lucretilis, or by the banks of the 
 Digentia, either stretch himself to dream upon the grass, 
 lulled by the murmurs of the stream, or look after the cul- 
 ture of his fields, and fancy himself a farmer. The site of 
 this farm has been pretty accurately ascertained, and it is 
 at the present day a favorite resort of travellers, especially 
 of Englishmen, who visit it in such numbers, and trace its 
 features with so much enthusiasm, that the resident peas- 
 antry, "who cannot conceive of any other source of in- 
 terest in one so long dead and unsainted, than that of co-pa- 
 triotism or consanguinity," believe Horace to have been 
 an Englishman.* The property was of moderate size, and 
 produced corn, olives, and wine, but was not highly culti- 
 vated. Here Horace spent a considerable part of every 
 year. Latterly, when his health failed, he passed the win- 
 ter in the milder air of a villa at Tivoli. The Sabine farm 
 was very retired, being about four miles from Varia (Vico 
 Varo), the nearest town, well covered with timber, and 
 traversed by a small but sparkling stream. It gave em- 
 ployment to five families of free coloni, who were under the 
 superintendence of a bailiflf; and, besides these, eight slaves 
 were attached to the poet's establishment. With his inex- 
 pensive habits this little property was sufficient for all his 
 wants (Satis beatus unicis Sabinis). Here he could enter- 
 
 1 Letter by Mr. Dennis. — Milman's Uorace, London, 1849, p. 109 
 
132 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 tain a stray friend from town, — his patron Maecenas, upon 
 occasion, — and the delights of this agreeable retreat and 
 the charm of the poet's society, were doubtless more than a 
 compensation for the plain fare or the thin home-grown 
 wine. Vile Sabinum, with which its resources alone enabled 
 him to regale them. 
 
 The life of Horace from the time of his intimacy with 
 Maecenas appears to have been one of comparative ease 
 and of great social enjoyment. Augustus soon admitted 
 him to his favor, and sought to attach him to his person in 
 the capacity of secretary. This offer Horace was prudent 
 and firm enough to decline ; while at the same time he had 
 the tact not to offend the master of the world by his re- 
 fusal. To the close of his life his favor at court continued 
 without a cloud. Augustus not only liked the man, but 
 entertained a profound admiration for the poet. Believing 
 in the immortality of his writings, it was natural the em- 
 peror should cultivate the good-will and seek to secure the 
 " deathless meed " of his favorite's song. That Horace had 
 fought with Brutus against him was no prejudice. To have 
 espoused the cause, and enjoyed the confidence of one 
 whose nobility of purpose his adversaries never scrupled to 
 acknowledge, formed, indeed, in itself a claim upon his suc- 
 cessful rival's esteem. Horace was no renegade; he was 
 not ashamed of the past, and Maecenas and Augustus were 
 just the men to respect him for his independence, and to 
 like him the better for it. They could appreciate his supe- 
 riority to the herd of time-servers around them ; and like 
 all the greatest actors on the political stage, they were above 
 the petty rancors of party jealousy, or the desire to enforce 
 a renunciation of convictions opposite to their own. It was 
 by never stooping to them unduly that Horace secured their 
 esteem, and maintained himself upon a footing of equality 
 with them as nearly as the difference of rank would allow. 
 Thf>rp is no reason to suspect Horace, in the praises which 
 
HORACE. 133 
 
 he has recorded of Augustus, either of insincerity or syco- 
 phancy. He was able to contrast the comparative security 
 of hfe and property, the absence of political turmoil, and 
 the development of social ease and happiness, which his 
 country enjoyed under the masterly administration of Au- 
 gustus, with the disquietudes and strife under which it had 
 languished for so many years. The days of a republic had 
 gone by, and an enhghtened despotism must have been wel- 
 comed by a country shaken by a long period of civil commo- 
 tion, and sick of seeing itself played for as the stake of 
 reckless and ambitious men. He was near enough to the 
 councils of the world's master to see his motives and to 
 appi'eciate his policy ; and his intimate personal intercourse 
 with both Augustus and Maecenas no doubt enabled him to 
 do fuller justice both to their intentions and their capacity, 
 than was possible perhaps to any other man of his time. 
 The envy which his intimacy with these two foremost 
 men of all the world for a time excited in Roman so- 
 ciety by degrees gave way, as years advanced, and the 
 causes of their esteem came to be better understood. Their 
 favor did not spoil him. He was ever the same kindly, 
 urbane, and simple man of letters he had originally been. 
 He never presumed upon his position, or looked super- 
 ciliously on others less favored than himself. At all times 
 generous and genial, years only mellowed his wisdom, and 
 gave a sharper lustre to the beauty of his verse. 
 
 The unaffected sincerity of his nature, and the rich vein 
 of his genius, made him courted by the rich and noble.^ 
 He mixed on easy terms with the choicest society of Rome, 
 and what a society must that have been which included 
 Virgil, Varius, Plotius, Tibullus, PoUio, and a host of others, 
 who were not only ripe scholars, but had borne and were 
 bearing a leading part in the great actions and events of 
 
 1 Odes, II. xvii., 9, el seq. 
 12 
 
184 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 that memorable epoch ? It is to this period that the compo- 
 sition of his principal odes is to be attributed. To these, 
 of all his writings, Horace himself ascribed the greatest 
 value, and on these he rested his claims to posthumous fame. 
 They were the result of great labor, as he himself indicates : 
 *' Operosa parvus Carmina fingo,"^ and yet they bear preemi- 
 nently the charm of simplicity and ease. He was the 
 first to mould the Latin tongue to the Greek lyric measures ; 
 and his success in this difficult task may be estimated from 
 the fact, that as he was the first so was he the greatest of 
 the Roman lyrists. Quinctilian's criticism upon him can 
 scarcely be improved : " Lyricorum Horatius fere solus 
 legi dignus. Nam et insurgit aliquando, et plenus est ju- 
 cunditatis et gratiae, et vai'iis figuris, et verbis felicissime 
 audax." In this airy and playful grace, in happy epithets, 
 in variety of imagery, and exquisite felicity of expression, 
 the Odes are still unsurpassed among the writings of any 
 period or language. If they want the inspiration of a great 
 motive or the fervor and resonance of the finest lyrics of 
 Greece, they possjcss at all events an exquisite grace and 
 terseness of expression, a power of painting an image or 
 expressing a thought in the fewest and fittest words, and a 
 melody of tone, which imbue them with a charm quite 
 peculiar, and have given them a hold upon the minds of 
 educated men, which no change of taste has shaken. That 
 they are inferior to his Greek models is not to be wondered 
 at. Even although Horace had possessed the genius of 
 Pindar or Sappho, it is doubtful whether, writing in an arti- 
 ficial language, which he was compelled to make more 
 artificial by the adoption of Grecian terms of expression, 
 and being therefore without the free and genial medium of 
 expression which they had at command, he could have 
 found an adequate utterance for his inspiration. But his 
 
 1 Odes, IV. ii., 31. 
 
HORACE. 135 
 
 genius was akin to neither of these ; and that good sense, 
 which is his great characteristic, withheld him from ever 
 either soaring too high or attempting to sustain his flight too 
 long. He knew the measure of his powers, and in his 
 greatest efforts, therefore, no undue strain upon them is to 
 be detected. His power of passion is limited, and his 
 strokes of pathos are few and slight. Above all, he did 
 not possess the faculty,* which, in a lyrical writer, is the 
 highest, of losing himself in a great theme. Whatever 
 subject he treats, we neve^lose sight of the poet in the 
 poem. This quality, while it is fatal to lyric poetry of the 
 liighest class, helps, however, to heighten the charm of 
 the mass of his odes, especially those which are devoted to 
 his friends, or which breathe the delight with which thfe 
 contact with the ever fresh beauties of natural scenery 
 inspired him. Into these he throws his whole heart, and in 
 them we feel the fascination which made him beloved by 
 those who came within the circle of his personal influence, 
 and which makes him as it were, the well known and inti- 
 mate ft'iend of all to whom his writings are a famihar study. 
 Horace was not and could not have been a national poet. 
 He wrote only for cultivated men, and under the shadow of 
 a court. The very language in which he wrote must have 
 been unintelligible to the people, and he had none of those 
 popular sympathies which inspire the lyrics of Burns or 
 Beranger. The Roman population of his time was perhaps 
 as little likely to command his respect as any which the 
 world has ever seen ; and there was no people, in the sense 
 in which we understand the word, to appeal to. And yet 
 Horace has many points in common with Burns. " A man 's 
 a man for a' that," in the whole vein of its sentiment is 
 thoroughly Horatian ; but the glow which kindles the heart 
 and fires the brain is subdued to a temperate heat in the 
 gentler and physically less energetic nature of Horace. In 
 his amatory verses the same distinction is visible. None 
 
136 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 of hi3 erotic poems are vivified by those gushes of emotion 
 which animate the love poetry of the poets we have named, 
 and of other modern song writers. Never indeed was love 
 less ideal or intense in a poet of unquestionable power. 
 Horace is not insensible to beauty. No writer hits off with 
 greater neatness the portrait of a beauty, or conjures up 
 more skilfully before his reader an image of seductive grace. 
 But the fire of genuine passion is tvanting. Horace's ardor 
 Beems never to have risen above the transient flush of 
 desire. His heart is whole th^jpgh Cupid may have clapped 
 him on the shoulder. The Lalages and Lyces, the Glyceras 
 and Phrynes of his Odes are pretty playthings of an hour, 
 who amused his fancy and delighted his senses, but never 
 robbed him of a night's repose or of a day's appetite. The 
 attempt to make them out as real objects of attachment, is 
 one of the many follies in which his commentators have 
 wasted much dreary labor. Horace might, no doubt, have 
 Bung of himself, like B6ranger, in his youth, — 
 
 " J'avais vingt ans une folle maitresse, 
 Des francs amis, et I'amour de chansons," — 
 
 and even when he could count eight lustres, despite his own 
 protest,^ his senses were probably not dead to the attractions 
 of a fine ankle, or a pretty face, or to the fascinations of a 
 sweet smile, or a musical voice. But his passions were too 
 well controlled, and his love of ease too strong, to have 
 admitted of so many flirtations as would be implied in the 
 supposition that Tyndaris, Myrtale, and a score of others, 
 were actual favorites of the bard. To sing of beauty has 
 always been the poet's privilege and delight ; and to record 
 the lover's pains an easy and popular theme. Horace, the 
 wit and friend of wits, was not likely to be out of the mode, 
 
 1 Odes, II. 4, 21, et seq. 
 
HORACE. 137 
 
 and so he sang of love and beauty according to his fashion. 
 Very airy and playful and pleasant is that fashion, and, for 
 his time, in the main comparatively pure^ and chaste ; but 
 we seek in vain for the tenderness, the negj^tion of self, and 
 the pathos, which are the soul of all true love poetry. 
 " His love ditties," it has been well said, " are, as it were, 
 like flowers, beautiful in form, and rich in hues, but with- 
 out the scent that breathes to the heart." It is certain 
 that many of them are merely imitations of Greek originals. 
 His Satires and Mpistles are less read, yet they are per- 
 haps more intrinsically valuable than his lyric poetry. 
 They are of very various merit, written at different periods 
 of his life, and although the order of their composition may 
 be difficult to define with certainty, much may be inferred, 
 even from the internal evidence of style and subject, as to 
 ihe development of the poet's genius. This subject has 
 engaged much of the attention of the commentators, and all 
 concur in placing the Satires first, and the Epistles, includ- 
 ing the Epistle to the Pisos, De Arte Poeticd, last in the 
 order of date. As reflecting " the age and body of the 
 time," they possess the highest historical value. Through 
 them the modern scholar is able to form a clearer idea of 
 the state of society in Rome in the Augustan age than of any 
 other phase of social development in the history of nations. 
 Mingling, as he did, freely with men of all ranks and pas- 
 sions, and himself untouched by the ambition of wealth or 
 influence which absorbed them in the struggle of society, 
 he enjoyed the best of opportunities for observation, and he 
 used them diligently. Horace's observation of character 
 is subtle and exact, his knowledge of the heart is profound, 
 his power of graphic delineation great; a genial humor 
 plays over his verses, and a kindly wisdom dignifies them. 
 Never were the maxims of social prudence and practical 
 good sense inculcated in so pleasing a form as in the Epistles. 
 The vein of his satire is delicate yet racy, and he stimulates 
 
 12* 
 
138 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and amuses, but rarely offends by indelicacy, or outrages 
 by coarseness. He does not spare himself upon occasion. 
 
 His sarcasms, moreover, have no spice of malignity, 
 neither are th(^ tinged by the satirist's vice of vaunting 
 his superiority to his neighbors. For fierceness of invec- 
 tive, or loftiness of moral tone^he is inferior to Juvenal ; but 
 the vices of his time were less calculated to provoke the 
 " sseva indignatio," or to call for the stern moral censure 
 of the satirist of a more recent date. He deals rather with 
 the weakness and follies, than with the vices or crimes of 
 mankind, and his appeals are directed to their judgment and 
 practical sense rather than to their conscience. The idea 
 of duty or absolute right is not a prominent one with 
 Horace. He inculcates what is fitting and decorous, and 
 tends most to tranquillity of mind and body, rather than the 
 severe virtues of a high standard of moral purity. To liv» 
 at peace with the world, to shun the extremes of avarice, 
 luxury, and ambition, to outrage none of the laws of nature, 
 to enjoy life wisely, and not to load it with cares which the 
 lapse of a few brief years will demonstrate to be foolishness, 
 is very nearly the sum of his philosophy. Of religion, as 
 we understand it, he had little. He was, however, too 
 observant of the world around him, and too habitually ac- 
 customed to look into his own soul, not to have been pro- 
 foundly impressed with the evidences of Supreme Wisdom 
 governing the machine of the universe, and to have felt as- 
 pirations for a future in which the mysteries of the present 
 world should find a solution. Although himself little of a 
 practical worshipper — parens deorum cultor et infrequens — 
 he respected the sincerity of others in their belief in the old 
 gods. But in common with the more vigorous intellects of 
 the time, he had outgrown the effete creed of his country- 
 men. He could not accept the mythology, about which the 
 forms of the contemporary worship still clustered. The rela- 
 tion of the universe to its Maker was a mystery to him, and 
 
HORACE. 139 
 
 the agency of an active Providence, if it occasionally 
 startled him out of the easy indifference of a vain philoso- 
 phy, seems to have been by no means a permanent convic- 
 tion of his mind, influencing his actions, or giving a lofty 
 sweep to his speculations. The morality of enlightened 
 and far-seeing wisdom was attainable by such a mind, and 
 it was attained ; but to the divine spirit, which raised some of 
 the ancient writers almost to a level with the inspired au- 
 thors of the books of our faith, Horace has no claim. As a 
 living and brilliant commentary on life, as a storehouse of 
 maxims of practical wisdom, couched in language the most 
 apt and concise, as sketches of men and manners, which will 
 be always fresh and always true, because they were true 
 once, and because human nature will always reproduce itself 
 under analogous circumstances, his Satires, and still more 
 his Epistles, will have a permanent value for mankind. In 
 these, too, as in his Odes, Horace helped materially in giv- 
 ing to the Latin language the highest amount of polish of 
 which it is susceptible. 
 
 At no time very robust, Horace's health appears to ha^'e 
 declined some years before his death. He was doomed to 
 see some of his most valued friends drop into the grave 
 before him. This to him, who gave to friendship the ardor 
 which other men give to love, was the severest wound that 
 time could bring. Youth, and si^irits, and health, the inevit- 
 able decay of nature, saddened the thoughtful poet in his sol- 
 itude, and tinged the gayest society with melancholy. But 
 the loss of friends, the brothers of his soul, of Virgil, Quinc- 
 tUius, TibuUus,* and others, and ultimately of Maecenas, with- 
 out that hope of reunion which springs from the cheering 
 faith which was soon afterwards to be revealed to the world, 
 must have by degrees stripped life of most of its charms. 
 Singula de nobis anni prcedantur euntes ^ is a cheerless 
 
 1 Epistles, II. ii., 55. 
 
140 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reflection to the man who has no assured hope beyond the 
 present time. Maecenas's health was a source of deep 
 anxiety to him, and one of the most exquisite odes (the 17th 
 of the 2nd book), addressed to him, in answer to some out- 
 burst of despondency, while it expresses the depth of the 
 poet's regard, bears in it the tones of a man somewhat 
 weary of the world : — 
 
 " Ah ! if untimely fate should snatch thee hence, 
 Thee, of my soul a part, 
 Why should I linger on, with deaden'd sense. 
 
 And ever aching heart, 
 A worthless fragment of a fallen shrine ? 
 No, no ! One day beholds thy death and mine ! 
 
 " Think not that I have sworn a bootless oath ! 
 Yes, we shall go, shall go. 
 Hand linked in hand, whene'er thou leadest, both 
 The last sad road below ! " 
 
 The prophecy seems to have been realized almost to 
 the letter. The same year (a. u. c. 786, b. c. 8) witnessed 
 the death of both Horace and Maecenas. The latter died 
 in the middle of the year, bequeathing his friend, in almost 
 his last words, to the care of Augustus : Horatii Flacci, ut 
 mei, esto memor. On the 27th of November, when he was 
 on the eve of completing his fifty-seventh year, Horace 
 himself died, of an illness so sharp and sudden, that he was 
 unable to make his will in writing. He declared it verbally 
 before witnesses, leaving the little all which <he possessed to 
 Augustus. He was buried on the Esquiline Hill, near his 
 patron and friend Maecenas. No trace of the tombs of 
 either remains ; but the name and fame of both are inextri- 
 cably^ entwined, and can only perish with the decay of liter- 
 ature itself. The fame of Horace was at once established. 
 In the days of Juvenal he shared with Virgil the doubtful 
 
HORACE. 141 
 
 hoilbr bf being a scBool-book.^ That honor he still enjoys ; 
 but it is only by minds matured by experience and reflection 
 that Horace can be thoroughly appreciated. To them the 
 depth of his observation, and the reach of his good sense 
 are made daily more apparent; and the verses which 
 charmed their fancy or delighted their ear in youth, became 
 the counsellors of their manhood, or the mirror which focal- 
 izes for their old age the gathered wisdom of a lifetime. 
 No writer is so often quoted, and simply because the 
 thoughts of none are more pertinent to men's " business and 
 bosoms " in the concerns of every-day life, amid the jostle 
 of a crowded and artificial state of society ; and because 
 the glimpses of nature, in which his writings abound, come 
 with the freshness of truth, alike to the jaded dwellers in 
 cities, and to those who can test them day by day in the 
 presence of nature herself. To Petrarch and Wordsworth 
 he was a favorite study. Richard Hooker made him a 
 manual. Louis XVIII. had him by heart; and there is 
 scarcely a statesman of eminence in whose mouth his say- 
 ings are not household words. 
 
 There are no authentic busts or medallions of Horace, 
 and his descriptions of himself are vague. He was short 
 in stature ; his eyes and hair were dark, but the latter was 
 early silvered with gray. He suffered at one time from an 
 affection of the eyes, and seems to have been by no means 
 robust in constitution. His habits were temperate and fru- 
 gal, as a rule, although he was far from insensible to the 
 charms of a good table and good wine, heightening and 
 heightened by the zest of good company. But he seems to 
 have had neither the stomach nor the taste for habitual in- 
 dulgence in the pleasures of the table. In youth he was 
 hasty and choleric, but easily placable ; and to the last 
 he probably shared in some degree the irritability which 
 
 1 Juvenal, Satires, VII., 226. 
 
142 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 he ascribes to his class. At the saiffe time, if hfs ^^t- 
 ings be any index to his mind, his temper was habitu- 
 ally sweet and well under control. Like all playful men, a 
 tinge of melancholy colored his life, if that is to be called 
 melancholy which is more properly only that sense of the 
 incompleteness and insufficiency of life for the desires of the 
 soul, which must be deeply seated in all earnest natures. 
 Latterly he became corpulent, and sensitive to the severity 
 of the seasons, and sought at Baiae and Tivoli the refresh- 
 ment or shelter which his mountain retreat had ceased to 
 yield to his delicate frame. 
 
 The chronology of the poems of Horace has been the 
 source of much critical controversy. The earlier labors of 
 Bentley, Masson, Dacier, and Sanadon have been followed up 
 in modern times by those of Passow, Walckenaer, Weber, 
 Grotefend, and Stallbaum abroad, and of Tate and Milraan 
 at home. As the subject is not one which admits of cer- 
 tainty, the speculation is . endless, and must always be in a 
 great measure unsatisfactory. The general result may be 
 stated as follows. The Satires and Epodes were first in the 
 order of composition, having been written between the years 
 713 and 725, after the return of Horace to Rome, and 
 before the close of the civil wars consequent upon the defeat 
 of Antony and his party. The two first books of Odes ap- 
 peared between this period and the year 730. Then fol- 
 lowed the first book of Epistles. The third book of Odes 
 appears to have been composed about the year 735, the 
 Carmen Seculare in 737, and the fourth book of Odes 
 between 737 and 741. The second book of Epistles may 
 be assigned to the period between 741 and 746 ; and to the 
 same period may be ascribed the composition of the Epistle 
 to the Pisos. The results of the speculations of Bentley and 
 several of the leading critics are presented in a tabular form 
 in the admirable edition of Horace published by Firmin 
 Didot, Paris, 1855, with the commentary of Diibner, which 
 
HORACE. 143 
 
 is a model at once of typographical beauty and editorial 
 skill. 
 
 For a list of the best editions of Horace, and of the 
 numerous works on the topography and chronology of his 
 poems, reference may be made to Smith's Dictionary of 
 Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London, 1850, 
 sub voce Horatius. 
 
 The translations of Horace into all the European lan- 
 guages ar^ numerous. The English versions are more 
 numerous than successful. Pope and Swift, in their imita- 
 tions, have caught more of his manner than any of the 
 translators : and probably, the rendering which will convey 
 the best idea of his peculiar chai'm will be. that which hits a 
 happy medium between the literal and the paraphrastic. 
 The translation of Francis, which long held a place as the 
 English representative of this classic, is a poor perform- 
 ance, and is rapidly falling into merited oblivion. That of 
 Wrangham is weak, colorless, and trivial. Of late years 
 many versions have issued from the press, among which 
 those of F. W. Newman, London, 1853 ; Melville, London, 
 1850; and Robinson, London, 1846-55; are chiefly re- 
 markable. But a good English Horace is still a desidera- 
 tum, and, if ever supplied, it will probably be the result of 
 the combined labors of many hands. 
 
ROBERT HALL. 
 
 Robert Hall, one of the most celebrated writers and 
 preachers England has produced, was born at Arnsby, near 
 Leicester, May 2, 1764. His father was the minister of 
 the Baptist congregation in that place, and the author of 
 several religious publications, one of which obtained consid- 
 erable popularity. His character has been sketched by his 
 more celebrated son, from whose testimony, as well as that 
 of less partial witnesses, he appears to have been a man of 
 no little ability and worth. Nor was Robei't Hall less happy 
 in his other parent — his mother being a woman of excel- 
 lent sense and eminent piety. He lost her when he was 
 but twelve years of age (1776) ; his father lived to rejoice 
 in his son's dawning fame. He died in 1791. 
 
 Robert was- the youngest of fourteen children. His 
 infancy — like that of Newton, Locke, and Pascal, in whom 
 the flame of life flickered as if it would go out almost as 
 «Qon as kindled, while in the two last it but flickered all 
 their days — was extremely sickly, and for some years there 
 was hardly any hope of rearing him. As if to remind us 
 how little we can anticipate the course of life, a full propor- 
 tion of the great minds that have astonished and adorned 
 the world, have come into it as if under sentence of imme- 
 diately quitting it, with the worst possible promise of the 
 great things they were destined to achieve. 
 
 (144) 
 
ROBERT HALL. 145 
 
 Robert Hall's childhood was, as we shall presently see, 
 unusually precocious — far more so than even that of most 
 of the sons of genius ; nor was the promise of the bright 
 dawn, so often delusive, clouded as the day went on. It is 
 said that he learned to talk and to read almost at tlie same 
 time ; his letters were assuredly learned in a strange school 
 and from strange books, that is, in a graveyard, and from 
 tombstones. The graveyard was adjacent to his father's 
 house, and thither his nurse used to carry him for " air " 
 and " exercise." Whether a cemetery be the best place for 
 childhood to take its " airings " in, or epitaphs the best 
 spelling-book, may be doubted ; but it was at all events a 
 singular introduction to literature. 
 
 Even at the dame's school, where he received his first 
 formal instructions, he betrayed his passion for books, and 
 was often found when school was over, in the above,favorite 
 but solemn " study " — the churchyard — engaged in soli- 
 tary reading, though no longer poring over the tombstones. 
 He pursued the same extra-official course of reading at his 
 next school, which was kept by a Mr. Simmons, at a village 
 four miles from Arnsby. He used to procure, it appears, 
 from his father's library, books for these play-hour readings, 
 and, doubtless, got more from his self-prompted studies than 
 from any of his regular lessons. But the character of this 
 " select library for the young " may well surprise us, and, if 
 the fact were not well authenticated, his choice of favorite 
 authors would seem incredible. Jonathan Edwards's Trea- 
 tise on the Freedom of the Will, and Butler's Analogy, were, 
 it seems, among the amusing " solatia " of his leisure hours ; 
 and Dr. Gregory assures us that it is " an ascertained fact," 
 that when he was about nine or ten, he had read and re-read 
 these works with " an intense interest." Before he was ten, 
 another incident evinced the tendencies of his mind to litera- 
 ture ; he had composed, it seems, many little essays, and 
 13 
 
146 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 often " invited his brother and sisters to hear him preach." 
 Similarly, when he was once disposing in imagination (as 
 children sometimes will) of his father's "goods and chat- 
 tels" before the worthy man's death, he willingly agreed 
 that his brother should have " the cows, sheep, and pigs," 
 but " all the hooks " were to come to him. 
 
 His early promise of eloquence, conjoined with religious 
 sensibility, seemed to point to the sacred officfe ; and, in fact, 
 his father indulged at a very early period some anticipations 
 that the pulpit was his destination. At eleven he was re- 
 moved to a school at Kettering, where the same brilliant 
 talents were evinced, but not very wisely developed. His 
 master, flattered by having such a prodigy, sometimes in- 
 vited him to display his precocious powers of oratory before 
 a " select audience," — a folly which the sound judgment of 
 Robert .Hall loudly and justly condemned in after-life. 
 From this school he was removed to another of greater 
 note at Northampton, kept by the Rev. John Ryland, a man 
 of eccentric, but like many others of the same family, of 
 unusually vigorous intellect. The energy of Mr. Ryland's 
 character, and his original and impressive modes of teach- 
 ing, seem to have given him a remarkable ascendency over 
 the minds of his pupils, — and there can be no doubt that 
 Robert Hall's intellect was greatly and healthfully stim- 
 ulated under his judicious training. Here he remained 
 about a year and a half, and then, having decidedly ex- 
 pressed his predilections for the ministry, and pursued some 
 preparatory theological studies under his father's roof, he 
 repaired to the Baptist Academy at Bristol. This was in 
 1778, when only in his fifteenth year. 
 
 During his stay at Bristol, he seems to have made rapid 
 progress in all the studies which constituted the academic 
 curriculum. His attention to the principles and practice of 
 composition was very marked ; though, as Dr. Gregory 
 
ROBERT HALL. 147 
 
 observes, the few remains of his juvenile compositions ex- 
 hibit " more of the tumultuary flourish of the orator than 
 he would have approved after his twentieth year." This is 
 a common case ; for a severe taste is, even in the highest 
 genius, of slow growth, though in Robert Hall's perhaps as 
 rapid as it ever was in any man. 
 
 His dehut as a public speaker gave but little promise of 
 the brilliant career which awaited him. On being appointed 
 to deliver an address (as the students were accustomed to 
 do in rotation) at the vestry of Broadmead Chapel, he, 
 after a brief but fluent exordium which excited the expecta- 
 tions of his auditors, suddenly, but completely lost his self- 
 possession, and covering his face in an agony of shame 
 exclaimed, " Oh ! I have lost all my ideas." His tutor, 
 confident (as Sheridan said after his own ignominious first 
 appearance) that it was i« him, and determined^ as was 
 Sheridan, that it should come otU of him, appointed him to 
 deliver the same address the following week ; not very 
 judiciously, perhaps, considering the laws of association, 
 and how apt is a sensitive mind, like a spirited horse, to shy 
 and falter at the same spot. Sad to say, he again failed, 
 and failed completely. Yet the incident was of value to 
 him. While there was Uttle fear lest a transient mortifi- 
 cation like this should permanently depress a powerful 
 mind, fully conscious of its powers, — indeed, such minds 
 are generally stimulated rather than depressed by obsta- 
 cles, — it had a salutary effect upon his moral nature. 
 
 In relation to the sacred ofiice he seems at this time, as 
 Dr. Gregory observes, to have been too little sensible of its 
 higher purposes, and too ambitious of achieving intellectual 
 eminence; perhaps also too conscious of his powers to 
 achieve it. Some feeling of this kind is indicated by his 
 own words, uttered after his second failure, — " If this does 
 not humble me, the devil must have me ! " Many other 
 young orators who have afterwards attained eminence, have 
 
148 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 encountered similar disasters in their first attempts. The 
 singularity in Robert Hall's case is that he had not been har- 
 dened to self-possession by his previous juvenile appearance 
 before those " select audiences," which his injudicious school- 
 master had so early taught the young Roscius to confront. 
 
 In the autumn of 1781, after staying three years at the 
 Academy, he went, as an exhibitioner under Dr. Ward's 
 will, to King's College, Aberdeen, where he remained till 
 178o. Several of the professors were men of note, espec- 
 ially Gerard and Leslie, while Marischal College could boast 
 of the prelections of Campbell and Beattie. Hall pursued 
 his studies in the departments of classics, philosophy, and 
 mathematics, with like distinguished success ; being the first 
 man of his year in all the classes. But the great charm of 
 his residence at Aberdeen was the society of Mackintosh, 
 who, though a year younger, had entered college a year 
 earlier. The friendship which ensued, and which only death 
 dissolved, was equally beneficial to both parties. With some 
 points of dissimilarity there were more of resemblance. 
 The instant regards of Mackintosh, according to his own 
 statement to Dr. Gregory, were strongly attracted by Hall's 
 ingenuous frankness of countenance, the mingled vivacity 
 and sincerity of his manner, and the obvious signs of great 
 intellectual vigor. He says he first became attached to 
 Hall " because he could not help it." But daily intercourse, 
 in which they studied together without rivalry, and inces- 
 santly disputed without anger, — a true test of genuine at- 
 tachment, — cemented their first casual predilections into a 
 lasting friendship. " After having sharpened their weapons 
 by reading, they often repaired to the spacious sands upon 
 the sea-shore, and still more frequently to the picturesque 
 scenery on the banks of the Don, above the old town, to 
 discuss with eagerness the various subjects to which their 
 attention had been directed. There was scarcely an impor- 
 tant position in Berkley's Minute Philosopher, in Butler's 
 
ROBERT HALL. 149 
 
 Analogy, or in Edwards On the Will, over which they had 
 not thus debated with the utmost intensity. Night after 
 night, nay, month after month for two sessions, they met 
 only to study or to dispute, yet no unkindly feeling ensued. 
 The process seemed rather — like blows in that of welding 
 iron — to knit them closer together." ^ Though they both, 
 doubtless, often fought for victory, they yet always thought 
 at the time that it was for truth ; and as Sir James strikingly 
 said : " Never, so far as he could then judge, did either make 
 a voluntary sacrifice of truth, or stoop to draw to and fro 
 the serra Xoyo^iaxias as is too often the case with ordinary 
 controvertists." From these " discussions, and from subse- 
 quent meditation upon them," Sir James declared that he 
 had " learned more as to principles than from all the books 
 he ever read." In addition to their discussions over Berk- 
 ley, Edwards, Butler, and other philosophers, they read large 
 portions of the best Greek authors together — especially 
 Plato. Such complete intercommunion of minds in the 
 same studies — such mutual reflection of lights and constant 
 collision of argument — must have been of incalculable 
 benefit to both. By this sort of student-partnership, when, 
 as in this case, minds are congenial, the results of reading 
 may be more than doubled. During the last years of Hall's 
 academic course, his friend was no longer at college, and his 
 mind sought no " new mate." He spent the time in solitary 
 study, and, as appears by his own confession, was much 
 engaged in devotion and religious meditation. He took his 
 degree of A. M. in 1785. 
 
 The six months' vacation of the two last sessions at Aber- 
 deen had been spent in assisting Dr. Evans at Broadmead 
 Chapel, Bristol. He now formally entered on the office 
 of assistant-preacher, and about the same time was appointed 
 to the classical tutorship in the Imstol Academy. This office, 
 
 1 Gregory's Memoir, p. 15. 
 13* 
 
150 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 assumed at the early age of twenty-one, he discharged with 
 great credit to himself and benefit to his pupils for more 
 than five years. igi 
 
 Of his preaching at this early period, an interesting ac- 
 count is given by Dr. Gregory, to which we can only refer 
 the reader. His favorite model for a short time was the 
 original but eccentric Robinson of Cambridge, and, fascinated 
 with his manner, he resolved, not very judiciously, to imitate 
 it. One so original was little fitted to be an imitator of any- 
 body, and his good sense soon reclaimed him from his error. 
 The account he gave to Dr. Gregory of the mode in which 
 he was cured of this folly is characteristic. " I was," he 
 says, " too proud to remain an imitator. After my second 
 trial, as I was walking home, I heard one of the congrega- 
 tion say to another, * Really Mr. Hall did remind us of Mr. 
 Robinson ! ' That, sir, was a knock down blow to my vanity ; 
 and I at once resolved that if ever I did acquire reputation 
 it should be my own reputation, belong to my own character, 
 and not be that of a likeness. Besides, sir, if I had not been 
 a foolish young man, I should have seen how ridiculous it 
 was to imitate such a preacher as Mr. Robinson. He had 
 a musical voice, and was master of all its intonations. He 
 had wonderful self-possession, and could say what he pleased, 
 when he pleased, and how he pleased ; while my voice and 
 manner were naturally bad ; and, far from having self-com- 
 mand, I never entered the pulpit without omitting to say 
 something that I wished to say, and saying something that I 
 wished unsaid ; and, beside all this, I ought to have known 
 that for me to speak slow was ruin. ' Why so ? ' 'I won- 
 der tliat you, a student of philosophy, should ask such a 
 question. You know, sir, that force or momentum is con- 
 jointly as the body and velocity ; therefore, as my voice is 
 feeble, what is wanted in bbSy must be made up in velocity, 
 or there will not be, cannot be, any impression.' " 
 
 It seems that he some time afterwards met Robinson in 
 
ROBERT HALL. 151 
 
 London, and young as he was, opposed in a public company 
 some of the heresies which Robinson had then embraced. 
 This he did so successfully that the latter, provoked out of 
 his temper and good breeding, spoke with disdain of "juve- 
 nile defenders of the faith." Hall was tempted to reply 
 that "if Ac ever rode into the field of controversy he would 
 at least not borrow Dr. Abbadie's boots," — a sarcasm in 
 which there was a double sting, inasmuch as Robinson had 
 at this time abandoned the very views which he had once 
 " borrowed " Abbadie's arguments to defend. 
 
 An unhappy nlisunderstanding with his colleague in 1789, 
 and which threatened the peace of the church at Broad- 
 mead, led to Hall's leaving Bristol. Before the close of his 
 connection with that congregation, suspicions of heterodoxy 
 on some points had been excited ; and in reply to certain 
 inquiries he gave a frank and explicit statement of his 
 views. To one or two singularities of opinion, which he 
 afterwards abandoned, he pleaded guilty. He avows he was 
 at this time a " materialist," but declares that his sentiments 
 did not affect his theology, and that he wished his material- 
 ism " to be considered a mere metaphysical speculation." It 
 may be observed that in the same document, in which he 
 fully avows his belief in the divinity of Christ, he makes no 
 mention of his belief in the personality of the Holy Spirit 
 — a doctrine of which at this time he was not convinced. 
 His materialism he altogether abandoned in 1790 ; to the 
 ordinary Trinitarian views he did not give his unqualified 
 adhesion till some years later (1800). 
 
 From Bristol Mr. Hall went (1790) to Cambridge, to the 
 congregation over which Robinson formerly presided. After 
 a twelve-month's trial of the place, he was invited to the 
 pastorate, and accepted it. As no small portion of the con- 
 gregation had been in various degrees infected with the 
 errors of their former minister, it has been well conjectured 
 by Dr. Gregory that the very immaturity of Hall's senti- 
 
152 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ments on certain points was an advantage rather than other- 
 wise. They listened to him when they wmald not have lis- 
 tened to a man of more strongly marked orthodoxy. As 
 Hall gradually approximated to the sentiments generally 
 held by his co-religionists, he led his congregation with him ; 
 and at length, by the force of his preaching, the influence of 
 his splendid reputation, and the still better influence of his 
 persuasive life and character, overcame all opposition to his 
 ministry, and thoroughly weeded out the errors that had in- 
 fested his flock. 
 
 In 1793 he published his celebrated Apology for the Free- 
 dom of the Press. The account of its origin is amusing. 
 It seems that on this occasion he was "importuned into con- 
 troversy," which, in spite of his unrivalled polemical powers, 
 he ever avoided if possible. " And so, in an evil hour," 
 says he, " I yielded. I went home to my lodgings and began 
 to write immediately ; sat up all night ; and, wonderful for 
 me, kept up the intellectual ferment for almost a month ; 
 and then the thing was done. I revised it a little as it went 
 through the press, but I have ever since regretted that I 
 wrote so hastily and supei'ficially upon some subjects 
 brought forward, which required touching with a master- 
 hand, and exploring to their very foundations." The esti- 
 mate he formed of the production was, it must be confessed, 
 sufficiently modest; for, as an exhibition of intellectual 
 vigor, it is certainly equal to almost any thing he ever pro- 
 duced. It may be conjectured, indeed, from the more cau- 
 tious political tone of his later publications, and the far dif- 
 ferent terms in which, like his friend Sir James, he learned 
 to' speak of the French Revolution, that, had he written at a 
 later period, he would have modified some of his statements, 
 though he always declared his adhesion to the " essential 
 principles " asserted. The reasons he assigns in the above 
 extract, but, still more, his ingenuously expressed regret for 
 the " asperities " in which he had occasionally indulged in 
 
ROBERT HALL. 153 
 
 this piece, would not permit him in his later years to consent 
 to its republication, till the booksellers left him no alterna- 
 tive. An earlier tract, entitled Christianity Consistent with 
 the Love of Freedom, was impudently pirated, on paper 
 which bore the watermark of 1818, with a title-page which 
 bore the year 1791 ! It was, as Dr. Gregory says, " a very 
 skilful imitation in paper, type, and date." 
 
 An anecdote here may be worth relating, as showing how 
 completely at this time he had resiled from Socinianism, 
 into which it had been once suspected he was fast lapsing. 
 His spirited eulogium on Dr. Priestley rekindled the hopes of 
 some of that gentleman's partisans, and rendered on some 
 occasions Mr. Hall's " denial " of any of the imputed ten- 
 dencies " imperative." " On one of these occasions," says 
 Dr. Gregory, " Mr. Hall having in his usual terms panegyr- 
 ized Dr. Priestley, a gentleman who held the doctor's theo- 
 logical opinions, tapping Mr. Hall upon the shoulder, said, 
 'Oh! sir, we shaj|^have you among us soon 1 see.' Mr. 
 Hall, startled and offended by the rude tone of exultation in 
 which this was uttered, hastily replied, ' Me amongst you, 
 sir ! Me amongst you ! Why, if that were the case, I 
 should deserve to be tied to the tail of the great red dragon, 
 and whipped round the nethermost regions to all eternity.' " 
 
 In 1801 appeared one of the most eloquent and original 
 of all his productions — the sermon on Modern Infidelity. 
 A curious account of its preparation for the press is given by 
 Dr. Gregory. Like most of Hall's sermons, it was deliv- 
 ered almost entirely unwritten, though the matter, of course, 
 had been profoundly meditated. The torture to which com- 
 position exposed him from the mysterious disease in his back, 
 quite indisposed the preacher to undertake the labor of pre- 
 paring the sermon for the press. It was therefore procured 
 in fragments from his dictation as he lay on the floor (a few 
 paragraphs or pages at a time), and passed through the press, 
 as his biographer assures us, without the author's having 
 
154 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 seen a line of it. Of its merits it is superfluous to speak ; 
 as a luminous defence of some of the first principles of all 
 religion, and a philosophical expose of the anti-social tenden- 
 cies of infidelity, it has never been surpassed. It raised 
 Hall's reputation to the highest pitch ; excited the admiration 
 of men of all ranks and opinions ; conciliated ,the esteem of 
 those who had been offended with the Apology ; crowded 
 his chapel with throngs of university students; and, per- 
 haps a still better proof of its success, exposed him to the 
 rabid attacks of Atheism and its champions. 
 
 Two other discourses of surpassing excellence appeared 
 in the course of the great struggle with France. One was 
 entitled Rejlections on War, preached on occasion of the 
 "general thanksgiving" at the transient peace of Amiens, 
 (1802). This, as Dr. Gregory surmises, was the only ser- 
 mon Hall ever delivered memoriter, and the embarrassment 
 he felt in some passages was sufficient to prevent him from 
 ever repeating the attempt. The other H/l^ delivered on the 
 renewal of the war (1803), and was entitled. Sentiments 
 proper to the present Crisis. In spite of one or two rhet- 
 orical flights, scarcely admissible in a Christian pulpit, it 
 is deservedly considered one of the most extraordinary effu- 
 sions of his eloquence. 
 
 During the latter years of his residence at Cambridge 
 this powerful and brilliant mind was raoi-e than once tran- 
 siently eclipsed. These accesses of mental disease were 
 doubtless- attributable to many causes; partly to solitude, 
 partly to excessive study, partly to the severe and harassing 
 suffering in his back and the sleepless nights which it occa- 
 sioned, partly to severe disappointment, but principally, no 
 doubt, to that which exacerbated all other causes of mis- 
 chief — the exquisitely strung and sensitive mind which is 
 too often, as Dryden long ago observed, 
 
 ■ " to madness near allied, 
 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 
 
BOBERT HALL. 155 
 
 Just before his first attack (Nov. 1804), his severe sufferings 
 from his old complaint induced his medical advisers to rec- 
 ommend his living a few miles from Cambridge, and using 
 horse exercise. Equestrian exercise would seem a question- 
 able remedy, considering the local symptoms of his myste- 
 rious disease,, though country air might doubtless be bene- 
 ficial. But whatever advantage this might secure was more 
 than counterbalanced, it is to be feared, by the solitude to 
 which his secluded residence doomed him, and which proba- 
 bly much contributed to his mental attack. The retreat 
 chosen for him was at Shelford, four miles from Cambridge. 
 There he was engaged in solitary study and meditation dur- 
 ing the whole day, and often deep into the night. Tlie first 
 melancholy attack took place in November, 1804. 
 
 To the delight of his congregation, who had proved, by 
 their provident care of him, their attachment to his minis- 
 try, he was able to resume his public functions in April, 
 .1805. As it wa# feared that the associations of Shelford 
 might prove prejudicial, he was recommended to change his 
 residence, and most injudiciously, as it seems to us, he was 
 again advised to reside in a remote village. He took a 
 house at Foulmire, nine miles from Cambridge. Solitude 
 once more proved his bane, and another attack soon super- 
 vened. After a year spent under judicious medical care at 
 Bristol, he recovered sufficiently to engage in occasional 
 village preaching, and to apply moderately to study. But 
 it was thought prudent that he should quit Cambridge alto- 
 gether, and he accordingly sent in his resignation. 
 
 Mr. Hall spent about fifteen years at Cambridge. Of 
 his residence there — his studies, his modes of preparation 
 for the pulpit, his social habits — an interesting account will 
 be found in Dr. Gregory's Memoir, to which only a refer- 
 ence can here be made. His biographer naturally dWills 
 with partial minuteness on this period of Hall's history, as 
 that in which he became intimate with him, and enjoyed 
 
156 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 unrestricted daily intercourse. It was that period, also, in 
 which Mr. Hall achieved his great public reputation, and 
 produced his most brilliant, if not his most useful, publica- 
 tions. 
 
 Leicester was the next scene of Hall's labors, whither he 
 removed in the year 1806, and where he resided nearly 
 twenty years, longer by some years than at any other place. 
 In the limits of this brief article there is no space for de- 
 tails, nor is it necessary. He lived as retired as his reputa- 
 tion would allow him to be. If fame came, it came un- 
 sought ; if the world intruded upon him, as it often did, 
 and often inconveniently, he gave it a courteous welcome, 
 but was still better pleased when it left him to his studies 
 and his flock. But much as he loved privacy, privacy for 
 him was no longer solitude ; in 1808, after a somewhat sin- 
 gular courtship, he married, and, as it turned out, most hap- 
 
 This event largely contributed to his^^velfare ; and it is. 
 observable that no symptoms of mental disease afterwards 
 appeared. In relation to what he himself would consider 
 the great purpose of his life, — the successful prosecution 
 of his ministry, — the years spent at Leicester were the 
 best of his life. However obscure might seem his lot, it 
 was yet most happy ; for he was eminently useful, and uni- 
 versally beloved. His chapel was twice enlarged to accom- 
 modate the increasing crowds who thronged to hear him. 
 Occupying a central spot in the kingdom, he was frequently 
 importuned to preach, on public occasions, in all directions 
 of the compass ; and, so far as his incessant and painful 
 maladies permitted, he complied with such requests un- 
 grudgingly. From time to time, and quite as frequently as 
 the same physical infirmities allowed, he also gave the pub- 
 BiSlhe benefit of his pen. Besides several reviews, tracts, 
 and other pieces, he published, during his residence at 
 Leicester, some of his most celebrated sermons ; two of 
 
ROBERT HALL. 157 
 
 them — on the Discouragements and Supports of the Chris- 
 tian Minister, and on the lamented Death of the Princess 
 Charlotte — are among the most striking efforts of his elo- 
 quence. He here also published the largest, and in some 
 respects most valuable of his writings — those on the Terms 
 of Communion. These treatises are equally distinguished 
 by acuteness of logic and catholicity of sentiment. It has 
 been sometimes lamented that he should not have given his 
 consummate logical powers a more ample theme. But, in 
 fact, his genius has made the thenre ampler than it seems. 
 Not only have these pieces exerted a wide influence in 
 liberalizing the opinions and practice of his own denomina- 
 tion, but they abound in reasoning and sentiments of practi- 
 cal application to every church in Christendom, and cannot 
 be read by any thoughtful Christian without making him 
 feel something of that noble expansion of soul Avhich ani- 
 mated their author ; without making him sigh for the day, 
 when " every middle wall of partition " which jealous big- 
 otry has interposed to the intercommunion of those who 
 reciprocally acknowledge each other to be Christians, may 
 be " broken down." 
 
 On Dr. Ryland's death (1825), Mr. Hall was invited to 
 Bristol, and, after a severe struggle, consented. It is 
 scarcely a figure to say that he tore himself away from his 
 congregation at Leicester. On the last occasion of cele- 
 brating the Lord's Supper, he sat down, overcome with his 
 emotions, and, covering his face with his hands, " wept 
 aloud." To see the " strong man thus bowed," dissolved the 
 people also in tears, — and so they parted ; his flock, as the 
 Ephesian elders from Paul, " sorrowing most of all for 
 the words that he spake, that they shoyld see his face no 
 more." « 
 
 Mr. Hall was in his sixty-second year when he removed 
 to Bristol, and it was his last change ; thus terminating his 
 labors where he began them. He was fast approaching the 
 
 14 
 
158 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 close of his cax-eer. The mysterious and intractable malady 
 which had so long tormented him, which had rendered his 
 days and nights so " wearisome," became more urgent, and 
 doses of opium almost fabulous produced little effect. The 
 indirect elFects of his complaint, — forbidding exercise, induc- 
 ing plethora, and impeding the circulation, — produced that 
 diseased condition of the heart which was the immediate 
 cause of his death. The close of his life was a scene of 
 frightful tortures, the sum of which, added to the almost 
 constant pain in which his life was passed, must have been 
 tantamount to many martyrdoms. The pages in Dr. Greg- 
 ory's Life which depict his last sufferings, and the tri- 
 umph of patience over them, form some of the most sor- 
 rowful, and yet also some of the brightest, in the records of 
 Christian biography. Deep were the clouds which gathered 
 round his sunset, but they were all penetrated and trans- 
 figured by the glory of the descending luminary ; and even 
 he who doubts whether Christianity be true, can surely 
 hardly read the closing scenes of this great and good man's 
 life without feeling, that since humanity is thus subject to 
 suffering, it is much to have such consolations. His death 
 took place February 21, 1831. After detailing the appear- 
 ances presented by thejoo*^ mortem examination, the eminent 
 physician, Dr. liichard, adds, — " Probably no man ever 
 went through more physical suffering than Mr. Hall; he 
 was a fine example of the triumph of the higher powers of 
 mind, exalted by religion, over the infirmities of the body. 
 His loss will long be felt in this place, not only by persons 
 of his own communion, but by all that have any esteem for 
 what is truly great and good." 
 
 The mind of Robert Hall was of that select order which 
 arc equally distinguished by power and symmetry ; where 
 each single faculty is of imposing dimensions, yet none out 
 of proportion to the rest. His*intellect was eminently acute 
 and comprehensive ; his imagination prompt, vivid, and 
 
ROBERT HALL. 159 
 
 affluent. This latter faculty, indeed, was not so exuber- 
 ant (as Foster justly remarks) as that of a Burke or a 
 Jeremy Taylor ; nor could it have been so, without marring 
 the harmony just mentioned. His reasoning was close as 
 that of almost any controvertist of any age, but expressed in 
 all the charms of a most chaste and polished style ; — severe 
 logic clothed in the most tasteful rhetoric. His talents for 
 the successful prosecution of abstract science, — especially 
 metaphysical and ethical — were of a very high order ; but 
 they were conjoined with strong practical sense, keen pow- 
 ers of observation, and a vivid sensibility. His memory 
 was tenacious, and his aptitudes for the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge, generally, far beyond the ordinary measure ; but in 
 him as in all very vigorous minds, diversified knowledge was 
 but the material and aliment of original thought, and was 
 subordinated to that wisdom which insists that it shall be 
 the handmaid, not the mistress of intellect. His sense of the 
 beautiful and the ludicrous seemed nearly equally vivid; and 
 graceful imagery and pointed wit animated alike his writings 
 and his conversation. His style is the very impress of all 
 this amplitude and variety of endowments. It is masculine 
 and compact, for a robust logic and strong sense form the 
 basis of it ; energetic and vivacious, for it is animated by 
 imagination and sensibility ; polished and elegant, for taste, 
 exquisite, sometimes even to a morbid fastidiousness, pre- 
 sided over it. 
 
 On the whole, minds of greater powers in several given 
 directions, or of more absolute originality in some one, may 
 be readily pointed out ; some too more strongly character- 
 ized either by rugged strength or imaginative exuberance ; 
 but seldom indeed has a mind appeared so variously dow- 
 ered with all the choicest gifts of strength and grace in 
 happy unison. 
 
 It has been well said of his style by a critic in the Quar- 
 terly Review, that it is " constructed after no model ; it is 
 
160 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 more massive than Addison's, more easy and unconstrained 
 than Johnson's, more sober than Burke's." This is, in fact, 
 one of its surpassing excellences ; it is eminently beautiful, 
 but for that reason has no predominant featui-es ; it is the 
 just image of the happy conjunction and equilibrium of the 
 author's powers ; — music in which no excess in any of the 
 parts mars the harmony. 
 
 If his more elaborate productions have a fault at all, it is 
 the result of that very sensitiveness of taste to which refer- 
 ence has been made. In polishing to an extreme of fastidi- 
 ous elegance, he has perhaps here and there pared away a 
 little of the energy of his style. For this reason it has even 
 been conjectured that some of his strictly extemporaneous 
 effusions, — extemporaneous as to the language, — to which 
 he gave utterance in the all but preternatural dilation of 
 mind, which sometimes characterized his eloquence in its 
 prime, transcended in force and beauty his most deliberate 
 compositions, produced as these always were amidst bodily 
 sufferings little favorable to the free action of his faculties. 
 In truth, his extemporaneous command of all the resources 
 of language (equally seen in the pulpit and in conversation) 
 was one of his most extraordinary endowments, and per- 
 haps to the degree in which he possessed it, almost unique. 
 Some may have been as copious in their diction, others as 
 pi'ecise ; but he conjoined both excellences in equal meas- 
 ure, and added to them, what is more rare, an astonishing 
 command of construction ; so that he could throw the rapid 
 and soluble words, which seemed to come at will, into the 
 most apt and elegant collocations. 
 
 This singular gift of extemporaneous speech put the cope- 
 stone on all his other excellences as an orator. The gen- 
 eral structure of his mind, his robust reasoning faculties, his 
 vigorous though ever ministering imagination, his keen sen- 
 sibility, and his vehement passions, pointed in the same 
 direction, and fitted him to be a great public speaker.- Such 
 
EGBERT HALL. 161 
 
 he would have become under any circumstances ; but it was 
 his rare gift of extemporaneous language which enabled him 
 to combine the immense advantage of unwritten composition 
 with a freedom from all its usual defects ; to clothe, not ex- 
 temporaneous thoughts indeed, — on which no man should 
 reckon, though after careful preparation such thoughts may 
 come unbidden, — but carefully meditated matters, in all 
 the graces of the most eloquent language. His usual mode 
 of preparation for the pulpit is thus described by Dr. Greg- 
 ory : — " The grand divisions of thought — the heads of a 
 sermon for example — he would trace out with the most 
 prominent lines of demarcation ; and these, for some years, 
 supplied all the hints that he needed in the pulpit, except on 
 extraordinary occasions. To these grand divisions he re- 
 ferred, and upon them suspended all the subordinate trains 
 of thought. The latter, again, appear to have been of two 
 classes, altogether distinct ; outline trains of thought, and 
 trains into which much of the detail was interwoven. In 
 the outline train the whole plan was carried out and com- 
 pleted as to the argument ; in that of detail the illustrations, 
 images, and subordinate proofs were selected and classified ; 
 and in those instances where the force of an argument or the 
 probable success of a general application would mainly de- 
 pend upon the language, even that was selected and appro- 
 priated, sometimes to the precise collocation of the words. 
 Of some sermons, no portions whatever were wrought out 
 thus minutely ; the language employed in preaching being 
 that which spontaneously occurred at the time ; of others, 
 this minute attention was paid to the verbal structure of 
 nearly half; of a few, the entire train of preparation, almost 
 from the beginning to the end, extended to the very sen- 
 tences. Yet the marked peculiarity consisted in this, that the 
 process, even when thus directed to minutiae in his more 
 elaborate efforts, did not require the use of the pen, at least 
 at the time to which -these remarks principally apply." 
 14* 
 
162 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 So perfect was the form in which he could give expression 
 to a train of thought, that (as already intimated) it may 
 ev'en be surmised that his spoken style often surpassed, in 
 all the essential excellences of eloquence, that of the most 
 admired and elaborate of his published discourses ; the for- 
 mer having all the advantages of a more idiomatic diction 
 and more colloquial construction, yet without the sacrifice of 
 the precision and elegance which distinguish the latter. His 
 frequent paroxysms of pain must at all events have tended 
 continually to distract his mind, and diminished the giovv of 
 feeling when in the act of composition ; and hence the ex- 
 treme reluctance with which he undertook the task. On the 
 other hand, under the excitement of public speaking, the 
 consciousness of painful sensations was less vivid, and some- 
 times vanished, as appears from one of his own curious but 
 most sad confessions. He tells us that he did not know that 
 he was ever perfectly free from the consciousness of distress- 
 ing sensations in his back, except now and then for a few 
 moments in the pulpit. 
 
 The same felicities of extemporaneous speech which 
 marked his pulpit efforts were observable in private. His 
 conversation possessed a vivacity, affluence, and elegance 
 very rarely equalled. His repartees were particularly 
 happy, and, as has been well remarked, strongly remind one 
 of the manner of Johnson. Some of the pungent sayings, 
 full of mingled wit and wisdom, which Dr. Gregory has 
 recorded, make one regret that some Boswell was not always 
 at hand to preserve those brilliant but evanescent effusions 
 of his genius. 
 
 Many have lamented that he did so little (compared with 
 some otlier men) by his pen. In truth, however, consider- 
 ing his constant sufferings and the dreadful toil which com- 
 position imposed upon him, his six octavos entitled him to 
 be considered even a voluminous writer. 
 
 Though, like most other men of powerful minds, he was 
 
ROBERT HALL. 163 
 
 fonder of thinking than reading, his acquisitions were vari- 
 ous, and, in several branches of study, profound. It may 
 be added that his ardor in the pursuit of knowledge followed 
 him to the last, of which Dr. Gregory give^us a singular 
 example. He says that he found him one morning, in the 
 closing years of his life, lying on the floor with an Italian 
 grammar and dictionary, deep in the study of that language. 
 To this he had been stimulated by an article in the Ediii- 
 hurgh Review, in which an elaborate parallel had been insti- 
 tuted between the genius of Dante and that of Milton. 
 With this critique he had been, he said, much delighted, and 
 Vished to judge for himself of the accuracy of the views 
 propounded. Among the many triumphs achieved by Mr. 
 Macaulay's genius, it may be doubted whether any was ever 
 more signal than that nearly his first Essay induced a mind 
 like that of Robert Hall to study a new language at the age 
 of threescore, just to verify the justice of the criticisms. 
 
 It has been justly remarked by Mr. Foster, in his admi- 
 rable critique on Robert Hall as a " preacher " (well worthy 
 of universal perusal), that his eloquence in later years lost 
 somewhat of the fire which characterized the oratory of his 
 youth and manhood. But what was lost in this respect was 
 gained in tenderness and pathos, in elevation of Christian 
 sentiment and depth of Christian feeling. 
 
 It is the crowning glory of Robert Hall that all his great 
 powers were consecrated to the noblest purposes ; sub- 
 ordinated to objects better worth living for than intel- 
 lectual power or intellectual fame. His sacred ambition 
 was for the formation, in himself and others, of the Chris- 
 tian character. To moral self-culture he sought, as all 
 ought to do, but so few really do, to consecrate every en- 
 dowment of his intellect. Of the possession of high powers 
 he could not but be conscious ; and of the temptations they 
 involved he was also profoundly sensible. His life shows 
 
164 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 US that he had learned how to make them keep their 
 place. Naturally impetuous, impatient, choleric, he sed- 
 ulously watched over these infirmities in temper, and be- 
 came remarkable for humility and simplicity ; full of ambi- 
 tion, he submitted to cast down " every proud imagination ; " 
 in his youth fiery and pugnacious, he learned in his later 
 years to hate controversy, and exercised in an eminent degree 
 that charity toward all good men of all parties, which made 
 him say in one of his sermons, " He who is good enough for 
 Christ is good enough for me." In his manners he was as 
 unsophisticated as a child, and in his conduct full of gener- 
 osity and benevolence. His patience and fortitude were* 
 eminently displayed in the uncomplaining endurance of 
 those frightful sufferings which made his life a perpetual 
 martyrdom ; while his faith and humility were evinced no 
 less in his admission that none of these pangs could have 
 been spared. It has been well said by a writer in the 
 Quarterly Review, " It is impossible to read the works of 
 this extraordinary man without perceiving that his passions 
 in his youth were turbulent in the extreme — that the ener- 
 gies of his mind were then scarcely under his own control — 
 that years of reflection and dear bought experience were 
 wanting to him, above all men, in order to tame his spirit — 
 that, like Milton's lion, he was a long time before he could 
 struggle out of earth." " I presume," says he, in one of his 
 letters, " the Lord sees I require more hammering and 
 hewing than almost any other stone that was ever selected 
 for his spiritual building, and that is the secret of his deal- 
 ing with me." In a word, he exhibited the traits of a gen- 
 uine Christian — his character shining with a more lustrous 
 light as he advanced in years, "growing brighter and 
 brighter to the perfect day." 
 
 The character to which he chiefly aspired himself, he was 
 equally anxious to aid in forming in his fellow men, and to 
 
ROBERT HALL. 165 
 
 this consecrated his genius as an object well worthy of it. 
 Hence his contentment with a lot far more obscure than he 
 could easily have attained in any department of secular life ; 
 and hence, with Paul, he accoutred it his chief glory to be a 
 " Christian minister." 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 
 
 Sir John Franklin, Rear-Admiral of the Blue, was 
 a native of Spilsby, in Lincolnshire. Sprung from a line of 
 freeholders, or " Franklins," his father inherited a small 
 family estate, which was so deeply mortgaged by his im- 
 mediate predecessor that it was found necessary to sell it ; 
 but by his success in commercial j)ursuits he was enabled to 
 maintain and educate a family of twelve children, of whom 
 one only died in infancy. The fortunes of his four sons 
 were remarkable, unaided as they were by patronage or 
 great connections. Thomas, the eldest, following the pur- 
 suits of his fathex", acquired the local reputation of an acute 
 and highly honorable man of business, whose intellect gave 
 him much influence with his neighbors, and in a time of 
 threatened invasion, he was mainly instrumental in raising 
 a body of yeomanry cavalry, in which he did the duty of 
 adjutant, and was afterwards chosen to be lieutenant-colonel 
 of a regiment of volunteer infantry. The second son. Sir 
 Willingham, educated at Westminster, was elected to a 
 scholarship of Christ's Church, Oxford, and after gaining 
 an Oriel fellowship, was called to the bar, and died a judge 
 fl,t Madras. James, the third son, having, as cadet, exhibited 
 great proficiency in Ilindostanee and Persian, was presented 
 by the India Company with a handsome sword, £50 in 
 money, and a cornetcy in the First Bengal Native Cavalry, 
 
 (166) 
 
SIR JOHN FKANKLIN. 167 
 
 in which he rose to the r*ik of major. He was noted while 
 in India for his scientific knowledge, which procured him a 
 lucrative civil appointment, but his advancement was intei^ 
 rupted by ill health, and after executing extensive surveys 
 of the country, he was under the necessity of returning 
 to England, where he died. His collections in natural 
 history were highly appreciated by zoologists. 
 
 John, the youngest son, and subject of this memoir, was 
 destined for the church by his father, who with this view, had 
 purchased an advowson for him. He received the first rudi- 
 ments of his education at St. Ives, and afterwards went to 
 Lowth Grammar-School, where he remained two years ; but 
 having employed a holiday in walking twelve miles with a 
 companion to look at the sea, which up to that time he knew 
 only by description, his imagination was so impressed with 
 the grandeur of the scene that former predilections for a 
 sea life were confirmed, and he determined from thenceibrth 
 to be a sailor. In hopes of dispelling what he considered 
 to be a boyish fancy, his father sent him on a trial voyage 
 to Lisbon in a merchantman, but finding on his return that 
 his wishes were unchanged, procured hfln, in the year 1800, 
 an entry on the quarter-deck of the Polyphemus, 74, Cap- 
 tain Lawford ; and this ship having led the line in the battle 
 of Copenhagen in 1801, young Franklin had the honor of 
 serving in Nelson's hardest fought action. Having left 
 school at the early age of thirteen, his classical attainments 
 were necessarily small, and at that period there was no 
 opportunity on board a ship of war, of remedying the 
 defect. Two months, however, after the action of Copen- 
 hagen, he joined the Investigator discovery ship commanded 
 by his relative, Captain Flinders, and under the training of 
 that able scientific officer, while employed in exploring and 
 mapping the coasts of Australia, he acquired a correctness 
 of astronomical observation and a skill in surveying which 
 proved of eminent utility in his future career. In the pros- 
 
108 NEW BIOGKAPHIES. 
 
 ecution of this service he gaineti for life the friendship of 
 the celebrated Robert Brown, naturalist to the expedition. 
 
 In 1803 the Investigator having been condemned at Port 
 Jackson as unfit for the prosecution of the voyage, Captain 
 Flinders determined to return to England to solicit another 
 ship for the completion of the survey, and Franklin em- 
 barked with him on board the Porpoise armed store-ship, 
 Lieutenant-Commander Fowler. In the voyage homewards 
 this ship and the Cato which accompanied her, were wrecked 
 in the night of the 18th of August, on a coral reef distant 
 from Sandy Cape, on the main coast of Australia, six- 
 ty-three leagues, and the crews, consisting of ninety-four 
 persons, remained for fifty days on a narrow sand-bank, 
 not more than 150 fathoms long, and rising only four 
 feet above the water, until Captain Flinders having made 
 a voyage to Port Jackson, of 250 leagues, in an open 
 boat, along a savage coast, returned to their relief with a 
 ship and two schooners.^ After this misfortune Captain 
 Flinders, as is well known, went to the Isle of France, 
 where he was unjustly and ungenerously detained a pris- 
 oner by General de^aen, the governor. Meanwhile Frank- 
 lin proceeded with Lieutenant Fowler to Canton, where he 
 obtained a passage to England in the Earl Camden, East 
 Indiaman, commanded by Sir Nathaniel Dance, commodore 
 of the China fleet of sixteen sail. 
 
 On the 15th of February 1804, Captain Dance had the 
 distinguished honor of repulsing a strong French squadron, 
 
 1 The Bridgewater, another merchantman, was also in company 
 with the Porpoise at the time of the wreck, and narrowly escaped 
 sharing the same fate. The master of her, however, having on the 
 following day seen the shipwrecked vessels from a distance, proceeded 
 on his voyage to Bombay, where, on his arrival, he reported their 
 loss. He did not live to explain his motives to those whom he thus 
 deserted, for the Bridgewater never was heard of again after she left 
 Bombay. 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 1G9 
 
 led by the redoubted Admiral Linois. Lieutenant Fowler 
 assisted the commodore with his professional advice in this 
 action, and Franklin performed the important duty of signal 
 midshipman. On reaching England, Franklin joined the 
 Bellerophon 74, and in that ship he was again intrusted 
 with the signals, a duty which he executed with his ac- 
 customed coolness and intrepidity in the great battle of 
 Trafalgar, while those stationed around him on the poop fell 
 fast, and were all, with only four or five exceptions, either 
 killed or wounded. In the Bedford, his next ship, he at- 
 tained the rank of lieutenant, and remaining in her for six 
 years, latterly as first lieutenant, served in the blockade of 
 Flushing, on the coast of Portugal, and in other parts of 
 the world, but chiefly on the Brazil station, whither the 
 Bedford had gone as one of the convoy which conducted the 
 royal family of Portugal to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. In the 
 ill-managed and disastrous attack on New Orleans, he com- 
 manded the Bedford's boats in an engagement with the 
 enemy's gunboats, one of which he boarded and captured, 
 receiving a slight wound in the hand-to-hand fight. 
 
 On peace being established, Franklin turned his atten- 
 tion once more to the scientific branch of his profession, 
 as affording scope for his talents, and having made his 
 wishes known to Sir Joseph Banks, who was generally 
 consulted by government on such matters, he set himself 
 sedulously to refresh his knowledge of surveying. In 
 1818, the discovery of a north-west passage became again, 
 after a long interval, a national object, principally through 
 the suggestions and writings of Sir John Barrow, secre- 
 tary of the Admiralty, and Lieutenant Franklin was ap- 
 pointed to the Trent, as second to Captain Buchan of the 
 Dorothea, hired vessels equipped for penetrating to the 
 north of Spitzbergen, and if possible, crossing to the Polar 
 Sea by that route. .During a heavy storm, both ships were 
 forced to seek for safety by boring into the closely packed 
 15 
 
170 . NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ice, in which extremely hazardous operation the Dorothea 
 ■was so much damaged that her reaching England became 
 doubtful; but the Trent having su^ained less injury, Frank- 
 lin requested to be allowed to prosecute the voyage alone, 
 or under Captain Buchan, who had the power of embarking 
 in the Trent if he chose. The latter, however, declined to 
 leave his officers and men at a time when the ship was 
 almost in a sinking condition, and directed Franklin to 
 convey him to England. Though success did not attend 
 this voyage, it brought Franklin into personal intercourse, 
 with the leading scientific men of London, and they were 
 not slow in ascertaining his peculiar fitness for the command 
 of such an enterprise. His calmness in danger, promptness 
 and fertility of resource, and excellent seamanship, as 
 proved under the trying situation which cut short the late 
 voyage, were borne ample testimony to by the oflicial re- 
 ports of hi« commanding oflicer ; but to these characteris- 
 tics of a British seaman, he added other qualities less com- 
 mon, more especially an ardent desire to promote science 
 for its own sake, and not merely for the distinction which 
 eminence in it confers, together with a love of truth which 
 led him to do -full justice to the merits of his subordinate 
 officers, without wishing to claim their discoveries as a cap- 
 tain's right. Added to this, he had a cheerful buoyancy of 
 mind, which, sustained by religious principle of a depth 
 known only to his most intimate friends, was not depressed 
 in the most gloomy times. It was, therefore, with full confi- 
 dence in his ability and exertions that he was, in 1819, 
 placed in command of an expedition appointed to travel 
 through Rupert's land to the shores of the Arctic Sea; 
 while Lieutenant Parry, who had in like manner risen from 
 second officer under Sir John Ross to a chief command, was 
 despatched with two vessels to Lancaster Sound, a mission 
 attended with a success that spread his fame throughout the 
 •world. At this period, the northern coast of America was 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 171 
 
 known at two isolated points only, namely, the mouth of the 
 Coppermine Eiver, discovered by Hearne, but placed erro- 
 neously by him four degrees of latitude too much to the 
 north ; and the mouth of the Mackenzie, more correctly laid 
 down by the very able traveller by whose name the river is 
 now known. On the side of Behring's Straits, Cook had pen- 
 etrated only to the Icy Cape, and on the Eastern coasts Cap- 
 tain (Sir John) Ross, in 1818, had ascertained the correct- 
 ness of Baffin's survey, which had been questioned, and had 
 looked into Lancaster Sound and reported it to be closed by 
 an impassable mountain, barrier. To stimulate enterprise 
 by rewarding discoverers, the legislature established a scale 
 of premiums, graduated by the degrees of longitude to 
 which ships could penetrate, but no provision was made for 
 a pecuniary recompense to any one who should trace out 
 the north-west passage in boats or canoes. 
 
 Lieutenant Franklin, attended by a surgeon, two mid- 
 shipmen, and a few Orkneymen, embarked for Hudson's 
 Bay in June, 1819, on board of one of the company's ships, 
 which ran ashore on Cape Resolution during a fog on the 
 voyage out, and was saved from foundering by Franklin's 
 nautical skill. On reaching the anchorage off York Fac- 
 tory, a large hole was found in the ship's bottom, but so far 
 closed by a fragment of rock as considerably to diminish 
 the influx of water. Franklin's instructions left the route he 
 was to pursue much to his own judgment ; in fact, so little 
 was then known in England of the country through which 
 he was to travel, even by the best informed members of the 
 government, that no detailed direction could be given, and 
 he was to be guided by the information he might be able to 
 collect at York Factory from the Hudson Bay Company's 
 servants there assembled. No time could be more un pro- 
 pitious for a journey through that land. For some years an 
 internecine warfare had been carried on between the North- 
 West Company, operating from Canada, claiming a right to 
 
172 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the fur-trade from priority of discovery, and holding com- 
 missions as justices of peace from the colonial govern- 
 ment, and the Hudson Bay Company, which, in virtue of a 
 charter from King Charles the Second, attempted to main- 
 tain an exclusive authority over all the vast territory 
 drained by the rivers that fall into the bay. Arrests by 
 clashing warrants of the contending justices were frequent, 
 might became right when the members of the two com- 
 panies met, personal violence, seizure of property, and 
 even assassination were too common, and in a recent fight 
 at Red River twenty-two colonists of the Hudson Bay 
 Company had lost their lives. Numbers also had perished 
 of famine in the interior, owing to the contests that were 
 carried on. When the expedition landed at York Factory, 
 ihey found some of the leading North- West partners prison- 
 ers there, and learned that both companies were arming to 
 the extent of their means for a decisive contest next sum- 
 mer. Such being the state of the country, a party coming 
 out in a Hudson's Bay ship was looked upon with suspicion 
 by the members of the rival company, and it was mainly 
 through Franklin's prudent conduct and conciliating man- 
 ners that it was permitted to proceed ; but sufficient aid to 
 insure its safety was not afforded by either of the contend- 
 ing bodies. Wintering the first year on the Saskatchewan, 
 the expedition was fed by the Hudson Bay Company ; the 
 second winter was spent on the " barren grounds," the party 
 subsisting on game and fish procured by their own exer- 
 tions, or purchased from their native neighbors ; and in the 
 following summer the expedition descended the Coppermine 
 River, and surveyed a considerable extent of the sea-coast 
 to the eastward, still depending for food on the usual sup- 
 plies of the chase, and often faring very scantily, or fasting 
 altogether. The disasters attending the return over the 
 barren grounds, on the premature approach of winter, have 
 been told by Franklin himself in a narrative which excited 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 173 
 
 universal interest and commiseration. The loss of Mr 
 Hood, a young officer of very great promise, and who at 
 the time of his death had been promoted to the rank of 
 lieutenant, was especially deplored. The survivors of this 
 expedition travelled from the outset at York Factory down 
 to their return to It again, by land and water, 5,550 miles. 
 While engaged on this service, Franklin was promoted to 
 be a commander, and after his return to England in 1822, 
 he obtained the post rank of captain, and was elected to 
 be a fellow of the Royal Society. In the succeeding year 
 he married Eleanor,^ the youngest daughter of William 
 Porden, Esquire, an eminent architect, by whom he had a 
 daughter and only child, now the wife of the Rev. John 
 Philip Gell. 
 
 In a second expedition, which left home in 1825, he 
 descended the Mackenzie under more favorable auspices, 
 peace having been established throughout the fur-countries 
 under the exclusive government of the Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany, which had taken the North- West traders into partner- 
 ship, and was then in a position to affijrd him effectual assist- 
 ance, and speed him on his way in comfort. This time the 
 coast line was traced through thirty-seven degrees of longi- 
 tude from the mouth of the Coppermine River, where his 
 former survey commenced, to nearly the 150th meridian, 
 and approaching within 160 miles of the most easterly 
 point attained by Captain Beechey, who was coopei'ating 
 with him from Behring's Straits. His exertions were fully 
 appreciated at home and abroad. He was knighted in 1829, 
 received the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from 
 the University of Oxford, was adjudged the gold medal of 
 the Geographical Society of Paris, and was elected in 1846, 
 Correspondent of the Institute of France in the Academy 
 of Sciences. Though the late surveys executed by him- 
 
 1 She died in 1825. 
 15* 
 
174 NEW BIOGRAPHIKS. 
 
 self and by a detachment under command of Sir John Rich- 
 ardson comprised one, and within a few miles of two, of the 
 spaces for which a parliamentary reward was offered, the 
 Board of Longitude declined making the award, but a bill 
 was soon afterwards laid before parliament by the secretary 
 of the Admiralty abrogating the reward altogether, on the 
 ground of the discoveries contemplated having been thus 
 effected.^ In 1828, he married his second wife, Jane, sec- 
 ond daughter of John Griffin, Esq. 
 
 Sir John's next official employment was on the Mediter- 
 ranean station, in command of the Rainbow, and his ship 
 soon became proverbial in the squadron for the happiness 
 and comfort of her officers and crew.^ As an acknowledg- 
 ment of the essential service he had rendered off Patras in 
 the " war of liberation," he received the Cross of the 
 Redeemer of Greece from King Otho, and after his return 
 to England he was created Knight Commander of the Guel- 
 phic order of Hanover. 
 
 In 1836, Lord Glenelg offered Sir John the lieutenant- 
 governorship of Antigua, and afterwards of Van Diemen's 
 Land, or Tasmania, which latter he accepted with the condi- 
 tion that he might be allowed to resign it, if, on a war break- 
 ing out, he were tendered the command of a ship. He pre- 
 ferred rising in his own profession, to the emoluments of the 
 civil service. In as far as a man of independent political 
 principles, of strict honor and integrity, conspicuous for the 
 
 J Messrs. Dean and Simpson of the Hudson Bay Company, at a 
 later period (1836-1839) completed the survey of 160 miles of coast 
 line lying between the extreme points of Bceehcy and Franklin, and 
 navigated the sea eastwards beyond the mouth of Back's Great Fish 
 River, proving the existence of a continuous watercourse from Behr- 
 ing's Straits through 73° of longitude, as far eastward as the ninety- 
 fourth meridian. 
 
 2 The sailors, with their usual fondness for epithets, named the ship 
 the " Celestial Rainbow " and " Franklin's Paradise." 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 175 
 
 benevolence of his character, without private interests to 
 serve, and of a capacity which had been shown on several 
 important commands, was likely to benefit the colony he was 
 sent to govern, the choice was a judicious one, and did honor 
 to Lord Glenelg's discernment. Dr. Arnold, no mean judge 
 of character, rejoicing in the promise the appointment gave 
 of a new era in the annals of colonial management, expressed 
 the delight with which, had circumstances permitted, he 
 would hav§ labored with such a governor in founding a sys- 
 tem of general education and religious instruction in that 
 distant land. Sir John's government, which lasted till the 
 end of 1843, was marked by several events of much interest. 
 One of his most popular measures was the opening of the 
 doors of the legislative council to the public, a practice soon 
 afterwards followed by the older colony of New South 
 Wales. He also originated a college, endowing it largely 
 from his private funds with money and lands, in the hope 
 that it would eventually prove the means of affording to all 
 parties secular and religious instruction of the highest kind. 
 At Sir John's request Dr. Arnold selected a favorite pupil, 
 the Rev. John Philip Gell,^ to take the direction of this 
 institution ; but much opposition to the fundamental plan of 
 the college was made by various religious bodies, and after 
 Sir John left the colony the exclusive management of it was 
 vested in the Church of England, with free admission to the 
 members of other persuasions. In his time also the colony 
 of Victoria was founded by settlers from Tasmania ; and 
 towards its close, transportation to New South Wales having 
 been abolished, the convicts from every part of the British 
 empire were sent to Tasmania. Up to the period of his 
 quitting the government this concentration had occasioned 
 no material inconvenience, neither was there at that time 
 
 1 In later years he became Sir John's son-in-law, as mentioned 
 above. 
 
176 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 any organized opposition to it. On an increase to the lieu- 
 ten ant-governor's salary being voted by the colonial legisla- 
 ture, Sir John declined to derive any advantage from it per- 
 sonally, while he secured the augmentation to his successor. 
 In 1838 he founded a scientific society at Hobarton (now 
 called the " Royal Society"). Its papers were printed at 
 his expense, and its meetings were held in Government 
 House. He had also the gratification of erecting in Soutli 
 Australia, with the aid of the governor of thajt colony, si 
 handsome granite obelisk, dedicated and inscribed to the 
 memory of his former commanding ofiicer, Captain Flinders, 
 to whose discoveries we owe our earliest knowledge of thai 
 part of the continent of Australia. It stands on a lofty hill, 
 and serves as a landmark to sailors. A magnetic observa- 
 tory, founded in 1840, at Hobarton, in connection with the 
 head establishment under Colonel Sabine at Woolwich, 
 was an object of constant personal interest to Sir John ; and 
 Tasmania being the appointed refitting station of several 
 expeditions of discovery in the Antarctic regions, he en- 
 joyed frequent opportunities of exercising the hospitality he 
 delighted in, and of showing his ardor in promoting the 
 interests- of science whenever it lay in his power to do so. 
 The lamented Dumont d'Urville commanded the French 
 expedition, and Sir James Clark Ross the English one, con- 
 sisting of the Erebus and Terror. The surveying vessels 
 employed in those seas during that period came also in suc- 
 cession to Hobarton — namely, the Beagle, Captain Wickham ; 
 the Pelorus, Captain Harding; the Rattlesnake, Captain 
 Owen Stanley ; the Beagle (2d voyage), Captain Stokes , 
 and the Fly, Captain Blackwood ; all of whom, with the 
 officers under them, received from the lieutenant-governor a 
 brother sailor's welcome. Thus pleasantly occupied, the 
 years allotted to a colonial governorship drew towards a 
 close, and Sir John contemplated with no common satisfac- 
 tion the advancing strides of the colony in material pros- 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 177 
 
 perity; but he was not destined to be spared one of those 
 deep mortifications to which every one is exposed, however 
 upright may be his conduct abroad, who is dependent for 
 support and approval upon a chief at home that changes 
 with every party revolution. When Sir John was sent to 
 Tasmania, England had not yet recognized as an established 
 fact that the inhabitants of a colony are better judges of their 
 own interests, and more able to manage their own affairs, 
 than bureaucracy in Downing Street, with a constantly shift- 
 ing head, ill informed of the factious oligarchies that infest 
 colonies, and of the ties that connect them with subordinate 
 officials at home. Previous to leaving England, Sir John 
 was advised, and indeed instructed, to consult the colonial 
 secretary of Tasmania in all matters of public concern, as 
 being a man of long experience, thoroughly acquainted witli 
 the affairs of the colony ; and he found on taking charge of iiis 
 government, that this was a, correct character of the officer 
 next to himself in authority. Mr. Montagu was a man emi- 
 nently skilful in the management of official matters, but he 
 was also the acknowledged head of a party in tlie colony 
 bound together by family ties, and possessing great local 
 influence from the important and lucrative situations held 
 by its members, and the extensive operations of a bank of 
 which they had the chief control. Party struggles ran high 
 in the legislative council, and the lieutenant-governor's posi- 
 tion was one of great delicacy, while the difficulty of his 
 situation was vastly augmented through the practice of the 
 officials in Downing street of encouraging private communi- 
 cations on public measures from subordinate officers of the 
 colony, and weighing them with the despatches of the lieu- 
 tenant-governor. For some years, by Sir John's prudent 
 conduct, the harmony of the colonial executive was not in- 
 terrupted ; but at a later period the colonial secretary, hav- 
 ing visited England, returned to Tasmania with greater pre- 
 tensions, and commenced a course of independent action, 
 
178 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ever hostile to his chief, subversive of the harmonious co- 
 operation heretofore existing, and thus injurious to the 
 interests of the colony, so that Sir John was under the 
 necessity of suspending this officer from his functions until 
 the pleasure of Lord Stanley, then secretary of state for 
 the colonies, was known. Mr. Montagu immediately pro- 
 ceeded to England to state his own case, and he did it with 
 such effect that Loi'd Stanley, while admitting that the 
 colonial secretary had acquired a local influence which ren- 
 dei'ed "his restoration to his office highly inexpedient,"^ 
 penned a despatch which is not unjustly characterized as a 
 consummate piece of special pleading for Mr. Montagu, whom 
 it absolves, while it comments on the lieutenant-governor's 
 proceedings in a style exceedingly offensive to a high-minded 
 officer who had acted, as he conceived, with the strictest 
 regard to the public interests. The extraordinary measure 
 was also resorted to of instantly furnishing Mr. Montagu, 
 then in attendance at Downing street, with a copy of this 
 despatch, so that he was enabled to transmit it to Hobarton, 
 where it was exposed in the Bank to public inspection. At 
 the same time there was circulated privately amongst the 
 officers of the colonial government and others a journal of 
 his transactions with the lieutenant-governor, and of his 
 private communications with members of Franklin's family, 
 which he had kept for years while on terms of close social 
 intercourse with them. This volume having answered in 
 England the purpose for which it was intended, was now 
 exhibited in the colony as containing an account of the sub- 
 jects in which he stated he had held conversations with 
 Lord Stanley. All this took place before the' lieutenant- 
 governor received ofl&cial information of Lord Stanley's 
 decision. The recovery of a document which had lain 
 
 1 Lord Stanley's despatch, September 13, 1842. Mr. Montagu was 
 promoted to be colonial secretary at the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
SIR JOHN FEANKLIN. 179 
 
 secluded in an office in the colony enabled Sir John after- 
 wards more fully to substantiate one of the most important 
 charges he had made ; nevertheless Lord Stanley refused to 
 modify the terms he had employed, or to make any conces- 
 sion calculated to soothe the wounded feeling of an honor- 
 able and zealous officer. The arrival of a new lieutenant 
 governor, the late Sir John Eardley Wilmot, bringing with 
 him the first notice of his own appointment, and consequently 
 finding Sir John still in the colony, served to show more 
 strongly than could otherwise have been done, the hold the 
 latter had gained on the affections of the colonists, and the 
 verdict pronounced on Lord Stanley's despatch by the peo- 
 ple, to whom all the merits of the case were most fully 
 known. Sir John, after three months' longer residence at 
 Hobarton as a private individual, waiting for a passage to 
 England, during which time he received addresses emanat- 
 ing from every district of the colony, was attended to the 
 place of embarkation by the most numerous assemblage of 
 all classes of people which had ever been seen on those 
 shores, the recently consecrated Bishop of Tasmania ' walk- 
 ing at their head, along with the new colonial seci'etary, the 
 late Mr. Bicheno, who for some months had acted in the 
 greatest harmony with Sir John. A local paper, after de- 
 scribing the scene in much detail, adds : " Thus departed 
 from among us as true and upright a governor as ever the 
 destinies of a British colony were intrusted to." Years 
 afterwards, when the enthusiasm of party feelings could 
 have no share in their proceedings, the colonists showed their 
 remembrance of his virtues in a more substantial manner, 
 as will be mentioned below. Sir John, on receiving the 
 secretary of state's despatch, had tendered his resignation, 
 but his successor was appointed before his letter could reach 
 
 ^ The erection of Tasmania into a see was promoted by Sir John's 
 exertions and representations. 
 
180 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 England, though, as we have just said, his recall despatch 
 did not come to Tasmania till some days after Sir Eardley's 
 arrival. 
 
 Owing to the fortunate rendezvous at Hobarton of the 
 scientific expeditions and surveying ships above named, as 
 well as many of her Majesty's vessels engaged in the ordi- 
 nary service of those seas, the intrigues of the family faction 
 and their supporters in the colony being matters of common 
 discussion, became known to numbers of Sir John's brother 
 officers, and a true estimate of the treatment he had received 
 from the colonial minister was formed by the profession to 
 which he belonged. He found, therefore, on reaching Eng- 
 land, that the confidence of the Admiralty in his integrity 
 and ability was undiminished, and this was speedily shown by 
 his appointment in 1845 to the command of an expedition, 
 consisting of the Erebus and Terror, fitted out for the fur- 
 ther discovery of the north-west passage. With an experi- 
 enced second in command, Captain Crozier, trained under 
 Parry and James Ross from 1821 in the navigation of icy 
 seas, a select body of officers chosen for their talent and 
 energy, and excellent crews, in ships as strong as art could 
 make them, and well furnished, Franklin sailed from Eng- 
 land for the last time on the 26th of May, 1845. He was 
 last seen by a whaler on the 26th of July, in Baffin's Bay, 
 at which time the expedition was proceeding prosperously. 
 Letters written by him a i'ew days previously to that date 
 were couched in language of cheerful anticipation of 
 success, while those received from his officers expressed 
 their admiration of the seamanlike qualities of their com- 
 mander, and the happiness they had in serving under him. 
 In the autumn of 1847, public anxiety began to be mani- 
 fested for the safety of the discoverers, of whom nothing had 
 been heard ; and searching expedition after expedition ^ie- 
 spatched in quest of them in 1848, and the succeeding years 
 down to 1854, regardless of cost or hazard, redound to the 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 181 
 
 lasting credit of England. In this pious undertaking Sir 
 John's heroic wife took the lead. Her exertions were un- 
 wearied, she exhausted her private funds in sending out 
 auxiliary vessels to quarters not comprised in the public 
 search, and by her pathetic appeals she roused the sympathy 
 of the whole civilized world. France sent her Bellot; 
 the United States of America replied to her calls by man- 
 ning two searching expeditions, the expenses of which were 
 borne by Mr. Grennell, a wealthy private citizen of great 
 humanity and liberality ; and the inhabitants of Tasmania 
 subscribed ~£l,700, which they transmitted to Lady Frank- 
 lin, as their contribution towards the expense of the search. 
 In August, 1850, traces of the missing ships were discov- 
 ered, and it was ascertained that their first winter had been 
 spent behind Beechey Island, where they had remained at 
 least as late as April, 1846. Yet in spite of every exertion 
 by the searching parties, no further tidings were obtained 
 until the spring of 1854, when Dr. Rae, then conducting an 
 exploring party of the Hudson Bay Company, learnt from the 
 Esquimaux that in 1850, white men to the number of about 
 forty, had been seen dragging a boat over the ice, near the 
 north shore of King William's Island, and that later in the 
 same season, but before the breaking up of the ice, the bodies 
 of the whole party were found by the natives on a point 
 lying at a short distance to the north-west of Back's Great 
 Fish River, where they had perished from the united effects 
 of cold and famine. These unfortunate men were identified 
 as the remnant of the crews of the Erebus and Terror, by 
 numerous articles which the Esquimaux had picked ^up at 
 the place where they perished, many of which Dr. Rae pur- 
 chased from that people and brought to England. Point 
 Ogle is supposed by this gentleman to be the spot where the 
 bodies lie ; and this summer (1855) Mr. Anderson of the 
 Hudson Bay Company, started from Great Slave Lake to ex- 
 amine the locality, pay the last tribute of respect to the dead, 
 16 
 
182 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 
 
 and collect any written papers that might remain there, or 
 books and journals said to be in the hands of the Esquimaux. 
 By considering the direction in which the party that per- 
 ished were travelling when seen by the natives, and the 
 small district that remains unexplored, we must come to the 
 conclusion that the ships were finally beset between the 70th 
 and 72d parallels of latitude, and near the 100th meridian. 
 Two entrances from the north may exist to this part of the 
 sea, one along the west coast of North Somerset and Boothia, 
 which is an almost certain one ; and the other which is 
 more conjectural, may occupy the short unexplored space 
 between Captain Sherard Osborn's and Lieutenant Wynn- 
 iatt's extreme points. To approach this last strait, if it 
 actually exists. Cape Walker would be left on the eastern 
 side of the passing ships. It is a singular and most melan- 
 choly fact, that the very limited district of the Arctic Sea 
 thus indicated, and which was specially adverted to in the 
 original plan of seai'ch, is almost the only spot that has defied 
 the exertions of the skilful and persevering officers who 
 have attempted to explore it. Sir James Ross failed in 
 reaching it ; it intervenes between the extremes of the long 
 and laborious journeys made by Captain Sherard Osborn 
 and Lieutenant Wynniatt. Dr. Rae's two attempts to en- 
 ter it were frustrated by the state of the ice and other cir- 
 cumstances, and Captain CoUinson was also stopped short 
 on its southern side by the want of fuel. Lady Franklin 
 had sent out the Prince Albert for the express purpose of 
 searching this quarter, but Mr. Kennedy unfortunately, in- 
 stead, of adhering to the letter of instructions, trusted to a 
 distant view of the passage from the north, which seemed to 
 him to be closed, and turning to the west, made his memo- 
 rable winter journey through a space, which, though he 
 was ignorant of the fiict at the time, had been previously 
 examined. 
 
 With the utmost economy in its use, fuel would soon 
 
SIR JOHN FRANKLIN. 183 
 
 become precious on board the Erebus and Terror ; and it is 
 probable that after three years one of the ships would be 
 broken up to furnish this essential article. Provisions could 
 not last longer without placing the crews on short allowigice, 
 and to do so in that climate, subjected them to sure and de- 
 structive attacks of scurvy. Fish and venison, it is true, 
 might be procured in quantities sufficient to modify these 
 conclusions, but not to a great extent : and, beyond all ques- 
 tion, the numbers of the intrepid sailors who left England 
 in such health and spirits in 1845, had waned sadly by the 
 close of the season for operations in 1849. The forty men 
 seen by the natives early in 1850, were doubtless the only 
 survivors at tliat date. Franklin, had he lived till then, 
 would have been sixty-four years old, but no one of that 
 age was in the number seen by the natives. Had he been 
 then in existence, he would have taken another route on the 
 abandonment of his ship, as no one knows better than he 
 the fatal result of an attempt to cross that wide expanse of 
 frozen ground lying between the mouth of the Great Fish 
 River and the far-distant Hudson Bay post on the south 
 side of Great Slave Lake. Who can conjecture the reason 
 that turned the steps of the weary wanderers in that direc- 
 tion ? Perhaps the desire of solving the long-sought problem 
 of a north-west passage, even then animated their emaciated 
 frames, and it is certain that they did solve it, though none 
 of them lived to claim the grateful applause of their country- 
 men. Later in point of time, and in a higher latitude, Sir 
 Robert M'Clure also, filled up a narrow gap between pre- 
 vious discoveries, and so traced out the north-west passage 
 by travelling over ice that has in the five several years in 
 which it has been attempted, proved to be a barrier to 
 ships. If ever in the pursuit of whales, or for conveyance 
 of minerals, commercial enterprise endeavors to force a 
 north-west passage by steam, the southern route, whose last 
 link was forged by Franklin's party with their lives, will un- 
 
184 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 doubtingly be chosen. And it is to be deeply regretted that 
 the parliamentary committee in recommending the grant of 
 public money to Sir Robert M'Clure, which his courage and 
 enterprise so well deserved, should have omitted to mention 
 the prior discovery made by the crews of the Erebus and 
 Terror.' 
 
 This sketch of Sir John Franklin's character and public 
 services has been written by one who served long under his 
 command, who during upwards of twenty-five years of close 
 intimacy had his entire confidence, and in times of great 
 difficulty and distress, when all conventional disguise was 
 out of the question, beheld his calmness and unaffected piety. 
 If it has in some passages assumed the appearance of eulogy, 
 it has done so not for the purpose of unduly exalting its 
 subject, but from a firm conviction of the truth of the state- 
 ments. On the other hand, the writer has abstained, in the 
 only sentences in which it was necessary to speak of oppo- 
 nents, from saying a single word more of their conduct or 
 motives than strict justice to Franklin's memory demanded. 
 Franklin himself was singularly devoid of any vindictive feel- 
 ing. While he defended his own honor, he would have 
 delighted in showing any kindness in his power to his bit- 
 terest foe ; and in emulation of that spirit the preceding 
 pages have been penned. 
 
 1 Spars and pieces of rail recognized as having belonged to the 
 Erebus and Terror were picked up by Captain Collinson near liis 
 wintering place in Cambridge Bay, and are sufficient evidence of 
 currents setting in that direction, through a passage incumbered 
 doubtless with drift ice. 
 
HOMER. 
 
 Homer, the greatest epic poet of Greece, and a name of 
 the highest significance, not with regard to Greece only, but 
 to Europe generally, and to the history of the human race. 
 For in Homer we have to do not merely with a poet of the 
 first class, holding the same place in literature that Aristotle 
 and Newton do in science, but with the oldest records, after 
 the books of Moses, that have exercised a permanent influ- 
 ence on the civilization of the West. It is but reasonable, 
 therefore, that we should give a more full and minute con- 
 sideration to the Homeric poems, than even the high position 
 of their author on the topmost peak of the Hellenic Parnas- 
 sus would justify. 
 
 The life of Homer did not fall within the strictly histor- 
 ical epoch of Greek literature ; nor were there any diligent 
 biographers in his day who made it a business to collect and 
 to make public the notable sayings and doings of men of 
 extraordinary genius. The existing literary testimonies for 
 the facts connected with the life of the poet, do not carry us 
 further back than the age of Pindar (b. c. 500) ; that is to 
 say, to a period more than three hundred years posterior to 
 the age of the great poet, taken at the latest of the various 
 dates to which it is assigned. What we know of Homer, 
 therefore, we know only through the channel of national 
 tradition, uncertain and vague as that must always be in an 
 
 16* (^85) 
 
186 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 age when writing was either unknown or little practised, 
 and criticism of literary documents never dreamt of. "We 
 shall not, therefore, be surprised to hear that even the birth- 
 place of their great national poet was unknown to the Greeks, 
 and that the period in which he flourished was a puzzle to 
 their ablest chronologers. We are not, however, to suppose 
 that on this interesting subject we know absolutely nothing. 
 However vague popular traditions may be, and however 
 discrepant in minor details, they will generally be found to 
 contain a nucleus of truth which a practised eye can 
 readily distinguish from the fabulous accretions of idle or 
 impudent imaginations ; and if the general substance of such 
 traditions regarding the life of a great poet, i^ not contra- 
 dicted, or is rather confirmed, by the internal evidence of 
 his reputed works, a reasonable man may take his stand 
 upon them as confidently as he does upon any other conclu- 
 sion, resting upon evidence which may reach the highest de- 
 gree of probability, but can in no case partake of absolute 
 scientific certainty. 
 
 The authorship of the Ldves of Homer, printed in Barnes', 
 and other editions, and in Westermann's collection,^ is un- 
 known ; but their value as literary documents depends not 
 on what the authors say in their own name, which is utterly 
 worthless, but on the ancient authorities and special popular 
 traditions which they quote. From them we know what 
 was the account given by Aristotle of the birthplace of 
 Homer, what Ephorus said was the local tradition of the 
 people of Cumae, and what Homeric monuments were shown 
 by the islanders of los. A very slight consideration of 
 these ancient testimonies thus analyzed will suffice to show 
 the vanity of the claims put forth by various Greek cities 
 as having given birth to Homer. Of these seven is the 
 number commonly mentioned in a well-known distich,^ but 
 
 1 'BioypiKpoi, Brunswick, 1845. * Aul. Gell. iii., 11. 
 
HOMER. 187 
 
 the reader who chooses to turn uj^Suidas will find at least 
 half a dozen more ; and to increase learning in this matter 
 will only be to increase skepticism, unless a man carries 
 with him the sound maxim of the lawyers, — ponderanda sunt 
 testimonia non numeranda. The claims of Athens, for in- 
 stance, rest, according to a distinct testimony,^ on the mere 
 fact that the lonians of Smyrna were a colony from Attica, 
 and that if Homer was a Smyrniote, he might reasonably be 
 called an Athenian, just as a person born in Sydney may say 
 he is a Londoner, because his father, or his grandfather, or 
 his great-grandfather was so. In a similar loose fashion the 
 claims of Salamis in Cyprus, are found to be explained by 
 the fact that Stasinus, one of the poets of the Epic Cycle, 
 was a native of that island, and that the epic poem called 
 Cypria, written by him, was by some attributed to Homer, 
 from whom Stasinus is said to have received it as a mar- 
 riage gift with the daughter of the great poet.^ Colophon, 
 in a similar way, claimed to have produced the poet of the 
 Iliad, because of a famous humorous poem called the 
 Margites, of which Homer was generally supposed to be the 
 author.^ But the same critical inspection which enables us 
 to expose the flimsy pretensions of these places, reveals the 
 remarkable fact that those other cities which have most to 
 say for themselves as being the native country of Homer, 
 unite, by the peculiar form of their traditions, in giving to 
 Smyrna at least some share in hi^^^birth, — a plain admission 
 that at the time when these traditions were framed, the 
 claims of Smyrna were considered so strong that they could 
 not possibly be ignored. Thus the most detailed and best 
 known Life, that attributed to Herodotus, which was for a 
 long time received as authentic, deduces the parentage of 
 Homer from Magnesia, in Thessaly; thence Melanopus is 
 
 1 Lives <5 and e in Westermann. 2 jElian, V. H. ix., 15. 
 
 ^ Welcker, Efic Cycle, 1., 184. 
 
188 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 said to have crossed thc'^gean, and settled in Cumae, the 
 principal city of the ^olians, in Asia Minor ; here he mar- 
 ried a lady of Cuma;, by whom he had a daughter called 
 Critheis ; and this maiden having, unknown to her guar- 
 dians, formed a connection with some unknown individual of 
 the male sex, was, to avoid exposure, sent to Smyrna, where, 
 on the banks of the river Meles, she brought forth Homer, 
 thence called Melesigenes. We have already said that such 
 local traditions are not history ; but when we find another 
 of the seven cities, namely, los, framing a local legend, 
 which, while differing from that of Cumaj in every other 
 point, agrees with it in bringing the immortal minstrel to the 
 banks of the Meles to be born, we must be altogether blind 
 to the spirit in which local legends are composed, if we do 
 not see here the strongest proof that the real country of 
 Homer was that which is distinctly allowed in the legends 
 of those very cities which are most interested in denying its 
 claims. We say, therefore, that according to all human 
 probability, Homer was born at Smyrna ; and when we say, 
 with equal probability, that he died at los, — one of the 
 Cyclades in the Archipelago, for on this point the various 
 accounts also agree, — we have stated all that can be said 
 to be known with regard to the father of epic poetry in 
 Greece. The other events of his life, as given in the larger 
 biographies, are fictions invented, many of them, with the 
 plain purpose of giving % historical existence to certain of 
 the characters mentioned in the Iliad and Odyssey ; or they 
 are mere blunders of which the source is innocent and obvi- 
 ous. That, like all minstrels, Homer was given to wander 
 about from place to place in the exercise of his vocation, is 
 probable enough without any voucher, and appears quite 
 certain from the extensive and accurate geographical in- 
 formation displayed in his works ; but the details of his 
 travels would be curiously retained in no man's memory ; 
 and what we have for them bears all the marks of a vulgar 
 
HOMEE. 189 
 
 forgery. The much-bespoken circumstance of his being 
 blind, noticed in all the ancient Lives, if implying a mere 
 superinduced misfortune, and not a congenital defect, might, 
 as a matter of popular tradition, be probable enough, were the 
 origin of the story not too plain in the double fact that a 
 blind poet is introduced in the Odyssey,^ and in the famous 
 hymn to Apollo, which Thucydides ^ and other ancients ac- 
 cepted as the productions of the genuine Homer. This 
 hymn, indeed, must be regarded as the main authority of 
 those who claim Homer as a Sciote ; for the lines run ex- 
 pressly, — 
 
 Tr^Wf avrjp, oIkh 6s Xicp evi naiKaXoeaai] . 
 
 The blind old man who dwells in Chios' rocky isle ; 
 
 and there is certainly no evidence so strong in favor of 
 Smyrna, provided only it could be proved — what no scholar 
 now dreams — that these lines were really so said and sung 
 by the veritable singer of the Iliad and Odyssey. But after 
 this line is rejected, there remains no ground for the claims 
 of Chios, save that weak one expressly mentioned by 
 Strabo,^ that in this city there flourished the famous guild or 
 brotherhood of minstrels (of whom more anon), known by 
 the name of the Homeridae ; a fact of no more power, when 
 critically examined, to prove that Homer himself was a 
 Chiote, than the fact of Calvinistic theology being very 
 dominant in Scotland, would prove that the author of the 
 doctrine was born in Edinburgh. 
 
 The age of Homer is a matter about which less that is 
 satisfactory can be stated than with regard to his country. 
 That if not a Smyrniote he was at least a native of that 
 part of Asia Minor, is proved not merely by the traditional 
 evidence just adduced, but by the internal evidence of the 
 poems themselves — by their rich tone, color, and style, and 
 
 1 Odyssey, viii. 64. ^History, iii. 104. » Strabo, XIV p. 645. 
 
190 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 also by many well-known facts relative to the early rise and 
 growth of poetic literature among the Greeks. But chro- 
 nology is, in the nature of the thing, a matter with which 
 popular tradition has nothing to do: and the internal evi- 
 dence of the poems themselves on this head, though strong 
 enough, perhaps, to exclude certain extreme suppositions, 
 affords a pretty wide range to a merely conjectural chronol- 
 ogy. Herodotus, in a well-known passage,^ places Homer 
 about four hundred years older than liimself ; that is, in the 
 year 850 b. c, or thereabout ; Aristotle, in the account 
 given by him in the legend of los, makes the birth of Ho- 
 mer contemporary with the great Ionic migration (1044 
 B. C.) ; while Dionysius of Samos, the cyclographer, threw 
 him back as far as the Trojan War, which he de- 
 scribes. To determine exactly between these contending 
 dates, and at least a dozen more given in a very full 
 scheme by Lauer,^ is of course hopeless ; but the circum- 
 stances of the case warrant us in refusing to allow any date 
 for Homer, so early as that assumed by the cyclographer, 
 or later than that given by Herodotus. For such an ex- 
 tensive collection of myths as that connected with the Trojan 
 war requires time to grow ; and Homer manifestly talks of 
 the heroes of the Iliad as belonging to some age not alto- 
 gether identical with his own. The mingled elements, also, 
 of Ionic and -^olic Hellenism, which appear in the Ho- 
 meric poems, did not exist in Asia Minor, at the early date 
 supposed by Dionysius, or those who come near to him. 
 As little, on the other hand, can we go beyond Herodotus, 
 in bringing Homer nearer to the date of the Olympiads 
 than the year 850, for the very uncertainty in which the 
 wisest Greeks were as to the age of the poet, proves that he 
 lived at a period considerably more ancient than the first 
 year (776 b. c.) of their recognized national chronology. 
 
 1 History, ii., 53. ^ Homerische Poesie, p. 124. 
 
HOMER. 191 
 
 Perhaps some reader may have been content that we 
 should allude to these disputed points in a manner even 
 more perfunctory than we have done ; but in these days of 
 rampant historical skepticism, imported wholesale from Ger- 
 many, it is absolutely necessary to make some attempt to 
 mark distinctly where the cloud-architecture of mere imagi- 
 nation ends, and the mainland of actual tradition, hazy and 
 yet indubitable, commences. In reference to these skeptical 
 views of the Germans, we cannot avoid noticing here that 
 some of them have even gone so far as to deny the exist- 
 ence of such a man as Homer altogether; and, what is 
 of more consequence to us, the language, which some of the 
 more wild of that sect are still in the habit of using, has 
 been adopted by some of our own scholars whose name is 
 sufficient to make even their incidental errors dangerous. 
 Mr. Grote, for instance, uses the following language: — 
 " The name of Homer — for I disallow his historical per- 
 sonality — means the Iliad and the Odyssey, and nothing 
 else ; " and again, " Homer is no individual man, but the 
 divine or heroic father of the Gentile Homerids ; " ^ that is 
 to say, while the whole of the Greek nation believed they 
 had once had a great epic poet to whose extraordinary 
 genius, as to a natural and adequate cause, they attributed 
 their two great epic poems (just as the ordered world finds 
 the best explanation of its existence in a God) ; we, the 
 learned of modern times, are bound to doubt whether that 
 poet had any existence, and to treat these poems as if they 
 were not productions of a great poetic genius at all, but the 
 creation of some half dozen or a score of second-rate rhym- 
 ers, whose names no person ever cared to know, but who 
 were cunning enough to raise themselves into a fictitious 
 historical consequence by the creation of a symbolical head 
 of their corporation called Homer, whom' the silly world 
 
 1 History, Ho\. ii., p. 179. 
 
192 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 has, for nearly three thousand years, been willing to take 
 for a substantial reality ! Now, it ought at once to be 
 granted to Mr. Grote, and those Germans whose nebulous 
 notions he has, in this matter, imported, that there was a 
 tendency in the earliest times of the Greeks, as perhaps of 
 all highly imaginative nations, to represent in the historical 
 form certain favorite ideas and theories, theological and 
 ethnological; which allegorical or mythical narratives a 
 modern reader of a prosaic temper may be apt to mistake 
 for realities. Of the Religious myth in particular, the his- 
 toric was the generally accredited form, to such an extent 
 that the original physico-theological ideas which these nar- 
 ratives were invented to convey, are now but dimly discern- 
 ible behind the motley company of human incarnations by 
 which they are impersonated. Nay, more, it may even be 
 true in some cases, according to a favorite notion of the 
 Germans (Uschold and others), that the religious symbols 
 of our century became the anthropomorphic gods of another, 
 and dwindled down to the merely human heroes of a third. 
 Further, it is not to be denied that beyond the sphere of 
 religion the practice seems to have prevailed among the 
 Greeks to a certain extent of inventing names of charac- 
 ters, apparently historical, to symbolize the origin and the 
 connection of certain notable races of men. Thus Hellen 
 in whose personality the most critical of ancients believed,^ 
 is taken by almost all modern writers, even by Clinton, for 
 a mere name invented as a symbol of the common national- 
 ity of the people whom he represented. But even with 
 regard to national genealogies, we are in nowise entitled to 
 assume that because they are peculiarly liable to forgery, 
 therefore no national genealogy is in any case to be accepted 
 to be true. Much less are we to make a general rule of 
 evaporating all the most deeply-rooted local traditions of a 
 
 1 See Thucy*, I. 3. 
 
HOMEK. 193 
 
 country into mere misty imaginations and unsubstantial 
 symbols, and to assume that the " manufacture of fictitious 
 personalities" (Grote), was the only or the main function 
 of the popular intellect of any people, at any stage of their 
 civilization. Man is a real creature, and he deals with 
 realities ; and of all realities, those which he is least dis- 
 posed to lose hold of are the great men whose energy fathers 
 any extraordinary product of the national life, and whose 
 name marks any great national epoch. In conformity with 
 this real tendency of human nature we find that in all popu- 
 lar poetry the actions of famous men — the national heroes 
 — form a much more prominent element than symbolized 
 religious or physical philosophy ; * and the periods of intel- 
 lectual and political advancement marked by such names as 
 Homer and Theseus are precisely those in which a great 
 reality would be more powerful to seize the minds of men 
 than the most significant symbol. Extraordinary and even 
 miraculous stories in the life of a historical personage ought 
 not in the very least to shake our credit in his fundamental 
 reality ; for it is precisely because his reality was so strik- 
 ing and so overpowering that these miraculous stories were 
 invented, and naturally found credit. The Israelites carried 
 back the genealogy of their nation to the son of Isaac, from 
 wiiom they sprung. Had the books of Moses, with all their 
 circumstantial details and lifelike reality never been writ- 
 ten, a German philologer might have said that Jacob was 
 merely a symbol. In the same way, the Athenians ascribed 
 certain great political changes in their country to the son of 
 JEgeus, of whom various wonderful and superhuman stories 
 are told ; but these stories no more justify us in throwing him 
 into the limbo of symbols, than the ridiculous lies about Abra- 
 ham and the other patriarchs, current in the Koran and other 
 Eastern books, would entitle us to disallow the historical 
 
 1 See some admirable remarks in Lauer, p. 131-174. 
 17 
 
.V',-' 
 
 194 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reality of the father of the faithful. In the same way — 
 though there are some things of a plainly mythical nature 
 in the traditional legends of Homer — to conclude from 
 ^ these that Homer himself is a myth, is to argue with the 
 ;! precipitation of a whim-intoxicated German, not with the 
 \ deliberation of a sober-minded and judicious Englishman. 
 ' Indeed, it is only doing the Germans justice to state that the 
 " disallowance of the personality of Homer," to use Mr. 
 Grote's phrase, is by no means so common among them now 
 as in the first fever of intemperate Wolfian enthusiasm it 
 might have been without offence. William Miiller, the 
 most popular champion of Wolfian ideas, says distinctly in 
 his Vorschule (p. 51) that " we are not called to question the 
 personal existence of Homer ; " and Professor Welcker (to 
 whose learned labors all students of Homer are so much 
 indebted), Nitsch, C. O. Miiller, Dr. Ihne (in Smith's IHc- 
 tionary), Baiimlein, Lauer, and others who have written 
 recently on the subject, show a moderation of temper, and a 
 soundness of historical judgment, very far removed from 
 what we are accustomed to designate as " German extrava- 
 gance." It is becoming evident to a thoughtful observer 
 that even among that most speculative, skeptical, and, intel- 
 lectually speaking, most anarchical nation of Europe, the 
 conflict of extreme views is beginning to produce its natural 
 results in the recognition of the great human realities which 
 lie at the bottom of the strong though unpurified historical 
 convictions of the masses. 
 
 So much for the Poet. The next question that presents 
 itself in connection with the name of Homer, is that of the 
 authenticity of the works which go under his name. What 
 security have we that the poems we now read with such de- 
 light and instruction are the identical works which Aristotle 
 analyzed, which Plato denounced, which Thucydides and 
 Strabo quoted as the best autliority for some of the earliest 
 and most important facts in Greek history and topography ? 
 
HOMER. 195 
 
 What guarantee further that the works which the great 
 writers of the classic age of Greece, received as genuine 
 works of the great Ionian bard, actually were so ; and how 
 far they might not have been made subject to various inter- 
 polations and mutilations in the thi'ee or four centuries that 
 elapsed between the heroic age, when they were compared, 
 and the historic age, when we find them made the subject 
 of literary study and criticism ? The importance of these 
 questions will appear the more strongly, when we bear in 
 mind that the celebrity of Homer naturally led to the na- 
 tional practice of stamping with his name many poetical 
 works of a popular character, in which the stern tests 
 applied by a severe criticism, refuse to find any marks of so 
 illustrious a paternity. Prominent among these are the 
 Homeric hymns, treated as authentic by Thucydides, and 
 published as undoubted works of the great bard in the 
 Editio Princeps, and other notable editions by modern 
 scholars. Of the same kind are the Cypria already men- 
 tioned, of the contents of which a short account is given by 
 Proclus, the grammarian. To Homer also was very gen- 
 erally attributed by the ancients the Colopherian poem 
 called Margites ; and the Battle of the Frogs and Mice is 
 an example of one of the many Ttdiyna, or humorous popu- 
 lar pieces, with the composition of which the singer of the 
 wrath of Achilles is supposed to have amused his mighty 
 mind in his hours of relaxation. With regard to all these, 
 it may be sufficient to state, that the ancients themselves 
 were very far from exhibiting a serious agreement as to 
 their authorship ; and their being attributed to Homer must 
 be viewed as rather a floating popular belief, than a strong 
 national conviction. Such being their character, it could 
 not be expected that they should stand muster before the 
 scrutinizing glance of modern criticism, and the skeptical 
 analysis of the Germans. In talking of Homeric poems we 
 must, therefore, remove these minor works altogether from 
 
196 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 our view ; but the fact of their having been for a long 
 period so generally received as genuine works of the poet, 
 leads us to treat with the greatest consideration the caution 
 of those who demand the severest proof for the real author- 
 ship of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Now, with regard to 
 these two great works, there is, in the first place, not the 
 slightest reason to doubt that we possess and use them, so 
 far as the contents and the text are concerned, exactly as 
 they were possessed and used by the Greeks of the classic 
 ages ; and with regard to their authorship, the faith which 
 we have that these identical works were the genuine works 
 of the great Ionian epopoeist, was the general faith of the 
 whole ancient world, both Greek and Roman; and in the 
 case of the Iliad, at least, (for there were some difficulties 
 started by a few curious inquirers with regard to the 
 Odyssey,) a faith for centuries unshaken by a single breath 
 of contradiction. That the Iliad, which we now read, is 
 substantially the Iliad of Pindar and of Plato, can be 
 proved to the satisfaction of any sane man, exactly in the 
 same way that the Christian Scriptures, read now in the 
 Christian churches, are proved to be substantially the same 
 as those expounded by the earliest bishops, and sanctioned 
 by the most authoritative councils of the church. To the 
 Greeks, Homer was in fact a Bible, and guarded with all 
 the care and all the piety that belongs to such a book ; a 
 fact which at once explains the extravagant, and to our feel- 
 ing, illiberal zeal with which Plato denounces it in his ideal 
 polity, and at the same time puts into our hands a guarantee 
 of the surest and most sacred kind for the general authen- 
 ticity of the poems as we now read them. No person who 
 is even superficially read in the Greek classics can fail to 
 have observed how constantly all writers of note, from the 
 severe and stern Aristotle, to the light and sportive Lucian, 
 refer to Homer as to a writer of whom a universal knowl- 
 edge might be presupposed in all their readers, and to 
 
HOMER. 197 
 
 whom a universal respect was paid. The consequence of 
 this frequent reference is, that there is no writer of an- 
 tiquity of whom we are more sure that we possess his genu- 
 ine words as current in the mouths of the ancients, than we 
 are with regard to the author of the Uiad and Odyssey. 
 But more than this. In the time of the Ptolomies, and 
 when the productive power of Greek literature had begun 
 to faint and die away, there was a special band of learned 
 critics and commentators, who made it their business to col- 
 late the various recensions of the Homeric epics, and to 
 transmit their text to us with as much conscientious fidelity 
 as was possible. Prominent among these were Aristarchus 
 and Zenodotus, of whom the first has transmitted his name 
 to modern times as a popular appellative for the literary 
 man who exercises the higher sort of documental criticism 
 as a vocation ; and not only do we know that such men ex- 
 isted, and exercised their philologic care on the great 
 national treasure of the Homeric text, but we have in the 
 Venetian scholia, first published from the St. Mark's library 
 by Villoison (1788), a series of notices of their method of 
 critical procedure, and a list of their asterisks and obelisks, 
 sufficient to dispel all doubt as to the unadulterated trans- 
 mission of the Iliad and Odyssey, at least from the pe- 
 riod when letters began to be a study and an occupation 
 in Greece. But when did this period begin.? and what 
 have we to say for the nature of the guarantees of authen- 
 ticity, whatever they were, that existed before this period ? 
 These are really serious questions, the answers to which 
 have raised difficulties that have made wise men pause and 
 foolish men stumble, not without observation. Oh all hands 
 it is allowed that Pisistratus, the well-known Athenian 
 tyrant (b. c. 560), was the first, so far at least as Athens is 
 concerned, to collect together the various books or rhapso- 
 dies of the Homeric epics, which were generally sung or 
 recited separately, and to arrange and publish them — to 
 17* 
 
198 NEW BIOGEAPHIES. 
 
 use a modern phrase — in the form in which they now ex- 
 ist. Pisistratus, therefore, or rather his literary coadjutors, 
 among whom Onomacritus is prominently named, must be 
 regarded as our first historical guarantee for the text of the 
 Iliad and Odyssey as we now possess it ; but the details 
 of his literary labors are unfortunately not in the least 
 known to us ; so from this point backward we are left to 
 conjecture, to historical probabilities and internal evidence, 
 and to the hundred and one small skeptical doubts and 
 skeptical solutions of those doubts, which will never cease 
 to exercise the wits of those who are born to torment them- 
 selves in this way. 
 
 The question whether the Iliad as arranged by Pisistratus 
 was, both in point of matter and arrangement, exactly the 
 same as the Iliad, of which Homer was the reputed author, 
 is a question that in the nature of the case admits of no per- 
 fectly satisfactory answer. Absolutely the same of course 
 in the nature of human things it cannot be : for even the 
 Christian Scriptures, guarded as they have been by the 
 double sanction of individual and corpoi*ate authority, have 
 not been transmitted through eighteen centuries of literary 
 record without being made subject to several very notable 
 interpolations ; nor can it even be said that any man at the 
 present day can feel the same degree of certainty with re- 
 gard to the text of Homer that he does with regard to that 
 of Milton, Tasso, Dante, or even Virgil. Wliy ? Not only 
 because of the greater lapse of time ; for in a question of 
 documentary criticism this is often a point of comparatively 
 small moment ; hut because of the different conditions under 
 which these works were composed, and the different mediums 
 through which, in their earliest stage, they were transmitted. 
 We read of no Pisistratus that first collected the scat- 
 tered books of the -^neid ; the very MS. which Dante 
 gloried in, or something as good, is no doubt lying in the 
 Grand Duke's library in Florence at the present hour. In 
 
HOMEK. 199 
 
 the case of these poets people may be vexed with various 
 readings and doubtful lines, — such questions as curious 
 editors will raise even with regard to modem Scotts and 
 Byrons ; but there is no talk about cutting out whole books, 
 and the strange process with which learned Germans are so 
 familiar, of restoring a great poem to its integrity by de- 
 priving it of some of its most beautiful parts. Let us en- 
 deavor, then, to fix a steady eye on the real state of the 
 Homeric text at the time when it was collected by Pisis- 
 tratus. What reason have we to suppose that it was then 
 to any considerable extent interpolated, or changed in any 
 way from its original condition as it came from the mouth 
 of Homer? The answer to this question depends upon 
 another. Who were the conservators of that trust, previous 
 to the time of Pisistratus ; and what safeguards were they pro- 
 vided with against those invasions of spurious matter to which 
 all works of extensive circulation, and general popularity, 
 are especially subject ? The conservators of the trust are, 
 in the first place, the national doidot, minstrels or bards, who, 
 like Homer himself, made a profession of singing songs and 
 epic poems for the amusement of the people ; and when 
 these had begun to wane, they were succeeded by the rhap- 
 sodists or popular reciters, who performed the same func- 
 tions, but with less original genius and less social dignity iu 
 an age when historians, and orators, and philosophers, and 
 rhetoricians, had usurped many of the functions that had 
 originally been exercised by the doiSog. *Now it is of im- 
 mense importance in the criticism of Homer to ascertain 
 clearly if possible what was the moral position of the origi- 
 nat minstrel's profession with regard to the great poet ; for 
 on this depends the likelihood of their eiih€% loosely inter- 
 polating or conscientiously respecting the integrity of his 
 works. That they cannot have felt the same religious sort 
 of respect for him that arose in the Greeks of a later age, 
 seems pretty evident ; they were minstrels by trade as well 
 
200 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 as he, and could only look upon him in the exercise of their 
 profession as primus inter pares. Nevertheless, they did 
 respect him very much ; of which we have ample evidence 
 in the existence of the fimous guild or institution of poets 
 of Chios, known by the name of the Homeridce, or sons of 
 Homer, concerning whom we have the most distinct testi- 
 mony in Harpocration. Whether any of the actual descend- 
 ants of the poet fonned the original nucleus of this fraternity 
 we cannot tell ; but its existence under that designation is 
 ample proof of the extraordinary respect in which Homer 
 continued to be held in the parts of Asia nearest to his birth- 
 place, and affords a sufficient practical guarantee that the 
 professional minstrels who were incorporated under this 
 name would not, from mere rash conceit, be inclined to tam- 
 per with the real tradition of the Smyrnaean muse of which 
 they were the select depositaries. On the other hand, it 
 must not be forgotten that a poem like the Iliad, made not 
 to be read as a continuous book, but to be sung in separate 
 parts for the public amusement, was peculiarly liable to have 
 such additions made to it or variations as the occasion might 
 require. Of this our own ballads^ supply everywhere 
 abundant proof, the existing version of which is often pieced 
 together from a variety of different texts, presenting all sorts 
 of deficiencies and redundancies. That something of this 
 kind should not have taken place with regard to the Ho- 
 meric poems in general circulation through the scattered 
 tribes of the Greeks, would have been positively miracu- 
 lous ; and we must suppose that the principal business of 
 Pisistratus, in collecting these poems, was not, as some have 
 Strangely supposed, to-preate an order which never existed, 
 but to fix ai^ order which was in danger of being lost. 
 Whether in doing so he had the advantage of any complete 
 correct text derived from the Homeridae of Chios, with 
 
 1 See Chambers' Songs and Ballads of Scotland, p. 106, note. 
 
HOMEB. 201 
 
 which to compose and correct the scattered rhapsodies in 
 popular currency, we cannot say ; but it is not at all un- 
 likely ; — at any rate he would have little difficulty in re- 
 storing the original arrangement of the books, partly because 
 that order in the generality of cases shines out manifestly 
 from the inherent, character of the plot, and the progress of 
 the story, partly because there could not fail to exist among 
 the more literate and accomplished of the rhapsodists some 
 one who could recite by memory not merely single books, 
 but the whole concatenation of books, as the Homeridae of 
 Chios had received them from their great father. Most 
 assuredly, as has been insisted on both by Baiimlein and 
 Grote, he n^ver could have set himself seriously to make 
 extensive modern interpolations in poems, the contents of 
 which were well known over the whole of Greece, and had 
 in Athens been made the subject of a special public regula- 
 tion by their great lawgiver, Solon.* 
 
 In the view here given of the respective functions of the 
 Homeridae, and of Pisistratus, in the transmission of the 
 Homeric poems, we have said nothing about the famous 
 question, whether the art of writing was known in Homer's 
 time ? because a little reflection will show that this question 
 has really very little bearing on the genuineness of the poems 
 as we now possess them, and besides is a question that does 
 not admit of a satisfactory answer. At the first blush, in- 
 deed, when a modern who is the slave of pen and ink, hears 
 it stated that in all likelihood the great bard of the Iliad 
 could neither read nor write, he is apt to feel very much 
 as if the whole foundation for his critical faith in the poet 
 was removed from beneath his feet, and there was no 
 longer any ground for him to stand on. How many an elo- 
 quent modern speaker might be struck dumb if pen, ink, and 
 paper were suddenly removed from the category of things 
 
 1 See Diog. Laert., in Solon, 9. 
 
202 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 that be ! But they managed these matters difFerently on 
 Parnassus and Hehcon in the days when Memory was the 
 mother of the Muses, and the Muses could sing sweetly 
 without help from a goose quill. We have the most distinct 
 testimony of Juhus Caesar (b. c. vi. 14), to the effect "that 
 the pupils of the Druids learn by heart a great number of 
 verses ; and some continue twenty years in a course of in- 
 struction. Nor do they think it right to commit their doc- 
 trines to writing, though in other matters they use the Greek 
 alphabet. This they appear to do for two reasons ; first, that 
 they may not make their religious mysteries too common and 
 profane hy general publication, and again, that they may not 
 weaken the power of memory in their scholars' by teaching 
 them to trust to written notes ; for nothing is more common 
 than that the abundance of literary helps teaches persons to 
 remit their exertions in committing their knowledge to mem- 
 ory." This remarkable passage reveals to us in the most 
 striking manner the real secret of the transmission of the 
 Homeric poems without the help of written manuscripts ; 
 the memory of the minstrels was not more uncertain, but 
 more true and trustworthy for this very reason, that they 
 were not accustomed to depend for the faithful recollections 
 of the poems which they recited, upon a leaf of papyrus or 
 a library itself. In estimating the memorial powers of these 
 men we must never forget not only that they exercised their 
 art under intellectual conditions exactly the reverse of those 
 which now exist, but also that they had no other business or 
 interests by which to distract their attention, and so could 
 perform certain feats with ease, that bear the same relation 
 to our common exercises of memory, that tumbling and 
 rope-dancing do to common walking. It is always in our 
 power, by exclusive and persevering exercise of a favorite 
 faculty in a favorite sphere, to perform apparent prodigies. 
 We shall therefore readily disabuse ourselves of the super- 
 ficial modern notion that written memoranda are neces- 
 
HOMEK. 203 
 
 sary to the faithfulness of versified tradition ; the " wonder " 
 as it has been called by Grote, of the " preservation " of 
 such long poems fi'om such early ages \Yill become part of 
 the common intellectual drill of an age eloquent without pa- 
 per, and poetical without ink ; and the question will only 
 remain, as a matter of legitimate curiosity with regard to the 
 Iliad and Odyssey, whether their author was unacquainted 
 witn those useful arts of literary conservation, the knowl- 
 edge of which is in our days justly accounted a necessary 
 element in the lowest stages of popular education. Now 
 with regard to the use of lettei's in Greece, the general voice 
 of Hellenic antiquity pointed to Cadmus as having imported 
 these cunning symbols fi'om Phoenicia at a period far an- 
 tecedent to the age of Homer, or even the supposed date 
 of the Trojan War ; and this tradition is consistent not only 
 with the philosophical analysis of their letters of the alpha- 
 bet, but with the then general state of the civilization, and 
 the admitted intercourse between Asia and the West, as 
 having taken place in various forms at a very early period 
 of the history of the world. There is every probability, 
 therefore, in favor of the belief that letters, in some shape 
 or other, were known in Greece, at whatever date, between 
 the Trojan War and the year 850, which may be assumed 
 as most convenient for the age of Homer. But from this 
 probable belief with regard to tMi epoch of the knowledge 
 of letters in Greece, the distance to a reasonable conviction, 
 with regard to the practice of Homer himself in composing 
 and preserving his poems, is very great, and not lightly to 
 be overlooked. That letters, when first introduced, were 
 used only in great public matters, and for inscriptions in 
 wood, Kone, lead, and other heavy materials, not for writing 
 a long concatenation of poetic rhapsodies, is conformable 
 to the nature of the thing, and to every testimony on the 
 subject. According to the usual slow progress of human 
 aflTairs, three centuries at least may well have been required 
 
204 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 to transfer letters from the rare service of temple-porticos 
 and monumental pillars, to the common use of literary con- 
 servation ; so that, even assuming the use of letters for 
 public purposes in the days of Homer, the probability may 
 be considered very small that they were actually used by 
 the poet or his immediate successors for any merely literary 
 purpose. This probability becomes even less, when we 
 consider that there is not a single allusion in the wSole 
 forty-eight books of the two poems to writing or books, as 
 a part of the civilization which they describe ; ^ and though 
 this in itself were no conclusive argument, as any poet who 
 uses pen and ink is not even in these days obliged to make 
 his heroes do so, yet taken in connection with the general 
 character of the poems, and the circumstances of the time, 
 as ascertained by historical analogy, it is in nowise to be 
 looked on as an altogether indifferent circumstance. 
 
 So far we have confined our remarks to the external aids 
 and authorities, by means of which the poet and his works 
 are in the first place commended to our attention. It now re- 
 mains from this general basis of outward historical proba- 
 bilities and presumptions, to direct our inquiry into the 
 character and genius of the poems themselves, and from this 
 investigation either to transmute our probabilities into cer- 
 tainties, or throw them aside as unsupported, or contradicted 
 by a higher, and the highest sort of evidence. For no 
 mere array of authorities, however venerable, can in the 
 long run support an incoherent tradition that carries its own 
 contradiction in its face. This eternal superiority of imma- 
 nent and inherent, to merely accredited evidence, has, since 
 Bentley's famous dissection of the epistles of Phalaris, ban- 
 ished from the shelves of authentic classical traditiofir, many 
 a hoary tome that had long held an honored place there, 
 along with the most venerated worthies of the Greek and 
 
 1 The af/fiara Tarypdi in Iliad, vi. 168, is ambiguous. 
 
HOMER. 205 
 
 Roman pantheon. How stands the case with regard to the 
 Iliad and Odyssey'? Are these works what they have for 
 nearly three thousand years been reputed to be — the great 
 poems of a great old Ionian poet — or do they bear the trick 
 of forgery on their face, and show the patchwork of a bung- 
 ling fabricator on the phylacteries of their outer garment ? 
 
 The severe ordeal which the Homeric poems, in the. way 
 of internal analysis, have undergone, takes its rise in modern 
 times from the publication of a famous edition by F. A. Wolf, 
 a German professor of extraordinary talent, in the year 1795. 
 This scholar, partly following the bent of his own genius, 
 partly, no doubt, carried along by the general revolutionary 
 tendencies of the age, did, in the Prolegomena prefixed to 
 his edition, set forth an extremely skeptical doctrine with 
 regard to Homer and his poetry, with such rare learning, 
 vigor, and taste, that it was impossible for German minds to 
 resist him ; and though the whole tendency and love of 
 English scholarship runs in a directly contrary direction,* as 
 
 ^ It is remarkable that the germs of the Wolfian theory travelled 
 from this country over to Germany; and Wolf, in his Prolegomena, 
 honestly recognizes Wood and Bentley as valuable pionfeers of the 
 doctrine which he so eloquently enforces. Bentley's well-known 
 utterance with regard to Homer is found in his Remarks on a late Dis- 
 course on Free Thinking, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis ( Works by Dyce, 
 iii. 304). " To prove Homer's universalPlnowledge, our author says, 
 'he designed his poem for eternity to please and instruct mankind;' but 
 take my word for it, poor Homer, in those circumstances and early 
 times, had never such aspiring thoughts. He wrote a sequel of songs 
 and rhapsodies to be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at 
 festivals and other days of merriment; the Iliad he made for the men, 
 and the Odyssey for the other sex ; " from which passage thrown out 
 incidentally, however, be it remembered, and not deliberately meas- 
 ured in eveiy word, one thing seems plain, that by using the word 
 " Sequel," the great critic gives us plainly to understand that he held 
 there was an essential unity of plan going through both works, which 
 puts him plainly out of the roll of thorough-going Wolfians, and 
 advocates of what Nitsch calls the Klein-lieder-theorie. Among other 
 18 
 
206 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the great work of Clinton sufficiently testifies, it cannot be 
 denied that beyond the pale of mere Oxonians the Wolfian 
 views have exercised no small influence in forming the criti- 
 cal opinions of some of the best educated minds in England. 
 The critical spirit of the age, the skeptical researches of 
 Niebuhr with regard to Roman history, and the increasing 
 action of German scholarship on the learning of this coun- 
 try, have all tended to produce this result. The theory of 
 Wolf, founded not merely on a minute critical analysis of 
 the poems, but, as he imagined also, on satisfactory external 
 evidence, was to the effect, that whether a great poet called 
 Homer ever existed or not, the two great poems generally 
 attributed to him are no homogeneous works created by the 
 plastic power of a presiding genius, but mere aggregates of 
 various origin, gathered together from the great floating ele- 
 ment of popular poetry in Greece, and cunningly licked 
 into shape by certain expert literary artizans in the days of 
 Pisistratus. Now, with regard to the external evidence on 
 which this paradox is founded, it seems at this hour gener- 
 ally agreed, even among the Germans, that the authorities 
 relied on by Wolf do in nowise support his extreme con- 
 clusion, do not in fact go beyond the historical statement of 
 the matter which we have just made, — a statement per- 
 fectly consistent both with the personal existence of one 
 great poet, and the or^Riizing action of his presiding spirit 
 on the two great poems that go by his name. The advo- 
 cates of the Wolfian theory, therefore, are now driven to 
 confine themselves to a series of arguments drawn from tlu; 
 minute critical examination of the text of the poems, by 
 means of which they think they have evolved such an 
 imposing array of inconsistencies, as is utterly iocompatible 
 
 notable anticipators of Wolf's theory, the case of the Neapolitan phi- 
 losojjher Vico, has often been mentioned. See Scienza nuova Uhro 
 terzo; ddla discoverta del vero Omero, first published in the year 1725, 
 and repeatedly reprinted. 
 
HOMER. 207 
 
 with the belief in the presiding control of one great mind. 
 Among those who have distinguished themselves in this 
 field of what we may call Homeric histology, is Carl Lach- 
 mann, lately deceased, a Berlin professor of great erudition 
 and subtlety, as attested by well-known works in various 
 departments of philological investigation. It behooves us, 
 therefore, to inquire, on what presumptions and on what 
 principles the analytical criticism of this school is founded ; 
 and when we have shown^that these presumptions require 
 to be inverted, and that these principles are altogether false 
 or altogether misapplied, we may spare our readers the 
 trouble of a minute and curious refutation of the individual 
 objections. Those who wish to pursue the question into its 
 details, may consult the little tract of Lachmann,^ or the 
 English work of Colonel Mure,^ a book replete with the 
 best German learning, and, what is of greater consequence, 
 animated throughout with a spirit of good-sense, and a fine 
 poetical appreciation, which very few Germans can boast of. 
 In an investigation of this kind the presumptions with 
 which a man starts, though not always distinctly set forth, 
 are of the utmost consequence in determining his procedure. 
 The false historical presumptions from which Wolf pro- 
 ceeded, naturally led him to seek for flaws in the texture of 
 the Homeric poems ; and it is manifest that even Mr. Grote, 
 who justly considers the extreme Wolfian theory as quite 
 untenable, in propounding his wild scheme of resolving the 
 Iliad into two distinct parts, has been influenced, partly by 
 his desire to mitigate what he calls " the wonder " of the 
 creation, and the preservation of two such long continuous 
 poems, bearing the stamp of one mind, in an age when writ- 
 mg was altogether unknown. That there are no external 
 
 1 Betrachtungen iiber Homer's llias, Berlin, 1847. 
 
 2 A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece, 
 second edition, London, 1854, vols. i. and ii. 
 
208 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 historical presumptions of this kind we have already at- 
 tempted to show ; a presumption of a different kind we shall 
 now state. It is not to be presumed that Homer would be 
 anxiously accurate about the mere articulation or joint-work 
 of his epic poems, for several reasons. First, because he 
 was a poet, and aimed, as all true poets do, mainly at pro- 
 ducing an effect on the feelings and imaginations of his 
 hearers, not on their mere cognitive capacity. Small mis- 
 takes in incidental matters taken cognizance of by the curi- 
 ous understanding only, might, without offence, be committed 
 by a great singer of poetry, as they would certainly not be 
 observed by a healthy-minded hearer ; and that mistakes of 
 this kind actually have been made, and are even now daily 
 made by poets and novelists of the highest order, has been 
 shown by Colonel Mure in the most effective manner. 
 Second, because he was a popular poet, a wandering minstrel 
 with a lyre in his hand, as he is truly represented in all the 
 old biographies, and not a learned Southey sitting in a li- 
 brai-y, with books, and desk, and pen, and ink, printers' proof 
 sheets, publishers' quarterly reviews, and every,6ort of liter- 
 ary apparatus of the newest and most approved description. 
 In judging of the Iliad as a whole, we must never forget, 
 though it seems to be very generally forgotten, that it was 
 not, could not be, Homer's immediate object to compose a 
 great whole, for the plain and simple reason that he had 
 comparatively few opportunities of using such a whole. His 
 art, therefore, was to concatenate a series of parts, which, 
 while they might be used with effect on a few great festive 
 occasions as a whole, were meant to produce their general 
 and most appreciable effect, in the shape of parts either 
 absolutely complete in themselves, or admitting of being 
 easily supplemented by the indwelling traditional lore, 
 which the poet could legitimately presuppose in the minds of 
 his hearers. Something analogous to this we have in the 
 great historical plays of Shakspeare, consisting of several 
 
HOMER. 209 
 
 parts, in any of wliich if there happened to be some small 
 inconsistencies with the other parts, none but a curious per- 
 son making a business of criticism would ever notice it, as 
 the parts, though connected in conception, are so constructed 
 as to give the impression of completeness, where they are 
 represented as separate wholes. If this point be duly con- 
 sidered, and there is nothing more certain or more duly 
 attested in the history of these poems, the weakness of a 
 great number of the objections made by Lachmann and 
 Grote to the concatenation of the Iliad will instantly appear. 
 The tenth book for instance — that in which the midnight 
 expedition of Diomedes and Ulysses is described — ha*, it 
 is said, no necessary connection with the parts of the poem 
 that precede or follow, and might be cut out without injury. 
 Of course ; because it was the object of the poet to string 
 together a number of little wholes, originally independent, 
 that they might still remain little wholes, and yet become 
 parts of a great whole — an exquisite trick of art plainly, 
 and which, as the whole history of popular poetry teaches, 
 it required precisely a mighty genius like Homer to perform. 
 And this brings us to the third presumption, with which we 
 must start in judging of the alleged inconsistencies of the 
 Iliad. We must bear in mind that Homer did not make 
 his materials, but received them ; the little wholes which he 
 had to recast and organize into a great whole, already 
 existed in the minds and in the mouths of the people whom 
 he addressed, just as the Romaic ballads that arose out of 
 the war of independence in 1821-7 exist in the minds and 
 mouths of the Hellenes of the present day, waiting for some 
 second Homer, it may be, to fuse them with a great epos 
 of Missolonghi, when the day may at length have come 
 for that reconstruction of that Byzantine empire which the 
 late Czar of Russia said he would on no account tolerate. 
 In the same way an epic poem of Caledonian loyalty, 
 were the times favorable, might be made out of the materials 
 
 18* 
 
210 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 contained 'in the Scottish Jacobite songs ; and a grander 
 epos still called "The Fall of Napoleon," might be con- 
 structed containing many finely dramatic materials from the 
 war songs composed by Korner and others in the great Ger- 
 man rising of 1813. Now, if the rich materials of popular 
 traditionary song, out of which Homer constructed the Iliad 
 (and no person who knows any thing about such matters will 
 think it more probable that he made it out of nothing) con- 
 tained, as they could not but contain, certain elements that 
 would be incongruous, when the diiferent parts were worked 
 up into a new whole; and if Homer did not care — as the 
 practice of his art did not require him to be particularly 
 curious — whether every line or phrase that marked the 
 original independence of these parts, was nicely obliterated, 
 it is manifest that the small flaws in the concatenation which 
 may here and there be ,visible to the curious eye, prove, not 
 as Lachmann imagines, that one poet did not organize the 
 whole, but that Homer gave himself no concern to disguise 
 the fact, that the several parts of his poem, both in the pop- 
 ular tradition and in the actual practice of his art, had a 
 complete and independent existence apart from the magni- 
 ficent whole into which his genius had organized them. 
 
 These considerations will enable the student of Homer to 
 make short work, not only with the hypercritical captiousness 
 and the peeping anatomy of Lachmann's Betrachtungen, but 
 also with the more large and philosophical analysis of Mr. 
 Grote. We must not start in our inquiry into the unity 
 of the Iliad, with the strong inclination to magnify the im- 
 portance of small inconsistencies, but with the most charita- 
 ble desire possible to overlook them. This poet, as com- 
 pared with Virgil, Dante, or Milton, demands the special 
 indulgence of the critic ; and yet it does rather seem that 
 from Wolf down to Grote, the whole army of objectors are 
 keenly set upon being particularly severe, in many cases pos- 
 itively ill-natured, and, from a poetic point of view, as 
 
HOMER. 211 
 
 Colonel Mure has triumphantly shown, positively unjust. 
 For not only do they pay no regard to those kindly consider- 
 ations which we have stated, arising out of the peculiar 
 position of the poet, and the nature of his materials, but 
 with a perverse ingenuity pardonable scarcely in Germans, 
 they insist on judging poetry by rules applicable only to 
 works composed with a strictly practical, or a purely scien- 
 tific view. If an experienced soldier like Napoleon could 
 criticize with such a cutting eloquence the description of the 
 taking of Troy by the polished and learned \^rgil which yet 
 speaks admirably to the imagination,^ how strange and how 
 unreasonable that a gentleman of Mr. Grote's discernment 
 should urge as a strong proof against the authenticity of the 
 seventh book of the Iliad, the circumstance that it repre- 
 sents a ditch or dyke, as having been made in the ninth year 
 of the war, which, according to all principles of military 
 tactics, should have been made, as Thucydides "^ seems to 
 have taken the liberty of supposing it was made, in the first 
 year ! The answer to all such very scientific cavils is this, 
 that Homer was neither a soldier nor a critic, but a poet ; 
 and that when composing the seventh book of the Iliad, he 
 had before his mind's eye not a future Vegetius or a Grote, 
 but only the wrath of Achilles, and the place which that oc- 
 cupied in the popular traditions of ^olia. If critical spec- 
 tacles were not used when popular poems were composed, 
 their correct appreciation can allow no place to scientific 
 microscopes. Many things may be discovered by scientific 
 eyes, — wonders in the white rock, wonders in the blue 
 cheese, — but the character and effect of popular poetry 
 does not come within the laws of that particular kind of 
 vision. Even Mr. Grote, who has so ably exposed the 
 absurdity of the Wolfian " small song theory " (Klein-lie- 
 der-theorie), which resolves the Iliad into an aggregate of 
 
 1 See Classical Museum, Vol. I. p. 205. 2 History, I. 11. 
 
212 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 separate ballads, implying no common authorship on the 
 ground of alleged inconsistencies, has, in attempting to 
 resolve the same great work into two separate works, the 
 AchilTeid and the Iliad, adopted a principle of criticism, 
 which every man who has any practical knowledge of poets 
 and poetry, must feel to be quite out of place. " The last 
 two books of the poem," he says, " were probably additions 
 to the original Achilleid ; for the death of Hector satisfies the 
 exigencies of a coherent scheme, and we are not entitled to 
 extend the oldest poem beyond the limits which such neces- 
 sity prescribes. And in the spirit of this criticism, he cuts 
 out the whole books, from the second to the seventh inclu- 
 sive, because the coherent scheme of an Achilleid is suffi- 
 ciently satisfied without them, and there is no necessity for 
 extending the oldest poem beyond the limits which such 
 exigency requires. But a great poet is not influenced in the 
 selection or the arrangement of his material by any exi- 
 gency of this kind ; that nude coherency of scheme which 
 satisfies a mere logical mind, may omit precisely those ele- 
 ments which work most powerfully on his own mind and 
 that of his hearers ; not imaginative meagreness and par- 
 simony, but luxuriance and exuberance is his law. On the 
 whole, the candid student of Lachmann and Grote, if he be a 
 person of native poetical appreciation, will have no difficulty 
 in coming to the conclusion, that the great mass of the 
 recent skeptical objections against the organic unity of the 
 Iliad, proceed on essentially perverse and oblique principles, 
 and that the brave old minstrel has assuredly fallen on evil 
 days, when men are eager to judge him for whose judgment 
 he never wrote, and by canons which he never acknowl- 
 edged. 
 
 The current of these remarks by no means implies that 
 there are no interpolations in the received text of Homer. 
 They are merely to tlve effect, that the sharpest scrutiny of 
 modern criticism and hyp-jrcriticism has failed to point out 
 
HOMER. 213 
 
 any such gross incongruities in the component parts of the 
 poem, as wpuld distinctly indicate the separate authorship 
 of those parts. In other words, the positive impression of 
 an organic unity which the unlearned reader receives from 
 the perusal of these poems, can in nowise he considered to 
 have been nullified by the multiform endeavors of learned 
 men to prove, that these famous poems are, to any consider- 
 able extent, an aggregation of independent and unharmo- 
 nized integers. That those integers once existed in that 
 crude state, may be assumed as most certainly true ; but the 
 poems, as we now have them, prove, in the face of the most 
 cruel analysis, that these crude elements did, in the earliest 
 ages of Greek culture, come under the fusing and formative 
 influence of a great poet-mind so completely, that any at- 
 tempt to resolve them into their primitive elements by the 
 method of mere analysis must prove a failure. With this 
 understanding, . every reasonable man must be willing to 
 admit that there are, and must in the nature of the case be, 
 not a few extraneous additions to a work, which was a sort 
 of public property in everybody's hands for several hundred 
 years before it was finally fixed down to the literary form in 
 which we now have it. Some of the interpolations, of 
 course, may be pointed out, with more or less success, ac- 
 cording to the general laws by which incongruities in liter- 
 ary documents are exposed ; but in addition to the pre- 
 sumptions for leniency of treatment already stated, the 
 critical reviser of the Homeric text must bear in mind, that 
 there prevails in the popular poetry of all countries a cer- 
 tain current tone, and common property in thought and 
 in expression, which makes it extremely diflacult, from mere 
 internal evidence, to distinguish the original work of the 
 great master-mind from the additions made by a skilful 
 interpolator. Under these extremely delicate and dubious 
 conditions, it does appear extremely strange, that Lachmann 
 and so many other learned Germans, should talk with as 
 
214 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 much dogmatic decision about the original constituent ele- 
 ments of the Iliad, as if they had been present at their 
 creation, and personally superintended their manufacture ; 
 and a plain man can only conclude with regard to the whole 
 matter, that in philology, as in metaphysics, these minute 
 investigators have, by an intense special devotion, worked 
 themselves into a sort of chronic insanity, from which only 
 time and the gradual operation of certain potent political 
 and social causes may ultimately achieve their redemption. 
 
 Before we leave this part of the subject a few words may 
 be allowed to the famous question. Whether, assuming Ho- 
 mei''s authorship of the Iliad, there be not reasonable 
 grounds for assigning the Odyssey to the plastic powers of 
 a difi^rent and less mighty minstrel ? Now, if this were 
 altogether an open question, and there were no distinct and 
 intelligible Hellenic traditions as to the common authorship 
 of these two wonderful poems, not a few things might be 
 urged in favor of a separate authorship which might have 
 weight with a reasonable critic. There is a certain more 
 mild and subdued tone in the Odyssey, which, along with 
 certain points of difference in incidental matters, might be 
 suflficient, were there no contrary evidence to authorize the 
 supposition of a different intellectual origin. But the great 
 error of those who, in modern times, take upon themselves 
 to assert the separate authorship of these works, is the 
 groundless assumption that the general voice and tradition 
 of Hellenic antiquity is to be taken as an element of no 
 weight soever, in the critical estimate of such a matter. 
 On this point we differ toto coelo from the Germans, and are 
 nothing ashamed to believe, with our learned countryman, 
 Colonel Mure, that Aristotle, Plato, and the overwhelming 
 majority of the highest intellects in Greece, had very suf- 
 ficient reasons for placing a wide gulf between the two 
 epic poems which they agreed to stamp with the name of 
 Homer, and the very inferior works of a cognate character. 
 
HOMER. . 215 
 
 known afterwards under the name of the Epic Cycle. Na- 
 'ture did not produce twin Homers in those old Greek days, 
 we may depend upon it, any more than she has produced in 
 these days twin Dantes or twin Shakespeares.^ If there 
 had been a second Homer of genius large enough to pro- 
 duce a counterpoise to such a work as the Iliad, no doubt 
 the Homeridae of some second Chios would have been 
 equally eager to stereotype his memory in their compo- 
 sition, and to immortalize themselves with his name. But 
 precisely, we imagine, because there was only one Homer, 
 was there only one guild of gentile Homeridae, and one 
 uniform undisputed authorship of the Iliad and the Odys- 
 sey among the Greeks till some pragmatical grammarians in 
 meagre Alexandria (among whom a certain Xenon and 
 Hellanicus are specialized), the prototypes of our modern 
 Wolfians, began to nibble at imagined incongruities, and to 
 moot the question of separate authorship. Such being the 
 historical conditions under which the question is raised, it is 
 manifest that the presumptions, as in the question about the 
 unity of the Iliad, are all against the disintegrators ; and a 
 detailed examination of their array of minute and micro- 
 scopic objections to the common authorship will, in all likeli- 
 hood, bi'ing the intelligent student, as it has brought Colonel 
 Mure, to a distinct verdict oi not proven. One may, indeed, 
 urge the same objection against all the objections of the 
 Separatists — Xo3Qi'C,ovxig as they were called — that Mr. 
 Grote has urged against Lachmann and the minute dissec- 
 tors of the Iliad. " The Wolfian theory," says that emi- 
 nent scholar, " explains the gaps and contradictions through- 
 out the narrative, but it explains nothing else. In like 
 manner, we may say the theory of the Separatists explains 
 the small incongruities between the Iliad and the Odyssey, 
 
 1 " Some people believe in twenty Homers ; we in one. Nature is 
 not 80 prodigal of her poets." (John Wilson, in Blackwood's Maga- 
 »ine, April, 1831.) 
 
216 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 but it leaves out of account altogether a more difficult matter 
 to explain — the very remarkable congruity that exists be- 
 tween the whole style, tone, color, and materials of these 
 poems. This congruity has been pointed out with great 
 skill and effect by Colonel Mure, also by a recent French 
 writer, Alexis Pierron,^ whose words, after so much heavy 
 discussion with the Germans, the English reader will doubt- 
 less accept as a welcome relief : — 
 
 " Mais le style, les tours de phrase, I'ordre et le mouve- 
 ment des pens^es ! mais le versification ! mais les formules 
 consacr^es ! mais les epithetes traditionelles ! c'est la ce que 
 les chorizontes negligent de comparer dans le deux poems. 
 Je n'hesite pas a dire, que cent vers pris au hazard dans I'un 
 ne ressemblent pas moins a cent vers pris dans I'autre, et pour 
 la facture, et pour la tournure, et pour le mouvement general, 
 que ceux-ci ne ressemblent a tous les vers qui les precedent 
 et les suivent. Si le style est I'homme meme, comme dit 
 Buffon, le m§me style c'est le mgme homme. If n'y a qu'un 
 Homere. Le style ne s'enleve pas : et, malgr^ tous les 
 efforts, on ne prend pas le tour d'esprit d'un autre : on 
 n'ecrit qu'avec soi-meme, mieux qu'autrui ou plus mal, aussi 
 bien peut-etre, mais toujours autrement. Sans doute c'est 
 une grande merveille, que le meme homme qui a compose 
 riliade soit aussi I'auteur de I'Odyssee. Mais le phenomene 
 de ressemblance admis pas le chorizontes est bien plus inoui 
 encore. Le vieux Pythagoricien, Ennius, disoit 'que I'ame 
 d'Homere avoit passe dans la sienne ; et Ton sait quel Ho- 
 mere c'etoit qu' Ennius. C'est bien une autre metempsy- 
 cose qu'il nous faudrait admettre, pour donner raison a ces 
 Pythagoriciens nouveaux. II y a une chose cent fois plus 
 extraordinaire que I'existence d'un Homere unique, c'est 
 I'existence de deux Homeres." 
 
 After having cleared our way through this dreary accu- 
 
 1 Litl€rature Grecqtie, Paris, 1850. 
 
HOMER. 217 
 
 mulation of critical briers and brambles, it only remains 
 that we state shortly what is the real character and worth of 
 the Homeric poems, as we have them, and what is their 
 proper and enduring place in the poetical literature of the 
 world. And here we must start with a grateful recognition 
 of the point of view on which our judgment of the Homeric 
 poems has been placed by the labors of Wolf and his fol- 
 lowers. Their error did not lie in their blindness to the true 
 character of these productions, but in their attributing to a 
 dozen or a score of Homers a phenomenon which finds a 
 more obvious and satisfactory explanation in the time-hon- 
 ored recognition of one. But the genuine character of the 
 Iliad and the Odyssey as the poetry of the people composed 
 to be sung, not the poetry of the individual written to be 
 read, though previously discovered by Bentley, Vico, and 
 Wood,^ was never generally acknowledged and felt till it 
 was brought forward by Wolf, and scattered over Europe 
 by the host of enthusiastic disciples whom his genius roused 
 into a new and vivid consciousness of a great truth. AH 
 the errors of that school, in fact, which we have been obliged 
 to criticize in severe language, were but exaggerations and 
 caricatures of the great truth which Wolf propounded in 
 his Prolegomena of the essential generic difference between 
 Paradise Lost, the epos of the scholarly man Milton, and 
 Homer's Iliad, the epos of the rude Greek people. Homer 
 lived in an age when the individual poet had not commenced 
 to separate himself from the general culture of his people, 
 after such a strange fashion as ,we see in the Shelleys, the 
 Byrons, the Wordsworths, and the Tennysons of modern 
 times. The poetry of Homer, therefore, represents the age 
 of Homer more completely than the most popular of our 
 highly cultivated modern poetry represents the age to which 
 the poet belongs. The reason of this plainly is, that in the 
 
 ^ An Essay On the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, by R. 
 Wood, Esq., London, 1770. 
 
 19 
 
218 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 earliest ages of society, the minstrel was the only and the 
 universal exponent of the highest moral and intellectual life 
 of his age, and had an existence only as expressing this 
 culture in a popular and effective way. Whereas, in later 
 times, the man of genius rose into an independent existence, 
 and often expressed merely his own cultures and that of a 
 select body — more or less numerous — of literary sympa- 
 thizers and . admirers whom he might have the power to 
 attach. The intimate relation that existed between the 
 heroic doidog and his hearers may perhaps be best under- 
 stood by comparing that sort of action and reaction which 
 exists between the writers of leading articles in a newspa- 
 per like the Times, and the public to whom their daily ap- 
 peals are addressed. A similar case occurs in the weekly 
 addresses of a popular preacher to a religious people like the 
 Scotch, whose faith has not degenerated into decent formal- 
 ism or unmeaning ceremonial. Herein, therefore, lies the 
 invaluable excellence of the Homeric poems, which Wolf 
 profoundly felt, and which made him careless about the mere 
 personality of their reputed author, — in the fact that, 
 whether these poems be the composition of one, or a half a 
 hundred minstrels, they are equally inspired by the breath 
 of a great poetic soul, and that soul the highest life of the 
 Greek people, at one of the most poetic periods of its exist- 
 ence. Recognizing this fundamental truth, the great Ger- 
 man critic could readily let loose from his grasp a great 
 many much-bespoken excellencies of the mere man Homer, 
 apart from the Greek peopje, w^ich were either quite imag- 
 inary, or not at all necessary to the main fact of the essen- 
 tially popular and national character of the poems. In 
 room of a great mass of foolish indiscriminate eulogy heaped 
 up by various famous critics both ancient and modern, Wolf 
 enunciated the peculiar excellence of the great king of Hel- 
 lenic ballad-singers in the following simple and significant 
 words : " Haec carraina paullo diligentius cognita admiran- 
 
feOMER. 219 
 
 dam ostendant vim naturae atque ingenii minorem artis, nul- 
 1am reconditae doctrinae et exquisitae." ^ The first great excel- 
 lence of Homer's poetry, as here expressed, undoubtedly lies 
 in its complete naturalness, simplicity, and healthiness, with 
 an entire absence of all those faults which are the natural 
 product of over-stimulated art in a high state of intellectual 
 culture. In thought. Homer exhibits nothing strained, far- 
 fetched, or affected ; in sentiment, no morbid groping, no cu- 
 rious over-nice sensibility in particular favorite directions ; 
 in moral tone, neither prudery nor wantonness ; no uncom- 
 fortable strife between the real and ideal, betAveen poetry 
 and life, between rhyme and reason. With the bard of the 
 Iliad, as indeed to a great extent with all the Greek poets 
 in the best ages, the ideal is only the highest step in the lad- 
 der of the real. In style again, we find in Homer, as in the 
 Old Testament, nothing that smacks of the artist ; there is no 
 forced and studied concentration as in Thucydides and 
 Tacitus ; no stringing together of brilliant antitheses as in 
 Velleius Paterculus ; much less any theatrical turgidity and 
 proposed pomp of words as in Lucan, and not a few of the 
 later classics, both Greek and Roman, who flourished at a 
 period when language had lost its native modesty and be- 
 come vitiated, as a conceited beauty does by an assiduous 
 contemplation of her own perfections. Closely connected 
 with this complete naturalness of Homer, is his remarkable 
 objectiveness, as the German critics call it, — that is to say, 
 the extraordinary clearness, breadth, accuracy, and vigor of 
 his impi'essions of the external world : or as an artist would 
 say, his fine eye both for minute delicacy of detail and gran- 
 deur of general effect in his pictures. The reason of this 
 lies in the fact that Homer lived in a perfectly natural state 
 of society, when all men, and especially poets, were con- 
 stantly called upon to use their eyes, not upon gray parch- 
 
 1 Prolegom., 12. 
 
220 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ment and spotted paper, but upon the fresh and ever-chang- 
 ing^ variety of- those soul-seizing pictures which nature and 
 life are continually pouring in upon those whose eyes are 
 quick and open to her fulness. In Homer there is found 
 not the least trace of the anxiously subtle thought, the loose- 
 floating sentiment, the cloudy imaginations, the dim specula- 
 tions, the gray intangible abstractions that never fail to char- 
 acterize the poetry of a later age, when the particular men- 
 tal character of the poet assumes an undue prominence, and 
 the writer wastes himself in a painful struggle to find ade- 
 quate expressions for certain infinite longings and indefinite 
 desires that have no counterpart in the external world, or in 
 the bosom of any healthy-minded reader. Not a less re- 
 markable consequence of the nice harmony between Homer 
 and his audience was the honest faith and unaffected re- 
 ligiousness that breathes through every page of his two great 
 works. Poets, indeed, are naturally a religious race, and, 
 except under peculiar, harsh influences, readily harmonize 
 with the theological belief of the country to whose human 
 aspirations it is their high mission to give utterance. But in 
 ages of high intellectual culture, when the individual often 
 runs aside into strange tracks of private speculation, the lead- 
 ing minds of the day, including poets, often find themselves 
 forced into a state of strange and uncomfortable protest 
 against the religious convictions of the masses whom they 
 are destined to lead ; and in this way strange phenomena 
 become visible in the literary heaven, — as in the case of 
 Euripides, Lucretius, Lucan, Lucian, Goethe, Byron, Burns, 
 Shelley, and many more. With difiiculties of this kind, 
 which always interfere to a great extent with a poet's popu- 
 lar influence. Homer had nothing to do. The theology of 
 his day was no doubt full of puerilities, and not free from 
 contradictions ; but philosophy yet unborn had not brought 
 these puerilities and inconsistencies into a distinctly felt 
 collision with the higher sentiments of a healthy piety in the 
 
HOMES. 221 
 
 mind of the great minstrel. Homer's piety is accordingly 
 thoroughly serious, but withal playfully cheerful. Calvin- 
 istic readers might think him jesting sometimes ; and grave 
 German critics have been offended at the tone of the love 
 affair of Ares and Aphrodite in Odyssey viii., which they 
 confidently pronounce an interpolation ; ^ but they are mis- 
 taken, — Lucian did not live till one thousand years after- 
 wards and he wrote many clever comic sketches indeed, but 
 not an Iliad. The epic poet, or great popular minstrel of a 
 heroic age, is' always a believer.^ 
 
 The extraordinary excellence of the Iliad and Odyssey as 
 pattern specimens of the popular epos, may be most readily 
 discerned by comparing them with the Niebelungen-lay 
 of the Germans, a poem composed in a similar stage of 
 society, and so much under the same circumstances that 
 Lachmann actually set himself to analyze it after the Wolfian 
 fashion, and resolve it into what he considered its constituent 
 "small songs." In this Teutonic epos the unprejudiced 
 reader will, along with many qtuet beauties, discover an 
 utter want of that equestrian vigor, manfulness, and fire, 
 which never remit in the sinewy and bracing course of the 
 Iliad. Homer sometimes seems to take his subject easily, — 
 either sleeps himself, no doubt, or some interpolated Homerid 
 is sleeping in his chair, — but he is never flat, never thin, 
 never weak. Of the Niebelungen-lay, on the other hand, 
 we may say that breadth, dilution, and weakness are the ohar- 
 acteristics ; it is a German Iliad, and a very German Iliad 
 
 1 On this point, and on the subject of Homeric interpolation gener- 
 ally, see some admirable remarks in a paper by W. Watkins Lloyd. 
 Classical Museum, Vol. vi., p. 387. 
 
 2 On the interesting subject of the Thedogy of Homer, see Nagels- 
 bach's Homensche Theologie, Niimberg, 1840; and Classical Museum, 
 Vol. vii., p. 414. The work of Granville Penn, — " An Examination 
 of the Primary Argument of the Iliad, London, 1821," — contains some 
 ideas on this subject that must be regarded as high-flown and hyper- 
 bolical, and remote from the simple truth. 
 
 19* 
 
22? NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 indeed, as Coleridge said of the Messiah of Klopstock — an 
 Iliad composed by an old German in his easy chair, envelop- 
 ing his ungirt muse in a loose-floating atmosphere of tobacco- 
 smoke ; — Homer in his shppers. But besides vigor, the 
 Greek asserts his proud preeminence over the German by 
 the healthy hilarity, and the rich sunny luxuriance of his 
 fine Ionic temperament. One feels that these poems were 
 written in a clime where, next to Olympian Jove, the shin- 
 ing Apollo was the great object of local worship. His 
 variety and many-sidedness have been equally praised ; for, 
 though it is certainly true that there is, for our modern 
 tastes, a very considerable superfluity of mere fighting in the 
 Iliad, we must bear in mind that Homer wrote in an age 
 when the soldier was the only hero, and for a people to 
 whom the recital of the military exploits of their ancestors 
 was as full of moral significance, as the trials of the Apostle 
 Paul are to a modern Christian. Not less admirable, finally, 
 than his vigor, his sunniness, and his luxuriant variety, are 
 the sobriety, sense, and raQjieration — the truly Greek (Tcoqp^o- 
 avvTi — that every where regulate, and keep within chaste lim- 
 its, the billowy enthusiasm of the old minstrel. Occasionally, 
 perhaps, when a patriotic feeling interferes, there may be 
 discerned a little ludicrous exaggeration — as, for example, 
 in the manner in which Hector is made to comport himself 
 before the might of Achilles, in the twenty-second book ; 
 but, generally speaking, the poet's thorough naturalness and 
 truth, keep him by a safe instinct within the nicest limits of 
 good taste. In the Niebelungen-lay, on the other hand, as 
 in Klopstock's Messiah, there is a plentiful exhibition, in the 
 author's way, of the most appalling exaggeration. The ca- 
 tastrophe of the Odyssey, no doubt is sufliciently bloody ; but 
 this is the divine retributive vengeance of a goddess for a 
 long series of offences of a very gross and wanton descrip- 
 tion ; and, besides, it may well be called sober and moderate 
 when contrasted with that gigantic Cyclopean architectui-e 
 
HOMER. 223 
 
 of terrors cemented with streaming blood, and wrapt in 
 flames of portentous conflagration, which forms such a 
 grim catastrophe to'the grim epos of Niebelungen. 
 
 The works of Homer have been translated into all the 
 notable languages of the West ; seldom, however, or never, 
 it is to be feared, with the pervading perception of his true 
 character as a great popular minstrel, the general under- 
 standing of which great truth, as we have stated, dates in 
 Europe only from the publication of Wolf's Prolegomena 
 about sixty years ago. The best Italian translations are by 
 Cesarroti and Monti; French, by Dacier, de Rochefort, 
 Bitaub6 and Dugas-Montbel ; German, by Stolberg and 
 Voss ; English, by Chapman, Hobbes, Pope, Cowper, 
 Sotheby, and Newman. 
 
 For other details with regard to Homeric literature, 
 which forms a library in itself, the student, besides Colonel 
 Mure's great work, may consult Bernhardy's Griecfdsche 
 Literatur, Halle, 1845 ; Lauer's Homerische Poesie, Berlin, 
 1851, and Dr. Ihne's artiele in Smith's Dictionary. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMTTH, 
 
 Oliver Goldsmith was one of the most pleasing Eng- 
 lish writers of the eighteenth century. He was of a Protes- 
 tant and Saxon family which had long been settled in Ire- 
 land, and which had, like most other Protestant and Saxon 
 families, been, in troubled times, harassed and put in fear by 
 the native population. His father, Charles Goldsmith, 
 studied in the reign of Queen Anne at the diocesan school 
 of Elphin, became attached to the daughter of the school- 
 master, married her, took orders, and settled at a place 
 called Pallas, in the county of Longford. There he with 
 difficulty supported his wife and childi-en on what he could 
 earn, partly as a curate and partly as a farmer. 
 
 At Pallas, Oliver Goldsmith was born in November, 
 1728. That spot was then, for all practical purposes, almost 
 as r6mote from the busy and splendid capital in which his 
 later years were passed, as any clearing in Upper Canada 
 or any sheep-walk in Australasia now is. Even at this day, 
 those enthusiasts who venture to make a pilgrimage to the 
 birthplace of the poet, are forced to perform the latter part 
 of their journey on foot. The hamlet lies far from any 
 high road, on a dreary plain which, in wet weather, is often 
 a lake. The lanes would break any jaunting car to pieces ; 
 and there are ruts and sloughs through which the most 
 strongly built wheels cannot be dragged. 
 
 (224) 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 225 
 
 While Oliver was still a child, his father was presented 
 to a living worth about 200^. a year in the county of West- 
 meath. The family accordingly quitted their cottage in the 
 wilderness for a spacious house on a frequented road, near 
 the village of Lissoy. Here the boy was taught his letters 
 by a maid-servant, and was sent in his seventh year to a 
 village school kept by an old quarter-master on half pay, 
 who professed to teach nothing but reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic, but who had an inexhaustible fund of stories 
 about ghosts, banshees, and fairies, about the great Rap- 
 paree chiefs, Baldearg O'Donnell and galloping Hogan, and 
 about the exploits of Peterborough and Stanhope, the sur- 
 prise of Monjuich, and the glorious disaster of Brihuega. 
 This man must have been of the Protestant religion ; but 
 he was of the aboi'iginal race, and not only spoke the Irish 
 language, but could pour forth unpremeditated Irish verses. 
 Oliver early became, and through his. life continued to be, a 
 passionate admirer of the Irish music, and especially of the 
 compositions of Carolan, some of the last notes of whose 
 harp he heard. It ought to be added that Oliver, though 
 by birth one of the Englishry, and though connected by 
 numerous ties with the Established Church, never showed 
 the least sign of that contemptuous antipathy with which, in 
 his days, the ruling minority in Ireland too generally re- 
 garded tjbe subject majority. So far indeed was he from 
 sharing in the opinions and feelings of the caste to which he 
 belonged, that he conceived an aversion to the Glorious and 
 Immortal Memory, and, when George the Third was on the 
 throne, maintained that nothing but the restoration of the 
 banished dynasty could save the country. 
 
 From the humble ficademy kept by the old soldier. Gold- 
 smith was removed in his ninth year. He went to several 
 grammar-schools, and acquired some knowledge of the 
 ancient languages. His life, at this time, seems to have 
 been far from happy. He had, as appears from the admira- 
 
226 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ble portrait of him at Knowle, features harsh even to ugli- 
 ness. The smallpox had set its mark on him with more 
 than usual severity. His stature was small, and his limbs 
 ill put together. Among boys little tenderness is shown to 
 personal defects ; and the ridicule excited by poor Oliver's 
 appearance, was heightened by a peculiar simplicity and a 
 disposition to blunder which he retained to the last. He 
 became the common butt of boys and masters, was pointed 
 at as a fright in the play-ground, and flogged as a dunce in 
 the school-room. When he had risen to eminence, those 
 who had once derided him, ransacked their memory for the 
 events of his early years, and recited repartees anft couplets 
 which had dropped from him, and which, though little no- 
 ticed at the time, were supposed, a quarter of a century 
 later, to indicate the powers which produced the Vicar of 
 Wakefield and the Deserted Village. 
 
 In his seventeenth year Oliver went up to Trinity College, 
 Dublin, as a sizar. The sizars paid nothing for food and tui- 
 tion, and very little for lodging ; but they had to perform 
 some menial services from which they have long been re- 
 lieved. They swept the court ; they carried up the dinner 
 to the fellows' table, and changed the plates and poured out 
 the ale of the rulers of the society. Goldsmith was quar- 
 tered, not alone, in a garret, on the window of which his 
 name, scrawled by himself, is still read with interest. From 
 such garrets many men of less parts than his have made 
 their way to the woolsack or to the episcopal bench. But 
 Goldsmith, while he suffered all the humiliations, threw 
 away all the advantages of his situation. He neglected the 
 studies of the place, stood low at the examinations, was 
 turned d6wn to the bottom of his class for playing the buf- 
 foon in the lecture-room, was severely reprimanded for 
 pumping on a constable, and was caned by a brutal tutor 
 for giving a ball in the attic story of the college to some gay 
 youths and damsels of the city. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 227 
 
 While Oliver was leading at Dublin a life divided be- 
 tween squalid distress and squalid dissipation, his father 
 died, leaving a mere pittance. The youth obtained his 
 bachelor's degree, and left the university. During some 
 time the humble dwelling to which his widowed mother had 
 retired was his home. He was now in his twenty-first year ; 
 it was necessary that he should do something ; and his edu- 
 cation seemed to have fitted him to do nothing but to dress 
 himself in gaudy colors, of which he was as fond as a mag- 
 pie, to take a hand at cards, to sing Irish airs, to play the 
 flute, to angle in summer, and to tell ghost stories by the 
 fire in winter. He tried five or six professions in turn with- 
 out success. He applied for ordination ; but, as he applied 
 in scarlet clothes, he was speedily turned out of the episco- 
 pal palace. He then became tutor in an opulent family, 
 but soon quitted his situation in consequence of a dispute 
 about play. Then he determined to emigrate to Amex'ica. 
 His relations, with much satisfaction, set him out for Cork on 
 a good horse, with thirty pounds in his pocket. But in six 
 weeks he came back on a miserable hack, without a penny, 
 and informed his mother that the ship in which he had 
 taken his passage, having got a fair wind while he was at a 
 party of pleasure, had sailed without him. Then he re- 
 solved to study the law. A generous kinsman advanced 
 fifty pounds. With this sum Goldsmith went to Dublin, 
 was enticed into a gaming-house, and lost every shilling. 
 He then thought of medicine. A small purse was made 
 up ; and in his twenty-fourth year he was sent to Edin- 
 burgh. At Edinburgh he passed eighteen mpnths in nom- 
 inal attendance on lectures, and picked up some superficial 
 information about chemistry and natural history. Thence 
 he went to Leyden, still pretending to study physic. He 
 left that celebrated university, the third university at which 
 be had resided, in his twenty-seventh year, without a de- 
 gree, with the merest smattering of medical knowledge, and 
 
228 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 with no property but his clothes and his flute. His flute, 
 however, proved a useful friend. He rambled on foot 
 through Flanders, France, and Switzerland, playing tunes 
 which everywhere set the peasantry dancing, and which 
 often procured for him a supper and a bed. He wandered 
 as far as Italy. His musical performances, indeed, were 
 not to the taste of the Italians ; but he contrived to live on 
 the alms which he obtained at the gates of convents. It 
 should, however, be observed, that the stories which he told 
 about this part of his life ought to be received with great 
 caution ; for strict veracity was never one of his virtues ; 
 and a man who is ordinarily inaccurate in narration is likely 
 to be more than ordinarily inaccurate when he talks about 
 his own travels. Goldsmith, indeed, was so regardless of 
 truth as to assert in print that he was present at a most 
 interesting conversation between Voltaire and Fontenelle, 
 and that this conversation took place at Paris. Now it is 
 certain that Voltaire never was within a hundred leagues of 
 Paris during the whole time which Goldsmith passed on the 
 continent. 
 
 In 1756 the wanderer landed at Dover, without a shil- 
 ling, without a friend, and without a calling. He had, in- 
 deed, if his own unsupported evidence may be trusted, ob- 
 tained from the University of Padua, a doctor's degree ; but 
 this dignity proved utterly useless to him. In England his 
 flute was not in request ; there were no convents ; and he 
 was forced to have recourse to a series of desperate expedi- 
 ents. He turned strolling player ; but his face and figure 
 were ill suited to the boards of the humblest theatre. He 
 pounded drugs and ran about London with phials for chari- 
 table chemists. He joined a swarm of beggars which made 
 its nest in Axe Yard. He was for a time usher of a school, 
 and felt the miseries and humiliations of this situation so 
 keenly, that he thought it a promotion to be permitted 
 to earn his bread as a bookseller's hack; but he soon 
 
OLJVKR GOLDSMITH. 229 
 
 found the new yoke more galling than the old one, and 
 was glad to become an usher again. He obtained a 
 medical appointment in the service of the East India Com- 
 pany ; but the appointment was speedily revoked. Why it 
 was revoked we are not told. The subject was one on 
 which he never liked to talk. It is probable that he was 
 incompetent to perform the duties of the place. Then he 
 presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for examination, as 
 mate to a naval hospital. Even to so humble a post he was 
 found unequal. By this time the schoolmaster whom he had 
 served for a morsel of food and the third part of a bed, was 
 uo more. Nothing remained but to return to the lowest 
 drudgeiy of literature. Goldsmith took a garret in a mis- 
 erable court, to which he had to climb from the brink of 
 Fleet Ditch by a dizzy ladder of flagstones called Break- 
 neck Steps. The court and the ascent have long disap- 
 peai'ed ; but old Londoners well remember both. Here, 
 at thirty, the unlucky adventurer sat down to toil like a 
 galley-slave. 
 
 In the succeeding six years he sent to the press some 
 things which have survived, and many which have perished. 
 He produced articles for reviews, magazines, and newspa- 
 pers ; children's books which, bound in gilt paper and 
 adorned with hideous wood-cuts, appeared in the window 
 of the once far-famed shop at the comer of St. Paul's 
 Churchyard ; An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning 
 in Europe, which, though of little or no value> is still re- 
 printed among his works ; a Life of Beau Nash, which is 
 not reprinted, though it well deserves to be so ; a superfi- 
 cial and incorrect, but veiy readable History of England, in 
 a series of letters purporting to be addressed by a nobleman 
 to his son j and some very lively and amusing Sketches of 
 London Society, in a series of letters purporting to be ad- 
 dressed by a Chinese traveller to his friends. All these 
 works were anonymous ; but some of them were well known 
 20 
 
230 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 to be Goldsmith's ; and he gradually rose in the estimation 
 of the booksellers for whom he drudged. He was indeed 
 emphatically a popular writer. For accurate research or 
 grave disquisition he was not well qualified by nature or by 
 education. He knew nothing accurately : his reading had 
 been desultory ; nor had he meditated deeply on what he had 
 .read. He had seen much of the world ; but he had noticed 
 and retained little more of what he had seen, than some gro- 
 tesque incidents and characters which had happened to strike 
 his fancy. But though his mind was very scantily stored with 
 materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to 
 produce a wonderful effect. There have been many greater 
 writers ; but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly 
 agreeable. His style was always pure and easy, and, on 
 proper occasions, pointed and energetic. His narratives 
 were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, 
 his humor rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional 
 tinge of amiable sadness. About every thing that he wrote, 
 serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and 
 decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part 
 of whose life had been passed among thieves and beg- 
 gars, street-walkers and merry-andrews, in those squalid 
 dens which are the reproach of great capitals. 
 
 As his name gradually became known, the circle of his 
 acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who 
 was then considered as the first of living English writers ; 
 to Reynolds, the first of English painters ; and to Burke, 
 who had not yet entered parliament, but had distinguished 
 himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his 
 conversation. With these eminent men Goldsmith became 
 intimate. In 1763, he was one of the nine original mem- 
 bers of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been 
 called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed 
 that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of The 
 Club. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 231 
 
 By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwell- 
 ing at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers 
 in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. But he 
 was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close 
 of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear, that his landlady 
 one morning called in the help of a sheriff's officer. The 
 debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a message to John- 
 son ; and Johnson always friendly, though often surly, sent 
 back the messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow 
 speedily. He came and found that Goldsmith had changed 
 the guinea, and was railing at the landlady over a bottle of 
 Madeira. Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and en- 
 treated his friend to consider calmly how money was to be 
 procured. Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for 
 the press. Johnson glanced at the manuscript, saw that 
 there were good things in it, took it to a bookseller, sold it 
 for 60/. and soon returned with the money. The rent was 
 paid and the sheriff's officer withdrawn. According to one 
 story. Goldsmith gave his landlady a sharp reprimand for 
 her treatment of him ; according to another he insisted on 
 her joining him in a bowl of punch. Both stories are 
 probably true. The novel which was thus ushered into the 
 world was the Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 But before the. Vicar of Wakefield appeared in print, 
 came the great crisis of Goldsmith's literary life. In 
 Christmas week, 1764, he published a poem entitled The 
 Traveller. It was the first work to which he had put his 
 name ; and it at once raised him to the rank of a legitimate 
 English classic. The opinion of the most skilful critics was, 
 that nothing finer had appeared in verse since the fourth 
 book of the Dunciad: In one respect the Traveller differs 
 from all Goldsmith's other writings. In general his de- 
 signs were bad, and his execution good. In the Traveller^ 
 the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far infe- 
 rior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or 
 
232 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. 
 An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, 
 near the point where three great countries meet, looks down 
 on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, re- 
 calls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of 
 religion, of national character, which he has observed, and 
 comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness 
 depends little on political institutions, and much on the 
 temper and regulation of our own minds. 
 
 While the fourth edition of the Traveller was on the 
 counters of the booksellers, the Ticar of Wakefield appeared, 
 and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to 
 our own time, and which is likely to last as long as our 
 language. The fable is indeed one of the worst that ever 
 was constructed. It wants, not merely that probability 
 which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, 
 but that consistency which ought to be found even in the 
 wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. But the 
 earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral poetry, 
 together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his 
 spectacles, the vicar and his monogamy, the sharper and 
 his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aristotle that rela- 
 tives are related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous 
 task of converting a rakish lover by studying the contro- 
 versy between. Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great 
 ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and 
 Dr. Burdock's verses, and Mr. Burchell with his " Fudge," 
 have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been 
 caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages. 
 The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. 
 As we approach the catastrophe the absurdities lie thicker 
 and thicker, and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer 
 and rarer. 
 
 The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist 
 emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist He 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. ^ 233 
 
 wrote the Good-natured Man, a piece which had a worse 
 fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at 
 Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but 
 was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his 
 benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than 
 500/., five times as much as he had made by the Traveller 
 and the Vicar of Wakefield together. The plot of the 
 Good-Matured Man is, like almost all Goldsmith^s plots, 
 very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely 
 ludicrous ; much more ludicrous indeed, than suited the taste 
 of the town at that time. A canting, mawkish play, entitled 
 False Delicacy, had just had an immense run. Sentimen- 
 tality was all the mode. During some years, more tears 
 were shed at comedies than at tragedies ; and a pleasantry 
 which moved the audience to any thing more than a grave 
 smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, 
 that the very best scene in the Good-natured Man, that 
 in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by the 
 bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should 
 have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted 
 after the first night. 
 
 In 1770 appeared the Deserted Village. In mere diction 
 and versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps 
 superior, to the Traveller ; and it is generally preferred to 
 the Traveller by that large class of readers who think, with 
 Bayes in the Rehearsal, that the only use of a plan is to 
 *bring in fine things. More discerning judges, however, 
 while they 'admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by 
 one unpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The 
 fault which we mean is not that theory about wealth and 
 luxury which has so often been censured by political econ- 
 omists. The theory is indeed false: but the poem, con- 
 sidered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse on 
 that account The finest poem in the Latin language, in- 
 deed, the finest didactic poem in any language, was written 
 20* 
 
234 <• NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 in defence of the silliest and meanest of all systems of nat- 
 ural and moral philosophy. A poet may easily be par- 
 doned for reasoning ill ; but he cannot be pardoned for de- 
 scribing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so 
 carelessly that his portraits bear no resemblance to the orig- 
 inals, for exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous com- 
 binations of things which never were and never could be 
 found together. What would be thought of a painter who 
 should mix August and January in one landscape, who 
 should introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene ? 
 Would it be a sufficient defence of such a picture to say 
 that every part was exquisitely colored, that the green 
 hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the wagons reel- 
 ing under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburned reapers 
 wiping their foreheads were very fine, and that the ice, and 
 the boys sliding were also very fine ? To such a picture the 
 Deserted Village bears a great resemblance. It is made up 
 of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a 
 true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish 
 village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has 
 brought close together belong to two different countries, 
 and to two different stages in the progress of society. He 
 had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural 
 paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as 
 his Auburn. He had assuredly never seen in England all 
 the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes 
 in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. 
 The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment 
 he had probably seen" in Munster ; but by joining the two 
 he has produced something which never was and never will 
 be seen in any part of the world. 
 
 In 1773, Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden 
 with a second play, She Stoops to Conquer. The manager 
 was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece 
 out. The sentimental comedy still reigned, and Goldsmith's 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 235 
 
 comedies were not sentimental. The Good-natured Man 
 had been too funny to succeed ; yet the mirth of the Good- 
 natured Man was sober when compaxed with tlie rich di'oU- 
 ery of She Stoops to Conquer, which is, in truth, an incom- 
 parable farce in five acts. On this occasion, however, genius 
 triumphed. Pit, boxes, and galleines were in a constant 
 roar of laughter. If any bigoted admirer of Kelley and 
 Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily 
 silenced by a general cry of " turn him out " or " throw hun 
 over." Two generations have since confirmed the verdict 
 which was pronounced on that night. 
 
 While Goldsmith was writing the Deserted Village and 
 She Stoops to Conquer, he was employed on works of a very 
 different kind, works from which he derived little reputation 
 but much profit. He compiled for the use of schools a Ifis- 
 tory of Rome, by which he made 300Z., a History of Eng- 
 land by which he made GOO/., a History of Greece for which 
 he received 250/., a Natural. History for which the book- 
 sellers covenanted to pay him eight hundred guineas. These 
 works he produced without any elaborate research, by merely 
 selecting, abridging, and translating into his own cleai', pure, 
 and flowing language, what he found in books well known 
 to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. 
 He committed some strange blunders ; for he knew nothing 
 with accuracy. Thus in his History of England he tells us 
 that Naseby is in Yorkshire ; nor did he correct this mistake 
 when the book was reprinted. He was very nearly hoaxed 
 into putting into the History of Greece an account of a 
 battle between Alexander the Great and Montezuma. In 
 his Animated Nature he relates, with faith and with perfect 
 gravity, all the most absurd lies which he could find in books 
 of travels about gigantic Patagonians, monkeys that preach 
 sermons, nightingales that repeat long conversations. '' If he 
 can tell a horse from a cow," said Johnson, " that is the 
 extent of his knowledge of zoology." How little Goldsmith 
 
236 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 was qualified to write about the physical sciences is suffi- 
 ciently proved by two anecdotes. He on one occasion 
 denied that the sun is longer in the northern than in the 
 southern signs. It was vain to cite the authority of Mau- 
 pertuis. " Maupertuis ! " he cried, " I understand those 
 matters better than Maupertuis." On another occasion he, 
 in defiance of the evidence of his own senses, maintained 
 obstinately, and even angrily, that he chewed his dinner by 
 moving his upper jaw. 
 
 Yet ignorant as Goldsmith was, few writers have done 
 more to make the first steps in the laborious road to knowl- 
 edge easy and pleasant. His compilations are widely dis- 
 tinguished from the compilations of ordinary bookmakers. 
 He was a great, perhaps an unequalled master of the arts 
 of selection and condensation. In these respects his his- 
 tories of Rome and of England, and still more his own 
 abridgments of these histories, well deserved to be studied. 
 In general nothing is less attractive than an epitome ; but 
 the epitomes of Goldsmith, even when most concise, are 
 always amusing ; and to read them is considered by intelli- 
 gent children, not as a task but as a pleasure. 
 
 Goldsmith might now be considered as a prosperous man. 
 He had the means of living in comfort, and even in what to 
 one who had so often slept in barns and on bulks must have 
 been luxury. His fame was great and was constantly rising. 
 He lived in what was intellectually far the best society of 
 the kingdom, in a society in which no talent or accomplish- 
 ment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was 
 cultivated with splendid success. There probably were 
 never four talkers more admirable in four different ways 
 than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick ; and Gold- 
 smith wSs on terpis of intimacy with all four. He aspired 
 to share in their colloquial renown ; but never was ambition 
 more unfortunate. It may seem strange that a man who 
 wrote with so much perspicuity, vivacity, and grace, should 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 237 
 
 have been, whenever he took part in conversation, an 
 empty, noisy, blundering rattle. But on this point the evi- 
 dence is overwhelming. So extraordinary Was the contrast 
 between Goldsmith's published works and the silly things 
 which he said, that Horace Walpole described hira as an in- 
 spired idiot. " Noll," said Gairick, " wrote like an angel, and 
 talked like poor Pol." Charaier declared that it was a hard 
 exercise of faith to believe that so foolish a chatterer could 
 have really written the Traveller. Even Boswell could say, 
 with contemptuous compassion, that he liked very well to 
 hear honest Goldsmith run on. " Yes, sir," said Johnson, 
 "but he should not like to hear himself." Minds differ as 
 rivers differ. There are transparent and sparkling rivers 
 from which it is delightful to drink as they flow ; to such 
 rivers the minds of such men as Burke and Johnson may be 
 compared. But there are rivers of which the water when 
 first drawn is turbid and noisome, but becomes pellucid as 
 crystal, and delicious to the taste if it be suffered to stand 
 till it has deposited a sediment ; and such a river is a type 
 of the mind of Goldsmith. His first thoughts on every 
 subject were confused even to absurdity, but they required 
 only a little time to work themselves clear. When he wrote 
 they had that time ; and therefore his readers pronounced 
 him a man«»f genius; but when he talked, he talked non- 
 sense, and made himself the laughing-stock of his hearers. 
 He was painfully sensible of his inferiority in conversation ; 
 he felt every failure keenly ; yet he j^d not sufficient judg- 
 ment and self-command to hold his tongue. His animal 
 spirits and vanity were always impelling him to do the one 
 thing which he could not do. After every attempt he felt 
 that he had exposed himself, and writhed with shame and 
 vexation ; yet the next moment he began again. 
 
 His associates seem to have regarded him with kindness, 
 which in spite of their admiration of his writings, was not 
 unmixed with contempt. In truth, there was in his charac- 
 
238 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ter much to love, but very little to respect. His heart was 
 soft even to weakness ; he was so generous that he quite 
 forgot to be just ; he forgave injuries so readily that he 
 might be said to invite them, and was so liberal to beggars, 
 that he had nothing left for his tailor and his butcher. He 
 was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident. One vice 
 of a darker shade was imputed to him, envy. But there is 
 not the least reason to believe that this bad passion, though 
 it sometimes made him wince and utter fretful exclamations, 
 ever impelled him to injure by wicked arts the reputation 
 of any of his rivals. The truth probably is, that he was not 
 more envious, but merely less prudent than his neighbors. 
 His heart was on his lips. All those small jealousies, which 
 are but too common among men of letters, but which a man 
 of letters who. is also a man of the world, does his best to 
 conceal. Goldsmith avowed with the simplicity of a child. 
 When he was envious, instead of affecting indifference, in- 
 stead of damning with faint praise, instead of doing injuries 
 slyly and in the dark, he told everybody that he was envi- 
 ous. " Do not, pray, do not talk of Johnson in such terms," 
 he said to Boswell ; " you harrow up my very soul." 
 George Steevens and Cumberland were men far too cun- 
 ning to say such a thing. They would have echoed the 
 praises of the man whom they envied, and ih%n have sent 
 to the newspapers anonymous libels upon him. But what 
 was good and what Avas bad in Goldsmith's character was to 
 his associates a perfe(%seciirity that he would never commit 
 such villany. He was neither ill-natured enough, nor long- 
 headed enough, to be guilty of any malicious act which re- 
 quired contrivance and disguise. 
 
 Goldsmith has sometimes been represented as a man of 
 genius, cruelly treated by the world, and doomed to struggle 
 with difficulties, which at last broke his heart. But no rep- 
 resentation can be more remote from the truth. He did, 
 indeed, go through much shari) misery before he had done 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 239 
 
 any thing considerable in literature. But after his name had 
 appeared on the title-page of the Traveller, he had none but 
 himself to blame for his distresses. His average income, 
 during the last seven years of his life, certainly exceeded 
 400^. a yeai*, and 400^. a year ranked, among the incomes 
 of that day, as high as 800Z. a year would rank at present. 
 A single man living in the Temple, with 400/. a year, might 
 then be called opulent. Not one in ten of the young gen- 
 tlemen of good families who were studying the law there 
 had so much. But all the wealth which Lord Clive had 
 brought from Bengal, and Sir Lawrence Dundas from 
 Germany, joined together, would not have sufficed for 
 Goldsmith. He spent twice as much as he had. He 
 wore fine clothes, gave dinners of several courses, paid 
 court to venal beauties. He had also, it should be remem- 
 bered, to the honor of his heart, though not of his head, a 
 guinea, or five, or ten, according to the state, of his purse, 
 ready for any tale of distress, true or false. But it was not 
 in dress or feasting, in promiscuous amours or promiscuous 
 charities, that his chief expense lay. He had been from 
 boyhood a gambler, and at once the most sanguine and the 
 most unskilful of gamblers. For a time he put oflF the day 
 of inevitable ruin by temporary expedients. He obtained 
 advances fvfgca. booksellers by promising to execute works 
 which he never began. But at length this source of supply 
 failed. He owed more than 2000/.; and he saw no hope of 
 extrication from his embarrassments. His spirits and health 
 gave way. He v/as attacked by a nervous fever, which he 
 thought himself competent to treat. It would, have been 
 happy for him if his medical skill had been appreciated as 
 justly by himself as by others. Notwithstanding the degree 
 which he pretended to have received at Padua, he could 
 procure no patients. " I do not practise," he once said ; " I 
 make it a rule to prescribe only for my friends." " Pray, 
 dear Doctor," said Beauclerk, " alter your rule ; and pre- 
 
240 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 scribe only for your enemies." Goldsmith now, in spite 
 of this excellent advice, prescribed for himself. The 
 remedy aggravated the malady. The sick man was in- 
 duced to call in real physicians ; and they at one time 
 imagined that they had cured the disease. Still his weak- 
 ness and ifcstlessness continued. He could get no sleep. 
 He could take no food. " You are worse," said one of his 
 medical attendants, " than you should be from the degree of 
 fever which you have. Is your mind at ease ? " " No, it is 
 not," were the last recorded words of Oliver Goldsmith. 
 He died on the third of April, 1774, in his forty-sixth year. 
 He was laid in the churchyard of the Temple ; but the spot 
 was not marked by any inscription, and is now forgotten. 
 The coffin was followed by Burke and sReynolds. Both 
 these great men were sincere mourners. Burke, when 
 he heard of Goldsmith's death, burst into a flood of tears. 
 Reynolds had. been so much moved by the news, that he flung 
 aside his brush and palette for the day. 
 
 A short time after Goldsmith's death, a little poem ap- 
 peared, which will, as long as our language lasts, associate 
 the names of his two illustrious friends with his own. It 
 has already been mentioned that he sometimes felt keenly 
 the sarcasm which his wild blundering talk brought upon 
 him. He was, not long before his illness, j^ipvoked into 
 retaliating. He wisely betook himself to his pen ; and at 
 that weapon he proved himself a match for all his assailants 
 together. Within a small compass he drew with a singularly 
 easy and vigorous pencil, the characters of nine or ten of 
 his intimate associates. Though this little work did not re- 
 ceive his last touches, it must always be regarded as a mas- 
 terpiece. It is impossible, however, not to wish that four 
 or five likenesses which have no interest for posterity were 
 wanting to that noble gallery, and that their places were 
 supplied by sketches of Johnson and Gibbon, as happy and 
 vivid as the sketches of Burke and Garriek 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 241 
 
 Some of Goldsmith's friends and admirers honored him 
 with a cenotaph in Westminster Abbey. Nollekins was 
 the sculptor ; and Johnson wrote the inscription. It is 
 much to be lamented that Johnson did not leave to pos- 
 terity a more durable and a more valuable memorial of 
 his friend. A life of Goldsmith would have been an inesti- 
 mable addition to the Lives of the Poets. No man appreci- 
 ated Goldsmith's writings more justly than Johnson ; no man 
 was better acquainted with Goldsmith's character and habits ; 
 and no man was more competent to delineate with truth and 
 spirit the peculiarities of a mind in which great powers were 
 found in company with great weaknesses. But the list of poets 
 to. whose works Johnson was requested by the booksellers to 
 furnish prefaces, ended with Lyttelton, who died in 1773. 
 The line seems to have been drawn expressly for the pur- 
 pose of excluding the person whose portrait would have 
 most fitly closed the series. Goldsmith, hpjwever, has been 
 fortunate in his biographers. Within a few years his life 
 has been written by Mr. Prior, by Mr. Washington Irving, 
 and by Mr. Forster. The diligence of Mr. Prior deserves 
 great praise ; the style of Mr. Washington Irving is always 
 pleasing ; but the highest place must, in justice, be assigned 
 to the eminently interesting work of Mi". Forster. 
 
 21 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 
 
 Edward Gibbon, one of the most celebrated historians 
 of any age or country, was also his own historian. He has 
 left us one of the most piquant autobiographies ever written. 
 In the following sketch the chief incidents of his life will be 
 condensed from that authentic source ; for more than facts, 
 even for the setting of these, it would be unwise to trust to 
 any man's autobiography — though Gibbon's is as frank as 
 most There are points on which vanity will say too much, 
 and perhaps others on which modesty will say too little. 
 
 Gibbon was descended, he tells us, from a Kentish family, 
 ancient, though not illustrious. His grandfather was a man 
 of ability, and an enterprising roerchant of London ; one of 
 the commissioners of customs in the latter years of Queen 
 Anne ; and, in the judgment of Lord Bolingbroke, as deeply 
 versed in the " finance and commerce of England " as any 
 man of his time. He was not always wise, however, either 
 for himself or his country ; for he became deeply involved 
 in the South Sea scheme, and lost the ample wealtli he had 
 amassed, at the explosion of that tremendous bubble (1720). 
 As a director of the company, he was suspected of fraudu- 
 lent complicity, was taken into custody, and heavily fined ; 
 but £10,000 were allowed him out of the wreck of his £60,- 
 000, and with this his skill and enterprise soon constructed 
 (242) 
 
EDWAKD GIBBON. 243 
 
 a second fortune.* He died at Putney in 1736, leaving the 
 bulk of his property to his two daughters — nearly disinher- 
 iting his only son, the father of the historian, for having 
 married against his wishes. This son (by name Edward) 
 was educated at Westminster and Cambridge, but never 
 took a degree ; travelled, became member of parhament, 
 first for Petersfield, then for Southampton ; joined the party 
 against Sir Robert Walpole, and (as his son confesses, not 
 much to his father's honor) was animated in so doing by 
 " private revenge," against the supposed " oppressor " of his 
 family in the South Sea affair. If so, revenge, as usual, 
 was blind ; for Walpole sought rather to moderate than in- 
 flame public feeling against the projectors. 
 
 His celebrated son was born at Putney, Surrey, 27th of 
 ■ April, 1737. His mother was the daughter of a London 
 merchant. Gibbon was the eldest of a family of six sons 
 arid a daughter, yet was the only one who survived child- 
 hood ; and his own life in youth hung by so mere a thread 
 as to be a thousand times despaired of. His mother, be- 
 tween domestic cares and constant infirmities (which, how- 
 ever, did not pi'event an occasional plunge into fashionable 
 dissipation in compliance with her husband's wishes), did 
 but little for him. His true mother, if the expression may 
 be permitted, was his maiden aunt — Catherine Porten by 
 name — who tenderly nursed his infancy, and, whenever his 
 feeble health allowed, took care that his mind should not be 
 neglected. " Many anxious and solitary days," says Gibbon, 
 
 1 No less than three of the family intermarried with the Actons of 
 Shropshire. " I am thus connected," says Gibbon, "by a triple alli- 
 ance with that ancient and loyal family of Shropshire baronets. It 
 consisted about that time of seven brothers, all of gigantic stature ; 
 one of whom, a pigmy of six feet, two inches, confessed himself the 
 last and least of the seven ; adding, in the true spirit of party, that 
 such men were not born since the revolution." — Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 
 10. 
 
244 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 " did she consume with patient trial of every mode of relief 
 and amusement. Many wakeful nights did she sit by my 
 bedside in trembling expectation that each hour would be 
 my last." ^ At seven he was committed for eighteen months 
 to the care of a private tutor, John Kirkby by name, and 
 the author, among other things, of a " philosophical fiction" 
 entitled the Life of Automathes. The illustrious pupil 
 speaks gratefully of his tutor, and doubtless truly, so far as 
 he could trust the impressions of his childhood. Of the 
 " philosophical fiction " he says, " The author is not entitled 
 to the merit of invention since he has blended the English 
 story of Rohinson Crusoe with the Arabian romance of Hai 
 Ebn Tokhdan which he might have read in the Latin ver- 
 sion of Pococke. In the Automathes I cannot praise either 
 the depth of thought or elegance of style ; but the book is 
 not devoid of entertainment or instruction." ^ 
 
 At nine (1746), during a "lucid interval of health," he was 
 sent to a school at Kingston-on-Thames ; but the usual breaks 
 of sickness intervened, and his progress, by his own confes- 
 sion, was slow and* unsatisfactory. " My timid reserve was 
 astonished by the crowd and tumult of the school ; the want 
 of strength and activity disqualified me for the sports of the 
 
 play-field By the common methods of discipline, at 
 
 the expense of many tears and some blood, I purchased the 
 knowledge of the Latin syntax ; and not long since I was 
 possessed of the dirty volumes of Phcedrus and Cornelius Ne- 
 pos which I painfully construed and darkly understood." * 
 
 In 1747 his mother died, and he was taken home. 
 After a short time his father removed from Putney to 
 the "rustic solitude" of Buriton, and young Gibbon ac- 
 companied him. There probably his health was benefited, 
 and his mind certainly re.ceived its first decided stimulus. 
 In these early years, under the care of his devoted aunt, he 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 19. 2 jb. p. 21, 22. « lb. p. 22. 
 
EDWARD GIBBOK. 245 
 
 first acquired, he tells us, that passionate love of reading 
 " which he would not exchange for all the treasures of In- 
 dia." He read at will ; and there are minds to which it is 
 the best possible schooling. To be turned loose to graze in 
 the free mountain pasture, to " browse " at pleasure — as 
 Charles Lamb expresses it — in a library of wholesome liter- 
 ature, tends more than any thing else, if not to discipline, to 
 stimulate their powers ; and often not only tinctures, but de- 
 termines the whole future. It was so with Gibbon. After de- 
 tailing the circumstances which " unlocked" for him the door 
 of his grandfather's " tolerable library," he says, " I turned 
 over many English pages of poetry and romance, of history 
 and travels. Where a title attracted my eye, without fear or 
 awe I snatched the volume from the shelf." * In 1749, in his 
 twelfth year, he was sent to Westminster, still residing, how- 
 ever, with his aunt, who, unwilling to live a life of depend- 
 ence, had opened a boarding-house for Westminster school. 
 "In the space of two years (1749-50), interrupted by dan- 
 ger and debility, I painfully climbed into the third form ; and 
 my riper age was left to acquire the beauties of the Latin 
 and the rudiments of the Greek tongue.'"^ The continual 
 attacks of sickness which had retarded his progress induced 
 his aunt, by medical advice, to take him to Bath ; but the 
 mineral waters had no effect. He then resided for a time in 
 the house of a physician in Winchester ; the physician did 
 as little as the mineral waters ; and, after a further trial of 
 Bath, he once more returned to Putney, and made a last fu- 
 tile attempt to study at Westminster. Finally, it was re- 
 solved that he would never be able to encounter the discipline 
 of a school ; and casual instructors, at various times and 
 places, were provided for him. The snatches of his youth 
 that could be given to mental effort were doubtless pretty 
 well filled up by himself, and, for the reasons already as- 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. i8. 2 lb. p. 27. 
 
 21* 
 
246 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 signed, perhaps not unpropitiously in relation to the peculiar 
 character of his intellect and the requirements of his subse- 
 quent career. 
 
 Towards his sixteenth year he tells us that all his infirmi- 
 ties suddenly vanished. " Nature," as he frigidly expresses 
 it, " displayed in my favor her mysterious energies." His 
 education was now resumed under the roof of Francis, the 
 translator of Horace ; of whose negligence as a tutor the 
 historian speaks most strongly. " The translator of Horace," 
 says he, " might have taught me to relish the Latin poets, had 
 not my friends discovered in a few weeks that he preferred 
 the pleasures of London to the instruction of his pupils." * 
 
 Gibbon was then sent to finish his education (before it 
 had been properly begun) at Oxford, where he matriculated 
 as gentleman commoner of Magdalen College, April, 1752. 
 His description of his intellectual condition at that time is 
 curious enough : " I arrived there with a stock of erudition 
 which might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of igno- 
 rance of which a school-boy might have been ashamed." It 
 was natural. He had read extensively, though at random ; 
 and, his memory being tenacious, he had amassed much knowl- 
 edge, though of a very miscellaneous character. It seems, 
 however, that during the three previous years his youthful 
 mind had received a determinate direction, either from its 
 own secret tendencies, or from the class of works on which 
 he accidentally lighted, or more probably from both causes. 
 His taste was already fixed where it never afterwards 
 wavered — on history. 
 
 His list of the books which, during the three years of 
 self-prompted and wandering study, he had more or less 
 devoured, is amazingly miscellaneous ; but we have no space 
 to give it. The reader may find it in the Memoirs. Many 
 of them both for their extent and dryness, would have been 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. t. p. 28. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 247 
 
 repulsive enough to most lads of his age. Most of the 
 classical historians accessible in translations, not forgetting a 
 " ragged Procopius " which chanced to fall in his way, and 
 " many crude lumps," as he oddly expresses it, of the most 
 voluminous modern historians, as Davila, Rapin, Father 
 Paul, Machiavel, were hastily gulped — giving in those days, 
 doubtless, but little trouble in the digestion. " 1 devoured 
 them," he says, " like so many novels ; and I swallowed 
 with the same voracious appetite the description of India 
 and China, of Mexico and Peru." ^ At the same period his 
 fancy kindled with the first glimpses into oriental history, the 
 wild " barbaric " charm of which he never ceased to feel. 
 India, China, Arabia, and especially the career of Mohammed, 
 successively attracted his attention. Ockley's book on the 
 Saracens "first opened his eyes " to this last subject; and 
 with his characteristic ardor of literary research, he forth witli 
 plunged into the French of D'Herbelot, and the Latin of 
 Pococke's version of Ahulfaragius — sometimes " guessing," 
 and sometimes understanding — now swimming, now wading 
 up to his chin, and now plunging out of his depth altogether. 
 His first introduction to the historic scenes which afterwards 
 formed the passion of his life, took place at the same period. 
 In 1751, he notes his "discovery " of a " common book " — 
 Echard's Roman History.^ " To me," he says, " the reigns 
 of the successors of Constantino were absolutely new ; and I 
 was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube, 
 when the summons of the dinner bell reluctantly dragged 
 me from my intellectual feast." 
 
 He seems even then to have adopted the plan Df study he 
 followecT in after-life and recommended in his. Essai sur 
 V Etude ; that is, of letting his subject rather than his author 
 determine his course ; of suspending the perusal of a book 
 to reflect, and to compare the statements with those of other 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 30. 2 jb. p. 30 
 
248 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 authors ; so that he often read portions of fifty volumes 
 while mastering one. Where the mind has vigor and per- 
 severance to adopt this course, it is, without doubt, the most 
 profitable of all modes of reading. A man rarely forgets 
 what he has taken so much trouble -tp acquire. The chase 
 itself, too, and the variety of forms in which knowledge is 
 presented, afford a thousand links by which association aids 
 memory. 
 
 But Gibbon's huge wallet of scraps stood him in little stead 
 at the trim banquets to which he was invited at Oxford ; and 
 the wandering habit by which he had filled it absolutely un- 
 fitted him to be a guest. He was not well grounded in any 
 of the elementary branches which are essential to univer- 
 sity studies, and to all success in their prosecution. It was 
 natural, therefore, that he should dislike the university, and 
 as natural that the university should dislike him. Many of 
 his complaints of the system were certainly just ; but it may 
 be doubted whether any university system would have been 
 profitable to him, considering his antecedents. He com- 
 plains of his tutors, too, and in one case with abundant rea- 
 son ; but, by his own confession, they had equal reason to 
 complain of him, for he indulged in gay society, and kept 
 late hours. His observations, however, on the defects of our 
 university system in general, are acute and well worth pon- 
 dering, however little relevant to his own case. Many of 
 these defects, in the case of our own universities, have been 
 removed since his time, and some very recently. He re- 
 mained at Magdalen about fourteen months. " To the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford," he says, " I acknowledge no obligation ; 
 and she will as cheerfully renounce me for a son *as I am 
 willing to disclaim her for a mother. I spent fourteen 
 months at Magdalen College ; they proved the fourteen 
 months the most idle and unprofitable in my whole life.* 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 34. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 249 
 
 But little as he did as a student, he already meditated au- 
 thorship. In the first long vacation — " during which," he 
 says, (whimsically enough,) " his taste for books began to 
 revive," — he resolved to write a treatise on The Age of Se- 
 sostris ; * in which (and it was characteristic) his chief object 
 was to investigate the probable epoch of that semi-mythical 
 monarch's reign. " Unprovided with original learning, unin- 
 formed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of 
 composition, I resolved to write a book." He long after- 
 wards (November, 1772), but wisely, no doubt, " committed 
 the sheets to the flames." Literary ambition almost uniformly 
 displays its early energy in some such crude project, and 
 Gibbon was no exception to the rule. This period of his 
 life was also signalized by another premature attempt to 
 solve difficulties beyond the age of sixteen. He read Mid- 
 dleton's Free Inquiry ; and this, strange to say, repelled him 
 from Pi'otestantism, and gave him a bias towards Rome ; he 
 read Bossuet's Variations of Protestantism, and Exposition 
 of Catholic Doctrine, and these completed JjibBonversion, 
 " and surely," he adds, " I fell by a noble Y^Sn..'" In this 
 notable victory, however, of the Bishop of Meaux over a youth 
 of sixteen, there is nothing wonderful ; nor was l^^suet 
 the only champion of Rome who helped to lay him 1™, for 
 he attributes not a little to the perusal of the works of Par- 
 sons, the Jesuit. But the inexperience, perhaps wayward- 
 ness of youth, and impatience to have doubts hushed and 
 quelled, if not removed, had probably more to do with this 
 transient conquest, than all the above controvertists put 
 together. 
 /• No sooner converted, than he confessed. He certainly 
 practised none of the reserve of the Jesuit to whom he had 
 been so much indebted. On June 8, 1753, he records that 
 he " privately abjured the heresies " of his childhood before 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 41. 
 
250 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 a Catholic priest in London, and announced the same to his 
 father in a somewhat grandiloquent effusion, which his 
 spiritual adviser much approved, and in which it is probable 
 he had some share. " Gibbon," says Lord Sheffield, " de- 
 scribed the letter to his father, announcing his conversion, as 
 written with all the pomp, the dignity, and self-satisfaction 
 of a martyr." ^ His father heard with indignant surprise of 
 this act of juvenile apostasy, and indiscreetly giving vent to 
 his wrath, the authorities of Oxford dismissed the neophyte. 
 It is curious to read Gibbon's rather complacent estimate in 
 after-life of this " sacrifice of self-interest to conscience." 
 It is expressed in terms which might almost tempt one to 
 think that he scarcely contemplated his subsequent changes 
 with equal satisfaction. Yet he also seems to have felt that 
 the infirmities of reason which this escapade implied needed 
 some apology, and that the applause of conscience hardly com- 
 pensated for the reflections on his logic. He therefore justi- 
 fies his apostasy by the parallel vacillations of Chillingworth 
 and Bayle. " He could not blush," he says, " that his tender 
 mind was entangled in the sophistry which had seduced the 
 acute and manly understandings of a Chillingworth or a 
 Ba;^ ; " 2 of which he takes care to inform us that the latter 
 wa^venty-two, and the former of the " ripe age " of twenty- 
 eight years, when caught in the meshes of Romanism. 
 
 In short, he attached rather too much importance to the 
 fluctuations of sixteen. As a fact in the history of his own 
 mind, however, it is of interest ; in any other light, of nq 
 importance whatever. "To my present feelings," he tells 
 us in his Memoirs, " it seems incredible that I should ever 
 believe that I believed in transubstantiation," that is if he 
 were interpreted rigorously, " he could not believe that he 
 could ever believe that he believed in transubstantiation." 
 If that were his meaning, he ha*d certainly cured himself of 
 all superfluous facility of belief. 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 46. ^ lb. p. 47. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 251 
 
 It was now high time that his education, so nearly finished 
 in name, should be begun in earnest. But as dhe chief ob- 
 ject of his father was to secure in the course of it his recon- 
 version to Protestantism, he was. consigned (1753) to the 
 care of a Calvinist minister at Lausanne — a M. Pavilliard, 
 of whom Gibbon speaks in strong terms of affection and 
 esteem, and who appears to have deserved them. There 
 was one slight obstacle to be sure, to the intercourse of tutor 
 and pupil ; M. Pavilliard appears to have known little of 
 English, and young Gibbon knew nothing of French. But 
 this difficulty was soon removed by the pupil's diligence ; 
 the very exigencies of his situation were of service to him, 
 and he studied the language with such success, that at the 
 close of his five years' exile he declares that he " spontane- 
 ously thought " in French rather than in English, and that 
 it had become more familiar to " ear, pen, and tongue." It 
 is well known that in after years he had doubts whether he 
 should not compose his great work in French; and it is 
 certain that his familiarity with that language, in s[)ite of 
 considerable efforts to counteract its effects, tinged his style 
 to the last.' 
 
 Under the judicious regulations of his new tutor a sys- 
 tematic course of study was marked out, and was most ar- 
 dently prosecuted. The pupil's progress was proportion- 
 ably rapid. With the systematic study of the Latin and 
 Greek classics he conjoined that of French literature, which 
 he read largely though somewhat indiscriminately. 
 
 Nor was the object his father primarily had at heart less 
 effectually attained. To his large reading of the classics he 
 added a diligent study of logic in the prolix system of 
 Crousaz, and further invigorated his reasoning powers, as 
 well as enlarged his knowledge of metaphysics and juris- 
 prudence by the perusal of Locke, Grotius, and Montes- 
 quieu. He also read about this time Pascal's Provincial 
 Letters, and at sixty he declares he had reperused therii 
 
252 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 almost every year with new pleasure. It is one of the 
 " three books " which, by his own confession, probably con- 
 tributed, in a " special sense, to form the historian of the 
 Roman Empire." From Pascal, he flatters himself, he 
 "learned to manage the weapons of grave and temperate 
 irony, even on subjects of ecclesiastical solemnity ; " a grand 
 mistake as regards both the adroitness with which he used 
 and the subject on which he employed the weapon. There 
 is as much difference between the light grace of Pascal's 
 irony and the heavy, labored movement of Gibbon's, as 
 between an Arab courser and a Flanders war-horse. He 
 also studied mathematics to some extent, though purely in 
 compliance with his father's wishes. He advanced as far 
 as the conic sections in the treatise of L'Hopital. He as- 
 sures us that his tutor did not complain of any inaptitude 
 on the pupil's part, and that the pupil was as happily uncon- 
 scious of any on his own ; but here he broke off. He adds, 
 what is no^ quite clear from one who so frankly acknowl- 
 edges his Imiited acquaintance with the science, that he had 
 reason to congratulate himself that he knew no more. " As 
 soon," he says, " as I understood the principles, I relin- 
 quished forever the pursuit of the mathematics ; nor can I 
 lament that I desisted before my mind was hardened by the 
 habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feel- 
 ings of moral evidence, which must, however, determine the 
 actions, and d^inions of ijur lives." ^ 
 
 There is no doubt that the sort of evidence with which 
 the future historiafl was called to deal has to do with proba- 
 bilities and not rigid " demonstration ; " but whether he would 
 not have sometimes compute its elements with more im- 
 partiality and precision if he had had a little further train- 
 ing in the exact sciences, may be a question. 
 
 Under the new influences which were brought to bear on 
 
 * Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 66. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 253 
 
 him, he resumed in less than a twelvemonth his Protestant- 
 ism. " He is willing," h.e says, to allow M. Pavilliard a 
 " handsome share in his reconversion," though he stoutly 
 avows that it was principally due to his own " solitary reflec- 
 tions." He particularly congratulated himself on having 
 discovered a " philosophical argument " against " transubstan- 
 tiation." It was " that the text of Scripture which seems to 
 inculcate the real presence is attested only by a single sense 
 — our sight ; while the real presence itself is disproved by 
 three of our senses — the sight, the touch, and the taste." ^ 
 It is possible that the unconscious influence of the threats 
 of disinheritance, and the exchange of his " handsome apart- 
 ments at Magdalen " for the meanness and discomforts of 
 his Swiss home, may have been quite as efficacious as this 
 curious enthymeme. Thus was he converted to Romanism 
 in his sixteenth year, and recanted his recantation in his 
 seventeenth. The changes were doubtless important to 
 him, and it was natural that he should give them some 
 prominence in his " autobiography ; " but relatively to the 
 great questions they involve, the oscillations of such a 
 youthful mind, however intelligent, are of as little moment 
 as the transfer of a cypher from one side of an equation to 
 the other. 
 
 Two circumstances specially signalized his residence at 
 Lausanne — he saw Voltaire, and he fell in love. " Virgil- 
 ium vidi tantum" says he ; but his admiration of Voltaire's 
 writings was great, and exerted a rather equivocal influence 
 on his poetic tastes. It led to an excessive estimate of the 
 French drama, and abated, he scruples not to declare, his 
 " idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakspeare." Vol- 
 taire's writings also probably gave him a false bias in mat- 
 ters of infinitely more importance than those of literature. 
 
 His love aifair — his first and only one — was transient 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 58. 
 22 
 
254 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 enough. The young lady, in the bloom of sixteen, the 
 daughter of a Swiss pastor, was Mademoiselle Curchod, 
 afterwards the wife of the celebrated M. Necker. She 
 was, as Gibbon declares (and we know it on better testi- 
 mony than a lover's eyes), beautiful, intelligent, and ac- 
 complished. Her charms, however, do not seem to have 
 made any indelible impression on our young student, whose 
 sensibility, to say the truth, was never very profound. On 
 his father's expressing his disapprobation, he surrendered 
 the object of his affection with as little resistance as he had 
 surrendered his Romanism. " I sighed," he says, " as a 
 lover, but obeyed as a son." It would be invidious to in- 
 stitute comparisons as to the merit of " faithful love " and 
 filial devotion ; but, if the one be unrewarded by fortune, 
 and the other stimulated by menaces, it is a difficult choice 
 no doubt, for any but a hero ; and Gibbon neither then nor 
 afterwards was a hero. " Without my father's consent," he 
 plaintively says, " I was destitute and helpless." 
 
 Unwearied application to study was the best " remedium 
 amoris" if indeed he stood in need of any remedy. In any 
 case, his diligence was most commendable, and no one can 
 read the account of the three last years spent at Lausanne, 
 and especially the all but incredible toils of the last eight 
 months, without perceiving that the foundations of that vast 
 erudition which the Decline and Fall demanded, were 
 effectually laid ; or hesitate to give our student a worthy 
 place with the Scaligers, Huets, and Leibnitzes, of the pre- 
 ceding century. Though there may be a little unconscious 
 exaggeration in his statement of the achievements of these 
 miraculous eight months, we are tempted to give it in a note 
 for the encouragement or despair of other youthful students.^ 
 
 1 He says in his Journal, December 4, 1755, — "In finishing this 
 year, I must remark how favorable it was to my studies. In the 
 space of eight months, from the beginning of April, I learned the 
 principles of drawing ; made myself complete master of the French 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 255 
 
 In 1758 he returned to England, and was kindly re- 
 ceived at home. But he found a stepmother there ; and 
 this apparition on his father's hearth at first rather appalled 
 him. The cordial and gentle manners of IMrs. Gibbon, 
 however, and her unremitted study of his happiness, won 
 him from his first prejudices, and gave her a permanent 
 place both in his esteem and affection. He seems to have 
 been much indulged, and led a very pleasant life of it ; he 
 pleased himself in moderate excursions, frequented the theatre, 
 mingled, though not very often, in society ; was sometimes 
 a little extravagant, and sometimes a little dissipated, but 
 never lost the benefits of his Lausanne exile ; and with the 
 exception of a few transient youthful irregularities, settled 
 into a sober, discreet, calculating epicurean philosopher, who 
 sought the summum honum of man in temperate, regulated, 
 and elevated pleasure. The two years after his return to 
 England he spent principally at his father's country-seat at 
 Buriton, in Hampshire, only nine months being given to the 
 metropolis. He has left an amusing account of his employ- 
 ments in the country, where his love of study was at once 
 inflamed by a librai-y rich enough to make him contrast its 
 treasures with the poverty of Lausanne, and checked by the 
 necessary interruptions of his otherwise happy domestic life. 
 After breakfast " he was expected," he says, " to spend an 
 
 and Latin languages, with which I was very superficially acquainted 
 before, and wrote and translated a great deal in both ; read Cicero's 
 Epistles Ad Familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his Dialogues 
 De Amidtia and De Senectute ; Terence, twice ; and Pliny's Epistles. 
 In French, Giannone's Hiitory of Naples, and I'Abb^ Bannier's Mi/- 
 thology, and M. De Bochat's Memoires sur la Suisse, and wrote a very 
 ample relation of my tour. I liicewise began to study Greek, and 
 went through the grammar. I began to make very large collections 
 of what I read. But what I esteem most of all, from the perusal and 
 meditation of De Crousaz's Logic, I not only understood the princi- 
 ples of that science, but formed my mind to a habit of thinking and 
 reasoning I had no idea of before." — Memoirs, p. 61 . 
 
256 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 hour with Mrs. Gibbon — read the paper to his father in 
 the afternoon — was often called down to entertain idle 
 visitors — and, worst of all, was periodically compelled to 
 return the visits of their more distant neighbors." He says 
 he dreaded the " recurrence of the full moon," which was 
 the period generally selected for the more convenient ac- 
 complishment of such formidable excursions. 
 
 His father's library, though large in comparison with that 
 he commanded at Lausanne, contained, he says, " much 
 trash," which he gradually weeded out, and transformed it 
 at length into that " numerous and select " library which 
 was " the foundation of his works, and the best comfort of his 
 life at home and abroad." No sooner had he returned home 
 than he. began the work of accumulation, and records that, 
 on the receipt of his first quarter's allowance, a large share 
 was appropriated to his literary wants. " He could never 
 forget," he declares, " the joy with which he exchanged a 
 bank-note of twenty pounds for the twenty volumes of the 
 Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions." It may not be 
 unprofitable here to remark that the principles on which he 
 selected his admirable library are worthy of every student's 
 attention. " I am not conscious," says he, " of having ever 
 bought a book from a motive of ostentation ; every volume 
 before it was deposited on the shelf was either read or suffi- 
 ciently examined." The account he gives of his mode of 
 study is also deeply instructive, but there is not space for it 
 here. 
 
 In London he seems to have seen but little select society — 
 partly because his father's habits opened to him but little 
 that he cared for — partly from his own reserve and timid- 
 ity, increased by his foreign education. This had made 
 English habits unfamiliar and the very language in some 
 degree strange. And thus it was that he draws that inter- 
 esting picture of the literary recluse among the crowds of 
 London: " While coaches were rattling through Bond 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 257 
 
 Street, I have passed many a solitary evening in my lodg- 
 ing with my books. My studies were sometimes interrupted 
 with a sigh, which I breathed towards Lausanne ; and on 
 the approach of spring I withdrew without reluctance from 
 the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, 
 and dissipation without pleasure." ^ He became acquainted, 
 however, with Mallet — by courtesy called the " poet " — ■ 
 and through him gained access to Lady Hervey's circle, 
 where a congenial admiration, not to say affectation, of 
 French manners and literature, made him a welcome guest. 
 In one respect Mallet gave him good counsel. He advised 
 him to addict himself to an arduous study of the more 
 idiomatic English writers — Swift and Addison, for example 
 — with a view to unlearn his foreign idiom, and recover his 
 half-forgotten vernacular ; — a task, which he never per- 
 fectly accomplished. Much as he admired these writers, 
 Hume and Robertson were still greater favorites, as well 
 from their subject as for their style. Of his admiration of 
 Hume's style — of its nameless grace of simple elegance — 
 he has left us a strong expression, when he tells us that it 
 often compelled him to close the historian's volumes with a 
 feeling of despair. 
 
 In 1^61 Gibbon, after many delays, and with many flut- 
 terings of hope and fear, gave to the world, in French, his 
 maiden publication, composed two years before. It was 
 partly in compliance with his father's wishes, who thought 
 that the proof of some literary talent might introduce him 
 favorably to public notice, and " secure the recommendation 
 of his friends." But in yielding to paternal authority. 
 Gibbon frankly owns that he complied, " like a pious son — 
 with the wish of his own heart." 
 
 The subject of the JEssaisurV Etude de la Litterature was 
 suggested, its author says, by a refinen^nt of vanity — " the 
 
 1 Memoirs 'Yol. I. p. 81. 
 22* 
 
258 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 desire of justifying and praising the object of a favorite pur- 
 suit." Partly owing to its being written in French, partly 
 to its character, the essay excited more attention abroad than 
 at home. Gibbon has criticized it with the utmost frank- 
 ness, not to say severity, but after every abatement, it is 
 unquestionably a surprising effort for a mind so young, and 
 contains many thoughts which would not have disgraced 
 a thinker or scholar of much maturer age. The account of 
 its first reception and subsequent history in England de- 
 serves to be cited as amongst the curiosities of literature. 
 " In England," he says, " it was received with cold indiffer- 
 ence, little read, and speedily forgotten ; a small impression 
 was slowly dispersed ; the bookseller murmured, and the 
 author (had his feelings been more exquisite) might have 
 wept over the blunders and baldness of the English transla- 
 tion. The publication of my history Jif teen years afterwards 
 revived the memory of my first performance, and the essay 
 was eagerly sought in the shops. But I refused the per- 
 mission which Becket solicited of reprinting it : the public 
 curiosity was imperfectly satisfied by a pirated copy of the 
 booksellers of Dublin ; and when a copy of the original 
 edition has been discovered in a sale, the primitive value of 
 half a crown has risen to the fanciful price of a gufhea or 
 thirty shillings." ^ 
 
 Just before the publication of the essay, Gibbon entered a 
 hew, and, one might suppose, a very uncongenial scene of 
 life. He became a captain in the Hampshire militia ; and 
 for moi-e than two years led a life of march and counter- 
 march in the southern counties of England. Hampshire, 
 Kent, Wiltshire, and Devonshire, formed the successive 
 theatres of what he calls his " bloodless and inglorious cam- 
 paigns." He nevertheless, justly describes it as a life of 
 " military servitude," as the term of service was prolonged 
 
 1 Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 90. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 259 
 
 far beyond the period he had contemplated, and the mode 
 of Hfe utterly alien from all his pursuits as a scholar and a 
 student. " In the act," says he, " of offering our names and 
 receiving our commissions, as major and captain in the 
 Hampshire regiment (June 12, 1759), we had not supposed 
 that we should be dragged away, my father from his 
 farm, myself from my books, and condemned during two 
 years and a half (May 10, 1760, to December 23, 1762), 
 to a wandering life of military servitude." ^ He has left us 
 an amusing account of the busy idleness in which his time 
 was spent ; but, considering the circumstances, so adverse to 
 study, one is rather surprised that our military student 
 should have done so much, than that he did so little ; ^ and 
 never probably before were so many hours of literary study 
 spent in a tent. In estimating the comparative advantages 
 and disadvantages of this wearisome period of his life, he 
 has summed up with the sagacity of a man of the world, and 
 the impartiality of a philosopher. Irksome as were his em- 
 ployments, grievous as was the waste of time, uncongenial 
 as were his companions, solid benefits were to be set off 
 against these tilings ; his health became robust, his knowl- 
 edge of the world was enlarged, he wore off some of his 
 foreign idiom, got rid of much of his reserve ; he adds, — 
 and perhaps in his estimate it was the benefit to be most 
 prized of all, — " the discipline and evolutions of a modern 
 battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the 
 legion, and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the 
 
 ^ Memoirs, Vol. I. p. 95. 
 
 2 The notes of his Journal at this period are worth reading, as 
 curiously illustrative of his indomitable literary industry. " My 
 example," he says, " might prove that in the life most averse to study 
 some hours may be stolen, some minutes may be snatched. Amidst 
 the tumult of Winchester camp I sometimes thought and read in my 
 tent; in the more settled quarters of the Devizes, Blandford, and 
 Southampton, I always secured a separate lodging, and the necessary 
 books." — Zi. p. 104. 
 
260 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of 
 the Roman Empire." In 1762, while the new militia was 
 forming, he " enjoyed two or three months of literary re- 
 pose," and flew to his books with an appetite sharpened by 
 his long fast. In pursuing a plan of study at this period, 
 he hesitated between the prosecution of mathematics and 
 Greek ; it was but for a moment. As might be anticipated, 
 Homer carrted the day against Newton and Leibnitz. 
 
 Nothing can _ better illustrate the intensity of Gibbon's 
 literary ambition — his only strong passion — than the num- 
 ber of literary projects with which his mind was teeming 
 even in camp. He enumerates amongst others a history of 
 the expedition of Charles VIII. of France ; the crusade of 
 Richard the Lion-hearted ; the wars of the barons ; and 
 lives of the Black Prince, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter 
 Raleigh, and Montrose. These are only a portion of the 
 subjects he revolved with the same view. They show by 
 their number how strong was the impulse to literature, and 
 by their character, how determined the bent of his mind in 
 the direction of history. 
 
 The militia was disbanded in 1763, and he joyfully shook 
 off his bonds ; but his literary projects were still to be post- 
 poned. Following his own wishes, though with his father's 
 consent, he had projected a continental tour as the comple- 
 tion "of an English gentleman's education." This had 
 been interrupted by the episode of the militia. He now 
 resumed his purpose and left England in 1763. Two years 
 were " loosely defined as the term of his absence," which he 
 exceeded by half a year — returning June, 1765. He first 
 visited Paris, where he saw a good deal of D'Alembert, 
 Diderot, Barthelemy, Raynal, Helvetius, Baron d'Holbach, 
 and others of the same set ; and was often a welcome guest 
 in the saloons of Mesdames Geoffrin and Du Deffand.'^ Vol- 
 
 ^ This l*dy, though blind — " I'aveugle clairvoyante," as Voltaire 
 happily calls her — recognized with exquisite tact the self-betraying 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 261 
 
 taire was at Geneva, Rousseau at Montmorency, and Buffon 
 he neglected to visit ; but the above names are enough to 
 justify the suspicion that the hostility which he afterwards 
 evinced towards Christianity may in part be attributed to 
 the influence of such si>ciety. How well he liked Paris is 
 evident from his own statements : " Fourteen weeks insen- 
 sibly stole away ; but had I been rich and independent, I 
 should have prolonged and perhaps have fixed my residence 
 at Paris." * 
 
 From France he proceeded to Switzerland, 'and revisited 
 his friends at Lausanne ; thence to Italy in 1764. The ac- 
 count of his feelings on approaching Rome — how like in 
 intensity to those of Luther on a similar occasion, and yet 
 of how different a character ! — is deeply interesting. His 
 emotions, he says, were not "enthusiastic," and yet became, 
 as he confesses, almost " uncontrollable." While here, his 
 long yearning for some great theme worthy of bis historic 
 genius was gratified. The first conception of the Decline 
 and Fall arose as he lingered one Evening amidst the ves- 
 tiges of ancient glory ; but his precise words cannot be 
 omitted in any sketch of Gibbon, however brief: — " It was 
 at Rome," says he, "on the loth of October, 1764, as I sat 
 musing amidst the ruins of the capitol, while the barefooted 
 friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that 
 the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first 
 started to my mind." M. Suard fancifully attributes to the 
 combination of circumstances under which the conception of 
 the work arose, some of that inveterate hatred of Chris- 
 solicitude of Gibbon to catch the exact tone of French manners and 
 society. She thus speaks in a letter to Walpole : " He sets too much 
 value on our talents for society (nos agr^ments), shows too much desire 
 of acquiring them ; it is constantly on the tip of my tongue to say to 
 him, * Do not put yourself to so much trouble ; you deserve the honor 
 of being a Frenchman.' " 
 
 ^Memoirs, p. 117 
 
262 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 tianity which pervades it. " Struck with a first impi-ession," 
 he says, " Gibbon, in writing the Decline and Fall of the 
 Empire, saw in Christianity only an institution which had 
 placed vespers, barefooted friars, and processions, in the 
 room of the magnificent ceremoni«<s of Jupiter, and the tri- 
 umphs of the Capitol." 
 
 Others attributed it in part to the conservative quality of 
 his politics, which led him to regard Christianity as a " dar- 
 ing innovation." It seems probable that his tendencies and 
 habits of mind, which were eminently favorable to skepti- 
 cism, and the society in which he had early moved (and 
 especially of late in the saloons of Paris), had much more 
 to do with the result than either of these causes. 
 
 About five years after his return home his father died 
 (1770). This is the period of his life which he says he 
 passed -with the least enjoyment, and remembered with the 
 least satisfaction. He attended " every spring the meetings 
 of the militia at Southampton, — and rose successively to 
 the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel ; " but was each 
 year " more disgusted with the inn, the wine, the company, 
 and the tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily 
 exercise." From his own account, however, it appears that ■ 
 other and deeper causes produced his ennui. Sincerely at- 
 tached to his home, he yet felt the anomaly of his position. 
 At thirty, still a dependant, without a settled occupation, 
 without a definite social status, he often regretted that he 
 had not embraced some profession : " From the emoluments 
 of a profession," he says, " I might have derived an ample 
 fortune, or a competent income, instead of being stinted to 
 the same narrow allowance, to be increased only by an event 
 which I sincerely deprecate." ^ Doubtless the secret fire of 
 a consuming, but as yet ungratified, literary ambition also 
 troubled his repose. 
 
 ^ Metnoirs, p. 132. 
 
EDWAKD GIBBON. 263 
 
 He still " contemplated at awful distance " The Decline 
 and Fall ; and, meantime, revolved other subjects. Hesi- 
 tating between the revolutions of Florence and Switzerland, 
 he consulted M. Deyvcrdun, a young Swiss with whom he 
 had been intimate during his first residence at Lausanne, 
 and decided in favor of the land which was his " friend's by 
 birth " and " his own by adoption." He executed the first 
 book in French ; it was read as an anonjraous production 
 before a literary society of foreigners in London, and con- 
 demned. Gibbon sat and listened to their strictures. It 
 never got beyond that rehearsal ; and though Hume encour- 
 aged him to proceed, Gibbon declared the sentence just, and 
 declined. 
 
 In 1767, he joined with M. Deyverdun in starting the 
 Memoirs lAtteraires de la Grande Bretagne. But its cir- 
 culation was limited, and. only two volumes had appeared 
 when Deyverdun went abroad. The materials already col- 
 lected for a third volume were suppressed. It may be inter- 
 esting to the reader to knowHhat in the first volume is a 
 review by Gibbon of Lord Lyttleton's History of Henry II. 
 
 The next appearance of the historian made a deeper im- 
 pression. It was the first distinct print of the lion's foot. 
 " Ex ungue leonem " might have been justly said, for he 
 attacked, and attacked successfully, the redoubtable War- 
 burton. Of the many paradoxes in the Divine Legation, 
 none is more extravagant than the theory that Virgil in the 
 sixth book of his -^neid intended to allegorize, in the visit 
 of his hero and the sybil to th§ shades, the initiation of 
 ^neas, as a lawgiver, into the Eleusinian mysteries. This 
 theory Gibbon completely exploded in his Critical Observa- 
 tions (1770) ; no very difficy^t task, indeed, but achieved in 
 a style, and with a profusion of learning, which showed that 
 its author was capable of far greater things. Warburton 
 never replied, and few will believe that he would not, if he 
 had not thought silence more discreet. Gibbon, however. 
 
264 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 regrets that the style of his pamphlet was too acrimonious ; 
 and this regret, considering his antagonist's slight claims to 
 forbearance, is creditable to him. " I cannot forgive myself 
 the contemptuous treatment of a man who, with all his 
 faults, was entitled to my esteem." ^ 
 
 At length, after fifteen years from the date of his maiden 
 JEssai, and five from his father's death — an event which 
 left him the free use of his time — appeared the ^rst vol- 
 ume of the history which has immortalized his name. His 
 preparations for this great work were vast. The classics, 
 " as low as Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Juvenal," had 
 been long familiar. He now " plunged into the ocean of the 
 Augustan history," and " with pen almost always in hand," 
 pored over all the remains, Greek and Latin, between Tra- 
 jan and the last of the western Csesars. " The subsidiary 
 rays of medals and inscriptions, of geography and chronol- 
 ogy, were thrown on their proper objects; and I apphed the 
 collections of Tillemont, whose inimitable accuracy almost 
 assumes the character of genius, to fix and ax-range within 
 my reach the loose and scattered atoms of historical informa- 
 tion."^ The Theodosian Code, with Godefroy's Commen- 
 tary ; the Christian Apologists, with the testimonies of 
 Lardner ; The Annals and Antiquities of Muratori ; col- 
 lated with " the parallel or transverse lines " of Sigonius 
 and Maffei, Pagi and Baronius, were all critically studied. 
 Such was a portion of the formidable apparatus employed 
 by this great historical genius. His maxim as a student 
 had always been multum .legere potius quam multa. The 
 reader will probably think, even from this imperfect enu- 
 meration of his studies, that he read both multum and 
 multa ; but the general accuracy of his investigations was 
 commensurate with their variety. It appears from his own 
 confession that he long brooded over the chaos of materials 
 
 1 Memoirs, p. 139. '^ lb. p. 140. 
 
ED WARD GlBBON» 265 
 
 before light dawned upon it. At the commencement, he 
 says, " all was dark and doubtful ; " the limits, divisions, 
 even the title of his work were undetermined ; the first 
 chapter was composed three times, and the second and third 
 twice, before he was satisfied with his efforts. But this pro- 
 longed meditation .on his design and its execution was well 
 repaid by the result ; so methodical did his ideas become, 
 and so readily did his materials shape themselves, that (with 
 the above exceptions) the original MS. of the entire six 
 quartos were sent uncopied to the printer. He also says 
 that not a sheet had been seen by any other eyes than those 
 of author and printer. This last statement must be taken 
 with a small deduction ; or rather we must suppose that a 
 few chapters had been submitted, if not to the " eyes," to 
 the " ears " of others ; for he elsewhere tells us that he was 
 "soon disgusted with the modest practice of reading the 
 manuscript to his friends." 
 
 Such, however, were his preliminary diflSculties, that he 
 confesses he was often " tempted to cast away the labor of 
 seven years." He persevered, and in February, 1776, the 
 first volume was published. The success was instant, and, 
 for a quarto, probably unprecedented. The entire impres- 
 sion was exhausted in a few days* The author might 
 almost have said, as Lord Byron after the publication of 
 Childe Harold, that " he awoke one morning and found him- 
 self famous." In addition to public applause, he was grati- 
 fied by the more select praises of Robertson and Hume, and 
 declares that the complimentary letter of the last " overpaid 
 the labors of ten years." Hume applauds, as may be sup- 
 posed, the " prudent temperament " of the historisfli in the 
 treatment of the delicate subjects of the " celebrated chap- 
 ters." ^ Nevertheless, he predicted " clamor ; " and formed a 
 much more correct notion of the effects on the public mind 
 than Gibbon had done. He admits the nation's reverence 
 for Christianity, though he calls it " superstition ; " Gibbon 
 
 23 
 
266 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 believed, or aifected to believe, that England sympathized 
 with the indifFerentism of France. 
 
 Two years before the publication of this first volume (1774) 
 Gibbon was elected member of parliament for Liskeard. 
 His political duties did not suspend his prosecution of his 
 history, except on one occasion, and for. a little while. In 
 the year 1779 he undertook a task on behalf of the minis- 
 try, which, if well performed, was, it must be confessed, well 
 rewarded. The French government had issued a manifesto 
 preparatory to a declaration of war, and Gibbon was solic- 
 ited by Chancellor Thurlow, and Lord "Weymouth, Secretary 
 of State, to answer it. This produced his able Memoire 
 Justificatif, composed in French, and delivered to the courts 
 of Europe. He was rewarded with a seat at the Board of 
 Trade and Plantations, — little more than a sinecure in 
 itself, but with a very substantial salary of nearly £800 per 
 annum. His acceptance displeased his political associates, 
 and he was accused of " deserting a party in which," he 
 declares, " he had never enlisted." A note of Fox, how- 
 ever, on the margin of a copy of Gibbon's history, records 
 a very distinct remembrance of the historian's previous vitu- 
 peration of the ministry ; and this could not but make his 
 political services look venal. He is said to have said that 
 " there would be no hope for England except by taking off 
 the heads of six of the cabinet, and exposing them as an 
 example in parliament." Yet in a fortnight he accepted 
 place. Lord Sheffield says his friend never intended the 
 words to be taken literally t No doubt, but it sufficiently 
 shows what he thought of the deserts of fhe ministry he yet 
 consented to serve. But who can read the life and works 
 of Gibbon and imagine him a martyr, whether for love, 
 politics, or religion ? 
 
 At the general election in 1780, he lost his seat for Lis- 
 keard, but was subsequently elected for Lymington. The 
 ministry of Lord North, however, was tottering, and soon 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 267 
 
 after fell ; the Board of Trade was abolished, and Gibbon's 
 salary vanished with it; — no trifle, for his expenditure had 
 been for three years on a scale somewhat disproportionate 
 to his private fortune. He did not like to depend on states- 
 men's promises, which are proverbially uncertain of fulfil- 
 ment; he as little liked to retrench ; and he was wearied of 
 parliament, where he had never given any but silent votes. 
 Urged by such considerations, he once more turned his eyes 
 jto the scene of his early exile, where he might live on his 
 decent patrimony in a style which was impossible in Eng- 
 land, and pursue unembarrassed his literary studies. He 
 therefore resolved to fix himself at Lausanne. 
 
 A word only is necessary on his parhamentary career. 
 Neither nature nor acquired habits qualified him to be an 
 orator ; his late entrance on public life, his natural timidity, 
 his feeble voice, his limited command of idiomatic English, 
 and even, as he candidly confesses, his literary fame, were 
 all obstacles to success. "After a fleeting, illusive hope, 
 prudence condemned me to acquiesce in the humble station 
 of a mute. ... I was not armed by nature and education 
 with the intrepid energy of mind and voice — ' Vincentem 
 strepitus et natum rebus agendis.' Timidity was justified by 
 pride, and even the success of my pen discouraged the trial 
 of my voice." His repugnance to public life is strongly 
 expressed in a letter to his father of a very early date. He 
 prays that the money which a seat in parliament would cost 
 may be expended in a mode more agreeable to him. Gib- 
 bon was eight-and-thirty when he entered parliament ; and 
 the obstacles wnRi even at an earlier period he would have 
 had to encounter were hardly likely to be vanquished then. 
 
 Nor had he much political sagacity. He was better 
 skilled in investigating the past than, in divining the ftture. 
 While Burke and Fox, and so many great statesmen, pro- 
 claimed the consequence of the collision with America, Gib- 
 bon saw nothing but colonies in rebellion, and a paternal 
 
268 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 government justly incensed. His silent votes were all given 
 on that hypothesis. In a similar manner, while he abhorred 
 the French revolution, he seemed to have had no apprehen- 
 sion, like Chesterfield, Burke, or even Horace Walpole, of its 
 approach, or that it had any thing to do with the philosophic 
 coteries in which he had taken such delight. 
 
 In 1781, he published two more quartos of his history. 
 They excited less controversy, and were therefore less 
 talked about. This seems to have extorted from him a half 
 murmur about " prejudice and neglect." The fact is, there 
 was less room for discussion and complaint; the volumes, 
 however, were read with silent avidity, and deserved it. 
 Though less exciting than the first, they were written with a 
 deeper judgment, and were more free from the taint of in- 
 fidelity. 
 
 Having sold all his property except his library — to him 
 equally a necessary and a luxury — Gibbon repaired to 
 Lausanne in September, 1783, and took up his abode with 
 his early friend Deyverdun, now a resident there. Per- 
 fectly fi'ee from every engagement but those which his own 
 tastes imposed, easy in his circumstances, commanding just 
 as much society, and that as select as he pleased, with the 
 noblest scenery spread out ^t his feet, no situation can be 
 imagined more favorable for the prosecution of his literary 
 enterprise ; — a hermit in his study as long as he chose, and 
 the most delightful recreation always ready for him at the 
 threshold. " In London," says he, " I was lost in the crowd ; 
 I ranked with the first families in Lausanne, and my style 
 of prudent expense enabled me to maimain a fair bahince 
 of reciprocal civilities. . . . Instead of a small house be- 
 tween a street and a stable-yard, I began to occupy a spa- 
 cious and convenient mansion, connected on the north side 
 with the city, and open on the south to a beautiful and 
 boundless horizon. A garden of four acres had been laid 
 out by the taste of M. Deyverdun ; from the garden a rich 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 269 
 
 scenery of meadows and vineyards descends to the Leman 
 Lake, and the prospect far beyond the lake is crowned by 
 the stupendous mountains of Savoy."* In this enviable re- 
 treat, it is no wonder that a year should have been suffered 
 to roll round before he vigorously resumed his great work, — 
 and with many men it would never have been resumed in 
 such a paradise. We may remark en passant that the 
 retreat was often enlivened, or invaded, by friendly tourists 
 from England, whose " frequent incursions " into Switzerland 
 our recluse seems half to lament as an evil. What would 
 he have said fifty years later ? Among others, Mr. Fox 
 gave him two " welcome days of free and private society " 
 in 1788. Differing as they did in politics, Gibbon's testi- 
 mony to the genius and character of the great statesman is 
 highly honorable to both. " Perhaps no human being," he 
 says, " was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of 
 malevolence, vanity, or falsehood." 
 
 When once fairly reseated at his task he proceeded in 
 this delightful retreat leisurely, yet rapidly, to its comple- 
 tion. The fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes were all in man- 
 uscript before he thought of printing. On the 27th of June, 
 1787, he was " free," if freedom can be predicated of that 
 condition, so profoundly natural, which Gibbon has as natu- 
 rally delineated. *• I have presumed," says he, " to mark 
 the moment of conception ; I shall now commemorate the 
 hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather 
 night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven 
 and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a 
 summer-house in my garden. After la}4ng down my pen, 
 I took several turns in a berceau or covered walk of acacias, 
 which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and 
 the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, 
 the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, 
 
 ^ Memoirs, p. 166. 
 
 23* 
 
270 ' NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first 
 emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, per- 
 haps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was 
 soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my 
 mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of 
 an old and agreeable companion ; and that whatsoever might 
 be the future date of my history, the hfe of the historian 
 must be short and precarious." ^ Sad that the^'Consolations 
 of Philosophy should have offered nothing better than this ! 
 
 Taking the manuscript of the last three volumes with him. 
 Gibbon, after an absence of four years, once more visited 
 London. The arrangements for publishing volumes so 
 heralded by their predecessors, were soon effected, and 
 the printing proceeded apace ; but after it was completed, 
 a little trait of characteristic egotism for a while delayed the 
 publication. The great event was to synchronize with 
 the author's fifty-first birthday, and the two great events 
 were celebrated by ]VIr. Cadell, the publisher, by a third 
 great event, — no less than a literary dinner in the author's 
 honor ; — where, says Gibbon, '• I seemed to blush while 
 they read an elegant compliment from Mr. Hayley." As- 
 suredly it ought to have been no seeming blush with which 
 the historian listened to the fulsome hyperboles of the verses 
 with which this mediocre Pindar regaled him ; and if he 
 did not blush for himself, he ought to have done so for 
 the Muse. 
 
 The last volumes of the work were eagerly read, but much 
 criticized ; and while the same religious objections were 
 taken, and justly, the author was found more fault with for 
 the indecency of his notes. Gibbon professes that he never 
 could understand this charge ; and it is very likely (though 
 very lamentable) that he spoke the simple truth. In his 
 defence he says he had wrapped up the offensive matter in 
 
 1 Memoirs, p. 170. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 271 
 
 the learned languages ; but tlien, to how many thousands of 
 those who read his book were those languages familiar! 
 The question is as to the necessity of such citations and com- 
 ments as those in which he has indulged, and few will con- 
 tend for it, in the majority of cases, to any legitimate pur- 
 pose of history. He also says that he had been equally free, 
 though less censured, in the earlier volumes. This would 
 be nothing to the purpose even if true ; but it is hardly 
 true ; for it would be easy to point out in the later volumes 
 more than one instance in which Gibbon has gone completely 
 out of his way to introduce impurities which none but a 
 mind too accustomed to revolve such ideas would wish to 
 suggest to the minds of others ; and one instance, at least, in 
 which he has chosen to improvise a ludicrous varia lectio of 
 a passage for the very purpose of conveying a most gross 
 obscenity. As a writer in the Quarterly Review has very 
 justly remarked, " the critical scrupulosity with which he 
 investigates the most nauseous details, sifting them with the 
 pertinacity and relish of a duck filtering the filthiest mud 
 for its meal," " his sly innuendoes, his luxurious amplifica- 
 'tions," disclose a gross and prurient mind. Many other men 
 equally skeptical, would have shrunk from this kind of pollu- 
 tion ; he plunges into the filth with all the gout and relish 
 of a congenial sensuality. 
 
 He returned to Switzerland in July, 1788 ; but the death 
 of his friend Deyverdun, and the ennui resulting from the 
 loss of his great occupation, which had been as a daily com- 
 panion for so many years, had divested his retreat of its 
 chief charms ; while the premonitory mutterings of the 
 great thunderstorm of the French Revolution, which rever- 
 berated in hollow echoes even through the quiet valleys of 
 Switzerland, further troubled his repose. At length public 
 events, seconded by motives of friendship, drove the historian 
 to his island home. He arrived in England in 1793. He 
 appears to have amused himself during the latter part of 
 
272 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 his stay at Lausanne with his Memoirs, which, with his cor- 
 respondence and miscellaneous pieces, it was reserved for 
 his friend Lord Sheffield to give to the public. 
 
 His life was now drawing to a close, fie had fondly an- 
 ticipated, from the " laws of probability so true in general," 
 but, alas ! " so fallacious in particular," fifteen years of 
 life. They proved in his case to be " fallacious in particu- 
 lar," for he survived scarcely a fourth of the hoped for 
 period. He died January 16, 1794, about nine months 
 after his return to England. Singularly enough, he had 
 been for years afflicted by the disease which at last 
 proved fatal, but had been insensible to its importance, and 
 had declined, from false delicacy, to seek medical aid. It 
 was an element of the " probabilities," which he had not 
 calculated. 
 
 Just before his death he was in full possession of his 
 senses, and is said to have died with much composure ; but 
 he was evidently unconscious of the stealthy step of the De- 
 stroyer till the curtain was suddenly drawn, and the blow 
 struck. 
 
 The character of Gibbon presents much that is personally 
 and socially estimable. Of a frigid temperament, he had 
 not in his composition one particle of the qualities which 
 constitute moi*al greatness in any one of its many forms ; 
 but it would be unjust to deny that he was amiable and 
 good-tempered, and capable of feeling and inspiring a firm, 
 though not very enthusiastic friendship. It must be added 
 that his friendships were such as did not involve any severe 
 strain upon patience, self-denial, generosity, or on his 
 characteristic equanimity. That equanimity, it must be al- 
 lowed, was very little tried in any way ; he practised his 
 philosophy cheaply. Born to competency, and at length 
 possessed of fortune — always fully sensible of the advan- 
 tages which fortune brings in her train — provided with 
 pleasures and occupations he intensely loved — successful in 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 273 
 
 the great object of his literary ambition, which was his only 
 strong passion, and the gratification of which, as his Memoirs 
 show, afforded him intense delight — he seems, if we but 
 suppose this world to be aU, to have whiled away his time 
 here as pleasantly as any wise epicurean could, and to have 
 computed the sum of his enjoyments at the close with a suf- 
 ficiently complacent, but not erroneous arithmetic.^ " M. 
 d'Alembert relates," says he, " that as he was walking in 
 the gardens of Sans Souci with the king of Prussia, Fred- 
 erick said to him, ' Do you see that old woman, a poor 
 weeder, asleep on that sunny bank ? She is probably a 
 more happy being than either of us.' The king and the 
 philosopher may speak for themselves ; for my part I do 
 not envy the old woman." ^ 
 
 But with good-nature and social amenity the praise of his 
 personal character almost ends. No traits, so far as we can 
 find, of self-denial, generosity, magnanimity, nobility of mind, 
 mark his history. M. Vaillant even charges him with " in- 
 sensibility to all lofty and generous sentiments." This is 
 too strong ; at least if the expression of " lofty " sentiments 
 (a cheap way, it must be admitted, of manifesting the more 
 arduous virtues), may be taken as a key to character where 
 we cannot appeal to the bettei^est of action. Of such sen- 
 timents of sympathy with magnanimous virtue, there is no 
 lack in his Decline and Fall, — if we except two subjects. 
 " His reflections," says Porson, " are just and profound ; he 
 pleads eloquently for the rights of mankind and the duty of 
 toleration, nor does his humanity ever slumber — unless 
 when women are ravished, and Christians persecuted." 
 The exceptions, it must be confessed, cut deep, and remind 
 us a little of the indignant virtue of the Irish woman, who 
 challenged her accusers to say, barring theft, lust, and 
 drunkenness, what they could have to allege against her. 
 
 1 Memoirs, pp. 182-184. ^ 7J.^ p. i83. 
 
274 NEW BIOGUAPHIES. 
 
 Vanity he had in abundance, as appears in his Memoirs , 
 indeed, without it would any man ever write his autobiogra- 
 phy ? Yet it is accompanied in Gibbon with much candor. 
 Less indulgence can be given to the contemptuous arrogance 
 with which he treats opponents. 
 
 His conversation, though, as might be expected, full of 
 information, seems to have been, if not tinged with pedant- 
 ry, yet too formal. He talked much as he wrote, and this 
 prevented his attaining the ease and grace of the best col- 
 loquial style. " His conversation," says M. Suard, " never 
 carried one away. Its fault was an artificiality which never 
 permitted him to say any thing unless well," — that is, well 
 in his estimate ; and so, in books, and notes, and conversa- 
 tion his diction was apt to be recherche, and his sentences a 
 mosaic. 
 
 Gibbon's genius was singularly adapted to the task he 
 undertook. He ironically observes, in his Memoirs, that 
 since " philosophy has exploded all innate ideas and natural 
 propensities," fortuitous causes in early life must be alleged 
 to account for the invincible bent of his mind to history. 
 But he distinctly intimates his convictions to the con- 
 trary in another part of his Memoirs : " After his oracle 
 Dr. Johnson, my friend Sif Joshua Reynolds denies all 
 original genius, any natural propensity of the mind to one 
 art or science rather than another. Without engaging in a 
 metaphysical or, rather, verbal dispute, I know by experi- 
 ence that from my early youth I aspired to the character of 
 an historian." ^ • No just philosophy is likely to explode 
 " innate " aptitudes of fundamental peculiarities of mind, 
 whether generic or individual ; and to these, at least as 
 strongly as to education or accident, must we attribute each 
 special bias of genius. Not that these last have little to do 
 with the character of intellect, which is finally the result of 
 
 ^ Memoirs, p. 106. 
 

 EDWARD GIBBON. 275 
 
 It- 
 two variables — certain original tendencies of mind, and the 
 
 discipline to which the mind has been subjected. It is a 
 departure perhaps from ordinary language to speak of some 
 one distinct endowment of mind, or congeries of endow- 
 ments, and call it an historic genius, in the same way we 
 speak of a philosophical or poetical genius ; but if the 
 phrase be ever allowable, it is assuredly so in the case of 
 Gibbon. It mg.y be more proper to say, however, that he 
 had in large measure all those separate endowments, which, 
 in conjunction, best fit a man for this department of compo- 
 sition ; some of them hardly compatible at all, and scarcely 
 ever seen united. In him all were possessed in a harmony 
 and perfection seldom equalled, perhaps never surpassed ; a 
 most retentive memory, the most active powers of acqui- 
 sition, indomitable' industry, a mind capable equally of 
 ascending to the most comprehensive, and of descending to 
 the most minute surveys ; of appreciating the beautiful and 
 sublime in classic literature, and yet of delighting in the 
 verbal criticism, tedious collations, and dry antiquarian re- 
 search by which the text is established or illustrated ; of 
 celebrating the more imposing events of history with con- 
 genial pomp of description, and of investigating with the 
 dullest plodder's patience and perseverance the origin of 
 nations, the emigrations of obscure tribes, and the repulsive 
 yet instructive problems which ethnology presents. Ac- 
 cordingly, the widest deductions of historic philosophy alter- 
 nate in his pages with attempts to fix the true reading of an 
 obsciire passage or a minute point of chronology or geogra- 
 phy. It may even be said that in these last investigations 
 he took almost as much delight as in depicting the grander 
 scenes of history, and surrendered himself as absolutely for 
 the time to the migrations of the Goths and Scythians as to 
 the campaigns of Belisarius or the conquests of the Sara- 
 cens. It must be added that never has any historian 
 evinced greater logical sagacity in making comparatively 
 
276 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 obscure details yield impoftant inferences, or held with a 
 firmer hand the balance in the case of conflicting probabili- 
 ties ; none who has exhibited sounder judgment or self- 
 control (always excepting Christianity) in cases where it is 
 so easy for learned enthusiasm to run into fanciful hypoth- 
 eses. To these qualities must be added a singular skill in 
 marshalling for effect the diversified and multifarious mat- 
 ters of his history, and often much richness of iraaginatioR 
 and great graphic art in investing their more picturesque 
 features with the brilliant tints and colors, the due light and 
 shade which belong to historic painting. 
 
 Of the many high qualities which characterize his history 
 perhaps none is more marked than the manner in which he 
 he has managed to manoeuvre, so to speak, the vast array 
 of facts which crowd its pages. It is the amplest historic 
 canvas ever spread, the largest historic painting ever exe- 
 cuted by a single hand. The history of Rome is, for the 
 many centuries which Gibbon treats, the history of the 
 world ; and it is astonishing that he should have been able 
 to work with so much ease such vast and incongruous ma- 
 terials with so much unity of design ; that he should have 
 been able (so to speak) to exhibit the many-colored nations 
 of all varieties of costume, habits, languages, and religions 
 in one tolerably consistent tableau. The history is a sort 
 of moving panorama of the nations ; and as tribe after 
 tribe, nation after nation, Celt, Goth, Saracen, and Sarma- 
 tian appear on the scene from the obscurity of their origi- 
 nal seats, they blend with grace in the picturesque narrative. 
 Ilis history is like the Indus or the Mississippi, swelling 
 and still swelling by a thousand tributary floods, which aug- 
 ment its voluftie, and tinge its waters, but without destroying 
 the identity or the pervading character of the stream. 
 
 The style of Gibbon has great merits, mixed with some 
 not trivial defects. The " luminous Gibbon," was a phrase 
 of Sheridan in his speech on Hastings's trial, with which 
 
EDWAED GIBBON. 277 
 
 Gibbon was much delighted : but which the malicious wit 
 afterwards playfully denied, and said he must have meant 
 the " voluminous Gibbon." Yet the epithet may well stand. 
 The diction is precise, energetic, massive ; splendid where 
 the pictorial demands of the narrative require it, as that of 
 Livy ; and sometimes, where profound reflections are to be 
 concisely expressed, as sententious and graphic as that of 
 Tacitus. Less can be said for the sources of his diction ; it 
 is not sufficiently idiomatic English, and bears everywhere 
 the traces of his early addictedness to French. The Galli- 
 cisms are in many places amusingly perverse. Thus, for 
 example, his constant use of " prevents " in the old sense of 
 " anticipate " sometimes leads to ludicrous apparent contra- 
 diction, as when he tells us that " The prefect had signalized 
 his fidelity to Maximin by the alacrity with which he had 
 obeyed and even prevented the cruel mandates of the ty- 
 rant ; " or, again, that " the fortunate soil assisted and even 
 prevented the hand of cultivation." 
 
 The structure of his style is open to still greater objec- 
 tions than his diction. Harmonious as it often is, it is too 
 frequently set and formal ; deficient in flexibility. It is apt 
 to pall on the ear by the too frequent recurrence of the same 
 cadence at equal intervals, and the too unsparing use of an- 
 tithesis. It is not veined marble, but an exquisite tessela- 
 tion ; not the fluent naturally winding stream, but a stately 
 aqueduct, faced with stone, adorned with wooded embank- 
 ments, or flowing over noble arches, but an aqueduct still. 
 It is a just criticism of Sir James Mackintosh, that probably 
 no writer ever derived less benefit from his professed mod- 
 els. Pascal, Voltaire, Hume, were his delight, and he ac- 
 knowledges (as so unsuccessful a pupil well might) that he 
 often closed the pages of the last with a feeling of de- 
 spair. Addison and Swift he read for the very purpose of 
 improving his acquaintance with idiomatic English, yet, as 
 the above critic remarks, " with so little success, that in the 
 24 
 
278 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 very act of characterizing these writers, he has deviated not 
 a little from that beautiful simplicity which is their peculiar 
 distinction." 
 
 The irony of Gibbon, on which he evidently plumed him- 
 self, is in him no pleasant feature, not merely because in 
 history it can seldom be in place if much indulged, but be- 
 cause it is especially distasteful to the great majority of his 
 readers when applied to those deeply serious themes on 
 which he usually exercises it. He flattered himself, as 
 already seen, that Pascal's Provincial Letters had taught 
 him to use this weapon gracefully ; as little, it may be re- 
 torted, as Addison and Swift had taught him the use of idio- 
 matic English. The difference between an innocent smile 
 and a sardonic grin is scarcely greater than that between 
 the irony of Pascal .and the irony of Gibbon ; the one speaks 
 with a sweet riant air, as with the consciousness that what is 
 ridiculed is ridiculous ; the other with a cautious, stealthy, Guy 
 Faux look, as if conscious of a sinister purpose. Gibbon's 
 irony almost always wears a sneer, and seldom provokes the 
 smile of the reader, even where the subject does not repel it. 
 Not only so, it is so elaborate as to lose much of its grace even 
 where innocent ; in other cases it is often so masked as to 
 leave the reader (Pascal is never thus changeable) in doubt 
 whether the author meant what he seemed to mean, or 
 whether he is not meditating, by the very form of expres- 
 sion, a pusillanimous escape from the inferences that may 
 be legitimately founded on it. 
 
 We have expressed ungrudging admiration of the great 
 inerits of this astonishing work. It has, nevertheless, one 
 pervading blemish, of which we shall speak with similar im- 
 partiality. That blemish is, of course, the treatment of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 If the Christian public had given itself time to reflect, it 
 would have been seen that Gibbon's attack really afforded 
 little cause for alarm. The purpose of the assassin-like 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 279 
 
 stroke from behind the curtain of his irony is plain enough ; 
 but is really a hrutum fuhnen. Gibbon himself has pro- 
 vided for his own defeat by his very mode of conducting the 
 assault. If he meant, as he seemed to insinuaie rather than 
 affirm (or, to speak more accurately, insinuated while in 
 words he expressly affirmed the contrary), that his "five 
 secondary causes " gave a probable natural solution of the 
 origin and early triumphs of Christianity, — then the whole 
 thing was a ludicrous instance of vateQOv TtQOtSQOv, or, as our 
 proverb has it, of " the cart before the horse." The story 
 begins all too late ; the " causes " require as much to be ac- 
 counted for as the " effects ; " or rather, they are among the 
 very effects to be accounted for. According to'this mode 
 of explaining the origin of Christianity, causes are assigned 
 which implied not only its existence, but its activity ; in 
 other words, the hypothesis assigns Christianity itself as a 
 cause of itself, and its success as a ground of its success. 
 Thus, for example, if he is to be supposed (as he evidently 
 wishes the reader to infer) to be accounting for the purely 
 human origin and triumphs of Christianity, — the most po- 
 tent secondary causes he assigns are the zeal, morality, vir- 
 tue, unity ,^ and so forth, of the Christian church ; mean- 
 while, the very thing that demands explanation is just the 
 
 1 As to his third secondary cause, " miracles," the same may be said 
 as of his ironically conceded primary cause. He either meant that 
 miracles had been performed, or not ; if he did, he of course concedes 
 the main point ; if he did not, then he is giving a nothing (by a new 
 name) to account for the success of Christianity. If it be said that 
 what he meant was the pretension to miracles, though miracles there 
 were none, it is very likely ; but then it is easy to reply that though 
 such pretensions have been often of service when a religion has already 
 become accredited, there is no example (unless he choose to heg the ques- 
 tion by assuming it of the Jewish and Christian religions) of a religion 
 successfully ybujidt's^ itself on such hazardous assumptions, while there 
 are many examples of failure in such attempts ; that is, Gibbon's 
 cause, as usual, comes too late. 
 
280 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 sudden apparition in the world of this singular phenomenon, 
 the Christian church, with this bright retinue of virtues ; 
 how it was that a system from which the Jews have re- 
 coiled more than any other nation for the last eighteen hun- 
 dred years, should have sprung up in their bosom, in spite 
 of all their national antipathies ; how it was that a system 
 which was scarcely less odious from its origin, its character, 
 its doctrines (in a word, every thing), to all other nations, 
 should nevertheless have found its proselytes so rapidly in 
 every part of the Koman empire ; and in a few centuries, 
 not only gained a sphere for the exercise of that marvellous 
 " virtue " and " zeal " which it indeed might cause, but 
 which could hardly cause it, but dethroned all the deities of 
 Olympus, and became the established religion of the empire ! 
 That was the problem ; and Gibbon takes it up long after 
 Christianity had made good its footing, and assigns, if he 
 means what he seems to mean, causes for its origin and suc- 
 cess, which already presuppose both origin and success ! It 
 is as though a man were seeking the source of the Nile, and 
 ascending no higher than the cataracts, avows that he finds 
 its fountain there. Such is the value of Gibbon's hypothesis, 
 supposing he intended his secondary causes to account for 
 the origin and triumphs of Christianity ; but, as before said, 
 he made a provision for his retreat, by nominally granting 
 the " truth of the doctrine and the providence of God " to be 
 the great cause of the success of Christianity. Seriously, 
 one would imagine, (if we did not know his manner,) that he 
 meant all this ; for in his Vindication, in reply to Davis, 
 where he takes occasion briefly to mention "Watson's Letters, 
 and to excuse himself from reply, he appeals to this very 
 concession as a reason for silence ! He says, — " The re- 
 marks of Dr. Watson consist more properly of general argu- 
 mentation than of particular criticism. He fairly owns that 
 I have expressly allowed the full and irresistible weight of 
 the first great cause of the success of Christianity ; and be 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 281 
 
 is too candid to deny that the five secondary causes, which 
 I had attempted to explain, operated with some degree of 
 active energy towards the accomplishment of that great 
 event. The only question which remains between us re- 
 lates to the degree of the weight and effect of those secondary 
 causes ; and as I am persuaded that our philosophy is not of 
 the dogmatic kind, we should soon acknowledge that this 
 precise degree cannot be ascertained by reasoning, nor per- 
 haps be expressed by words." ^ This language, on the sup- 
 position that Gibbon was still really ironizing, greatly aggra- 
 vates the disingenuousness of the " celebrated chapters." 
 But either he meant what he said, or he did not ; if he did, 
 it of course formally surrenders the argument which infidel- 
 ity has founded on the supposed suflBciency of his " secon- 
 dary " causes ; if he did not mean it, he of course evades the 
 very question which his antagonist (and every other discreet 
 antagonist) would contest with him, by ironically affecting 
 argument. 
 
 It may be further remarked, not only that the Christian 
 feels that the " secondary causes " of Gibbon do not touch 
 the principal problem, — but that infidelity has confessed, in 
 a most significant way, a similar mistrust, by laboriously con- 
 structing other, and often reciprocally destructive hypotheses, 
 to account for the intractable phlfeomena. That of Strauss 
 is one, which, unlike that of Gibbon, professes to track the 
 origin of Christianity to its cradle ; but faithfully represents 
 that of Gibbon and many more, in one respect, that it is 
 ephemeral. It is even now fast losing its transient prestige. 
 These shining exhalations from the bog of skepticism glim- 
 mer, flicker, and vanish. Fortuitous myth, deliberate fiction, 
 deep fraud practising on simplicity, deep fanaticism practis- 
 ing on itself, — have all. under various modifications been 
 resorted to, as the contradictory basis of infidel theories, and 
 
 1 Miscellaneous Works, Vol. iii. p. 362. The italics are the author's own. 
 24* 
 
282 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 have been successively abandoned. The problem of the 
 origin of such a system as Christianity under such circum- 
 stances, and with such results, within a given century, still 
 presents the ancient difficulty. Meanwhile it may now be 
 safely asserted, that the chief hypotheses have been exhaust- 
 ed ; and we have reason to infer therefore, that the vast ma- 
 jority who examine Christianity will be as they have hith- 
 erto been, of Butler's opinion, that nothing but the truth of 
 the gospel will harmonize the facts. 
 
 But still further; it is a special weakness in Gibbon's 
 theory that so far from his " secondary causes " being suffi- 
 cient to account for the origin, they do not even account for 
 the progress of the gospel ; they are, when closely investi- 
 gated, quite as often opposed to that progress ; sometimes 
 must have been far greater hindrances than helps. Nothing 
 can be more infelicitous than some of his suppositions. For 
 example, he imagines that the " intolerant zeal " of Chris- 
 tianity — which expressed the most open and derisive con- 
 tempt of all the gods, consecrated by the classic mythologies 
 — w^as a mysterious advantage to it ! That the austere vir- 
 tue with which, be it recollected, it not only recoiled from 
 the too welcome laxity of a jovial heathenism, but enlarged 
 the circle of moral duties by adding the demands of the 
 most diffusive and refined spiritual purity — would somehow 
 attract votaries! That its visions of immortality — of a 
 heaven so unalluring — of a hell so terrible — would be of 
 magnetic force ! surely these are problematic auxiliaries. 
 Similarly, some of the facts he assumes are purely imaginary ; 
 he attributes the zeal of proselytism manifested by the 
 Christians to a Jewish origin, forgetting that the zeal of the 
 Tews was just of the opposite kind ; that Judaism was as ex- 
 clusive as Christianity is catholic. There may be, no doubt, 
 zeal for freedom and zeal for slavery ; but because each is 
 zeal, it would be odd to dejive one from the other. Another 
 cause to which he attributes much, was, alas ! too often non- 
 
EDWABD GIBBON. 283 
 
 existent, and its effects were at least neutralized by opposite 
 causes. It is the unity of the early church ; its close com- 
 pacted organization ! Surely a singular topic of compliment, 
 and even at a very early period a doubtful source of strength. 
 The divisions, jealousies, and quarrels of Christians, were 
 from the very first their weakness and their shame ; and 
 must have been at least as influential to retard, as ever their 
 union was to advance, the progress of the gospel. 
 
 In conclusion, Christians may take some encouragement 
 from Gibbon's failure. If ever man could hope to be the 
 historic champion of infidelity with success, it was he. His 
 work has such prodigious merits in nearly every thing but 
 its treatment of Christianity, as to have procured it almost 
 universal perusal ; it has now been published for the greater 
 part of a century ; and what, relatively to Christianity, have 
 been its effects ? Quite inappreciable. His management of 
 this high argument is generally considered as the great blot 
 of the work ; as a sufiicient, or even plausible account of 
 the origin and early triumphs of Christianity, it is for the 
 most part abandoned by infidels themselves. 
 
 The New Testament, somehow, still manages to impress 
 the bulk of mankind who examine it, with an indelible con- 
 viction that it is the fruit of neither imposture, fiction, nor 
 fanaticism, and that \}cv^ facts connected with the propagation 
 of the religion it embodies are historic verities. Since men 
 have persisted in this belief, in spite of the efforts of such 
 men as Bolingbroke, Voltaire, Hume, and Gibbon, to disa- 
 buse them, it is not probable that the enterprise in which 
 such champions have failed will be successfully achieved by 
 other hands. Hence it may be inferred that if Christianity 
 be false, it will, nevertheless, not be exploded. 
 
 The manner in which Gibbon prosecutes his object affords, 
 no doubt, great facilities for exciting prejudices against 
 Christianity, and ample scope .for his cherished sneer. 
 Christianity does not enter on the scene till it had degener- 
 
284 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ated in some degree from its primitive purity, and had con- 
 tracted many pollutions. The foibles and follies of its ad- 
 herents, of course afford a very easy triumph to the. satirist. 
 
 The Christian religion, once originated, and having 
 achieved an initial success, was left to struggle with all the 
 corrupting influences of the world, and, as might be expected, 
 did not come off uninjured. Brought into contagious con- 
 tact with false philosophies and degrading superstitions, and 
 gathering converts from those who were but partially re- 
 claimed from either, no wonder that its purity was blemished. 
 But all this which is favorable to Gibbon's satire, is any 
 thing but favorable to his argument : for the characteristics 
 of Christianity to which, one moment, he would fain assign 
 such wonderful efficacy, are anon exhibited in a very differ- 
 ent light; are alternately, as the exigencies of his argument 
 or the gratification of his malignity may dictate, the objects 
 of respect or contempt. Thus the zeal and the purity of 
 manners which are now so potent a cafise of success, are 
 now transformed, the one into bigotry and fanaticism, the 
 other into austerity and grimace. But velis et remis ; if 
 Christianity may but be discredited, the historian seems but 
 little troubled by his own inconsistencies. Thus, to give 
 other instances of this blind animosity : sometimes the Chris- 
 tians are, nearly all, povefty-stricken wretches, the very 
 dregs of society; presently they have plenty of riches 
 among them, and the mere prodigality of their benevolence 
 is no inconsiderable bait for proselytism : at one time the 
 early Christians, for a certain purpose, are too obscure to at- 
 tract the attention of the Roman great ; then, for another 
 purpose, it is suddenly remarkable that illustrious men like 
 Tacitus and Seneca could have been so insensible to its exist- 
 ence, or have regarded it with such apathy ! 
 
 The historian, in Short, has greatly diminished the perni- 
 cious effect of his attack, by the animus he everywhere be- 
 trays. It is that of inveterate prejudice, of resolute hostility. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 285 
 
 On this one topic he is never moved to generous or noble 
 emotions. The excellence of the Christian ethics, indeed, is 
 coldly conceded ; but even Gibbon could hardly deny that. 
 
 The sixteenth chapter is in some respects worse than the 
 fifteenth ; for in his anxiety to depreciate the numbers and 
 heroism of the Christian martyrs, he forgets what is due to 
 his professed maxims of toleration, and becomes, if not the 
 apologist, the palliator of the most odious persecution. But 
 his conduct here has been rebuked by one whose eminently 
 calm and judicial spirit, and exemption from all suspicion of 
 religious fanaticism, render his testimony particularly im- 
 pressive. " The sixteenth chapter," says Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh, " I cannot help considering as a very ingenious and 
 specious, but very disgraceful extenuation of the cruelties 
 perpetrated by the Roman magistrates against the Christians. 
 It is written in the most contemptibly factious spirit of prej- 
 udice against the sufferers Dr. Robertson has 
 
 been the subject of much blame for his zeal or supposed 
 lenity toward the Spanish murderers and tyrants in America. 
 That the sixteenth chapter of Mr. Gibbon did not excite 
 the same or greater disapprobation, is a proof of the unphi- 
 losophical and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity 
 which was so prevalent during the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century." ^ It is also well observed by M. Guizot, 
 that there is scarcely any thing in his history that does not 
 move Gibbon more than Christianity and its fortunes. The 
 achievements of a vigorous barbarism — the sanguinary 
 conquests, even the odious cruelties of a Bajazet or a Tam- 
 erlane — are described with more animation than the moral 
 conquests of Christianity. One would have imagined that 
 at least the prodigious influence of Christianity, true or false, 
 on the world's history and civilization, would have been a 
 tempting theme for the philosophical historian's speculation. 
 
 1 Mackintosh's Life, Vol. I. p. 245. 
 
286 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Yet, as the above writer has observed,^it is a topic almost 
 unappreciated by him. A single sentence from M. Guizot's 
 article in the BiograpMe Universelle well expresses the 
 above traits. " Apres s'etre efforce de rebaisser le courage 
 hdroique des martyrs Chretiens, il prend plaisir k c^Iebrer 
 les feroces exploits de Tamerlan et des Tartares : la grandeur 
 materielle, si on peut le dire, le f'rappe beaucoup plus que 
 la grandeur morale ; et les elans d'une vertu sublime ne 
 penetrent point j'usqu' a son ame, tandis que les ecarts d'une 
 force barbare seduissent son imagination et egarent son 
 jugement. 
 
 It is difficult, as several critics have remarked, to account 
 for Gibbon's extreme injustice to Christianity, Some have 
 fancied, and himself in his later days would fain counte- 
 nance the fancy, that it was partly due to his " conservative 
 politics ; " because he regarded Christianity as he would a 
 " modern innovation," and yearned, with, desperate fidelity 
 to antiquity, over the old heathenism it supplanted ; because 
 he felt much as he did at seeing the throne of France me- 
 naced by revolutionary fury ! A remarkable passage to 
 this effect occurs in one of his latest letters to Lord Shef- 
 field, dated 1790. He says, " Burke's book is a most ad- 
 mirable medicine against the French disease, which has 
 made too much progress even in this happy country. I 
 admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his 
 chivalry, and I can forgive even his superstition. The prim- 
 itive church, which I have treated with some freedom, was 
 itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached to the 
 old Pagan establishment." ^ To most this has appeared an 
 after-tJiought, and justly. For was ever an argument more 
 suicidal ! When he wrote, Christianity, right or wrong, was 
 in possession; and to attempt to destroy it was to do that 
 very work of destruction which he professed to deprecate ; 
 
 1 Gibbon's Works, Vol. I. p. 214. 
 
EDWARD GIBBON. 287 
 
 yet he had the effrontery to say in his Memoir, on the 
 breaking out of the French Revolution, — "I have some- 
 times thought of writing a dialogue of the dead, in which 
 Lucian, Erasmus, and Voltaire, should mutually acknowl- 
 edge the danger of exposing an old superstition to the con- 
 tempt of a blind and fanatic multitude." ^ Assuredly he 
 should have made himself a fourth interlocutor in the dia- 
 logue, and confessed that he was the greatest culprit, in this 
 kind, of his whole generation. Christianity, which, even if 
 according to him a " superstition," could plead the hoary 
 prescription of nearly two thousand years, he did his best to 
 undermine, because so many centuries ago it had dethroned 
 poor Jupiter ! On the same principles, had he lived in the 
 age of Augustus, he opght to have exemplified his zeal 
 against innovation by being jealous of the upstart of Olym- 
 pus, pleaded for the restoration of Saturn, or even gone 
 back to the more " primitive tradition " of " Chaos and Old 
 Night ! " 
 
 It would have been well if the contemporaries of Gibbon 
 had adopted that moderate estimate of his attack on Chris- 
 tianity which experience has now justified us in forming. 
 As it was, the public took fright, and numberless hasty re- 
 plies were published, — some of them insolent and abusive, 
 most of them very inadequate in point of learning and logic, 
 and none of thenj, if we except those of Watson and Lord 
 Hailes, of much value. That of Watson alone touched the 
 real points of the controversy, and showed that Gibbon's 
 sophistry left the great problem as it was. It is a pity that 
 Gibbon, instead of replying, evaded it by that disingenuous 
 feint of agreement on the main point at issue, to which ref- 
 erence has been already made. 
 
 The only adversary whom he honored with distinct ref- 
 utation was Davis, whose unworthy attempt to depreciate 
 
 % 
 1 Gibbon's Works, Vol. I. p. 181, 
 
288 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the great historian's learning, and captious, cavilling, ac- 
 rimonious charges of petty inaccuracies and discreditable 
 falsification, gave Gibbon an easy triumph. It was, as he 
 said, a " sufficient humiliation," to vanquish such an adver- 
 sary. At the same time it must be confessed, that he se- 
 lected his adversary discreetly. 
 
 The charges of inaccuracy against Gibbon in the citation 
 of his authorities have often been repeated, but they are not, 
 except to a very limited extent, substantiated in the estimate 
 of the most recent and competent of his editors. In his 
 treatment of Christianity, his inveterate and resolute prej- 
 udices may account for his partial evidence and perverted 
 logic without accusing him, as Davis did, of ignorance, 
 which cannot be suspected, or of deliberate suppressio veri, 
 which one would not suspect. 
 
 It is impossible to enumerate here the various editions of 
 Gibbon's works, or to enter into the voluminous literature 
 they have evoked. It may be well to mention, however, 
 the beautiful edition of the Decline and Fall recently put 
 forth in eight volumes octavo under the editorship of Dr. W. 
 Smith, and which embodies the notes of Professor Milman 
 and M. Guizot. 
 
 He who would obtain a full insight into the character and 
 genius of Gibbon, would do well to consult not only the 
 Memoir, but the Letters and Journals; his life was em- 
 phatically that of a student and scholar, and these remains 
 as vividly illustrate it, as the Memoir itself. 
 
GASSENDI 
 
 PiEBRE Gassend Gassendi, One of the most distin- 
 guisked philosophers of the seventeenth century, was born in 
 the last decade of the sixteenth (22d January, 1592), at the 
 village of Chantersier, near Digne in Provence. His 
 family was humble, but his parents were virtuous ; and to 
 their instructions and influence Gassendi seems to have 
 owed a more than usual debt of gratitude. His childhood 
 exhibited the most astonishing, not to say incredible, pre- 
 cocity ; and, if the feats told of him are true, shows (as M. 
 De Gerando observes in his able sketch of this philosopher 
 in the Biographie Vniverselle) that the feeling which is apt to 
 regard unusual precocity as a treacherous omen is not always 
 to be trusted. At the age of four, Sorbiere tells us, he 
 sometimes played among his youthful companions the part 
 of a censor, and imitated the manner of a preacher.. At 
 the same tender age he often crept out at night to watch the 
 stars — to the great alarm of his parents. At ten he de- 
 claimed in a tiny harangue before the Bishop of Digne 
 (Antony of Boulogne), on the occasion of a pastoral visita- 
 tion ; which struck that prelate (as it well might) with such 
 wonder, that he did not hesitate, in spite of the aforesaid 
 general distrust of precocity, to prophesy the boy-orator's 
 future eminence. Either that, or an early grave, or speedy 
 
 25 (289) 
 
290 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 fatuity, would certainly be a very rational deduction from 
 symptoms of such premature mental activity. 
 
 Gassendi was then receiving lessons from the cure of the 
 village ; but such was his ardor, that when he had learned 
 the prescribed tasks, he would pursue his solitary studies by 
 the light of the church lamp. At Digne he studied rhetoric, 
 and composed certain petites comedies. He then went to 
 Aix to study philosophy under Fesaye, a professor who 
 strongly shared and expressed the rising discontent with the 
 reigning scholastic philosophy. At sixteen our still beard- 
 less philosopher was elected to the chair of rhetoric at 
 Digne ; but, being destined for the church, speedily returned 
 to Aix to study theology, and other branches appropriate to 
 the ecclesiastical profession. At the early age of twenty- 
 one he was simultaneously elected to the two chaii's of phi- 
 losophy and theology in the university of Aix. He chose 
 the latter, and delivered his first course extemporaneously. 
 He retained this chair for ten years. Not content with 
 merely fulfilling the duties of his chair, he indulged in ample 
 excursions into almost every department of science and 
 literature, and made large collections of notes, which were 
 afterwards of great service to him as a philosophical critic. 
 His favorite pursuits in his leisure hours were astronomy 
 and anatomy. He confesses, too, a passing penchant for 
 astrology ; but it soon disappeared, and he became one of 
 the most strenuous opponents of that delusive science. In 
 1623, he was presented to a benefice in the cathedral of 
 Digne, and gave up his chair in order to surrender himself 
 more completely to study. In the following year he com- 
 menced author by the publication of a portion of his Exer- 
 citationes paradoxicce adversus Aristotelem, a work which 
 naturally called forth, in equal measure, the censures of the 
 servile lovers of antiquity, and the admiration of the ardent 
 minds who longed to inaugurate a new era in science and 
 philosophy. He himself, according to M. De Gerando, 
 
G4SSENDI. 291 
 
 seemed half astonished at the report of his own artillery. 
 But being now committed as author, he desired, says the 
 same writer, " s'^clairer par des observations et des conseils 
 et former des relations utiles." With this view he made 
 excursions in Provence and Dauphin^, visited the capital, 
 and took a journey to the Low Countries and Holland — 
 everywhere forming friendships with the literati of the age, 
 haunting learned establishments and consulting public li- 
 braries. With similar views, as a pilgrim of science, he pro- 
 jected, in common with other learned men, a journey to 
 Italy and Constantinople^ but this design he never executed. 
 During his stay at Marseilles, in 1636, he made some im- 
 portant astronomical observations ; and, by the aid of lunar 
 eclipses, ascertained more correctly the limits, in latitude 
 and longitude, of the Mediterranean, the length of which 
 hydrographers, following Ptolemy, had exaggerated in the 
 current charts by no less than two hundred leagues. In 
 1638, he found an ardent friend and admirer in Louis de 
 Valois, afterwards Due d'Angouleme ; and if the philoso- 
 pher, who ever preferred studious retirement to public life, 
 had been ambitious, he might have availed himself of this 
 patron's aid to secure station and riches. In 1 645 there was 
 some thought of making him tutor to the young prince, after- 
 wards Louis XIV., but it came to nothing. He was ap- 
 pointed, however, mathematical lecturer in the Royal Col- 
 lege of France by the good offices of the Archbishop ' of 
 Lyons, brother of Cardinal Richelieu. From that ambi- 
 tious minister himself he never received any favor ; which. 
 says De Gerando, is remarkable, considering the affect?8n 
 of the Archbishop and the renown of the philosopher. But, 
 too often, politicians regard neither affection nor merit where 
 talents cannot be serviceable to them, and Gassendi's modest 
 and retiring spirit was little likely to help the ambitious car- 
 dinal. Meantime, his fame gradually spread. Amongst his 
 ardent admii-ers appear royal and noble names : — Christina, 
 
292 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Queen of Sweden ; Frederick III. of Denmark ; a couple 
 of popes ; and several French princes. The Cardinal de 
 Retz also highly esteemed and honored hira. But he has 
 more legitimate claims to remembrance than the suffrages of 
 contemporaries illustrious only for rank and station ; and, 
 indeed, with the exception of De Retz, he is himself better 
 known now than any of the above-mentioned admirers. A 
 more emphatic testimony to the deserved esteem in which 
 he was held is found in his intimacy with all the great liter- 
 ati and philosophers of his day, with most of whom he main- 
 tained an active correspondence, which foi'ms by ho means 
 the least interesting portion of his works. A formidable list 
 of these illustrious friends and acquaintances is given in Sor- 
 biere's " General Preface " to Gassendi's works. Galileo 
 conferred upon him signal proofs of esteem, and Gassendi 
 consoled Galileo in his^ persecutions ; though, like Descartes, 
 he prudently declined any chance of sharing them. The 
 martyrs of science have been always scarce. 
 
 The lectures of Gassendi at the Royal College were well 
 attended. To Astronomy, which had been too much neg- 
 lected, he gave due prominence. Public speaking, how- 
 ever, was injurious to his lungs, which were always delicate, 
 and he was at length compelled to desist. He then repaired 
 to Digne for the benefit of his native air, and also spent 
 some pleasant time under the hospitable roof of his friend 
 and patron Louis de Valois, Earl of Alais. During this 
 interval he was chiefly occupied in composing his biogra- 
 phies. He finally returned to Paris, where, after a long 
 and gradual decay, he died October 14, 1655. His death is 
 said to have been hastened by the mad phlebotomy then in 
 vogue. He himself had often condemned the practice ; 
 somewhat inconsistently, it will be thought, since he allowed 
 himself to be killed by the Sangrados of his day. He is 
 said to have reconciled himself to the treatment to which he 
 submitted, though he could not approve it, by the thought 
 
aAssENDi. 293 
 
 that the weakness it induced would probably diminish the 
 pangs of dissolution. His last words, as he begged his at- 
 tendant to feel the feeble pulsation of his heart, were, " You 
 see what man's life is ! " He was buried in the church of 
 St. Nicholas des Champs, where he is honored by a mau- 
 soleum and bust. 
 
 Th« countenance of Gassendi is very imposing. The 
 broad, massive brow, full eye, and expressive contour of the 
 face, bespeak a mind full of intelligence, vivacity, and be- 
 nevolence.^ 
 
 The character of Gassendi's intellect is everywhere indi- 
 cated by his works ; — it was critical rather than inventive. 
 Probably no one was ever better quahfied to be a genuine 
 historian of philosophy, possessing as he did keen analytical 
 skill, in conjunction with profound and accurate erudition. 
 His A%/i<a5'maPAi7o50jt)AiCM»i everywhere displays these char- 
 acteristics. It is a vast attempt to exhibit in one encyclo- 
 paedic view the entire circle of science as then known ; — 
 logics, physics, physiology, ethics, all find a place there. 
 Subjects are discussed with a minuteness, copiousness, and 
 patience, which remind one of the style in which questions, 
 equally subtle and intractable, and not always more profit- 
 less, are treate«tin the Summa Theologice of Thomas Aqui- 
 nas. Gassendi's powers of acquisition must have been sin- 
 gularly active ; nor was his logical acuteness, or the liveli- 
 ness of his imagination, much inferior to the promptness and 
 retentiveness of his memory. His learning is never mere 
 learning ; like that of many of his erudite contemporaries, 
 it ministers to his intellect, but does not oppress it. The 
 vivacity of his mind animates and penetrates the mass ; and 
 
 1 The engraving in the folio edition of his works (1728) is in strik- 
 ing contrast with the grim effigies of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus in 
 the quarto wliich contains Gassendi's lives of those philosophers. But 
 it must be confessed the art of engraving had made prodigious pro- 
 gress in the interval. 
 
 25* 
 
294 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the acuteness of his reasoning and the exuberance of his 
 illustrations relieve of much of their tedium discussions in 
 themselves often uninviting enough. 
 
 The intellectual characteristics of Gassendi, as compared 
 with those of the far more original and profound Descartes, 
 are sharply set off in a long and elaborate parallel in the 
 article by De Gerando in the Biographic Vniverselle, and 
 it will be well to find space for a translation of a few of its 
 more discriminating touches. " There was no less opposi- 
 tion," says he, " between the character of their minds than 
 between the principles of their systems. The genius of 
 Descartes, full of originality, energy, and audacity, aspired 
 in all things to create ; the understanding of Gassendi, re- 
 served, prudent, calm, and investigating, contented itself 
 with a sound judgment of every thing; Descartes, shut 
 up in himself, strove to reconstruct universal science by the 
 force of meditation alone ; Gassendi, observing nature, 
 studying the writings of all ages, strove to coordinate facts, 
 and to make an enlightened election among opinions. The 
 former, proceeding in the track of the geometers, de- 
 duced from a few simple principles a long train of corol- 
 laries : the second, imitating the naturalists, collected a 
 great number of given facts in order to draw solid deduc- 
 tions from their comparison. The former evinced admirable 
 ability in the art of forming a system, the latter excelled in 
 the criticism of other people's systems. The one, an abso- 
 lute dogmatist, loved to speak in the style of a master, per- 
 haps because he was conscious of profound conviction, and 
 did not patiently bear contradiction ; the other, a skilled 
 dialectician, unravelled objections with art, distrusted him- 
 self, and easily entertained doubts which presented them- 
 selves. The one made great and veritable discoveries, and 
 at the same time wandered into rash hypotheses ; the other 
 brought together a great number of partial truths, and, 
 above all, destroyed a great number of errors." 
 
GASSENDI. 295 
 
 The qualities of Gassendi's mind are perhaps nowhere 
 more distinctly marked than in his commentary on the 
 Tenth Book of Diogenes Laertius, and his tractate on the 
 life and philosophy of Epicurus. In his attempt to ascer- 
 tain, illustrate, and defend the philosophy of his favorite 
 Epicurus, there was ample scope for his exuberant learning, 
 his critical acumen, and his eclectic tendencies. It is a pity 
 that he should have been so inordinately enamored of this 
 Greek philosopher ; for his strong expressions have in- 
 vited accusations, and even given color to them, which 
 seem wholly unfounded. Whatever his predilections for 
 the atomic philosophy, he explicitly repudiates the irre- 
 ligious dogmas founded upon it ; and acknowledges that a 
 supreme intelligence alone created and organized matter, 
 alone imparted and conserves its laws and properties. 
 " Metaphysics, morals, and physics," says M. De Gerando, 
 " are conformed to the opinions of Epicurus ; yet with the 
 modifications which the principles of Christianity demand." 
 Whether even the eclectic criticism of Gassendi could quite 
 harmonize such materials, even by the most judicious selec- 
 tions and rejections, may be a question ; but that he sin- 
 cerely thought he had advanced nothing contrary to Chris- 
 tianity, is evident from the entire tenor of his declaration ; 
 and he must be believed unless we are determined on a 
 more unpleasaift alternative — that of supposing him at least 
 as gi'eat a hypocrite as philosopher.* If the works just 
 referred to exhibit as distinctly as any the more marked 
 features of Gassendi's intellectual character, it is the Syn- 
 tagma Philosophicum, of course, which displays all the en- 
 
 1 After avowing his orthodoxy very explicitly, he says, in the Pro- 
 emial Book of his Syntagma, " Et videri quidem potest Epicurus 
 arridere prae ceteris ... at non idcirco aut probo omnia quae illius 
 sunt, — etiam Religionis non attinentia placita; aut quae probo non 
 sic amplector ut indubia certaque habeam . . . " — Opera, torn, i., 
 p. 25, Edit. Florent. 
 
296 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 dowments of this great philosopher in their amplest form. 
 The remarks on the Meditations of Descartes, however, 
 (supplied at the request of Father Mersenne,) best present 
 many of its phases. They are marked by an acuteness and 
 vivacity which he never surpassed. 
 
 As a metaphysician it has been mentioned that, however 
 ingenious and learned, he is yet critical rather than creative. 
 The same must be said of him as a mathematician and 
 physical philosopher. His attainments in the mathematics 
 were such as to elicit the praises of Barrow, no incompetent 
 judge ; and doubtless his fame might have been yet greater 
 had he not, like Barrow himself, Pascal, Descartes, and so 
 many other great mathematicians, varied or combined this 
 study with so many very different pursuits. It seems, if we 
 may judge by the conduct of almost every great mathema- 
 tician from the time of those just mentioned to the present 
 day, that, delightful as is the discovery and contemplation 
 of mathematical truth, it cannot alone fill or content the 
 mind. It is hardly possible to name instances of great 
 mathematicians who are known only as great mathematicians, 
 or who have not profoundly studied some branches either of 
 physics or abstract science. Gassendi, according to Sorbiere, 
 avowedly valued mathematics chiefly as a% indispensable 
 instrument of discovery in physical science. 
 
 Ardently attached to the new philosophy*of experiment, 
 Gassendi was one of the first Frenchmen, if not the first, 
 who fully appreciated Bacon, and in introducing him to 
 his countrymen, paid ungrudging homage to his genius.^ 
 Though such an- admirer, however, of the new school of 
 physics, he himself, as in other departments, made but 
 
 1 " Is videlicet meditatus attendensque, quam sit exiguum, quod, 
 ex quo tempore homines philosophari caeperunt, circa veritatem, in- 
 timaeque rerum naturse notitiam consecuti sunt ; ausu vere Heroico 
 novam tentare viara est ausus . . . ." — Opera, torn, i., p. 55, Edit. 
 Florent. 
 
GASSENDI. 297 
 
 moderate contributions to discovery. Here, too, his genius 
 was critical. But it is not to be forgotten that he was the 
 first to observe the transit of a planet across the sun's disc — 
 verifying the prediction of Galileo — and that, as before 
 mentioned, he made some valuable hydrographic corrections 
 by means of lunar eclipses. 
 
 As Gassendi is among the most literary of philosophers, 
 so he is also among the most voluminous. Six volumes 
 folio attest the vastness of his industry, no less than his 
 erudition and versatility. These have been twice printed ; 
 once at Lyons in 1658 under the editorship of Montmort 
 and Sorbiere, and once at Florence in 1728. The first two 
 volumes are occupied entirely with his Syntagma Philosoph- 
 icum ; the third contains his critical writings on Epicurus, 
 Aristotle, Descartes, Fludd, and Lord Herbert, with some 
 occasional pieces on certain problems of physics; the 
 fourth, his Institutio Astronomica, and his Commentarii de 
 rebus celestibus ; the fifth, his commentary on the Tenth 
 Book of Diogenes Laertius, the biographies of Epicurus, 
 Peiresc, Tycho Bralie, Copernicus, Peurbach, Regiomon- 
 tanus, with some tracts on the value of Ancient Money, on 
 the Roman Calendar, and on the theory of music ; to all 
 which is appended a large and prolix piece, entitled Notitia 
 Ecclesice Dlniensis ; — "the sixth volume contains his cor- 
 respondence. The Xz'we*,- especially of Copernicus, Tycho, 
 and Peii-esc, have been justly admired. That of Peiresc 
 has been repeatedly printed ; it has also been translated into 
 English. Gassendi was one of the first, after the revival of 
 letters, who treated the literature of philosophy in a lively 
 way. His writings of this kind, though too laudatory and 
 somewhat diffuse, have great merit ; they abound in those 
 anecdotal details, natural yet not obvious reflections, and 
 vivacious turns of thought, which made Gibbon style him, 
 with some extravagance certainly, though it was true 
 enough up to Gassendi's time — "le meilleur philosophe des 
 
298 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 litterateurs, et le meilleur litterateur des philosophes." Gas- 
 sendi wrote in Latin ; it is to be regretted that he did not 
 compose some of his works in French. There is little 
 doubt that he would have given us another specimen of that 
 happy philosophical style in which his countrymen have so 
 signally excelled from Descartes' time downwards ; as it is, 
 his writings, as might be expected from the qualities of his 
 mind, are perspicuous and lucid in an eminent degree ; but 
 the style is very diffuse, and, in many cases, cumbersome, a 
 fault which it may be reasonably supposed would have been 
 obviated if he had written in his vernacular. His illustra- 
 tions and examples, especially in the leisurely exposition of 
 the voluminous Syntagma Philosophicum, are often multi- 
 plied to tediousness, though generally apt and well selected. 
 Instances both of the merits and faults in question may be 
 seen in the parts of the Syntagma where he treats " de Sen- 
 sibus speciatim" and (more briefly) in the chapter "de 
 Instinctu Brutorum." ^ 
 
 The personal character of Gassendi must have been ex- 
 ceedingly attractive. Of his winning manners, agreeable 
 social qualities, and modesty, there is a pleasing proof re- 
 corded by Sorbiere, and pleasantly repeated by De Gerando. 
 " Marivat having travelled from Paris to Grenoble in his 
 company without suspecting his name, desired on arriving 
 to be presented to the celebrated Gassendi. He was greatly 
 surprised to recognize him in the amiable companion with 
 whom he had conversed on the route. This behavior reminds 
 us of that of Plato, when he returned from Syracuse into 
 Greece." His temper and manners were such as became a 
 philosopher, and a Christian philosopher rather than a dis- 
 ciple of Epicurus ; whose precepts, if capable of being 
 harmonized with virtue, are yet easily perverted to vice. 
 It may be doubted whether any philosopher ever lived more 
 
 1 Syntag. Phil. Physicae, part iii., sect, ill., lib. vii. ; viii., cap. v. 
 
GASSENDI. 299 
 
 philosophically than Gassendi, if we may judge by the tes- 
 timony of Sorbiere in the preface to the Opera Omnia. His 
 eulogium records virtues which make us love the man even 
 more than we revere the philosopher ; and with a trait or 
 two from it we shall conclude this notice of his character. 
 " When 1 consider his private life, I seem to see before me 
 some anchorite, who, in the midst of a crowded city, has set 
 up the severe rule of the desert ; so heartily did he embrace 
 a life of poverty, chaste celibacy, and obedience, though un- 
 constrained by any vows. Contented with little, he envied 
 none their riches ; none the richer for the patronage of the 
 wealthy, he dispensed whatever he received with a liberal 
 hand. He was voluntarily abstemious, rarely touched flesh, 
 generally subsisted on vegetables, and breakfasted and sup- 
 ped on oatmeal porridge." Sorbiere pronounces a deserved 
 eulogium on his modesty, humility, and benevolence. 
 
 The precise character and position of the philosophic sys- 
 tem of Gassendi has, like that of so many other philoso- 
 phers, been much debated. It is a topic which there is no 
 space to discuss here, but which cannot be wholly passed by, 
 since from misapprehension Gassendi has been treated 
 with less than justice by eminent philosophical critics, and 
 among the rest by Dugald Stewart in the "Preliminary 
 Dissertation." 
 
 By critics in general, fifty years ago, he would have been 
 regarded as a genuine precursor of the naked and undis- 
 guised sensational French philosophy of the last century ; 
 by other and later critics, he is represented as having taught 
 a philosophy not very dissimilar in its main principles from 
 that of Locke. Locke, indeed, is even supposed by some to 
 have derived more from the acute Frenchman than he has 
 allowed the generality of his readers to suspect. Of this a 
 word or two presently. 
 
 Meantime, the truth with regard to Gassendi seems to be 
 that, like many other phildSophers who have written folios, 
 
300 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and produced their works at distant intervals and under 
 very different circumstances, he has not been altogether con- 
 sistent in the exhibition of himself. Assuredly his tone is 
 very different when urging with so much vigor all the possible 
 " objections " which ingenuity could discover to Descartes' 
 Meditations, and when systematically developing his own 
 doctrines in his Syntagma Philosophicum. " The main 
 scope," says Dugald Stewart in the Preliminary Dissertation, 
 " of Gassendi's argument against Descartes is to materialize 
 that class of our ideas which the Lockists as well as the 
 Cartesians consider as the exclusive objects of the power of 
 reflection, and to show that these ideas are all ultimately re- 
 solvable into images or conceptions borrowed from things 
 external." If we look only at the animadversions on Des- 
 cartes, there is much to favor these observations. But then," 
 again, as Hallam justly observes, if we examine the Syntagma 
 Philosophicum, even the Proemial Book, even the Logic, but 
 more especially the important chapters in the Physics " De 
 Phantasia " and " De Intellectu," we cannot fail to perceive 
 that this estimate is erroneous, and that Gassendi is very far 
 indeed from resolving all the phenomena of mind into sensa- 
 tion. This Hallam has truly remarked, and has supplied a 
 few extracts from the above chapters of Gassendi in proof. 
 The explanation of the apparent discrepancies, this writer 
 says, is difficult. " Whether he urged some of his objections 
 against the Cartesian metaphysics with a regard to victory 
 rather than truth, or, as would beT the more candid and per- 
 haps more reasonable hypothesis, he was induced by the 
 •acuteness of his great antagonist to review and reform his 
 own opinions, I must leave to the philosophical reader." ^ 
 
 It seems highly probable that both explanations are cor- 
 rect. In accepting Mersenne's invitation, issued by Descar- 
 tes' commands, to find as much fault as possible with the 
 celebrated Meditations (which made such pretensions to 
 1 Literature of Europ* "Vol. iv. p. 203. 
 
GASSENDI. 301 
 
 logical rigor), Gassendi would naturally be tempted to 
 urge every objection to the uttermost ; and would proba- 
 bly challenge the proof of assertions, when he thought it 
 weak, not less where he agreed with the conclusions them- 
 selves than where he denied them. This seems to have been 
 obviously his course in some cases.^ In such a controversy 
 the true position is apt often to be forgotten both by him 
 who writes and by him who reads. Challenged to show the 
 invalidity of the reasoning which is employed to support a 
 given conclusion, the objector is apt to speak and to be in- 
 terpreted as if he contended not only for the validity of his 
 objections, but for an opposite conclusion from that of his 
 opponent. This may or may not be. In Gassendi's case it 
 is sometimes the conclusion as well as the reasoning, some- 
 times the reasoning only, to which he is opposed. 
 
 From Gassendi's " objections " his own positive opinions 
 on the points in question are not always inferrible. We 
 must look at his dogmatical explanations of his own views 
 as a safer criterion, and we find these in the Syntagma. It 
 must be added that a certain degree of personal feeling 
 evidently gave sharpness to his criticisms on Descartes ; and 
 philosopher though he was, being still a mortal man, this 
 could not but exert some influence. On the other hand, 
 when writing his Syntagma, Gassendi was freed from all 
 such bias ; he was no longer the advocate, but the judge ; 
 he had to show, not merely that such reasoning op behalf of 
 such and such conclusions was not valid, but what conclu- 
 sions he held himself. He had also had the opportunity of 
 reading all his great antagonist's " criticisms " on his own 
 " criticisms," and doubtless profited by them ; and lastly, 
 though the interval, as Hallam says, between the contro- 
 versy with Descartes and the commencement of the ponder- 
 
 1 It must have been so when so severely challenging Descartes' 
 proof of the immateriality of the soul, or of the existence of the ma- 
 terial world, for Gassendi denied neither. |ttk 
 26 
 
302 KEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ous Syntagma Philosophicum was but brief — the dates 
 being 1 641 and 1 642 — yet before its author had reached 
 the chapters " De Phantasia " and " De Intellectu " (nearly- 
 one thousand closely printed folio columns from the com- 
 mencement), he would have had abundant time to review 
 any opinions of an earlier date, and profit by the discussions 
 with his illustrious opponent. 
 
 Be this as it may, the chapter on the " Human Intellect " 
 shows incontrovertibly that Gassendi was far removed from 
 the sensationalists. While he maintains constantly his favor- 
 ite maxim " that there is nothing in the intellect which has 
 not been in the senses ; " while he contends that the imagi- 
 native faculty, " phantasia," is the counterpart of sense ; that 
 like that, as it has to do with material images, it is itself 
 material, and essentially the same both in men and brutes, — 
 the chapter " De Intellectu " plainly proves that he could 
 consistently mean nothing more than that " sensations " are 
 the invariable and indispensable antecedents and conditions 
 of the evolution of the phenomena of intellect ; for he admits 
 that the intellect, which he affirms to be " immaterial " — the 
 most chai*acteristic distinction of humanity — attains notions 
 and truths of which no effort of sensation or imagination can 
 give us the slightest apprehension.^ He instances in the 
 capacity of forming " general notions ; " in the very concep- 
 tion of universality itself,^ to which he says brutes, who par- 
 take as truly as men in the faculty he calls " phantasia," 
 never attain ; in the notion of God, whom he says we may 
 imagine to be corporeal, but understand to be incorporeal ; 
 
 1 '• Itaque est in nobis intellectionis species qua ratiocihando eo pro- 
 vehlmur, ut aliquid intelligamus, quod imaginari seu cujus habere obver- 
 santem imaginem, quantumcunque animi vireis contenderimus, non possi- 
 mus." — De Intellectu, cap. ii. Opera, Tom. ii., p. 383. 
 
 2 "Non modo universalia, universalcisve notiones formamus, sed 
 percipimus quoque ipsM» rationem universalitatis." — lb., p. 384. 
 
GA8SENDI. 303 
 
 and lastly in the " reflex actions " by which the mind makes 
 its own phenomena and operations the objects of attention.^ 
 
 His remarks on the last point — his very phraseology, 
 "actiones reflexivae," certainly remind one of Locke, and 
 have suggested that Gassendi's system was the source of 
 Locke's. It was so, exclaims Stewart, of the false system 
 of Locke into which the sensational schools of France dis- 
 torted that of the English philosopher. To this it seems 
 sufficient to reply, as before, that Gassendi himself, in his 
 more deliberate exhibition of his philosophy, does not belong 
 to those schools. At the same time, whether Locke had 
 ever studied* the system of Gassendi is somewhat doubtful. 
 That he was not, at all events, conscious of any signal ob- 
 ligations to Gassendi, may be inferred from the following 
 reasons: — 1. Locke's distinct assertion, to Stillingfleet and 
 others, that, right or wrong, his system had been the fruit 
 of his own excogitation. 2. That if he had consciously 
 borrowed from Gassendi, he, who was a model of honor and 
 candor as a writer, would not have failed to acknowledge his 
 obligations. 3. The very name of Gassendi scarcely occurs 
 in all his writings ; ^ and though it may be said that this 
 silence was natural if conscious that he had stolen, it is in- 
 consistent with his character ihat he should have so acted ; 
 the silence would have become a thief, but not John Locke. 
 4. He was no helluo librorum, and the Syntagma extends to 
 two ponderous folios. It is true that the abridgment by 
 Bernier in eight volumes (if such an abuse of the term may 
 be allowed) was published in 1678, and this, Locke, who 
 was certainly in habits of intercourse with Bemier at Paris 
 
 ^ Alteram est genus reflexarum actionum quibus intellectus seip- 
 sum, suasque functiones intelligit, ac speciatim se intelligere animad- 
 vertit. Videlicet hoc munus est omni facultate corporeS, superius. — 
 De Intellectu, cap. ii., p. 384. 
 
 2 He has just introduced his name in the controversy with Stilling- 
 fleet, and that is all. ^ • 
 
304 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 in 1677, might have seen. 5. But, supposing him to have 
 seen it, what then ? The utmost that can be said is, that it 
 is probable that the remarks on the reflex operations of 
 the mind, and the terms " actiones refiexivcB " (used, how- 
 ever, by Gassendi not with a view to a classification of 
 mental phenomena, hut incidentally, in proof of the mind's im- 
 materiality) may have unconsciously suggested to Locke his 
 second great division of ideas, and the phraseology in which 
 he has couched it. But the observations themselves are far 
 too scanty to have been of much service to Locke in con- 
 structing his general theory, still less in that elaborate and 
 minute analysis of the "ideas of reflection," which consti- 
 tutes the bulk of the " Essay." The whole of the two books 
 on " Imagination " and " Intellect " in the Syntagma would 
 not make above an eighth of Locke's " Essay," and the 
 greater part of these is occupied with questions which 
 Locke has expressly renounced as belonging to a hopeless 
 psychology ; as, for example, whether imagination be ma- 
 terial or immaterial (Gassendi deciding for the former) — 
 of how many kinds, or how, mechanically or physiologically, 
 related to sensation — whether and in what sense it can be 
 said to possess reason — whether it be identical with the 
 similar faculty in brutes. Such questions, together with the 
 history of opinions, Gassendi is as prone to discuss as Locke 
 to decline them. The opinion of De Gerando, however, on 
 the relations of Locke's philosophy to Gassendi's, is well en- 
 titled to attention. 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 
 
 James Crichton, commonly known by the appellation 
 of the Admirable Crichton, was born on the 19th of August, 
 1560.^ His father was Robert Crichton, who, in conjunc- 
 tion with John Spence, executed the oflBce of lord advocate; 
 his mother was Elizabeth, the only daughter of Sir James 
 Stewart of Beath, by Margaret, the eldest daughter of Lord 
 Lindsay of Byres. It appears highly probable, if not cer- 
 tain, that by the father's side, he derived his lineage from 
 Sir Robert Crichton of Sanquhar, ancestor of the earl of 
 Dumfries ; and his maternal grandfather, ancestor of the earl 
 of Moray, was the son of Lord Avandale, who was descended 
 from Murdac duke of Albany, and through him from Robert 
 IL It is inde^Lto be recollected that the birth of the first 
 Lord Avandale was illegitimate ; but it is likewise to be recol- 
 lected that he obtained letters of legitimation under the great 
 seal. His grand-uncle Lord Methven was the third husband 
 
 1 An Italian broadside, printed at Venice in 1580, states that ho had 
 completed the twentieth year of his age on the 19tli of August. This 
 curious document, which was lately discovered, and which affords 
 some confirmation of the account which Manutius and Imperiali 
 have given of Crichton's character and attainments, may be found in 
 the appendix to the second edition of Mr. Tytler's Lift of the Admi- 
 rable Crichton, p. 289. Edinb. 1823, 12mo. 
 
 26 * (306) 
 
306 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 of Margaret Tudor, the relict of James IV. It is therefore 
 sufficiently obvious that he was entitled to speak of his high 
 descent ; but his extraordinary endowments of mind con- 
 ferred upon him much higher distinction than he could 
 derive from any accidental circumstances of birth. The 
 place of his birth is somewhat doubtful. According to one 
 tradition, he was born in the castle of Cluny, situated on a 
 small lake bearing the same name ; but as the father did not 
 acquire his estate in Perthshire till two years after the birth 
 of James, his eldest son, this may be considered as entitled 
 to less attention than another tradition, which represents him 
 as having been born at EUiock in Dumfriesshire, the more 
 ancient seat of the family. The estate of Cluny, which 
 belonged to the bishopi-ic of Dunkeld, was conveyed to the 
 king's advocate by Robert Crichton, the last popish bishop 
 of that wealthy see. 
 
 In the year 1570, when he had only attained the age of 
 ten, he was sent to the university of St. Andrews, where he 
 was entered at St. Salvator's College. According to Aldus 
 Manutius, his father placed him under the tuition of Bu- 
 chanan, Hepburn, Robertson, and Rutherford, who are all 
 mentioned as very eminent persons. John Rutherford, 
 whose name is sufficiently known, was provost of the col- 
 lege to which Crichton belonged. Buchanan, who was prin- 
 cipal of St. Leonard's College, resigned his office about the 
 time when he became a student; but, according to the state- 
 ment of his Italian friend, he was partially educated along 
 with the young king of Scotland; and Buchanan was ap- 
 pointed to the office of preceptor to the king when he 
 quitted St. Andrews, in the year 1570. On the 20th of 
 March, 1573, or, according to our present mode of compu- 
 tation, 1574, Crichton took the degree of A. B. He pro- 
 ceeded A. M. in the year 1575, and thus completed the 
 regular course of study at the premature age of fifteen. 
 In the university of St. Andrews, the candidates for the 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 307 
 
 higher degree were then distributed into circles, according 
 to the comparative proficiency displayed in the course of 
 their previous examinations. Each circle was likewise 
 formed on the same principle. Of the thirty-six masters 
 who took their degrees on this occasion, there were three 
 circles ; and the third name in the first circle is that of 
 James Crichton. At the head of the list appears David 
 Monypenny. It is highly probable that Crichton was the 
 youngest of all those graduates ; and as his proficiency was 
 only excelled by two out of thirty-five, it is evident that he 
 had already begun to distinguish himself by his extraordi- 
 nary aptitude in the acquisition of knowledge. 
 
 As the king was six years younger than Crichton, they 
 could not well participate in the same studies, although they 
 could receive instructions from the same tutors. Crichton 
 must have continued to devote himself with intense ardor 
 to the pursuits of science as well as literature ; for to a 
 knowledge of many languages he added a familiar acquaint- 
 ance with the philosophy and even the theology of the age. 
 The power of genius is shown in the use of the materials 
 which are placed within its reach ; but there is no royal 
 road to learning, which, if acquired to any extent, must be 
 acquired by much labor and perseverance, although their 
 particular degree must vary according to the quickness of 
 apprehension and tenacity of memory belonging to various 
 individuals. 
 
 Crichton may for some time have enjoyed the benefit of 
 such able instruction ; for he appears to have been still re- 
 siding in Scotland towards the close of the year 1577. His 
 subsequent movements are represented as being partly in- 
 fluenced by some domestic disagi'cements. As the father 
 embraced the reformed doctrines, while the son adhered to 
 the ancient superstition, disputes and reproaches could 
 scarcely fail to intervene at a crisis of such high and gen- 
 eral excitement. The young scholar repaired to France, 
 
308 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 where he is said to have distinguished himself equally by 
 his skill in literature and in arms. Of a marvellous dispu- 
 tation which he held in the university of Paris, there is an 
 account which passes very currently, although it is only 
 stamped with the authority of Sir Thomas Urquhart. 
 According to this account, he affixed a programme in the 
 most public places of the city, inviting all men of learning 
 to meet him, after an interval of six weeks, at the College 
 of Navarre, where he should " be ready to answer to what 
 should be propounded to him concerning any science, lib- 
 eral art, discipline, or faculty, practical or theoretic, not ex- 
 cluding the theological nor jurisprudential habits, though 
 grounded but upon the testimonies of God and man, and 
 that in any of these twelve languages, Hebrew, Syriac, 
 Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, English, 
 Dutch, Flemish, and Sclavonian, in either verse or prose, at 
 the discretion of the disputant : " ^ in the mean time, as we 
 are duly instructed, " the admirable Scot (for so from thence- 
 forth he was called) minding more his hawking, hunting, 
 tilting, vaulting, riding of well-managed horses, tossing of 
 the pike, handling of the musket, flourishing of colors, danc- 
 ing, fencing, swimming, jumping, throwing of the bar, 
 playing at the tennis, balloon, or long-catch, and sometimes 
 at the house-games of dice, cards, playing at the chess, 
 
 ^ Urquhart's Discovery of a most exquisite J^el, p. 94. Lond. 
 1652, 8vo. — This writer is pleased to inform us that about a fortnight 
 before the appointed day of meeting, some person, less acquainted with 
 Crichton himself than with his reputation, subjoined the following 
 sarcastic inscription to bis programme on the gate of the Sorbonne : 
 " If you would meet with this monster of perfection, to make search 
 for him either in the taverne or bawdy-house, is the readiest way to 
 find him." The hint for this part of the story is to all appearance 
 borrowed from a work of mere fancy in which Boccalini relates that a 
 similar mordace facetla was practised upon Crichton, not in Paris, but 
 in Parnassus • " E chi lo vuol vedere, vada all' hosteria del Falcone, 
 che li fark mostrato." (Ragguagli di Parnaso, torn. i. p. 181.) 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 309 
 
 billiards, trou-madam, and other such like chamber spoi-ts, 
 singing, playing on the lute, and other musical instruments." 
 But when the appointed hour arrived, he acquitted himself 
 with stupendous learning and ability, having for the space 
 of nine hours maintained his ground against the most 
 eminent antagonists in all the faculties. The rector of the 
 university concluded the ceremony by presenting him with 
 a diamond ring and a purse full of gold. It would be a 
 mere waste of criticism to enter into a minute examination 
 of the narrative to which we have now referred. The de- 
 tails are sufficiently circumstantial, but they have much of 
 the aspect of a downright romance ; and such details from 
 the knight of Cromarty would have rcjquired the strong 
 confirmation of collateral evidence. It might perhaps be 
 admitted with some degree of safety that Crichton was en- 
 gaged in a public disputation at Paris, and that he ac- 
 quitted himself with consummate ability ; but as to his 
 fluency in twelve languages, and his maintaining so long 
 and powerful a contest, not merely with grammarians, 
 rhetoricians, and philosophers, but even with theologians, 
 canonists, and civilians, all these particulars must be re- 
 ceived with extreme hesitation ; and perhaps it may be con- 
 sidered as much more probable that such a disputation 
 never took place at Paris but was merely fabricated from 
 another, which took place at Venice. 
 
 The intellectual endowments of Crichton seem to have 
 been equalled by his personal accomplishments. He is 
 highly celebrated for his martial powers, and as a complete 
 master in the use of the sword and spear. Some degree of 
 military experience he must have acquired during his 
 two years' service in the civil wars of France ; but this terra 
 of service was apparently sufficient to gratify his youthful 
 inclination for the life of a soldier ; and he next directed his 
 steps towards Italy, where he must have arrived in the year 
 1580. According to Dr. Mackenzie, he proceeded to Rome, 
 
310 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and there gave another demonstration of his talents for pub- 
 lic disputation ; ^ but this account is evidently destitute of all 
 foundation, and the only authority alleged by its author is 
 that of Boccalini, whose meaning is either completely mis- 
 represented or completely misunderstood. Dempster has 
 stated that he went to Genoa, attracted by the offer of a 
 considerable salary ; but in what capacity he appeared there, 
 we are left to conjecture. Whatever might be his first place 
 of residence in Italy, it is at least ascertained that he arrived 
 at Venice before the close of the year 1580. He now ad- 
 dressed a Latin poem to the younger Aldus Manutius, a 
 name highly celebrated in the annals of typography ; and 
 this laid the foundation of a literary friendship, which was 
 not without considerable influence in perpetuating his fame. 
 He likewise formed an intimate acquaintance with other men 
 of letters, particularly with Sperone Speroni, Lorenzo 
 Massa, and Giovanni DonatL An ode addressed to Massa, 
 and another to Donati, are preserved among his literary 
 reliques. But the friendship of Manutius was distinguished 
 by a more than ordinary degree of zeal : he highly extolled 
 Crichton when living, and deeply bewailed him when dead. 
 To the notices which he has introduced into his edition of 
 Cicero, we are in a great measure indebted for our knowl- 
 edge of the young scholar's proceedings in the territory of 
 Venice. His edition of the Paradoxa he inscribed " Nobi- 
 lissimo juveni Jacoba Critonia Scoto ; " and the dedication, 
 dated on the first of June, 1581, contains a recital of some 
 of those literary exploits which astonished the Italians.^ 
 
 1 Mackenzie's Lives of Scots Writers, vol. iii. p. 200. — From the 
 very loose and erroneous account of Crichton which occurs in this 
 work, was fabricated a separate tract published under the title of the 
 Life of James Crichton of Clunie, commonly called the Admirable Crich- 
 ton. Aberdeen, 1760, 8vo. 
 
 2 The dedication of Aldus Manutius, together with the four Latin 
 poems of Crichton, are reprinted in Graevius's edition of Cicero 
 De Officiis, re. Amst. 1688, 8vo. They may likewise be found in 
 
JAMES CBICHTON. 311 
 
 An oration which Crichton pronounced before the Doge 
 and the nobility of Venice excited the admiration of his 
 audience, by the eloquence of the composition, as well as 
 by the gracefulness of the elocution, insomuch that the young 
 orator was regarded as a person of the most extraordinary en- 
 dowments. He afterwards engaged in various disputations 
 on subjects of divinity, philosophy, and the mathematical 
 sciences ; and such was the reputation which he now ac- 
 quired, that, during the remainder of his short career, he 
 seems to have been viewed as one of the wonders of Italy. 
 It has been thought a circumstance worthy of being recorded 
 in the life of Mazzoni, celebrated among his countrymen for 
 his powers of literary debate, that he thrice encountered 
 Crichton at Venice, and overwhelmed him by the astonish- 
 ing copiousness and subtilty of his arguments. If it was 
 reckoned an honor for a man of high reputation to sustain a 
 contest with so youthful an antagonist, we cannot fail to per- 
 ceive the singular estimation in which that antagonist must 
 have been held. 
 
 These intellectual exertions were succeeded by an infirm 
 state of health, which continued for upwards of four months ; 
 and before he had completely recovered, he made an excur- 
 sion to Padua, the seat of a flourishing university. The 
 professors in all the different faculties were invited to meet 
 him in the house of a person of rank ; and there, in the 
 midst of a numerous assembly, he exhibited new and strik- 
 ing proofs of the versatility of his genius. He commenced 
 his performances with the recitation of an extemporaneous 
 poem in celebration of Padua ; a subject which was only 
 then proposed to him, and which he treated in a manner 
 that is described as very elegant. With much^acuteness and 
 
 the Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. p. 452, and in the appendix to Mr. 
 Tytler's Life of the Admirable Crichton, p. 292. Only two of the 
 poems, the hexameters on Venice and the ode to Manutius, occur in 
 the DelicicB Poetarum Scotorum, torn. i. p. 268. 
 
812 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 learning, he afterwards discussed various topics of science 
 with the doctors who were there assembled ; and it is particu- 
 larly mentioned that he exposed many of the errors of Aris- 
 totle and his commentators. Having thus displayed his 
 knowledge for the space of six hours, the final theme pro- 
 posed to him was the praise of ignorance ; and on this sub- 
 ject he pronounced an oration, which still further excited the 
 admiration of his learned auditors. A similar exhibition 
 was announced to be held in the bishop's palace, but, for 
 some reason which is not plainly stated, it did not take place. 
 The popular applause which attended such demonstrations 
 of intellectual superiority, had too natural a tendency to ex- 
 cite envy, and to provoke detraction ; nor did Crichton 
 escape that lot which has been common to so many others. 
 On his return to Venice, he was induced by the malignity 
 of certain individuals, whom he does not mention by name, 
 to publish a remarkable programme, which has been pre- 
 served by his friend Manutius. In order to expose the fu- 
 tility of their cavils, he undertook to refute innumerable errors 
 of Aristotle, and of aU the Latin philosophers, that is, all the 
 schoolmen, both in their expositions of his doctrines, and in 
 their disquisitions on subjects of theology, together with the 
 errors of certain professors of mathematics, and to answer 
 such objections as might be urged against him. He further 
 gave his antagonists the option of selecting their topics of dis- 
 putation from any other branch of science, whether publicly 
 taught in the schools, or privately investigated by the most 
 profound philosophers ; and he undertook to return his an- 
 swers, as the proponents should themselves determine, either 
 according to the usual figures of logic, according to the se- 
 cret doctrine qf numbers, or mathematical figures, or in any 
 one out of a hundred different species of verse. The chal- 
 lenge may appear sufficiently bold, if not arrogant ; but unless 
 it came from a person who was conscious of possessing very 
 extraordinary powers of intellect, and who had repeatedly 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 313 
 
 applied to them a severe and unequivocal test, it could 
 scarcely be viewed in any other light than as an indication 
 of insanity. He appealed to a community which included 
 many competent judges of such pretensions, and therefore 
 could not hope to impose upon an unlearned multitude. 
 The appointed place of meeting was the church of St. John 
 and St. Paul ; and there, for the space of three days, this 
 young man sustained the arduous trial in a manner which 
 fully justified his confidence in his own intellectual resources. 
 His friend, Aldus Manutius, was a spectator of his triumphs 
 upon this occasion ; and though some allowances must doubt- 
 less be made for the warmth of friendship, and for an Italian 
 taste in writing, it is still to be remembered that when he 
 published his account, the event to which it referred was 
 altogether recent, and he necessarily appealed to a cloud of 
 living witnesses, who would have treated his panegyric with 
 derision, if Crichton had obviously failed in supporting his 
 own lofty pretensions. 
 
 After his departure from Venice, he betook himself to 
 Mantua ; and there, according to Urquhart's romantic nar- 
 rative, he rendered himself very conspicuous by his valiant 
 encounter with a fierce Italian gentleman, who had recently 
 slain three antagonists. Crichton is said to have challenged 
 this redoubtable champion, and after many efforts of mutual 
 skill, to have brought the matter to this conclusion : " His 
 right foot did beat the cadence of the blow that pierced the 
 belly of this Italian ; whose heart and throat being hit with 
 the two former stroaks, these three franch bouts given in 
 upon the back of the other ; besides that, if lines were im- 
 agined drawn from the hand that livered them, to the places 
 which were marked by them, they would represent a perfect 
 isosceles triangle, with a perpendicular from the top angle, 
 cutting the basis in the middle."^ The learned knight had 
 
 ^ Urquhart's Discovery of a most exquisite Jewel, p. 90. 
 27 
 
314 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 « 
 
 studied mathematics, and he seems to have been fully resolved 
 that his knowledge should be turned to some account. This 
 combat he has described in a very circumstantial manner ; 
 but, viewing his unsupported authority with no small degree 
 of suspicion, we feel no inclination to repeat his martial de- 
 tails, which however, are not a little curious in themselves. 
 But it is a fact confirmed by other evidence that Crichton was 
 invited or attracted to the court of Mantua, and that the 
 duke appointed him tutor to his son Vincenzo Gonzaga. 
 Here, according to the knight of Cromarty, he displayed his 
 dramatic talents as conspicuously as he had formerly dis- 
 played his learning and his prowess. In the space of five 
 hours, he is said to have represented fifteen different charac- 
 ters, and to have supported each of them with marvellous ef- 
 fect. But his brilliant career was speedily to close. When 
 he was one evening walking in the streets of Mantua with his 
 lute in his hand, he was unexpectedly assailed by three in- 
 dividuals ; and drawing his sword, he pressed upon them 
 with so much skill and resolution, that the principal aggres- 
 sor was impelled by his fears to discover himself as young 
 Gonzaga. Crichton fell upon his knees, and entreated for- 
 giveness for an act which evidently inferred no guilt ; when 
 the prince instantly pierced him through the body, and ter- 
 minated the mortal existence of one of the most remarkable 
 persons of the era to which he belonged.^ This act of base 
 
 1 Imperialis Musseum Hlstoricum, p. 242. Venetiis, 1640, 4to. — 
 In mentioning their first encounter, he uses the expression, " con- 
 sulto, an casu, incertum ; " nor are we in possession of any more 
 specific information. With regard to the date, there is some degree 
 of uncertainty. In the month of November, 1583, Manutius be- 
 wailed his young friend as already dead, and pointedly referred to 
 the fatal third of July. Imperiali likewise states that he died on the 
 third of July, 1583. On the other hand, Serassi, in his Vita del Maz- 
 zoni, p. 127, speaks of a poem written by James Crichton on the death 
 of Cardinal Borroinco, which did not take place till the third of No- 
 yember, 1584. Bat for such a fact as this, the authority of Manutius 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 3l5 
 
 ferocity was perpetrated on the third of July, 1583, when 
 Crichton had nearly completed the twenty-third year of 
 his age. 
 
 The elegance of his person had procured him the admira- 
 tion of those who were unable to estimate the powers of his 
 mind. His countenance is described as beautiful ; but his 
 right eye was marked, if not somewhat disfigured, by a red 
 spot, or as Manutius describes it, a red rose by which it was 
 surrounded. His reputation as a scholar did not render him 
 indifferent to the more superficial accomplishments of a 
 gentleman ; his address was courteous, and he was a pro- 
 ficient in dancing, as well as in the gymnastic and martial 
 exercises to which youth of his condition were then ad- 
 dicted. 
 
 The unrivalled fame of this young scholar is certainly 
 allied to romance ; but, on the other hand, it is very difficult 
 to imagine that it was not originally founded on some qual- 
 ities which eminently distinguished him from other forward 
 and aspiring youths, who at that period were sufficiently 
 numerous in the more learned countries of Europe. A 
 reputation so splendid, and so uniformly maintained, cannot 
 reasonably be ascribed to a mere concurrence of accidental 
 circumstances.' The specimens of his Latin poetry which 
 have been preserved do not indeed contain any thing very 
 remarkable ; but they are few in number, and were not 
 published by himself; nor does his reputation depend upon 
 one species of excellence. He is celebrated for the won- 
 derful facility with which he composed verses, for his 
 knowledge of ten or twelve different languages, for his ac- 
 quaintance with the writings of the fathers, for his uncom- 
 mon powers of memory, and for his promptitude and acute- 
 ness in public disputation. We must not therefore hastily 
 
 cannot well be called in question ; and we must rather conclude that 
 the poem was written by another James Crichton, or by some person 
 who thought proper to adopt his name. 
 
 m 
 
316 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 conclude that he " was in Italy considered one of those liter- 
 ary mountebanks who were numerous in that age ; " or that 
 his reputation chiefly depends on the romantic flights of Sir 
 Thomas Urquhart) who wrote about seventy years after his 
 death. Joseph Scaliger, who flourished at the same period 
 with himself, who professes to have obtained his information 
 in Italy, and who besides was not too prone to admiration, 
 mentions Crichton as a prodigious genius, and, indeed, 
 enumerates all the most essential qualifications that are 
 commonly ascribed to him.^ His testimony, which is en- 
 tirely overlooked by the late Dr. Black, is certainly of con- 
 siderable weight and importance. Crichton is likewise ex- 
 tolled in terms of the highest admiration, in a work pub- 
 lished so early as the year 1609, by Dr. Abernethy, a 
 native of Edinburgh, and a member of the university of 
 Montpellier. The longer of the two poems which he wrote 
 in celebration of his young countryman, commences with 
 these verses : — 
 
 O foelix animi juvenis Chrichtone ! vigore 
 Ingenii volitante supra qui vectus in astra 
 Humanam sortem, et mortalis culmen honoris, 
 Seu placuit Musas colere, aut glomeramine campuni 
 • Tundere cornipedis, pictisve ardescere in armis ; 
 Grandia sublimis nuper miracula mentis t 
 
 Monstrasti attonito, et rapuisti protinus orbi. 
 
 To the early testimonies which we have already produced, 
 many others, somewhat more recent, might easily be added; 
 and we are fully prepared to acquiesce in the opinion of Dr. 
 Johnson, that of Crichton's history, "whatever we may 
 suppress as surpassing credibility, yet we shall, upon incon- 
 testible authority, relate enough to rank him among prod- 
 igies." * Dr. Kippis, who has written a copious account of 
 
 1 Scaligcrana, p. 58. ^ Adventurer, No. 81. 
 
JAMES CRICHTON. 317 
 
 this renowned youth, has legitimately applied the test of 
 criticism to several of the early notices ; and many of his 
 strictures, particularly those on Urquhart and Mackenzie, 
 every person of a sober judgment must admit to be too 
 well founded. We have, however, placed no reliance on 
 such authorities, but have derived all our materials from 
 better sources. " He appears," says this biographer, " to 
 have had a fine person, to have been adroit in his bodily 
 exercises, to have possessed a peculiar facility in learning 
 languages, to have enjoyed a remarkably quick and reten- 
 tive memory, and to have excelled in a power of declama- 
 tion, a fluency of speech, and a readiness of reply. His 
 knowledge, likewise, was probably very uncommon for his 
 years ; and this, in conjunction with his other qualities, en- 
 abled him to shine in public disputation. But whether his 
 knowledge and learning were accurate or profound, may 
 justly be questioned ; and it may equally be doubted whether 
 he would have arisen to any extraordinary degree of emi- 
 nence in the literary world. It will always be reflected 
 upon with regret, that his early and untimely death pre- 
 vented this matter from being brought to the test of experi- 
 ment." ^ In all controversies, it is of the first importance to 
 ascertain the real state of the question. In a youth cff 
 twenty-three, whatever superiority of intellect he may pos- 
 sess, we do not expect to find the erudition of Scaliger or 
 Salmasius. Those who extol Crichton as a very extra- 
 ordinary person do not necessarily suppose that his attain- 
 ments exceeded the limits of human genius ; but they may 
 reasonably believe that in various departments of science 
 and literature he arrived at a degree of proficiency wonder- 
 fully premature ; that he evinced great energy of applica- 
 tion, with unusual powers of memory ; and that of the 
 knowledge which he so rapidly acquired, he possessed so 
 
 ^ Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. p. 455. 
 
 27* 
 
818 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 ready a command, together with so much promptitude and 
 acuteness of mental exertion, that he appeared as a prodigy 
 among men of the ordinary standard of intellectual excel- 
 lence.^ 
 
 1 " Ce fut," says Bayle, " I'un des plus extraordinaires prodiges 
 d'esprit qu'on ait j'amais vus." — (Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, 
 torn. i. p. 941.) This is scarcely exceeded by the panegyric of Im- 
 periali. See Musseom Historicam, p. 241. 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent English writ- 
 ers of the eighteenth century, was the son of Michael John- 
 son, who was, at the beginning of that' century, a magistrate 
 of Liclifield, and a bookseller of great note in the midland 
 counties. Michael's abilities and attainments seem to have 
 been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the 
 contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that the 
 country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought 
 him an oracle on points of learning. Between him and the 
 clergy, indeed, there was a strong religious and political 
 sympathy. He was a zealous churchman, and, though he 
 qualified himself for municipal office by taking the oaths to 
 the sovereigns in possession, was to the last a Jacobite in 
 heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed out to 
 every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was born on the 
 18th of September, 1709. In the child the physical, intel- 
 lectual, and moral peculiariti^ which afterward distinguished 
 the man were plainly discernible ; great muscular strength 
 accompanied by much«awkwardness and many infirmities ; 
 great quickness of parts, with a morbid propensity to sloth 
 and procrastination ; a kind and generous heart, with a 
 gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from his 
 ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond the power 
 of -medicine to remove, ffis parents were weak enough to 
 
 (319) 
 
320 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 believe that the royal touch was a specific for this malady. 
 In his third year he was taken up to London, inspected by 
 the court surgeon, prayed over by the court chaplains, and 
 stroked and presented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. 
 One of his earliest recollections was that of a stately lady 
 in a diamond stomacher and a long black hood. Her hand 
 was applied in vain. The boy's features, which were orig- 
 inally noble and not irregular, were distorted by his malady. 
 His cheeks were deeply scarred." He lost for a time the sight 
 of one eye, and he saw but very imperfectly with the other. 
 But the force of his mind overcame every impediment. In- 
 dolent as he was, he acquired knowledge with such ease and 
 rapidity, that at every school to which he was sent he was 
 soon the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he resided 
 at home, and was left to his own devices. He learned much 
 at this time, though his studies were without guidance and 
 without plan. He ransacked his father's shelves, dipped 
 into a multitude of books, read what was interesting, and 
 passed over what was dull. An ordinary lad would have 
 acquired little or no useful knowledge in such a way ; but 
 much that was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Sam- 
 uel. He read little Greek ; for his proficiency in that lan- 
 guage was not such that he could take much pleasure in the 
 masters of attic poetry and eloquence. But he had left 
 school a good Latinist, and he soon acquired, in the large 
 and miscellaneous library of which he now had the com- 
 mand, an extensive knowledge of Latin literature. That 
 Augustan delicacy of taste, which is the boast of the great 
 public schools of England, he never possessed. But he was 
 early familiar with some classical writers, who were quite 
 unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at Eton. 
 He was particularly attracted by the works of the great re- 
 storers of learning. Once, while searching for some apples, 
 he found a huge folio volume of Petrarch's works. The 
 name excited his curiosity, and he eagerly devoured hun- 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 321 
 
 dreds of pages. Indeed, the diction and versification of his 
 own Latin compositions show that he had paid at least as 
 much attention to modern copies from the antique as to the 
 original models. 
 
 While he was thus irregularly educating himself, his fam- 
 ily was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Michael John- 
 son was much better qualified to pore upon books, and to 
 talk about them, than to trade in them. His business de- 
 clined ; his debts increased ; it was with difiiculty that the 
 daily expenses of his household were defrayed. It was out 
 of his power to support his son at either university ; but a 
 wealthy neighbor offered assistance ; and, in reliance on 
 promises which proved to be of very little value, Samuel 
 was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the 
 young scholar presented himself to the rulers, of that 
 society, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure 
 and eccentric manners than by the quantity of extensive 
 and curious information he had picked up during many 
 months of desultory, but not unprofitable study. On the 
 first day of his residence he surprised his teachers by quot- 
 ing Macrobius ; and one of the most learned among them 
 declared, that he had never known a freshman of equal at- 
 tainments. 
 
 At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three years. 
 He was poor, even to raggedness ; and his appearance ex- 
 cited a mirth and a pity which were equally intolerable to 
 his haughty spirit. He was driven from the quadrangle of 
 Christ Church by the sneering looks which the members of 
 that aristocratical society cast at the holes in his shoes. 
 Some charitable person placed a new pair at his door ; but 
 he spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not 
 servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent gentleman 
 commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated 
 the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The 
 needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of 
 
322 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his eflSgy, haranguing a 
 circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and 
 dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed 
 ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the 
 college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, how- 
 ever, to a youth so highly distinguished by abilities and ac- 
 quirements. He had early made himself known by turning 
 Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. The style and rhythm, 
 indeed, were not exactly Virgilian ; but the translation 
 found many admirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope 
 himself. 
 
 The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the ordi- 
 nary course of things, have become a Bachelor of Arts : 
 but he was at the end of his resources. Those promises of 
 support en which he had relied had not been kept. His 
 family could do nothing for him. His debts to Oxford 
 tradesmen were small indeed, yet larger than he could pay. 
 In the autumn of 1731, he was under the necessity of quit- 
 ting the university without a degree. In the following win- 
 ter his father died. The old man left but a pittance ; and 
 of that pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the 
 support of his widow. The property to which Samuel suc- 
 ceeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds. 
 
 His life, during the thirty years which followed, was one 
 hard struggle with poverty. The misery of that struggle 
 needed no aggravation, but was aggravated by the suffering 
 of an unsound body and an unsound mind. Before the 
 young man left the university, his hereditary malady had 
 broken forth in a singularly cruel form. He had become 
 an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had 
 been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane ; and, in 
 truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been 
 thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for set- 
 ting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutter- 
 ings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 323 
 
 did not know him. At a dinner-table he would, in a fit of 
 absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He 
 would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a 
 clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unin- 
 telligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great 
 circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his 
 heart on touching every post in the streets through which 
 he walked. If bjTany chance he missed a post, he would 
 go back a hundred yards and repair the omission. Under 
 the influence of his disease, his senses became morbidly 
 torpid, and his imagination morbidly active. At one time 
 he would stand poring on the town-clock without being 
 able to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly hear 
 his mother, who was many miles off, calling him by his name. 
 But this was not the worst. A deep melan<!holy took pos- 
 session of him, and gave a dark tinge to all his views of 
 human nature and of human destiny. Such wretchedness 
 as he endured has driven many men to shoot themselves or 
 drown themselves. But he was under no temptation to 
 commit suicide. He was sick of life ; but he was afraid of 
 death ; and he shuddered at every sight or sound which 
 reminded him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found 
 but little comfort during his long and frequent fits of dejec- 
 tion ; for his religion partook of his own character. The 
 light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not in a direct 
 line, or with its own pure splendor. The rays had to 
 struggle through a disturbing medium: they reached him 
 refracted, dulled, and discolored by the thick gloom which 
 had settled on his soul ; and, though they might be suffi- 
 ciently clear to guide him, were too dim to cheer him. 
 
 With such infirmities of body and of mind, this celebrated 
 man was left, at two-and-twenty, to fight his way through 
 the world. He remained during about five years in the 
 midland counties. At Lichfield, his birthplace and his 
 early home, he had inherited some friends and acquired 
 
324 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 others. He was kindly noticed by Henry Hervey, a gay 
 officer of noble family, who happened to be quartered 
 there. Gilbert Walmesley, registrar of the ecclesiastical 
 court of the diocese, a man of distinguished parts, learning, 
 and knowledge of the world, did himself honor by patron- 
 izing the young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpol- 
 ished manners, and squalid garb, moved many of the petty 
 aristocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to disgust. 
 At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no way of earn- 
 ing a livelihood. He became usher of a grammar-school in 
 Leicestershire ; he resided as a humble companion in the 
 house of a country gentleman ; but a life of dependence was 
 insupportable to his haughty spirit. He repaired to Bir- 
 mingham, and there earned a few guineas by literary drudg- 
 ery. In that fown he printed a translation, little noticed at 
 the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about Abys- 
 sinia. He then put forth proposals for publishing by sub- 
 scription the poems of Politian, with notes containing a his- 
 tory of modern Latin verse ; but subscriptions did not come 
 in ; and the volume never appeared. 
 
 While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson 
 fell in love. The object of his passion was Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Porter, a widow who had children as old as himself. To 
 ordinary spectators, the lady appeared to be a short, fat, 
 coarse woman, painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy 
 colors, and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces 
 which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys and 
 Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions were strong, 
 whose eyesight was too weak to distinguish ceruse from 
 natural bloom, and who had seldom or never been in the 
 same room with a woman of real fashion, his Titty, as he 
 called her, was the most beautiful, graceful, and accom- 
 plished of her sex. That his admiration was unfeigned can- 
 not be doubted ; for she was as poor as himself. She ac- 
 cepted, with a readiness which did her little honor, the ad- 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 325 
 
 dresses of a suitor who might have been her son. The 
 marriage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, proved 
 happier than might have been expected. The lover con- 
 tinued to be under the illusions of the wedding day till 
 the lady died in her sixty-fourth year. On her monu- 
 ment he placed an inscription, extolling the charms of her 
 person and of her manners ; and when, long after her de- 
 cease, he had occasion to mention her, he exclaimed, with a 
 tenderness half ludicrous, half pathetic, " Pretty creature ! " 
 
 His marriage made it necessary for him to exert himself 
 more strenuously than he had hitherto done. He took a 
 house in the neighborhood of his native town, and adver- 
 tised for pupils. But eighteen months passed away ; and 
 only three pupils came to his academy. Indeed, his ap- 
 pearance was so strange, and his temper so violent, that his 
 school-room must have resembled an ogre's den. Nor was 
 the tawdry painted grandmother whom he called his Titty 
 well qualified to make provision for the comfort of young 
 gentlemen. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, 
 used, many years later, to throw the best company of London 
 into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the endearments 
 of this extraordinary pair. 
 
 At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of his age, 
 determined to seek his fortune in the capital as a literary 
 adventurer. He set out with a few guineas, three acts of 
 the tragedy of Irene in manuscript, and two or three letters 
 of introduction from his friend Walmesley. 
 
 Never since literature became a calling in England had it 
 been a less gainful calling than at the time when Johnson 
 took up his residence in London. In the preceding gen- 
 eration a writer of eminent merit was sure to be munificently 
 rewarded by the government. The least that he could ex- 
 pect was a pension or a sinecure place ; and if he showed 
 any aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member of 
 parliament, a lord of the treasury, an embassador, a secre- 
 28 
 
326 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 tary of state. It would be easy, on the other hand, to name 
 several writers of the nineteenth century of whom the least 
 successful has received forty thousand pounds from the 
 booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the 
 most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two 
 ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under 
 the patronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish 
 under the patronage of the public. One man of lett-ers, in- 
 deed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then considered 
 as a handsome fortune, and lived on a footing of equality with 
 nobles and ministers of state. But this was a solitary ex- 
 ception. Even an author whose reputation was established, 
 and whose works were popular, such an author as Thomson, 
 W'hose Seasons were in every library, such an author as 
 Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater run than any 
 drama since The Beggar's Opera, was sometimes glad to 
 obtain, by pawning his best coat, the means of dining on 
 tripe at a cook-shop underground, where he could wipe his 
 hands, after his greasy meal, on the back of a Newfound- 
 land dog. It is easy, therefore, to imagine what humil- 
 iations and privations must have awaited the novice who 
 had still to earn a name. One of the publishers to whom 
 Johnson applied for employment measured with a scornful 
 eye that athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, 
 "You had better get a porter's knot, and «arry trunks." 
 Nor was the advice bad, for a porter was likely to be as 
 plentifully fed, and as comfortably lodged, as a poet. 
 
 Some time appears to have elapsed before Johnson was 
 able to form any literary connection from which he could 
 expect more than bread for the day which was passing over 
 him. He never forgot the genex'osity with which Hervey, 
 who was now residing in London, relieved his wants during 
 this time of trial. " Harry Hervey," said the old philos- 
 opher many years later, " was a vicious man ; but he was 
 very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 827 
 
 him." At Hervey's table Johnson sometimes enjoyed 
 feasts which were' made more agreeable by contrast. But 
 in general he dined, and thought that he dined well on six- 
 penny worth of meat and a penny worth of bread at an ale- 
 house near Drury Lane. 
 
 The effect of the privations and sufferings wfiich he en- 
 dured at this time was discernible to the last in his temper 
 and his deportment. His manners had never been courtly. 
 They now became almost savage. Being frequently under 
 the necessity of wearing shabby coats and dirty shirts, he 
 became a confirmed sloven. Being often very hungry when 
 he ,sate down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating 
 with ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and 
 even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him 
 as it ^ects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in 
 cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and Alamode 
 beefshops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so for- 
 tunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too 
 long, or a meat pie made with rancid butter, he gorged him- 
 self with such violence that his veins swelled, and the moist- 
 ure broke out on his forehead. The affronts which his 
 poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to offer ta 
 him would have broken a mean spirit into sycophancy, but 
 made him rude even to ferocity. Unhappily the insolence 
 which, while it was defensive was pardonable, and in some 
 sense respectable, accompanied him into societies where he 
 was treated with courtesy and kindness. He was repeat- 
 edly provoked into striking those who had taken liberties 
 with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise enough to 
 abstain from talking about their beatings, except Osborne, 
 the most rapacious and brutal of booksellers, who pro- 
 claimed everywhere that he had been knocked down by 
 the huge fellow whom he had hired to puff the Harleian 
 Library. 
 
 About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in 
 
328 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular employ- 
 ment from Cave, an enterprising and intelligent bookseller, 
 who was proprietor and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine. 
 That journal, just entering on the ninth year of its long 
 existence, was the only periodical work in the kingdom 
 which then "had what would now be called a large circula- 
 tion. It was, indeed, the .chief source of parliamentary 
 intelligence. It was not then safe, even during a recess, to 
 publish an account of the proceedings of either House with- 
 out some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to entertain 
 his readers with what he called Reports of the Debates of 
 the Senate of Lilliput. France was Blefuscu ; London was 
 Mildendo ; pounds were sprugs ; the Duke of Newcastle 
 was the Nardac secretary of state; Lord Hardwicke was 
 the Hurgo Hicrad; and William Pulteney was Wjngul 
 Pulnub. To write the speeches was, during several years, 
 the business of Johnson. He was generally furnished with 
 notes, meagre indeed, and inaccurate, of what had been said ; 
 but sometimes he had to find arguments and eloquence both 
 for the ministry and for the opposition. He was himself a 
 Tory, not from i-ational conviction — for his serious opinion 
 Fas that one form of government was just as good or as bad 
 as another — but from mere passion, such as inflamed the 
 Capulets against the Montagues, or the Blues of the Roman 
 circus against the Greens, In his infancy he had heard so 
 much talk about the villainies of the Whigs, and the dangers 
 of the Church, that he had become a furious partisan when 
 he could scarcely ppeak. Before he was three he had in- 
 sisted on being taken to hear Sacheverel preach at Lichfield 
 cathedral, and had listened to the sermon with as much 
 respect, and probably with as much intelligence, as any 
 Staffordshire squire in the congregation. The work which 
 had been begun in the nursery had been completed by the 
 university. Oxford, when Johnson resided there, was the 
 most Jacobitical place in England ; and Pembroke was one 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 329 
 
 of the most Jacobitical colleges in Oxford. The prejudices 
 which he brought up to London were scarcely less absurd 
 than those of his own Tom Tempest. Charles II. and 
 James II. were two of the best kings that ever reigned. 
 Laud — a poor creatore who never did, said, or wrote any 
 thing indicating more than the ordinary capacity of an old 
 woman — was a prodigy of parts and learning, over whose 
 tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. Hampden 
 deserved no more honorable name than that of " the zealot 
 of rebellion." Even the ship-money, condemned not less 
 decidedly by Falkland and Clarendon than by the bitterest 
 Roundheads, Johnson would not pronounce to have been an 
 unconstitutional impost. Under a government the mildest 
 that had ever been known in the world — under a govern- 
 ment which allowed to the people an unprecedented liberty 
 of speech and action — he fancied that he was a slave ; he 
 assailed the ministry with obloquy which refuted itself, and 
 regretted the lost freedom and happiness iif^ those golden 
 days in which a writer who had taken but one tenth part of 
 the license allowed to him would have been pilloried, man- 
 gled with the shears, whipped at the cart's-tail, and flung 
 into a noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and 
 stockjobbers, the excise and the army, septennial parlia- 
 ments and continental connections. He long had an aver- 
 sion to the Scotch — an aversion of which he could not 
 remember the commencement, but which, he owned, had 
 probably originated in his abhorrence of the conduct of the 
 nation during the Great Rebellion. It is easy to guess in 
 what manner debates on great party questions were likely 
 to be reported by a man whose judgment was so much dis- 
 ordered by party spirit. A show of fairness was indeed 
 necessary to the prosperity of the Magazine ; but Johnson 
 long afterward owned that, though he had saved appearances, 
 he had taken care that the Whig dogs should not have the 
 best of it ; and, in fact, every passage which has lived — 
 28* 
 
330 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 every passage which bears the marks of his higher facul- 
 ties — is put into the mouth of some member of the op- 
 position. 
 
 A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these obscure 
 labors, he published a work which at qpce placed him high 
 among the writers of his age. It is probable that what he had 
 suffered during his first year in London, had often reminded 
 him of some parts of that noble poem in which Juvenal had 
 described the misery and degradation of a needy man of let- 
 ters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the tottering gar- 
 rets which overhung the streets of Rome. Pope's admirable 
 imitations of Horace's Satires and Epistles had recently ap- 
 peared, were in every hand, and were by many readers 
 thought superior to the originals. "What Pope had done for 
 Horace, Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise 
 was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson and 
 Juvenal there was much in common — much more, certainly, 
 than between ^pe and Horace. 
 
 Johnson's London appeared without his name in May, 
 1738. He received only ten guineas for this stately and 
 vigorous poem ; but the sale was rapid and the success com- 
 plete. A second edition was required within a week. Those 
 small critics who are always desirous to lower established 
 re})utations ran about proclaiming that the anonymous sati- 
 rist was superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department 
 of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the honor of 
 Pope, that he joined heartily in the applause with which the 
 appearance of a rival genius was welcomed. He made in- 
 quiries about the author of London. Such a man, he said, 
 could not long be concealed. The name was soon discov- 
 ered ; and Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to 
 obtain^ academical degree and the mastership of a gram- 
 mar-school for the poor young poet. The attempt failed, 
 and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack. 
 
 It does not appear that these two men — the most emi- 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 331 
 
 nent writer of the generation which was going out, and the 
 most eminent writer of the generation which was coming in 
 — ever saw each other. They Hved in very different cir- 
 cles — one surrounded by dukes and earls, the other by 
 starting pamphleteers and index-makers. Among Johnson's 
 associates at this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when 
 his shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses sitting up in 
 bed with his arms through two holes in his blanket, who 
 composed very respectable sacred poetry when he was sober, 
 and who was at last run over by a hackney-coach when he 
 was drunk ; Hoole, surnamed the metaphysical tailor, who, 
 instead of attending to his measures, used to trace geometri- 
 cal diagrams on the board where he sate cross-legged ; and 
 the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, after poring 
 all day, in an humble lodging, on the folios of Jewish rabbis 
 and the Christian fathers, indulged himself at night with 
 literary and theological conversation at an alehouse in the 
 city. But the most remarkable of the perspns with whom 
 at this time Johnson consorted, was Richard Savage, an 
 earl's son, a shoemaker's apprentice, and had seen life in all 
 its forms, — who had feasted among blue ribbons in Saint 
 James's Square, and had lain with fifty pounds' weight of 
 irons on his legs in the condemned ward of Newgate. This 
 man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at last into 
 abject and hopeless poverty. His pen had failed him. His 
 patrons had been taken away by death, or estranged by the 
 riotous profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 
 and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected their 
 advice. He now lived by begging. He dined on venison 
 and champagne whenever he had been so fortunate as to 
 borrow a guinea. If his questing had been unsuccessful, 
 he appeased the rage of hunger with some scraps of broken 
 meat, and lay down to rest under the piazza of Covent 
 Garden in warm weather, and, in cold weather, as near as 
 he could get to the furnace of a glass-house. Yet, in his 
 
332 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 misery, he was still an agreeable companion. He had an 
 inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and brilliant 
 wgrld from which he was now an outcast. He had observed 
 the great men of both parties in hours of careless relaxa- 
 tion, had seen the leaders of opposition without the masW of 
 patriotism, and had heard the prime minister roar with 
 laughter and tell stories not over decent. During some 
 months Savage lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson ; 
 and then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson 
 remained in London to drudge for Cave, Savage went to 
 the west of England, lived there as he had lived every- 
 where, and, in 1743, died, penniless and heart-broken, in 
 Bristol jail. 
 
 Soon after his death, while the public curiosity was strongly 
 excited about his extraordinary character, and his not less 
 extraordinary adventures, a life of him appeared widely 
 different from the catchpenny lives of eminent men which 
 were then a st^le article of manufacture in Grub Street. 
 The style was indeed deficient in ease and variety ; and the 
 writer was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our 
 language. But the little work with all its faults was a mas- 
 terpiece. No finer specimen of literary biography existed 
 in any language, living or dead ; and a discerning critic 
 might have confidently predicted that the author was des- 
 tined to be the founder of a new school of English elo- 
 quence. 
 
 The Life of Savage was anonymous ; but it was well 
 known in literary circles that Johnson was the writer. Dur- 
 ing the three years which followed, he produced no impor- 
 tant work ; but he was not, and indeed could not be, idle. 
 The fame of his abilities and learning continued to grow. 
 Warburton pronounced him a man of parts and genius ; 
 and the praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such 
 was Johnson's reputation that, in 1747, several eminent 
 booksellers combined to employ him in the arduous work of 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 333 
 
 preparing a Dictionary of the English Langtcoffe, in two 
 folio volumes. The sum which they agreed to pay him was 
 only fifteen hundred guineas ; and out of this sum he had to 
 pay several poor men of letters who assisted him in the 
 humbler parts of his task. 
 
 The Prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to the 
 Earl of Chestierfield. Chesterfield had long been celebrated 
 for the politeness of his manners, the brilliancy of his wit, 
 and the delicacy of his taste. He was acknowledged to be 
 the finest speaker in the House of Lords. He had recently 
 governed Ireland,, at a momentous conjuncture, with emi- 
 nent firmness, wisdom, and humanity ; and he had since be- 
 come Secretary of State. He received Johnson's homage 
 with the most winning affability, and requited it with a few 
 guineas, bestowed doubtless in a very graceful manner, but 
 was by no means desirous to see all his carpets blackened 
 with the London mud, and his soups and wines thrown to 
 right and left over the gowns of fine ladies and the waist- 
 coats of fine gentlemen, by an absent, awkward scholar, who 
 gave strange starts and uttered strange growls, who dressed 
 like a scarecrow, and ate like a cormorant. During some 
 time Johnson continued to call on his patron, but after being 
 repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship was not at 
 home, took the hint, and ceased to present himself at the in- 
 hospitable door. 
 
 Johnson had flattered himself that he should have completed 
 his Dictionary by the end of 1750, but it was not till 1755 
 that he at length gave his huge volumes to the world. 
 During the seven years which he passed in the drudgery 
 of penning definitions and marking quotations for transcrip- 
 tion, he sought for relaxation in literary labor of a more 
 agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity of Human 
 Wishes, an excellent imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juve- 
 nal. It is in truth not easy to say whether the palm belongs 
 to the ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets in which 
 
334 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, 
 are feeble when compared with the wonderful lines which 
 bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of 
 Sejanus, the laurels on the door-posts, the white bull stalk- 
 ing toward the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their 
 pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to 
 see him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to 
 have a kick at his carcass before it is hurled into the Tiber. 
 It must be owned, too, that in the concluding passage the 
 Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, 
 and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of his pagan 
 model. On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield 
 to Johnson's Charles ; and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic 
 enumeration of the miseries of a literary life must be allowed 
 to be superior to Juvenal's lamentation over the fate of De- 
 mosthenes and Cicero. 
 
 For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes John- 
 son received only fifteen guineas. 
 
 A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, 
 begun many years before, was brought on the stage. His 
 pupil, David Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance on 
 a humble stage in Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to 
 the first place among actors, and was now, after several 
 years of almost uninteiTupted success, manager of Drury 
 Lane Theatre. The relation between him and his old pre- 
 ceptor was of a very singular kind. They repelled each 
 other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Na- 
 ture had made them of very different clay ; and circum- 
 stances had fully brought out the natural peculiarities of both. 
 Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Continued 
 adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with 
 more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, 
 the china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic had 
 got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticulations, what 
 wiser men had written ; and the exquisitely sensitive van- ■ 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 335 
 
 ity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, while all the 
 rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain from 
 one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to de- 
 spise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn. 
 Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recollections 
 in common, and sympathized with each other on so many 
 points on which they sympathized with nobody else in the 
 vast population of the capital, that, though the master was 
 often provoked by the monkey-like impertinence of the pu- 
 pil, and the pupil by the bearish rudeness of the master, they 
 remained friends till they were parted by death. Garrick 
 now brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient to displease 
 the author, yet not sufficient to make the piece pleasing to 
 the audience. The public, however, listened, |vith little 
 emotion, but with much civility, to five acts of monotonous 
 declamation. After nine representations the play was with- 
 drawn. It is, indeed, altogether unsuited to the stage, and, 
 eve/i when perused in the closet, will be found hardly wor- 
 thy of the author. He had not the slightest notion of what 
 blank verse should be. A change in the last syllable of 
 every other line would make the versification of the Vanity 
 of Human Wishes closely resemble the versification of 
 Irene. The poet, however, cleared, by his benefit nights, 
 and by the sale of the copyright of his tragedy, about three 
 hundred pounds, then a great sum in his estimation. 
 
 About a year after the representation of Irene, he began 
 to publish a series of short essays on morals, manners, and 
 literature. This species of composition had been brought 
 into fashion by the success of the Tatler, and by the still 
 more brilliant success of the Spectator. A crowd of small 
 writers had vainly attempted to rival Addison. The Lay 
 Monastery, the Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealef, 
 the Champion, and other works of the same kind, had had 
 their short day. None of them had obtained a permanent 
 place in our literature ; and they are now to be found only 
 
336 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 in the libraries of the curious. At length Johnson under- 
 took the adventure in which so many aspirants had failed. 
 In the thirty-sixth year after the appearance of the last 
 number of the Spectator appeared the first number of the 
 Rambler. From March 1750 to March 1752, this paper 
 continued to come out every Tuesday and Saturday. 
 
 From the first, the Rambler was enthusiastically admired 
 by a few eminent men. Richardson, when only five num- 
 bers had appeared, pronounced it equal, if not superior, to 
 the Spectator. Young and Hartley expressed their appro- 
 bation not less warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose 
 many faults indifference to the claims of genius and learn- 
 ing cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of the 
 writer. In consequence probably of the good offices of 
 Dodington, who was then the confidential adviser of Prince 
 Frederic, two of his Royal Highness's gentlemen carried a 
 gracious message to the printing-office, and ordered seven 
 copies for Leicester house. But these overtures seem to 
 have been very coldly received. Johnson had had enough 
 of the patronage of the great to last him all his life, and 
 was not disposed to haunt any other door as he had haunted 
 the door of Chesterfield. 
 
 By the public the Rambler was at first very coldly- re- 
 ceived. Though the price of a number was only twopence, 
 the sale did not amount to five hundred. The profits were 
 therefore very small. But as soon as the flying leaves were 
 collected and reprinted, they became popular. The author 
 lived to see thirteen thousand copies spread over England 
 alone. Separate editions were published for the Scotch 
 and Irish markets. A large party pronounced the style per- 
 fect, so absolutely perfect that in some essays it would be 
 impossible for the writer himself to alter a single word for 
 the better. Another party, not less numerous, vehemently 
 accused him of having corrupted the purity of the English 
 tongue. The best critics admitted that his diction was too 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 337 
 
 monotonous, too obviously artificial, and now and then tur- 
 gid even to absurdity. But they did justice to the acuteness 
 of his observations on morals and manners, to the constant 
 precision and frequent brilliancy of his language, to the 
 weighty and magnificent eloquence of many serious pas- 
 sages, and to the solemn yet pleasing humor of some of the 
 lighter papers. On the question of precedence between 
 Addison and Johnson, a question which, seventy years ago, 
 was much disputed, posterity has pronounced a decision 
 from which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his chaplain and 
 his butler. Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, the Vision 
 of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, the Everlast- 
 ing Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves of Hilpah and 
 Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and the Visit to the 
 Abbey are known to everybody. But many men and 
 women, even of highly cultivated minds, are unacquainted 
 with Squire Bluster and Mrs. Busy, Quisquilius and Ve- 
 nustulus, the Allegory of Wit and Learning, the Clironicle 
 of the Revolutions of a Garret, and the sad fate of Anin- 
 gait and Ajut. 
 
 The last RamUer was written in a sad and gloomy hour. 
 Mrs. Johnson had been given over by the physician. Three 
 days later she died. She left her husband almost broken- 
 hearted. Many people had been surprised to see a man of 
 his genius and learning, stooping to every drudgery, and 
 denying himself almost every comfort, for the purpose of 
 supplying a silly, affected 'old woman with superfluities, 
 which she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his 
 affection had been concentrated on her. He had neither 
 brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To him she 
 was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as Lady Mary. 
 Her opinion of his writings was more important to him 
 than the voice of the pit of Drury Lane Theatre, or the 
 judgment of the Monthly Review. The chief support 
 
 29 
 
338 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 which had sustained him through the most arduous labor of 
 his life, was the hope that she would enjoy the fame and the 
 profit which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was 
 gone ; and, in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled by 
 eight hundred thousand human beings,- he was alone. Yet 
 it was necessary for him to set himsel^'as he expressed it, 
 doggedly to work. After three more laborious years, the 
 Dictionary was at length complete. 
 
 It had been generally supposed that this great work 
 would be dedicated to the eloquent and accomplished noble- 
 man to whom the Prospectus had been addressed. He well 
 knew the value of such a compliment; and therefore, when 
 the day of publication drew near, he exerted himself to 
 soothe, by a show of zealous and at the same time of deli- 
 cate and judicious kindness, the pride which he had so 
 cruelly wounded. Since the Rambler had ceased to appear, 
 the town had been entertained by a journal called The 
 World, to which many men of high rank and fashion con- 
 tributed. In two successive numbers of the World, the 
 Dictionary was, to use the modern phrase, puffed with won- 
 derful skill. The writings of Johnson were warmly praised. 
 It was proposed that he should be invested with the author- 
 ity of a Dictator, nay, of a Pope, over our language, and 
 that his decisions about the meaning and the spelling of 
 words should be received as final. His two folios, it was 
 said, would of course be bought by everybody who could 
 afford to buy them. It was soon known that these papers 
 were written by Chesterfield. But the just resentment of 
 Johnson was not to be so appeased. In a letter written 
 with singular energy and dignity of thought and language, 
 he repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The Dic- 
 tionary came forth without a dedication. In the preface the 
 author truly declared that he owed nothing to the great, and 
 described the difficulties with which he had been left to 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 339 
 
 Struggle so forcibly and pathetically, that the ablest ^nd 
 most malevolent of all the enemies of his fame, Home 
 Tooke, never could read that passage without tears. 
 
 The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full justice, and 
 something more than justice. The best lexicographer may 
 well be content, if his productions are received by the world 
 with cold esteem. But Johnson's Dictionary was hailed 
 with an enthusiasm such as no similar work has ever ex- 
 cited. It was indeed the first dictionary which could be 
 read with pleasure. The definitions show so much acute- 
 ness of thought and command of language, and the passages 
 quoted from poets, divines, and philosophers, are so skil- 
 fully selected, that a leisure hour may always be very agree- 
 ably spent in turning over the pages. The faults of the 
 book resolve themselves, for the most part, into one great 
 fault. Johnson was a wretched etymologist. He knew 
 little or nothing of any Teutonic language except English, 
 which, indeed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic lan- 
 guage ; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of Junius 
 and Skinner. 
 
 The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, added 
 nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen hundred 
 guineas which the booksellers had agreed to pay him, had 
 been advanced and spent before the last sheets issued from 
 the press. It is painful to relate that, twice in the course 
 of the year which followed the publication of this great 
 work, he was arrested and carried to spunging-houses, and 
 that he was twice indebted for his liberty to his excellent 
 friend Richardson. It was still necessary for the man who 
 had been formally saluted by the highest authority as Dic- 
 tator of the English language to supply his wants by con- 
 stant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He proposed to 
 bring out an edition of Shakspeare by subscription ; and 
 many subscribers sent in their names, and laid down their 
 money ; but he soon found the task so little to his taste, 
 
340 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 that he turned to more attractive employments. He con- 
 trilJuted many papers to a new monthly journal, which was 
 called the Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have 
 much interest ; but among them was the very best thing 
 that he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of 
 satirical pleasantry, the .review of Jenyns's Inquiry into the 
 Nature and Origin of Evil. 
 
 In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first of a 
 series of essays, entitled The Idler. During two years 
 these essays continued to appear weekly. They were 
 eagerly read, widely circulated, and, indeed, impudently 
 pirated while they were still in the original form, and had a 
 large sale when collected into volumes. The Idler may 
 be described as a second part of the Rambler, somewhat 
 livelier and somewhat weaker than the first part. 
 
 While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his mother, who 
 had accomplished her ninetieth year, died at Lichfield. It 
 was long since he had seen her ; but he had not failed to 
 contribute largely out of his small means, to her comfort. 
 In order to defray the charges of her funeral, and to pay 
 some debts which she had left, he wrote a little book in a 
 single week, and sent off the sheets to the press without 
 reading them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for 
 the copyright ; and the purchasers had great cause to be 
 pleased with their bargain ; for the book was Rasselas. 
 
 The success of Rasselas was great, though such ladies as 
 Miss Lydia Languish must have been greviously disap- 
 pointed when they found that the new volume from the cir- 
 culating library was little more than a dissertation on the 
 author's favorite theme, the Vanity of Human Wishes ; 
 that the Prince of Abyssinia was without a mistress, and 
 the Princess without a lover ; and that the story set the 
 hero and the heroine down exactly where it had taken them 
 up. The style was the subject of much eager controversy. 
 The Monthly Review and the Critical Review took different 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 341 
 
 sides. Many readers pronounced the writer a pompous 
 pedant, who would never use a word of two syllables where 
 it was possible to use a word of six, and who could not 
 make a waiting woman relate her adventures without bal- 
 ancing every noun with another noun, and every epithet 
 with another epithet Another party, not less zealous, cited 
 with delight numerous passages in which weighty meaning 
 was expressed with accuracy and illustrated with splendor. 
 And both the censure and the praise were merited. 
 
 About the plan of Hasselas little was said by the critics ; 
 and yet the faults of the plan might seem to invite severe 
 criticism. Johnson has frequently blamed Shakspeare for 
 neglecting the proprieties of time and place, and for ascrib- 
 ing to one age or nation the manners and opinions of 
 another. Yet Shakspeare has not sinned in this way more 
 grievously than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah 
 and Pekuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the 
 eighteenth century ; for the Europe which Imlac describes 
 is the Europe of the eighteenth century ; and the inmates 
 of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of that law of gravita- 
 tion which Newton discovered, and which was not fully 
 received even at Cambridge till the eighteenth century. 
 What a real company of Abyssinians would have been may 
 be learned from Bruce's Travels. But Johnson, not content 
 with turning filthy savages, ignorant of their letters, and 
 gorged with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philoso- 
 phers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his friend 
 Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished as Mrs. Len- 
 nox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the whole domestic sys- 
 tem of England to Egypt. Into a land of harems, a land 
 of polygamy, a land ^here women are married without ever 
 being seen, he introduced the flirtations and jealousies of our 
 ballrooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of 
 divorce, wedlock is described as the indissoluble compact. 
 ''^A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or brought to- 
 29* 
 
342 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 gether by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, 
 go home, and dream of each other. Such," says Rasselas, 
 " is the common process of marriage." Such it may have 
 been, and may still be, in London, but assuredly not at 
 Cairo. A writer who was guilty of such improprieties had 
 little right to blame the poet who made Hector quote Aris- 
 totle, and represented Julio Romano as flourishing in the 
 days of the oracle of Delphi. 
 
 By such exertions as have been described, Johnson sup- 
 ported himself till the year 1762. In that year a great 
 change in his circumstances took place. He had from a 
 child been an enemy of the reigning dynasty. His Jacobite 
 prejudices had been exhibited with little disguise both in his 
 works and in his conversation. Even in his massy and 
 elaborate Dictionary, he had, with a strange want of taste 
 and judgment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflections 
 on the Whig party. The excise, which was a favorite re- 
 source of Whig financiers, he had designated as a hateful 
 tax. He had railed against the commissioners of excise in 
 language so coarse, that they had seriously thought of pros- 
 ecuting him. He had with difficulty been prevented from 
 holding up the Lord Privy Seal by name as an example of 
 the meaning of the word " renegade." A pension he had 
 defined as pay given to a state hireling to betray his coun- 
 try ; a pensioner as a slave of state hired by a stipend to 
 obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author of these 
 definitions would himself be pensioned. But that was a 
 time of wonders. George the Third had ascended the 
 throne ; and had, in the course of a few. months, disgusted 
 many of the old friends, and conciliated many of the old 
 enemies of his house. The city was, becoming mutinous. 
 Oxford was becoming loyal. Cavendishes and Bentincks 
 were murmuring. Somersets and Wyndhams were hasten- 
 ing to kiss hands. The head of the treasury was now Lord 
 Bute, who was a Tory, and could have no objection to 
 
SAMUEL j6hnson. 343 
 
 Johnson's Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of 
 men of letters ; and Johnson was one of the most eminent 
 and one of the most needy men of letters in Europe. A 
 pension of three hundred a year was graciously offered, and 
 with very little hesitation accepted. 
 
 This event produced a change in Johnson's whole way of 
 life. For the first time since his boyhood he no longer felt 
 the daily goad urging him to the daily toil. He was at lib- 
 erty, after thirty years of anxiety and drudgery, to indulge 
 his constitutional indolence, to lie in bed till two in the after- 
 noon, and to sit up talking till four in the morning, without 
 fearing either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer. 
 
 One laborious task indeed he had bound himself to per- 
 form. He had received large subscriptions for his promised 
 edition of Shakspeare ; he had lived on those subscriptions 
 during some years ; and he could not without disgrace omit 
 to perform his part of the contract. His friends repeatedly 
 exhorted him to make an effort ; and he repeatedly resolved 
 to do so. But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his 
 resolutions, month followed month, year followed year, and 
 nothing was done. He prayed fervently against his idle- 
 ness ; he determined, as often as he received the sacrament, 
 that he would no longer doze away and trifle away his 
 time ; but the spell under which he lay resisted prayer and 
 sacrament. His private notes at this time are made up of 
 self-reproaches. " My indolence," he wrote on Easter eve 
 in 1764, "has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of 
 strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know not 
 what has become of the last year." Easter 1765 came, and 
 found him still in the same state. " My time," he wrote, 
 " has been unprofitably spent, and seems as a dream that 
 has left nothing behind. My memory grows confused, and 
 I know not how the days pass over me." Happily for his 
 honor, the charm which held him captive was at length 
 broken by no gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak 
 
344 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 enough to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost 
 which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and bad actually gone 
 himself, with some of his friends, at one in the morning, to 
 St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, in the hope of receiving a 
 communication from the perturbed spirit. But the spirit, 
 though adjured with all solemnity, remained obstinately 
 silent ; and it soon appeared that a naughty girl of eleven 
 had been amusing herself by making fools of so many phi- 
 losophers. Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk 
 with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was looking 
 for some man of established fame and Tory politics to 
 insult, celebrated the Cock Lane Ghost in three cantos, 
 nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked where the book was 
 which had been so long promised and so liberally paid for, 
 and directly accused the great moralist of cheating. This 
 terrible word proved effectual; and in October, 1765, ap- 
 peared, after a delay of nine years, the New Edition of 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 This publication saved Johnson's character for honesty, 
 but added nothing to the fame of his abilities and learning. 
 The preface, though it contains some good passages, is not 
 in his best manner. The most valuable notes are those in 
 which he had an opportunity of showing how attentively he 
 had during many years observed human life and human 
 nature. The best specimen is the note on the character of 
 Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even in Wilhelra 
 Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here 
 praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more 
 slovenly, a more worthless edition of any great classic. 
 The reader may turn over play after play without finding 
 one happy conjectural emendation, or one ingenious and 
 satisfactory explanation of a passage which had baffled pre- 
 ceding commentators. Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told 
 the world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which he 
 had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 345 
 
 under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English 
 language than any of his predecessors. That his knowl- 
 edge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, 
 unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of 
 our literature with which it is especially desirable that an 
 editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous 
 to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked by the asser- 
 tion, that in the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary, 
 there is not a single passage quoted from any dramatist of 
 the Elizabethan age, except Shakspeare and Ben. Even 
 from Ben the quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in 
 a few months, have made himself well acquainted with 
 every old play that was extant. But it never seems to 
 have occurred to him that this was a necessary preparation 
 for the work which he had undertaken. He would doubt- 
 less have admitted, that it would be the height of absurdity 
 in a man who was not familiar with the works of JEschylus 
 and Euripides, to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he 
 ventured to publish an edition of Shakspeare, without hav- 
 ing ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a single 
 scene of Massinger, Ford, Decker, Webster, Marlow, Beau- 
 mont, or Fletcher. His detractors were noisy and scurril- 
 ous. Those who most loved and honored him, had little to 
 say in praise of the manner in which he had discharged 
 the duty of a commentator. He had, however, acquitted 
 himself of a debt which had long lain heavy on his con- 
 science, and he sank back into the repose from which the 
 sting of satire had roused him. He long continued to live 
 upon the fame which he had already won. He was honored 
 by the University of Oxford with a Doctor's degree, by the 
 Royal Academy with a professorship, and by the King with 
 an interview, in which his Majesty most graciously ex- 
 pressed a hope that so excellent a writer would not cease to 
 write. In the interval, however, between 1765 and 1775, 
 Johnson published only two or three political tracte, the 
 
346 NEW BIOGRAPHIES., 
 
 longest of which he could have produced in forty-eight 
 hours, if he had worked as he worked on the Life of Sav- 
 age and on Rasselas. 
 
 But, thc^gh his pen was now idle, his tongue was active. 
 The influence exercised by his conversation, directly upon 
 those with whom he lived and indirectly on the whole liter- 
 ary world, was altogether without a parallel. His colloquial 
 talents were indeed of the highest order. He had strong 
 sense, quick discernment, wit, humor, immense knowledge 
 of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curious 
 anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke far better than he 
 wrote. Every sentence which dropped from his lips was as 
 correct in structure as the most nicely balanced period of 
 the Rambler. But in his talk there were no pompous 
 triads, and little more than a fair proportion of words in 
 osity and ation. All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. He 
 uttered his short, weighty, and pointed sentences, with a 
 power of voice, and a justness and energy of emphasis, of 
 which the effect was rather increased than diminished by the 
 rollings of his huge form, and by the asthmatic gaspings 
 and puffings in which the peals of his eloquence generally 
 ended. Nor did the laziness which made him unwilling to 
 sit down to his desk, prevent him from giving instruction or 
 entertainment orally. To discuss questions of taste, of 
 learning, of casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible 
 that it might have been printed without the alteration of a 
 word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He loved, as 
 he said, to fold his legs and have his talk out. He was 
 ready to bestow the overflowings of his full mind on any- 
 body who would start a subject, on a fellow-passenger in a 
 (Stage-coach, or on the person who sate at the same table 
 with him in an eating-house. But his conversation was no- 
 where so brilliant and striking as when he was surrounded 
 by a few friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled 
 them, as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball 
 
_ SAMUEL JOHNSON. 34? 
 
 that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed themselves 
 into a club, which gradually became a formidable power in 
 the commonwealth of letters. The verdicts pronounced by 
 this conclave on new books were speedily known over all 
 London, and were sufficient to sell off a whole edition in a 
 day, or to condemn the sheets to the service of the trunk- 
 maker and the pastry-cook. Nor shall we think this strange, 
 when we consider what great and various talents and ac- 
 quirements met in the little fraternity. Goldsmith was the 
 representative of poetry and light literature, Reynolds of the 
 arts, Burke of political eloquence and political philosophy. 
 There, too, were Gibbon, the greatest historian, and Jones, 
 the greatest linguist, of the age. Garrick brought to the 
 meeting his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mim- 
 icry, and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. Among 
 the most constant attendants were two high-born and high- 
 bred gentlemen, closely bound together by friendship, but of 
 widely different character? and habits : Bennet Langton, 
 distinguished by his skill in Greek literature, by the ortho- 
 doxy of his opinions, and by the sanctity of his life ; and 
 Topham Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowl- 
 edge of the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his sarcastic 
 wit. To predominate over such a society was not easy. 
 Yet even over such a society Johnson predominated. Burke 
 might indeed have disputed the supremacy to which others 
 were under the necessity of submitting. But Burke, though 
 not generally a very patient listener, was content to take the 
 second part when Johnson was present ; and the club itself, 
 consisting of so many eminent men, is to this day popularly 
 designated as Johnson's club. 
 
 Among the members of this celebrated body was one to 
 
 whom it has owed the greater part of its celebrity, yet who 
 
 . was regarded with little respect by his brethren, and had 
 
 not without difficulty obtained a seat among them. This 
 
 was James Bos well, a young Scotch lawyer, heir to an hon- 
 
346 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 orable name and a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and 
 a bore, weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious 
 to all who were acquainted with him. That he could not 
 reason, that he had no wit, no humor, no eloquence, is ap- 
 parent from his writings. And yet his writings are read 
 beyond the Mississippi, and under the Southern Cross, and 
 are likely to be read as long as the English exists, either as 
 a living or as a dead language. Nature had made him a 
 slave and an idolater. His mind resembled those creepers 
 which the botanists call parasites, and which can subsist only 
 by clinging round the stems and imbibing the juices of 
 stronger plants. He must have fastened himself on some- 
 body. He might have fastened himself on Wilkes, and 
 have become the fiercest patriot in the Bill of Rights So- 
 ciety. He might have fastened himself on Whitfield, and 
 have become the loudest field preacher among the Calvin- 
 istic Methodists. In a happy hour he fastened himself on 
 Johnson. The pair might seemgill matched. For Johnson 
 had early been prejudiced against Boswell's country. To a 
 man of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable temper, 
 the silly egotism and» adulation of Boswell must have been 
 as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. Johnson hated to 
 be questioned ; and Boswell was eternally catechizing him 
 on all sorts of subjects, and sometimes propounded such 
 questions as, " What would you do, Sir, if you were locked 
 up in a tower with a baby ? " Johnson was a water drinker 
 and Boswell was a winebibber, and indeed little better than 
 an habitual sot. Ife was impossible that there should be per- 
 fect harmony between two such companions. Indeed, the 
 great man was sometimes provoked into fits of passion, in 
 which he said things which the small man, during a few 
 hours, seriously resented. Every quarrel, however, was 
 soon made up. During twenty years the disciple continued 
 to worship the master : the master continued to scold the 
 disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The two friends 
 
SAMUEL JOHXSOK. 349 
 
 • 
 
 ordinarily resided at a great distance from each other. 
 Boswell practised in the Parliament House of Edinburgh, 
 and could pay only occasional visits to London. , During 
 those visits his chief business was to watch Johnson, to dis- 
 cover all Johnson's habits, to turn the conversation to sub- 
 jects about which Johnson was likely to say something re- 
 markable, and to fill quarto note-books with minutes of what 
 Johnson had said. In this way were gathered the materials 
 out of which was afterwards constructed the most interesting 
 biographical work in the world. 
 
 Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson formed a con- 
 nection less important indeed to his fame, but much more 
 important to his happiness, than his connection with Boswell. 
 Henry Thrale, one of the most opulent brewers in the king- 
 dom, a man of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid 
 principles, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those 
 clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young women, 
 who are perpetually doing or saying what is not exactly 
 right, but who, do or say what they may, are always agre^ 
 able. In 1765 the Thrales became acquainted with John- 
 son, and the acquaintance ripened fast into friendship. They 
 were astonished and delighted by the brilliancy of his con- 
 versation. They were flattered by finding that a man so 
 widely celebrated preferred their house to any other in 
 London. Even the peculiarities which seemed to unfit him 
 for civilized society, his gesticulations, his roUings, his puf- 
 fings, his mutterings, the strange way in which he put on his 
 clothes, the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his 
 dinner, his fits of melancholy, his fits of anger, his frequent 
 rudeness, his occasional ferocity, increased the interest which 
 his new associates took in him. For these things were the 
 cruel marks left behind by a life which had been one long con- 
 flict with disease and with adversity. In a vulgar hack writ- 
 er, such oddities would have excited only disgust. But in a 
 man of genius, learning, and virtue, their effect was to add 
 30 
 
350 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 pity to admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apart- 
 ment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more pleasant 
 apartment at the villa of his friends on Streatham Common. 
 A large part of every year he passed in those abodes, abodes 
 which must have seemed magnificent. and luxurious indeed, 
 when compared with the dens in which he had generally been 
 lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from what 
 the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called " the endearing 
 elegance of female friendship." Mrs. Thrale rallied him, 
 soothed him, coaxed him, and, if she sometimes provoked 
 him by her flippancy, made ample amends by listening to 
 his reproofs with angelic ^eetness of temper. When he 
 was diseased in body and in mind, she was the most tender 
 of nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no con- 
 trivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by womanly 
 compassion, could devise, was wanting to his sick room. He 
 requited her kindness by an affection pure as the affection 
 of a father, yet delicately tinged with a gallantry, which, 
 though awkward, must have been more flattering than the 
 attentions of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the names, 
 now obsolete, of Buck and Maccaroni. It should seem that 
 a full half of Johnson's life, during about sixteen years, was 
 passed under the roof of the Thrales. He accompanied the 
 family sometimes to Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once 
 to Wales, and once to Paris. But he had at the same time 
 a house in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the 
 north of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a 
 large and miscellaneous collection of books, falling to pieces 
 and begrimmed with dust. On a lower floor he sometimes, 
 but very rarely, regaled a friend with a plain dinner, a veal 
 pie, or a leg of lamb and spinage, and a rice pudding. Nor 
 was the dwelling uninhabited during his long absences. It 
 was the home of the most extraordinary assemblage of in- 
 mates that ever was brought together. At the head of the 
 establishment Johnson had placed an old lady named Wil- 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 351 
 
 liams, whose chief recommendations were her blindness and 
 her poverty. But, in spite of her mumiurs and reproaches 
 he gave an asylum to another lady who was as poor as her- 
 self, Mrs. Desmoulins, whose family he had known many 
 years before in Staffordshire. Room was found for the 
 daughter of Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute 
 damsel, who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, 
 but whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack 
 doctor named Levett, who bled and dosed coal-heavers and 
 hackney coachmen, and received for fees crusts of bread, 
 bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and sometimes a little copper, 
 completed this strange menagerie. All tliese poor creatures 
 were at constant war with each other, and with Johnson's 
 negro servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they transferred 
 their hostihties from the servant to the master, complained 
 that a better table was not kept for them, and railed or 
 maundered till their benefactor was glad to make his escape 
 to Streatham, or to the Mitre Tavern. And yet he, who 
 was generally the haughtiest and most irritable of mankind-, 
 who was but too prompt to resent any thing which looked 
 like a slight on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a 
 noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from mendicants, 
 who, but for his bounty, must have gone to the workhouse, 
 insults more provoking than those for which he had knocked 
 down Osborne and bidden defiance to Chesterfield. Year 
 after year Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and 
 Levett, continued to torment him and to live upon him. 
 
 The course of life which has been described was inter- 
 rupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an important event. 
 He had early read an account of the Hebrides, and had 
 been much interested by learning that there was so near 
 him a land peopled by a race which was still as rude and 
 simple as in the Middle Ages. A wish to become intimate- 
 ly acquainted with a state of society so utterly unlike all 
 that he had ever seen frequently crossed his mind. But it 
 
352 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 is not probable that his curiosity would have overcome his 
 habitual sluggishness, and his love of the smoke, the mud, 
 and the cries of London, had not Boswell importuned him 
 to attempt the adventure, and offered to be his squire. At 
 length, in August, 1773, Johnson crossed the Highland line, 
 and plunged courageously into* what was then considered by 
 most Englishmen as a dreary and perilous wilderness. 
 After wandering about two months through the Celtic 
 region, sometimes in rude boats which did not protect him 
 from the rain, and sometimes on small shaggy ponies which 
 could hardly bear his weight, he returned to his old haunts 
 with a mind full of new images and new theories. During 
 the following year he employed himself in recording his ad- 
 ventures. About the beginning of 1775, his Journey to the 
 Hebrides was published, and was, during some weeks, the 
 chief subject of conversation in all circles in which any at- 
 tention was paid to literature. The book is still read with 
 pleasure. The narrative is entertaining; the speculations, 
 whether sound or unsound, are always ingenious ; and the 
 style, though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat easier 
 and more graceful than that of his early writings. His 
 prejudice against the Scotch had at length become little 
 more than matter of jest ; and whatever remained of the 
 old feeling had been effectually removed by the kind and 
 respectful hospitality with which he had been received 
 in every part of Scotland. It was, of course, not to be ex- 
 pected that an Oxonian Tory should praise the Presbyterian 
 polity and ritual, or that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows 
 and parks of England should not be struck by the bareness 
 of Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in censure 
 Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlightened 
 Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, were well 
 pleased. But some foolish and ignorant Scotchmen were 
 moved to anger by a little unpala^ble truth which was 
 mingled with much eulogy, and assailed him whom they 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSpN. 353 
 
 chose to consider as the enemy of their country with libels 
 much more dishonorable to their country than any thing that 
 he had ever said or written. They published paragraphs in 
 the newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny pam- 
 phlets, five-shilling books. One scribbler abused Johnson 
 for being blear-eyed ; another for being a pensioner ; a third 
 informed the world that one of the Doctor's uncles had been 
 convicted of felony in Scotland, and had found that there 
 was in that country one tree capable of supporting the 
 weight of an Englishman. Macpherson, whose Fingal had 
 been proved in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, 
 threatened to take vengeance with a cane. The only effect 
 of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the charge of 
 forgery in the most contemptuous terms, and walked about 
 during some time, with a cudgel, which, if the impostor had 
 not been too wise to encounter it, would assuredly have de- 
 scended upon him, to borrow the sublime language of his 
 own epic poem, " like a hammer on the red son of ihe fur- 
 nace." 
 
 Of other assailants Johnson took no notice whatever. He 
 had early resolved never to be drawn into controversy ; and 
 he adhered to his resolution with a steadfastness which is 
 the more extraordinary because he was, both intellectually 
 and morally, of the stuff of which controversialists are made. 
 In conversation he was a singularly eager, acute, and perti- 
 nacious disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had 
 recourse to sophistry ; and when heated by altercation, he 
 made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. But when 
 he took his pen in his hand, his whole character seemed to 
 be changed. A hundred bad writers misrepresented him and 
 reviled him ; but not one of the hundred could boast of hav- 
 ing been thought by him worthy of a refutation, or even of 
 a retort. The Kenricks, Campbells, MacNichols, and Hen- 
 dersons did their best to annoy him, in the hope that he 
 would give them importance by answering them. But the 
 30* 
 
354 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reader will in vain search his works for any allusion to Ken- 
 rick or Campbell, to MacNichol or Henderson. One 
 Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of Scotch learn- 
 ing, defied him to the combat in a detestable Latin hex- 
 ameter. 
 
 " Maxirae, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 
 
 But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He had 
 learned, both from his own observation and from literary 
 history, in which he was deeply read, that the place of books 
 in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about 
 them, but by what is written in them ; and that an author 
 whose works are likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to 
 wrangle with detractors whose works are certain to die. 
 He always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock, which 
 could be kept up only by being beaten back, as well as 
 beaten forward, and which would soon fall if there were 
 only one battledore. No saying was oftener in his mouth 
 than that fine apothegm of Bentley, that no man was ever 
 written down but by himself. 
 
 Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of the Jour- 
 ney to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none of his envious 
 assailants could have done, and, to a certain extent, succeeded 
 in writing himself down. The disputes between England 
 and her American colonies had reached a point at which no 
 amicable adjustment was possible. Civil war was evidently 
 impending ; and the ministers seem to have thought that the 
 eloquence of Johnson might, with advantage, be employed 
 to inflame the nation against the opposition here, and against 
 the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He had already written 
 two or three tracts in defence of the foreign and domestic 
 policy of the government ; rfnd those tracts, though hardly 
 worthy of him, were much superior to the crowd of pam- 
 phlets which lay on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. 
 But his Taxation No Tyranny was a pitiable failure. The 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. # 355 
 
 very title was a silly phrase, which can have been recom- 
 mended to his choice by nothing but a jingling alliteration 
 which he ought to have despised. The arguments were 
 such as boys use in debating societies. The pleasantry was 
 as awkward as the gambols of a hippopotamus. Even Bos- 
 well was forced to own that, in this unfortunate piece, he 
 could detect no ti-ace of his master's powers. The general 
 opinion was, that the strong faculties which had produced 
 the Dictionary and the Rambler were beginning to feel the 
 effect of time and of disease, and that the old man would best 
 consult his credit by writing no more. 
 
 But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, not 
 because his mind was less vigorous than when he wrote 
 Rasselas in the evenings of a week, but because he had 
 foolishly chosen, or suffered others to choose for him, a sub- 
 ject such as he would at no time have been competent to 
 treat. He was in no sense a statesman. He never willingly 
 read, or thought, or talked about affairs of state. He loved 
 biography, Uterary history, the history of manners ; but 
 political history was positively distasteful to him. The 
 question at issue between the colonies and the mother 
 country was a question about which he had really nothing 
 to say. He failed, therefore, as the greatest men must fail 
 when they attempt to do that for which they are unfit ; as 
 Burke would have failed if Burke had tried to write come- 
 dies like those of Sheridan ; as Reynolds would have failed 
 if Reynolds had tried to paint landscapes like those of Wil- 
 son. Happily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving 
 most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed to intel- 
 lectual decay. 
 
 On Easter eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a meet- 
 ing which consisted of forty of the first booksellers in Lon- 
 don, called upon him. Though he had some scruples about 
 doing business at that season, he received his visitors with 
 
356 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition 
 of the English poets, from Cowley downward, was in con- 
 templation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical pre- 
 faces. He readily undertook the task, a task for which he 
 was preeminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary 
 history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. 
 That knowledge he had derived partly from books, and partly 
 from sources which had long been closed ; from old Grub 
 Street traditions ; from the talk of forgotten poetasters and 
 pamphleteers who had long been lying in parish vaults ; from 
 the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, who 
 had conversed with the wits of Button ; Gibber, who had 
 mutilated the plays of two generations of dramatists ; 
 Orrery, who had been admitted to the society of Swift ; and 
 Savage, who had rendered services of no very honorable 
 kind to Pope. The biographer, therefore, sate down to his 
 task with a mind full of matter. He had at first intended to 
 give only a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four 
 or five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of anec- 
 dote and criticism overflowed the narrow channel. The 
 work, which was originally meant to consist only of a few 
 sheets, swelled into ten volumes — small volumes, it is true, 
 and not closely printed. The first four appeared in 1779, 
 the remaining six in 1781. 
 
 The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best of 
 Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertaining as any 
 novel. The remarks on life and on human nature are emi- 
 nently shrewd and profound. The criticisms are often ex- 
 cellent, and, even when grossly and provokingly unjust, well 
 deserve to be studied ; for, however erroneous they may be, 
 they are never silly. They are the judgments of a mind 
 trammelled by prejudice and deficient in sensibility, but vig- 
 orous and acute. They therefore generally contain a por- 
 tion of valuable truth which deserves to be separated from 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 857 
 
 the alloy ; and, at the very worst, they mean something, a 
 praise to which much of what is called criticism in our time 
 has no pretensions. 
 
 Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had ap- 
 peared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, will turn 
 to the other lives, will be struck by the difference of style. 
 Since Johnson had been at ease in his circumstances, he had 
 written little and had talked much. When, therefore, he, 
 after the lapse of years, resumed his pen, the mannerism 
 which he had contracted while he was in the constant habit of 
 elaborate composition was less perceptible than formerly ; 
 and his diction frequentlj'^ had a colloquial ease which it had 
 formerly wanted. The improvement may be discerned by a 
 skilful critic in the Journey to the Hebrides, and in the 
 Lives of the Poets is so obvious that it Cannot escape the 
 notice of the most careless reader. 
 
 Among the Lives the best are perhaps those of Cowley, 
 Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, beyond all doubt, 
 that of Gray. 
 
 This great work at once became popular. There was, 
 indeed, much just and much unjust censure : but even those 
 who were loudest in blame were attracted by the book in 
 spite of themselves. Malone computed the gains of the 
 publishers at five or six thousand pounds. But the writer 
 was very poorly remunerated. Intending at first to write 
 very short prefaces, he had stipulated for only ^wo hundred 
 guineas. The booksellers, when they saw how far his per- 
 formance had surpassed his promise, added only another 
 hundred. Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or 
 ^affect to despise money, and though his strong sense and 
 long experience ought to have qualified him to protect his 
 own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful and 
 unlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally re- 
 puted the first English writer of his time. Yet several 
 writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums such as he 
 
358 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 never ventured to ask. To give a single instance, Robert- 
 son received four thousand five hundred pounds for the His- 
 tory of Charles V., and it is no disrespect to the memory 
 of Robertson to say that the History of Charles V. is both 
 a less valuable and less amusing book than the Lives of 
 
 the Poets. 
 
 Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The infirm- 
 ities of age were coming fast upon him. That inevitable 
 event, of which he never thought without horror, was brought 
 near to him ; and his whole hfe was darkened by the shadow 
 of death. He had often to pay the cruel price of longevity. 
 Every year he lost what could never be replaced. The 
 strange dependents to whom he had given shelter, and to 
 whom, in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by 
 habit, dropped off one by one ; and, in the silence of his 
 home, he regretted even the noise of their scolding matches. 
 The kind and generous Thrale was no more ; and it would 
 have been well if his wife had been laid beside him. But 
 she survived to be the laughing-stock of those who had en- 
 vied her, and to draw from the eyes of the old man who had 
 loved her beyond any thing in the world, tears far more 
 bitter than he would have shed over her grave. With some 
 estimable, and many agreeable qualities, she was not made 
 to be independent. The control of a mind more steadfast 
 than her own was necessary to her respectability. While 
 she was retrained by her husband, a man of sense and 
 firmness, indulgent to her taste in trifles, but always the un- 
 disputed master of his house, her worst offences had been 
 .impertinent jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness 
 ending in sunny good-humor. But he was gone ; and she 
 was left an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibility, 
 volatile fancy, atid slender judgment. She soon fell in love 
 with a music-master from Brescia, in whom nobody but her- 
 self could discover any thing to admire. Her pride, and 
 perhaps some better feelings, struggled hard against this 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON. 359 
 
 degrading passion. But the struggle irritated her nerves, 
 soured her temper, and at length endangered her health. 
 Conscious that her choice was one which Johnson could not 
 approve, she became desirous ^o escape from his inspection. 
 Her manner toward him changed. She was sometimes cold 
 and sometimes petulant. She did not conceal her joy when 
 he left Streatham : she never pressed him to return ; and, 
 if he came unbidden, she received him in a manner which 
 convinced him that he was no longer a welcome guest. He 
 took the very intelligible hints which she gave. He read, 
 for the last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the 
 library which had been formed by himself. In a solemn 
 and tender prayer he commended the house and its inmates 
 to the Divine protection, and, with emotions which choked 
 his voice and convulsed his powerful frame, left forever that 
 beloved home for the gloomy and desolate house behind 
 Fleet Street, where the few and evil days which still re- 
 mained to him were to run out. Here, in June, 1783, he 
 had a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, 
 and which does not appear to have at all impaired his intel- 
 lectual faculties. But other maladies came thick upon him. 
 His asthma tormented him day and night. Dropsical symp- 
 toms made their appearance. While sinking under a com- 
 plication of diseases, he heard that the woman whose friend- 
 ship had been the chief happiness of sixteen years of his 
 life had married an Italian fiddler; that all London was 
 crying shame upon her ; and that the newspapers and maga- 
 zines were filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron and 
 the two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that he 
 would try to forget her existence. He never uttered her 
 name. Every memorial of her which met his eye he flung 
 into the fire. She, meanwhile, fled from the laughter and 
 hisses of her countrymen and countrywomen to a land where 
 she was unknown, hastened across Mount Cenis, and learned, 
 while passing a merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade 
 
360 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 parties at Milan, that the great man, with whose name hers 
 is inseparably associated, had ceased to exist. 
 
 He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily afflic- 
 tion, clung vehemently to life. The feeling described in 
 that fine but gloomy paper 'which closes the series of his 
 Idlers seemed to grow stronger in him as his last hour drew 
 near. ' He fancied that he should be able to draw his breath 
 more easily in a southern climate, and would probably have 
 set out for Rome and Naples but for his fear of the expense 
 of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the means of 
 defraying ; for he had laid up about two thousand pounds, 
 the fruit of labors which had made the fortune of several 
 publishers. But he was unwilling to break in upon this 
 hoard, and he seems to have wished even to keep its ex- 
 istence a secret. Some of his friends hoped that the gov- 
 ernment might be induced to increase his pension to six 
 hundred pounds a year, but this hope was disappointed, and 
 he resolved to stand one English winter more. That winter 
 was his last. His legs grew weaker; liis breath grew 
 shorter ; the fatal water gathered fast, in spite of incisions 
 which he, courageous against pain, but timid against death, 
 urged his surgeons to make deeper and deeper. Though 
 the tender care which had mitigated his sufferings during 
 months of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, he was not 
 left desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons attended 
 him, and refused to accept fees from him. Burke parted 
 from him with deep emotion. Windham sate much in the 
 sick room, arranged the pillows, and sent his own servant to 
 watch at night by the bed. Frances Bumey, whom the old 
 man had cherished with fatherly kindness, stood weeping at 
 the door; while Langton, whose piety eminently qualified 
 him to be an adviser and comforter at such a time, received 
 the last pressure of his friend's hand within. When at 
 length the moment, dreaded through so many years, came 
 close, the dark cloud passed away from .Johnson's mind. 
 
SAMUEL JOHJfSON. 361 
 
 His temper became unusually patient and gentle ; he ceased 
 to think with terror of death, and of that which lies beyond 
 death ; and he spoke much of the mercy of God, and of the 
 propitiation of Christ. In this serene frame of mind he 
 died on the 13th of December, 1784. He was laid, a week 
 later, in Westminster Abbey, among the eminent men of 
 whom he had been the historian — Cowley and Denham, 
 Diyden and Congreve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 
 
 Since his death the popularity of his works — the Lives 
 of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
 excepted — has greatly diminished. His Dictionary has 
 been altered by editors till it can scarcely be calted his. 
 An allusion to his Rambler or his Idler is not readily ap- 
 prehended in literary circles. The fame even of Rasselas 
 has grown somewhat dim. But though the celebrity of the 
 writings may have declined, the celebrity of the writer, 
 strange to say, is as great as ever. Boswell's book has 
 done for- him more than the best of his own books could do. 
 The memory of other authors is kept alive by their works. 
 But the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works alive. 
 The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with 
 the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, • 
 blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, 
 tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in 
 oceans. No human being who has been more than seventy 
 years in the grave is so well-known to us. And it is but just 
 to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would 
 himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and of 
 his temper, serves only to strengthen our conviction that he 
 was both a great and a good man. 
 
 31 
 
SIR HUM1>HRY DAVY. 
 
 SiB*HuMPHRY Davy was born at Penzance on the 
 17th of December, 1778. His was an ardent boyhood. 
 Educated in a manner somewhat irregular, and with only 
 the ordinary advantages of a remote country town, his 
 talents appeared in the earnestness with which he cultivated 
 at once the most various branches of knowledge and specu- 
 lation. He was fond of metaphysics ; he was fond of ex- 
 periment ; he was an ardent student of nature ; and he 
 possessed at an early age poetic powers, which, had they 
 been cultivated, would in the opinion of competent judges, 
 have made him as eminent in literature as he was in science. 
 All these tastes endured throughout life. Business could 
 not stifle them, — even the approach of death was unable to 
 extinguish them. The reveries of his boyhood on the sea- 
 worn cliffs of Mount's Bay, may yet be traced in many of 
 the pages dictated during the last year of his life amidst the 
 ruins of the Coliseum. But the physical sciences — those 
 more emphatically called at that time chemical — speedily 
 attracted and absorbed his most earnest attention. The 
 philosophy of the imponderables — of Light, Heat, and 
 Electricity — was the subject of his earliest, and also that of 
 his happiest essays. He was a very able chemist in the' 
 strictest sense of the word, although his ardor and his ra- 
 pidity of generalizing might seem to unfit him, in some 
 (862) 
 
Sm HUMPHKT^DAVT. ' 363 
 
 measure, for a pursuit which requires such intense watch- 
 fulness with regard to minutiae, such patient weighing of 
 fractions of a grain, such frequent though easy calculations. 
 To Cavendish and Daltoh, his great contemporaries — to 
 whom we may now add WoUaston — these things were a 
 pleasure in themselves ; to Davy they must ever have been 
 irksome indispensables to the discovery of truth. But, in 
 fact, Davy's discoveries were almost independent of such 
 quantitative details ; numerical relations, and harmony of pro- 
 portion, did not affect his mind with pleasure, which possibly 
 was one reason of his deficient appreciation of works of art, 
 the more remarkable from his poetic temperament. Dalton's 
 doctrine of atomic combinations was, slowly and doubtfully 
 received by him, whilst WoUaston perceived its truth in- 
 stantaneously. A keener relish for such relations might 
 most naturally have led Davy to an anticipation of Mr. 
 Faraday's notable discovery of the definite character of elec- 
 trical decomposition, and the coincidence of the Electro- 
 chemical proportions for different bodies with their atomic 
 weights. 
 
 The early papers of Davy refer chiefly to Heat, Light, 
 and Electricity. He was, in fact, a physicist, more than a 
 chemist. Whilst yet a surgeon's apprentice at Penzance, 
 he satisfied himself of the immateriality of heat, which he 
 illustrated by some ingenious experiments, in which, con- 
 curring unawares with the conclusions of his future patron 
 Rumford, he laid one foundation of his promotion. Re- 
 moved to a sphere of really scientific activity at Clifton, 
 under Dr. Beddoes,* he executed those striking researches in 
 pneumatic chemistry and the physiological effects of breathing 
 various gases, which gave him his first reputation ; re- 
 
 1 Davy hit oflF his principal's character in a single sentence, — 
 " Beddoes had talents which would have exalted him to the pinnacle 
 of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion." 
 
364 NEW BIOGEAPHIES. 
 
 searches so arduous and full of risk as to require a chemist 
 in the vigor of life, and urged by an unextinguishable thirst 
 for discovery, to undertake them. Even his brilliant dis- 
 covery of the effects of inhaling 'nitrous oxide brought no 
 competitor into the field ; and the use of anaesthetics, which 
 might naturally have followed — the greatest discovery (if 
 we except, perhaps, that of vaccination) for the relief of 
 suffering humanity made in any age — was delayed for 
 another generation. But so it was in all his triumphs. He 
 never seemed to drain the cup of discovery. He quaffed 
 only its freshest part. He felt the impulse of an unlimited 
 command of resources. He carried on rapidly, and seem- 
 ingly without order, several investigations at once. As in 
 conversation he is described as seeming to know what one 
 was going to say before uttering it, — he had the art of di- 
 vining things complex and obscure. Seizing on results, he 
 left to others the not inconsiderable merit, as well as labor, 
 of pursuing the details. Keenly alive as he was to the 
 value of fame, and the applause which his talents soon ob- 
 tained for him, he left enough of both for his friends ; his 
 contemporaries, as well as his successors, were enabled to 
 weave a chaplet from the laurels which he had not stooped 
 to gather. 
 
 These remarks apply quite as strongly fo his discoveries 
 in the laws and facts of electro-chemical decomposition — 
 those on which his fame most securely rests. Promoted in 
 1801 to a situation in the Laboratory of the Royal Institu- 
 tion in London, he attached himself to the study of galvan- 
 ism in the interval of the other and more purely chemical 
 pursuits which the duties of his situation required. He 
 had already, at Clifton, made experiments with the pile of 
 Volta, and taken part in the discussion of its theory and 
 effects, then (as we have seen) so actively carried on in 
 Britain. In his papers of that period we find not only 
 excellent experiments, but happy and just reasoning. The 
 
Sm HUMPHBr DAVY. S65 
 
 chemical theory of the pile — namely, that the electrical 
 eflFects observed by Galvani and Volta are due solely or 
 chiefly to the chemical action of the fluid element on the 
 metals — was more strongly embraced by him then than 
 afterwards. In November, 1800, he concluded that " the pile 
 of Volta acts only when the conducting substance between 
 the plates is capable of oxidating the zinc ; and that in pro- 
 portion as a greater quantity of oxygen enters into combi- 
 nation with the zinc in a given time, so in proportion is the 
 power of the pile to decompose water and to give the shock 
 greater." He concludes that "the chemical changes con- 
 nected with " oxidation " are somehow the cause of the elec- 
 trical effect it produces." ^ His views on this subject under- 
 went some modification afterwards. In his Elements of 
 Gher^ical Philosophy, published twelve years later, we find 
 the following statement of his opinions on the subject : — 
 " Electrical effects are exhibited by the same bodies acting 
 as masses, which produce chemical phenomena when acting 
 by their particles ; it is, therefore, not improbable that the 
 primary cause of both may be the same." A little further 
 on he adds : — " They," speaking of electrical and chemical 
 energies, " are conceived to be distinct phenomena, but pro- 
 duced by the same power acting in the one case on masses, 
 in the other on particles." ^ 
 
 In 1804, Berzelius had published in conjunction with 
 Hisinger, a paper on Electro-chemical Decompositions, in 
 which he insisted on the general fact, that alkalies, earths, 
 
 1 Works, ii., 162. 
 
 2 Works, iv., 119. In his Bakerian lecture (1806) he had said, "In 
 the present state of our knowledge, it would be useless to attempt to 
 speculate on the remote cause of the electrical energy, or the reason 
 why different bodies, after being brought into contact, should be 
 found differently electrified ; its relation to chemical afiinity is, how- 
 ever, suflSciently evident. May it not be identical with it; and an 
 essential property of matter ? " — Works, vol. v., p. 39. 
 
 SI* 
 
366 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and combustible bodies seem to be attracted to the negative 
 pole, and oxygen and acids to the positive. He also showed 
 that the subdivision of bodies thus obtained was only a rela- 
 tive not an absolute one ; for the same body may act as a 
 base to a second, and as an acid to a third. But we must 
 observe that results almost similar were contained in the 
 early papers of Davy, and that Berzelius did not carry out 
 his own principle so far as to lead to any striking discovery 
 between 1803 (when his experiments were made) and 1806, 
 (the date of Davy's first Bakerian lecture,) during which 
 time the science of Galvanism or Voltaism made little real 
 progress. The numerous experimenters engaged with it 
 were baffled by the anomalous chemical results obtained, 
 and by the appearance of decompositions under circum- 
 stances wholly unexpected, such as appeared to threatep the 
 existence of some of the best established chemical truths. 
 The chemical theory of the pile, at first so plausible, pre- 
 sented new difiicnlties, and Berzelius having for a while 
 defended it, returned to the simple contact theory of Volta. 
 It was then that Davy seriously addressed himself to the 
 subject, resolved to trace to their source every chemical 
 anomaly ; and this he effected in a masterly mannei', in his 
 Bakerian lecture read before the Royal Society in 1806. In 
 it he traces the unaccountable results of his predecessors to 
 impui'ities in the materials used by them, or to those of the 
 vessels in which the decompositions were made ; and he' 
 brings into a far distincter light than his predecessors had 
 done, the power of the galvanic circuit to suspend or re- 
 verse the action of even powerful chemical affinity ; " differ- 
 ent bodies naturally possessed of chemical affinities ap- 
 pearing incapable of combining or remaining in combina- 
 tion when placed in a state of electricity different from their 
 natural order." We here see the fundamental doctrine of 
 the electro-chemical theory, that all bodies possess a place in 
 the great scale of natural electrical relations to one another ; 
 
SIB HUMPHRY DAVY. 367 
 
 that chemical relations are intimately connected with this elec- 
 tric state, and are suspended or reversed by its alteration. 
 In the interpretation of those striking experiments, in 
 which he caused acids to pass to the positive pole of the 
 battery through the midst of alkaline solutions, and the con- 
 verse, we find so close an approach to the theory of polar 
 decomposition as enforced by the discoveries and reasonings 
 of Mr. Faraday, that it seems impossible to deny to Davy 
 the merit of having first perceived these curious relations. 
 " It is very natural," he says, " to suppose that the repellant 
 and attractive energies are communicated from one particle 
 to another particle of the same kind so as to establish a 
 conducting chain in the fluid, and that the locomotion takes 
 place in consequence ; " and presently adds, " there may 
 possibly be a succession of decompositions and recomposi- 
 tions throughout the fluid.^ He likewise shows (p. 21) that 
 the decomposing power does not reside in the wire or pole^ 
 but may be extended indefinitely through a fluid medium 
 capable of conducting electricity. Mr. Faraday's experi- 
 ments, which led him to discard the term pole, lead to the 
 same conclusion, and are of the same character. A few 
 pages further on in this same Bakerian lecture, Davy 
 observes (p. 42), that, " allowing that combination depends* 
 on a balance of the natural electrical enei'gies of bodies, 
 it is easy to conceive that a measure may be found of the 
 artificial energies as to intensity and quantity capable of 
 destroying this equilibrium ; and such a measure would 
 enable us to make a scale of electrical powers corresponding 
 to degrees of affinity." Here we see the acute presentiment 
 of the beautiful discovery of the definiteness of electrical de- 
 compositions ; as in the concluding portion of the same remark- 
 able paper we find a clear anticipation of natural electrical 
 currents to be discovered in mineral, and especially metalif- 
 
 1 Of the Bakerian Lecture, in his collected Works, p. 29. 
 
368 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 erous deposits, since established by Mr. R. W. Fox, and of 
 the agency of feeble electric energies, long continued, in 
 effecting geological changes, and in producing insoluble 
 combinations of earths and metals, so ingeniously confirmed 
 by the beautiful and direct experiments of Becquerel. 
 
 The sequel to this remarkable paper, read to the Royal 
 Society in November, 1807, contained the splendid appli- 
 cation of the principle and methods which it described, 
 to the decomposition of the alkalies and to the discovery of 
 their singular bases, — substances possessing the lustre 
 and malleability of metals, yet so light as to float upon 
 water, and having the extraordinary property of becoming 
 inflamed in contact with ice. Potassium was discovered in 
 the Laboratory of the Royal Institution on the 6th October, 
 1807, and sodium a few days later. The battery used con- 
 tained 250 pairs of plates of six and four inches square. 
 Such success was fitted to charm a disposition like that of 
 Davy, and more than reward him for all his toils. To have 
 discovered two new bodies, and opened an entirely new field 
 of wide chemical research, would itself have been enough. 
 But the extraordinary properties of the new bases were 
 such as seemed to correspond to the lively imagination of 
 *the chemist who produced them, and to transport him to an 
 Aladdin's palace more brilliant than ever his fertile im- 
 agination had ever conceived. Yet it is pleasing to remem- 
 ber that these popular discoveries followed, at the interval 
 of a year, the patient and able researches which led him to 
 them, and which had already been rewarded, at a period of 
 the bitterest international hostilities by the scientific prize of 
 3,000 francs, founded by the Emperor Napoleon.^ 
 
 The genius displayed in these, Davy's most celebrated 
 
 1 Such was the national feeling at this time in England, <hat worthy 
 people were found who considered Davy as almost a traitor, when he 
 accepted the French prize. See Southey's Life, 
 
SIK HUMPHKT DAVY. 369 
 
 researches, is evident on a careful perusal of his papers ; 
 but still more from a consideration of the state of science 
 at the time, and of the willing tribute to his nferits paid by 
 the ablest of his contemporaries. Few persons of the 
 present- day will venture to controvert the assertion of his 
 acute contemporary, Dr. Thomas Young (than whom no 
 man was ever a less indiscriminate eulogist), that Davy's 
 researches were " more splendidly successful than any which 
 have ever before illustrated the physical sciences, in any of 
 their departments ;" and that the contents of the Bakerian 
 Lectures, in particular, " are as much superior to those of 
 Newton's Optics, as the Principia are superior to these or 
 any other human work." ^ A not less impartial tribute to 
 his superlative genius has been yielded by M. Dumas, who, 
 if I mistake not, has described Davy as being the ablest 
 and most successful chemist who ever lived. A similar 
 homage is paid to him by the sagacious Cuvier. 
 
 It is not within our scope to consider minutely Davy's 
 purely chemical discoveries and experiments, though they 
 were numerous«and important, independently of those made 
 with the aid of electricity. His proofs of the elementary 
 nature of chlorine and iodine were amongst the most con- 
 siderable in their results. But as a mere analyst, Davy 
 had neither the leisure nor the taste for continuous plodding 
 labor, and he therefore naturally made mistakes in chemical 
 details. His Elements of Chemical Philosophy remained, 
 in consequence, a fragment of an extensive work. His 
 contemporary, BerzeUus, following his steps in electro-chem- 
 ical discovery, attained far greater address, and became an 
 author of high and merited reputation, whilst his school 
 surpassed all others in Europe in producing accomplished 
 analysts.^ 
 ■ 
 
 ^ Quarterly Review, No. 15. 
 
 2 Jons Jacob BerzeUus, the greatest analytical chemist of his day, 
 was bom in East Gothland, in the same year with Davy, and died in 
 
370 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 The years immediately following the publication of his 
 Bakerian Lectures were passed by Davy in the unenvied 
 possession of the highest fame, and in the tranquil further- 
 ance of his first and greatest discoveries. His lectures at 
 the Royal Institution continued to be one of the most 
 fashionable resorts in London, and he was freely admitted 
 in return into the most aristocratic society ; he had but to 
 express a wish, and a voltaic battery of no less than 2,000 
 pairs, containing 128,000 square inches of surface, was con- 
 structed for his use, by means of a liberal subscription. 
 His health, when seriously compromised by the severity of 
 his labors, was a matter of public concern, and its variations 
 were announced by frequent bulletins. The copyright of 
 his lectures on agriculture was sold for a price unexampled 
 perhaps before or since for such a work. In 1812, he was 
 knighted by the Prince Regent, and soon after he married 
 a lady of fortune and accomplishments. His duties at the 
 Royal Institution became thenceforth honorary. He had in 
 a space of ten years attained the pinnacle of scientific repu- 
 tation, and he was for the time truly happjf — unenvious of 
 others — deeply attached to his relatives — generous of his 
 resources — unwearied in his philosophic labors. A certain 
 change (it must with regret be owned) came over his state 
 of mind, tarnished his serenity, and gradually, though im- 
 perceptibly, weakened his scientific' zeal. It was to be 
 ascribed solely, we believe, to the severe ordeal of exuber- 
 ant but heartless popularity which he underwent in London. 
 The flatteries of fashionable life actfrig on a young, ardent, 
 and most susceptible mind, minghng first with the graver 
 applause of his philosophic compeers, and at length, by their 
 reiteration and seductions quite overpowering it, by degrees 
 
 1848, when he had almost completed his 69th year. He* contributed, 
 in a signal manner, to the establishment of Dalton's principle of de- 
 finite chemical equivalents ; but he made no single discovery of com- 
 manding importance. 
 
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 371 
 
 attached Davy to the fashionable world, and loosened his 
 ties to that laboratory which had once been to him the sole 
 and fit scene of his triumphs. Had he been blessed with a 
 family his course would have been evener and happier. 
 Let us not severely criticize, where we still find so much to 
 admire and imitate. But we record the fact, for the conso- 
 lation of those who, beginning the pursuit of science, as 
 Davy did, in a humble sphere, and with pure ardor, may 
 fancy that they are worthy of pity, if they do not attain with 
 him the honors of wealth and title, and the homage, grateful 
 to talent, of rank, wit, and beauty. 
 
 A reseai'ch, second perhaps only to his electro-chemical 
 discoveries, remains to be noticed, as the chief fruit of the 
 third period of his life, on which we now enter, the first 
 being his early C&reer before settling in Londoij ; the second 
 that passed in the Royal Institution. 
 
 The subject was, the laws of combustion, and the happy 
 invention of the safety-lamp. Though intimately connected 
 with the doctrine of simple heat, it may, most properly, from 
 its chemical character, and from its connection with Davy's 
 history, be considered briefly here. The lamentable losp of 
 life occurring in coal-mines from explosions of fire-damp or 
 inflammable air disengaged from the workings, had for many 
 years attracted the attention and sympathy of the public, 
 and had likewise been carefully considered by scientific men. 
 The explosive gas was known to be the light carburetted 
 hydrogen. Two plans alone seemed to present themselves 
 for diminishing the danger : — the one to remove, or chemi- 
 cally to decompose the fire-damp altogether ; the other to 
 provide a miner's lamp which, by its construction, should be 
 incapable of causing explosion. The former of these modes 
 of protection, it was soon seen, could only be palliative ; the 
 only eflBcient form which it took, was that of a more eflfectual 
 ventilation ; but the terrific rapidity with which a mine may 
 be suddenly pervaded by fire-damp, from channels opened 
 
872 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 by a single pick-axe, must prevent it from ever acting as a 
 cure. The latter plan had as yet yielded nothing more ef- 
 fectual than the steel mill long used by miners, which pro- 
 duced an uncertain and intermitting light, by the rotation of 
 a steel wheel against a flint, the scintillations of which were 
 incapable of inflaming the fire-damp. The insufficiency of 
 the light prevented it from being used, except in circum- 
 stances of* known danger. The celebrated Baron Humboldt, 
 Dr. Clanny, and several others, had invented safety-lamps 
 on different principles ; but they were all clumsy and more 
 or less ineffectual.^ 
 
 At last, in the summer of 1815, the Rev. Dr. Gray 
 afterwards Bishop of Bristol, then chairman of a com- 
 mittee appointed by a benevolent association at Bishop 
 Wearmouth for the prevention of colHery accidents, applied 
 to Davy, who was then on a sporting tour in Scotland, re- 
 questing his advice and assistance. Sir Humphry answered 
 the call with promptitude. On his southward journey, in 
 the latter part of August, he visited the collieries, ascer- 
 tained the circumstances of the danger which he had to 
 meet, and was provided by Mr. Buddie with specimens of 
 the inflammable air for examination. Within a fortnight 
 after his return to London, he had ascertained new and im- 
 portant qualities of the substance, and had already four 
 schemes on hand for the prevention of accident. Before the 
 end of October he had arrived at the following principles of 
 operation in connection with the safety -lamp. " First, a cer- 
 tain mixture of azote and carbonic acid prevents the explo- 
 sion of the fire-damp, and this mixture is necessarily formed 
 •in the safe-lantern. Secondly, the fire-damp will not explode 
 in tubes or feeders of a certain small diameter. The ingress 
 
 1 I have spoken in art. 393 [of the Dissertation] of the independent 
 and ingenious efforts of (Jeorge Stephenson towards the invention of 
 a safety-lamp contemporaneously with those of Davy. 
 
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 373 
 
 to, and egress of air from my lantern," he adds, " is through 
 such tubes or feeders ; and, therefore, when any explosion 
 is artificially made iu the safe-lantern, it does not communi- 
 cate to the external air." The effect of narrow tubes in 
 intercepting the passage of flame, is due to the cooling 
 effect of their metallic sides upon the combustible gases of 
 which flame is composed ; ^ and one of his first and most 
 important observations was the fortunate peculiarity that 
 fire-damp, even when mixed with the amount of air most 
 favorable to combustion, (one part of gas to seven or eight 
 of air,) requires an unusually high temperature to induce 
 combustion. Olefiant gas, carbonic oxide, and sulphuretted 
 hydrogen, ai"e all inflamed by iron at a red heat, or ignited 
 charcoal, but carburetted hydrogen does not take fire under 
 a perfect white heat. The earliest safety-lamp consisted of 
 a lantern with horn or glass sides, in which a current of air 
 to supply the flame was admitted below by numerous tubes 
 of small diameter, or by narrow interstices between concen- 
 tric tubes of some length ; or, finally, by rows of parallel 
 partitions of metal, forming rcQtangular canals extremely 
 narrow in proportion to their length. A similar system of 
 escape apertures was applied at the top of the lantern. 
 
 With characteristic ingenuity, Davy did not stop here. 
 He continued to reduce at once the apertures and length of 
 his metallic guards, until it occurred to him that wire gauze 
 might, with equal effect and far more convenience, act upon 
 the temperature of flame, so as to reduce it below the point 
 of ignition, and thus effectually stop its communication. 
 The experiment was successful, and by the 9th of Novem- 
 ber, 1815, or within about ten weeks after his first experi4 
 ments, an account of the safety-lamp defended by wire 
 
 1 This fact had been ascertained some years previously, by Mr. 
 T<^nant and Dr. Wollaston, bat it remained unpublished, and was 
 not applied by them to the prevention of colliery explosions. 
 32 
 
374 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 gauze was presented to the Royal Society. About two 
 months later he produced a lamp entirely enveloped in me- 
 tallic tissue. 
 
 There are none of Davy's researches which will stand 
 a closer scrutiny than those which terminated thus success- 
 fully. No fortuitous observation led him to conceive a 
 happy idea and apply it to practice. A great boon to hu- 
 manity aiid the arts was required at his hands ; and with- 
 out a moment's delay, he proceeded to seek for it under the 
 guidance of a strictly experimental and inductive philoso- 
 phy. Without, perhaps, a single false turn, and scarcely a 
 superfluous experiment, he proceeded straight to his goal, 
 guided by the promptings of a happy genius aided by no 
 common industry. The chemical, the mechanical, and the 
 purely physical parts of the problem were all in turn dealt 
 with, and with equal sagacity. It may safely be affirmed 
 that he who was destitute of any one of these qualifications 
 must have failed in obtaining the object so ardently desired, 
 unless by the aid of some rare good fortune. We have it 
 on Davy's own authority, that none of his discoveries gave 
 him so much pleasure as this one. His whole character 
 possessed in it much of a sympathizing and generous hu- 
 manity ; his ideas of the dignity of science were from the 
 first, as his researches in Dr. Beddoes' laboratory showed, 
 intimately connected with the aim of advancing the welfare, 
 and of diminishing the misfortunes of mankind : the rapid- 
 ity and singular success of his investigation in the case of 
 the safety-lamp, kept his ardent soul all alive, and afforded 
 him the triumph of a Eureka at its completion. To tliese 
 ^wources of inward gratification was added the unstinted 
 meed of praise bestowed on him by his contemporaries. 
 Playfair, " the true and amiable philosopher," as Davy long 
 before described him, thus proclaimed his victory in the 
 Edinhurgh Review : — After describing the course of a dis- 
 covery " which is in no degree the effect of accident," he 
 
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 375 
 
 adds, " this is exactly such a case as we should choose to 
 place before Bacon, were he to revisit the earth, in order to 
 give him, in a s^pall compass, an idea of the advancement 
 which philosophy has made since the time when he had 
 pointed out to her the route which she ought to pursue. 
 The result is as wonderful as it is important. An invisible 
 and impalpable barrier made effectual against a force 
 the most violent and irresistible in its operations ; and 
 a power that in its tremendous effects seemed to emulate the 
 lightning and the earthquake, confined within a narrow 
 space, and shut up in a net of the most slender texture, — 
 are facts which must excite a degree of wonder and aston- 
 ishment, from which neither ignorance nor wisdom can de- 
 fend the beholder." 
 
 For this truly patriotic labor, the only national testimony 
 which Davy received was the inadequate one of a baronetcy 
 which was conferred on him by the Prince Regent in 1818 ; 
 but his real triumph and great reward were in the enthusi- 
 astic appreciation of his entire success by those on whom he 
 had disinterestedly conferred so great a benefit. A testi- 
 monial, in the form of a service of plate^of great value, 
 was presented to him by the coal-owners of the north of 
 England. 
 
 Davy's researches on fiame were intimately connected 
 with his electrical and chemical discoveries. He remodelled 
 Lavoisier's theory of combustion, and put an end to the dis- 
 tinction between combustibles and supporters of combustion. 
 Chemical combination, effected with great energy, and ac- 
 companied by a high temperature, is essential to combustion, 
 and either elemen||^f the combination is equally entitled 
 to the denomination of combustible. Guided by the electro- 
 chemical theory, Davy appears to have thought that the 
 heat of fiame has an electrical origin. 
 
 But I must hasten to close this section. Among the 
 labors of his latter years, there was none which interested 
 
376 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Davy more, or which reasonably promised more useful re- 
 sults, than his plan for protecting the copper sheathing of 
 ships from the corrosive action of sea-^ater, by affixing 
 plates of zinc or iron, which should render the copper 
 slightly electro-negative, and thus indispose it for combining 
 with acid principles. It is a somewhat singular fact, that 
 Fabbroni, about thirty years before, had instanced the cor- 
 rosion of copper sheathing near the contact of heterogene- 
 ous metals, as an instance of the chemical origin of galvan- 
 ism.-^ Davy's experiments were conducted with his usual 
 skill and success, and the remedy only failed of gsneral 
 adoption on account, it may be said, of being too effectual, 
 other and opposite injurious effects having been found to 
 arise. 
 
 Davy was elected President of the Royal Society in 
 1820, in the room of Sir Joseph Banks, who had held the 
 office for forty-two years. It was a distinguished compli-. 
 ment, for the election was all but unanimous. He continued 
 to communicate papers for several years subsequently ; but 
 his energy, his temper, and, finally, his healt-h began to give 
 way, showing t^at the ardent labors of his youth and prime 
 had injured his constitution. Attacked with paralysis in 
 1827, he spent his last years chiefly abroad, and died at 
 Geneva (where he was buried), on the 29th May, 1829. 
 
 The character of Davy was a rare and admirable com- 
 bination. The ardor of his researches, and the deep devo- 
 tion of his whole being to scientific investigation, have been 
 already pAved. They had the effect of completely annihi- 
 lating every baser passion. He valued property only in so 
 far as he could apply it usefully ; and Jus disinterestedness 
 with respect to the fortunes which several of his practical 
 discoveries might have honorably earned, was one of the 
 
 1 There appears, however, to have been somethfng erroneous in tlia 
 details of Fabbroni's observations, or at least in the account of them 
 given in Nicliolson's Journal. 
 
SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 377 
 
 most Striking parts of his character. His fancy was dis- 
 cursive to a degree rarely met with in men of science. He 
 continued to write poetry nearly all his life, and the .tone of 
 it was that of grave speculation, always reverting to the 
 destiny of man and the beneficence of the Creator. His 
 lectures were composed with care ; and their effect, even as 
 pieces of oratory, was striking. Coleridge frequented them 
 " to increase his stock of metaphors ; " yet they were always 
 to the point, and never degenerated into rhetorical display. 
 For a man of such extraordinary liveliness of fancy and 
 impetuosity of action, his mistakes were astonishingly few. 
 After his very first experience, his publications were made 
 with great care and judgment. His estimates of his con- 
 temporaries appear generally to have been fair and liberal, 
 though it would be incorrect to affinn that h§ was univer- 
 sally popular among them. The combination of isolated 
 and intense occupation in his laboratory, with excitement in 
 the mixed society of an admiring London public, was a trial 
 which few, if any, could have escaped better than he did ; 
 and so far as we can judge of a man from his expressed 
 opinion of his own successes, whether recorded in his works 
 or in his intimate correspondence, Davy miist be accounted 
 to have acquitted himself gracefully and well. He always 
 spoke of the Pile of Volta as the first source of his own 
 success. " Nothing tends so much to the advancement of 
 knowledge as the application of a new instrument," he 
 says ; and then adds, " The native intellectual powers of 
 men in different times are not so much the caifses of the 
 different success of their labors, as the peculiar nature of 
 the means and artificial resources in their possession ; " a 
 proposition which he applies to his own discoveries. But we 
 may truly say with one of his biographers, that to him 
 " the Voltaic apparatus was the golden branch by which he 
 subdued the spirits that had opposed the advance' of previ- 
 ous philosophers ; but what would its possession have 
 32* 
 
878 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 availed him had not his genius, like the ancient sibyls, 
 pointed out its use and application ? " 
 
 The last, and not least, extraordinary characteristic of 
 Davy to which I shall now adveirt, was the highly practical 
 turn of a mind which seemed formed in a speculative mould. 
 Four at least of his chief researches were of this kind — 
 his experiments in breathing the gases ; his lectures on agri- 
 cultural chemistry ; his invention of the safety -lamp ; and 
 his protectors for ships. No man, whose path so clearly lay 
 in original discovery, ever left so many valuable legacies to 
 art and to his country. 
 
DAVID HUME. 
 
 David Hume, one of the most celebrated historians and 
 philosophers of Great Britain, has already been twice no- 
 ticed in the Preliminary Dissertations^ where the principal 
 doctrines of his metaphysics have been considered by 
 Stewart, and those of his ethics by Mackintosh. This, hap- 
 pily, exempts the writer of the present arttele from touching 
 on the same topics, except incidentally. But as the life and 
 character of other celebrated men, no less prominent in the 
 Dissertations, have been formally treated in the body of this 
 work, it seemed due to the memory of Hume to give his 
 biography a little more fully than in the few paragraphs 
 dedicated to him in the previous editions ; and the following 
 sketch has therefore been inserted. It will be restricted to 
 a brief account of his life and genius, an estimate of his 
 merits as a writer, and probably a glance at one or two of 
 such of his philosophical opinions as were too remote from 
 the design of either Dissertation to challenge notice there, 
 but yet may seem of sufficient importance to be referred to. 
 
 Hume has left us a very short autobiographic sketch of 
 his own life ; it is too scanty, too bare of details, to inspire 
 the interest which belongs to some similar memoirs, — that 
 of Gi0l5»on for example. But though it is little more than a 
 catalogue of dates and facts, the author offers a good apology 
 
 1 To the Encyclopsedia Britannica. 
 
 (379) 
 
380 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 for his conciseness : " It is difficult," he says, " for a man to 
 speak long of himself without vanity." He assures the 
 reader that the notice shall contain little more than the his- 
 tory of his writings, and he has kept his word. From all 
 danger of vanity in treating such topics — however delicat* 
 for an author — he flattered himself he had security in his 
 early failures : " The first success of my writings," says 
 he, " was not such as to be an object of vanity." Yet the 
 acerbity with which at that so distant day he remembers 
 and records the slow steps by which he had emerged from 
 obscurity into fame, and which all that fame had not been 
 able to soothe, would seem to indicate that the philosopher 
 had not quite so effectually mortified his vanity as he im- 
 agined. The tardy homage which the public paid to his 
 merits is a theme to which he never tired of recurring, 
 thou^, as will be seen in the sequel, not very reasonably.^ 
 
 He was born at Edinburgh, April 26, 1711. His father 
 \^^ a scion of the house of the Earl of Home, or Hume, as, 
 the name was often spelt, and as our philosopher, in oppo- 
 sition to his brother's orthographic heterodoxy, always per- 
 sisted in spelling it. His mother was daughter of Sir 
 David Falconer, president of the College of Justice. His 
 father died when he was a child ; his mother, of whom he 
 speaks in the fondest terms, was long spared to him, and well 
 deserved the tribute of affection he pays her. " Though 
 young and handsome, she devoted herself entirely to the 
 rearing and education of her children." At the age of 
 fifteen he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, and he 
 tells us, what none will doubt, that he passed through the 
 
 1 " Every new edition was only an acknowlcflgment of the injustice 
 which had been done him, and a poor instalment of his just dues. . . . 
 Hume at last wore out the patience of his very publisher," {Ed. Rev. 
 Jan. 1847). "As to the approbation or esteem of those blockheads 
 who call themselves the public," thus ho writes (1767) "and whom a 
 bookseller, a lord, a priest, or a party can guide, I do most heartily 
 despise it." 
 
DAVID HUME. 381 
 
 usual " course of education with success ; " though his read- 
 ing was marked at that time — and as regards the classics, 
 was always marked — rather by extent than by accurate 
 scholarship. Even at that early age he was possessed with 
 an intense love of literature, and by that ambition of literary 
 distinction which was the ruling passion, not to say the only 
 passion, of his life. Seldoro, if ever, has the propensity U 
 a studious life developed itself so early or so exclusively, o- 
 asserted its claims so imperiously. From the very first, and 
 all along, it overmastered every thing in the shape of pleas- 
 ure or interest that could be brought into competition with it. 
 As a younger brother, and a younger brother of no opu- 
 lent house, he was, of course, to carve out his own fortunes 
 in the world. " My patrimony," he says, " after the manner 
 of my country, was but slender ; " yet no lures, no exigen- 
 cies could induce him to seek fortune at the expense of 
 literature. In this case, the phlegm of the young philos- 
 opher seemed, in its way, as immovable as the enthusiasm 
 of a young poet frequently proves ; he could not, as the 
 world would say, calculate consequences. To add to the 
 wonder, Hume was most creditably anxious of independ- 
 ence, and resolved, at whatever costs of economy, to pos- 
 sess it. Nay, as his after-life showed, our philosopher was 
 by no means insensible to the advantages of wealth ; never- 
 theless, he was unwilling to adopt any course to attain 
 riches at the expense of those literary pursuits which must 
 more frequently conduct to penury. Thus all the schemes 
 his friends formed on his behalf were frustrated by this one 
 passion. His " studious habits, sobriety, and industry, led 
 them to wish that he should devote himself to the law," in 
 which surely these qualities, in conjunction with his surpassing 
 acuteness and subtilty, might have easily won distinction; 
 but while " they fancied be was poring over Voet and 
 Vinnius, Cicero and Virml were the authors he was se- 
 
882 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 cretly devouring." An experiment in mercantile life was 
 equally unsuccessful. In 1734, he went to Bristol with 
 introductions to " eminent merchants " in that city, but he 
 found this "scene utterly unsuitable." He then exiled 
 himself to France ; and first at Rheims, then at La Fleche, 
 devoted himself in studious solitude, to literature and phi- 
 losophy. During this time he made a "rigid frugality 
 supply the deficiencies of fortune " — a course to which he 
 resolutely adhered till the dawn of better days ; and with 
 singular decision of character, and obedience to the ruling 
 passion, " regarded every object as contemptible except the 
 improvement of his talents for literature." In this interval 
 he meditated and composed his Treatise of Human Nature. 
 This work was completed by his twenty-fifth year, and, as 
 the production of so young a mind, must certainly be re- 
 garded as a prodigy of metaphysical acuteness. Indeed, 
 there is reason to believe, that the results of his speculation 
 (if scepticism allow the term) must have been arrived at* 
 long before, even from his boyish days. In the account he 
 gives of himself in that remarkable letter, first published by 
 Mr. Burton, (vol. i., pp. 31-39,) in which he anonymously 
 consults a physician in relation to some singular but very 
 prolonged hypochondriacal afiection, (itself, probably, both 
 symptom and effect of an overwrought mind,) he discloses a 
 style of thought and points to a method of speculation which 
 strongly remind us of the conditions of mind under which 
 Descartes commenced philosopher. Were there any proofs 
 (as there are certainly none) of his acquaintance with Des- 
 cartes' writings at this early age, it would have seemed 
 almost certain that his method of philosophizing was sheer 
 imitation; on the other hand, if this letter had been written 
 after his residence at La Fleche, where Descartes felt so 
 similarly, the same conclusion would have been inevitable. 
 From this letter, as a clue to mi^ph in the character of his 
 
DAVID HUME. 383 
 
 mind and its after history, and of its tendencies to morbid 
 speculation at a very early date, we shall presently give 
 some extracts. 
 
 In 1737, Hume came to London with his Treatise on 
 Human Nature, and in the next year published it. " Never 
 literary attempt," he says, " was more unfortunate ; it fell 
 dead-bom from the press, without reaching such distinction 
 as even to exite a murmur." He declares, however, that 
 being naturally of a cheerful temper, he soon recovered 
 from this and similar subsequent disappointments. Yet it is 
 clear, from the details in Burton's Life, that the equanimity 
 of our philosopher was sorely tried ; that he had, with the 
 exaggeration natural in a young author, been expecting that 
 the world would have little to do for a time, except to read 
 his lucubrations! He tells his friend Ramsay, that "he 
 would not aim at any thing until he could judge of his 
 suqcess in hi$ grand undertaking, and see upon what footing 
 he was to stand in the world ; " and as the day of publica- 
 tion drew near, confesses to being perturbed at " the near- 
 ness of the great event." Yet it is certain that he bore the 
 disappointment of his hopes on this occasion much better 
 than he did some far lighter failures of the same kind. 
 Cheerful as might be his temper, buoyant as were his hopes, 
 his mortifications of this sort, and especially that which 
 befell him when he published the first volume of his History, 
 were keenly felt and remembered, and engendered prejudices 
 against the " Public," which little became a philosopher, and 
 utterly prevented him from doing the said " Public " justice. 
 Properly speaking he never forgave its early neglect, and 
 could not see that he had not been a very ill-used man, even 
 when fame and competency had rewarded his at first un- 
 promising labors. In the case of the Treatise of Human 
 Nature, however, he himself admits, that in fact the public 
 was in the right ; which, indeed, any one would naturally 
 expect, seeing that the philosopher was but five-and-twenty, 
 
8B4k NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and his philosophy the product of that mature age ! That 
 he was not insensible that his failure in the first instance 
 was more attributable to himself than to the world, is sig- 
 nificantly shown by his acknowledgment of indiscretion in 
 going to the press so early. " I had always," he says, " en- 
 tertained a notion that my want of success in publishing the 
 Treatise of Human Nature, had proceeded more from the 
 manner than the matter" (equally from both, the public 
 would say,) " and that I liad been guilty of a very usual 
 indiscretion in goilig to the press too early." He tells us, 
 he " set about remedying its defects." He cast the first part 
 of it entirely anew in the Enquiry concerning Human 
 Understanding, published 1747 ; but this, he confesses, had 
 little more success than the former. In fact, he was still but 
 serving his apprenticeship to fame — which many a man, as 
 great, has had to do for a much longer period. In 1742, he 
 published the first part of his Essays. These, which were 
 buoyed up by a large intermixture 'of more attractive topics 
 than those of the Treatise, and were recommended by the 
 fascinations of a far more finished style, met with a better 
 reception, and they have since been always popular. The 
 second edition, however, did not go off rapidly enough to 
 satisfy the exacting temper of the author. After publishing 
 the Treatise, he lived for some time with his brother in 
 Scotland, still ardently pursuing his literary occupations. 
 This mode of life was not very agreeably diversified by the 
 temporary charge of the half mad, or at least wholly hyp- 
 ochondriacal Earl of Annandale (1745). Whether tutor 
 or keeper be the more proper term for our philosopher 
 during a year of very humiliating servitude, it seems hard 
 to say. His next post (1747) was that of secretary to 
 General St. Clair, whom he accompanied in his military 
 embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. He was intro- 
 duced, he tells us, as aid-de-camp to the general, and wore 
 the uniform of an officer, — a droll transformation for our 
 
DAVID HUME. ' 385 
 
 ungainly philosopher. Two years were thus spent, almost 
 the only years of his life, he declares, in which he was 
 " estranged from literature." Total estrangement can hardly 
 be supposed, nor does one see any reason for it. If it were 
 80, the military uniform in his case must have done more 
 than even the active duties of a soldier's life could do in that 
 of Gibbon, in whom the passion for literature was, however, 
 still more ardent than in Hume. Gibbon's account, in his 
 Journal, of the absolute possession which history had taken 
 of him, of the enthusiasm with which he indulged dreams 
 of literary ambition and pursued his studies even in his tent, 
 affords a striking instance of the " ruling passion." But if 
 Hume's occupations estranged him for- a while from litera- 
 ture, the emoluments of his office were not to be despised ; 
 they so materially aided his very limited resources, that he 
 sometimes pleasantly talked to his smiling friends of having 
 achieved independent fortune : " I was now," says he, 
 " master of near a thousand pounds ! " 
 
 In 1749, he again repaired to his brother's house, where 
 he took up his abode for two years. He spent his leisure in 
 composing the second part of his essays, which he called 
 Political Discourses, and his Enquiry concerning the Prin- 
 ciples of Moral$. His publisher now told him, that his writ- 
 ings, " all but the unfortunate Treatise, were beginning to 
 be asked for and talked about." " It was a hopeful symp- 
 tom too," he tells us, " that answers by reverends and right 
 reverends came out two or three in a year ; " and that he 
 " found, by Dr. Warburton's railing, that the books were 
 beginning to be esteemed in good company." 
 
 In 1751, he removed from the country to Edinburgh, 
 under the notion that the " capital was the true scene for a 
 man of letters ; " and in the following year he published the 
 Political Discourses ; " the only work of mine," says he, 
 " that was successful on the first publication." It is difficult 
 to say what is the criterion of success in the estimate of un- 
 33 
 
886 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 reasonable expectation ; but Hume was still a young writer, 
 and he certainly had no reason to complain of the reception 
 of the first part of his Essays. Conscious of power, he was 
 too impatient for fame, and forgot that fame is a thing of 
 slow growth ; he wished to see the oak rise immediately 
 from the acorn. Meantime, grumble as he might, his sap- 
 lings, in the estimate of any sober judge, would be thought 
 to be doing well enough. 
 
 In the same year he published in London, his Enquiry 
 concerning the Principles of Morals, of which he hesitates 
 not to say, that " of all his writings, philosophical, literary, 
 or historical, it is incomparably the best." 
 
 Hume wondered that Rousseau should prefer his Emile 
 to his Heloise, and compares it to Milton's preference of his 
 Paradise Regained to his Paradise Lost. Whether ^ume 
 himself be not another instance of a singular delusion, many 
 readers will have their doubts. But much will depend on 
 what is meant by " best." If Hume meant by " best," that 
 the Enquiry was the most original and acute of his writings, 
 that which displayed most power, posterity will hardly 
 affirm his verdict ; if by " best," he meant, that of all his 
 writings, it ig most free from paradox and error, it will 
 probably be granted. Sir James Mackintosh has observed, 
 that " it is creditable to him that he deliberately preferred 
 the treatise Avhich is least tainted with paradox, though the 
 least original of all his writings." Sir James contends, how- 
 ever, for its preeminent excellence of style. For- a very 
 able criticism of its merits and defects, the reader is referred 
 to the second Dissertation. 
 
 In 1752, Hume was appointed librarian to the Faculty 
 of Advocates. The chief immediate value of the ofRce, to 
 which little or no emolument was attached, consisted in the 
 access it afforded to a large library ; indirectly it was of 
 greater advantage, as this last circumstance encouraged, if it 
 did not suggest, his writing the History of England. Ter- 
 
DAVID HUME. 387 
 
 riiied, however, with the magnitude of the task, dreading, 
 as ue Well might, to begin, after the orthodox manner, with 
 the landing of Julius Csesar, he commenced with the acces- 
 sion of the Stuarts, " an epoch," he thought, " when the mis- 
 representations began chiefly to take place ; " but which, let 
 them be what they would, could hardly transcend his own. 
 His anticipations of success were, as in former cases, san- 
 guine, and he was doomed, for a while, to see the usual frus- 
 tration of his hopes. " Miserable," says he, " was my dis- 
 appointment ; I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disap- 
 pointment, and even execration. English, Scotch, and Irish ; 
 Wliig and Tory, churchman and sectary, free-thinker and 
 religionist, united in their rage against the one man who had 
 presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. 
 and the Earl of StraflTord." Hume's indignation makes a 
 droll mis-estimate of his own enormous delinquencies. If 
 he had exercised common justice and impartiality, to say 
 nothing of " generosity," in other cases, the few " gAierous 
 tears " which the unwontedly sentimental skeptic could have 
 managed to distil for Strafford or Charles, would never have 
 given such mortal offence. It was yet more mortifying to 
 the author, that the furious storm which greeted the first 
 appearance of the work, subsided into a more vexatious 
 calm ; for what man would not sooner be railed at than for- 
 gotten? The History seemed doomed to oblivion. The 
 publisher assured Hume, that " in a year he sold but forty- 
 five copies." Hume himself confesses, that with two " odd 
 exceptions," — the Primates of England and Ireland, — he 
 scarcely heard of any man of rank or letters who " could 
 endure the book ; " and that had it not been for the breaking 
 out of the war with France (in spite of the " cheerful tem- 
 per " with which he would have us believe his philosophy 
 took such things ^), he would have sought an asylum there, 
 
 1 On a subsequent occasion, when complaining of the tardiness of 
 his political patrons, Hume repeated this sort of threat. — " The fum- 
 
388 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 and changing his name, for ever renounced his country ! 
 As it was, his country was spared this dire infliction. Mean- 
 time, Hume persevered, and his second volume which ap- 
 peared two years afterwards had somewhat better success. 
 
 In 1759, he pubHshed, according to the retrograde course 
 in which he had commenced, the history of the House of 
 Tudor, which also was received with a storm of disapproba- 
 tion. But if we may trust his own averment, he was now 
 " callous against the impression of public folly; " and gave the 
 early history in two more volumes in 1761, " with tolerable, 
 and but tolerable success."' 
 
 But that his complaints of want of success were, on the 
 whole, unreasonable, is evident from his own statement, 
 namely, that in spite of all " public folly," " the copy-money 
 given him by the booksellers much exceeded any thing for- 
 merly known in England." In fact he had been, as usual, 
 too impatient of success. But even when he had become, 
 and in a large degree from his literary labors, " not only in- 
 dependent, but opulent " according to his truly philosophi- 
 cal scale of riches, — he never forgave the " public folly " 
 for not instantaneously recognizing his merits. 
 
 Though his History had grievous defects, which he took 
 care, in the indulgence of his prejudices (continually 
 strengthening with opposition), to aggravate in every suc- 
 cessive edition, it had also singular merits, and was secure 
 of the popularity which the impatience of its author thought 
 so tardy. It was nearly the first modern example of his- 
 tory treated in a philosophical spirit, while the charms of 
 its unrivalled style would alone have insured its success. 
 
 ing incense," says the critic in the Ed. Review, (1847,) "which the 
 Parisians were offering him as a sort of male Goddess of Keason, 
 must have intoxicated him, or he never would have closed a letter 
 with the formal notice, — ' I have been accustomed to meet with 
 nothing but insults and indignities from my native country ; but if it 
 continue so, ' imjrata patria, ne ossa quidem habebis.' " 
 
DAVID HUME. 389 
 
 In the interval between the first and second vohimes of 
 his History he published his Natural History of Religion ; 
 of which he says the " public entry was obscurfe ; " its con- 
 tents, acute as the treatise is, need not leave us in any won- 
 der at that. For this neglect, however, he assures us he 
 received consolation, in the shape of " a pamphlet by Dr. 
 Ilurd, written with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, 
 and scurrility, which distinguish the Warburtouian school." 
 The consolation, from this mode of speaking of it, would 
 not seem very soothing. 
 
 Hume was now (1761) fifty years of age, and meditated 
 a philosphical retreat in Edinburgh for the rest of his days ; 
 but on receiving an invitation from Lord Hertford to attend 
 him in his embassy to Paris, with the prospect of secretary- 
 ship to the embassy, he, after some hesitation, consented. 
 He was soon appointed secretary, and in 1765, when Lord 
 •Hertford was made lord-lieutenant of Ireland, was left at 
 Paris as Charge d' Affairs till the new ambassador, the Duke 
 of Richmond, arrived. In 1766, he returned to Edin- 
 burgh, " not richer," he pleasantly says, " hut with much 
 more money." 
 
 During his residence in Paris, he was not only welcome, 
 he was the rage. In spite of his philosophical shyness, his 
 destitution of all personal graces and charm of manner, and 
 even in spite of his French — French which only French 
 politeness could have heard without laughing — he was 
 overwhelmed with the most flattering attentions of combined 
 rank and genius, youth and beauty. . " The more I resiled 
 from these excessive civiUties," says he, " the more I was 
 loaded with them." It is evident, nevertheless, from many 
 expressions, that this homage was not a little soothing to our 
 philosopher's complacency, and often excited a flutter of 
 vanity which his philosophy would hardly have approved ; 
 and he would as certainly have been cured of it, had he 
 been duly conscious of the ridiculous position in which his 
 33* 
 
390 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 worshippers often placed him. " From what has already 
 been said of him," says Lord Charlemont, " it is apparent 
 that his conversation to strangers, and particularly to 
 Frenchmen, could be little delightful, and still more par- 
 ticularly, one would suppose, to Fi-ench women ; and yet no 
 lady's toilette was complete without Hume's attendance. At 
 the opera his broad unmeaning face was usually seen entre 
 deuxjolis minois. The ladies in France gave the ton, and 
 the ton was deism ; a species of philosophy ill suited to the 
 softer sex, in whose delicate frame weakness is interesting, 
 and timidity a charm. . . . How my friend Hume was able 
 to endure the encounter of these French female Titans, I 
 know not." ^ Some of the scenes in which fashionable soci- 
 ety doomed him to enact a part, must have been exquisitely 
 comic ; and had his friends intended to ridicule, not to honor 
 him, they could hardly have devised any thing better 
 adapted to the purpose. The scene described so vividly 
 by Madame D'Epinay, must surely have been abundantly 
 trying. We have hardly space for the passage, but it is so 
 graphic, and indeed so instructive, that we cannot resist the 
 temptation to give an abridged translation below.*^ On 
 
 1 Memoires of Charlemont, cited in Burton's Life, vol. ii. p. 223. To- 
 which we may add the following from Grimm's Correspondence Litter- 
 aire: — "Cequ'ilya encore de plaisant, c'est que toutes les jolies 
 femiries se le sont arrache, et que le gros philosophe Ecossais s'estplus 
 dans leur societe. C'est un excellent homme, que David Hume ; il 
 est naturellement serein, il entend finement, il dit quelque-fois avec 
 Bel, quoiqu'il parle pcu ; mais il est lourd, il n'a ni chaleur, ni grace, 
 ni agrement dans I'esprit, ni rien qui soit propre k s'allier au ramage 
 de ces charmantcs petitcs machines qu'on appelle jolies femmes. O 
 que nous sommes un drole de peuple ! " — Ibid. 
 
 2 " The celebrated David Hume, the great fat English historian, 
 known and esteemed for his writings, has not equal talents for the 
 social amusements for which all our pretty women had decided him 
 
 to be fit. He made his debiit at the house of Madame do T -. 
 
 They had destined him to act the part of a sultan seated between two 
 slaves, employing all his eloquence to make them fall in lave with 
 
DAVID HUME. 391 
 
 another occasion still more trying to his gravity, if not to his 
 modesty, he was compelled to listen to complimentary har- 
 angues from the Dauphin's children, — the youngest of the 
 child-orators unhappily breaking down in the middle of his 
 address ; we shall give the scene in Hume's own vein of 
 quiet pleasantry. It is clear that however flattered by the 
 homage received, as other expressions in his letters prove, 
 he was by no means insensible to the absurdity of the situa- 
 tion in which the extravagance of adulation sometimes 
 placed him. " Do you ask me," says he, " about my course 
 of life ? I can only say that I eat nothing but ambrosia, 
 drink nothing but nectar, breathe nothing but incense, and 
 tread on nothing but flowers. Every man I meet, and still 
 more, every lady, would think they were "wanting in the 
 most indispens'able duty, if they did not make a long and 
 
 him ; finding thera inexorable, he was to seek the cause of their ob- 
 stinacy ; he is placed on the sofa between the two prettiest women in 
 Paris, he looks at them attentively, keeps striking his hands on his 
 stomach and knees, and finds nothing else to say to them than, — ' Eh 
 bien ! mes demoiselles. . . . Eh bien ! vous voilk done ! . . . Eh bien ! 
 vous voilJi . . . vous voilk ici 1 ' This lasted for a quarter of an hour 
 without his being able to get any further. One of them at last rose 
 impatiently. . . . Since then he has been doomed to the part of a 
 spectator, and is not less welcomed' and flattered. In tmth, the part 
 he plays here is most amusing. Unfortunately for him, or rather for 
 philosophic dignity (for he seems to accommodate himself very well to 
 this mode of life), there was no ruling mania in this country when he 
 came here ; under these circumstances he was looked upon as a new 
 found treasure, and the enthusiasm of our young heads turned to- 
 wards him. All the pretty women are mad about him ; he is at all 
 the fine suppers, and there is no good fete without him ; in a word, he 
 is among our fashionables what the Genevcse are to me." (Memoirs 
 and Correspondence de Madame D'Epinay, vol. iii. p. 284.) Well 
 might a writer in the Edinburgh Review say, " Since the exhibition of 
 the old Fabliaux of Aristotle in love down upon all-fours, and his 
 mistress riding on his back — there has been no representation of phi- 
 losophy so out of character, as it is shown us in the portrait of Hume 
 by Madame d'Epinay." [Ed. Review, January, 1847.) 
 
392 NEW BTOGRAPHIES. 
 
 elaborate harangue in my praise. What happened last week, 
 
 when I had the honor of being presented to the D n's 
 
 children, at Versailles, is one of the most curious scenes I 
 had yet passed through. The Due de B., the eldest, a boy of 
 ten years old, stepped forth and told me • how many friends 
 and admirers I had in this country, and that he reckoned 
 himself in the number, from the pleasure he had received 
 from the reading of many passages in my works. When he 
 had finished, his brother, the Count de P., who is two yeai's 
 younger, began his discourse, and informed me that I had 
 been long and impatiently expected in France, and that he 
 himself expected soon to have great satisfaction from the 
 reading of my fine History. But what is more curious, 
 when I was carried thence to the Count D'A., who is but 
 four years of age, I heard him mumble something which, 
 though he had foi'got in the way, I conjectured from some 
 scattered words, to have been also a panegyric dictated to 
 him. Nothing could more surprise my friends, the Parisian 
 philosophers, than this incident." ^ 
 
 The Fi-ench of Hume could scarcely have been so bad 
 as the malicious wit of Horace Walpole has represented it ; 
 if it was, it is hard to believe that, however prone may have 
 been the French just at that moment to admii-e, he should 
 have been able to get on in the saloons of Paris at all. 
 Even French civility could hardly have kept its counte- 
 nance. That it did not refrain from sarcasm we have some 
 proofs, while Hume's English acquaintance exercised it 
 abundantly. "The French," says Walpole with his cus- 
 tomary cynicism, " believe in Mr. Hume ; the only thing in 
 the world that they believe implicitly ; for I defy them to 
 understand any language which he speaks." And in a letter 
 first published in the Suffolk Correspondence, he says, with 
 still more reckless causticity, " as every thing English is in 
 
 1 Burton, vol. ii. p. 177, 178. 
 
DAVID HUME. 393 
 
 fashion^ our bad French is accepted into the bargain. Many ' 
 of us are received everywhere. Mr. Hume is fashion itself, 
 although his French is almost as unintelligible as his Eng- 
 lish."^ It is not Walpole only, however, that makes himself 
 merry with the philosopher's French. One of Rousseau's 
 suspicions of Hume was founded on a few words of French 
 which he uttered in his sleep. Hume remarked that he was 
 not aware that he dreamt in French ; " he could not," 
 quietly said M. Morellet. 
 
 Of his quarrel with Rousseau, which made so much noise 
 at the time of its occurrence both in England and France, 
 Hume, in the little sketch of his life, which comes up to 
 within a short period of his death, says not one syllable. It 
 certainly was not from thinkmg it of no importance, for it 
 gave him a world of vexation ; indeed he confesses it was 
 one of the most painful, as well as the most extraordinary 
 that had ever happened to him. It was perhaps partly from 
 unpleasant remembrances, that he passed it by ; but also 
 probably from a more creditable motive. Angry, and justly 
 angry as he had felt at Rousseau's ingratitude and absurdity 
 — unphilosophically virulent as his language ^ had sometimes 
 been, he doubtless felt inchned as time rolled on, to acquiesce 
 in the views since generally taken, namely, that the French 
 philosopher's " egotism " and " sentimentality " were not sel- 
 dom undistinguishable from madness ; and whether they had 
 produced it or resulted from it might be a fair question. Of 
 the whole quarrel, a most copious and interesting account 
 will be found in Burton's Life of Hume ; and it is no more 
 than just to say that Hume comes out of it in a manner 
 highly creditable not only to his honor but to his benevo- 
 lence. His friends in France had forewarned him what a 
 
 1 In the celebrated introduction to the letter to Baron d'Holbach, 
 in which Hume first explodes in wrath, he says, " Mon cher Baron, 
 Jean Jacques est un scflerat." 
 
394 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 monster of intractable caprice and infinite egolisnijie was 
 patronizing ; — all which he found out when it was too late. 
 Surely the scene which he himself paints with so much 
 vividness, in which Rousseau, after fantastically misinterpret- 
 ing an act of kindness into the most villanous malignity, 
 suddenly relents, pops down into the surprised philosopher's 
 lap, and sobs and blubbers out his momentary repentance 
 amidst tears and kisses, — repentance soon to be followed 
 by a relapse into as capricious resentment, — presents a 
 picture of Rousseau, of which it is hard to say whether it be 
 more pitiable or ludicrous ; while we may easily conceive 
 that to one of so " unsentimental " a nature as Hume, his 
 involuntary role in so ridiculously " tender scene " must have 
 been profoundly mortifying. 
 
 " I endeavored," says Hume, " to pacify you and to divert 
 the discourse, but to no purpose. You sat sullen, and was 
 either silent, or made me very peevish answers. At last 
 you rose up and took a turn or two about the roOm, when 
 all of a sudden, and to my great surprise, you clapped your- 
 self on my knee, threw your arms about my neck, kissed me 
 
 with seeming ardor, and bedewed my face with tears 
 
 I was very much affected, I own ; and I believe a very ten- 
 der scene passed between us." The description of Rousseau 
 is, as may be expected, still richer.^ 
 
 After about two more years (1767-1769), of political ser- 
 vice as under secretary, a post to which he was preferred 
 by General Conway, Hume finally retired to Edinburgh, 
 and there anticipated a calm philosophic evening of life in 
 the midst of his favorite society. To use his own words he 
 was " very opulent," having a revenue of £1000 a year. 
 His society was much courted by men of the highest literary 
 reputation, and of the widest diversity of opinions, both 
 political and religious. Freed from literary and all other 
 
 1 Burton, vol, ii. p. 342. 
 
DAVID HUME. 395 
 
 cares, he entertained, "though somewhat stricken in, years, 
 the prospect of enjoying long his ease, and seeing the in- 
 crease of his reputation." 
 
 These hopes were fallacious. In 1775, appeared the first 
 symptoms of that long decay which terminated in his death, 
 August, 1776. 
 
 It is but justice to say that all concurrent testimony 
 proves him to have borne this slow and harassing, though, 
 it seems, by no means painful illness, not only with exem- 
 plary fortitude and patience, but with much sweetness of 
 temper, and to have contemplated the great change with un- 
 diminiAed serenity. Convinced that his disease was incur- 
 able long before his friends would believe it, he refused to 
 listen to false predictions of returning health. When Dr. 
 Dundas intimated that he should tell his friend, Colonel 
 Elphinstone, that he " was much better, and in a fair way of 
 recovery," Hume replied, " Doctor, as I believe you would 
 not choose to tell any thing but the truth, you had better tell 
 him that I am dying as fast as my worst enemies, if I have 
 any, could wish, and as easily as my best friends could 
 desire." 
 
 Sometimes, it is true, he regarded the approach of the 
 last moment with a hilarity strangely unbecoming his situa- 
 tion, whether as a philosopher or a man ; and his ill-timed 
 pleasantry about Charon's boat might well have been spared. 
 John Foster, in his review of Ritchie's Life of the philos- 
 opher, has observed, that even on the hypothesis that death 
 is an extinction of our being, much more on that of Hume's 
 skepticism, which left it uncertain whether death might not 
 reveal the truth of what he had been doubting all his life 
 long, any thing bordering on levity in such an hour is utterly 
 out of place. It is as though a man should laugh and caper 
 in the cave of Trophonius. But, in other respects, it can- 
 not be denied that Hume's last hours exhibit a serenity 
 which, though often exemplified by religion, has rarely been 
 
396 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 exhibited by philosophy, and still more rarely by a skeptical 
 philosophy. 
 
 Foolish inferences have been founded on what cannot 
 without gross disingenousness be denied, — the philosophic 
 fortitude and tranquillity of Hume's death, — and equally 
 foolish attempts made to prove all that fortitude and tran- 
 quillity affectation. Experience ought to convince us that 
 nothing can be inferred from the adaptation of this or that 
 system of philosophy or religion to produce calmness in a 
 dying hour, from the phenomena of any individual death- 
 bed. The best men have often encountered the great enemy 
 with dismay, and the worst with tranquillity. We •can as 
 little infer from their conduct what death is to disclose, as 
 we could infer what is at the bottom of a deep abyss, if we 
 saw that, of a thousand men who were compelled to leap 
 into it, some madly laughed, and some pusillanimously wept 
 on the brink before making the inevitable plunge. It should 
 be sufl&cient to vindicate the superiority at least of a Chris- 
 tian's faith to every form of skepticism, that if he has really 
 lived in accordance with his hopes and convictions, the nat- 
 ural tendency of his sentiments and conduct is to produce 
 tranquillity at the last hour, whether from physical causes 
 he attains that tranquillity or not ; and that his " immortal 
 hopes " — even if they were to prove delusions — are as 
 naturally connected with a peaceful close of the great strife 
 as any other cause with its effect. Nothing can be more 
 true than the pointed declaration of Lord Byron : " Indis- 
 putably the firm believers in the Gospel have a great ad- 
 vantage over all others, for this simple reason, that, if true, 
 they will have their reward hereafter ; and, if there be no 
 hereafter, they can be but with the infidel in his eternal 
 sleep, having had the assistance of an exalted hope through 
 life, without subsequent disappointment, since (at the worst 
 for them) ' out of nothing nothing can arise, not even sor- 
 row.' " 
 
DAVID HUME. 397 
 
 On the other hand, even the least candid of skeptics will 
 acknowledge that there is nothing in skepticism itself — least 
 of all in such radical, devastating skepticism as that of 
 Hume — naturally calculated to soothe a dying hour. 
 Though a skeptic may meet it with tranquillity, from frigid- 
 ity of temperament or hardihood of character, or fixed 
 aversion to look at the future, or from a too complacent esti- 
 mate of his own worth,^ or a deficient moral sensibility, or 
 from many other reasons, assuredly there is nothing in the 
 native tendency of a skeptic's sentiments to render a death- 
 bed more tolerable. 
 
 And that such is the natural impotence of skeptical phi- 
 losophy tor all such purposes, would seem to be indicated by 
 the frequent appeal of skeptics to this " instantia solitaria " 
 of Hume's death-bed. The rarity of the phenomenon neu- 
 tralizes it as an argument ; if, like the calm or triumphant 
 deaths of consistently religious men, such a phenomenon 
 were too common to be specially noted at all, it would be 
 something to the purpose. 
 
 For Hume's skepticism, charity, we think, may blame- 
 lessly make ampler excuse than the generality of readers 
 have been disposed to make. One may suspect, considering 
 its remarkably early, uniform, and inveterate character, that 
 it had to do profoundly with the very structure of his intel- 
 
 1 Hume certainly pronounces his own ^oge with suflBcient confi- 
 dence : " My friends," says he in his autobiography, " never had occa- 
 sion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct." 
 If by this he meant to claim exemption only from flagrant vice, there 
 are few decent characters in life who could not say as much ; but, with 
 a deeper self-knowledge and profounder moral sensibility, most men 
 would own that they were conscious of too many failings which men 
 knew not, and which God only knew, to permit them to plume them- 
 selves on any such grounds. But of the ordinary infirmities of man, 
 and especially of the subtle spiritual vices of pride, vainglory, pre- 
 sumption, and prejudice, the biographj'^iud character of Hume pre- 
 sent as little lack as those of other men. 
 34 
 
398 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 lect, and was ah origine far more involuntary than is gener- 
 ally the case. It may, in our opinion, be even surmised 
 that it was connected with that singular morbid condition 
 from which he suffered so much at so early an age. The 
 very curious document in which he discloses so freely the 
 symptoms which oppressed him has been already referred 
 to, and the brief citations we proposed to give will be found 
 below ; but the whole letter, first published in Burton's Life 
 is well worthy of perusal in extenso. It reveals a condition 
 of mind, considering the writer's extreme youth, at least as 
 unhealthy as that of the body. At an age when other youths 
 are for the most part only too credulous, he was entertaining 
 universal doubt ; and when others are full of nothing but 
 poetry and love, he was presumptuously exploring the deep- 
 est problems that can engage the human intellect, and de- 
 claring that nothing certain was yet established in philoso- 
 phy or morals ! At the very time that he was laboring 
 under the cloud of hypochondriacal depression, referred to 
 in the letter from which we give extracts below, he was in- 
 tensely excogitating his philosophy. His whole state was 
 unnatural.^ 
 
 1 " Every one who is acquainted cither with the philosophers or 
 critics knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these 
 two sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes, 
 even in the most fundamental articles. Upon examination of these, 
 I found a certain boldness of temper growing in me, which was not 
 inclined to submit to any authority in these subjects, but led me to 
 seek out some new medium by which truth might be established. 
 After much study and reflection on this, at last, when I was about 
 eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new 
 scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure, and made 
 rae, with an ardor natural to young men, throw up every other pleas- 
 ure or business to apply entirely to it I was infinitely happy 
 
 in this course of life for some months ; till at last, about the begin- 
 ning of September, 1729, all my ardor seemed in a moment to be 
 extinguished, and I could ^o longer raise my mind to that pitch 
 which formerly gave me such excessive pleasure In this con- 
 dition I remained for nine months very uneasy to myself, as you may 
 
DAVID HUME. 399 
 
 At the early age of twenty-two or twenty-three, his phi- 
 losophical opinions were already nearly complete — that is, 
 
 well imagine, but without growing any worse, which was a miracle. 
 .... Though I was sorry to find myself engaged with so tedious a 
 distemper, yet the knowledge of it set me very much at ease, by satis- 
 fying me that my former coldness proceeded not from any defect of 
 temper or genius, but from a disease to which any one may be subject. 
 .... I believe it is a certain fact, that most of the philosophers who 
 have gone before us have been overthrown by the greatness of their 
 genius, and that little more is required to make a man succeed in 
 this study, than to throw off all prejudices either for his own opinions 
 or for those of others. At least this is all I have to depend on for 
 the truth of my reasonings, which I have multiplied to such a degree, 
 that within these three years I find I have scribbled many a quire of 
 paper in which there is nothing contained but my own inventions. 
 This, with the reading most of the celebrated books in Latin, 
 French, and English, and acquiring the Italian, you may think a suflS- 
 cient business for one in perfect health, and so it would, had it been 
 done to any purpose ; but my disease was a cruel encumbrance on 
 me. I found that I was not able to follow out any train of thought 
 by one continued stretch of view, but by repeated interruptions, and 
 by refreshing my eye from time to time upon other objects. ... I 
 have noticed in the writings of the French mystics, and in those of 
 our fanatics here, that when they give a history of the situation of 
 their souls, they mention a coldness and desertion of the spirit which 
 frequently returns; and some of them at the beginning have been 
 tormented with it many years. As this kind of devotion depends 
 entirely on the force of passion, and consequently of the animal 
 spirits, I have often thought that their case and mine were pretty par- 
 allel, and that their rapturous admirations might discompose the fab- 
 ric of the nerves and brain as much as profound reflections, and 
 that warmth of enthusiasm which is inseparable from them. 
 
 " However this may be, I have not come out of the cloud so well as 
 they commonly tell us they have done, or rather begin to despair of 
 
 ever recovering The questions I would humbly propose to 
 
 you are : Whether among all those scholars you have been acquainted 
 with, you have ever known any affected in this manner ? Whether I 
 can ever hope for a recovery 1 Whether I must long wait for it 1 
 Whether my recovery will ever be perfect, and my spirits regain their 
 former spring and vigor, so as to endure the fatigue of deep and ab- 
 struse thinking ■?"— (Burton, vol. i. p. 31-38.) 
 
400 NEW BIOGRAPHIES.' 
 
 when he had hardly advanced beyond boyhood. His skep- 
 tical tendencies, — thus deeply radicated, and indulged at 
 an age so portentously early, — every thing in his nature 
 tended to confirm, and nothing in his experience and subse- 
 quent history tended to correct. He was of a naturally 
 frigid temperament, — entirely without enthusiasm, — with 
 little sympathy for the lofty or heroic in sentiment or char- 
 acter. Nor, in his after-life was there any thing to develop 
 any latent germs of such qualities ; he never passed through 
 those agitating scenes of absorbing love, or joy, or sorrow, or 
 hope, or fear, which form the discipline of life, and so often 
 profoundly modify, and even revolutionize, the human char- 
 acter ; which often develop qualities not suspected to exist, 
 or shiver into atoms the sentiments and opinions formed in 
 youthful inexperience. With only one dominant passion, as 
 he himself admits, — that ambition of literary distinction, 
 which tended rather to inflame than correct his early love 
 of dazzling paradox, — he passed life in respectable epi- 
 curean tranquillity. A most commendable frugality made 
 him content in youth with very little; he saw, as years 
 rolled on, increasing prosperity in every desirable form, — an 
 income which his moderation counted wealth, a steadily in- 
 creasing reputation, " troops of friends," flatteries, unin- 
 terrupted health, and, in a word, every thing that could lay 
 to sleep (as prosperity very generally does) the suscepti- 
 bilities and emotions of man's spiritual nature. His bark 
 sailed on a smooth sea, and encountered none of those shocks 
 or tempests which, more than most things, make the voy- 
 ager of life consider whether his ship is constructed and 
 equipped as well for the storm as for the calm. It may be 
 added, <hat so habitually deficient is Hume in the sentiment 
 of veneration, — so unnatural the apathy with which he 
 regards religious phenomena, — so easy, apparently, the en- 
 tire extrusion of the subject from his thoughts, — so fright- 
 fully contented does he seem with his skepticism, — that, 
 
DAVID HUME. 401 
 
 though this state of mind was encouraged, no doubt, by the 
 too congenial atmosphere of his age, and the French society 
 he loved, it is difficult not to infer some abnormality in the 
 very original structure of his moral nature ; and it is the 
 kindest apology that can be made for him. 
 
 On any other hypothesis, he cannot be too severely cen- 
 sured for the indolent facility wjt^i which he seems to have 
 acquiesced, in after-life, in his ffit early conclusions — the 
 very immaturity of which might well have awakened sus- 
 picion. There is no proof that, when he became a man in 
 intellect,- he ever seriously revolved them again. He must 
 also be blamed for the resolute way in which he evaded or 
 silenced every attempt to turn his mind to the reconsidera- 
 tion of his opinions. A remarkable instance of this disposi- 
 tion to get rid of expostulation occurs in one of his letters 
 to Blair, cited by Mr. Burton : " Whenever," says Hume, 
 " I have had the pleasure to be in your company, if the dis- 
 course turned on any common subject of hterature or rea- 
 soning, I always parted from you both entertained and 
 instructed. But, when the conversation was diverted by 
 you from this channel towards the subject of your profes- 
 sion — though I doubt not but your intentions were friendly 
 towards me — I own I never received the same satisfaction ; 
 I was apt to be tired, and you to be angry. I would there- 
 fore wish, for the future, whenever my good fortune throws 
 me in your way, that these topics should be forborne between 
 us. I have long since done with all inquiries on such sub- 
 jects and hc^e become incapable of receiving instruction." 
 
 Blair's letter, by the way, shows that Hume's Scottish 
 clerical admirers did not hesitate to embrace opportunities 
 of faithful expostulation as far as Hume's repellent humor 
 permitted, and proves how unjust and uncharitable the sus- 
 picions which were sometimes founded on the intimacy 
 between him and them. A man's Christianity would be 
 equivocally evinced by renouncing all intercourse with such 
 
 34* 
 
402 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 as renounce it ; such conduct would suggest to those thus 
 repelled a strange idea of the charity which professed to 
 seek their spiritual welfare ! It were rather to be desired 
 that every Hume or Gibbon might have for his bosom 
 friend a Bishop Butler or a Robert HaU. 
 
 Of the personal and social elements of Hume's character 
 it is unnecessary to say^ny thing, as the subject has been 
 so admirably touched by i5ir James Mackintosh, in his pre- 
 liminary Dissertation. That he was very amiable, and well 
 merited the admiration of his friends, cannot be doubted; 
 though the eulogy of Adam Smith, uttered in the first fresh- 
 ness of grief at his loss is, as Sir James observes, " an affec- 
 tionate exaggeration." " Such a praise," he justly says, " can 
 never be earned without passing through either of the 
 extremes of fortune, without standing the test of tempta- 
 tions, dangers, and sacrifices. It may be said, with truth, 
 the private character of Mr. Hume exhibited all the virtues 
 which a man of reputable station, under a mild government, 
 in the quiet times of a civilized country, has often the oppor- 
 tunity to practise." 
 
 In certain respects, Hume presented rather a curious con- 
 trast. He was by no means the impassive person his gen- 
 eral coldness of temperament would lead us to conclude, 
 and by no means the unprejudiced person which a skeptical 
 philosophy may be presumed to have a tendency to form, 
 and which he would fain be thought. Where his solitary 
 passion — literary ambition — was in question, his vanity 
 is as impatient, exacting, and querulous as^hat of any 
 mortal ; in spite of constantly brightening prospects and 
 widening fame, he is perpetually harping about imaginary 
 neglect and imaginary persecution. Similarly as to preju- 
 dice ; his bitterness against the English ^ will just match, 
 
 1 Thus he speaks of the English in 1764 : " That nation are relaps- 
 ing fast into the deepest stupidity and ignorance. The taste for liter- 
 ature is neither decayed nor depraved here as with the barbarians on 
 
DAVID HUME. 403 
 
 and no more than match, with Johnson's bitterness against 
 the Scotch. In these two men, the two nations may justly 
 consider themselves quits ; and fortunately are never likely 
 to have any more such absurd accounts to settle between 
 them. It is the happiness of our age that Englishmen 
 would as little tolerate the prejudices of Johnson as Scotch- 
 men would those of Hume. But it is in his historical writ- 
 ings that Hume's intense capacity of prejudice appears most 
 signally. He who was the most skeptical of philosophers 
 became, in fact, the. most bigoted of historians ; with this 
 aggravation of his bigotry, however, — that all the acts and 
 opinions of which, in his history, he was so keen an apolo- 
 gist, were in direct defiance of the general strain of his 
 political sentiments and speculations, as disclosed in his Po- 
 litical JEssays. 
 
 As to his character As a philosopher, his genius will 
 probably be more appreciated, and its achievements less 
 valued, by successive generations of readers. His capacity 
 cannot be well exaggerated. That such a work as the 
 Treatise of Human Nature, or the Essays, should have pro- 
 ceeded from so young a man, gives an impression of sub- 
 tlety, acuteness, and ingenuity seldom, if ever, surpassed. 
 But these productions are chiefly remarkable as proofs of 
 his genius, and for the searching investigations to which they 
 led on the part of others ; not for their intrinsic value. 
 System, as both StewSrt and Mackintosh observe, he had 
 none ; he is constantly shifting his ground, and contradictions 
 
 the banks of the Thames. . . Can you seriously talk of my continuing 
 an Englishman ? Am I or are you an Englishman 1 Do they not treat 
 with derision our pretensions to that name, and with hatred our just pre- 
 tensions to surpass and govern them 1 . . .(1775) I have a reluctance 
 to think of settling among the factious barbarians of London, who 
 will hate me because I am a Scotsman, and am not a Whig, and 
 despise me because I am a man of letters. . . (1776) It is lamentable 
 to think how much that nation has declined in literature in our time." 
 
404 JiEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 without number may be detected in his writings. The fact 
 is, that provided he could find any arguments to support the 
 paradox of skepticism which happened to be the theme of 
 one essay, he did not care how it might be opposed to some 
 other paradox of skepticism which was defended in another 
 essay. Thus, while speculatively arguing that neither " in- 
 tuition," " demonstration," " experience," nor any other 
 conceivable reason, really authorizes us to conclude that 
 any one sequence will follow any one antecedent rather than 
 another, or that the future will resemble the past, he, in his 
 Essay on Miracles, declares all " miracles " utterly incred- 
 ible,-^ because they would contradict the uniformity of na- 
 ture as ascertained by experience:^ ambitious to outdo 
 Berkeley by annihilating not only matter but mind, and re- 
 ducing every thing in the universe to " impressions and 
 ideas," he abundantly contradicts himself (but here, to be 
 sure, he could not help it) by saying in the same breath, 
 
 1 This inconsistency with his speculative principles is the least de- 
 fect in that acute but sophistical performance. But its fallacies have 
 been too often pointed out to need being mentioned here. 
 
 2 " For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, 
 that the future will resemble the past, and tliat similar powers will bo 
 conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion 
 that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no 
 rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise 
 to no inference or conclusion. It is inlJ)ossible, therefore, that any 
 arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to 
 the future; since all these arguments arc founded on the supposition 
 of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever 
 8o regular, that alone, without some new argument or inference, 
 proves not that for the future it will continiie so. In vain do you 
 pretend to have learned the nature of bodies fi-om your past expe- 
 rience." — (Essays, vol. ii.. Sceptical Doubts). " A wise man, therefore, 
 proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are 
 founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the 
 last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as full proof 
 of the future existence of that event." — {Essays, vol. ii., Mrades.) 
 
DAVID HTTME. 405 
 
 that of the existence of these " impressions and ideas " even" 
 skepticism cannot doubt, since we — that is, the doubted 
 conscious unity, Mind — cannot but be conscious of them : 
 similarly, while affirming, consistently enough in words all 
 his life long, his belief in an intelligent First Cause, (and it 
 is the only determinate religious tenet which he seems to 
 have maintained,) nearly all his speculative reasonings — 
 , especially his theory of causation — tend to show that of that 
 pri/nal truth there cannot be satisfactory proof, and he has 
 even furnished atheism with a novel paradox in its support, 
 founded on the world's being a " singular effect : " indig- 
 nantly repelling, as a perversion of his meaning, the notion 
 that he " had ever asserted so absurd a proposition as that 
 any thing might arise without a cause," he has yet so ex- 
 pressed himself, that (as has been well said by one of his 
 most acute critics) the entire metaphysical world has shared 
 in the mistake ! Magnanimously declaring at one time that 
 the philosopher must abide by truth, even though it were 
 proved pernicious to mankind, — quite in the \oity fiat jus- 
 titia mat caelum style, — he, at another, advises (and it is a 
 deep blot on his character) a skeptical friend to accept church 
 preferment, and preach what he did not believe ; affirming 
 that " to pique oneself on sincerity in such matters is to put 
 too great a respect on the vulgar and their superstitions 1 " 
 Well may one of his most charitable critics proclaim him- 
 self " ashamed to print " the philosopher's words ! Again, 
 while in his Essay on Polygamy and Divorce he sees so 
 clearly and illustrates so well the infinite importance of 
 preserving the domestic relations pure, he speaks, in his 
 Inquiry into the Principles of Morals, in an apologetic tone 
 of vices which, if freely indulged, would soon dissolve so- 
 ciety — an inconsistency which has called forth the just 
 animadversion of Sir James Mackintosh. 
 
 In a word, there is no end to the incoherencies of Hume's 
 statements, and which are only concealed so long as one 
 
406 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 essay is not collated with another. He wrote, as it were, 
 with the old Roman stylus ^b, sharp pen at one end, and an 
 instrument of erasure at the other. 
 
 His fame as a philosopher, therefore, will rest rather on 
 what he was capable of than of what he achieved ; and it 
 may be said, by a somewhat similar paradox, that his fame 
 as an historian will rest much more on his manner than on 
 his matter. His work is everywhere disfigured with gross 
 defects, inaccuracies, and prejudices, as Hallam, Brodie, 
 and many others, have abundantly shown ; but the charm 
 of his style embalms and perfumes his errors, and men will 
 still be willing to read him — though they disbelieve. 
 
 Not, indeed, that even his style as an historian is wholly 
 free from defects. It is cold — that might be expected 
 from the frigid temperament of the man. It is wanting in 
 imaginativeness and consequently in animation, and the per- 
 fection of graphic skill. This fault again is often aggravated 
 by superficial knowledge of his materials ; for a full mas- 
 tery of details is the only thing which can render precise 
 statement safe. Thus Hume often omits names and dates 
 where they ought to be inserted, and conceals the necessity 
 of definite statement in convenient vagueness. His asser- 
 tions are often so general and so adroitly balanced and qual- 
 ified, that they seem to betray a consciousness that he is 
 standing on delicate ground, and that he had better not 
 commit himself to too much exactness, lest some critic of 
 greater knowledge of details should convict him of inaccu- 
 racy. These artifices he employs no doubt with great dex- 
 terity, but one would greatly have preferred that there 
 should have been no occasion for them. Still, in spite of all 
 these deductions, the narrative is so lucid, the grouping so 
 admirable, the reflections so unforced and natural, and the 
 style flows on in such a stream of tranquil beauty — com- 
 bining so much of flexile grace and natural dignity, that his 
 work will ever stand high in the estimate of every culti- 
 
DAVID HUME. 407 
 
 vated taste. It is an instance of the importance o^ style, as Sir 
 J. Mackintosh remarked of Butler. That profound thinker 
 has been often undervalued for want of a style worthy of 
 his thoughts ; the work of Hume, in spite of his defects, has 
 been raised into one of the most familiar manuals of history 
 because it has one. So senseless is that cry which one 
 sometimes hears — that style is of little consequence, if facts 
 be but stated. So little is this to be expected that though 
 Hume's inaccuracies have been exposed a thousand times 
 he still maintains, in virtue of his style alone, the place of a 
 classic of English history. 
 
 The same qualities of style, are, if possible, more manifest 
 in Hume's Philosophical Essays. Amidst that absence of 
 all generous enthusiasm which we should expect in so com- 
 plete a Pyrrhonist, and a prodigal use of subtle and ingen- 
 ious sophistry that would seem to have had no other object 
 than to confound and perplex the intellect of the reader, 
 they abound in passages which, considered simply as com- 
 position, are exquisite specimens of refined simplicity — of 
 that severe attic grace which it is evident he had carefully 
 studied and cultivated, as well as of a very quiet but most 
 elegant pleasantry. And amongst such passages few "are 
 more striking than those in which the sceptic acknowledges 
 the vanity of skepticism.* 
 
 1 Nothing can be happier than the pleasantry in some of Hume's 
 familiar letters, and it makes us regret that we have not more of 
 them. We would willingly exchange for them portions either of his 
 Essays or his History, bulk for bulk. Light and trivial in comparison 
 no doubt they would be, but one might find consolation in thinking 
 that elegant triviality was at least as good as grave error or pernicious 
 paradox. How graceful is the following badinage: — "I live still, 
 and must for a twelvemonth, in my old house in St. James's Court, 
 which is very cheerful, and even elegant, but too small to display my 
 great talent for cookery — the science to which I intend to addict the 
 remaining years of my life ! I have just now lying on the tabic before 
 me a receipt for making soupe a la reine, copied witii my own hand. 
 
408 NEW BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 The fullest and most authentic account of Hume's Life 
 and Writings will be found in Burton's recent Life, to 
 which we willingly confess our obligations. 
 
 For beef and cabbage (a charming dish,) and old mutton, and old 
 claret, nobody excels me. I make also sheep's head broth, in a man- 
 ner that Mr. Keith speaks of it for eight days after ; and the Due 
 de Nivernois would bind himself apprentice to my lass to learn it ! I 
 have already sent a challenge to David Moncrief ; you will see that in 
 a twelvemonth he will take to the writing of history (the field I have 
 deserted), for, as to giving of dinners, he can now have no further 
 pretensions. I should have made a very bad use of my abode in 
 Paris, if I could not get the better of a mere provincial like him." 
 
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