unintelligible. He came into the world when the school of Dryden and Pope gave the law to English poetry. In that school he had himself learned to be a lofty and vigorous declaimer in harmonious verse; beyond that school his unforced admiration perhaps scarcely soared; and his highest effort of criticism was accordingly the noble panegyric on Dryden. His criticism owed its popularity as much to its defects as to its excellences. It was on a level with the majority of readers-persons of good sense and information, but of no exquisite sensibility; and to their minds it derived a false appearance of solidity, from that very narrowness, which excluded those grander efforts of imagination to which Aristotle and Bacon have confined the name of poetry." The admirable and original delineation, of which this is but a small part, appears to have been the task of one disturbed and sickly day. We have in these volumes characters of Hume, Swift, Lord Mansfield, Wilkes, Goldsmith, Gray, Franklin, Sheridan, Fletcher of Saltoun, Louis XIV., and some others, all finished with the same exquisite taste, and conceived in the same vigorous and candid spirit; besides which, it appears from the Journal, that in the same incredibly short period of fourteen or fifteen days, he had made similar delineations of Lord North, Paley, George Grenville, C. Townshend, Turgot, Malesherbes, Young, Thomson, Aikenside, Lord Bolingbroke, and Lord Oxford; though (we know not from what cause) none of these last mentioned appear in the present publication.

During the same voyage, the perusal of Madame de Sevigné's Letters engages him (at intervals) for about a fortnight; in the course of which he has noted down in his Journal more just and delicate remarks on her character, and that of her age, than we think are any where else to be met with. But we cannot now venture on any extract; and must confine ourselves to the following admirable remarks on the true tone of polite conversation and familiar letters, suggested by the same fascinating collection:

lowered in expression, out of condescension to our calmer temper. It is thus that harangues and dec lamations, the last proof of bad taste and bad man ners in conversation, are avoided, while the fancy and the heart find the means of pouring forth all their stores. To meet this despised part of language in a polished dress, and producing all the effects of wit and eloquence, is a constant source of agreeable surprise. This is increased, when a few bolder and higher words are happily wrought into the texture of this familiar eloquence. To find what seems so unlike author-craft in a book, raises the pleasing astonishment to its highest degree. I once thought of illustrating my notions by numerous examples from La Sevigné.' And I must, some day or bungler, who is not enough master of language to other, do so; though I think it the resource of a convey his conceptions into the minds of others. The style of Madame de Sevigné is evidently copied, not only by her worshipper, Walpole, but even by Gray; who, notwithstanding the extraordinary merits of his matter, has the double stiffness of an imiator, and of a college recluse."

How many debatable points are fairly settled by the following short and vigorous remarks, in the Journal for 1811:

"Finished George Rose's Observations on Fox's History,' which are tedious and inefficient. That James was more influenced by a passion for refinement in Fox: Ile liked both Popery and arbitrary power than by Popish bigotry, is an idle tyranny; and I am persuaded he did not himself know which he liked best. But I take it to be certain that the English people, at the Revolution, dreaded his love of Popery more than his love of tyranny. This was in them Protestant bigotry. not reason: But the instinct of their bigotry pointed right. Popery was then the name for the faction which supported civil and religious tyranny in Europe: To be a Papist was to be a partisan of the ambition of Louis XIV."

There is in the Bombay Journal of the same year, a beautiful essay on Novels, and the moral effect of fiction in general, the whole of which we should like to extract; but it is far too long. It proceeds on the assumption, that as all fiction must seek to interest by representing admired qualities in an exagge rated form, and in striking aspects, it must tend to raise the standard, and increase the admiration of excellence. In answer to an obvious objection, he proceeds

"When a woman of feeling, fancy, and accomplishment has learned to converse with ease and grace, from long intercourse with the most polished society, and when she writes as she speaks, she must write letters as they ought to be written; if "A man who should feel all the various sentishe has acquired just as much habitual correctness ments of morality, in the proportions in which they as is reconcilable with the air of negligence. A are inspired by the Iliad, would certainly be tar moment of enthusiasm, a burst of feeling, a flash of from a perfectly good man. But it does not follow cloquence may be allowed; but the intercourse of that the Iliad did not produce great moral benefit. society, either in conversation or in letters, allows To determine that point, we must ascertain whether no more. Though interdicted from the long-con- a man, formed by the Iliad, would be better than tinued use of elevated language, they are not with- the ordinary man of the country, at the time in out a resource. There is a part of language which which it appeared. It is true that it too much inis disdained by the pedant or the declaimer, and spires an admiration for ferocious courage. That which both, if they knew its difficulty, would ap- admiration was then prevalent, and every circum proach with dread; it is formed of the most familiar stance served to strengthen it. But the Iliad phrases and turns in daily use by the generality of breathes many other sentiments, less prevalent men, and is full of energy and vivacity, bearing less favoured by the state of society, and calculated upon it the mark of those keen feelings and strong gradually to mitigate the predominant passion. The passions from which it springs. It is the employ- friendship and sorrow of Achilles for Patroclus, the ment of such phrases which produces what may be patriotic valour of Hector, the paternal affliction of called colloquial eloquence. Conversation and let. Priam, would slowly introduce more humane affecters may be thus raised to any degree of animation, tions. If they had not been combined with the ad without departing from their character. Any thing miration of barbarous courage, they would not have may be said, if it be spoken in the tone of society. been popular; and consequently they would have The highest guests are welcome if they come in found no entry into those savage bearts which they the easy undress of the club; the strongest meta- were destined (I do not say intended) to soften. It phor appears without violence, if it is familiarly exis therefore clear, from the very nature of poetry, pressed; and we the more easily catch the warm-that the poet must inspire somewhat better morals est feeling, if we perceive that it is intentionally than those around him; though, to be effectual and

'Apply these remarks, with the necessary modi fications, to those fictions copied from common life In great capitals, men of different provinces, called Novels, which are not above a century old, professions, and pursuits are brought together in so and of which the multiplication and the importance, ciety, and are obliged to acquire a habit, a matter, as well literary as moral, are characteristic features and manner mutually perspicuous and agreeable. of England. There may be persons now alive who Hence they are raised above frivolity, and are di recollect the publication of Tom Jones,' at least, vested of pedantry. In small societies this habit is if not of Clarissa.' Since that time, probably not imposed by necessity; they have lower, but twelve novels have appeared of the first rank-a more urgent subjects, which are interesting to all, prodigious number, of such a kind, in any depart-level to all capacities, and require no effort or prepament of literature (by the help of Sir Walter Scott ration of mind." and Miss Edgeworth we may now at least double the number) and the whole class of novels must

we shall only say, that nothing could possibly set the work before us in so favourable a point of view, as a comparison between it and the volumes of "Table Talk," to which we have already made reference- unless, perhaps, it were the contrast of the two minds which are respectively portrayed in these

miscellany of elegant criticism, original speculation, and profound practical suggestions on politics, religion, history, and all the greater and the lesser duties, the arts and the elegances of life-all expressed with a beautiful clearness and tempered dignity-breathing the purest spirit of good-will to mankindand brightened not merely by an ardent hope, but an assured faith in their constant advancement in freedom, intelligence, and virtue.

misjudgment as this, and coming from such a quarter, cannot be passed without notice. If Sir James Mackintosh had any talent more conspicuous and indisputable than another, it was that of appreciating the merits of eminent and original men. His great learning and singular soundness of judgment enabled him to do this truly; while his kindness of na-publications. ture, his zeal for human happiness, and his In these memorials of Sir James Mackinperfect freedom from prejudice or vanity, tosh, we trace throughout the workings of a prompted him, above most other men, to do powerful and unclouded intellect, nourished it heartily. And then, as to his being a person by wholesome learning, raised and instructed from whose conversation little could be car- by fearless though reverent questionings of ried away, why the most characteristic and the sages of other times (which is the per remarkable thing about it, was that the whole mitted Necromancy of the wise), exercised of it might be carried away-it was so lucid, by free discussion with the most distinguished precise, and brilliantly perspicuous! The joke among the living, and made acquainted with of the "warehouse to let " is not, we confess, its own strength and weakness, not only by quite level to our capacities. It can scarcely a constant intercourse with other powerful mean (though that is the most obvious sense) minds, but by mixing, with energy and dethat the head was empty-as that is incon-liberation, in practical business and affairs; sistent with the rest even of this splenetic and here pouring itself out in a delightfur delineation. If it was intended to insinuate that it was ready for the indiscriminate reception of any thing which any one might choose to put into it, there could not be a more gross misconception; as we have no doubt Mr. Coleridge must often have sufficiently experienced. And by whom is this discovery, that Mackintosh's conversation presented nothing that could be carried away, thus confidently announced? Why, by the very individual against whose own oracular and interminable talk the same complaint has been made, by friends and by foes, and with an unanimity unprecedented, for the last forty years. The admiring, or rather idolizing nephew, who has lately put forth this hopeful specimen of his relics, has recorded in the preface, that "his conversation at all times required attention; and that the demand on the intellect of the hearer was often very great; and that, when he got into his huge circuit' and large illustrations, most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost himself." Nay, speaking to this very point, of the ease or difficulty of "carrying away" any definite notions from what he said, the partial kinsman is pleased to inform us, that, with all his familiarity with the inspired style of his relative, he himself has often gone away, after listening to him for several delightful hours, with divers masses of reasoning in his head, but without being able to perceive what connection they had with each other. "In such cases," he adds, "I have mused, sometimes even for days afterrards, upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it were, the fire would kindle," &c. &c. And this is the person who is pleased to denounce Sir James Mackintosh as an ordirary man; and especially to object to his conversation, that, though brilliant and fluent, there was rarely any thing in it which could be carried away!

An attack so unjust and so arrogant leads naturally to comparisons, which it could be easy to follow out to the signal discomfiture of the party attacking. But without going beyond what is thus forced upon our notice,

On all these points, the "Table Talk ” of his poetical contemporary appears to us to present a most mortifying contrast; and to render back merely the image of a moody mind, incapable of mastering its own imagin ings, and constantly seduced by them, or by a misdirected ambition, to attempt impracti cable things:-naturally attracted by dim paradoxes rather than lucid truths, and preferring, for the most part, the obscure and neglected parts of learning to those that are useful and clear-marching, in short, at all times, under the exclusive guidance of the Pillar of Smoke-and, like the body of its original followers, wandering all his days in the desert, without ever coming in sight of the promised land.

Consulting little at any time with any thing but his own prejudices and fancies, he seems. in his latter days, to have withdrawn altogether from the correction of equal minds: and to have nourished the assurance of his own infallibility, by delivering mystical oracles from his cloudy shrine, all day long, to a small set of disciples, to whom neither question nor interruption was allowed. The result of this necessarily was, an excaerbation of all the morbid tendencies of the mind; a daily increasing ignorance of the course of opinions and affairs in the world, and a proportional confidence in his own dogmas and dreams, which might have been shaken, at least, if not entirely subverted, by a closer contact with the general mass of intelligence. Unfortunately this unhealthful training (peculiarly unhealthful for such a constitution) produced not merely a great eruption of ridicu lous blunders and pitiable prejudices, but

seems at last to have brought on a confirmed purpose than to give effect to the enlightened and thoroughly diseased habit of uncharitable- and deliberate will of the community. To ness, and misanthropic anticipations of cor- enforce these doctrines his whole life was ruption and misery throughout the civilised devoted; and though not permitted to comworld. The indiscreet revelations of the work plete either of the great works he had proto which we have alluded have now brought jected, he was enabled to finish detached to light instances, not only of intemperate portions of each, sufficient not only fully to abuse of men of the highest intellect and develope his principles, but to give a clear most unquestioned purity, but such predic- view of the whole design, and to put it in the tions of evil from what the rest of the world power of any succeeding artist to proceed has been contented to receive as improve- with the execution. Look now upon the other ments, and such suggestions of intolerant and side of the parallel. Tyrannical Remedies, as no man would believe could proceed from a cultivated intellect of the present age-if the early history of this particular intellect had not indicated an inherent aptitude for all extreme opinions, -and prepared us for the usual conversion of one extreme into another.

Mr. Coleridge, too, was an early and most ardent admirer of the French Revolution; but the fruits of that admiration in him were, not a reasoned and statesmanlike apology for some of its faults and excesses, but a resolution to advance the regeneration of mankind at a still quicker rate, by setting before their eyes the pattern of a yet more exquisite form of society! And accordingly, when a fullgrown man, he actually gave into, if he did not originate, the scheme of what he and his friends called a Pantisocracy-a form of society in which there was to be neither law nor government, neither priest, judge, nor magistrate-in which all property was to be in common, and every man left to act upon his own sense of duty and affection!

And it is worth while to mark here also, and in respect merely of consistency and ultimate authority with mankind, the advantage which a sober and well-regulated understanding will always have over one which claims to be above ordinances; and trusting either to an erroneous opinion of its own strength, or even to a true sense of it, gives itself up to its first strong impression, and sets at defiance all other reason and authority. Sir James Mackintosh had, in his youth, as This fact is enough:-And whether he afmuch ambition and as much consciousness of terwards passed through the stages of a Jacopower as Mr. Coleridge could have: But the bin, which he seems to deny-or a hotheaded utmost extent of his early aberrations (in his Moravian, which he seems to admit,-is really Vindicia Gallica) was an over estimate of the of no consequence. The character of his unprobabilities of good from a revolution of derstanding is settled with all reasonable men: violence; and a much greater under-estimate As well as the authority that is due to the of the mischiefs with which such experiments anti-reform and anti-toleration maxims which are sure to be attended, and the value of set- he seems to have spent his latter years in tled institutions and long familiar forms. Yet, venting. Till we saw this posthumous publithough in his philanthropic enthusiasm he did cation, we had, to be sure, no conception of miscalculate the relative value of these op- the extent to which these compensating maxposite forces (and speedily admitted and rec-ims were carried; and we now think that few tified the error), he never for an instant disputed the existence of both elements in the equation, or affected to throw a doubt upon any of the great principles on which civil society reposes. On the contrary, in his earliest as well as his latest writings, he pointed steadily to the great institutions of Property and Marriage, and to the necessary authority of Law and Religion, as essential to the being of a state, and the well-being of any human society. It followed, therefore, that when disappointed in his too sanguine expectations from the French Revolution, he had nothing to retract in the substance and scope of his opinions; and merely tempering their announcement, with the gravity and caution of maturer years, he gave them out again in his later days to the world, with the accumulated authority of a whole life of consistency and study. At no period of that life, did he fail to assert the right of the people to political and religious freedom; and to the protection of just and equal laws, enacted by representatives truly chosen by themselves: And he never uttered a syllable that could be construed into an approval, or even an acquiescence in persecution and intolerance; or in tne maintenance of authority for any other

of the Conservatives (who were not originally Pantisocratists) will venture to adopt them. Not only is the Reform Bill denounced as the spawn of mere wickedness, injustice, and ignorance; and the reformed House of Commons as "low, vulgar, meddling, and sneering at every thing noble and refined," but the wise and the good, we are assured, will, in every country, "speedily become disgusted with the Representative form of government, brutalized as it is by the predominance of democracy, in England, France, and Belgium !"' And then the remedy is, that they will recur to a new, though, we confess, not very comprehensible form, of "Pure Monarchy, in which the reason of the people shall become efficient in the apparent Will of the King!" Moreover, he is for a total dissolution of the union with Ireland, and its erection into a separate and independent kingdom. He is against Negro emancipation-sees no use in reducing taxation-and designates Malthus' demontration of a mere matter of fact by a redundant accumulation of evidence, by the polite and appropriate appellation of "a lie;" and represents it as more disgraceful and abominable than any thing that the weakness and wickedness of man have ever before given birth to