priety, from which the addresses of Mr. Erskine were not altogether free, and of which some others of our advocates are apt to be guilty. Like his celebrated countryman, too, Mr. Phillips appears to our colder taste, to be rather too fond of mixing witty allusions with the more impressive parts of his address. But, unlike him, his imagination seems always on the full stretch to say something smart, or fine, without troubling himself to reflect whether it will at all serve the cause which he is engaged to plead. Such, for instance, is the following annunciation of the defendant's name: "His name, Gentlemen, is William "Peter Baker Dunstanville Sterne: one would think he had "epithets enough, without adding to them the title of Adul"terer."

And such too is the laboured but not very intelligible, nor most apposite eulogium upon Lord Erskine, avowedly introduced by the advocate into his speech, to "gratify himself," (p. 28.); and sure we are that in connection with his brief, it could answer no other purpose. Nor could any thing surely but this desire to exhibit the orator, rather than his cause, have induced him to put together such a rhodomontade as this:

"With the serpent's wile, and the serpent's wickedness, he stole into the Eden of domestic life; poisoning all that was pure, polluting all that was lovely, defying God, destroying man; a dæmon in the disguise of virtue, a herald of hell in the paradise of innocence."

The same observation will apply to the following sublimely unintelligible metaphor:

"God forbid, that by a villain's wile, or a villain's wickedness, the solace of that artery torn from his heart-strings, he should be taught how to appreciate the woe of others in the dismal solitude of his own."

It may perhaps be thought, that the preceding observations are more severe than so early an effort of a young orator could possibly demand, or should have received at our hands. To this we answer, that had the admirers of that early effort been less extravagant in their commendation, we should easily have been induced to be more sparing in our censure. But when a speech, such as we have honestly described this to be, is vauntingly characterised as the most brilliant specimen of oratory ever delivered in a court of justice;" when it is publicly advertized in the newspapers, and placarded at the door of every little stationer's shop, in which it may be bought for sixpence, as "a master-piece of eloquence, which ought to be read by every husband, wife, son, and daughter, in the kingdom," it is high time, for the credit of the profession to which the orator belongs; it is high time, for the correction of the public taste, that the NO. XI. Aug. Rev. VOL. II. T

truth of these pretensions should be examined, and their presumption pointed out. It is, therefore, to the injudicious encomiums of his friends, that Mr. Phillips is indebted for a comparison, to which, had not they themselves made it, we should never have thought of subjecting him.

It must not, however, be imagined, that because we have placed its faults in so strong a light, we can discover in this speech no marks of genius, no traces of genuine eloquence. Of the former, there are many; and indeed several of the passages we have transcribed exhibit errors, into which none but a man of genius could have fallen. Of the latter, several might be produced but few, perhaps, with which the defects we have endeavoured to point out, and to trace to their source, do not largely mingle. The opening of the speech, for instance, is dignified, but unassuming; appropriate, but striking; and preferable, perhaps, on the whole, to that either of Mr. Erskine, or Mr. Curran for the former begins in too high a tone, and the latter is somewhat too argumentative. But our readers will observe, that the orator has scarcely got through three sentences, before he abandons the simply eloquent strain of his exordium, for that vitiated style of florid expression, and extravagant metaphor, of which we have had so much reason to complain. The following are the four first sentences of the speech:

"In this case I am of Counsel for the Plaintiff, who has deputed me, with the kind concession of my much more efficient Colleagues, to detail to you the story of his misfortunes. In the course of a long friendship which has existed between us, originating in mutual pursuits, and cemented by mutual attachment, never until this instaut did I feel any thing but pleasure in the claims which it created, or the duty which it imposed. In selecting me, however, from this bright array of Learning and of Eloquence, I cannot help being pained at the kindness of a partiality which forgets its interest in the exercise of its affection, and confides the task of practised wisdoin to the uncertain guidance of youth and inexperience. He has thought, perhaps, that Truth needed no set phrase of speech; that misfortunes should not veil the furrows which its tears had burned, or hide, under the decorations of an artful drapery, the heart-rent heavings with which its bosom throbbed: he has surely thought that, by contrasting mine with the powerful talents selected by his antagonist, he was giving you a proof that the appeal he made was to your reason, not to your feelings; to the integrity of your hearts, not the exasperation of your passions."

The character of the Plaintiff is sketched in a manner well calculated to prejudice the Jury in his favour; a manner which, had Mr. Phillips continued through the statement of his case, we should have had reason to praise, instead of censuring. That of the Defendant is more overcharged than we could have

wished it to be; yet, perhaps, it is on the whole one of the least exceptionable parts of the speech. We shall therefore make one extract from it, as we conceive it to be as fair a specimen of Mr. Phillips's best style as we could possibly select:

"Of his character I know but little; and I am sorry that I know so much. If I am instructed rightly, he is one of those vain and vapid coxcombs, 'whose vices tinge the frivolity of their follies with something of a more odious character than ridicule. With just head enough to contrive crime, but not heart enough to feel for its consequences; one of those fashionable insects, that folly has painted, and fortune plumed, for the annoyance of our atmosphere; dangerous alike in their torpidity and their animation; infesting where they fly, and poisoning where they repose."

The flight on ambition, as it has not inaptly been styled by a brother critic, with whose opinions our own do not often coincide, we shall not transcribe, precisely because we consider it one of the most faulty passages, which the whole speech affords. In fact it out-herods Herod.

Here then we bring to a close an article, which would not have been of half the length that it is, but that we were fearful the reception which this speech has met with might operate unfavourably upon those young men, who are preparing themselves for the profession, in which Mr. Phillips has commenced his career with such extraordinary eclat; but in which, such a style of eloquence as he employs, will never obtain for any one more than a momentary reputation. Of that gentleman we know nothing, but that he is the author of a poem that does equal credit to his genius and his patriotism; that whilst pursuing his professional studies in this country, he neglected no opportunity of improving his time and his talents; and that he has recently entered on the practice of his profession with every prospect of ample remuneration for all his past exertions.

ART. X.-Postscript to a Letter to the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. By the EARL of ELGIN. 8vo. pp. 32.

THE noble author of the pamphlet before us, justly congratulates himself on having derived the principal grounds of his defence from the very work which first preferred an accusation against him. Without intending to pay any compliment to our own sagacity, we may be allowed to observe, that the circum

stance of our having anticipated his lordship in nearly the whole of the animadversions he has thought proper to make on the statement of his accuser, is a corroboration of the correctness of his deductions; since, without any other evidence before us than that which his adversaries furnished, we have arrived at precisely the same conclusions as he has done; and this too, by a process differing little from that which he has adopted, except in our having gone more fully into the inquiry. There are still, however, a few minor points on which our limits would not, a month ago, allow us to dwell; and to these we now briefly recur.

First, with respect to the condition in which the property sent from Athens reached Constantinople. Lord Elgin points cut a method of bringing the point to an issue, which had not escaped our notice; though it seems never to have presented itself to the mind of the reverend gentleman, who has so deep an interest in its decision.

"There is one person," says his lordship," who can, if he pleases, distinctly ascertain, at least, what part of these effects was saved from the shipwreck. It appears that the magistrates of Coutali delivered to Papa Simeon a certificate touching the effects saved,' and which was 'delivered into the hands of Mr. Spencer Smith, by the said P. Simeon, on his arrival at Constantinople. Let this document be produced, and it will shew whether the whole contents of the Athenian inventories reached Constantinople."

Why it was not produced and printed in the voluminous appendix to the Remains, Mr. R. Tweddell, and Mr. Spencer Smythe, could, we have no doubt, if they thought proper, inform us. Perhaps it was for the same reason that only one solitary letter of the latter gentleman's important, and, as we are led to believe, extensive correspondence with Mr. Tweddell, Senior, has been allowed a place in that valuable collection of well-selected documents. Had they been so printed, Mr. Tweddell would have been spared the following just animadversion on a line of procedure, which would seem to have been framed upon any rule rather than upon that golden one of the faith of which he is a regularly appointed teacher.

"There is not a more unpleasant circumstance in the conduct of this reverend gentleman, than the liberties he has taken with the documents, on which he has brought his charge against me. This correspondence with Mr. Smith, as well as my own letters, ure suppressed. Mr. Thornton's letters are printed imperfectly; and his own, as I have elsewhere shewn, (Letter, p. 25. note,) are wilfully misstated." p. 13.

To this note of Lord Elgin's we would add, that the breaks in Mr. Thornton's correspondence, marked by asterisks, most

unfortunately occur in those very places where the writer begins to speak of his lordship's conduct; respecting which he ought to have been allowed "to speak out all that he did know," if allowed to speak at all. But Mr. Tweddell might have thought that it would be advantageous to him to appear, at least, tender of his lordship's character: yet if this had really been the case, there are many passages in his book which he would have done wisely to have suppressed, had he not been indifferent to the little circumstance of being called on to answer for their publication "before our lord the King, at Westminster,”—as we have heard it whispered he is not unlikely soon to be.

As we are on the subject, we would just observe en passant, that the noble lord against whom this "great book was made," seems not disposed to leave Mr. Tweddell in full possession of all the laurels with which the author of such an elaborate work might fancy himself entitled to adorn his brow. Indeed he expressly assigns him a certain ex-envoy as a coadjutor, in a passage which we shall transcribe, as a certain society print their books," without note or comment."

"There is abundant evidence throughout this volume, that Mr. Smith largely shares with Mr. Tweddell the honours of authorship. It will hardly, I think, be denied, that the review of Mr. Thornton's book in the Naval Chronicle, and the long and learned dissertations on the law of diplomacy, are contributed by him. And the various notices which concern him personally, the censures cast on Government for their conduct to him, and the singular documents with regard to him, showing that he had been honoured with the personal enmity of Buonaparte, have no conceivable connection with the subject of the book, otherwise than as Mr. Smith was concerned in getting it up. And, if he was so, he is a party in the charge against me, not a witness in support of it." p. 15.

In the observations which his lordship makes on Mr. Smith's inattention to the property of his deceased friend, and on the spirit which seems to have dictated many of the remarks made by that gentleman at different stages of this unpleasant business, he has our full concurrence ;-we had indeed anticipated him in the expression of those sentiments.

It is painful to be obliged to say any thing that may seem to cast a reflection upon the dead. But to "de mortuis nil nisi bonum," we beg to add another humane maxim-de vivis nil It cannot but be among our primary duties to do

nisi verum.

"Je veux contre lui faire un jour un gros livre," said Voltaire anon some occasion or other; and if Mr. Tweddell has never read this threat, he has certainly acted in the spirit of it,