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to the authors. For particular papers the demand was immense; of some, it is said, 20,000 copies were required." In 1716 he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick. This union is generally supposed to have proved unhappy. In the year following he became Secretary of State, which place he soon resigned on a pension of £1500 a year. Holland House, their residence, forms the subject of vignette to the present volume. The story of his marriage is thus told by the Princess Marie Liechtenstein in her work entitled "Holland House:" "Robert, son of the first Earl of Holland, who became second Earl of Holland, and afterwards succeeding his cousin, became, in 1673, fifth Earl of Warwick, made Holland House his principal residence. Edward, his son and successor, married Charlotte, daughter of Sir Thomas Middleton of Chirk Castle, and she was the Countess of Warwick who, on August 2, 1716, married Addison. She had been a widow since 1701, and had devoted herself to the education of her young son, the Earl of Warwick. It is a disputed point whether or not Addison was his tutor, but it is no disputed point that he became the boy's stepfather. Living at Chelsea, he was a country neighbour, which circumstance naturally facilitated his courtship, while Arcadian accompaniments may have graced it. The marriage was announced in The Political State of Great Britain for August, 1716, as follows: About the Beginning of August, Joseph Addison, Esq.; famous for many excellent Works, both in verse and Prose, was married to the Right Honourable Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, Relict of Edward late Earl of Warwick, who died in 1701, and Mother to the present Earl, a Minor.'" Addison died here on the 17th June 1719, in his forty-eighth year, leaving one daughter, who died unmar ried in 1797.

ADDISON, JOSEPH, claims our attention as one | yielded a large revenue, both to the State and of the greatest of the English Essayists. His father was an eminent clergyman of the Church of England, at Milston, near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, where he was born May 1, 1672. At the University of Oxford he distinguished himself by his Latin verse. Originally intended for the Church, he drifted into literature and politics, principally through Dryden's influence over him, and the patronage of Lord Somers, to whom he had dedicated a poem on one of King William's campaigns. In 1699 he received a pension of £300 a year, and started on a continental tour. Returning in 1703 he celebrated the battle of Blenheim in a triumphal poem, when Lord Godolphin, who was so pleased with it, made him Commissioner of Appeals. He acted as Under Secretary of State in 1706, and in 1709 went to Ireland in the capacity of secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. In the same year the Tatler was published by Sir Richard Steele, to which he contributed forty-two papers. "At the beginning of March 1711," says Lord Macaulay, "appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers, containing observations on life and literature, by an imaginary spectator. The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both original and eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series may be read with pleasure separately; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole, and the whole has the interest of a novel. He is entitled to be considered, not only the greatest of the English Essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English novelists. We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are his and it is no exaggeration to say, that his worst essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety. The number of copies daily distributed was at first 3000. It subsequently increased, and had risen to near 4000, when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, and though its circulation fell off, still

AIRD, THOMAS, one of the most distinguished of the recent Scottish poets, and a writer of excellent poetic and descriptive prose, was born in the village of Bowden, Roxburghshire, in

1802. He received the rudiments of his education at Bowden and Melrose parish schools, and went through a course of literary and philosophical study at the University of Edinburgh. In 1827 he published a little treatise, entitled "Religious Characteristics." After a residence of some years in Edinburgh, in the course of which he contributed occasionally to Blackwood's Magazine, and other periodicals, he was, in 1835, on the recommendation of his steadfast friend, Professor Wilson, appointed editor of the Dumfries Herald, a Conservative journal newly started in Dumfries, from the editorship of which he has lately retired. In 1845 he published "The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish Village," a collection of tales and sketches of Scottish scenery, character, and life. In 1848 he collected and published his poems. In 1852 he wrote a memoir of his friend, David Macbeth Moir (the wellknown "Delta" of Blackwood's Magazine), and prefixed it to an edition of Moir's poems, which he edited for behoof of the poet's family. Aird died at his residence, at Castlebank, near Dumfries, 25th April 1876, in the 74th year of his age.

BACON, FRANCIS, son of Sir Nicolas Bacon, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Queen Elizabeth, and one of that queen's wisest counsellors, was born in London on the 22d of January 1561. His mother was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, and to her other accomplishments united a knowledge of the Latin and Italian languages. Bacon in his childhood had the good fortune, by the vivacity of his intellect and the sedateness of his behaviour, to attract the attention of the queen, who called him her young Lord Keeper. Being designed by his father for public life, at the age of thirteen he was sent to Cambridge, and his education was completed in the house of Sir Amias Paulet, English Ambassador in France. Gaining the confidence of Sir Amias, he was selected to perform a mission to her Majesty, which he accomplished successfully, publishing as a result of his residence abroad his "Brief View of the State of Europe." His father dying suddenly, in 1579, he was forced to adopt some profession, as he found himself in narrow circumstances. He began to study law, and at the age of twenty-eight was named by Elizabeth her Counsel Extraordinary. An application which he made to his uncle, Lord Burleigh, to procure him some post under Government, where he could spend his leisure in cultivating philosophy and literature, proving unsuccessful, he spent several years more in the study of law. Burleigh had represented him to Elizabeth as of too speculative a turn of mind for the details of business. In 1593 Bacon sat as member for Middlesex, and in 1597 his essays were published in a small volume. When King James came to the throne, in 1603, Bacon was knighted, and rapidly rose in power and influence. He was made King's Counsel in 1604, and became Solici

tor-General in 1607, and Attorney-General in
1612. He was actively employed in the House
of Commons in behalf of the union between
England and Scotland. His treatise on the
"Advancement of Learning" appeared in 1605,
and his "Wisdom of the Ancients" appeared in
1610, while his great work, the "Novum Organ-
um," was advancing to completion. In 1617,
when he had attained the height of his fame, he
was appointed Keeper of the Great Seal. Under
the new Parliament of 1621 he was accused
of taking bribes; the Chancellor admitted the
charge; he was condemned to pay a fine of
£40,000, and to be imprisoned in the Tower
during the king's pleasure. This sentence being
commuted, he retired to Gorhambury, where
his leisure was spent in writing "A Digest of
the Laws of England," "A History of England
under the Princes of the House of Tudor," a
body of Natural History, and a Philosophical
Romance. He died in 1626 from the effect of
a chill taken in stuffing a fowl with snow as an
experiment against decomposition. The follow-
ing lines by Sir Henry Taylor have been taken
as expressing the truth regarding Bacon's life :
"Yet is he in sad truth a faulty man.

In slavish, tyrannous, and turbulent times
He drew his lot of life, and of the times
Some deep and bloody stains have fallen upon him.
But be it said he had this honesty,
That undesirous of a false renown
He ever wished to pass for what he was;
One that swerved much and oft, but being still
Deliberately bent upon the right,

Had kept it in the main; one that much loved
Whate'er in man is worthy high respect,
And in his soul devoutly did aspire
To be it all; yet felt from time to time
The littleness that clings to what is human,
And suffered from the shame of having felt it."

BURTON, ROBERT, was an English divine, a native of Lindley in Leicestershire. He studied at Oxford University, and became rector of Segrave. Born in 1576, he died in 1640. His claim to rank as an essayist rests on that wonderful book the "Anatomy of Melancholy," written by way of alleviating his own melancholy. With Dr Johnson this volume was a great favourite, so much so that he would turn earlier out of bed to read it. Two chapters, which give a fair idea of the style of the book, are given in a detached essay form. The "Anatomy of Melancholy" is a quarry of the most diverse materials, a storehouse of things new and old, but wanting in signs of art, order, memory, and judgment.

BROWNE, SIR THOMAS, the celebrated author of the "Religio Medici" (The Religion of a Physician), was born at London, in the parish of St Michael in Cheapside, on the 19th of October 1605. He received the first part of his education at the school of Winchester. In the beginning of 1623, he was removed from Winchester,

and entered a gentleman-commoner of Broadgate Hall, afterwards called Pembroke College, Oxford. After he had taken his Master of Arts degree, he turned his studies to physic, and first began, rather prematurely, as it would appear, to practise his profession in Oxfordshire. Shortly after he went to Ireland, and thence abroad. To complete his medical education, he prosecuted his studies at Montpellier and Padua, and after some stay at these famous schools, returned home by way of Holland, and was created Doctor of Physic at the University of Leyden. Browne returned to London about the year 1634, and the next year is supposed to have written the celebrated treatise "Religio Medici," a work which was no sooner published than it excited attention in an extraordinary degree. It first came out, as it was said, surreptitiously, in itself a circumstance calculated to recommend it tó notice; but, besides this, it was distinguished by much learning, great subtlety, and exuberant imagination, and written in the strongest and most forcible language. Dr Browne settled, in 1636, at Norwich, where his practice soon became very extensive, many patients resorting to him for advice; and in 1637, he was incorporated Doctor of Physic in the University of Oxford. A few years after, he married Mrs Mileham, of a good family in the county, "a lady," as she is described, "of such symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism." 1646, his work entitled "Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors" appeared. In 1658, the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write "A Discourse on Sepulchral Urns," in which he treats, with his asual learning, on the funeral rites of the ancient nations, exhibits their various treatment of the dead, and examines the substances found in the urns liscovered in Norfolk. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. In 1671, Browne received the honour of knighthood from Charles II. at Norwich, where he continued to live in high reputation, till, in his seventy-sixth year, he was seized with a colic, which, after having tortured him about a week, put an end to his life, October 19, 1682. On his monument, in the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, is the following inscription:

"Near the Foot of this Pillar

In

Lies Sir THOMAS BROWNE, Kt. and Doctor in Physick,
Author of Religio Medici, and other Learned Books,
Who practic'd Physick in this city 46 years,
And died Oct. 1682, in the 77 year of his Age,
In Memory of whom
Dame Dorothy Browne, who had bin his Affectionate
Wife 41 Years, caused this Monument,
to be Erected."

CARLYLE, THOMAS, one of the most original of all our modern essayists, and one whose

influence has been co-extensive with the diffusion of our literature, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, on the 4th December 1795. The intelligence of his father, who was a small farmer, and the piety and strong common sense of his mother, are on record. He attended first the parish school of Ecclefechan, and afterwards that of Annan, where he met Edward Irving, when a strong friendship sprang up between them. In 1809, when about fourteen years of age, he came to study at the Edinburgh University. His habits at this time are said to have been lonely and contemplative, and his reading in all kinds of literature assiduous and extensive. He distinguished himself in the mathematical class, and succeeded in gaining the friendship of Professor John Leslie, which we find was shortly afterwards useful to him, in his appointment to a tutorship at Kirkcaldy. Previous to this appointment he taught for two years in the burgh school of Annan. In 1818 he returned to Edinburgh, became a contributor to the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," and also made a translation of "Legendre's Geometry." In 1823 he acted as ti cor to Charles Buller. He published a translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" in 1824. His "Life of Schiller" appeared in the London Magazine (1823-24), at that time counting among its contributors Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Allan Cunningham. In 1826 he married an only daughter of Dr Welsh of addington: on the father's side the Welshes were lineal descendants of John Knox. From the year of his marriage in 1826, till 1834, he resided it Craigenputtoch, a retired farm-house about fifteen miles from Dumfries. In 1834 he removed to London, settling at Chelsea, where he resided till his death in 1881. "Sartor Resartus," written at Craigenputtoch, appeared by instalments in Fraser's Magazine, after numerous rejections. His "History of the French Revolution" was published in 1837. In the same year he d-livered a course of lectures on "German Literature," in Willis's Rooms, London; in 1839 he lectured on the "Revolutions of Modern Europe,' and in 1840 on "Hero-Worship." This was his last public appearance in this capacity, with the exception of his rectorial address to the Edinburgh students in 1866, a description of which interesting occasion, by Alexander Smith, is given in this volume. Mr Carlyle's of her works are, "Past and Present," "Letters an 1 Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of John Sterling," "History of Frederick

II.,"

," "Early Kings of Norway," also an essay on the "Portraits of John Knox." On the occasion of Mr Carlyle's eightieth birthday, he was presented by a numerous circle of literary friends and admirers, with a gold nedal and an address, signed by various friends and wellwishers. The publication of Carlyle's essays marked a new era in biographical portraiture, and his papers on Samuel Johnson and Robert

Burns have been extolleu es masterpieces in this difficult art.

COWLEY, ABRAHAM, better known as a poet than as an essayist, was born in London in 1618. Losing his father at an early age, he was COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOK, the youngest left to the care of his mother. In the window of of a numerous family, was born at Ottery St their apartment lay Spenser's "Faerie Queen," Mary, in Devonshire, on the 21st October 1772. in which he very early took delight to read, till, He received his early education at Christ's Hos- by feeling the charms of verse, he became, as he pital, where Charles Lamb was one of his school-relates, irrecoverably a poet. "Such," says Dr fellows. His early love of poetry was nursed Johnson, "are accidents which, sometimes reand inspired by a perusal of the sonnets of W. me:nbered, and perhaps sometimes forgotten, L. Bowles. When nineteen years of age, on prod. ce that particular designation of mind, obtaining his presentation from Christ's Hos- and propensity for some certain science or empital, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, gain- ployment, which is commonly called genius." ing in classics a gold medal for a Greek ode. Cowley might be said to "lisp in numbers," and About 1794 his acquaintance began with Southey; gave such early proofs, not only of powers of Coleridge and Southey were afterwards married language, but of comprehension of things, as to on the same day to two sisters, and settled at more tardy minds seem scarcely credible. When Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, where they only in his thirteenth year, a volume of his also met Wordsworth. An account of this poems was printed, containing, with other meeting, by Hazlitt, will be found on p. 249. poetical compositions, "The Tragical History Some of Coleridge's finest pieces were written of Pyramus and Thisbe," written when he was there, such as the "Ancient Mariner," the "Ode ten years old, and "Constantia and Philetus," on the Departing Year," and the first part of written two years after; and while still at school, "Christabel." Coleridge visited Germany he produced a comedy of a pastoral kind, called through the liberality of the Messrs Wedgwood, "Love's Riddle," though it was not published the Staffordshire potters, and on returning in till he had been some time at Cambridge. At 1800 went to reside with Southey at Keswick, the time of his death, in 1667, Cowley certainly Wordsworth then staying at Grasmere. In 1804 ranked as the first poet in England, though the he visited Malta. In the latter part of his life "Comus" of Milton and some of his exquisite he resided with his friend and medical adviser, minor poems had been published nearly thirty Mr Gillman, at Highgate, delighting a large years before. The taste for his poetry has now circle by his splendid conversational powers. changed with the fashion of the times, but his Here he died on the 20th of July 1834, in the prose is a very different thing. It is clear, sixty-second year of his age. The plan of the manly, and forcible. A comparison has someperiodical publication the Friend, occurred to times been instituted between him and ShenColeridge while staying at Keswick, the first stone, but Cowley in the end stands out as the number of which appeared on the 8th of June greater of the two. Dr Johnson's note given 1809, and the last on the 15th of March 1810. on p. 58 gives a fair idea of his power as an As a philosopher and theologian, the influence essayist. of Coleridge has been very great, and probably is so still, notwithstanding the apparent predominance of a less spiritual philosophy than his. Although he did not live to complete the grand system of religious philosophy which he appears to have projected, the massive fragments he has left suffice to show more than the outlines of the vast whole. His writings are pervaded by a spirit not of this world; and for every earnest student they are rich in lessons of truth, wisdom, and faith.

COWPER, WILLIAM, was born at Berkhampstead in 1731, and was educated at a country school, and afterwards at Westminster. From his childhood he possessed a heart of the most exquisite tenderness and sensibility. His life was ennobled by many private acts of beneficence; and his exemplary virtue was such, that the opulent sometimes delighted to make him their almoner. In his sequestered life at Olney, he administered abundantly to the wants of the poor; and before he quitted St Alban's, he took upon himself the charge of a necessitous child, in order to extricate him from the perils of being educated by very profligate parents. Cowper's great work was "The Task," which appeared in 1784, a poem which, as Hazlitt well remarks, contains " number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself." Cowper's clain to rank as an essayist rests on his contributions to the Connoisseur, a weekly miscellany com

COOPER, ANTHONY ASHLEY, third Earl of Shaftesbury, born in 1671, after a liberal education, and some foreign travel, was elected Member of Parliament for Poole in 1693. His conduct in Parliament was an honourable and earnest support of every measure which tended towards the public good. Owing to the delicacy of his health, he retired from public business in 1698, and resided chiefly abroad. His principal work, from which the selection in this volume is taken, is entitled "Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opin-menced by George Colman and Bonnel Thornton. ions, and Times." He died in 1713.

How easily he might have excelled in this kind

of writing may be seen from his letters, and from these occasional contributions already men. tioned. The essay entitled "Conversation" he afterwards expanded into the delightful poem bearing the same title. The Connoisseur lasted from January 1754 to September 1756, and was succeeded by Johnson's Idler. Cowper died at East Dereham, in Norfolk, on the 25th of April 1800.

DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, was born on the 15th of August 1785 at "The Farm," a countryhouse near Manchester. His parents were people in the middle walk of life, cultured and intelligent. He had an elder brother and several sisters. His early youth was passed amid the most delightful surroundings, and he writes, in after-life, "Were I to return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, I would single out these four as worthy of special commemoration: That I lived in a rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent Church." He was a small, sensitive child; a dreamer, always musing, imaginative, revelling almost from infancy in a world of his own creation, and he grew up to manhood with his whole character coloured by the solitary dream-life he had led. At school he was an apt scholar, particularly proficient in Latin. At the age of fifteen he set out with a friend and schoolmate-Lord Westford-for a visit to Ireland, where the latter lived. He passed several months at the residence of Lord Altamount, afterwards the Marquis of Sligo, Lord Westport's father, in the county of Mayo. He soon grew tired of school, and we next meet with him in London. He had already begun the pernicious habit of opium eating. By and by he indulged in it for the sake of the pleasure it gave him, and for the purpose, he says, of keeping his "moral affections in a state of cloudless serenity and high over all the great light of this majestic intellect." He attended the University at Oxford, and soon after he left college he went to live in the Lake country, where he lived for twenty years. In 1816 he married, and in 1821 he created his first sensation by the publication of the "Opium Eater." In 1809 he had become acquainted with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and this was the commencement of a life-long friendship. In 1829 he quitted Grasmere, and from that time resided mostly in Glasgow and Edinburgh, until his death in the last-named place, December 8, 1859, at the age of seventy-four. De Quincey was a wonderful talker. His talk was brilliant and full of learning; his memory was tenacious; his discourse sparkled with anecdote, and yet was utterly devoid of pedantry. His writings embrace A variety of subjects - biographical sketches,

speculative papers, political economy, fantasies or prose poems, theological essays, literary history, rhetoric, historical and critical essays, and many others. As a political economist he took a high place. In appearance he was a small, attenuated-looking man, with large, piercing eyes, and a face carved with lines of intense thought and suffering. He was very absentminded, and very careless in his attire, often dressed in a coat two or three sizes too large for him, trousers that barely reached the tops of his shoes, and a hat that almost fell over his eyes; yet, as Professor Wilson said of him, “a person of the highest intellectual and imaginative powers; a metaphysician, a logician, and a political economist of the first order; a profound and comprehensive scholar, a perfect gentleman, and one of the best of men."

FOSTER, REV. JOHN, was the son of a farmer, residing between Wainwright and Hebden Bridge, Halifax, Yorkshire. There Foster was born, September 17, 1770. While a youth, he worked at the loom, and in his seventeenth year, through the patronage of the Rev. Dr Fawcett, Baptist minister of Hebden Bridge, he was entered as a student of the Baptist College, Bristol, in 1791. On the completion of his studies in 1797 he accepted the charge of a congregation at Chichester, Sussex, which he held for two years and a half, In 1804 he became minister of Frome, in Somersetshire, but a morbid state of the thyroid gland unfitted him from preaching with effect, and he resigned his charge in 1806. From this time till July 1839, he became a regular contributor to the Eclectic Review, writing in all about 185 articles, fifty of which were selected and published in a separate form in 1844. In 1817 he had accepted a charge at Downend, near Bristol, but his preaching proving unacceptable to his congregation he resigned, and for the remainder of his life resided at Stapleton, near Bristol, chiefly engaged in literary work. There he died, October 15, 1843. His "Essays" have gone through more than twenty editions, and still continue to be popular. His excellent taste, clear and com. prehensive intellect, rendered him an admirable essayist. His "Essays," in the form of letters, published in 1805, were really addressed to the lady who soon afterwards became his wife.

FULLER, THOMAS.-A conspicuous place in the prose literature of our language is due to the historian, divine, and essayist, Thomas Fuller. He was born at Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, in 1608, and educated at Queen's College, Cambridge. The works of Fuller are very numerous, the chief of them being the following: "A History of the Worthies of England," one of the earliest biographical works in the language, a strange mixture of topography, biography, and popular antiquities; "The Holy and Profane State," "The History of the Holy War," and

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