publication of which, in 1765, some of high name have dated the revival of a genuine feeling for true poetry in the public mind."— Hallam. "The first time I could scrape a few shillings together-which were not common occurrences with me- I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with half the enthusiasm."-Scott, in Lockhart's Life.

WILLIAM HAYLEY, 1745-1820, was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and, on leaving the University, retired to his estates in the country, and devoted himself to literary pursuits. He was the friend of Gibbon, the friend and biographer of Cowper, and was in high repute at the close of the last century as one of the literary magnates of England, "by popular election, king of the English poets."-Southey. It seems difficult at this day to realize that Hayley could ever have enjoyed such a reputation, so utterly has he now disappeared from the public view.

The following is a list of his principal publications: The Triumphs of Temper, a Poem, in 6 cantos, 4to; Poetical Epistle to an Eminent Painter, 4to; The Triumph of Music, a Poem, 4to; Essay on History, addressed to Gibbon, 4to; Essay on Epic Poetry, 4to; Essay on Old Maids, 3 vols., 12mo; Essay on Sculpture, 4to; Life, Works, and Letters of Cowper, 3 vols., 4to; Life of Milton, 4to., Life and Poetical Works of Milton, 3 vols., folio, etc.

Wakefield.

Gilbert Wakefield, 1756-1801, was a distinguished classical scholar and critic.

Wakefield was born in Nottingham, and educated at Cambridge. He entered the ministry of the Church of England, but afterwards abandoned episcopacy and became very bitter towards it, although he did not connect himself with any other religious body He was classical tutor in the Dissenting Academy at Warrington from 1779 to 1783; taught a private school at Nottingham from 1784 to 1790; in 1791-2 was classical tutor in the Dissenting Academy at Hackney. He wrote intemperately on ecclesiastical and political subjects, and in 1799 was imprisoned for a year for a seditious libel. The sympathy for him, growing out of this appearance of persecution, led his political friends to make up for him a purse of £5000.

Wakefield possessed accurate scholarship and acuteness of intellect, but lacked judgment; he was violent in his prejudices, and bitter in his animosities; and he rebelled against authority, equally in church, in state, and in letters. His writings are valuable, not for his conclusions, but for the sharpness of his criticism.

He published An Inquiry into the Expediency and Propriety of Social Worship, advocating its inexpediency and impropriety; An Inquiry concerning the Person of Jesus Christ; Evidences of Christianity; Examination of Paine's Age of Reason; Reply to Paine's Second Part of the Age of Reason; Translation of the New Testament; Poetical Translations from the Ancients; Memoirs of his Life, written by Himself. He gave critical editions of Virgil, Horace, Lucretius, and several of the Greek Plays.

"Gilbert Wakefield was a diligent, and, we believe, a sincere inquirer after truth,

but he was unhappily so framed in temper and habits of mind as to be nearly certain of missing it, in almost every topic of inquiry. He was as violent against the Greek accents as he was against the Trinity, and anathematized the final V as strongly as Episcopacy."- British Critic.

"He had the pale complexion and the mild features of a saint, was a most gentle creature in domestic life, and a very amiable man; but when he took part in political or religious controversy, his pen was dipped in gall.”—Henry Crabb Robinson.

Porson.

RICHARD PORSON, 1759-1808, was the greatest Greek scholar of his day.

Porson was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and was made Regius Professor of Greek in that University, but dissolved the connection on account of his scruples concerning the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Porson's memory was remarkable, and his application, when not interfered with by intemperance, was extraordinary. He was conversant with the entire range of Greek and Latin classics, and extremely well read in English and French. He did not display as much originality and breadth of view, perhaps, as his great predecessor, Bentley, but his power of verbal criticism was immense. In private intercourse, especially with the unlearned, he was amiable and unassuming; but he could not endure any affectation of learning, or unsound scholarship in any shape. Hence his literary centroversies are unpleasantly bitter in tone.

After leaving Cambridge he obtained the position of head librarian of the London Institution, and eked out his somewhat scanty salary by writing for the newspapers Porson's published works do not correspond to his reputation. His life was too irregular, and too much harassed by petty cares, to permit him to give forth any one work fully commensurate with his genius. He edited several Greek plays, and published Notes and Emendations to the Greek poets, and numerous scattered essays. His celebrated Letters to Archdeacon Travis, against the authenticity of 1 John v 7, were bitter but able, and exhausted the argument on that side of the question.

ROBERT POTTER, 1721-1804, a graduate of Cambridge and a clergyman of the Church of England, is favorably known as a translator from the Greek classics. His Translations of the Plays of Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles have all been in demand, and all have substantial merit, though by no means of a high order. Potter also published a volume of Poems, and some other works of less note.

STUART and REVETT.-James Stuart, 1713-1788, a classical scholar, and Nicholas Revett, 1720-1804, an accomplished architect and painter, connected themselves indissolubly with the memory of Grecian art and architecture, by their work, The Autiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated, in 4 vols., imp. fol., first published in 1762. In this great work, the first which gave exactness to our knowledge of Athenian antiquities, the literary portions were furnished by Stuart, and the drawings and measurements by Revett. It is popularly quoted as "Stuart and Revett's Athens."

JACOB BRYANT, 1715-1804, was a man of great learning and a voluminous writer on learned topics. He was tutor to the sons of the Duke of Marlborough, and had free access to the famous library at the Duke's castle of Blenheim. His most important work was one on the Ancient Mythology, 3 vols., 4to. He published Observations on

Various Parts of Ancient History, in which he joined issue with the greatest critics, Bentley, Grotius, Bochart, and Beza. He wrote also A Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures and the Truth of the Christian Religion; and many other works.

BENJAMIN BLAYNEY, D. D., 1801, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, had a high reputation as a Biblical critic, and was employed for many years in revising for the Clarendon Press the text of the Authorized Version of the Bible, with a view chiefly of eliminating typographical errors. His edition has been followed since as the standard in England. He wrote also a New Translation of Jeremiah and Zechariah, with Notes, after the manner of Lowth's Version of Isaiah, but not with equal success. He published a learned Dissertation on Daniel's Seventy Weeks, and a critical edition of the Samaritan Pentateuch. Blayney was not deficient in harmony, but he had not that exquisite taste, and acute discernment of poetical beauty, for which Lowth was distinguished."

Orme.

JAMES ELPHINSTON, 1721-1809, a Scotch schoolmaster, born in Edinburgh, exercised his vocation for a long time and with great favor, near London. Besides being intimate with Dr. Johnson and other literary celebrities, he dabbled a good deal in literature on his own account, and had a great fancy for reforming the spelling of the language. He made many attempts in this line, but found people just as obstinate on the subject then as they are now; no persuasions of the persevering Scotchman could make them see the beauty of writing proze, ov, boath, geniusses, Inglish, Lattin, etc. Reformers of this kind do not seem to see the enormous difficulty of getting a whole people to change a single word at any one's bidding. Language, indeed, changes continually; nothing is half so fluctuating. But the change is never made to order. Elphinston published Propriety Ascertained in her Picture, an explanation of his phonographic system; English Orthography Epitomized; Proprietie's Pocket Dictionary; Fifty Years' Correspondence between Geniusses of boath Sexes and James Elphinston, 8 vols.; Education, a Poem; A Poetical Version of Racine's Redemption, etc., etc.

Walker.

John Walker, 1732-1807, a celebrated elocutionist of London, is widely known from his connection with the English Dictionary.

Walker was born at Colney-Hatch, Middlesex, and was educated a Presbyterian, but became afterwards a zealous Catholic. He was in early life an actor. At the age of thirty-five he left the stage, and engaged in teaching, which after two years he abandoned and devoted himself to public lectures on Elocution. These he delivered with great applause in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Walker had a quick ear, and was a careful observer of the sounds of the language; and by taking note of the way in which the several words were uttered by educated people, and by the best public speakers, he was enabled to give a standard for the pronunciation of English words. His Pronouncing Dictionary became an authority, not on the ground of his dictum, but because he had carefully and judiciously selected for each word or set of words that pronunciation which was used by genteel and educated people. It was an exact exhibit, prepared by an expert, of the actual

pronunciation of English words by good society. The work was so well done, that it helped greatly to fix what is in itself arbitrary and fluctuating, and Walker's pronunciation has continued accordingly without material change to the present day almost a century from the time when he began his work. Walker was not a lexicographer. He was simply an orthoepist and elocutionist. All that he contributed to the Dictionary was to mark the pronunciation. His publications were: A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language; A Key to the Pronunciation of the Greek and Latin Proper Names, and also to the Scripture Proper Names; A Rhyming Dictionary; Elements of Elocution; Elocution taught, like Music, by Visible Signs; Rhetorical Grammar, etc.

Lindley Murray.

Lindley Murray, 1745-1826, holds about the same relation to English Grammar that Walker holds to the English Dictionary. Murray's Grammar was, to many generations of school-boys and school-girls, the court in the last resort on all questions of correct speaking and writing.

Murray, though an American by birth and education, is counted an English writer, as he became an Englishman by residence, and wrote all his works in England. He was born at Swatara, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was educated in Philadelphia, at an academy of the Society of Friends, to which body he belonged. He began as a lawyer; abandoned law for the counting-house; retired early with a competence; and then lived for some years on the Hudson, three miles above New York. In 1784, being a little over forty, he removed to England, and remained there the residue of his days, living at Holdgate, a mile from York.

Murray was a devout Christian, and he had the benevolence and the practical sense characteristic of the Society to which he belonged. The following are his principal works: The Power of Religion on the Mind in Retirement, Affliction, and at the Approach of Death; The Duty and Benefit of a Daily Perusal of the Holy Scriptures: A Compendium of Religious Faith and Practice, designed for Young Persons of the Society of Friends; and some other pieces, all of which were characterized by sobriety and good sense, and passed through many editions. But his main works were his English Grammar and his English Reader. These, though marked by no special originality or scholarship, yet by their general correctness, and by their being pioneers in the ground which they covered, acquired a prodigious influence which is not even yet spent.

Murray was no philologist, and no scholar in the proper acceptation of the term; he was not even a grammarian, as the word is now understood. But he had a large fund of common sense, and he reduced to a practical form the grammatical principles advanced first by Wallis and afterwards by Bishop Lowth. As English Gram. mar before that time had only begun to be a common study, scholars previously getting their knowledge of grammar from their study of Latin, Murray's book came in to gupply a want just beginning to rise; and it acquired, and for a long time held, ex. clusive possession of the field. His Grammar was in various forms, from 2 vols., 8vo,

down to small abridgments in 18mo, but the one chiefly in use was the 12mo, with which most readers are acquainted.

Murray's English Reader, with the Introduction, and the Sequel, had an enormous sale, both in England and America. Indeed, they are still extensively used in both countries, and probably always will be used. A better selection has never been made for such a purpose, and the books deserved the popularity which they enjoyed. They cannot adequately represent English literature at this day, for many of the best things which exist in the language were not yet written when Murray's compilations were made. But up to the year 1800, these Readers contain the very marrow and fatness of what English literature had to give.

ROBERT HENRY, D. D., 1718-1790, a Scotch Presbyterian divine, educated at the University of Oxford, is chiefly known as an author by his History of Great Britain, in 6 vols., 4to, of which the last volume was edited by Laing after Henry's death. The history embraces the time from the invasion under Julius Cæsar to the death of Henry VIII. It was continued by James Petit Andrews down to the accession of James I. Charles Knight has based his own excellent history upon Henry's plan slightly modi fied. Henry's history embodies the labor of thirty years of anxious research; the author has succeeded in making it a vast repository of information, but his style is dry, and his treatment too unphilosophical to entitle him to a place by the side of Hume, Gibbon, and Hallam.

WILLIAM RUSSELL, 1741-1793, a native of Scotland, removed in 1767 to London, where he was employed in various printing offices as corrector and literary manager. His leisure moments were passed in the composition of numerous miscellaneous works, chiefly of an historical nature. His poems and tales have fallen into neglect. He is known almost exclusively by his History of Modern Europe, down to 1648, in 5 vols., Svo. This work lays no claim to originality of investigation, but is a mere compilation. As such it still retains its value, although many of its statements and views should be corrected by the light of recent discoveries.

WILLIAM TYTLER, 1711-1792, a distinguished Scotch lawyer, father of Lord Woodhouselee, and grandfather of the author of the History of Scotland, is chiefly known in the literary world by his famous Historical and Critical Inquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots, one of the ablest arguments ever made in favor of the Queen. Mr. Tytler was also a man of general culture and an accomplished musician.

WILLIAM GILPIN, 1724-1804, a clergyman of the Church of England, wrote many works, partly religious and partly descriptive and picturesque. Being an accomplished artist, he illustrated his works of the latter kind by drawings of his own, besides the etchings furnished by his brother Sawery Gilpin, who was a professional artist.

The following are Gilpin's principal works: Forest Scenery, 2 vols., 8vo; Northern Tour, 2 vols.; Southern Tour; Western Tour; Eastern Tour; Scottish Tour, 2 vols. ; River Wye; Essays on Picturesque Beauty, etc.; Life of Bernard Gilpin; of Latimer; of Wyckliffe; of Cranmer; Lives of the Reformers, 2 vols.; Lectures on the Catechism of the Church of England; Exposition of the New Testament, 2 vols.; Sermons to a Country Congregation, 4 vols.; Dialogues on the Amusements of the Clergy.

"Gilpin has described, in several justly esteemed Tours, the picturesque beauties