ceive from the state of the physical constitution in infancy, there is this most curious assertion, boldly made and confidently left, as if it were of a nature to make its way instantly, without assistance, into the rank of self-evident truths. 'A temperament of ease and health, like the savage state, opposing no obstacles, or presenting few objects, will give the mind little opportunity for exertion or enlargement!' The section on childhood is written with more perspicuity and liveliness than are usual with our author. It is a sensible miscellaneous exhibition of the ways in which impressions are made on opening minds, in which their preferences are fixed and their characters take a determinate form. The direct task, however, of instructing the biographer, is kept in hand with so little strictness in these amplified illustrations, that the writer's own perceptions admonish him into a kind of apology, in the form of professing that a main object of the book is to make suggestions for the improvement of education. The leading purpose, that of forming an accomplished biographer, might have been more effectually served in this and the subsequent sections, by suggesting instructions for discerning the indications of the peculiar and distinctive form in which the general attributes of childhood, adolescence, youth, &c. &c. are modified in an individual, who is to be traced and described through these stages. An individual, important enough to be made formally the subject of a biographical exercise so laborious and scientific as our author enjoins, may be presumed to be very greatly distinguished from ordinary men; and therefore the biographer would be but very poorly qualified for his office by merely knowing as he carries his hero through his childhood, youth, &c. how to describe the ordinary phenomena of the human nature in those stages respectively

In leading the biographer's studies through the period of adolescence, the essayist diverges into a loose discussion of the subject of education, and gets himself involved in the old litigation between the advocates of the domestic discipline and those of the public school.-The division purporting to be allotted to the topic of youth, considered in relation to the right conduct of a biographical memoir, is occupied with the impressions and tendencies which the character may receive from the accidental exterior distinctions of the person, its great or little stature, its perfection and gracefulness, or its deformity.

There remain several chapters of which we have reported no more than the titles. But on looking back over the exY OL. XI.

R

tent of space we have already filled, we are imperatively admonished to make a short cut towards a conclusion, by a few general remarks on the quality of the book.

And, it must be acknowledged not to be the production of quite an ordinary mind. It is a mind strongly intent on thinking, and not satisfied with the superficial view of the matters in consideration. It is eagerly reaching, though with defective perception and unskilful aim, at what is called the philosophy of the subject. It has been seized with a kind of passion for the subject of biography, has very long dwelt and mused upon it, has lapsed towards it by an involuntary and invincible tendency and attraction, through every part of an extensive course of reading, in several languages, and has gradually become haunted, and at length possessed, with the idea that the subject has a magnitude which has never been adequately recognized, that it has never received a duly solemn and systematical investigation, that it is capable of a grand developement of principles and outlines, and that it ought long since to have received, or that at least it is high time it should now at last receive, the dignity and organization of a regular and splendid science. A mind quite incompe tent to carry such a lofty notion into practical effect, might, nevertheless, after a long and interested and busy occupation about the subject, during which it combined with its own workings: a large quantity of reading, of a nature related or applicable to that subject, be expected to afford some serviceable suggestions. Accordingly the present work may be perceived to contain within its mass, in a crude elemental state, a certain portion of right sense about the mode of writing lives; and we should be glad to learn that other readers have found less difficulty than we have to reduce it to a palpable form.

We are perfectly clear of every feeling at variance with candour when we say that we have hardly ever, in proceeding through. a. long series of pages, beep less able than inthe present instance, to keep our minds in the consciousness of any thing like a clear and connected progress of thought. With a determined effort to force them into this state of consciousness, we have, in many parts of the book, gone over a page or section two or three times, but still in vain. There is no repelling or beguiling the impression of the prevailing character of the composition, as crude, indefinite, confused, disconnected, and therefore every way ineffective, in a very strange degree. To us it is wonderful, it is really very wonderful, how a scholar, a reader, we may presume an attentive one, of the very best authors, an ardent admirer

of the writings of Bacon, could let himself believe that the paragraphs and pages he was composing would convey into any human mind an orderly train of distinct prominent ideas. It is strange, too, that he should not have made the experiment on some intelligent honest friend, requesting that friend to give back with precision, in language of his own, the meaning of each sentence of a section and precisely the collective import of the whole. But even if there were no friend in the world to be consulted, what can have become of an author's own discernment, when he can deliberately reckon on illuminating the understandings of his readers by a composition like the following?

A set of disjointed passages, however lively in themselves and in the manner of their exhibition, does not constitute historical narration: they must be threaded together, to give continuity to the subject, and direction to the mind. How different soever the various incidents of life appear, they have their classes, their dependencies, and connections The ordinary acts of producing these relations, or of generating one from another have such a definite identity, that a true biographer may apply to his terms of connection with such precision, as to derive very great assistance towards the devolving of causes, as well as towards the tracing of successive effects. Whereas, from the writer's ignorance of those hidden links which connect events with agency, and those general elements which impress similitude on the human character, the truth of biographical representation is distorted, and all attempts at characteristical investigation are defeated or confounded.' p. 17.

Every discovery gives delight; and discoveries of principles, with facility of application, are the parents of scientific affection. But where much is projected, execution, as well as improvement, will depend upon the nature and energy of the powers that are brought to the undertaking; and, therefore, we find, amongst this description of writers, (writers who undertake great numbers of lives collectively,) different degrees of this spirit, (the peculiar biographical spirit) from the inanimate though useful sketches of Anthony Wood, to the luminous and orderly delineations of Melchior Adam.' p. 23.

The clear and unsophisticated influence of pure religion can only direct the mind to an ardent love of truth, and the exercise of impartial justice. That mild spirit which regards the widespread family of mankind with equal eye, and whose bountiful precepts inculcated liberal benevolence, must dispose its genuine votaries, each to enjoy and practise his own established ritual, without arraigning or disturbing the convictions and observances held by others. But religion is a sentiment of feeling as well as an exercise of reasoning; and, beside the abstractions of intellect and inculcations of doctrine, it has a reality and interest sufficient to excite the sensibility and raise the passions of the

human heart. When passions and their objects are formed, every property and appendage of those objects will be considered as inseparable from them, and claim a proportionable share of affectionate regard. Though agreed in essential points, men often differ as to the attributes and modifications, &c. p. 41.

-Accumulating anecdotes-gratifies those who look for the reiteration of amusement, but who would feel fatigued by the attention requisite to follow a series of facts and events, collected by patient observation, strung together by the laws of agency and consequence, and by the progressive principles which influence the direction and force of human action.' p. 59.

In our contemplation of biography--whether the complete work be laid before us, to undergo a process of analysis and study, or that the several parts are collected together, in order to composition and display, the doctrine of pursuits will be the main object to claim our attention-will be the regulating principle to be applied to the purpose of either distribution or construction. In this point of view, pursuits are to be considered according to the succession of appropriate advances to a determinate end, or as taking, by induction, the result of a number of such cases, as a mean of direction towards the attainment of any general ob ject.' p. 311.

The work is continually aiming at something abstracted, comprehensive, or-for there is no avoiding the abused epithet -philosophical. Every trifling matter requires a solemn consultation of general principles; every little operation is to be performed, with measured movements, under the superintendence of science. The biographer, instead of going to his business in the direct and simple way of just relating the most important portion of what can be known about an interesting individual, with here and there a pertinent general observation, is to surround himself with an apparatus of systems, logical, ethical, metaphysical; to work by synoptical tables; and, as it appears to us, to perform the whole matter fully as much in the way of an illustrative exercise on a theory of human nature, and an exhibition of the method of handling logical tools, as for the purpose of giving a piece of useful or entertaining personal history. Doubtless, one of the utilities of writing and reading the lives of individuals will arise from the illustrations which those individual examples may furnish of the general qualities of the species; and also, it will be of advantage to the writer and the student to keep in sight and in use some of the plainest rules of logic, both in making inferences to the general nature of man from these individual instances, and in applying principles derived from what is known of that general nature in judging of these individuals. But the strain of the Essay might almost tempt the reader to suppose that human nature must

be some newly discovered substance in this quarter of the universe; that the individuals in the hands of the biographer were a few rare fragments, procured with difficulty as samples for analysis; and that the whole system and machinery of philosophizing, theoretical and experimental, were to be put in requisition on so extraordinary an occasion.

This ostentation of philosophy maintains an almost unremitting and overwhelming parade of scientific phraseology. The author appears to have a horror of the diction of plain sense; and there is no relief or escape from elements, principles, generalizations, combinations, progressions, inductions. This however might be endured, perhaps, if the composition possessed the appropriate virtues of a scientific dialect, brevity, precision, and clearness, the only virtues which could atone for such an artificial and schismatical separation from the general mode of expression. But here it is as prolix and indefinite, and cloudy, for the most part, as it is artificial and academical. The word progression' recurs so often as to excite apprehension and antipathy. And it has the effect of a satire on the general tenour of the book; for we have met, we think, with no instance of a treatise more completely failing in any thing like an advancing order of distinct successive parts; more completely holding itself in stagnation by mixing and confusing its topics all together, with a consequent excessive repetition of its doctrinal positions and references.

We transcribe, nearly at random, a slight specimen of the philosophical ostentation of the style.

Country, sex, temperament, condition, associates, and pursuits, considered generally with the habits, opinions, principles, and tendencies effected by them through the different stages of life, are the elements of which the science of universal biography is composed. Advancing from analysis, by induction, the professor assumes a high and dignified station. Applying the philosophy of the intellectual and active powers of man to the varieties of situation and progression of events, on a general scale, principles will be formed, and elements may be extracted, which, directed to the local condition or given circumstances of an individual character, will not only serve to place it in any adjusted point of view, but may also assist in disclosing the latent and less obvious working of those springs which set the whole machinery in motion.' p. 86.

It seems apparent, then, that the philosophy of character must be founded on actual observations,-directed precisely to facts— those especially of personal condition, manners, tendencies, and sentiments; to the view of the moral and intellectual faculties; and to the course of voluntary action, in its progressive series of motive, means, attainment and consequence. And the philosophy