cularly recurred during the solitary state of our academical secession, in which our social circle has been for the most part contracted within the narrow bounds of our two families. However, with business, books, a wife and children, I should be unreasonable to complain of ennui; and I have taken the most effectual method to keep it off by being pretty fully employed in my grand scheme, which goes on briskly and prosperously. Dr. Fothergill, who has been down here, approves it and offers me his assistance; and my more intimate friends of the faculty all encourage me to go on with spirit.

"I have lately been writing the life of a very extraordinary man, Sir Thomas Browne, the famous Norwich physician, and author of Religio Medici. Did you ever read this singular book? If not, I desire you and my sister would immediately do it and give me your opinions concerning it. It has all the spirit and eccentricity of uncommon genius."

In September 1776 he thus records the progress of his plans:-" I have a terrible heap of old books to look over, and need not want a fresh supply when they are done with; for Dr. Darwin of Litchfield has sent me word that if I will send an ass with a pair of paniers, he will load him with old books of physic, bought at two-pence a pound.

"I have just finished for our composition club, a paper of Remarks on Inconsistencies in some of Shakespeare's characters. What heresy! you will say. It is a sort of bold stroke, I must confess; but I was provoked past endurance at finding some of the Scotch writers, Richardson in particular, quoting Shakespeare for any fact in the history of the human mind like gospel; and philosophizing away upon any sentiment of this poor player's as if he had all the schools of all the philosophers, ancient and modern, in his head. Shakespeare is a poet,-let him not be degraded into a mere moralist. I can lose myself in ecstasy in his enchanted island or forest of Arden, but I cannot allow his Richard to be a true Macchiavel, or his Hamlet a model of virtuous feeling."

The Life of Agricola had been designed by Mr. Aikin partly as a proof of his own skill as a translator, partly as a specimen of "a Warrington-printed classic," and the accuracy with which it had been executed by Mr. Eyres, encouraged him to try another experiment of the same kind. It was his fondness for natural history which on this occasion directed his choice of an author, and produced the plan thus unfolded in a letter to Mr. Barbauld.

"Did you ever read Pliny's Natural History? I have a scheme, as indeed I am never without

one, of selecting some of the more entertaining and unexceptionable parts of his account of animals, of which there is a good deal very elegant and pleasing, and making a school-book out of them. My father and several friends approve of it, if it can be made worth while. But Pliny is a difficult author, and many schoolmasters would not perhaps trust themselves with him. If this objection were obviated, to be sure the subject of the book, teaching things as well as words, and things more accommodated to the taste and capacity of boys than the general subjects of schoolbooks, would make the publication very desirable. Pray give me your free opinion upon the matter."

The selection appeared soon after in a thin duodecimo; and Mr. Aikin thought himself fortunate in prevailing upon his learned father to contribute a short Latin preface, composed with such fullness of meaning and such an elegant purity of language, as to have called forth extraordinary commendations from a living scholar of first-rate eminence. A selection of entire pieces from Seneca, and a complete edition of the works of Statius, were afterwards printed for the use of schools by Eyres under Mr. Aikin's superintendence.

An Essay on the application of Natural History to Poetry, printed in 1777, was Mr. Aikin's next

contribution to the amusement and instruction of the public;-to please and to profit together was indeed the general aim of his writings, and the mode by which he effected this double purpose is well exemplified in the instance before us.

The sciences which he chiefly pursued,—those founded on experiment and the investigation of nature,-unlike the mathematics and the more abstruse questions of metaphysics, easily lend themselves to an alliance with polite literature; they supply rhetoric with metaphors and illustrations, and poetry with simile and description, and derive lustre in return from a moderate and judicious employment of the ornaments of cultivated diction. This he early perceived; and nothing is more observable in a large portion of his works than the blending of various branches of natural knowledge with the elegancies of literature; while the spirit of philosophical criticism presiding over the whole, deduces its principles and suggests its reflections, now from the discoveries of science and now from the creations of genius.

The Essay is dedicated to Mr. Pennant, from whose works its original idea and some of its most valuable materials are stated to be derived. It begins with taking notice of the frequent complaint of the general insipidity of modern poetry; and rejecting the discouraging theory of a general

decay of genius, finds the solution of the fact in that prevalent imitation of preceding poets which takes place, among their successors, of original observation and the exercise of invention. Novelty of subject, he pronounces to be the present requisite, and he recommends that it should be sought among "the grand and beautiful objects which nature every where profusely throws around us; and which, though the most obvious store of new materials to the poet, is that which of all others he has most sparingly touched." In illustration of the habit of successive copying which has long prevailed, he adduces several instances, from writers of high name; but speedily quitting this more beaten ground, he proceeds to offer examples of another fault, the vagueness and indistinctness, and sometimes the inconsistency and absurdity, which the neglect of the study of actual nature has introduced into poetical description. A discussion follows of the "false representations of nature which ancient error or fable first introduced, but which, having been made the foundation of ingenious figures and pleasing allusions, the poets of every age have adopted." These, not without some graceful expressions of reluctance and regret, are at length condemned; on the principle, that "nothing can be really beautiful which has not truth for its basis," and on the further consi