literary criticism, and fun, were intermingled, enjoyed extraordinary popularity. His novels likewise were eagerly read (see p. 450). In 1820 he was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died April 2, 1854. "With respect to Wilson's merits as a writer, a variety of judgments will be formed. His poetry can never, in our opinion, take a foremost place among English classics. His prose tales, Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, The Trials of Margaret Lindsay, The Foresters, &c., had their day. Probably no man, living or dead, could have written them except himself, yet we doubt whether they will find many readers a dozen years hence. Of his criticism, likewise, we are constrained to observe that it is at all times the decision of an impulsive rather than of a judicial mind. But far above all his contemporaries, and, indeed, above writers of the same class in any age, he soars as a rhapsodist. As Christopher North, by the loch, or on the moors, or at Ambrose's, he is the most gifted and extraordinary being that ever wielded pen. We can compare him, when such fits are on, to nothing more aptly than to a huge Newfoundland dog, the most perfect of its kind; or, better still, to the 'Beautiful leopard from the valley of the palm-trees,' which, in sheer wantonness and without any settled purpose, throws itself into a thousand attitdes, always astonishing and often singularly graceful.” * § 12. It would be impossible in our limits to give an account of the many other writers who distinguished themselves by their contributions to the Reviews and Magazines; but in addition to those already mentioned two essayists stand forth pre-eminent Charles Lamb and Thomas de Quincey. CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) is one of the most admirable of those humorists who form the peculiar feature of the literature, as the ideas they express are the peculiar distinction of the character, of the English people. He was born February 18, 1775, in the Temple, where his father was clerk to one of the Benchers, and was educated at Christ's Hospital. He was essentially a Londoner: London life supplied him with his richest materials; and yet his mind was so imbued, so saturated with our older writers, that he is original by the mere force of self-transformation into the spirit of the older literature: he was, in short, an old writer, who lived by accident a century or two after his real time. Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet of solitary rural nature; Lamb drew an inspiration as true, as delicate, as profound, from the city life in which he lived; and from which he never was for a moment removed but with pain and a yearning to come back. In him the organ of locality must have been enormously developed: "his household gods planted a terribly fixed foot, and were not to be rooted up without blood.” During the early and greater part of his life, Lamb, poor and unfriended, was drudging as a clerk in the India House; and it was not till late in life that he was unchained from the desk. Yet in this, the most monotonous and unideal of all employments, he found * Quarterly Review, No. 225, p. 240. means to fill his mind with the finest aroma of our older ‹uthors; par ticularly of the prose writers and dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: and in his earliest compositions, such as the drama of John Woodvil, and subsequently in the Essays of Elia, although the world at first perceived a mere imitation of their quaintness of expression, there was, in reality, a revival of their very spirit. The Essays of Elia, contributed by him at different times to the London Magazine, are the finest things, for humor, taste, penetration, and vivacity, which have appeared since the days of Montaigne. Where shall we find such intense delicacy of feeling, such unimaginable happiness of expression, such a searching into the very body of truth, as in these unpretending compositions? A chance word, dropped half by accident, a parenthesis. an exclamation, often let us into the very mechanism of the sentiment admit us, as it were, behind the scenes The style has a peculiar and most subtle charm; not the result of labor for it is found in as great perfection in his familiar letters—a certain quaintness and antiquity, not affected in Lamb, but the natural garb of his thoughts. This arises partly from the saturation of his mind with the rich and solid reading in which he delighted; and partly, but in a much higher degree, from the sensibility of his mind. The manure was abundant, but the soil was also of a "Sicilian fruitfulness." As in all the true humorists, his pleasantry was inseparably allied with the finest pathos: the merry quip on the tongue was but the commentary on the tear which tembled in the eye. He possessed the power, which is seen in Shakspeare's Fools, of conveying a deep philosophical verity in a jest — of uniting the wildest merriment with the truest pathos and the deepest wisdom. It is not only the easy laugh of Touchstone in the forest of Arden, but the heart-rending pleasantry ɔf Lear's Fool in the storm. The inspiration that other poets find in the mountains, in the forest, in the sea, Lamb could draw from the crowd of Fleet Street, from the remembrances of an old actor, from the benchers of the Temple. In his poems, also, so few in number and so admirable in originality, we have the quintessence of familiar sentiment, expressed in the diction of Herbert, Wither, and the great dramatists. Lamb was the schoolfellow, the devoted admirer and friend, of Coleridge; and perhaps there never was an individual so loved by all his contemporaries, by men of every opinion, of every shade of literary, political, and religious sentiment, as this great wit and amiab'e man The passionate enemy of everything like cant, commonplace, 1 con ventionality, his writings derive a singular charm, a kind of fresh and wild flavor, from his delight in paradox. The man himself was full of caradox: and his punning repartees, delivered with all the pangs of stuttering, often contained a decisive and unanswerable settlement of the question. In his drama of John Woodvil he endeavored to revive the forms of the Elizabethan drama; and the work might be mistaken for some woodland play of Heywood or Shirley. But it was his Specimens of the Old English Dramatists which showed what treasures of the richest poetry lay concealed in the unpublished, and in modern times unknown, writers of that wonderful age, whose fame had been eclipsed by the glory of some two or three names of the same period. In the few lines, often only the few words, of criticism ir which Larb sketched the characters of the dramatists (with whose writings, from the greatest to the least, from Shakspeare down to Broome or Tourneur, no man was ever more familiar), we see perpetual examples of the delicacy and penetration of his critical faculty. Lamb's mind, in its sensitiveness, in its mixture of wit and pathos, was eminently Shakspearian; and his intense and reverent study of the works of Shakspeare doubtless gave a tendency to this: the glow of his humor was too pure and steady not to have been reflected from the sun. In his poems, as for instance the Farewell to Tobacco, the Old Familiar Faces, and his few but beautiful sonnets, we find the very essence and spirit of this quaint tenderness of fancy, the simplicity of the child mingled with the learning of the scholar. The one Among the Essays of Elia are several little narratives, generally visions and parables, inexpressibly simple and beautiful. named Dream-Children, and another entitled The Child-Angel, are worthy of Jean Paul himself: while the little tale Rosamond Gray is perhaps one of the most inimitable gems ever produced in that difficult style. § 13. Perhaps the greatest master of English prose in the present century, not excepting even Macaulay, is THOMAS DE QUINCEY (17851859). He was born of wealthy parents near Manchester, August 15, 1785, and in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater he has left us an extraordinary account of his early life, in which, however, there is clearly a mixture of Dichtung and Wahrheit. As an undergraduate at Oxford, he was remarkable for his extraordinary stock of knowledge upon every subject that was started in conversation; but even at that period he had commenced taking large doses of opium. After leaving Oxford he settled at Grasmere, but resided during the latter part of his life at Glasgow and Edinburgh. He died December 8, 1859.. Upon De Quincey's position in the literature of the present day an able critic observes, "De Quincey's mind never wholly recovered from the effects of his eighteen years' indulgence in opium. He himself says. half jocularly, but apparently quite truly, that it is characteristic of the opiuin-eater never to finish anything. He himself never finished any. thing, except his sentences, which are models of elaborate workmanship. But many of his essays are literally fragments, while those which are not generally convey the impression of being mere prolegomena to some far greater work of which he had formed the conception only. Throughout his volumes, moreover, we find allusions to writings which have never seen the daylight. And finally, there is The Great Unfinished, the De Emendatione Humani Intellectus, to which he had at one time devoted the labor of his whole life. It is, in fact, th one half melancholy reflection which his career suggests, that a man so capable as he was of exercising a powerful influence for good upon the political and religious thought of the present age, should have comparatively wasted his opportunities, and left us his most precious ideas in the condition of the Sibyl's leaves after they had been scattered by the wind. Hence those who approach him with any serious purpose are only too likely to come away disappointed. It is, therefore, rather on his style, at once complex and harmonious, at once powerful and polished, than on the substance of his works, that his posthumous fame will be dependent. The extraordinary compass and unique beauty of his diction, accommodating itself without an effort to the highest flights of imagi nation, to the minutest subtleties of reasoning, and to the gayest vagaries of humor, are by themselves indeed a sure pledge of a long if not undying reputation.”* De Quincey's writings have been collected in fourteen volumes. The best known is the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, published in 1821, in which the language frequently soars to astonishing heights of eloquence. Of his historical essays and narratives, the finest is his Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars, which is equal, in many passages, to the English Opium-Eater. His literary criticisms, both upon English and German writers, are very numerous, but cannot be further noticed here. Some of his essays are almost exclusively humorous, among which Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is the best known. The critic whom we have already quoted, thus sums up DQuincey's literary merits: "A great master of English composition a critic of uncommon delicacy; an honest and unflinching investigato of received opinions; a philosophic inquirer, second only to his first and sole hero (Coleridge), - De Quincey has left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic rigor of his logic, forms a combination which centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study as one of the marvels of English literature." § 14. One of the studies peculiar to the present century has been that of political economy. Adam Smith has been well called the creator of the science, and his followers in the present age have exercised no small influence in moulding the character of public opinion and in controlling the course of public events. RICARDO, SENIOR, MACULLOCH, and MILL are writers whose place in a history of literature would perhaps be small, but whose influence on politics and commerce have been so great, that it would be a serious omission not to call the atten tion of the student to their works. The most important writer upon ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy is undoubtedly JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832). He was the son of a solicitor in London, was educated at Oxford, and called to the bar, but did not pursue it as a profession. For half a century Bentham was the centre of a small but influential circle of philosophical writers, and was the founder of what * Quarterly Review, No. 219, pp. 15, 16. is called the utilitarian school. In one of his earliest works he laid down the principle that "utility was the measure and test of all vir tue;" and the fundamental principle of his philosophy was, that happiness is the end and test of all morality. It is, however, as a writer on jurisprudence that his fame rests; and almost all the improvements in English law that have since been carried into effect may be traced, Fither directly or indirectly, to his exertions. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. OTHER PROSE WRITERS OF THE NINE- WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1759-1833) was born at Hull, and educated at Cambridge. He took a leading part in Parliament for the abolition of the Slavetrade, and deserves a notice in English literature on account of his Practical View of Christianity, published in 1797, which had an immense sale, and exercised throughout the earlier part of the nineteenth century a great influence upon religious literature. SIB JAMES MACKINTOSHI (1765-1832) was born at Aldourie, on Loch Ness, Inverness-shire, October 24, 1765, and was educated at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, for the medical profession; but he soon abandoned medicine, and maintained himself by literature in London. In 1791 he published his Vindiciæ Gallicæ, a reply to Burke on the French Revolution, a work which at once gained him a great reputation. In 1795 he was In 1795 he was called to the bar, and four years afterwards he delivered, with great applause, in the hall of Lincoln's | Inn, his lectures On the Law of Nature and Nations. He rose rapidly at the bar; and his speech in de- | fence of Peltier (February 21, 1803), who had been prosecuted for a libel on Bonaparte, then First Consul, placed him among the great orators of the age. In 1804 he was appointed Recorder of Bombay; and after spending seven years in India he returned to England, was made a Privy Councillor, and in 1830 | Commissioner for the Affairs of India. He died May 22, 1832. His principal works are, a Disserta- | tion on Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; three volumes of a History of England; a Life of Sir Thomas More, in Lardner's Cyclopædia; and a ragment of a History of the Revolution of 1688, which was published in 1834. Everything which Sir James Mackintosh has written is pleasing, but nothing striking; and in a few years more his writings will probably be forgotten. WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830), son of a Unitarian minister, was born at Maidstone, April 10, 1778, was educated as an artist, but lived by literature. He was one of the best critics in the earlier | part of this century. His paradoxes are a little startling, and sometimes lead him astray; but there | | is a delicacy of taste, a richness of imagination, and a perceptive power, that make him a worthy second to De Quincey. His style is vivid and picturesque, and his evolutions of character are clear. His chief works are Principles of Human Action, Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, Table Talk, Lectures on various authors, Essays on English novelists in the Edinburgh, and a Life of Napoleon in four volumes. WILLIAM COBBETT (1762-1835) was a native of Farnham in Suffolk. From an agricultural laborer he became a soldier, then a writer on political questions, and finally member of Parliament for Oldham. In his paper, called The Weekly Register, he attacked all sides with rancor and bitterness. Hie English is forcible and idiomatic. He published several other works, of which his English Grammar most deserves mention. JOHN WILSON CROKER (1780-1857), born in Gal| way, December 20, 1780, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered Parliament, and held the office of Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. He was one of the chief writers in the Quarterly Review. His Essays on the French Revolution, which originally appeared in that Review, have been republished in a separate form, and exhibit a remarkable knowledge of that period of history. His principal work is an edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, which was criticised most severely, but most unfairly, by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review. Croker also edited the Suffolk Papers, Lady Hervey's Letters, Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., and Walpole's Letters to Lord Hertford. The following historians deserve a brief notice: JAMES MILL (1773-1836), a native of Montrose, rose to eminence as a writer in the leading periodi cals of his time. His History of British India (1817 1818) is written with great impartiality, and procured for the author a place in the India House. The Analysis of the Mind is a useful contribution to mental science, and has done much to illustrate the principle of association as one of the first general laws of mind. DR. JOHN GILLIES (1747–1836) was born at Brechin in the county of Forfar, Scotland, and succeeded Dr. Robertson as Historiographer Royal for Scot land. He published several historical works, of which his History of Greece is the best knową, |