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 _UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL
                              KNOWLEDGE._




                                  THE
                         GALLERY OF PORTRAITS:
                                  WITH
                                MEMOIRS.

                              VOLUME VII.


                                LONDON:
                  CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.

                                 1837.

                  [PRICE ONE GUINEA, BOUND IN CLOTH.]




                                LONDON:

                  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,

                         Duke-Street, Lambeth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                       PORTRAITS AND BIOGRAPHIES
                       CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.


                                              Page.

                     1. Gustavus Adolphus         1

                     2. Marc Antonio Raimondi    10

                     3. Coke                     15

                     4. Gibbon                   25

                     5. Scaliger                 32

                     6. Penn                     39

                     7. De Thou                  49

                     8. Chatham                  55

                     9. Mozart                   66

                    10. Loyola                   73

                    11. Brindley                 81

                    12. Schiller                 87

                    13. Bentham                  97

                    14. Catherine II.           103

                    15. Defoe                   112

                    16. Hume                    121

                    17. De Witt                 129

                    18. Hampden                 137

                    19. Dr. Johnson             145

                    20. Jefferson               153

                    21. Wilberforce             162

                    22. Dr. Black               169

                    23. Bacon                   177

                    24. Sir Walter Scott        185

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.

  _From a Print by Paul Pontius, after a Picture by Van Dyck._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                            GUST. ADOLPHUS.


During the fourteenth, and the beginning of the fifteenth century,
Sweden, lying under vassalage to the crown of Denmark, suffered the
evils which commonly belong to that condition. Gustavus Vasa, after a
series of romantic adventures, established the independence of his
country, and was deservedly elected by the Swedish Diet, in 1523, to
wear its crown. The same kingdom to which he gave a place among free
states, his grandson, Gustavus Adolphus, raised from the obscurity of a
petty northern power, to rule in Germany, and to be the terror of the
Church of Rome.

The establishment of the Reformation was coeval with the independence of
Sweden; and a fundamental law forbade any future sovereign to alter the
national religion, or to admit Roman Catholics to offices of power and
trust. For infringing this principle, Sigismond, by election King of
Poland, the lineal successor of Gustavus Vasa, was set aside by the
Diet, and the crown was given to his father’s younger brother, Charles,
Duke of Sudermania. Charles died, and was succeeded by his son Gustavus
Adolphus, December 31, 1611; the high promise of whose youth induced the
States to abridge the period of minority, and admit him at once to the
exercise of regal power, though he had but just attained the age of
seventeen, being born December 9, 1594.

He had been trained up in the knowledge likely to be serviceable to a
king and a soldier. He spoke the Latin language, then a universal medium
of communication, with uncommon energy and precision; he conversed
fluently in French, Italian, and German; he had studied history,
political science, mathematics, and military tactics; and commencing
with the part of a musketeer, he had been made master, by practice, of
all the details of a soldier’s life. He was capable of very severe
application to abstruse study, and is said to have passed whole nights
in reading the military history of the ancients. He was of uncommon
stature and strength, and his constitution was early inured to labour
and endurance.

Gustavus’s situation, at his accession, was critical. The King of Poland
laid claim to his dominions, and Denmark and Muscovy were in arms
against him. The danger was most pressing on the side of Denmark; and
thither Gustavus’s first efforts were directed. But in Christian IV. he
had to contend with an able enemy, from whom he gained no advantage; and
after one unsuccessful campaign he accommodated the quarrel at the
expense of some concessions. In the war with Muscovy he was more
fortunate; and he reduced the Czar to purchase peace in 1617, by the
sacrifice of the provinces which border the Gulf of Finland and the
Baltic sea. During these years of warfare, Gustavus found leisure to
bestow attention upon internal improvements. He devoted much thought and
care upon strengthening the Swedish navy, esteeming that to be his
surest defence against invasion; he sought to encourage commerce; he
purified the administration of justice, by rendering judges less
dependant upon the crown, and by abridging the tediousness and expense
of lawsuits; and he laboured to devise means for increasing the revenue
by judicious arrangement, without adding to the burdens of the people.
Both in peace and war he received the most valuable assistance from his
zealous, faithful, and sagacious minister, the celebrated Oxenstiern.

In 1620 Gustavus travelled incognito through the chief towns of Germany.
At Berlin he formed acquaintance with Maria Eleonora, sister to the
Elector of Brandenburg, whom he espoused at Stockholm in November of the
same year. One daughter, the famous Christina, his successor, was the
offspring of this marriage.

The King of Poland’s enmity was not seconded by his ability. He
endeavoured in vain to shake the fidelity of Gustavus’s subjects, and he
tried the fortune of war with no better success. In the contests between
the cousins, which occurred in the first ten years of Gustavus’s reign,
the advantage was always on the side of Sweden. Gustavus was desirous of
peace, and forbore to press his superiority. But Sigismond’s hostility
was nourished and stimulated by the leading Catholic powers, Spain and
Austria; and he made so bad a return for this moderation, that in 1621
the war was renewed in a more determined manner, and in the course of
eight years Livonia, Courland, and Polish Prussia, were gradually
subjected to Sweden. During this time Gustavus was no careless spectator
of the Thirty Years’ War, which was raging in Germany. However well
inclined he might be to step forward as the defender of the Protestant
cause, he could not do so with effect while his exertions were demanded
in Poland; and though he made an offer of assistance to the Protestants
in 1626, it was clogged with conditions which induced them to decline
his proposals. But in 1629, under the mediation of France, he concluded
a truce for six years with Sigismond, retaining possession of the
conquered provinces; and being thus relieved from all fear of Poland,
and guaranteed against injury from Denmark by the interest of that
country in checking the progress of the Imperial arms, he found himself
qualified to take the decisive part which he had long desired in the
affairs of Germany. How far his determination was influenced by personal
and ambitious motives, how far it was due to patriotism and religious
zeal, it must be left to each inquirer to decide for himself. The crisis
was one of extreme importance: for the temporal rights of the whole
German empire were endangered by the inordinate and seemingly prosperous
ambition of the House of Austria; and the Protestant states in
particular had reason to apprehend the speedy destruction of their own,
and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic church. And if the
influence of the Emperor, Ferdinand II., supported by the papal
hierarchy re-established in its great power and rich benefices through
the north of Germany, were suffered unchecked to extend itself to the
Baltic sea, the liberties of Sweden and Denmark, and the very existence
of the Reformation on the Continent, seemed to be involved in no remote
danger. To pull down the power of Ferdinand and the Catholic League thus
became of vital moment to the King of Sweden. But though the Protestant
princes were ready to invoke his assistance in secret complaints, none
of them dared to conclude an open treaty with a distant prince, and a
kingdom hitherto obscure, and thus to incur the resentment of the
Emperor, whose formidable armies, anxious above all things for the
renewal of war and rapine, were at hand. Moreover, the jealousy and
selfishness of the chiefs of the Protestant union formed a greater
obstacle to the King of Sweden’s views, than even the weakness of their
individual states. Unable, therefore, to obtain the cordial and willing
co-operation of those who were linked to him by the bond of a common
interest, Gustavus had only the alternative to abandon them to their
fate and share the dangers which he sought to obviate, or to take the
equivocal and rarely defensible step of occupying their territories and
compelling their assistance, an unsolicited, though an honourable and
friendly, ally. He chose the latter.

The shortest apology for this determination, which as a matter of policy
was opposed by Oxenstiern, may be found in the substance of the king’s
answer to that minister’s objections, as it is abridged by Schiller in
his History of the Thirty Years’ War. “If we wait for the enemy in
Sweden, in losing a battle, all is lost: all, on the contrary, is gained
if we obtain the first success in Germany. The sea is large, and we have
extensive coasts to watch. Should the enemy’s fleet escape us, or our
own be beaten, it is not possible for us to prevent a landing. We must
therefore use all our efforts for the preservation of Stralsund. So long
as this harbour shall be in our power Ave shall maintain the honour of
our flag in the Baltic, and shall be able to keep up a free intercourse
with Germany. But in order to defend Stralsund we must not shut
ourselves up in Sweden; but must pass over with an army into Pomerania.
Speak to me then no more of a defensive war, by which we shall lose our
most precious advantages. Sweden herself must not behold the standards
of the enemy; and, if we are vanquished in Germany, it will still be
time enough to have recourse to your plan.”

The army which Gustavus carried into Germany consisted only of 15,000
men; but it was formidable from its bravery, its high discipline, and
the reliance which the general and the troops felt upon each other. “All
excesses,” we quote from Schiller, “were punished in a severe manner;
but blasphemy, theft, gaming, and duelling, met with a more severe
chastisement. The Swedish articles of war prescribed moderation; there
was not to be seen in the Swedish camp, even in the tent of the king,
either gold or silver. The general’s eye watched carefully over the
manners of the soldiers, while it en-flamed their courage in battle.
Every regiment must each morning and evening form itself in a circle
round its chaplain, and, in the open air, address prayers to the
Almighty. In all this the legislator himself served as a model. An
unaffected and pure piety animated the courage of his great mind.
Equally free from that gross incredulity which leaves without restraint
the ferocious movements of the barbarian, and the grovelling bigotry of
a Ferdinand, who abased himself in the dust before the Divinity, and yet
disdainfully trampled on the necks of mankind, in the height of his good
fortune, Gustavus was always a man and a Christian; amid all his
devotion, the hero and the king. He supported all the hardships of war
like the lowest soldier in his army; his mind was serene in the midst of
the most furious battle; his genius pointed out the results to him
beforehand; everywhere present, he forgot death which surrounded him,
and he was always found where there was the greatest danger. His natural
valour made him too often lose sight of what was due to the general, and
this great king terminated his life as a common soldier. But the coward
as well as the brave followed such a leader to victory, and not any of
the heroical actions which his example had created ever escaped his
penetrating eye. The glory of their sovereign inflamed the entire
Swedish nation with a noble confidence; proud of his king, the peasant
of Finland and Gothland joyfully gave up what his poverty could afford;
the soldier willingly shed his blood; and that elevated sentiment which
the genius of this single man gave to the nation survived him a
considerable time.”

Gustavus took a solemn farewell of the States of the kingdom, May 20,
1630, presenting to them his daughter Christina, as his heir and
successor. Adverse winds delayed his departure, and it was not till the
24th of June that he reached the coast of Pomerania. He disembarked his
army on the islands of Wollin and Usedom, at the mouth of the Oder, and
having taken possession of the strong town of Stettin on the same river,
established a sure footing on the continent, and secured his means of
retreat and communication with Sweden. To this proceeding he gained a
reluctant consent from the Duke of Pomerania, who, though wearied and
disgusted with the ravages of the Imperial troops, was unwilling to
commit himself in defence of that which still appeared the weaker cause.
But having no force to prevent the hostile, if he refused to warrant the
friendly, occupation of his country, he made a virtue of necessity, and
allied himself closely with the Swede.

Gustavus’s progress at first produced no uneasiness at Vienna: the
courtiers called him the snow-king, and said in derision that he would
melt in his progress southward. But in the first campaign he nearly
cleared Pomerania of the Imperialists; and he was strengthened by the
accession of the Duke of Mecklenburg, who, having been despoiled of his
territories in favour of Wallenstein, now openly raised troops in
support of the King of Sweden. As winter approached, the Imperialists
negotiated for a suspension of arms; but Gustavus replied, “The Swedes
are soldiers in winter as well as summer, and are not disposed to make
the peaceable inhabitants of the country support any longer than
necessary the evils of war. The Imperialists may do as they choose, but
the Swedes do not intend to remain inactive.”

Meanwhile he met with cold support from the Protestant princes, in whose
cause he had taken arms. The chief of these was the Elector of Saxony,
who felt a jealousy, not unnatural, of the power and the ultimate views
of the King of Sweden, and was himself ambitious to play the first part
among the Protestants of Germany. Seeking to act independently, and to
hold the balance between Sweden and Austria, he invited the Protestant
States to a conference at Leipsic, February 6, 1613, at which it was
determined to demand from the Emperor the redress of grievances, and to
levy an army of 40,000 men, to give weight to their remonstrances. On
the 13th of January, Gustavus had concluded an alliance with France, by
the terms of which he was to maintain in Germany 30,000 men, France
furnishing a subsidy of 400,000 dollars yearly, to use his best
endeavours to reinstate those princes who had been expelled from their
dominions by the Emperor, or the Catholic League, and to restore the
empire to the condition in which it existed at the commencement of the
war. Richelieu tried to bring the princes who had joined in the
convention of Leipsic to accede to this alliance, but with very partial
success. A few promised to support the Swedes, when opportunity should
favour; but the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg kept aloof. During
these negotiations Gustavus made progress in Brandenburg. The memorable
siege and destruction of Magdeburg, May 10, by Tilly, for a time cast a
gloom over the Protestant cause. Gustavus has been censured, both as a
man and a soldier, for suffering that well-deserving and important place
to fall without risking a battle in its behalf. His defence rests upon
the interposed delays, and the insincerity of the Electors, which
involved him in the risk of total destruction if he advanced thus far
without having his retreat secured. But even this signal misfortune
proved finally serviceable to the Protestant cause. It induced Gustavus
to adopt a different tone with his brother-in-law of Brandenburg, who,
finding no alternative but a real union or an open rupture with Sweden,
wisely chose the former. The pride of success led the Imperial generals
into acts of insolence, which induced the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel,
first of the German princes, to conclude a close and hearty alliance
with Sweden, and left the Elector of Saxony no choice between entire
dependence on the already exasperated Emperor, and an effective support
of the only power that could protect him. Accordingly he formed a
junction with the Swedes, and the united forces joined battle with Tilly
not far from Leipsic, September 7, 1631. The opposing armies were nearly
equal in strength. The stress of the conflict fell on the right wing of
the Swedes, where the King commanded in person. The fiery Pappenheim led
seven impetuous charges of the whole Austrian cavalry against the
Swedish battalions without success, and, seven times repulsed, abandoned
the field with great loss. The Saxons on the left wing were broken by
Tilly. But the day was restored by a decisive movement of the Swedish
right wing upon Tilly’s flank, and the Imperialists dispersed in utter
confusion. Leipsic, Merseburg, and Halle speedily fell into the victor’s
hands; and no obstacle existed to check his advance even to the heart of
the Emperor’s hereditary dominions. This was a tempting prospect to an
ambitious man: but it would have abandoned Germany to Tilly, who was
already occupied in raising a fresh army; and the King of Sweden
determined to march towards Franconia and the Rhine, to encourage by his
presence the Protestants who wavered, and to cut the sinews of the
Catholic League, by occupying the territories, and diverting the
revenues of its princes. Bohemia lay open to the Elector of Saxony, and
he left it to that prince to divert the Emperor’s attention, by carrying
the war into that country.

From Leipsic, Gustavus pursued his triumphant way to the southward. The
rich bishopric of Wurtzburg fell into his hands, almost without
resistance. Nuremburg placed itself under his protection. The nobility
and citizens of Franconia declared in his favour as soon as they were
relieved from the presence of the Imperial troops, and when his drum
beat for recruits, crowds flocked to the Swedish standards. He pursued
his course along the Maine to Frankfort, which opened its gates, and
received a Swedish garrison; and being strengthened by the junction of
the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, with 10,000 men, he crossed the Rhine,
and, after a short siege, became master of Mentz by capitulation,
December 13, 1631. There he gave his troops a few weeks’ repose, being
himself busily engaged in diplomatic labours. Early in the following
year he completed the conquest of the Palatinate, and threatened to
carry the war into Alsace and Lorraine.

The advance of Tilly recalled the King of Sweden into Franconia, at the
head of 40,000 men. Tilly then retreated into Bavaria, closely followed
by the enemy, who passed the Danube at Donawerth, forced the passage of
the Lech, and carried the war into the yet uninjured plains of Bavaria.
The passage of this river in the face of the enemy, April 5, is regarded
as one of the King of Sweden’s most remarkable exploits. His old
antagonist Tilly received a mortal wound on this day. Munich, the
capital, and the greater part of the Electorate, yielded without
resistance. The Emperor was now reduced to the greatest difficulties.
Bohemia was overrun by the Saxons, the Austrian dominions lay open to
invasion from Bavaria, Tilly was dead, the Duke of Bavaria discouraged
by his reverses, and inclined to purchase peace by consenting to a
neutrality. There was but one man capable by the charm of his name and
the power of his talents to compete with Gustavus, and he was
Wallenstein. In his retirement that wildly ambitious man had long been
scheming to bring his master to such a degree of abasement as should
enable him to dictate his own terms of reconciliation and assistance;
and the time was come when the Emperor saw himself obliged to consent to
demands which almost superseded his own authority, and invested his
dangerous subject with more than Imperial power. For this event
Wallenstein’s plans had long been maturing: a powerful army started up
at once at his command, and when it suited his secret purposes to act,
Bohemia was cleared of the Saxons more quickly than it had been
conquered by them. He then formed a junction with the Duke of Bavaria,
and at the head of 60,000 men advanced against Gustavus, who, not having
above 18,000 or 20,000 men with him, entrenched himself strongly under
the walls of Nuremburg. Wallenstein took up a strong position against
him, and the two generals, each hoping to exhaust the other by scarcity
of provisions, remained inactive till August 21, when Gustavus, having
drawn together his scattered forces, made a desperate and fruitless
attempt to carry the Imperial lines. Frustrated in this, he returned to
his encampment, which he quitted finally, September 8, and marched into
Bavaria.

Wallenstein followed his example on the 12th, and retired without any
hostile attempt on Nuremburg. He had determined to fix his winter
quarters in Saxony, hoping by the terror of his arms to detach the
Elector from the Swedish alliance; and had already advanced beyond
Leipsic, on his march against Dresden, when he was recalled by the rapid
approach of the King of Sweden. Gustavus arrived at Nuremburg November
1, and entrenched himself there to wait for reinforcements which he
expected. Wallenstein, in the belief that his adversary would be in no
hurry to quit his strong position, proceeded to canton his troops near
Merseburg, in such a manner that they might easily be called into action
at the shortest notice, and detached Pappenheim with a large division of
the army upon distant service. As soon as Gustavus heard of the latter
movement, he marched in haste to attack the diminished enemy, and
Wallenstein, though with inferior troops, was not slow to meet him. The
King of Sweden’s last victory was gained November 6, 1632, in the plain
of Lutzen. Suffering from a recent wound, he did not wear armour, and
early in the day, as he mingled in the front of the battle with his
usual ardour, his left arm was broken by a musket-ball. As he retreated
from the press he received another bullet in the back, and fell. His
body was stripped by the Imperialists, a furious contest took place for
the possession of it, and it was soon buried under a heap of slain. The
Duke of Weimar took the chief command, and completed the victory.

It was probably fortunate for Gustavus’s honour that his brilliant
career was here cut short. He died when no more successes could have
enhanced the fame as a soldier which he had already acquired; at a
period, says Schiller, when he had ceased to be the benefactor of
Germany, and when the greatest service that he could render to German
liberty was to die. However pure his views had been at the commencement
of the war, success had taught him ambition. This was shown by the
homage to Sweden which he exacted from Augsburg and other free cities of
the empire, by his design of converting the archbishopric of Mentz into
an appanage of Sweden, and by his reluctance to reinstate the Elector
Palatine in the conquered Palatinate, and the conditions which he
finally exacted for so doing. And whether or not he aimed at the
Imperial throne, it is probable that his life and prosperity would have
proved no less dangerous to the constitution of Germany, and the welfare
of the Catholic states, than to the Protestant, the ambition of
Ferdinand II., and the Catholic League. But dying thus early, he has
preserved the reputation of sincere piety, humanity in the field, heroic
courage, consummate policy, and skill united to success in the art of
war, unequalled by any general since the downfall of Rome. Of the
improvements which he effected in military tactics we have no room to
speak: a full account of them, and of his whole system, will be found in
the Essay prefixed to Harte’s ‘History of Gustavus Adolphus.’ A more
concise and spirited account of the King of Sweden’s exploits in
Germany, than is contained in that laborious book, will be found in
Schiller’s ‘History of the Thirty Years’ War,’ which is translated both
into French and English.

[Illustration: [From the original in the British Museum.]]

[Illustration]




                            M. A. RAIMONDI.


The invention of the art of taking impressions on paper from an engraved
plate is, on the authority of Vasari, usually ascribed to Tommaso
Finiguerra, a celebrated enameller and chaser, of Florence, who, having
occasion to make a sulphur cast from a piece of plate in 1460, observed
that the charcoal dust and dirt which had collected in the engraved
lines of the metal were brought off upon the sulphur, so as to present a
counterpart of his work. Struck by the appearance, he tried to produce a
similar effect by passing moistened paper over the plate, under pressure
from a roller; and the experiment succeeded. This is a natural and a
probable account; from the earliest antiquity the graver has been
employed in embellishing armour, vessels of the precious metals, and
other valuable articles of use and ornament; and it is certain that the
earliest Italian engravers were, by profession, workers in gold and
silver. It is strange indeed that so obvious an extension of the uses of
engraving should not have been observed sooner; but all experience
teaches us that a very important discovery may long lie very near the
surface, before it meets with an observer sufficiently clear-sighted or
fortunate to bring it to light. The Germans, however, contest priority
of invention in this art with the Italians. The matter is of no great
importance, even to the national fame of the two lands. Those prints
which date before Albert Durer in the one, and before Marc Antonio in
the other, possess little value either for their design or their
execution, however precious they may be to collectors for their rarity,
or to antiquaries and artists as historical records of the art.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  MARC ANTONIO RAIMONDI.

  _From a Print by Rosaspina, after a Picture by Raphael._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

Marc Antonio Raimondi was born at Bologna, about the year 1488: the
dates of his birth and death are not mentioned by Vasari, who is the
sole original authority for the private history of this artist. He
learnt the art of design from Francesco Francia, or Raibolini, after
whom he has sometimes been denominated Marc Antonio di Francia: his
first instructor in the use of the graver is said to have been a
goldsmith. And as Hogarth set out on his career of art by ornamenting
tankards and shop-bills, so Marc Antonio at first gained his livelihood
as a jeweller’s workman. The first of his copper-plates which bears a
date represents the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, and was engraved in
1505[1]; but he is said to have executed others before it, among which
we find one only, the Four Horsemen, mentioned by name.

Footnote 1:

  Heinekin says 1502, by mistake. The print of Apollo and Hyacinth bears
  also the date of 1505.

Induced by the desire of improvement in his art, he took a journey to
Venice. Here, for the first time, he saw Albert Durer’s engravings on
wood; which he admired so highly, both for correctness of outline and
accuracy of workmanship, that he bought the series of thirty-six pieces,
representing the passion of our Saviour, at a price which very nearly
exhausted his slender purse. These wood-cuts he copied upon copper, with
so much success that they were mistaken for the originals; and Vasari
says that Albert Durer complained in great anger to the Venetian senate
of the injury thus done to him, and obtained no other redress than an
order that Antonio should abstain from imitating his signature. The
Baron Heineken, on the contrary, asserts that the existing copies of
these prints do not bear the German artist’s mark, and that no one has
seen copies which do bear it; and he believes the story, if founded on
fact, to refer to a series of prints representing the life of the Virgin
Mary, in seventeen prints, which are exactly copied from Durer, even to
his cipher.

From Venice Marc Antonio went to Rome, where, to his inestimable
benefit, he became acquainted with Raphael, who perceived and assisted
his talents, certainly by advice, and, some say, even by manual help.
The outlines of Antonio’s plates after Raphael have been said to be
executed by the painter himself: but this is solely conjecture; and it
appears improbable that, in an art depending so much upon manual
dexterity, the more unpractised hand should be the superior in precision
and delicacy. But that Raphael was very much pleased with the justice
which Antonio rendered to his designs is certain. He sent to Albert
Durer copies of the Bolognese engraver’s works; and Durer, however
jealous he might be, and however justly displeased at past occurrences,
could not deny his rival’s merit, and acknowledged the courtesy by
sending impressions of his own works in return. The honour of Raphael’s
patronage, the admirable choice of subjects afforded by his pictures,
and the real benefit which any lover and cultivator of art must have
derived from his society, all combined to raise Antonio’s fame; and many
pupils came to study under him, among whom Marco di Ravenna, Agostino di
Musis, and Giulio Bonasoni, whose plates are highly valued by
collectors, may be named as most eminent.

After the death of Raphael, Antonio was largely employed by Raphael’s
distinguished pupil, Giulio Romano, and executed, among other things,
the designs which accompanied Aretin’s notorious sonnets. These
engravings attracted the just indignation of Pope Clement VII., who cast
the artist into prison. His release was procured by the interference and
interest of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and Baccio Bandinelli; and, as a
testimony of gratitude to the latter, Antonio executed the engraving
from his picture of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence. This print is
twenty-one inches by sixteen in dimensions, and is the largest and one
of the finest of the artist’s works. It procured for him the entire
forgiveness and favour of the offended pontiff. The plates to Aretin
were so carefully suppressed, that not a single specimen of them is now
certainly known to exist.

When Rome was plundered by the Spaniards, in 1520, Marc Antonio lost all
his property. He returned to Bologna after this misfortune, and was
still leading a retired life there in 1539: the battle of Centaurs and
Lapithæ bears date in that year, and is the last certain memorial of
him. The combat of Hector and Achilles, dated in 1546, though attributed
to Marc Antonio, is considered by the Baron Heineken to be at least
doubtful. Malvasia relates that a Roman nobleman, for whom Antonio had
engraved a print of the Massacre of Innocents, with an undertaking never
to repeat the subject, caused the artist to be assassinated for
re-engraving it. But it casts a doubt on the truth of this story, that
it is not even alluded to by Vasari.

Marc Antonio’s plates passed through the hands of Tommaso Barlacchi,
Antonio Salamanca, Antonio Lafreri, Nicholas Van Aelst, and Rossi, or De
Rubeis, of Rome. Of these publishers, the impressions which bear
Salamanca’s name, are most esteemed: but the best are those which have
no publisher’s name at all. The Baron Heineken, in his elaborate
‘Dictionnaire des Artistes dont nous avons des Estampes,’ (from which
this memoir is little more than a free translation,) has given a minute
catalogue of the works attributable to Marc Antonio. He divides them
into four classes:—prints really engraved by the master, and bearing his
marks, in number, 120; prints engraved by him, but without mark, 126;
prints doubtful, 66; and prints which belong to his era, and to his
school, but are by unknown hands. In this reckoning, series like the
Passion of Christ, which consist of many plates, are counted only as
single works. Strutt, in his Dictionary of Engravers, and Bryan, in his
Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, give lists of the more remarkable
of Antonio’s productions; Bryan is the fuller, but neither of them
pretend to compete in extent and detail with the catalogue of Heineken;
whom Strutt has closely followed in his biographical notice of this
artist. He has given fac-similes of this engraver’s marks, seven in
number, in plate 9, vol. ii. We quote the following passages in
illustration of Marc Antonio’s merits and peculiar characteristics, from
the Essay on the History of Engraving, which is prefixed to Strutt’s
work.

“His engravings are often defective in point of harmony, and the skilful
management of the light and shadow, which gives them an unfinished and
sometimes disgustful appearance to the common eye. On the other hand, a
graceful flow of outline, joined with purity and correctness of drawing
in its greatest latitude, are found in the best works of this master;
but these beauties rarely attract the general notice without the
assistance of neatness, or what is more properly called high finishing,
especially in the present day (1786). The eye, long accustomed to
neatness and delicacy of finishing, especially where the judgment is not
capable of distinguishing the greater essentials of the art, will
necessarily consider that neatness to be the criterion of excellency.
Hence it is that the works of the old masters are fallen into such
general disrepute: their beauties are overlooked, and their faults are
viewed through a magnifying medium. And it is perhaps because Marc
Antonio stands the first among the old masters, that he has received a
greater share of censure than the rest.

“The excellency of this master consists in the correctness of his
drawing, the character of his heads, and the pure idea his works convey
of the simplicity and elegance of the originals they are taken from: and
they may be considered as admirable drawings, not highly finished
indeed, but sufficiently so to preserve the design and spirit of the
masters from whom he worked.

“That persons possessed of little judgment in the arts should not
discover the merits of this engraver, cannot surprise us; but that
artists themselves, and experienced collectors, should join in the
common censure, is much more extraordinary. In these instances, we may
conclude, he has been too hastily, as he has certainly been unjustly,
condemned, without a proper examination of his works in their native
state. Such as generally appear at sales, and too many of those in the
hands of collectors, are either worn-out impressions, or what is still
worse, retouched ones. In these the primitive beauty is entirely lost.
Let any one, for instance, examine the common impressions of that
admirable engraving of this master, representing the Martyrdom of St.
Lawrence, from Baccio Bandinelli, which is the largest of all his
prints, and he will find the outlines darkened with black strokes upon
the lights, and the demitints upon the flesh increased, so as nearly to
equal the deep shadows; by which means all the breadths of light are
destroyed, and cut into a variety of disagreeable divisions, which
produce a disgustful and inharmonious effect. But in a fine impression
of the same plate, there are none of these disagreeable crudities to be
found; the shadows are judiciously softened and blended into the lights,
and harmonized with each other; the outlines are neat and correct; and
the characters of the heads admirably well expressed. In short, he would
scarcely believe it possible that the same plate should furnish
impressions, so beautiful in one state, and so truly execrable in the
other. But the wonder ceases, if he be told that the plate, passing
through a variety of hands, has been frequently retouched, and that by
careless and unskilful men. We may further add, that as the name of Marc
Antonio stands high among the curious collectors, the ignorant are too
frequently imposed upon by bad copies, or spurious productions.”

A very excellent and extensive collection of the engravings of Marc
Antonio, and of his pupils, exists in the British Museum, which, with
the exception of a few of the extremely rare prints, presents a better
assemblage than most public or private cabinets can boast of, whether as
to number, beauty of impression, or condition.

[Illustration: [Poesy, from a print by Marc Antonio.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  COKE.

  _From a Picture in the Hall of Sergeant’s Inn, Chancery Lane._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                 COKE.


Edward Coke, the only son of Robert Coke, of Mileham, in the county of
Norfolk, and Winifred, daughter and one of the heirs of William
Knightley, of Morgrave-Knightley, in the same county, was born at
Mileham, February 1, 1551. He was descended, both by his father’s and
his mother’s side, from ancient and opulent families. His father, who
was a bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, died in the year 1561, when Edward Coke
was ten years old. Before that event he had been sent to the Free
Grammar School at Norwich, whence, in September, 1567, he removed to
Cambridge, and was admitted as a fellow commoner at Trinity College.
After having spent three years at the University he returned into
Norfolk for a few months, and then went to London to commence his legal
education. According to the practice of that time, he took the first
step of his legal course by becoming a member of Clifford’s Inn, a house
of Chancery, or inferior inn, dependent upon the Inner Temple, and was
admitted into the latter society, April 24, 1572. He was called to the
bar in Easter Term, 1578. During the continuance of his studies in the
Inner Temple, he is said to have greatly distinguished himself in the
exercises called mootings and readings, which constituted a necessary
part of the education of an advocate in former times, and which were
carried on with a degree of interest and excitement almost incredible to
those who at the present day peruse the details of these grotesque and
antiquated proceedings.

In the course of the year after his call to the bar, the society of the
Inner Temple appointed him reader at Lyon’s Inn; and the learning
displayed by him, in the conduct of the exercises at which he presided
in this capacity, raised for him a high reputation as a lawyer, and
opened the way to that extensive practice at the bar, which he acquired
with a degree of rapidity almost without a parallel in the history of
the profession. In the first term after he was called to the bar he
conducted an argument of much nicety and importance, which is reported
by the name of Lord Cromwell’s Case; “And this,” he says, in his own
report of it (4 Rep. 146), “was the first cause that the author of this
book moved in the King’s Bench.” Less than three years afterwards he was
associated with Popham, the Solicitor General, in arguing before the
Chancellor and the twelve judges the important case in which was laid
down the celebrated doctrine in the law of real property, well known as
the ‘Rule in Shelley’s Case.’ From that period until he became Solicitor
General in 1592, his practice was enormous: it appears from the Reports
of that time that there was scarcely a single motion or argument before
the court of King’s Bench in which he was not engaged. Professional
honours were the legitimate consequence of this large business in the
courts; in 1586 he was chosen Recorder of Norwich, and four years
afterwards was made a bencher of the Inner Temple. In January, 1592, on
the resignation of Serjeant Fleetwood, he was elected Recorder of
London; but, in the following June, on being appointed Solicitor
General, he resigned that office. In the same summer he became Reader of
the Inner Temple, and selected the Statute of Uses for the subject of
his readings. He says that he had composed seven readings for this
occasion, and had delivered five of them to a large audience, consisting
of not less than 160 members of the society, when the appearance of the
plague in the Middle Temple, which raged with great violence in the
autumn of that year, compelled him to discontinue them, and to leave
London abruptly for his house at Huntingfield in Suffolk. Such was the
honour and respect in which he was held by the profession, that on this
occasion he was accompanied on his journey, as far as Romford, by a
procession composed of nine benchers and forty other members of the
Inner Temple. In March, 1594, he was appointed Attorney General, and, as
the office of Solicitor continued vacant until the close of the
following year, the duties and labours of both offices during that
interval devolved upon him.

At this period originated the animosity between Coke and Bacon, which
prevailed with little intermission during the life of the latter. As
soon as the office of Attorney General became vacant, in consequence of
the removal of Sir Thomas Egerton, the Earl of Essex used his most
strenuous efforts to induce the Queen to bestow that place upon Bacon,
instead of promoting Sir Edward Coke from the inferior office of
Solicitor General. The letters of Bacon, written to Essex and others,
with relation to this intrigue, abound with sarcastic and contemptuous
expressions respecting Coke, whose high reputation and great experience
certainly marked him out as fitter for the office than his rival, whose
practice at the bar was never extensive, and who was then scarcely known
in the courts. After Coke had obtained the appointment of Attorney
General, Bacon and his friends charged him first with intriguing to keep
the emoluments of both offices in his own hands, and afterwards with
recommending Serjeant Fleming for the vacant solicitorship and
encouraging the antipathies and prejudices of the Queen against Bacon.
There is, however, no evidence to show that these imputations were true;
and if Coke really urged the appointment of Fleming, it might well be
with the view of obtaining a more experienced and efficient coadjutor
than Bacon.

In truth, the state services imposed upon the Attorney General at this
time were extremely laborious. The severity of the laws recently
introduced against Roman Catholics had occasioned a succession of plots
by foreign adventurers against the person of the Queen, more or less
dangerous, the investigation of which was necessarily committed to the
Attorney General. The treasons of Lopez, the Queen’s physician, of
Patrick Cullen, and of Williams and Yorke, all occurred about this
period; and the business of constant examination at the Tower, in
addition to his Star Chamber duties and his undiminished practice in the
common-law courts, must have imposed a weight of labour and
responsibility upon Coke, which no mind of ordinary activity and energy
could have sustained. Whole volumes of examinations in these cases of
treason, taken by himself and written with his own hand, are still
preserved at the State Paper Office, and sufficiently attest his zeal
and assiduity in the service.

In February, 1593, Coke, being at that time Solicitor General, was
elected a member of parliament for his native county of Norfolk. In his
own memorandum of this circumstance he says, that the election was
“unanimous, free, and spontaneous, without any canvassing or
solicitation on his part.” At the meeting of parliament he was chosen
Speaker of the House of Commons.

In the year 1582, Coke married the daughter and heiress of John Paston,
Esq., of Huntingfield, in Suffolk, through whom he became connected with
several families of great opulence and importance, and with whom he
received a fortune of 30,000_l._—a very large dowry in those days. By
this lady he had ten children. She died in June 1598; and in his private
register of this event in the Notes, which have been often before
referred to, he calls her “dilectissima et præclarissima uxor,” and
concludes his brief notice of her decease thus:—“Bene et beaté vixit, et
tanquam vera ancilla Domini obdormivit in Domino, et nunc vivit et
regnat in cœlo.” In the month of November in the same year, Coke
contracted a second marriage with the widow of Sir William Hatton,
daughter of Thomas Lord Burleigh, and grand-daughter of the Lord High
Treasurer, which, though it was an advantageous alliance in point of
connection and brought him a considerable accession of property, was by
no means a source of domestic happiness. The marriage itself involved
all the parties concerned in considerable embarrassment: for having
taken place without license or banns, Coke and his lady, together with
the clergyman, Lord Burleigh, and all who were present at the ceremony,
were cited to appear in the Archbishop’s Court; and it was only in
consequence of their making full submission, and pleading their
ignorance of the law, (a singular excuse in Coke’s mouth,) that they
escaped the sentence and penalties of excommunication.

Sir Edward Coke held the office of Attorney General until the death of
Queen Elizabeth, and with the exception of the Earl of Essex, who always
disliked him, enjoyed the fullest confidence of her ministers, and in
particular of Sir Robert Cecil. He had always been favourable to the
title of James I., and upon the death of Elizabeth, is said to have
co-operated cordially with Cecil and the other members of the late
Queen’s council in making the necessary arrangements for the peaceable
accession of the king of Scotland to the crown. James, upon his arrival
in London, continued him in his office of Attorney General, and
conferred upon his eldest son the honour of knighthood.

Coke’s sound judgment and extensive legal knowledge, united with his
fervent attachment to Protestantism, rendered him an invaluable officer
of the crown in the various proceedings against the Roman Catholics at
the close of Elizabeth’s reign, and the beginning of that of James I. In
the examinations respecting the several assassination-treasons, which
have been already mentioned, as well as that of Squire in 1598, of the
Raleigh conspiracy in 1603, of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, and of
numerous other treasonable and seditious movements imputed to the
Catholics during the period that he filled the office of Attorney
General, he engaged with a zeal and ardour far beyond mere professional
excitement: and the temper displayed in his speeches and general conduct
on the several trials is much more that of a religious partisan than of
a legal advocate. It is common with Catholic writers to attribute to him
the utmost barbarity in the use of the rack and the general treatment of
prisoners under examination. That he, who in his writings inveighs most
strenuously against the use of torture, was nevertheless in his official
character the constant instrument of the Privy Council for applying this
odious process, is beyond all question: but it must be remembered that
what he wrote on this subject was written long after the period of which
we are now speaking, and in the dawn of a better order of things; and
also that the use of the rack for discovering State secrets was common
throughout Europe in his time, and had been the daily practice of the
Privy Council in England for centuries before he was born. There is no
satisfactory proof that he was coarse and cruel in his conduct towards
prisoners under examination; and on the contrary, Father Cornelius, the
Jesuit, who had been examined by him respecting the Popish Plots in
Queen Elizabeth’s time, told Garnet that he had found him “omnium
hominum humanissimus;” and Garnet himself, in his intercepted
correspondence, admits, as he also did on his trial, that he was
constantly treated by him with the utmost courtesy and kindness.

As the advocate of the crown on trials for State offences, he displayed
a degree of intemperance and asperity shocking to the feelings of
readers, who are familiar only with the more civilized character of
criminal proceedings at the present day. His vulgar vituperation of
Raleigh, and his more measured sarcasm towards Essex, were extremely
offensive even to his contemporaries, and were remembered against him
with malicious eagerness on his own reverse of fortune. “In your
pleadings,” says Bacon to him on the eve of his discharge from the
office of Lord Chief Justice, “you were wont to insult over misery, and
to inveigh bitterly at the persons; which bred you many enemies, whose
poison yet swelleth, and the effects now appear.”

With the trials of the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot in 1606, the
career of Sir Edward Coke as an advocate closed. In the month of June in
that year he received his appointment as Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas. He retained this situation upwards of seven years; and, in the
discharge of the common judicial duties at this period, his profound
learning and unwearied industry procured him the highest reputation. At
this time too, though he has sometimes been reproached for a haughty and
unconciliating deportment on the bench, the bitterness of temper which
he had displayed at the bar appears to have been suppressed or softened;
and in several constitutional questions of the highest importance which
occurred while he was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and in which he
resolutely opposed the views of the king, especially in the conflicts
between the ecclesiastical jurisdictions and the courts of common law,
and in his resistance to the encroachment of prerogative on the subject
of royal proclamations, he displayed great integrity and independence.
With a view to corrupt his uncompromising disposition, his crafty and
ambitious rival, Sir Francis Bacon, who was then Solicitor General,
suggested his promotion to the Chief Justiceship of the King’s Bench;
and accordingly he received his patent for that office in October, 1613,
and a few days afterwards took his seat at the board as a Privy
Councillor. In the following year he was elected High Steward of the
University of Cambridge.

The project of making the Chief Justice “turn obsequious” by his
advancement, which was no doubt entertained by the court, and was
expressly avowed by Bacon, altogether failed. In the case of Peacham,
who was prosecuted for treason in the year 1615, for having in his
possession a sermon supposed to contain sedition, written by him, but
never preached or published, Lord Coke expressed an opinion, in direct
opposition to the wishes of the court, that the offence was not treason.
His deportment at the trial of Somerset and the murderers of Sir Thomas
Overbury, in the same year, though praised by Bacon in conducting the
case as Attorney General, gave much displeasure to the king; and his
independent conduct in the case of Commendams, which occurred in 1616,
finally determined the court to remove him from his office. The
transaction was this. A serjeant-at-law, in the discharge of his duty as
an advocate in the Court of Common Pleas, was supposed to have used
matter in his argument which tended to abridge, or at least to question,
the royal prerogative; upon this the king required the judges to proceed
no further in the case without his warrant. The twelve judges conferred
upon this message, and resolved that in a common dispute between party
and party, it was their duty to proceed notwithstanding the king’s
mandate. Upon this they were summoned to the council table, and
personally reprimanded by the king; and all of them, excepting the Lord
Chief Justice, acknowledged their error, and craved pardon for their
offence upon their knees. Sir Edward Coke, on the contrary, boldly
justified his opinion, contending that the king’s command for staying
the proceedings was a delay of justice, and consequently against the
law, and contrary to the judges’ oath. After much discussion, the Lords
of the council proposed the following question to the judges:—“Whether
in a case where the king believed his prerogative or interest concerned,
and required the judges to attend him for advice, they ought not to stay
proceedings till his Majesty had consulted them?” All the judges at once
answered in the affirmative, except Coke, who only said “that, when the
case happened, he would do his duty.”

The court now despaired of bending the stubborn integrity of the Chief
Justice, and determined at all events to displace him. Accordingly, as a
preliminary to his removal, he was summoned before the Council and
charged with several frivolous accusations, some of them founded upon
alleged malversations while he was Attorney General, to all of which he
returned distinct answers. Soon afterwards, being again summoned to
appear before the Council, he was reprimanded, sequestered from the
Council-table during the King’s pleasure, enjoined not to ride the
summer circuit as Judge of Assize, and ordered to employ his leisure in
revising certain “extravagant and exorbitant opinions” set down, as was
pretended, in his Book of Reports. He received his writ of discharge
from the office of Chief Justice, in November, 1616; and was succeeded
by Sir Henry Montague, who was expressly warned by the Lord Chancellor
Egerton “to avoid the faults of his predecessor, who had been removed
for his excessive popularity.” The discharge of a judge of unrivalled
learning and incorruptible integrity for the exercise of the very
qualities which rendered him an honour and an ornament to his station,
forms a part of the long catalogue of weak and wicked actions which
disgraced the reign of James I., and directed the course of events to
that catastrophe by which the fate of the Stuart family was decided.

From causes, not very distinctly explained in the letters and histories
of the day, but which are supposed to have been connected with an
intrigue for the marriage of his daughter to Sir John Villiers,
afterwards Viscount Purbeck, and brother to the celebrated Duke of
Buckingham, Sir Edward Coke, though he never afterwards filled any
judicial situation, was, at no long interval, restored to a certain
degree of royal favour; and in September, 1617, he was reinstated as a
member of the Privy Council. In the course of the next three years he
was employed in several commissions of a public nature; and in the
Parliament which assembled in 1620 he was returned as a Member for the
Borough of Liskeard in Cornwall. In this Parliament he distinguished
himself as one of the most able and zealous advocates of the liberal
measures which were proposed; he declared himself a strenuous opponent
of the pernicious monopolies by which at that period the freedom of
trade was fettered, and took an animated part in that struggle between
the prerogative pretensions of James and the freedom of debate, which
ended in the celebrated resolution of the Commons, “That the liberties,
franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the ancient
and undoubted birth-right and inheritance of the subjects of England.”
The consequence was, that he was arrested on one of those vague and
senseless charges which prevailed in those evil days, and committed to
the Tower, in December, 1621, where he remained a close prisoner until
the month of August in the ensuing year. On this occasion, he was a
second time formally dismissed from the Council-table, and was never
afterwards restored to favour at Court.

In the first Parliament of Charles I., called in April, 1625, Sir E.
Coke was again returned as one of the knights of the shire for the
county of Norfolk, as he says in his note, without any canvassing or
solicitation on his part. At the commencement of this Parliament he
adopted a moderate tone. He dissuaded the House from insisting upon
grievances, and urged conciliatory measures; saying, that “as it was the
very beginning of the new king’s reign, there could be no grievances as
yet.” But this disposition to peace was overcome by the determined
tendency of the crown to arbitrary measures; and the king being unable
to obtain any other answer to his demand of a subsidy, than repeated
remonstrances against grievances, abruptly dissolved the Parliament. He
was compelled, however, by his pecuniary wants, to assemble a new one in
the course of the same year, having previously appointed Sir Edward Coke
and three other popular leaders sheriffs of counties, in order to
prevent their serving as members. Coke was again returned as knight of
the shire for Norfolk; and though he did not take his seat, and
consequently took no part in the proceedings of that Parliament, it was
considered that he was still _de facto_ a member of the House, and for
that reason no new writ was issued to supply his place. On occasion of
the third Parliament summoned by Charles I. in March, 1628, Sir Edward
Coke was returned for two counties, Buckingham and Suffolk. He elected
to serve for the former. In this Parliament, though now in his 79th
year, this extraordinary man asserted and defended the constitutional
rights of the people of England with all the energy of youth, and the
sagacity of age. By his advice, and with his active co-operation and
assistance, which his extensive and varied experience rendered
particularly valuable, the celebrated Petition of Right was framed; and
by his perseverance and reasoning the Lords were, after many
conferences, induced to concur in that measure, which was, at last, and
after many ineffectual attempts at evasion, reluctantly assented to by
the king. One of the last acts of his public life was his spirited
denunciation of the Duke of Buckingham as the cause of all the
misfortunes of the country. As a proof of the earnest feelings by which
he was impressed, Rushworth records that, on this occasion, “Sir Edward
Coke, overcome with passion, seeing the desolation likely to ensue, was
forced to sit down when he began to speak, through the abundance of
tears.” At the close of the Session of Parliament, in March, 1629, the
growing infirmities of age induced him to withdraw from public life, and
he passed the remainder of his days in retirement on his estate at Stoke
Pogis, in Buckinghamshire. Still it appears that his vigorous and active
mind was not without employment; and the last years of his life are said
to have been occupied by the revision of the numerous unpublished works
which he left behind him.

The last entry in his note-book, written with almost as firm a hand as
he wrote at the age of 40, records the following incident, which may
possibly have been the cause of his death:—

“Memorandum. Die Jovis, the iii^{rd} of May, 1632, riding in the morning
in Stoke, between eight and nine of the clocke to take the ayre, my
horse under me had a strange stumble backward, and fell upon me (being
above 80 years old), where my head lighted nere to sharpe stubbes, and
the heavy horse upon me. And yet, by the providence of Almighty God,
though I was in the greatest danger, yet I had not the least hurt,—nay,
no hurt at all. For Almighty God saith by his prophet David, ‘The angel
of the Lord tarieth round about them that feare him, and delivereth
them.’ Et nomen Domini benedictum, for it was his work!”

He died on the 3rd of September, in the following year, repeating with
his last breath the words, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” He was
interred in the burying-place of the Coke family in the church of
Titeshall, in Norfolk.

Lloyd, in his “State Worthies,” gives the following account of Sir
Edward Coke:—“His parts were admirable; he had a deep judgment, faithful
memory, active fancy. And the jewel of his mind was put into a fair
case,—a beautiful body with a comely countenance;—a case, which he did
wipe and keep clean, delighting in good clothes, well worn, and being
wont to say ‘that the outward neatness of our bodies might be a monitor
of purity to our souls.’”

The most celebrated of Sir Edward Coke’s works is the treatise commonly
known by the name of Coke upon Littleton, or the First Institute. It
consists of a minute and laborious Commentary upon the text of
Littleton’s Tenures, in the course of which almost the whole learning of
the common law, as it existed in his time, is embodied and explained.
Ever since the time of Sir Edward Coke to the present day, this book has
been considered as a work of the highest authority in the municipal law
of England. The Second Institute contains Commentaries on several
ancient statutes; the Third Institute is a Treatise on Criminal Law; and
the Fourth Institute relates to the Jurisdiction of different Courts.
Besides these works, Sir Edward Coke was the author of a Treatise on
Copyholds, entitled “The Complete Copyholder,” and of a “Reading on
Fines.” He also published a collection of Reports, which are still of
great value to the profession; and at the time of their appearance
formed an epoch in the history of the law. Sir Francis Bacon speaks of
this produce of the industry and learning of his great rival in terms of
high and deserved commendation; and justly ascribes to the Reports the
praise of having preserved the vessel of the common law in a steady and
consistent course; “For the law,” says he, “by this time had been like a
ship without ballast, for that the cases of modern experience are fled
from those that are adjudged and ruled in former time.”

[Illustration: [Westminster Hall.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  GIBBON.

  _From a Print by Ja^s. Hall, after a Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                GIBBON.


The historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was born at
Putney in Surrey, in May, 1737. He was the eldest son of Edward Gibbon,
a gentleman of some fortune, and a strong attachment to Tory principles.
His mother’s name was Porten. But in his Memoirs, written at the close
of his life, he betrays no strong sense of gratitude or affection
towards either of his parents; while he acknowledges with abundant
warmth the most important obligations to his aunt, Catharine Porten. To
her lessons he ascribes his “invincible love for reading;” to her care
he attributes the very preservation of his precarious life; and he
designates her, in the calmness of distant reflection, as the true
mother both of his body and his mind.

From a private school he was removed to Westminster; from Westminster to
Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was admitted as a gentleman-commoner,
April 3, 1752. About this time his constitution, hitherto extremely
feeble, acquired a sudden vigour, which never deserted him during the
rest of his life. At Oxford he made absolutely no proficiency in any
branch of knowledge, or any useful accomplishment. “To the University of
Oxford (he says) I acknowledge no obligation; and she will as cheerfully
renounce me for a son, as I am willing to disclaim her for a mother.”
Accordingly he exhausts the severity of his sarcasm, both upon the
system which was there established, and upon the men who administered
it, without honestly inquiring whether he had laboured to extract, even
from an imperfect system, the modicum of advantage which it was capable
of yielding. But his recollections of Oxford were embittered by his
subsequent contest with some of the clergy, and the hostile treatment
which he sustained at their hands; and the principles which he embraced
in after life would have rendered him equally intolerant of any
institution, standing on a religious foundation.

During his residence at Oxford, and at the usually unreflecting age of
sixteen, he was converted to the Roman Catholic faith. He was first
stirred to thought by the “bold criticism” of Middleton. He then
“swallowed” the miracles of the Basils, the Chrysostoms, and other
Fathers of the Church; and Bossuet achieved the conquest by the
‘Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine,’ and the ‘History of the
Variations.’ And then he made his formal recantation before a Jesuit,
named Baker, one of the Chaplains of the Sardinian Ambassador. In his
retrospect upon this the most singular incident in the history of his
mind, Gibbon might indeed profess to be proud of his change of opinion,
as a sacrifice of interest to principle; but he probably conveys his
habitual reflections more faithfully when he says, with his usual
strength: “To my present feelings it seems incredible that I should ever
believe that I believed in transubstantiation.”

He was immediately removed from Oxford, and placed under the care of a
tutor at Lausanne. To a Swiss pastor, named Pavillard, was entrusted the
delicate office of disentangling the mind of Gibbon from the intricacies
of popery, and leading it back again into the pale of the Protestant
Church. He succeeded: by seasonable arguments, and judicious
admonitions, aided perhaps by the influence of a mild and benevolent
character, he prevailed over the hasty caprice of a powerful intellect;
and on Christmas-day, in 1754, Gibbon publicly renounced his adopted
creed, and received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne. There is no
reason to suspect the sincerity of this recantation, or to believe that
he had yet fallen either into scepticism, or indifference.

He remained, in the whole, five years at Lausanne, and by his “serious
character, and soft and quiet manners” he won the respect and affection
of his tutor. During this time he laid the foundation of those studious
habits, which formed the pride and happiness of his later life. Besides
a passionate devotion to French literature and great diligence in
forming a correct style in that language, he read, according to a
regular system, the whole of the Latin Classics; he acquired the
rudiments of Greek; and gained some insight into the principles of
mathematics. But this last pursuit he never afterwards renewed; though
he would lead us to believe that a readiness in calculation was the
talent of his childhood, and that nature had qualified him to succeed in
that branch of application.

He was presented to Voltaire, at that time resident at Geneva, without
being distinguished by any particular mark of his attention. Yet he was
a constant spectator at the poet’s little theatre, when he recited his
own verses, and represented his own characters. It was likewise during
this period that he formed an attachment for Madlle. Curchod, the
daughter of a Swiss pastor, and afterwards the wife of Necker. The
attachment appears to have been mutual; but his father prevented the
marriage, and he remained faithful during the rest of his life to the
memory of his youthful passion.

He returned to England in May, 1758, and remained there, with a short
interval, for the twenty-five following years. His father’s residence
was Buriton, near Petersfield; and, as he passed some time there, he
became in 1760 a captain in the South Hampshire militia: an incident
which might well pass unnoticed in the life of an ordinary person, but
which in this case is dignified by the value which Gibbon himself has
set upon it, and the conviction long afterwards expressed by him—“that
the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers was not useless to the historian
of the Roman Empire.”

On the disbanding of the militia, in the beginning of 1763, he spent two
or three months at Paris, from which he proceeded on his second visit to
Lausanne. Here he remained for a year, occupied in various studies,
especially that of geography; and then passed, in the spring of 1764,
into Italy. An ardent curiosity, nourished by reading and meditation,
carried him directly to Rome; and the emotions with which he approached
and entered the Eternal City were, after an interval of twenty-five
years, still fresh in his memory. “After a sleepless night I trod, with
a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus
stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell, was at once present to my eye; and
several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed, before I could
descend to a cool or minute investigation.” His enthusiasm gradually
gave way to deep and philosophical reflection, not uninfluenced either
by the scenes which surrounded him, or by the recollection of the past.
He became curious to trace the links which connected what he had read
with what he saw; and it was when he was musing in the ruins of the
Capitol, _while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple
of Jupiter_, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City
first started to his mind. This idea, once suggested, was never
abandoned; and though other avocations prevented him from immediately
pursuing it, it remained immovably fixed in his mind, and was the object
of his perpetual meditation.

Without claiming any precocity of genius, Gibbon describes his mind as
having opened considerably in his twelfth year. He had an early and
indiscriminate appetite for books, and had indulged it in much desultory
reading even before his admission at Oxford. A preference for historical
works already displayed itself. His attention was fixed by the accounts
of Mahomet and the Saracens; and the ‘Continuation of Echard’s Roman
History’ first introduced him to the successors of Constantine. But, as
his studies had been directed only by his own curiosity, his information
was partial and ill-digested, and more useful as the result of literary
habits, than as a fund for the use of his maturer years. Yet even thus
early he made an essay at historical composition; and the subject showed
that his mind had been chiefly attracted by the records of the Eastern
World. The ‘Age of Sesostris,’ suggested perhaps by the ‘Siècle de Louis
XIV.,’ then new and popular, was the first production of the pen of
Gibbon. But this attempt was presently abandoned; though the unfinished
manuscript remained for twenty years at the bottom of a drawer, and was
not finally destroyed till 1772. His first publication was an ‘Essai sur
l’Etude de la Littérature.’ It appeared in the spring of 1761, and was
written in French, through a secret ambition in the author to acquire a
peculiar celebrity, as a successful writer in a foreign language. This
dream, however, was not realised. The ‘Essai’ was received with little
enthusiasm abroad, with absolute indifference at home. Nor, indeed, were
its intrinsic merits, clouded as they were by an obscure and abrupt
style, sufficient to establish the author’s claims to the reputation
which he sought.

Gibbon then turned his thoughts to some historical subject; and among
many that attracted him were The Life of Raleigh; The History of the
Liberty of the Swiss; and that of the Republic of Florence under the
House of Medici. But he appears not to have engaged seriously in any one
of these, at the time of his second departure for the Continent. To the
second of those subjects however he afterwards returned, again
discarding his native tongue, for the use of what he deemed a more
general language. He wrote his ‘History of Switzerland’ in Latin. But
having caused a specimen of it to be recited in a society of literary
foreigners in London, at which he was himself present, though not known
as the author, he had the affliction of hearing its condemnation. He
submitted to the sentence, and delivered the imperfect sheets to the
flames. And it was in the same year (October 24, 1767) that Hume
addressed to him a very sensible exhortation to confine his compositions
to his own language, as that which was destined, through conquest and
colonization, to the most general prevalence in after-ages. It was
worthy of the riper wisdom and genius of Hume, to direct the rising
candidate for historical fame into the path wherein alone it was
possible to find it; and to enlarge his views, to teach him to look
beyond the actual and transient condition of the world, and fix his eyes
upon the generations that were to come.

Gibbon mentions three works as having more than any others contributed
to the formation of his mind: ‘Pascal’s Provincial Letters;’ ‘The Life
of Julian, by the Abbé Bletterie;’ and ‘Giannone’s History of Naples.’
Not one of them was English; he acknowledges no early obligations to the
literature of his own country; in fact, those five years which usually
decide the character of the rest of life were entirely passed abroad, in
the study and perpetual use of foreign languages, and the imitation of
foreign literature. It was not then wonderful that he should continue
for some time longer to follow the first impulse. But repeated failures
would doubtless have shown him the false position in which he stood,
even without the seasonable admonition administered by the authority of
Hume.

Gibbon returned immediately from Italy to England, and retired to the
peaceful retreat of his family and his books. Yet the five years which
followed were those on which he reflected with least satisfaction. He
was dependent on his father’s generosity, he had no professional
occupation for an active and ambitious mind, his very reading was
somewhat desultory, and his whole energies were not yet devoted to one
great object. He felt the absence of this; and it was ill supplied by
his ‘Critical Observations on the 6th Book of the Æneid,’ or his attempt
at the History of Switzerland. The death of his father, in 1770, placed
him in possession of a moderate fortune and of entire independence; and
then it was that he entered in good earnest on the ‘History of the
Decline and Fall.’

In 1772 he settled in London, and obtained a seat in parliament for
Liskeard. He adhered to the Government of Lord North, and by “many a
sincere and silent vote” on the American question, supported the rights
(as he says), though not perhaps the interests, of the mother country.
As a senator, he acquired no distinction. A mixture of timidity and
pride, a want of physical energy and of that ready vigour of mind, which
fits men for public life, better than habits of the sagest meditation,
disqualified him for political polemics: and even his general opinions
seem at that time to have been so little fixed, that when at last he
accepted a place at the Board of Trade under Lord North, he gave
surprise and offence to the opposition, who considered him as on their
side. He fell with his patron; and his natural distaste for politics
being probably increased by this and a subsequent disappointment, he
retired for ever from the disquietudes of public life.

During his residence in London, he published the first three volumes of
his History. On the composition of the first he had bestowed peculiar
care, and its reception repaid his labours. A very laudatory letter,
which he received from Hume, foretold the attacks to which the fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters would subject him; for which he was entirely
unprepared. And in his subsequent reflections on this subject, he admits
that, had he foreseen the offence they were calculated to give, he
“might perhaps have softened the two invidious chapters, which would
create many enemies, and conciliate few friends.” Among his
ecclesiastical opponents, by far the most eloquent and powerful was
Bishop Watson, whose high-minded hostility deserved the respect bestowed
on it by the historian himself, in his celebrated Vindication.

The second and third volumes were not so favourably received as the
first; the author himself admits that they are possibly too minute and
prolix: and the work made as yet no progress on the continent. But he
persevered with increasing zeal in the labour which was now become
necessary to his happiness; and that he might the more exclusively
devote himself to it, he returned to establish himself at Lausanne, in
1783, nearly twenty years after his second visit to that place. He made
it his residence until 1793, and there composed the last three volumes
of his history: and he has carefully recorded, that it was on the 27th
of June, 1787, between eleven and twelve at night, in a summer-house in
his garden, that he wrote the last sentence. His fourth volume cost him
rather more than two years, his fifth rather less, and the sixth little
more than one. It had been his habit, till quite at last, to close his
studies with the day, and commonly begin them with the morning, and the
result of this late change is observed in the increased rapidity with
which the latter portion of the work was written. He visited England to
superintend the printing of these three volumes, and published them
together on his fifty-first birthday.

He lived only five years and seven months longer: and his premature
death (for he died during the full vigour of all his faculties and
talents) may be ascribed to his own singular improvidence. He had been
afflicted above thirty years by a disease requiring surgical assistance,
which he altogether neglected till it became incurable. He died January
16, 1794, at the house of his friend Lord Sheffield, and was buried in
his lordship’s family vault at Fletching in Sussex.

Of his miscellaneous works, the following are some of the most
remarkable:—

_Historical._ ‘Outlines of the History of the World (written between
1755 and 1763); ‘Mémoire sur la Monarchie des Mèdes’ (do.);
‘Introduction à l’Histoire Générale de la République des Suisses’
(1767); ‘Antiquities of the House of Brunswick’ (1790).

_Classical and critical._ ‘Essai sur l’Etude de la Littérature’; ‘Nomina
Gentesque Antiquæ Italiæ’ (1763 and 1764); ‘Remarques sur les Ouvrages
et sur le Caractère de Salluste, Jules César, Cornèle Nepos, Tite Live,
&c.’; ‘Critical Observations on the Design of the 6th Book of the Æneid’
(1770); ‘Vindication of the History of the Decline and Fall.’

_Miscellaneous._ ‘Mémoire Justicatif;’ ‘Principes des Poids, des
Monnoies, et des Mesures des Anciens’ (1759); and ‘Dissertation sur les
anciennes Mesures du Bas Empire’; ‘Selections from the Extraits
raisonnés de mes Lectures, and from the Recueil de mes Observations’
(from 1754 to 1764); ‘Remarks on Blackstone’s Commentaries’ (1770).
These, and many more than these, were the subjects to which he applied
his extensive erudition—with more or less success, but never without
throwing some light on whatever he undertook to treat.

[Illustration]




                               SCALIGER.


In the sixteenth and the latter part of the fifteenth century, a man of
learning filled a very prominent and distinguished place in the world’s
esteem. Public attention was not then distracted by the multitude of
claimants; for scarcely any country but Italy possessed a national
literature; and few branches of knowledge were much prized, except the
faculties of divinity, law, and physic, and the newly-opened stores of
Greek and Roman antiquity. As Latin was still the universal language of
Europe, that which was done in one country soon and readily became known
to the learned men of all; and if the general standard of information
was low, those who possessed it abundantly towered the higher above
their fellows. Though there were then fewer helps to learning, it was a
time of great discoveries and much excitement. A modern scholar of far
inferior calibre may have a more accurate knowledge of antiquity, and a
deeper insight into the minutiæ of the ancient languages, than the
greatest men of the age of which we speak; but as far as regards the
mass of information gained by their individual labour, few indeed could
venture to compete with such men as Casaubon, Lipsius, Grævius, the
Scaligers, and others. And the honour paid them was proportionate to
their merits. Princes and States courted them, Universities competed for
their residence, Europe at large took an interest in their quarrels and
controversies; and as humility and charity were not the graces in which
they most abounded, the interest in these subjects was in no danger of
perishing for want of agitation. Of this remarkable class of men, none
were more admired by their contemporaries than the two Scaligers.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff._

  JOSEPH SCALIGER.

  _From a Print engraved by Edelinch._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

Julius Cæsar Scaliger, the elder, was as singular a mixture of great
talent, learning, vanity, and presumption, as the world has often seen.
He was born, probably at Verona, in 1484, being the son, according to
the best authorities, of a miniature painter, named Benedict Bordoni,
was baptized by the name of Julius, studied at the University of Padua,
adopted the medical profession, and having attracted the favourable
notice of Antoine de la Rovere, Bishop of Agen in Gascony, accompanied
him thither, in 1525, in the quality of domestic physician. We are not
informed of the exact time at which he thought fit to make addition to
his real name, but in 1528 he obtained letters of naturalization under
the sounding appellation of Julius Cæsar de Lescalle de Bordoms, or
Bordonis; and in 1529 he married a girl of sixteen, by whom he had a
very numerous family. This is his real history, as far as it is known;
but the truth was far too commonplace to satisfy his passion for
notoriety, and he invented a new version of his history, to the
following effect:—

He called himself the son of Benedict de la Scala, one of the bravest
captains of the fifteenth century (of whom it is observed that his name
unfortunately occurs in no contemporary historian), and through him
descended from the ancient family of Princes of Verona. He was born near
the Lago di Guarda; and having narrowly escaped, in infancy, the jealous
search of the Venetians, who were anxious to cut off every scion of his
house, was brought up as a page in the service of the Emperor
Maximilian. He served with distinction in the Italian wars. But the
desire of recovering Verona, the inheritance of his family, from Venice,
ever haunted him; and seeing no chance any other way, he became a monk,
in hope of rising to the Holy Chair, and rendering the resources of the
papacy subservient to the gratification of this ruling passion. The
frivolous and wearisome observances of the cloister soon disgusted him,
and he (broke his vows, we presume, and) returned to his old trade as a
soldier, and again distinguished himself in the wars of Piedmont, while
at the same time he studied the ancient languages, philosophy, and
medicine. At the solicitation of the Bishop of Agen he closed his
adventurous course, as is above related. This extravagant story,
entirely without foundation in any of its parts, and garnished with
abundance of gasconade, was stoutly upheld by the elder Scaliger, and
generally believed by his contemporaries: the younger Scaliger wrote a
book to maintain it, with equal stoutness, but without equal success.

After Scaliger took up his abode at Agen, his chief employment was the
cultivation of learning; his chief passion, the acquisition of fame. In
this he succeeded to the extent of his wishes; and we need seek no
stronger proof of the ascendancy which he gained over his
contemporaries, than the general acceptation of the wonderful story
which we have just told. De Thou said of him, that the age did not
furnish his equal, nor antiquity his superior; and Lipsius classed him
with Homer, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, and named him ‘the miracle and
glory of his age.’ Unquestionably he possessed a vast fund of knowledge,
was an excellent Latin scholar, and wrote extremely well in Latin prose.
Of Greek his knowledge probably was much less; he did little for Greek
literature, and appears not to have taught his son Joseph so much as the
rudiments of the language. His many fine qualities were sadly obscured
by a temper arrogant and overbearing in the last degree: on this subject
it is enough to refer to the abuse which he lavishes on a better man
than himself, the excellent Erasmus, in their controversy concerning
_Ciceronianism_. Unfortunately, he bequeathed the same overweening
vanity and propensity to scurrilous language to his still more
distinguished son, the original of our portrait.

Joseph Justus Scaliger, the tenth child of this singular man, was born
at Agen, August 4, 1540. At the age of eleven he was sent with two of
his brothers to study at the University of Bourdeaux; but at the end of
three years the plague broke out, and he returned in consequence to his
paternal home. The elder Scaliger from that time forward took charge of
Joseph’s education: concerning his method of teaching we know little
more than that he obliged his pupil to compose an essay every day upon
some historical subject. He died in 1558; and in the following year
Joseph Scaliger went to Paris, and devoted himself to the study of Greek
under the celebrated Turnebus. At that time his acquaintance, if he had
any, with the language was very slight. Before two months elapsed he
found the progress of his master too slow to please him; and resolving
to take the matter into his own hands, he made himself cursorily
acquainted with the conjugations, and set to work at once upon Homer,
whom he read through in twenty-one days, constructing a grammar for
himself as he went along. The other Greek poets he perused in the same
manner in four months. The orators and historians he took next in order;
but these extraordinary exertions rest upon his own testimony, which in
things connected with the gratification of his vanity cannot be
considered unimpeachable. After two years’ study of Greek he undertook
Hebrew and other Oriental languages, which he learned without assistance
in the same manner. He certainly possessed an uncommon talent for the
study of languages: it is stated by Du Bartas that he knew
thirteen,—Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, German, French,
English, Ethiopian, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Persian. His habits
throughout life were very laborious; he slept little, and sometimes
passed days almost without taking food. Heinsius, in his first oration,
reports that he had often heard Scaliger speak of having been in Paris
during the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and engaged so deeply in his
Hebrew studies as for a long time not to be aware of the tumult without.
On the contrary, the Vassans, collectors of the ‘Scaligera secunda,’
state, also on the authority of Scaliger’s private conversation, that he
was at Lausanne when the massacre took place. The matter is of little
moment, excepting in so far as it may serve to illustrate the speaker’s
boastful disregard for veracity.

Joseph Scaliger embraced the Reformed religion in 1562, and in the
following year became domestic tutor in a noble family named
Roche-Pozay. In this connexion he was very fortunate: his patron was a
generous and discerning man, by whose liberality he was enabled to visit
the principal Universities of France and Germany. He studied theology at
Geneva under Beza, and shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in
1572, was invited to accept the chair of philosophy in the University of
that city: this he declined, but it appears that he did give lectures
there in 1578. In 1573 he ventured to return to his patron’s estate near
Tours, and there composed the greater portion of his works. He visited
Italy, whence he brought home a number of inscriptions, which he
communicated to Gruter, with leave to publish them in his ‘Thesaurus;’
and he even extended his travels to our northern, and then uninviting,
realm of Scotland.

The multiplicity of Scaliger’s labours did not enrich him. “Poverty,” he
says in one of his letters, “has been my faithful companion through
life, and I never thought to lose her company.” But his spirit was lofty
and independent, and he refused on more than one occasion large sums of
money, which those who esteemed his merits would have forced upon him.
In 1593 he was invited by the States of Holland to accept the
professorship of belles-lettres at Leyden, with a liberal salary. This
he accepted, so that the close of his life was spent in independence.
Unfortunately for his tranquillity, his evil genius of vanity led him in
1594 to publish his testimony to the truth of his own illustrious
descent, in his ‘Letter concerning the Antiquity of the Family Della
Scala’ (Epistola de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ, et vita
Jul. C. Scaligeri, &c.). It is here, says Niceron, that the vanity and
presumption of Scaliger appear to the greatest advantage; and Scioppius,
a brother critic and scholar, who expressed the highest regard and
admiration for the Leyden professor, so long as they were on terms of
mutual admiration, no sooner felt a touch of Scaliger’s power of
sarcasm, than he attacked him in this weak point, in the ‘Scaliger
hypobolimæus; hoc est, Elenchus Epistolæ Joan. Burdonis,
pseudo-Scaligeri, de vetustate et splendore gentis Scaligeræ: 1607.’
Scaliger replied in ‘Confutatio stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ in
which, though the letter of his adversary was short enough, he professed
to have detected 499 falsities. Scaliger retorted on Scioppius, whose
life and conversation were open enough to attack, in his ‘Confutatio
stultissimæ Burdonum fabulæ: 1608,’ published under the name of
Rutgersius, one of his pupils. It has been said that the veteran
controversialist died of chagrin in consequence of Scioppius’s book.
This, however, is not much in accordance with his character; at all
events, his annoyance was long in killing him, for he did not die till
1609, and his disease was a dropsy. High honours were paid by the
University to his memory; a funeral oration was pronounced in his praise
by the eminent scholar Heinsius, and a monument was erected to him at
the public expense.

For the fullest account of Scaliger’s very numerous works, we refer to
Niceron, ‘Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des Hommes Illustres,’ vol.
23. The earliest of them, ‘Conjectanea in Varronem,’ was composed when
the author was only twenty years old. Another of his earlier productions
was an edition of ‘Lycophron,’ with a version into Latin iambics, for
which he has obtained the sarcastic commendation of having by a _tour de
force_ of which no other person was capable, made the translation quite
as unintelligible as the original. He translated the ‘Ajax’ of
Sophocles, in the same metre. He has commented upon Cæsar, Catullus,
Tibullus and Propertius, Persius, Ausonius, Manilius, the tragedies of
Seneca, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, &c. His original works contain
treatises on astronomy, mathematics, numismatics, and chronology, and
various departments of philological and antiquarian research. He
flattered himself that he had discovered and propounded in his
‘Cyclometrica Elementa duo; nec non Mesolabium;’ a method for the
quadrature of the circle: but the fallacy which deceived him was soon
exposed by Vieta and others. Scaliger’s most important and most original
work is that ‘De Emendatione Temporum, 1583,’ which merits especial
praise, as being the first attempt to produce a system of chronology. It
contains a vast quantity of learning, in the collection of which the
author was greatly assisted by his knowledge of the Oriental languages,
as well as of Greek and Latin. That he is often in error is, in this
instance, hardly a blemish upon his merited fame: in so vast an
untrodden field it was impossible to avoid mistakes. And doubtless this
would have been willingly conceded, but for his presumptuous,
uncharitable, and abusive manner of treating the mistakes of others:
those who had suffered from his venomous tongue, of course were ready
and eager to revenge themselves at the first opportunity. In the second
and third editions he made considerable alteration. Petavius, another
eminent chronologer of the same age, who had the advantage, it is to be
recollected, of all that Scaliger had done before him, finds great fault
with the ‘De Emendatione;’ but he allows that “the learning diffused
through it, the immense variety of topics which it embraces, the novelty
of the subject, and the decided tone of the author, procured for him a
very high reputation.” It was in this that Scaliger propounded the
Julian period, as a sort of common measure for the various eras; but it
never became general, and has fallen into complete disuse. The same
Petavius, in speaking of Scaliger’s letters, which are full of curious
matter, easy and familiar, and brilliant without affectation (Epistolæ
Omnes, 1627, published by Heinsius), declared, that if he had then seen
these “divine letters,” he would never have attacked the author of them.
Scaliger’s poems (Poemata Omnia, collected and published in 1615) have
not done much for his fame, though he boasted of his critical skill in
poetry. “Je me connais en trois choses—in vino, poesi, et juger des
personnes. Si bis hominem alloquar, statim scio qualis sit.”
(Scaligerana secunda.) From his translation of select epigrams of
Martial into Greek (Florilegium Martialis Epigrammatum, cum versione
Græca metrica, 1607) a list of sixty-four faults, false quantities and
barbarisms, has been drawn up and preserved in the ‘Menagiana,’ vol. i.
p. 325; many of them, however, are very trifling.

Concerning Scaliger’s character as a critic, we may quote the opinion of
Bayle—‘Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,’ for June 1684—“I know
not whether it might not be said that Scaliger had too much wit and
learning to write a good commentary; for his wit enabled him to find in
the authors on whom he commented more refinement and genius than in fact
they possessed; and his deep knowledge of literature was the cause of
his fancying a thousand points of connexion between the thoughts of a
writer and some rare matter of antiquity. And having made up his mind as
to the reference contained in the passage, he proceeded forthwith to
correct it accordingly. Unless it should rather be thought that the
desire of throwing light upon some mystery of learning, unobserved by
previous critics, led him to fancy hidden meanings where they did not
really exist. Be this as it may, his notes are full of conjectures,
bold, ingenious, and learned; but it is not clear that the authors
always meant to say all that he has made them. It is possible to go as
far wide of the real meaning, by having too much wit, as by having too
little; and it will not do to believe that the lines of Horace and
Catullus contain all the erudition which it pleases Messieurs the
notemakers to bestow upon them.” This passage will sufficiently explain
the grounds of the bitter saying, that Scaliger was born to corrupt,
rather than to correct, the classics.

The praises bestowed on him by his contemporaries, however, were most
extravagant. Heinsius says, in his Funeral Oration, “Men call him
differently, an abyss of erudition, a sea of sciences, the sun of
doctors, the divine progeny of a divine father, of the race of gods, the
greatest work and miracle, the extreme reach of Nature.” His great
contemporaries, Casaubon, Lipsius, and De Thou, adopt a somewhat similar
style of exaggerated commendation. Such expressions of course are to be
taken with allowance; rather as specimens of the taste of the age than
as the deliberate testimony of those who use them. That Scaliger was
profoundly learned and of immense acquirement, will not be denied; that
it is impossible to push things farther than he has, will not now be
asserted, “because,” says Niceron, “it has been done by many.”
Unfortunately, this extravagant admiration contributed, no doubt, by
feeding his vanity, to exacerbate that intolerably scurrilous and
malignant humour, the worst part of his character, which he inherited,
with his great talents, from his remarkable father.

The Table-Talk, as we may call it, of Scaliger has been collected in two
series, entitled ‘Scaligerana, Prima et Secunda.’ For the history of
these see Niceron, or the preface to Des Maizeaux’s edition. They bear
the same unfavourable impress of character as the rest of his writings:
“the pride, arrogance, and venom of an angry pedant reign from the first
leaf to the last; and they are sometimes defective in point of
learning.” So says Vigneul Marville, and his judgment is fully confirmed
by others. “The Scaligerana,” says D’Israeli, “will convince us that he
was incapable of thinking or speaking favourably of any person.” We have
already quoted one passage which gives a specimen of the strange way in
which French and Latin are mixed up in the second series, and we
conclude with another, which contains an amusing instance of his vanity,
both for himself and his father:—“Auratus dicebat Jul. Cæs. Scaligerum
Regi alicui facie similem. Oui, à un Empereur! Il n’y a Roi qui eût si
belle façon que lui. Regardez moi! je lui ressemble en tout, et partout,
le nez aquilin.”

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  WILLIAM PENN.

  _From the Print by J. Hall, after the Picture by West._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                 PENN.


William Penn was born in London, October 14, 1644. He was the son of a
naval officer of the same name, who served with distinction both in the
Protectorate and after the Restoration, and who was much esteemed by
Charles II. and the Duke of York. At the age of fifteen, he was entered
as a gentleman-commoner at Christchurch, Oxford. He had not been long in
residence, when he received, from the preaching of Thomas Loe, his first
bias towards the doctrines of the Quakers; and in conjunction with some
fellow-students, he began to withdraw from attendance on the Established
Church, and to hold private prayer-meetings. For this conduct Penn and
his friends were fined by the college for non-conformity; and the former
was soon involved in more serious censure by his ill-governed zeal, in
consequence of an order from the king, that the ancient custom of
wearing surplices should be revived. This seemed to Penn an infringement
of the simplicity of Christian worship: whereupon he with some friends
tore the surplices from the backs of those students who appeared in
them. For this act of violence, totally inconsistent, it is to be
observed, with the principles of toleration which regulated his conduct
in after life, he and they were very justly expelled.

Admiral Penn, who like most sailors possessed a quick temper and high
notions of discipline and obedience, was little pleased with this event,
and still less satisfied with his son’s grave demeanour, and avoidance
of the manners and ceremonies of polite life. Arguments failing, he had
recourse to blows, and as a last resource, he turned his son out of
doors; but soon relented so far as to equip him, in 1662, for a journey
to France, in hope that the gaiety of that country would expel his
new-fashioned and, as he regarded them, fanatical notions. Paris,
however, soon became wearisome to William Penn, and he spent a
considerable time at Saumur, for the sake of the instruction and company
of Moses Amyrault, an eminent Protestant divine. Here he confirmed and
improved his religious impressions, and at the same time acquired, from
the insensible influence of those who surrounded him, an increased
polish and courtliness of demeanour, which greatly gratified the Admiral
on his return home in 1664.

Admiral Penn went to sea in 1664, and remained two years on service.
During this time the external effects of his son’s residence in France
had worn away, and he had returned to those grave habits, and that rule
of associating only with religious people, which had before given his
father so much displeasure. To try the effect of absence and change of
associates, Admiral Penn sent William to manage his estates in Ireland,
a duty which the latter performed with satisfaction both to himself and
his employer. But it chanced that, on a visit to Cork, he again attended
the preaching of Thomas Loe, by whose exhortations he was deeply
impressed. From this time he began to frequent the Quakers’ meetings;
and in September, 1667, he was imprisoned, with others, under the
persecuting laws which then disgraced our statute-book. Upon application
to the higher authorities, he was soon released.

Upon receiving tidings that William had connected himself with the
Quakers, the Admiral immediately summoned him to England; and he soon
became certified of the fact, among other peculiarities, by his son’s
pertinacious adherence to the Quakers’ notions concerning what they
called Hat Worship. This led him to a violent remonstrance. William Penn
behaved with due respect: but in the main point, that of forsaking his
associates and rule of conduct, he yielded nothing. The father confined
his demands at last to the simple point, that his son should sit
uncovered in the presence of himself, the King, and the Duke of York.
Still William Penn felt bound to make not even this concession; and on
this refusal, the Admiral again turned him out of doors.

Soon after, in 1668, he began to preach, and in the same year he
published his first work, ‘Truth Exalted, &c.’ We cannot here notice his
very numerous works, of which the titles run, for the most part, to an
extraordinary length: but ‘The Sandy Foundation Shaken,’ published in
the same year, claims notice, as having led to his first public
persecution. In it he was induced, not to deny the doctrine of the
Trinity, which in a certain sense he admitted, but to object to the
language in which it is expounded by the English Church; and for this
offence he was imprisoned for some time in the Tower. During this
confinement, he composed ‘No Cross, No Crown,’ one of his principal and
most popular works, of which the leading doctrine, admirably exemplified
in his own life, was, that the way to future happiness and glory lies,
in this world, not through a course of misery and needless
mortification, but still through labour, watchfulness, and self-denial,
and continual striving against corrupt passions and inordinate
indulgences. This is enforced by copious examples from profane as well
as sacred history; and the work gives evidence of an extent of learning
very creditable to its author, considering his youth, and the
circumstances under which it was composed. He was detained in prison for
seven months, and treated with much severity. In 1669 he had the
satisfaction of being reconciled to his father.

William Penn was one of the first sufferers by the passing of the
Conventicle Act, in 1670. He was imprisoned in Newgate, and tried for
preaching to a seditious and riotous assembly in Gracechurchstreet; and
this trial is remarkable and celebrated in our criminal jurisprudence,
for the firmness with which he defended himself, and still more for the
admirable courage and constancy with which the jury maintained the
verdict of acquittal which they pronounced. He showed on this, and on
all other occasions, that he well understood and appreciated the free
principles of our constitution, and that he was resolved not to
surrender one iota of that liberty of conscience which he claimed for
others, as well as for himself. “I am far from thinking it fit,” he
said, in addressing the House of Commons, “because I exclaim against the
injustice of whipping Quakers for Papists, that Papists should be
whipped for their consciences. No, for though the hand pretended to be
lifted up against them hath lighted heavily upon us, and we complain,
yet we do not mean that any should take a fresh aim at them, or that
they should come in our room, for we must give the liberty we ask, and
would have none suffer for a truly sober and conscientious dissent on
any hand.” His views of religious toleration and civil liberty he has
well and clearly explained in the treatise entitled ‘England’s present
Interest, &c.,’ published in 1674, in which it formed part of his
argument that the liberties of Englishmen were anterior to the
settlement of the English church, and could not be affected by
discrepancies in their religious belief. He maintained that “to live
honestly, to do no injury to another, and to give every man his due, was
enough to entitle every native to English privileges. It was this, and
not his religion, which gave him the great claim to the protection of
the government under which he lived. Near three hundred years before
Austin set his foot on English ground the inhabitants had a good
constitution. This came not in with him. Neither did it come in with
Luther; nor was it to go out with Calvin. We were a free people by the
creation of God, by the redemption of Christ, and by the careful
provision of our never-to-be-forgotten, honourable ancestors: so that
our claim to these English privileges, rising higher than Protestantism,
could never justly be invalidated on account of non-conformity to any
tenet or fashion it might prescribe.”

In the same year died Sir William Penn, in perfect harmony with his son,
towards whom he now felt the most cordial regard and esteem, and to whom
he bequeathed an estate computed at 1500_l._ a-year, a large sum in that
age. Towards the end of the year he was again imprisoned in Newgate for
six months, the statutable penalty for refusing to take the oath of
allegiance, which was maliciously tendered to him by a magistrate. This
appears to have been the last absolute persecution for religion’s sake
which he endured. Religion in England has generally met with more
toleration in proportion as it has been backed by the worldly importance
of its professors: and though his poor brethren continued to suffer
imprisonment in the stocks, fines, and whipping, as the penalty of their
peaceable meetings for Divine worship, the wealthy proprietor, though he
travelled largely, both in England and abroad, and laboured both in
writing and in preaching, as the missionary of his sect, both escaped
injury, and acquired reputation and esteem by his self-devotion. To the
favour of the King and the Duke of York he had a hereditary claim, which
appears always to have been cheerfully acknowledged; and an instance of
the rising consideration in which he was held, appears in his being
admitted to plead, before a Committee of the House of Commons, the
request of the Quakers that their solemn affirmation should be admitted
in the place of an oath. An enactment to this effect passed the Commons
in 1678, but was lost, in consequence of a prorogation, before it had
passed the Lords. It was on this occasion that he made that appeal in
behalf of general toleration, of which a part is quoted in the preceding
page.

Penn married in 1672, and took up his abode at Rickmansworth in
Hertfordshire. In 1677 we find him removed to Worminghurst in Sussex,
which long continued to be his place of residence. His first engagement
in the plantation of America was in 1676, in consequence of being chosen
arbitrator in a dispute between two Quakers, who had become jointly
concerned in the colony of New Jersey. Though nowise concerned, by
interest or proprietorship, (until 1681, when he purchased a share in
the eastern district of New Jersey,) he took great pains in this
business; he arranged terms, upon which colonists were invited to
settle; and he drew up the outline of a simple constitution, reserving
to them the right of making all laws by their representatives, of
security from imprisonment or fine except by the consent of twelve men
of the neighbourhood, and perfect freedom in the exercise of their
religion: “regulations,” he said, “by an adherence to which they could
never be brought into bondage but by their own consent.” In these
transactions he had the opportunity of contemplating the glorious
results which might be hoped from a colony founded with no interested
views, but on the principles of universal peace, toleration, and
liberty: and he felt an earnest desire to be the instrument in so great
a work, more especially as it held out a prospect of deliverance to his
persecuted Quaker brethren in England, by giving them a free and happy
asylum in a foreign land. Circumstances favoured his wish. The Crown was
indebted to him 16,000_l._ for money advanced by the late Admiral for
the naval service. It was not unusual to grant not only the property,
but the right of government, in large districts in the uncleared part of
America, as in the case of New York and New Jersey respectively to the
Duke of York and Lord Baltimore: and though it was hopeless to extract
money from Charles, yet he was ready enough, in acquittal of this debt,
to bestow on Penn, whom he loved, a tract of land from which he himself
could never expect any pecuniary return. Accordingly, Penn received, in
1681, a grant by charter of that extensive province, named Pennsylvania
by Charles himself, in honour of the Admiral: by which charter he was
invested with the property in the soil, with the power of ruling and
governing the same; of enacting laws, with the advice and approbation of
the freemen of the territory assembled for the raising of money for
public uses; of appointing judges, and administering justice. He
immediately drew up and published ‘Some Account of Pennsylvania, &c.;’
and then ‘Certain Conditions or Concessions, &c.’ to be agreed on
between himself and those who wished to purchase land in the province.
These having been accepted by many persons, he proceeded to frame the
rough sketch of a constitution, on which he proposed to base the charter
of the province. The price fixed on land was forty shillings, with the
annual quit-rent of one shilling, for one hundred acres: and it was
provided that no one should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any
Indian without incurring the same penalty as if the offence had been
committed against a fellow-planter; that strict precautions should be
taken against fraud in the quality of goods sold to them, and that all
differences between the two nations should be adjudged by twelve men,
six of each. And he declares his intention “to leave myself and my
successors no power of doing mischief; that the will of one man may not
hinder the good of a whole country.”

This constitution, as originally organized by Penn, consisted, says Mr.
Clarkson, “of a Governor, a Council, and an Assembly; the two last of
which were to be chosen by, and therefore to be the Representatives of,
the people. The Governor was to be perpetual President, but he was to
have but a treble vote. It was the office of the Council to prepare and
propose bills, to see that the laws were executed, to take care of the
peace and safety of the province, to settle the situation of ports,
cities, market-towns, roads and other public places, to inspect the
public treasury, to erect courts of justice, to institute schools for
the virtuous education of youth, and to reward the authors of useful
discovery. Not less than two-thirds of these were necessary to make a
quorum, and the consent of not less than two-thirds of such quorum in
all matters of moment. The Assembly were to have no deliberative power,
but when bills were brought to them from the Governor and Council, were
to pass or reject them by a plain Yes or No. They were to present
Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace to the Governor; a double number, for
his choice of half. They were to be chosen annually, and to be chosen by
secret ballot.” This ground-work was modified by Penn himself at later
periods, and especially by removing that restriction which forbade the
Assembly to debate, or to originate bills: and it was this,
substantially, which Burke, in his ‘Account of the European Settlements
in America’ describes as “that noble charter of privileges, by which he
made them as free as any people in the world, and which has since drawn
such vast numbers of so many different persuasions and such various
countries to put themselves under the protection of his laws. He made
the most perfect freedom, both religious and civil, the basis of his
establishment; and this has done more towards the settling of the
province, and towards the settling of it in a strong and permanent
manner, than the wisest regulations could have done on any other plan.”

In 1682 a number of settlers, principally Quakers, having been already
sent out, Penn himself embarked for Pennsylvania, leaving his wife and
children in England. On occasion of this parting, he addressed to them a
long and affectionate letter, which presents a very beautiful picture of
his domestic character, and affords a curious insight into the minute
regularity of his daily habits. He landed on the banks of the Delaware
in October, and forthwith summoned an assembly of the freemen of the
province, by whom the frame of government, as it had been promulgated in
England, was accepted. Penn’s principles did not suffer him to consider
his title to the land as valid, without the consent of the natural
owners of the soil. He had instructed persons to negotiate a treaty of
sale with the Indian nations before his own departure from England; and
one of his first acts was to hold that memorable Assembly, to which the
history of the world offers none alike, at which this bargain was
ratified, and a strict league of amity established. We do not find
specified the exact date of this meeting, which took place under an
enormous elm-tree, near the site of Philadelphia, and of which a few
particulars only have been preserved by the uncertain record of
tradition. Well and faithfully was that treaty of friendship kept by the
wild denizens of the woods: ‘a friendship,’ says Proud, the historian of
Pennsylvania, ‘which for the space of more than seventy years was never
interrupted, or so long as the Quakers retained power in the
government.’

Penn remained in America until the middle of 1684. During this time much
was done towards bringing the colony into prosperity and order. Twenty
townships were established, containing upwards of 7000 Europeans;
magistrates were appointed; representatives, as prescribed by the
constitution, were chosen, and the necessary public business transacted.
In 1683 Penn undertook a journey of discovery into the interior; and he
has given an interesting account of the country in its wild state, in a
letter written home to the Society of Free Traders to Pennsylvania. He
held frequent conferences with the Indians, and contracted treaties of
friendship with nineteen distinct tribes. His reasons for returning to
England appear to have been twofold; partly the desire to settle a
dispute between himself and Lord Baltimore, concerning the boundary of
their provinces, but chiefly the hope of being able, by his personal
influence, to lighten the sufferings and ameliorate the treatment of the
Quakers in England. He reached England in October, 1684. Charles II.
died in February, 1685. But this was rather favourable to Penn’s credit
at court; for besides that James appears to have felt a sincere regard
for him, he required for his own church that toleration which Penn
wished to see extended to all alike. This credit at court led to the
renewal of an old and assuredly most groundless report, that Penn was at
heart a Papist—nay, that he was in priest’s orders, and a Jesuit: a
report which gave him much uneasiness, and which he took much pains in
public and in private to contradict. The same credit, and the natural
and laudable affection and gratitude towards the Stuart family which he
never dissembled, caused much trouble to him after the Revolution. He
was continually suspected of plotting to restore the exiled dynasty; was
four times arrested, and as often discharged in the total absence of all
evidence against him. During the years 1691, 1692, and part of 1693, he
remained in London, living, to avoid offence, in great seclusion: in the
latter year he was heard in his own defence before the king and council,
and informed that he need apprehend no molestation or injury.

The affairs of Pennsylvania fell into some confusion during Penn’s long
absence. Even in the peaceable sect of Quakers there were ambitious,
bustling and selfish men: and Penn was not satisfied with the conduct
either of the representative Assembly, or of those to whom he had
delegated his own powers. He changed the latter two or three times,
without effecting the restoration of harmony: and these troubles gave a
pretext for depriving him of his powers as Governor, in 1693. The real
cause was probably the suspicion entertained of his treasonable
correspondence with James II. But he was reinstated in August, 1694, by
a royal order, in which it was complimentarily expressed that the
disorders complained of were produced entirely by his absence. Anxious
as he was to return, he did not find an opportunity till 1699: the
interval was chiefly employed in religious travel through England and
Ireland, and in the labour of controversial writing, from which he
seldom had a long respite. His course as a philanthropist on his return
to America is honourably marked by an endeavour to ameliorate the
condition of Negro slaves. The society of Quakers in Pennsylvania had
already come to a resolution, that the buying, selling, and holding men
in slavery was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian religion:
and following up this honourable declaration, Penn had no difficulty in
obtaining for them free admission into the regular meetings for
religious worship, and in procuring that other meetings should be holden
for their particular benefit. The Quakers therefore merit our respect as
the earliest, as well as some of the most zealous emancipators. Mr.
Clarkson says, “When Penn procured the insertion of this resolution in
the Monthly Meeting book of Philadelphia, he sealed as assuredly and
effectually the Abolition of the Slave Trade, and the Emancipation of
the Negroes within his own province, as, when he procured the insertion
of the minute relating to the Indians in the same book, he sealed the
civilization of the latter; for, from the time the subject became
incorporated into the discipline of the Quakers, they never lost sight
of it. Several of them began to refuse to purchase Negroes at all; and
others to emancipate those which they had in their possession, and this
of their own accord, and purely from the motives of religion; till at
length it became a law of the society that no member could be concerned,
directly or indirectly, either in buying and selling, or in holding them
in bondage; and this law was carried so completely into effect, that in
the year 1780, dispersed as the society was over a vast tract of
country, there was not a single Negro as a slave in the possession of an
acknowledged Quaker. This example, soon after it had begun, was followed
by others of other religious denominations.”

In labouring to secure kind treatment, to raise the character, and to
promote the welfare of the Indians, Penn was active and constant, during
this visit to America, as before. The legislative measures which took
place while he remained, and the bickerings between the Assembly and
himself, we pass over, as belonging rather to a history of Pennsylvania,
than to the biography of its founder. For the same reason we omit the
charges preferred against him by Dr. Franklin. The union in one person
of the rights belonging both to a governor and a proprietor, no doubt is
open to objection; but this cannot be urged as a fault upon Penn: and we
believe that it would be difficult to name any person who has used power
and privilege with more disinterested views. That he was indifferent to
his powers, or his emoluments, is not to be supposed, and ought not to
have been expected. He spent large sums, he bestowed much pains upon the
colony: and he felt and stated it to be a great grievance, that, whereas
a provision was voted to the royal governor during the period of his own
suspension, not so much as a table was kept for himself, and that
instead of contributing towards his expenses, even the trivial
quit-rents which he had reserved remained unpaid: nay, it was sought by
the Assembly, against all justice, to divert them from him, towards the
support of the government. It is to be recollected that Franklin wrote
for a political object, to overthrow the privileges which Penn’s heirs
enjoyed.

The Governor returned to England in 1701, to oppose a scheme agitated in
Parliament for abolishing the proprietary governments, and placing the
colonies immediately under royal control: the bill, however, was dropped
before he arrived. He enjoyed Anne’s favour, as he had that of her
father and uncle, and resided much in the neighbourhood of the court, at
Kensington and Knightsbridge. In his religious labours he continued
constant, as heretofore. He was much harassed by a law-suit, the result
of too much confidence in a dishonest steward: which being decided
against him, he was obliged for a time to reside within the Rules of the
Fleet Prison. This, and the expenses in which he had been involved by
Pennsylvania, reduced him to distress, and in 1709, he mortgaged the
province for £6,600. In 1712 he agreed to sell his rights to the
government for £12,000, but was rendered unable to complete the
transaction by three apoplectic fits, which followed each other in quick
succession. He survived however in a tranquil and happy state, though
with his bodily and mental vigour much broken, until July 30, 1718, on
which day he died at his seat at Rushcomb, in Berkshire, where he had
resided for some years.

His first wife died in 1693. He married a second time in 1696; and left
a family of children by both wives, to whom he bequeathed his landed
property in Europe and America. His rights of government he left in
trust to the Earls of Oxford and Powlett, to be disposed of; but no sale
being ever made, the government, with the title of Proprietaries,
devolved on the surviving sons of the second family.

Penn’s numerous works were collected, and a life prefixed to them, in
1726. Select editions of them have been since published. Mr. Clarkson’s
‘Life,’ Proud’s ‘History of Pennsylvania,’ and Franklin’s ‘Historical
Review, &c. of Pennsylvania,’ for a view of the exceptions which have
been taken to Penn’s character as a statesman, may be advantageously
consulted.

[Illustration: [From West’s picture of the Treaty between Penn and the
Indians.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  DE THOU.

  _From a Picture by Ferdinand, in the Royal Library, Paris._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                DE THOU.


Jacques Auguste de Thou, whom it is no exaggerated praise to call the
greatest writer of contemporary history that has appeared since the
extinction of Roman literature, was descended of a noble family of the
Orleanois; and his immediate ancestors for three generations had filled
with honour the higher legal offices of the realm. He was born in Paris,
October 9, 1553. His temper was naturally studious; but the extreme
weakness of his childhood interfered greatly with the early cultivation
of his mind, and almost incapacitated him for severe application. He
received, however, the best instruction which Paris could afford, until
1570, when he went to the University of Orleans to study law. Thence he
removed to Valence in Dauphiny, to attend the lectures of the celebrated
civilian Cujas.

De Thou returned to Paris in 1572, and meaning to take orders, applied
himself principally to the study of Greek and of the canon law. In the
next year he visited Italy in the train of Paul de Foix, ambassador of
France to the Pope and other Italian sovereigns, and employed himself
diligently and profitably in cultivating the acquaintance of learned
men, and in collecting materials for his history, the design of which he
had already conceived. He returned to Paris in 1575, and during four
years applied himself chiefly to study, taking various occasions to
extend his travels into Flanders and Germany. In 1578 he was appointed
Conseiller-clerc to the parliament of Paris, and in 1581, one of a
commission sent into Guienne, to provide for the better administration
of justice, which had been greatly impeded by religious dissension.
Returning to Paris in November, 1582, immediately after the decease of
his father, and having become the head of his family by the death of two
elder brothers, he determined to abandon the ecclesiastical profession,
and exchanged his place of Conseiller-clerc, for the lay appointment of
Maître des Requêtes. In 1586 he obtained the reversion of the office of
Président à Mortier, held by his uncle Augustin de Thou; and having
obtained a dispensation from the ecclesiastical engagements which he had
contracted, he married, in 1587, Marie de Barbanson.

When the Parisians embraced the party of the League, in 1588, and Henry
III. was obliged to quit the capital, De Thou followed the person and
fortunes of the monarch, and received a commission to travel through
Normandy and Picardy, to sound the intentions, and, if possible, to
secure the adherence of the authorities, civil and military, of those
provinces. His services were rewarded by the dignity of Conseiller
d’État. In the autumn he was present at the convention of the States at
Blois; but he returned to Paris before the murder of the Duke of Guise.
He was not informed of the intention to commit that crime; and he
believed, from certain peculiarities of behaviour, that the king had
sent for him expressly to communicate that intention, but had changed
his mind during the course of the interview. In the tumults which took
place on the arrival of the news at Paris, De Thou’s life was in
considerable danger, until he effected his escape under the disguise of
a soldier, and returned to Blois.

De Thou laboured to induce Henry III. to reconcile himself sincerely to
the King of Navarre; and being engaged in a journey to raise supplies of
men and money in Germany and Italy when the former was assassinated, he
returned with all haste to tender his allegiance to the new monarch,
Henry IV., by whom he was favourably received, and employed in the most
important and confidential negotiations. Of this period of his life, and
of its ill requital, he has spoken with considerable bitterness in a
letter dated March 31, 1611, to his friend the President Jeannin, and
written, it is to be observed, in a moment of considerable
mortification, because his claims to the office of First President had
been passed over in favour of M. de Verdun. “I remained,” he says,
“after returning from Italy, in Henry IV.’s camp for five years, except
when commissioned to repair to Tours, where the Parliament was then
held, or to visit other parts of the kingdom upon business. At last,
after the king was crowned at Chartres, and the surrender of Paris,
being restored to my library and my home, I thought myself sufficiently
repaid for my labours, in enjoying, with a sound conscience and
unstained fidelity to my sovereign, the benefits of the peace, expecting
that the king would do something for me, in remembrance of those five
years of service in the camp, during which I hardly quitted his side.
Throughout that time I was in the greatest need of all things, being
deprived of all my means by the war, and having served the whole time at
my own cost, without pay or fee. And the king himself used to say that I
was very different from other men, inasmuch as I, though a constant
loser, made no complaints, while others, who were every day profiting by
the public misfortunes, used diligently to complain of their own losses.
Which in truth was complimentary enough; but this praise was my only
payment for past labours: for the king’s temper changed with his
fortune, and I learnt, at my own expense, how fleeting is the favour of
princes, and how ready they are in prosperity to forget past sufferings,
and to take the mention of them by their fellow-sufferers as a
reproach.”

“For two years,” he continues, “nothing was said of me, until the
Protestants again made inconvenient demands, and I was selected by the
king with full powers to hear their complaints.” These were the disputes
which were terminated in 1598, by the publication of the celebrated
Edict of Nantes. De Thou was very reluctant to undertake this office,
foreseeing that it would involve him in great odium. Nor was he mistaken
in this respect. He was a zealous advocate of toleration: and his
liberality of spirit, manifested upon this and on other occasions, but
most of all in the unsparing impartiality of his History, placed him,
though a Catholic, in bad odour at the court of Rome, by whose influence
with the Queen Regent, after the death of Henry IV., he was frustrated
in the chief object of his ambition, that of succeeding to the office of
First President of the Parliament of Paris, which became vacant in 1611.
To that of Président à Mortier he had succeeded in 1595, by his uncle’s
death. He was deeply mortified at this slight, and meditated the
resignation of all his offices: and he has strongly expressed his sense
of the weight of his claims, and of the injury done to him by thus
overlooking them, in the letter to the President Jeannin, part of which
we have just quoted. The first suggestion of pique, however, was
overruled by his friends. He was appointed one of the directors-general
of finance, after the death of Henry IV., and consequent resignation of
Sully, in 1610, and was consulted by the Regent in almost all matters of
delicacy and importance. His leisure moments during these last years
were devoted to his History, which he did not live to bring down to its
intended point of conclusion, the death of Henry IV. He died May 7,
1617, leaving three sons and three daughters by a second marriage: his
first wife, childless, died in 1601. The eldest of these, François
Auguste de Thou, is known in history by having suffered death with
Cinq-Mars, in the reign of Louis XIII., for an alleged conspiracy
against the state, the real object of which was the overthrow of
Cardinal Richelieu.

In 1593 De Thou was appointed principal librarian to Henry IV.; and by
his advice the valuable library of Catherine de’ Medici was purchased,
and the foundation was laid of that splendour and importance which the
Bibliothèque du Roi has since attained. He had himself brought together
a very excellent library, a large part of which has since passed into
the royal collection. He was a steady friend and favourer of learning
and learned men; a zealous, faithful, and disinterested subject; an able
statesman; an upright and enlightened magistrate: and his life, both in
public and private, displayed the same undeviating integrity and love of
truth, which especially distinguish him as an historian.

De Thou began to write his great work, the History of his own Times, in
1591: but, as has been already stated, he had been engaged from early
youth in collecting materials for it, and his own description of the
pains which he bestowed on the task, will convey the best idea of his
zeal and industry. We quote again from the letter to the President
Jeannin. “Having always received great pleasure from the perusal of
history, and being of opinion that men are to be formed for happiness by
examples, as well as precepts, I came to the conclusion, that by
undertaking a history of my own time, beginning where Paulus Jovius left
off, I should do what would be useful to my country, and honourable to
myself. Resolute in this purpose even from boyhood, I laboured
afterwards, in my travels, at the bar, in embassies, in the employments
of war and peace, for this one object, that when leisure came for the
execution of it, I might have all things necessary to my purpose
provided. All printed histories I purchased, unprinted ones I procured
to be copied, I consulted the notes of military commanders, the records
of embassies, the papers of secretaries to kings. I also acquired a
great deal of knowledge from the confidential conversations of
illustrious men who were my seniors, and weighed, by their judgment and
candour, the contradictory reports of party spirit. Thus prepared, I
began to compose my History, while the civil war still raged; and I call
on God, who gave me strength and understanding to complete a work of
such magnitude, amidst such troubles and employments, to witness my
entire and uncorrupted honesty, unswayed either by fear or favour, and
that I had no other end in view but the glory of God, and the benefit of
the public. In style, eloquence, perspicuity, depth of thought, I
confess myself inferior to many: in good faith and diligence I yield to
none who have preceded me in this kind of composition; and I refer this
point to the judgment of posterity.” He proceeds to speak of his full
knowledge that the tenor of the book would involve him in broils and
danger, and expresses a wish that he could have published it
anonymously. But he was prepared, he adds, to sacrifice court favour,
fortune, and his good name with the public, rather than, by an excess of
prudence, throw a shade of discredit upon a work which he had composed
with such lofty ends, and with so great labour. He was not wrong in his
anticipations. It was impossible honestly to write the history of the
stormy and profligate times in which he lived, without saying much that
would shock religious zeal, offend party spirit, and raise up bitter
enemies in those whose misdeeds were openly and unsparingly brought to
light and condemned. De Thou, himself a Catholic, recognised the
existence of virtue and talent among the Reformers, and exposed the
selfish schemes and atrocious cruelties, which had been formed and
exercised under the cloak of maintaining true religion. This was enough
to bring on him the hatred of those who still clung to the principles of
the League, and the enmity of the court of Rome, which in 1609 placed
his History in the list of forbidden books, and, as has been said,
exerted its influence with success in 1611, to prevent his promotion. In
a Latin epitaph, which he composed for his own tomb, after a solemn
declaration of his orthodoxy, he demands, as the only favour which he
has to ask of men, to be more kindly treated by them after his death
than he had been before it. Posterity at least has responded to the
appeal, and by its admiration of the very qualities which involved him
in his mortifications, has done him ample justice for the jealousy of
Rome, and for the lukewarmness of the master whom he had well served
through bad and good fortune.

The History is written in Latin: the style is good, but it is disfigured
by the affectation not only of Latinizing names, but of expressing
modern offices by classical phrases, which of necessity bear a very
forced, or no analogy to the things which they are tortured to denote.
For instance, it would be difficult to recognise the Constable of France
under the title Magister Equitum. This makes the assistance of an
explanatory dictionary very requisite, and such a one was published by
Jacques Dupuy, in 1634, under the title, Index Thuani. The History is
comprised in 138, or, as divided in some editions, into 143 books; and,
in the London edition of 1733, fills six ponderous folios. In the
relation of foreign affairs, De Thou’s authority is less valuable, for
it is stated that he received with little examination the accounts which
were transmitted to him from abroad: but for the history of France
during the sixteenth century, his work is the standard authority on
which later writers have relied. The best and wisest men of all parties
have joined, since his death, in according to him the praise of strict
integrity and impartiality, a generosity of temper which scorned to
suppress or pervert the truth, and great diligence, as well as unusual
opportunities, in ascertaining the real course of events. It is not
meant to claim for him an entire exemption from the errors of limited
information, or the faults of temper and prejudice: defects such as
these are incident to all human productions. It is to be observed that
the heaviest charges against him on this head have been made by those
who were of his own religion.

The first portion of this work was published in 1604, comprising the
first eighteen books, with the letter to Henry IV., which serves as a
preface. This, which was translated into French, and published
separately, has obtained great admiration, as one of the finest
specimens extant of this branch of composition. De Thou published the
remainder at different times, and superintended several editions.
Prudential considerations induced him to make some changes and
suppressions, but upon his death-bed he entrusted a perfect manuscript
copy to his friends Peter Dupuy and Rigault, with injunctions to publish
it. The passages expunged by De Thou himself were subsequently collected
and published in Holland, under the title, Thuanus Restitutus. But the
most complete edition is that of London, 1733, from the collections and
papers of Carte the historian, which were purchased for that purpose by
Dr. Mead. This consists of six splendid folio volumes, with a seventh,
containing De Thou’s autobiography, and a variety of supplementary
pieces. The Eloges of learned men, to the number of 400 and upwards,
contained in the History, were extracted and published in a body by
Antoine Teissier. The whole has been translated into French.

A doubt has been expressed whether the Latin memoirs which profess to be
written by De Thou, proceed from his own pen, or from that of Rigault.
They are translated into French, and printed by themselves. They are
interspersed with many pieces in Latin verse, which De Thou took
pleasure in composing, and wrote with elegance. He composed a poem on
Hawking, entitled “Hieracosophion”, and translated the Book of Job, and
several portions of the Prophecies. The gleanings of his conversation,
extant under the title Thuana, are scarcely worthy of his high
reputation.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  LORD CHATHAM.

  _From a Print by E. Fisher, after a Picture by R. Brompton_.

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                CHATHAM.


William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, was born in Westminster,
November 15, 1708. He was sent to Eton at an early age, and admitted a
gentleman-commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, in January, 1726. His
father, Robert Pitt, Esq., of Boconnock, in Cornwall, died in the
following year, and left to him the scanty inheritance of a younger son.
He quitted Oxford without taking a degree; spent some time in travelling
on the Continent; and entered the army shortly after his return. He
obtained a seat in Parliament for Old Sarum in 1735, and attached
himself to the party in opposition, then headed in the lower house by
the Pulteneys, and favoured in the upper by the Prince of Wales. His
known talents, and his determined hostility, soon drew upon him the
anger of Sir Robert Walpole, who is reported to have said, “We must at
all events muzzle that terrible cornet of horse.” Failing in this, he
had recourse to a method of revenge which would not have been tolerated
in later times, and took away Pitt’s commission. For this injury,
however, the sufferer received an ample recompense in the increased
estimation of the public.

Pitt spoke with great ability and energy, in 1739, against the proposed
convention with Spain, and in 1740, against a bill introduced to
facilitate the impressment of seamen, containing very arbitrary and
oppressive provisions. Many of his speeches have been preserved, to a
certain extent, in the periodical works of the day; though it is
probable, from the very imperfect mode of reporting which then
prevailed, that little remains of their original garb of words. Walpole
was compelled to resign in 1742; but, with his usual dexterity, he
contrived, by disuniting the opposition, to secure himself from the
consequences of an inquiry into his conduct. Pitt spoke with much heat
and eloquence in favour of the inquiry; and two of his speeches on this
subject are reported at considerable length. He obtained no share in the
ministry upon Walpole’s fall, and continued to be a leader in opposition
during the years 1742–3–4. More especially he was earnest in reprobation
of the Hanoverian policy, which was supposed at that time to have an
undue preponderance in our councils: and his pertinacity on this point
engendered in the breast of George II. a strong personal dislike, which
is said to have prevented his admission into that which was whimsically
termed the “broad-bottomed administration,” formed at the close of 1744.
In that autumn he received a bequest of £10,000 from the celebrated
Duchess of Marlborough, “upon account of his merit, in the noble defence
he has made for the support of the laws of England, and to prevent the
ruin of his country.”

Pitt was assured by the Pelhams, that as soon as the King’s antipathy
could be removed, his services would be secured to the government: and
he accordingly received the appointment, of Vice-treasurer of Ireland,
February 22, 1746, and, May 6, was promoted to the office of
Paymaster-general. In the latter capacity he showed his superiority to
pecuniary corruption, by foregoing the profit which it had been usual to
derive from the large balances retained in that officer’s hands, and by
rejecting other lucrative perquisites of office. But he has incurred the
charge of political dishonesty, by supporting measures, as a minister,
analogous in character to those which, under former governments, he had
so strongly condemned. On this subject we may quote the words of a
recent writer on the history of parties in England. “By the absorption
into the government of almost all its leaders and chief orators, the
opposition was for some time reduced in Parliament to extreme
insignificance. Mr. Pitt was now one of the most determined supporters
of the very measures which the first ten years of his parliamentary life
had been spent in condemning and opposing. Nor did he scruple to avow
his change of opinion. In reference, for instance, to the claim of
exemption from search for British ships when found near the coast of
Spanish America, which, urged by the opposition in the time of Sir
Robert Walpole, had involved the country in a war with Spain, and was
afterwards abandoned at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle by the government
of which Pitt was a member, he said in the House of Commons that he had
indeed once been an advocate for that claim; but it was when he was a
young man; he was now ten years older, and having considered public
affairs more coolly, was convinced it could not be maintained. In the
same manner very much of his old jealousy of military power and of the
prerogative appears to have evaporated in the cooler consideration which
he had now been enabled to give to such matters. We do not profess to
doubt the perfect honesty of Mr. Pitt in this change of sentiment; and
we may also think that his more matured opinions were, upon the whole,
more rational than those of his fervid and impetuous nonage as a
politician; but the facts (which only furnish an instance of what has
often happened) are worth recording as a lesson for such as are capable
of understanding it.” It is to be recollected, that the remarkable
events of 1745–6 may very well have modified Mr. Pitt’s opinions with
respect to the maintenance of a standing army.

On the death of Henry Pelham, March 6, 1754, his brother, the Duke of
Newcastle, became First Lord of the Treasury. Pitt’s wishes certainly
pointed to the office of Secretary of State, vacated by the Duke, but he
received no promotion. This was excused on the ground of the King’s
personal dislike; but Pitt felt himself aggrieved; and having neither
regard nor respect for the prime minister, he gradually placed himself
in decided opposition to the government. Still he retained his place as
Paymaster, until November 20, 1755, on which day, with his friends Legge
and George Grenville, he was dismissed. In opposition, he resumed his
former activity; and he had abundant ground for invective against the
incapacity which led to those reverses in the Mediterranean, in America,
and in India, which raised a general cry of indignation through the
country. The Duke tried in vain to strengthen himself, by making
overtures of reconciliation to Mr. Pitt, and at last resigned, November
11, 1756. The Duke of Devonshire went to the Treasury, Pitt was made
Secretary of State, and Legge and Grenville both were taken into office.
This arrangement was short-lived. The King was ill-pleased at the way in
which the present ministry had been forced upon him; and he had a
personal dislike to some of them, especially to Pitt, and to the first
Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Temple, who was dismissed in April, 1757.
Upon this Pitt resigned. During the short period of this administration,
he had displayed his vigour and decision in originating measures to
repair the loss which we had sustained in America; and had endeavoured,
but in vain, to save the unfortunate Admiral Byng.

A sort of ministerial interregnum succeeded, and lasted until the
beginning of June. The King tried in vain to construct an
administration. Meanwhile Pitt was at the height of popularity; and
addresses of approbation were showered on him from all parts of the
kingdom. At last the King was compelled to recall him; and, after
considerable negotiation, he consented to form a government in union
with the Duke of Newcastle, whose parliamentary influence conferred on
him a degree of importance quite disproportioned to the weakness of his
character. Pitt, with the power of Premier, returned to his post as
Secretary, and the Duke took the office of First Lord of the Treasury.

Pitt found the country engaged in an unsuccessful war, and hampered with
a system of continental alliances, against which he had often directed
the full vigour of his eloquence. By pursuing that system he endangered
his popularity, and incurred the charge of having sacrificed his
principles to his ambition. There is no doubt (and this ought to teach
us moderation in our censures), that even honest men, in administration
and in opposition, may view the same measures under very different
aspects. Objectionable as he had thought and called that policy, he
probably persuaded himself that, under existing circumstances, it was
inexpedient to change it; and he followed it up with an energy and
decision, which at least led to results very different to those which
had disgraced the administration of his predecessors. He is reported to
have said to the Duke of Devonshire, “My Lord, I am sure I can save this
country, and nobody else can;” and the success which attended him made
good one half at least of the boast. France was alarmed by frequent,
and, on the whole, successful descents upon her shores; our connexion
with Frederic of Prussia was strengthened and improved; the plans for
the expulsion of the French from North America, which Pitt had formerly
conceived, were now carried into effect; and the result of his judgment
in selecting officers for foreign service, and of his indefatigable care
that no preliminary steps were neglected at home, was seen in those
various successes which were crowned by the glorious capture of Quebec,
and the ultimate cession of Canada by the French. In three years he
raised England from depression and despondency into a situation to give
laws to Europe; and during that time he converted into confidence and
favour that obstinate dislike with which George II. had so long regarded
him. But with the accession of George III., October 25, 1760, a new
favourite, Lord Bute, rose into power. Pitt continued at the head of
administration for a time, but he found that his counsels had ceased to
be the mainspring of government; and having been outvoted in the cabinet
when he urged the necessity of immediately declaring war against Spain,
he resigned, October 5, 1761, to use his own words, “in order not to
remain responsible for measures which he was no longer allowed to
guide.” The King bestowed on him a pension of 3000_l._, and raised his
wife to the rank of Baroness Chatham.

Not many months elapsed before the new ministers found it absolutely
necessary to declare war against Spain, the very point upon which Pitt
had resigned. A general peace was effected by the treaty of Paris,
signed February 10, 1763, by which Canada and other French possessions
in North America were ceded to England. Pitt inveighed strongly, more
strongly perhaps than was quite fair and candid, against the terms of
this treaty; but he took no active part to overthrow the existing
administration. In August, 1763, the King made overtures to induce him
to return to office; and it is not very clearly known upon what account
this negotiation failed. When Wilkes’s case brought forward the question
of general warrants, Pitt took a strong part in condemning the use of
them. In January, 1765, he received a second uncommon testimony of
respect for his public conduct from Sir William Pynsent, an aged baronet
of ancient family in Somersetshire, who, dying, bequeathed to him his
property, to the amount of nearly 3000_l._ a year.

To the scheme for raising a revenue in America, Mr. Pitt was very
strongly opposed. Illness prevented his attendance in the House of
Commons when that scheme was first brought forward; but in his speech on
the meeting of parliament, January 14, 1766, after tidings of the
disturbances in America had been received, he declared his opinion in
the strongest terms. “It is a long time, Mr. Speaker, since I have
attended in parliament. When the resolution was taken in the House to
tax America, I was ill in bed. If I could have endured to have been
carried in my bed, so great was the agitation of my mind for the
consequences, I would have solicited some kind friend to have laid me
down on this floor, to have borne my testimony against it.... It is my
opinion that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies.
At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the
colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of government
and legislation whatsoever.” He recommended that the Stamp Act should be
repealed absolutely and immediately, but that the repeal should be
accompanied with an assertion of the sovereign power of this country
over the colonies, couched in the strongest terms that could be devised,
in every point whatsoever, except that of taking their money out of
their pocket without their consent. These declarations coincided with
the policy of the Marquis of Rockingham, who had been summoned by the
King to form an administration in July, 1765, and who, without any fault
on his side, was involved in all the difficulties and dangers which
resulted from his predecessor’s ill-judged scheme for taxing America.
Mr. Pitt had previously been applied to, but declined taking office upon
the terms proposed; and he showed a coolness towards the Rockingham
administration, which appears to have been uncalled for by any
difference in their political opinions, and which, as far as we can
conjecture from the course of events, was very prejudicial to the
country. Disliked by the King, slighted by Mr. Pitt, whose influence in
the nation was at this time at its height, harassed by a powerful
opposition which regarded it base to yield to the demands of America,
the Rockingham government rather fell to pieces than was broken up,
little more than a year after its formation; and Mr. Pitt reached the
utmost limit of ambition in being commissioned by the King to form a
ministry, without the smallest limitation as to terms, in July, 1766.

Whatever gratification he may have felt at the moment, this high
position added neither to his glory nor his happiness. It led in the
first place to a violent quarrel with his most intimate friend and
political associate, Lord Temple, who felt himself slighted by Mr.
Pitt’s arrangements. Many of the most important persons, whose support
he desired, felt aggrieved by his past conduct, or were offended by the
haughtiness of his demeanour: Lord Rockingham, in particular, refused
even to grant him an interview. And when the government was formed at
last, it was of that ill-assorted and motley character which led Burke,
in an often-quoted passage of his great speech on American taxation, to
describe it as a “tesselated pavement without cement.” The Duke of
Grafton was placed at the Treasury, and for himself Pitt took a peerage
and the Privy Seal. The astonishment of every body at this was extreme.
Lord Chesterfield says, “Mr. Pitt, who had a carte blanche given him,
named every one of them (the new ministry); but what would you think he
named himself for?—Lord Privy Seal, and (what will astonish you as it
does every mortal here) Earl of Chatham. The joke here is, that he has
had a fall up stairs, and has done himself so much hurt that he will
never be able to stand upon his legs again. Every body is puzzled how to
account for this step; though it would not be the first time that great
abilities have been duped by low cunning. But, be it what it will, he is
now certainly only Earl of Chatham, and no longer Mr. Pitt in any
respect whatever. Such an event, I believe, was never heard nor read of.
To withdraw in the fullness of his power, and in the utmost
gratification of his ambition, from the House of Commons (which procured
him his power, and which could alone insure it to him), and to go into
that hospital of incurables, the House of Lords, is a measure so
unaccountable, that nothing but proof positive could have made me
believe it; but true it is.”

At this time often recurring paroxysms of gout had greatly shattered
Lord Chatham’s constitution, and incapacitated him for that
comprehensive superintendence over the affairs of government which he
had exercised during his former glorious administration. Surrounded by a
disjointed set of men, fluctuating in opinion, attached neither to each
other nor to their chief, it was more than ever necessary that the
master-hand should retain its wonted dexterity and power. But the case
was very different. During the whole session of Parliament in 1767, Lord
Chatham was prevented from attending to business by illness; and after
the rising of Parliament he was compelled to inform the King, that “such
was his ill state of health, that his Majesty must not expect from him
any further advice or assistance in any arrangements whatever.” This
declaration may be considered as equivalent to a resignation; but
unfortunately he continued nominally in office until October 15, 1768,
lending the sanction of his great name to a course of policy the reverse
of that which he had advocated, especially in regard of the renewal of
the attempt to tax America. On this subject Mr. Thackeray remarks, “A
greater contrast in the feelings of the Cabinet and of the nation upon
the present resignation of Lord Chatham, to those which were evinced
upon his dismission from office in 1757, and upon his retirement in
1761, can hardly be imagined. His dismission in 1757 excited one common
cry of enthusiastic admiration towards himself, and of indignation
against his political opponents. The attention, not only of Great
Britain, but of the whole of Europe, was attracted by his resignation in
1761; and, although the voices of his countrymen were not so universally
united in his favour as upon the former occasion, the event was
considered as affecting the interests of nations in the four corners of
the globe. The resignation of Lord Chatham in 1768 was in fact nothing
more than the official relinquishment of an appointment in which he had
long ceased to exercise his authority, or to exert his abilities. It was
expected by the ministry, it was little regarded by the people of Great
Britain, it was almost unknown on the Continent of Europe.”

Repose soon wrought a favourable change in Lord Chatham’s health, for in
1770 he led the opposition in the House of Lords. The proceedings in the
House of Commons against Mr. Wilkes formed the principal topic of his
first attack: but he warned the House against the fatal tendency of the
attempts to raise a revenue in America; and he took occasion, at an
early period of the session, to express his belief of the necessity of
introducing some reform into the representation of the people, and to
proclaim his cordial reconciliation and union with the Rockingham party.
At the end of January, to the general surprise, the Duke of Grafton
resigned; and Lord North succeeding him, formed the first durable
administration which had existed since the death of Henry Pelham. During
the years 1771, 1772, 1773, and 1774, Lord Chatham very seldom appeared
in Parliament. At the beginning of 1775, he made two vain attempts to
induce the government to offer overtures of reconciliation to America:
but during the greater part of that year, and the whole of 1776, the
shattered state of his health prevented him from taking any part in
public affairs. May 30, 1777, he came down to the House swathed in
flannel, to move an address imploring the King to take the most speedy
and effectual measures for putting a stop to hostilities in America, by
removing the accumulated grievances of that country: and predicted, with
his usual energy and eloquence, the certain results of the conduct which
we were pursuing. “You may ravage, you cannot conquer; it is impossible,
you cannot conquer the Americans. You talk of your numerous friends to
annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their
army. I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch.
What you have sent there are too many to make peace, too few to make
war. If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you,
you cannot make them wear your cloth: you will plant an invincible
hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they
can never respect you.” The events of that year, the capture of
Philadelphia, and the surrender of Burgoyne, fully justified his
predictions. These events had not been announced in England in November,
when Parliament again met; but in the debate on the Address on the 18th,
Lord Chatham again raised his warning voice to predict the certain
failure of the contest in which we were engaged. “I love and honour the
English troops: I know their virtues and their valour: I know they can
achieve anything except impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of
English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it,
you cannot conquer America.” His speech on this occasion fortunately is
very fully reported, and the records of our Parliament contain none more
eloquent.

In February, 1778, Lord North announced the resolution of government to
yield every point in question to the Americans, except their nominal
independence of the crown. To this, little opposition was offered in
either house; it probably was the line of conduct which Lord Chatham at
this late hour would have advised. But the Americans had declared their
independence, and were not now to be satisfied with anything short of a
formal acknowledgment of it; and here the two great sections of
opposition, the Rockingham and Shelburne parties, were divided. The
latter, with Lord Chatham at their head, regarded such an acknowledgment
as the prelude to the total ruin and degradation of the country. The
former held that it was impossible to avoid it at last, and earnestly
desired, since the colonists could not be retained as subjects, to
secure their alliance to this country, and not to drive them into the
arms of France. The Duke of Richmond moved an address embodying these
views, April 7th, a day memorable for the most affecting scene ever
witnessed within the walls of Parliament. We relate it as nearly as
possible from the account communicated to Mr. Seward by an eyewitness,
and published in his Anecdotes of distinguished Persons.

“Lord Chatham came into the House of Lords leaning on two friends,
wrapped up in flannel, pale and emaciated. Within his large wig little
more was to be seen than his aquiline nose, and his penetrating eye. He
looked like a dying man; yet never was seen a figure of more dignity; he
appeared like a being of superior species.

“He rose from his seat with slowness and difficulty, leaning upon his
crutches, and supported under each arm by his two friends. He took one
hand from his crutch, and raised it, casting his eyes towards Heaven,
and said, ‘I thank God that I have been enabled to come here this day,
to perform my duty, and to speak on a subject which has so deeply
impressed my mind. I am old and infirm—have one foot—more than one foot,
in the grave. I am risen from my bed, to stand up in the cause of my
country!—perhaps never again to speak in this House.’

“The reverence, the attention, the stillness of the house, was most
affecting: if any one had dropped an handkerchief, the noise would have
been heard. At first he spoke in a very low and feeble tone; but as he
grew warm his voice rose, and was as harmonious as ever; oratorical and
affecting perhaps more than at any former period; both from his own
situation and from the importance of the subject on which he spoke. He
gave the whole history of the American war; of all the measures to which
he had objected; and all the evils which he had prophesied in
consequence of them; adding, at the end of each, ‘And so it proved.’” He
concluded with an energetic appeal against the “dismemberment of this
ancient and most noble monarchy.” To the Duke of Richmond’s reply he
listened with attention and composure: he then rose again, but his
strength failed, and he fell back in convulsions in the arms of the
Peers who surrounded him. The House immediately adjourned. On the
following day the Duke of Richmond’s motion was negatived.

Lord Chatham was removed to Hayes, where he languished until May 12,
1778, on which day he expired. He was honoured with a public funeral,
and a public monument in Westminster Abbey; a sum of 20,000_l._ was
voted in discharge of his debts; and a pension of 4,000_l._ a year was
annexed to the earldom of Chatham. He left five children by his wife,
Lady Hester Grenville, sister of Earl Temple, whom he married November
6, 1754. He warmly loved and was beloved by his family, and in domestic
life enjoyed all the happiness which unbroken confidence and harmony can
bestow.

The character of this great man is thus drawn by Lord Chesterfield:—“His
constitution refused him the usual pleasures, and his genius forbade him
the idle dissipations of youth; for so early as the age of sixteen, he
was the martyr of an hereditary gout. He therefore employed the leisure
which that tedious and painful distemper either procured or allowed him,
in acquiring a great fund of premature and useful knowledge. Thus, by
the unaccountable relation of causes and effects, what seemed the
greatest misfortune of his life, was perhaps the principal cause of its
splendour. His private life was stained by no vice, nor sullied by any
meanness. All his sentiments were liberal and elevated. His ruling
passion was an unbounded ambition, which, where supported by great
abilities, and crowned with great success, makes what the world calls a
great man. He was haughty, imperious, impatient of contradiction, and
overbearing; qualities which too often accompany, but always clog great
ones. He had manners and address, but one might discover through them
too great a consciousness of his own superior talents. He was a most
agreeable and lively companion in social life, and had such a
versatility of wit, that he would adapt it to all sorts of conversation.
He had also a happy turn for poetry, but he seldom indulged, and seldom
avowed it. He came young into Parliament, and upon that theatre he soon
equalled the oldest and the ablest actors. His eloquence was of every
kind, and he excelled in the argumentative, as well as in the
declamatory way. But his invectives were terrible, and uttered with such
energy of diction, and such dignity of action and countenance, that he
intimidated those who were the most willing and best able to encounter
him. Their arms fell out of their hands, and they shrunk under the
ascendant which his genius gained over theirs.”

Mr. Thackeray’s ‘History of the Right Hon. W. Pitt, Earl of Chatham,’ in
addition to the fullest account of his public and private life, contains
copious extracts from the reports of his speeches, and his
correspondence. The letters to his nephew, afterwards Lord Camelford,
deserve notice, as exhibiting his private character in a very amiable
light. The same may be said of the letters to his son, William Pitt,
printed by Dr. Tomline in his life of that statesman.

[Illustration: [Death of Chatham, from the picture by J. S. Copley,
R.A.]]

[Illustration]




                                MOZART.


That most of those who are now by universal consent numbered among the
benefactors of the human race reaped little benefit from their genius,
however actively exerted, is a melancholy truth not to be disputed, and
seldom more strongly exemplified than in the instance of the great
composer, who is the subject of this memoir. He to whom all the really
civilized parts of the world are so deeply indebted for the increase, to
an almost incalculable amount, of the stock of an intellectual and
innocent pleasure, scarcely ever enjoyed a moment’s respite from
ill-requited labour and corroding anxieties: few, not in a state of
actual want, ever suffered more from the evils of poverty; and he who
left so valuable a treasure to mankind had not in the hour of death the
consolation of feeling that he had been able to secure against the
miseries of dependence, an affectionate wife and her helpless offspring.

JOHANN-CHRYSOSTOMUS-WOLFGANG-GOTTLIEB MOZART was born at Salzburg,
January 26, 1756. His father, Leopold, was sub-chapel master, or
organist, to the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and a skilful performer
on the violin, a valuable treatise on which instrument he published, in
quarto, under the title of ‘Violinschule,’ in 1769. Whatever time the
duties of his office left at his disposal, he devoted to the education
of his two children, and he began to give his daughter, who was four
years older than her brother, instructions on the harpsichord, when the
latter had scarcely completed his third year. The boy’s strong
disposition for music then immediately developed itself: his delight was
to seek out _thirds_ on the instrument, and his joy was unbounded when
he succeeded in discovering one of these harmonious concords.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Thomson._

  MOZART.

  _From a Print engraved by C. Kohl, 1793._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

When Wolfgang had attained his fourth year, says M. Schlichtegroll, his
father began, though hardly in earnest, to teach him a few minuets and
other short pieces of music. It took the child half an hour to learn a
minuet, and proportionately more time to master compositions of greater
length. In less than two years he had made such progress, that he
invented short pieces of music, which his father, to encourage such
promising talent, committed to writing. It is to be regretted that not
one of these curious manuscripts, if preserved, has ever been produced.
Before he began to manifest a predilection for music, his amusements
were like those of other children; and so ardent was he in the pursuit
of them, that he would willingly have sacrificed his meals rather than
be interrupted in his enjoyment. His great sensibility was observable as
soon as he could make his feelings understood. Frequently he said to
those about him, “Do you love me well?” and when in sport he was
answered in the negative, tears immediately began to flow. He pursued
everything with extraordinary ardour. While learning the elements of
arithmetic, the tables, chairs, even the walls, bore in chalk the marks
of his calculations. And here it will not be irrelevant to state,—what
we believe has never yet appeared in print,—that his talent for the
science of numbers was only inferior to that for music: had he not been
distinguished by genius of a higher order, it is probable that his
calculating powers would have been sufficiently remarkable to bring him
into general notice.

When under six years of age, Mozart surprised his father, though well
accustomed to these premature manifestations of musical genius, by the
production of a concerto for the harpsichord, written in every respect
according to rule, the only objection to which was its difficulty of
execution. This circumstance at once determined Leopold Mozart to let
the youthful prodigy be seen at some of the courts of Germany. He
therefore carried his whole family, as soon as Wolfgang had completed
his sixth year, to Munich, where they were received by the Elector in so
flattering a manner, that the party returned to Salzburg to prepare for
other visits. In 1762 they proceeded to Vienna, and performed at court.
Here Mozart, when sitting down to play, said to the emperor Francis
I.,—“Is not M. Wagenseil here? he ought to be present; he understands
such matters.” The emperor sent for M. Wagenseil. “Sir,” said the child
to the composer, “I shall play one of your concertos,—you must turn the
leaves for me.” About the same time, a small violin was purchased for
him, merely for his amusement; but while it was supposed to be little
more than a toy in his hands, he made himself so far a master of the
instrument, that when Wenzl, the violinist, brought his newly composed
trios to Leopold Mozart for his opinion, Wolfgang supplicated to be
allowed to take the second violin part, and accomplished the task as
much to the satisfaction of the composer as to the wonder of all.

In 1763 the Mozart family commenced an extended tour, giving concerts in
the principal cities through which they passed. In Paris they continued
five months, and Wolfgang performed on the organ in the _chapelle du
roi_, in presence of the whole court. There he composed and published
his first two works, which, compared with other productions of the day,
are by no means trivial. In April, 1764, the party arrived in London,
where they remained till the middle of the following year. Here, as in
France, the boy exhibited his talents before the royal family, and
underwent more severe trials than any to which he had before been
exposed, through which he passed in a most triumphant manner. So much
interest did he excite in London, that the Hon. Daines Barrington drew
up an account of his extraordinary performances, which was read before
the Royal Society, and declared by the council of that body to be
sufficiently interesting and important to form part of the Philosophical
Transactions, in the seventieth volume of which it is published. But
some suspicions having been entertained by many persons that the
declared was not the real age of the youthful prodigy, Mr. Barrington
obtained, through Count Haslang, then Bavarian minister at the British
court, a certificate of Wolfgang’s birth, signed by the chaplain of the
Archbishop of Salzburg, which at once dispelled all doubts on the
subject.

In 1765, the family returned to the continent. At the Hague, where
Mozart published six sonatas, they remained some months; then paid a
second long visit to Paris, and, passing through Switzerland, reached
Salzburg in 1768. Some time after, the children performed at Vienna
before Joseph II., by whose desire Mozart composed an entire opera, _La
finta Sposa_. Hasse and Metastasio both bestowed great commendations on
the work, but it never was produced on the stage, and the probability is
that its merit was only of a relative kind.

In 1769, Mozart (in his fourteenth year!) was appointed director of the
Archbishop of Salzburg’s concerts. Shortly after he proceeded with his
father to Italy, where he was received with enthusiasm. At Rome he gave
a proof of memory which is still the subject of conversation in that
city. He heard the famous Miserere of Allegri in the pontifical chapel,
and knowing that the pope’s singers were forbidden, under pain of
excommunication, to furnish a copy, or allow one, under any plea, to be
taken, he gave his utmost attention to the composition during its
performance, wrote it down when he returned home, and exultingly carried
it with him to Germany. While in Italy, the pope invested him with the
order of the Golden Spur. At Bologna he was unanimously elected a member
of the Philharmonic Academy. He reached Milan in October, 1770, and in
the following December gave his second opera, Mitridate, which had a run
of twenty nights. In 1773 he composed another serious opera, Lucio
Silla; this was performed twenty-six nights successively. He produced
many other works of various kinds between that year and 1779, when he
fixed his residence permanently in Vienna.

In his twenty-fifth year he was captivated by Madlle. Constance Weber,
an amiable, accomplished, and celebrated actress, to whom he soon made a
proposal of marriage. This was courteously declined by her family, on
the ground that his reputation was not then sufficiently established.
Upon this he composed his Idomeneo, in order to prove what means were at
his command; and, animated by the strongest passion that ever entered
his heart, produced an opera which he always considered his highest
effort: certainly it was the first that showed his positive strength.
Parts of it are in his most original, and grandest manner; but parts
show that he had not quite emancipated himself from the thraldom of
custom. Some of the airs, though far superior to those of his
contemporaries, are too much in the opera style then prevailing, a style
now become nearly obsolete; and when, a few years ago, it was wished to
bring out Idomeneo at the King’s Theatre, it became evident that, if
performed as originally written, its success would be very doubtful. To
Madlle. Weber, on whom the composer’s affections were unalterably fixed,
was assigned the principal character in the opera, and the high
reputation which the author acquired by his work having immediately
silenced the objections of Constance’s family, her hand was shortly
after the reward of his efforts.

In 1782 Mozart composed Die Entführung aus dem Serail, (L’Enlévement du
Sérail,) and here it is evident that he had entirely broken the fetters
which before he had only loosened. Here is exhibited that style which,
in an improved state, afterwards characterized all his dramatic works.
It was on the first representation of this opera that Joseph II.
remarked to the composer,—“All this may be very fine, but there are too
many notes for our ears.” To which Mozart, with that independent spirit
which always characterised him, replied,—“There are, Sire, just as many
as there ought to be.” Le Nozze di Figaro—second in merit only to Don
Giovanni, if to that—was produced in 1786, by command of the Emperor, by
whose authority alone an Italian conspiracy against it was suppressed.

In 1787 appeared, first at Prague, the _chef-d’œuvre_ of Mozart, his Don
Giovanni, which was received with enthusiasm by the Bohemians, but at
that time, and indeed years after, was above the comprehension of the
Viennese public, whose taste, unlike that which prevails in the north of
Germany, still inclines them to prefer the nerveless, meagre
compositions of Italy. “This matchless work of its immortalised author,”
never found its way to our Anglo-Italian stage till the year 1817, when
it was performed in a manner that surpassed all former representations,
and has never since been equalled. The production of Don Giovanni in
London,—which put ten thousand pounds into the manager’s pocket, and
forms an era in our musical history—was so strenuously opposed by an
Italian cabal, that but for the courage and perseverance of the director
of that season, it would have been put aside, even after all the expense
of getting up and trouble of rehearsing had been incurred. The charming
comic opera, Cosi fan tutti, was composed in 1790; Die Zauberflöte and
La Clemenza di Tito, in 1791; the latter for the coronation of Leopold
II.

The last and, taken as a whole, the most sublime work of Mozart, his
Requiem, was written on his death-bed; and having been left in rather an
unfinished state, his pupil, Süssmayer, filled up some of the
accompaniments. This circumstance led, a few years ago, to a dispute
concerning its authorship, some indiscreet friends of the latter having
claimed as his composition the best parts of the mass. The assertions by
which the claim was supported, and the arguments in its favour, proved
unavailing against the internal evidence which the work afforded, and it
is to be presumed that the controversy will never be renewed. A story,
too, that an anonymous, mysterious stranger commissioned Mozart to
compose the Requiem, raised many idle conjectures, some of them of the
most grossly superstitious kind. The matter, however, has latterly been
very satisfactorily explained[2].

Footnote 2:

  See Harmonicon, vol. iv., page 102.

This illustrious composer, on whom nature bestowed so much vigour of
imagination, so little physical strength, never seemed destined to
attain longevity. Slightly constructed, and feeble in constitution, he
required more mental repose than his necessities would allow. His mind
did not yield, but his body gave way, and on the 5th of December, 1792,
prematurely worn out, he expired thoroughly exhausted, without any
appearance of organic disease.

It has been said of Mozart, that his knowledge was bounded by his art,
and that detached from this he was little better than a nonentity. That
his thoughts were almost wholly bent on music was not a matter of
choice, but of necessity. Had not his miserably-remunerated labours
occupied nearly all his time, his means would have been still more
limited than they were. But we have reason to think (as we have
elsewhere stated) that his acquirements were far greater than in England
is generally believed; in proof of which we have the best authority for
saying, that once, at a court masquerade given at Vienna, Mozart
appeared as a physician, and wrote prescriptions in Latin, French,
Italian, and German; in which not only an acquaintance with the several
languages was shown, but great discernment of character, and
considerable wit. Assuming this to be true, he could not have been a
very ignorant man, nor always a dull one, out of his profession. But
still stronger evidence in favour of his understanding may be extracted
from his works. That he who, in his operas, adapted his music with such
felicity to the different persons of the drama—who evinced such nicety
of discrimination—who represented the passions so accurately—who
coloured so faithfully—whose music is so expressive, that without the
aid of words it is almost sufficient to render the scene
intelligible,—that such a man should not have been endowed with a high
order of intellect is hard to be believed, but that his understanding
should have been below mediocrity is incredible.

Had Mozart lived, this country, which witnessed his early proofs of
genius, would have enjoyed it in its matured and most luxuriant state.
When Salomon, the celebrated violin player—an enterprising, liberal,
sensible man—was about establishing his subscription-concerts in London,
he went to Vienna to engage either Haydn or Mozart to compose symphonies
for him, and after several “most amicable and pleasant meetings”
(Salomon’s own words) between the parties, it was agreed that Haydn
should first proceed to the rich capital of the British dominions, and
that the following season he should be succeeded by Mozart. The illness
and death of the latter rendered unavailing an arrangement which would
at least have compensated his labours more adequately than they had ever
before been rewarded. The father of modern orchestral music may be said
to have made his fortune—a small one, it is true, but an independence—by
his visits to London; and the creator of an entirely new, an infinitely
superior, style of dramatic music would hardly have been less
successful.

The compositions of Mozart are of every kind, and so numerous, that we
cannot pretend to give even a bare list of them. But it may be observed,
generally, that from the sonata to the symphony, from the simplest
romance to the most elaborate musical drama, he—whose career was stopped
before he had completed his thirty-sixth year—composed in every
imaginable style, and excelled in all. In each class he furnished models
of the greatest attainable excellence: “exquisite melodies, profound
harmonies, the playful, the tender, the pathetic, and the sublime,” are
to be found among his works. It is the exclusive privilege of first rate
merit to be more admired as it is better known; and while inferior
composers enjoy their day of fashion, and are forgotten, Mozart’s fame
will continue to expand in proportion as mankind advances in taste and
knowledge.

[Illustration]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  LOYOLA.

  _From a Print by Bolswert, after a Picture by Rubens._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                LOYOLA.


The family-name of the founder of the Order of Jesuits, commonly called
IGNATIUS LOYOLA, is stated by Ranke, Romischen Papste, vol. 1, on the
authority of judicial records, to have been Don Inigo Lopez de Recalde.
He was born in 1491, at the Castle of Loyola, in the province of
Guipuscoa, in Spanish Biscay; and being destined to the profession of
arms, was sent, at an early age, to learn the rudiments of war and
gallantry, at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella. He made great
proficiency in both. Endowed with a lively imagination, and an ardent
temperament, he became distinguished in arms, and first applied his
talents, which were destined to such different purposes, to the
composition of poetry. Thus he spent his youth; and he had already
reached his thirtieth year, when he was called to the defence of
Pampluna against the attack of the French. On this occasion he displayed
his wonted valour, and while standing in the breach of the castle, he
was struck by a cannon shot which fractured his leg. A tedious
confinement followed; in part occasioned, as some assert, by his great
anxiety to preserve the symmetry of the limb, which led him to undergo a
second operation, to remove a deformity which had been occasioned by an
ill-set bone. To relieve his weariness he called for some books of
chivalry, but in their place he was supplied with the Lives of Saints,
and other devotional works. He read them with extraordinary eagerness.
He admired the zeal of those holy men; he sympathized in their
sufferings; he envied their glory; and he aspired at their eternal
recompense. His thoughts and wishes were thus turned into a new channel,
and he entered on the path of spiritual warfare, with his natural ardour
stimulated and inflamed by religious devotion.

Accordingly, he rose from his bed of sickness, resolved to renounce the
pursuits and pleasures of this world, and to dedicate himself to the
service of God. Still it was not without a desperate struggle that he
could accomplish this resolution. He had a passion for military fame; he
had a mistress whom it was necessary to abandon; and his earthly ties
were as strong, as his temperament was violent. But the new sprung
influence of religion overcame all obstacles. March 24, 1522, he passed
the night in prayer and fasting in the church of the Holy Virgin at
Montserrat; and having hung up his arms on the altar, he consecrated
himself, according to all the forms of chivalry, to her service. At the
same time he made a vow to perform a pilgrimage barefoot to Jerusalem;
and he carried his immediate penance to such extremes of austerity, as
to enervate his frame, and to endanger his life.

As the histories which had most deeply affected his imagination were
those of St. Francis and St. Dominic, so the service which he vowed to
the Virgin was one of privation and errantry. Accordingly he set out
privately on his pilgrimage; and after tarrying some little time at
Rome, to obtain the benediction of the Pope, he proceeded to Venice, and
from Venice to Cyprus and the Holy Land. He reached Jerusalem, September
4, 1523, in the guise of the poorest pilgrim; and after indulging his
piety in frequent visits to all the spots which religion and tradition
have consecrated, he offered his services to the ecclesiastical officers
resident there, for the conversion of the Infidels, or any other holy
purpose. These however were refused, and he was dismissed, somewhat
peremptorily, and commanded to return to Europe.

It is curious, in reviewing the lives of some of those eminent men, who
have left lasting traces of their exertions, to observe how their own
inclinations, had Providence allowed them their course, would sometimes
have led them away from the work which they were commissioned to
accomplish. Had Wesley proved a successful missionary, which was his
earliest enterprise, the society which bears his name might never have
existed. Had Loyola been permitted to spend his energies in attempts at
converting the Jews or Turks, his life might have been of short
duration, and his name might never have been heard beyond the limits of
Palestine.

When his pilgrimage was completed, and he was restored to his native
country, his passion for religious enterprise and distinction did not in
any degree abate; but he soon discovered that his literary acquirements
were wholly insufficient for his purpose. He began therefore, at the age
of thirty-three, to apply himself to the rudiments of grammar; and
endeavoured to regain lost time by his zeal and industry. He commenced
his labours at Barcelona, and remained there till his pious attempts to
reform a convent of abandoned nuns brought down upon him the vengeance
of their lovers. Thence he retired to Alcala, where an university had
lately been founded by Cardinal Ximenes. Here he pursued his studies
with great ardour till the year 1527: he attempted at the same time the
three sciences of logic, physic, and theology, and was bent on
accomplishing by a single effort what results to other men from the
patient employment of much time and labour. But it was too late in life.
His mind had been already formed to more active pursuits, and he could
not bend it to the acquisition of learning. A confused mass of
knowledge, directed by no reflection, and founded on no principles,
could neither be applied nor retained; and his endeavour to grasp so
much, at so great a disadvantage, ended, where it was sure to end, in
entire ignorance. He discovered his failure; and thenceforward directed
his energies to a more attainable end: and, though he desisted not
entirely from his tardy struggles after learning, he seems rather to
have looked for success from the influence which personal intercourse
generally enabled him to acquire over those about him. Some lectures,
however, which he delivered at Alcala, gave offence to the authorities
of that university; and after an imprisonment of forty-two days, he was
prohibited from public preaching, until he should have completed a
course of four years in theology. It seems too, that, together with two
or three companions, he had assumed a peculiar dress, which they were
ordered to lay aside.

From Alcala he removed to Salamanca; but there too he had no sooner
resumed his preaching than the Inquisitors laid hands on him; and after
a second confinement, with severer treatment, he and his companions were
again dismissed, under a sentence not widely differing from the
preceding. On these occasions it was not so much the character of his
sermons which gave the offence, as the circumstance that they were
delivered by a layman.

Thus discouraged in his native country, he hoped to find a wider, or at
least a safer, field for his exertions in France. Accordingly he
departed for Paris, and arrived there in the beginning of February,
1528. His means were extremely small, and even these had been provided
by the generosity of his friends. He was deprived of all that remained
to him, soon after his arrival, by the treachery of a fellow-student,
and had no other method of subsistence than mendicity. Thus he lived,
returning, as we are informed, with his first ardour to the rudiments of
literature, and striving by his instructions and example to extend the
narrow limits of his influence. Even thus however he was not beneath the
notice of the Inquisitor, a special emissary of Clement VII., then
resident at Paris; but on this occasion he cleared himself from any
charge or suspicion of heresy, and was absolved without any particular
injunction or reproach. But his poverty still compelled him to employ
his vacations in begging, through various countries, the means which
were to maintain him during his studies; and in one of these mendicant
excursions, he visited certain Spanish merchants resident in London.
Doubtless his powers of observation were profitably exercised during
these wanderings, and his perpetual intercourse, even in the character
of a religious beggar, with all classes of all nations, could not fail
to improve a penetrating intellect in the art of dealing with mankind.

By this uncommon perseverance he was enabled to finish his course of
study of three years, and was admitted to the degree of Master of Arts.
Then again he betook himself more especially to theology; and it was at
this time (1534) that he formed the first serious design of establishing
a new Order. Such a project, in the hands of so very humble a person as
Loyola then was, might have seemed wild and hopeless; and the prospect
of its success was not improved by the number or quality of his
associates. Seven individuals, of no distinguished rank or eminence,
personal or ecclesiastical, some of whom were very young and others very
poor, met together in the church of Montmartre, August 15, 1534, and
devoted themselves to the service of Christ. They were prepared for this
solemnity by prayer and fasting. One of them, Le Fevre, who had lately
been ordained, administered the sacrament to his brethren in a
subterraneous chapel; and all then bound themselves, by a solemn vow, to
undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the conversion of the infidels
of the East, and to renounce all their possessions, except such as
should be necessary for that pilgrimage: or else, in case they should be
unable to accomplish that design, to throw themselves at the feet of the
Pope, and offer their services as his faithful and gratuitous
instruments and missionaries, for the performance of any ministry that
he might think proper to impose on them. Another of these devotees was
Francis Xavier, a Spaniard, fifteen years younger than Loyola; who,
being from the very beginning one of his most zealous disciples, was
numbered in later life among the most distinguished ornaments of the
society.

Such was the origin of the “Society of the Jesuits.” From this little
congregation of obscure enthusiasts in the subterraneous chapel of
Montmartre arose that redoubted Company, which sprang up into such
immediate eminence; which spread so soon through the whole body of
Christendom; which took possession of the courts and the consciences of
princes, and exerted for so many years a scarcely credible influence, in
every quarter of the globe, over the course of human affairs. Its first
professed object was the conversion of the infidels: the entire devotion
to the Roman See, whence its future importance chiefly proceeded, was
not, as it would seem, the primary motive which Ignatius inspired into
his followers. Perhaps the chivalrous feeling which animated, or rather
created, the earliest efforts of his piety, was not yet extinct within
him—or it may have been his policy to put forward, as the leading part
of his design, that which required the greatest sacrifice and offered
the least reward. But, however that may have been, he had no sooner thus
bound his associates together, than he prescribed to them rules and
practices of devotion, daily meditations and penances, spiritual
conversations, the study and imitation of the character of Jesus,
constant self-examination, and frequent communion. He appointed the Day
of the Assumption, the anniversary of their vow, for their peculiar
observance; and during an interval of preparation necessary for his
disciples, he directed his own exertions to repress the progress in
France of the doctrines of Luther and Zuinglius.

After visiting his native country, he proceeded to Venice, according to
agreement with his followers, for the accomplishment of their vow of
pilgrimage: and arrived there at the end of 1535.

Their first design however was to present themselves at Rome. There
Ignatius acquired the confidence of Peter Ortiz, a distinguished
Spaniard, employed by Charles V. to sustain at the Holy See the validity
of the marriage of Catharine of Arragon with Henry VIII. Ortiz presented
him to Paul III., who approved his doctrine and encouraged his project.
Howbeit, his departure for the Holy Land was prevented by the Turkish
war, which at that moment broke out; and at the end of 1537 he assembled
his companions, now increased to nine, at Vicenza, and persuaded them,
that, as the approach to Palestine was closed, it only remained for them
to fulfil the other part of their vow, and offer their devoted services
to the Pope. Accordingly, Ignatius, with two others, returned to Rome
for that purpose. The rest dispersed themselves among the principal
academies of Italy, to gain proselytes. All bound themselves to the
observance of certain distinctive rules and practices; and to any
interrogatories which might be put to them respecting the Order to which
they belonged, Ignatius instructed them to reply, that they were members
of the Company of Jesus.

The encouragement which he received at Rome induced him to take further
measures for the establishment and enlargement of his new Order. He
presently recalled his missionaries, and collected them about him at
Rome. During their residence at Venice they had taken the two vows of
poverty and chastity; they now added that of obedience, and decided to
elect a General with absolute power. They next determined to undertake a
fourth and peculiar obligation—one, to which they had indeed already
engaged themselves in the chapel of Montmartre, but which they had not
yet proclaimed to the world—that of doing, without aid or recompense,
any errand on which the Pope, as Vicar of Christ, might think fit to
send them. Loyola then applied to Paul III. for the confirmation of his
Order. Some obstacles arose, which were gradually removed. A charge of
heresy, founded chiefly on his early persecutions at Alcala and
Salamanca, was advanced with great clamour against him and his
companions; but a judicial inquiry, by confirming their innocence,
increased their reputation. An influential Cardinal earnestly opposed
the establishment of the new Order. But his objections were finally
overcome, and, September 27, 1540, the Pope issued his bull to sanction
the institution of Ignatius. The number of his disciples was still
confined to nine. Three of these were then absent from Italy,—Xavier and
Rodriguez on a mission to India, Le Fevre at the Diet of Worms; so that
on the day appointed for the election of a general, six only assembled,
together with Loyola. He was chosen unanimously: but he affected great
sorrow at this decision, and only accepted the honour, after it had been
pressed upon him by a second assembly, and urged by the authoritative
command of his confessor. The ceremonies of profession were performed in
the Church of St. Paul, April 22, 1541; and while Ignatius made his vow
of especial obedience directly to the Pope, the vows of the others
professed were tendered exclusively to their General.

The Pope immediately availed himself of the services thus offered him,
and sent the six disciples on various missions into different parts of
Europe. Ignatius alone remained at Rome, and employed himself in offices
of piety. He lectured publicly on religious subjects; he discharged many
duties of humanity and charity; he took measures for the conversion of
the Jews at Rome; he established a penitentiary for women reclaimed from
sin; he founded an asylum for orphans; and the leisure which he could
spare from these holy works, he devoted to composing the Constitutions
of his Order.

These were founded on the principle of uniting spiritual meditation with
active habits of practical piety; so that, while, on the one hand, he
enjoined mental prayer, frequent self-examination, and religious
retirement; on the other, he engaged his disciples to use every exertion
for the instruction and sanctification of the rest of mankind. He
commanded them to be perpetually exercised in preaching and missions, in
the conversion of infidels and heretics, in the inspection of prisons
and hospitals, in the direction of consciences, and the instruction of
youth. To this end, he discouraged every severity of mortification, and
all superfluity both in their public and private devotions. He
prohibited the possession of property by any of his establishments,
except colleges, which he permitted to be endowed for the advantage of
necessitous students; and he closed, as far as he was able, all the
various sources of ecclesiastical emolument. Similar professions of
disinterested devotion and perfect self-denial had laid the foundations
of the enormous wealth, power, and luxury of more ancient Orders; and if
Ignatius had been actuated by ambition, he could have devised no better
means of raising his society to affluence and importance, than by laying
the same snare for the credulity of mankind.

In this mere sketch of the life of Loyola, it would be absurd to attempt
any account of the internal constitution of his Order, of the particular
laws by which it was regulated, of the gradual development of its
principles, and the general evils which flowed from them. It is enough
to give some faint notion of its earliest progress. Six years after the
confirmation of the Order of Jesuits, a college was opened to them in
Spain (it was the first of these establishments), by Francis Borgia,
Duke of Gandia, and endowed with the same privileges as those of Alcala
and Salamanca. Its statutes were composed by Loyola. In the same year,
to give some pledge for the sincerity of his vow of self-denial, and to
secure his followers against one of the commonest temptations of
ambition, he prevailed upon the Pope to exclude them and their
successors, by a perpetual edict, from the possession of bishoprics,
abbeys, and every description of benefice. This restriction not only
stamped them with a peculiar character, and recommended them to popular
favour as singular instances of self-devotion, but also left them, for
the furtherance of the especial objects of the society, the leisure,
talents, and industry which might otherwise have been employed in the
pursuit of ecclesiastical dignities, or the performance of pastoral
duties. But it was not faithfully observed, even during the lifetime of
Ignatius.

The Spiritual Exercises, the great work of the founder of the Jesuits,
is asserted to have been composed by him, aided by the inspiration of
the Holy Virgin, very soon after his return from Jerusalem. His capacity
for such a composition, at that period of his life, has been disputed by
many, and various doubts have been thrown on its genuineness. Howbeit,
the book passed for his during the infancy of the society, and in 1548
the Archbishop of Toledo took great pains to suppress it. Loyola turned
this attempt into an advantage to himself. He caused the merits of the
work to be strongly represented to Paul III., and obtained a bull in
praise and confirmation of all contained in it. Thus recommended by the
apostolical authority to the meditations of the faithful, it attracted
more general attention on its author, and on the institution which he
had founded.

After the first step had been taken, the progress of the Company of
Jesus surpassed in rapidity all that is recorded of the infancy of the
older establishments. It was scarcely planted in Spain before it spread
to Ferrara, and other parts of Italy. In 1548 it got footing at Messina
and Palermo. In 1550 it was introduced into Bavaria; and in the same
year it was still further confirmed by a bull of Julius III., and
enriched, as it had previously been, by abundant benefactions from the
apostolic treasury. Two years afterwards, it founded a Germanic college
at Rome, and by this time it could boast of similar institutions in many
of the most civilized cities of Europe. And not in Europe only: its
missionaries had already penetrated into India, Africa, and America. In
the year 1553 they presented themselves in Cyprus, at Constantinople,
and Jerusalem, and were carried by the same impulse into Abyssinia and
China. France alone avowed her suspicion of their principles, and
refused them admission: nor were the utmost endeavours of Loyola himself
able to achieve this object. Howbeit, the perseverance of his followers,
supported by their general success, succeeded even there, and in
February, 1564, they opened their celebrated college in the Rue St.
Jacques at Paris.

Cheered by this sudden and most rapid prosperity, Loyola, whom his
disciples represent as the only spring of all the movements of the
Company, and the sole spirit of the mighty body which was already spread
over all the quarters of the world—whom his enemies describe as a vain,
illiterate enthusiast, without talents, without knowledge, a mere
machine in the hands of a crafty and worldly hierarchy—peaceably expired
at Rome, July 31, 1566, surrounded by his disciples, and animated (as
they relate) with the deepest feelings of piety, and gratitude to
Providence for the blessing which had been vouchsafed upon his mission.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. T. Wedgwood._

  BRINDLEY.

  _From a Print by R. Dunkarton 1773, after a Picture by F. Parsons._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                               BRINDLEY.


Our memoir of the man who originated that system of canal navigation,
which contributed in no secondary degree to the wonderful increase of
our national wealth in the last century, is taken entirely, and in many
parts verbatim, from Dr. Kippis’s Biographia Britannica. The article
BRINDLEY in that work, communicated by Brindley’s brother-in-law, Mr.
Henshall, and his friend Mr. Bentley, appears to be the only original
account of him extant, and the source from which all later accounts have
been taken.

James Brindley was born in the parish of Wormhill in Derbyshire, in
1716. He was the son of a small freeholder, who squandered his property
in rustic dissipation, and could scarcely afford to give him even the
rudiments of education. His boyhood, therefore, was spent in rural
labour: but at the age of seventeen he left his home, to be apprenticed
to a millwright at Macclesfield. He soon exhibited an uncommon share of
mechanical ingenuity, which enabled him to excel his master in planning
and executing orders for machinery more complicated than usual, and
caused his services to be eagerly sought and highly prized by those who
had once occasion to employ him.

At a later period he went into business on his own account, and, by many
useful inventions and contrivances, established his reputation
throughout the neighbourhood as a skilful mechanic. He gradually
obtained a wider range for the exercise of his powers. In 1752 he
erected a remarkable engine to drain some coal mines at Clifton, in
Lancashire, of which the moving power was a wheel fixed thirty feet
below the surface of the earth, and driven by water drawn from the river
Irwell, by a tunnel cut for near 600 yards through the rock. In 1755 he
was employed to construct portions of the works for a silk mill at
Congleton, under the superintendence of an engineer, who proved
incompetent to the task which he had in hand. Brindley does not appear
ever to have executed machinery of the sort required, and he had not
even been permitted to see the general model of the mill: but on the
incompetency of his superior being discovered, he came forward and told
the proprietors, that if they would let him know what was the effect
they wished to have produced, and would permit him to perform the
business in his own way, he would finish the mill to their satisfaction.
The knowledge which they had of his ability and integrity induced them
to repose confidence in this assurance; he accomplished that very
curious and complex piece of machinery, in a manner far superior to the
expectations of his employers, and with the addition of several new and
useful contrivances. He also invented machines for making tooth and
pinion wheels, which hitherto had been cut by hand, and with great
labour.

Many other improvements Brindley introduced into the mechanical arts.
But about this time his thoughts were drawn towards a larger sphere of
action by the resolution of Francis Duke of Bridgewater to cut a canal
from his coal mines at Worsley to the town of Manchester, distant about
seven miles. This scheme is said to have been before conceived by one of
that nobleman’s predecessors: but that circumstance does not detract
from the honour due to the great perseverance and resolution displayed
in the execution of his plan. Divesting himself of the splendour which
usually belongs to his rank, he devoted his large revenue almost
entirely to his favourite undertaking: resisting the temptation to
borrow money, lest he should involve himself and his successors in
irremediable difficulties, in case of the failure of an undertaking
which, from its novelty, no man living could assert to be certain of
success. At the same time having selected Brindley as his engineer, on
good experience of his skill and talent, he placed a noble confidence in
him; and, without fear or distrust, devoted his energy and fortune to
work out the magnificent design which the genius of his coadjutor had
planned. As the difficulties to be overcome were very great, so there
was little experience to guide the projectors. Navigable rivers indeed
had been improved, and those which were not navigable by nature had been
made so by pounding up their waters with locks and dams: but of canals,
properly so called, this was the first constructed in England. That it
might be perfect in its kind, it was resolved to preserve a level, and
avoid locks altogether: but to effect this obstacles were to be
overcome, such as never had been surmounted in England,—obstacles which
had always been considered insurmountable. Navigable tunnels were to be
cut, long and large mounds to be carried across valleys, and in the line
which finally was adopted, an aqueduct bridge of three arches, nearly
fifty feet in height, and including the embankments on each side, five
hundred yards in length, was to be carried over the river Irwell. This
part of the scheme being generally considered wild and extravagant,
Brindley, to justify himself to his employer, desired that the opinion
of another engineer might be taken. This was accordingly done: but the
second, on being conducted to the spot where it was intended that the
aqueduct should be made, exclaimed, “I have often heard of castles in
the air, but never before was shown the place where any of them were to
be erected.” But the Duke of Bridgewater’s confidence in Brindley was
not to be shaken, and the bridge was undertaken and finished within less
than a year.

It is needless now to give the details of works which, though they
excited the wonder of contemporaries, have been far surpassed in
magnitude by more recent undertakings. One feature in the Duke of
Bridgewater’s canal, however, is too remarkable to be passed over: it is
continued on the same level more than three quarters of a mile into the
heart of the hill in which the collieries are situated, so that after a
short transit in low waggons along the galleries of the mine, the coal
is deposited at once in the barges which convey it to Manchester. For a
fuller account, we may refer to Phillips’s History of Inland Navigation.
In 1762, the Duke of Bridgewater obtained an Act of Parliament, enabling
him to continue his canal from Worsley in an opposite direction to
Runcorn, in the tideway of the Mersey, so as to establish a perfect
water-way between Liverpool and Manchester, unembarrassed by the
constant current, and inequalities of flood and drought, which impeded
the navigation of the Irwell. In this part of the line several deep
valleys, especially those of the rivers Mersey and Bollin, were to be
crossed, and this was done without the assistance of a single lock.
Brindley’s method of constructing the long embankments, which occurred
in some places, was remarkable: he built caissons along the line of its
intended course, into which boats laden with excavated soil were
conducted by the canal itself, and discharged their contents upon the
very spot where the ground was to be raised. Thus the canal, as it were,
pushed itself forward; and the labour and expense of transporting these
immense masses of earth was greatly diminished. To guard against the
total loss of water, and ruin to the surrounding country, which might
occur from a breach of these embankments, Brindley contrived stops,
which were gates so hung as to lie horizontally near the bottom when the
water was at rest, but to rise and close when any current should be
produced by the banks giving way, and thus prevent the escape of any
water, except that portion near the breach which should be comprised
between them. It is hardly necessary to add that the result of this, the
greatest undertaking perhaps ever performed by any private person out of
his own fortune, has been the realization of an enormous income to the
peer who undertook it, and to his heirs.

This success encouraged others to proceed in the same course; and in
1765 a subscription was raised, and an Act of Parliament procured, for
uniting the rivers Mersey and Trent, and consequently the ports of
Liverpool and Hull, by what is commonly called the Grand Trunk Canal.
Brindley bestowed this name upon it, in the expectation that, traversing
a large and important portion of our manufacturing district, it would be
the main trunk, from which a number of minor branches would spring. The
scheme had been projected so early as 1755, and the ground surveyed,
which for the most part offered little difficulty. But there was one
line of high ground, called Harecastle Hill, which could neither be
turned nor surmounted by any expedient that former engineers could
devise. Brindley overcame the obstacle by driving a tunnel through it,
upwards of a mile and five furlongs in length, and in some parts seventy
yards below the surface of the ground. This canal, which is ninety-three
miles long, was begun in 1766, and finished in May, 1777, less than
eleven years after its commencement. In connexion with it, Brindley
planned and executed a branch which joined the Severn, and thus gave
Bristol an inland navigation to Hull, Liverpool, and Manchester.

Some notion may be formed of the impulse which Brindley’s energy and
skill gave to the system of internal navigation, when it is stated that
during the few years which elapsed between the completion of the
Bridgewater Canal, and his death in 1772, he was engaged in at least
eighteen different projects for cutting canals, or for improving rivers,
without including those we have already mentioned. The mere names of
these would be matter of little interest; they may be seen in the
Biographia Britannica. Nor shall we now be expected to dwell on the
unprecedented increase of trade and manufactures during the last
century, and to point out how closely this is connected with our great
facilities of internal communication. One thing, however, is too
remarkable to be passed over: it was as nearly as possible at the same
time that Watt, Arkwright, and Brindley, were effecting, each in his own
department, those wonderful improvements in mechanical science, which
conjointly have given such vast extent and importance to all branches of
our manufactures, and which singly would have been, as it were, each of
them crippled and imperfect. Of Brindley’s private history, scarcely any
particulars are preserved. The following account of his character is
stated by Dr. Kippis to proceed from the pen of Mr. Bentley, a partner
in the celebrated house of Wedgwood, who knew him well:—

“When any extraordinary difficulty occurred to Mr. Brindley in the
execution of his works, having little or no assistance from books, or
the labours of other men, his resources lay within himself. In order
therefore to be quiet and uninterrupted, whilst he was in search of the
necessary expedients, he generally retired to his bed; and he has been
known to lie there one, two, or three days, till he had attained the
object in view. He then would get up, and execute his design without any
drawing or model. Indeed, it never was his custom to make either, unless
he was obliged to do it to satisfy his employers. His memory was so
remarkable, that he has often declared that he could remember and
execute all the parts of the most complex machine, provided he had time,
in his survey of it, to settle in his mind the several departments, and
their relation to each other. His method of calculating the powers of
any machine invented by him was peculiar to himself. He worked the
question for some time in his head, and then put down the results in
figures; after this, taking it up again in that stage, he worked it
further in his mind for a certain time, and set down the results as
before. In the same way, he still proceeded, making use of figures only
at stated periods of the question. Yet the ultimate result was generally
true, though the road he travelled in search of it was unknown to all
but himself; and, perhaps, it would not have been in his power to have
shown it to another.

“The attention which was paid by Mr. Brindley to objects of peculiar
magnitude did not permit him to indulge himself in the common diversions
of life. Indeed, he had not the least relish for the amusements to which
mankind in general are so much devoted. He never seemed in his element,
if he was not either planning or executing some great work, or
conversing with his friends upon subjects of importance. He was once
prevailed upon, when in London, to see a play. Having never been at an
entertainment of this kind before, it had a powerful effect upon him,
and he complained for several days afterwards, that it had disturbed his
ideas, and rendered him unfit for business. He declared, therefore, that
he would not go to another play upon any account. It might, however,
have contributed to the longer duration of Mr. Brindley’s life, and
consequently to the further benefit of the public, if he could have
occasionally relaxed the tone of his mind. His not being able to do so,
might not solely arise from the vigour of his genius, always bent upon
capital designs; but be, in part, the result of that total want of
education, which, while it might add strength to his powers in the
particular way in which they were exerted, precluded him, at the same
time, from those agreeable reliefs that are administered by
miscellaneous reading, and a taste in the polite and elegant arts. The
only fault he was observed to fall into, was his suffering himself to be
prevailed upon to engage in more concerns than could be completely
attended to by any single man, how eminent soever might be his abilities
and diligence. It is apprehended that, by this means, Mr. Brindley
shortened his days, and in a certain degree abridged his usefulness.
There is, at least, the utmost reason to believe, that his intense
application in general to the important undertakings he had in hand
brought on a hectic fever, which continued upon him, with little or no
intermission, for some years, and at length terminated his life. He died
at Turnhurst, in Staffordshire, on the 27th of September, 1772, in the
fifty-sixth year of his age, and was buried at New Chapel in the same
county. The vast works Mr. Brindley was engaged in at the time of his
death, he left to be carried on and completed by his brother-in-law Mr.
Henshall, for whom he had a peculiar regard, and of whose integrity and
abilities in conducting these works he had the highest opinion.

“The public could only recognise the merit of this extraordinary man in
the stupendous undertakings which he carried to perfection, and
exhibited to general view. But those who had the advantage of conversing
with him familiarly, and of knowing him well in his private character,
respected him still more for the uniform and unshaken integrity of his
conduct; for his steady attachment to the interest of the community; for
the vast compass of his understanding, which seemed to have a natural
affinity with all grand objects; and likewise for many noble and
beneficent designs, constantly generating in his mind, and which the
multiplicity of his engagements, and the shortness of his life,
prevented him from bringing to maturity.”

[Illustration: [Aqueduct over the Irwell.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  SCHILLER.

  _From a Print by Faustin Anderloni, after a Picture by G. von
    Kügelgen._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                               SCHILLER.


Schiller is as universally acknowledged to be the second of German, as
Milton is of English poets: and these great names, after those of Goethe
and Shakspeare, denote the chiefs of the national literature of their
respective countries. But the German poets were not merely
contemporaries, but associated in friendship and congenial pursuits; and
so much light is thrown upon the character of each by its being
contemplated in connexion with that of the other, that in our endeavour
to compress within very narrow limits the pregnant matter which this
great man’s name suggests, we shall take leave to call in aid our
attempted characteristics of his greater friend, and request that this
article may be considered as a sequel to the former.

Frederick Christopher von Schiller was born at Marbach, in the duchy of
Wurtemburg, November 10, 1759. His father held the rank of captain in
the service of the duke, and was in fortune so low, that he was glad to
place his son, in 1773, after an ordinary school-education, in the ducal
academy of Stuttgard, which, partaking of an eleemosynary character,
subjected the pupils to military discipline, though training for arts
and professions called liberal. Schiller had early in life manifested
the sensibilities common to the religious and poetic temperament, but
was compelled to forego the study of theology, because this institution
made no provision for it. He began with law, but finally went through a
course of medical study, so as to obtain the post of regimental surgeon
in 1780. These pursuits were against his inclination. During eight
years, as he said, his genius was in conflict with military subjection.
He ought rather to have said, that thereby his genius received the
direction which determined the course of his life. For it was while
under the sad impressions produced by a life of restraint within the
walls of the academy, that he composed his tragedy of The Robbers, which
he found means to print in 1781. Germany was at that period without a
national theatre; scarcely half-a-dozen original stock-plays could be
now produced which were then popular. Hence this juvenile work, with all
its faults and extravagances (perhaps on account of these), was received
with a tumult of applause in many parts of Germany. He was invited to
adapt it to the stage, and it was performed the following year at
Manheim. Of this most faulty and most famous maiden-play, it will be
sufficient to remark that it exhibits, in over-charged colours,
relations of life and character most likely to strike a youthful
imagination. It represents in contrast two brothers. One, originally
noble and heroic, becomes the perpetrator of those crimes against
society, which law punishes with its severest penalties. The other
betrays a character far more odious and revolting to the moral sense of
mankind. The result is a catastrophe of appalling horror. The young poet
solicited for leave of absence to witness the representation of his
first play, which was refused him. He therefore, in defiance, made a
journey to Manheim, and was punished by a fortnight’s arrest in his own
house. He was also found guilty of having in his play uttered a national
reflection on the people of the Grisons. For this he was reprimanded,
ordered by his sovereign not to write on any subject but medicine, or at
least to submit any literary work to the inspection and correction of
his Serenity, and threatened with imprisonment in a fortress. While he
was compelled to submit to a tyranny so humiliating, he learned that
beyond the limits of the petty state to which he belonged, his work was
the subject of loud and even extravagant applause. After a severe
conflict, he abandoned his parents and the friends of his youth, and in
October of the same year made his escape from an intolerable servitude.
It has been gravely stated, to the credit of the duke, that he suffered
his disobedient subject, some ten years afterwards, when he had acquired
celebrity, to visit his family unmolested. That is, he was not seized
and shot as a deserter.

When Schiller thus threw himself on the world, he had no other friends
than those whom these early fruits of his talents had raised, no other
support than the consciousness of those talents, nor other immediate
resource than the unwrought materials of two other tragedies in prose,
which he produced almost immediately, and which established his
character as a dramatic poet. These were the Conspiracy of Fiesco, a
political play taken from the romantic tale of St. Real, in which the
intrigues of republican faction were picturesquely exhibited, and Cabal
and Love, in which the tragic distress arises from the conflict between
the natural passion of love, and the conventional social duties which
originate in the relations of birth and station. During the completion
of these juvenile works, which appeared in 1783 and 1784, his first
asylum was Manheim, where he even deliberated about becoming an actor;
and his first patron was the munificent ecclesiastic Baron von Dalberg,
who became at a future period, under the French government,
Prince-primate of Catholic Germany. Schiller also became the editor of
the Rhenish Mercury, a monthly miscellany devoted to literature and the
arts, and engaged in manifold literary labours, for which he had to
qualify himself by supplying the defects of a very imperfect education.
He early felt the necessity of studying history as indispensable to the
cultivation of the serious drama, and so he became an historian by
profession. At that time, it was a fashionable opinion that all sciences
and arts were to be founded on metaphysics, and he became also a
metaphysician. But in order to pursue these studies, it was not on the
north-western frontier of Germany that he could profitably remain.

Saxony was already become the seat of literature as well as philosophy.
He removed thither, and during the years 1785–1789, he resided at
Leipzic, Dresden, Rudolstadt, and Weimar. At the latter place he gained
the favour of Wieland and Herder, during the absence of Goethe in Italy.
It was in 1787 that these great poets met. Though mutually repelled at
first by obvious dissimilarities of character and genius, they were soon
attracted and united by their common love of art and poetry. Under the
auspices of his new friend, Schiller obtained, in 1789, the
professorship of history at the neighbouring University of Jena, where
he cultivated, as a teacher and as a writer, both history and
philosophy, which in that university were followed with great celebrity:
he himself lectured on history and æsthetics (the science of taste). In
the year 1790 he united himself in a happy marriage with a lady of good
family but small fortune, Fraûlein Lengenfeld. But at this early period
he was attacked by disease; and the state of his health compelled his
removal to Weimar, whence he never departed. Here he lived in the
closest intimacy with Goethe. Their union was a memorable incident, even
in the life of Goethe. But it was the one great event in the life of
Schiller, by which his education was consummated, and he was enabled to
execute nearly all the great works on which his reputation rests. A few
years were now spent in intense intellectual labour, rendered painful by
the attacks of disease. He edited first the Thalia, and then a monthly
work of higher pretensions, ‘Die Horen’ [the Hours]. He published for
several years an Almanac of the Muses, and with unwearied assiduity
devoted himself to the drama as literary manager, translator, editor,
and author. The eagerness with which he pursued these various
avocations, it has been generally thought, undermined his constitution.
For several years before his death he devoted his nights, not days, to
poetic composition; and his pale and emaciated countenance, and the
lassitude and debility of his frame, announced the ravages of disease
which carried him off, May 9, 1805, in the forty-sixth year of his age.
He left a widow and several children, who were enabled to occupy an
honourable station in society. During his latter years, Schiller enjoyed
a pension from the Duke of Weimar, sufficient, in addition to the
profits of his works, to enable him to live in comfort; and a patent of
nobility was procured for him by the Duke, to replace his lady in her
station at the court of Weimar, from which her marriage with a commoner
had excluded her. Schiller was in figure tall and thin. The
characteristic features of his feeling and melancholy countenance are
admirably represented on the colossal bust executed in marble, by
Dannecker, which is preserved at Stuttgard.

Schiller’s numerous works may be classed under the heads of criticism,
history, lyrical poetry, and the drama. We shall endeavour to
characterise them, in the inverse order of their importance. In all of
these departments his writings acquired immediate popularity. And in the
latter they will enjoy permanent distinction, more from the vigorous
style, warm sensibility, and fine moral feeling which are diffused over
all his compositions, than from the development of the peculiar genius
which any one class especially requires. When Schiller emancipated
himself from the thraldom of his youth, the Kantian metaphysics were
become popular among students. With characteristic ardour he became a
disciple of the new school, and laboured to apply the critical
philosophy to poetry and the arts. His first writings were scholastic
exercises performed in public. But as the philosophy of his country,
like his own mind, was in a state of transition, his metaphysical
dissertations on æsthetical education, on naive and sentimental poetry,
&c., deserve notice chiefly as appertaining to the literary history of a
memorable philosophical crisis. They did not serve even to lay the
foundation of a system of poetics, which was reserved for the Schlegels.
These constitute three volumes.

The historical works of Schiller originated in his dramatic studies.
These led him to the subjects of his histories; and his mode of treating
these subjects as a dramatist, and an historian, is such that we must
blend the consideration of his two historical works with two of his most
famous tragedies. The first of his elaborate dramas in blank verse was
Don Carlos, in connexion with which was written the commencement of a
history of the successful insurrection of the Dutch against the Spanish
despotism. In his play he has not, like Otway in his forgotten tragedy,
and Alfieri in his Filippo, rendered the real or supposed love of the
young prince to his step-mother the most important incident. The heroic
reformer, Marquis Posa, is the character that most excites the sympathy
of the reader. And it is the sort of prophetic prelude to the
reformation that engrosses his attention. So in the history, the author
addresses himself rhetorically to the patriotism, the love of religious
and civil liberty, and other virtuous feelings of his reader. Schiller
is no where the critical investigator of doubtful facts, nor is he an
authority to decide the merits of a doubtful character. His other great
subject was the Thirty Years’ War. This narrative also is a series of
eloquent dissertations, splendid descriptions, and pregnant moral
reflections, rather than a philosophic development of the chain of
events. His Wallenstein, which dramatises a chapter of that history, is
the most laboured of his dramas; and it obtained for him the honour of a
translation from a man of kindred genius, Coleridge. In the half comic
prelude, called The Camp, and the two parts of the tragedy, all the
varieties of the military character and of military cabal are unfolded.
Besides the hero himself, the subtle intriguer the elder Piccolomini, is
finely contrasted with his high-minded, enthusiastic son, the lover of
Thekla, the exquisite daughter of the heroic victim.

Besides the four volumes of these histories, there are two others of
minor historical treatises. And it may be noticed here, in connexion
with this class of his writings, that he began a romance called the
Ghost-Seer, the historical foundation of which lay in the tragi-comic
absurdities, and mischievous vagaries of the German illuminati and
freemasons, a strange compound of superstition and infidelity, with
which were blended political fanaticism, fraud, and sentimental
philanthropy. This disease was partly cured by, and partly absorbed in
the events of the French Revolution.

But it was as a philosophic and lyric poet that Schiller’s peculiar
genius developed itself, and in this class of his works chiefly do we
find those qualities which characterise him morally and intellectually,
and exhibit him in striking contrast to his friend Goethe. As in his
philosophical and historical writings, Schiller never wrote under the
influence of the mere love of truth, but was impelled by moral feelings,
always generous and noble; so it was in his poems. They neither mainly
originated in, nor were addressed especially to the imagination. A large
portion of them were metaphysical exercises in verse. There were
scattered, even among these, the “thoughts that breathe and words that
burn,” but they were not poetical, because they were addressed either to
the mere intellect, the faculty of solving philosophical problems, or to
the will, under the excitement of passions, which, however exalted in
their character, are far remote from the exercise of imagination, and do
not originate in the sense of beauty. Even the ballads of Schiller are
didactic and moral, and therein strikingly contrasted with those of
Goethe. Each poet idealised in his own way; but the ideal of the one was
framed according to a law of natural, that of the other, according to a
law of moral beauty. Goethe avowed his creed, “faults as well as virtue
look well in song.” He therefore, availing himself of a style
incomparably graceful, exhibits the passions of humanity in all their
natural charm, and so fascinates the sense of natural beauty in the
reader, that he is content to disregard what a severe moral sense might
require. Schiller’s ballads, on the contrary, originate in, and have no
other object than to excite, a passionate sympathy with virtuous and
heroic affections and actions. But though there is “a pomp and
prodigality of phrase,” there is seldom that magic of style that leaves
the most fastidious taste gratified. Among these lyric poems, a
considerable portion originated in his political and patriotic, or
rather philanthropic feelings. To appreciate these, we must bear in mind
that Schiller was brought up in a country, the people of which possessed
no political power, nor any civil liberty but under sufferance; and that
during the more important period of his life, his country suffered under
the aggravated oppression of a foreign yoke. No English reader can form
a correct judgment of any German political work of the last age, be it
of thought or imagination, who for an instant forgets either of these
two facts; and in the study of the works of Goethe and Schiller, it is
especially necessary to keep them always before us. It must otherwise
appear unaccountable, that since the youth of Schiller had been passed
in the suffering incident to oppressed poverty; since he had the
consciousness of not occupying that station in society to which his
natural superiority over others entitled him; since he had the
constitutional ardour of a man of genius, and was, by his position in
society, led to feel, as a reformer, not to say agitator, on every
polemical question that could arise between the people and the
privileged orders; there should, notwithstanding all this, be so little
that is stimulating and practical in his writings. But the wonder
ceases, when it is borne in mind, that while in Britain the French
Revolution was an object of hope or fear, and was held up as party
feelings prompted, either as a warning or an example, in Germany it was
seldom more than a problem for the exercise of the talents of
speculative men: and whatever susceptibility to insurrectional
excitements there might be among any class of the people, was repressed,
not merely by the utter extinction of all liberty in France, but by all
the humiliations and oppressions endured in every part of Germany from
an imperious conquering enemy. Hence, while the German people went far
beyond the British in the intensity of their hatred towards France, the
privileged order of thinkers among them, from their habits of abstract
speculation, were able to contemplate the events of the day, as well as
the principles set afloat, with an unsympathising coolness unknown
either in England or France. Hence, even in Schiller, whose earliest
writings betrayed tendencies from which it might be feared that a German
Jacobin would be formed, the love of liberty soon subsided from a
passion into a taste. It became a quiet, moral sentiment, like the love
of religion, of virtue, of country: he never could indeed lay aside his
essentially moral and sentimental nature; nor during the period of his
country’s abasement, which to the irretrievable loss of the nation he
did not survive, could he, like Goethe, devoting himself to the studies
of pure art and science, dismiss by an effort from his mind the
consideration of the painful incidents of the day. On the contrary, they
entirely filled his soul; they formed the background of all his
speculations and feelings, in his dramas, histories, disquisitions, and
poems. A sentiment which for years pressed on him, and which
appropriately terminates the collection of his poems in two volumes, we
will venture to render in prose, as most expressive of the sort of
philosophic resignation to which he at length brought himself at the
close of the century. “Two mighty nations are wrestling for the sole
possession of the world. To annihilate freedom in every country, they
wield the trident and the thunderbolt. To them every land must pay
tribute. The Gaul, like Brennus, throws his iron sword into the scale of
justice, and the Briton greedily stretches out his polypus arms on every
side, and will shut up the free realm of Amphitrite, as if it were his
own mansion.... Into the still and sacred recesses of the heart you must
fly from the pressure of life. Freedom is only in the realm of dreams,
and the beautiful blooms only in song.”

But it was not as a lyric poet that Schiller exercised the widest
influence over his countrymen. It was in the more popular form of the
drama, to which perhaps his genius was less adapted, that he sought and
acquired a fame that has already reached the utmost limits of European
civilization.

His dramatic works fill seven volumes. Not to repeat our remarks on the
three juvenile prose tragedies, and on Don Carlos and Wallenstein, we
proceed to enumerate the master-pieces which he produced during the last
years of his life; but we must, for want of space, pass over unnoticed
his less successful attempts at comedy, his translations of Shakspeare’s
Macbeth, Racine’s Phaedra, and Gozzi’s Turandot; and his labours on the
works of other authors. The result of these, his various studies, was
the production of a form of tragedy, which, to be fairly appreciated,
must be compared with the French, not the English, drama: for Schiller
stands at an immeasurable distance, not merely from Shakspeare, but from
the great body of the romantic dramatists of the English and Spanish
schools, in whom are to be found either profound development of
character, or elaborate skill in the entanglement and management of
incident. Schiller has however, on the other hand, enhanced the dignity,
and poetically enriched that form of tragedy which the French gratify
their vanity by claiming as peculiarly their own, and which they do not
hesitate to proclaim an improvement on the Greek! This class is
essentially rhetorical. The French public seem to estimate the
master-pieces of their favourite tragic poets, chiefly by the number of
fine quotable passages they supply; while their critics estimate their
worth by their conformity with certain purely artificial rules. One of
them says, “Though the English stage has not one perfect tragedy [we had
thought Cato to be perfect in their eyes], yet it has many fine scenes:
we cannot say so much for the German.” In this the critic is wrong on
his own principle. The great works of Schiller contain, relatively, as
many splendid declamatory passages as are to be met with in the
tragedies of Corneille, Racine, or Voltaire: and he has in the structure
of his pieces amply made up for his disregard of the dramatic unities,
by the infusion of higher beauties, both of sentiment and character,
than the French school can boast of. In the enumeration of his later
tragedies, we can merely point out the subjects to which his taste and
opinions naturally led him.

In 1800 he attained the summit of his dramatic reputation by Maria
Stuart. This tragedy exhibits, not the early and guilty love, but the
late sufferings and death of the Queen of Scots. The author, as becomes
the poet, takes no part in the controversies which her ambiguous
character has produced. With an allowable departure from historic truth,
he brings together the rival queens, and succeeds in rendering Mary an
object of admiration and pity, and Elizabeth, not of disgust. He finely
opposes the heroic enthusiasm of the youthful Mortimer to the flagitious
wiles of the practised courtier Leicester, and avails himself of the
most solemn rite of the Roman Catholic church to enhance the picturesque
effect, and clothe poetically the religious feeling that adorns and
sanctifies the character of the heroine.

In 1801 he produced the most poetical of his historic dramas, the
Jungfrau von Orleans. It was reserved for a German to render due honour
to the most romantic of French heroines, who was degraded, perhaps, by
Shakspeare. The unworthy caricature which passes under his name at
least, only shows the virulence of national prejudices. Joan of Arc has
been not only shut out from the temple of Fame erected in her own
country, but her name has been polluted by the impurities so vilely cast
on it by Voltaire: while French literature has only its infamous
_Pucelle_, the German stage has its _Virgin_ of Orleans. In this
romantic play, Schiller has poured a richer stream of poetry over the
camp and military glory than in his Wallenstein; and has exquisitely
contrasted with the sacred virago, the frail, tender, most lovely, and
admirable Agnes Sorel.

In 1803 appeared the Braut von Messina, a lyrical play, in which the
author has introduced not only a chorus, but other prominent ingredients
of the Grecian tragedy, oracles, dreams, an overwhelming fate, and a
Nemesis, whose vengeance falls alike on the evil and good; by means of
which pity and terror are excited. The odes are splendid, but the
dramatic effect on the stage is weak.

In 1804, in the year preceding his death, Schiller produced the most
picturesque of his dramas, Wilhelm Tell. The name sufficiently announces
the plot, in which well-known incidents are inartificially exhibited.
The characters display all the varieties of moral beauty which harmonize
with the scene, and those virtues which the incidents are likely to call
forth. Throughout there is an exhilarating predominance of good over
evil, which forms a pleasing contrast to the fierce passions and
barbarous themes which attracted the author in his youth. It was the fit
termination of his short career, for it impresses the spectator and
reader with the feeling that the poet ended his labours a happier and
better man than he began. His untimely death while his last work was in
the enjoyment of its fresh popularity, spread a universal sorrow over
Germany, which had never yet beheld so powerful an intellect devoted to
interests of such high morality, and in such perfect harmony, with the
wants and wishes of his age and country.

For a further account, we refer to the life by Thomas Carlyle—Leben von
Döring; and the brief memoir by Körner, prefixed to the edition in
eighteen volumes, Vienna and Stuttgard 1819. Of English translations we
may enumerate, besides two of Wallenstein, The Maid of Orleans, printed,
but not yet published, by Mr. Drinkwater; Maria Stuart, by Mr. Mellish;
and also Don Carlos, and the three prose tragedies by we know not whom.
Translations have also been published of the Ghost Seer, and the two
historical works; and also of a number of the poems in periodical works,
besides several of the ballads, and the Song of the Bell, with
illustrations by Retsch.

[Illustration: [From a bust of Schiller by Dannecker.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  BENTHAM.

  _From an Original Picture by J. Watts, in the possession of J.A.
    Roebuck. Esq._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                BENTHAM


The life of Jeremy Bentham was peculiarly that of a student, and,
consequently, in common with the lives of many others who have acquired
extensive celebrity, it presents few passages of a personal kind that
can be separated from the account of his studies and his publications.
Bentham was the son of an eminent solicitor, resident in the city of
London, and was born February 15, 1748. At an early age he was sent to
Westminster School, from which he removed to Queen’s College, Oxford.
Both at school and at the university he is said to have distinguished
himself. At sixteen years of age he took the degree of B.A., and before
he was twenty he took that of M.A. No inference, however, as to the
development of his talents, or the extent of his acquirements, is to be
drawn from the early age at which these degrees were obtained: for it
was the common practice, until towards the end of the last century, for
students to commence and terminate their studies at the universities, at
a very early period of life. While at Oxford, Mr. Bentham subscribed the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, under exceedingly painful
feelings of doubt respecting their interpretation. He yielded to the
authority of the university, which requires that subscription from its
graduates; but this compliance in opposition to his judgment was
followed by a sense of bitter regret, which the lapse of time never
removed. During his residence at Oxford he attended the celebrated
lectures delivered by Blackstone upon the English law, and his dissent
to the almost universal panegyric of the lecturer upon every part of the
system of which he treated, was expressed in a work published by him
soon after he left the university, entitled A Fragment upon Government.
In this treatise he exposes, with great force, many of the errors that
are chargeable upon the Commentaries. The style in which it is written
is exceedingly correct, and, like all his earlier works, it is entirely
free from those peculiar expressions which abound in the later writings
of the author,—expressions which, though they have been the subject of
much mirth and ridicule, favoured a precision and accuracy of thought
that excuses their use. This Fragment contains the germ of his later
works, and is remarkable for the mode it introduced of dealing with the
science of government. It was the first philosophic attack upon many of
the distinguishing characteristics of the English constitution.

After leaving Oxford, Mr. Bentham became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and
in 1772 was called to the bar. The connexions of his father afforded to
him a very favourable prospect of professional advancement, which was
greatly extended by his own extraordinary habits of industry. But he was
repelled from the practice of the law by the moral sacrifices which he
conceived it to require, and by the impossibility of combining it with
speculative pursuits. He continued, however, a member of Lincoln’s Inn,
of which society he became a bencher in 1817. In the year 1785 he left
England for nearly three years, and, after proceeding through France and
part of Italy, went on to Smyrna and Constantinople, through Bulgaria,
Wallachia, and Moldavia, and joined his brother, afterwards Sir Samuel
Bentham, then a lieutenant-colonel in the service of the Emperor of
Russia, at Crichoff, in White Russia. At Crichoff he wrote his
celebrated letters in defence of usury, which very shortly and
accurately expound the principles upon which loans of money are
effected, and the impolicy of laws regulating the amount of interest at
which loans may be made. When these letters were published, the subject
was surrounded with every kind of prejudice, and both judges of our
courts of law and moral writers had treated excessive rates of interest
as highly censurable and immoral. On this question however, as upon
several others, Mr. Bentham preceded his age. Long before he died, his
opinions upon usury were supported by the great body of mercantile men,
the nature of whose business was once considered hostile to any
alteration in the laws regulating rate of interest. His principles have
not as yet been fully adopted by the legislature, but he lived to see
several acts of parliament passed, in which they were very extensively
acted upon. It was also at Crichoff that the letters which subsequently
formed the greater portion of his work entitled Panopticon, proposing a
systematic plan for the construction and general administration of
prisons, were written. The suggestions it contained were afterwards
formally submitted by him to Mr. Pitt, who readily acknowledged their
importance and his willingness to carry them into effect. Difficulties,
however, occurred; and though the Milbank Penitentiary was the result of
Mr. Pitt’s intercourse with Mr. Bentham, its plan is very different from
that which Mr. Bentham proposed; its arrangements are imperfect and have
been found, as was foreseen, very inadequate for its purposes, and it
was erected at a cost enormously exceeding that which would have
accompanied the execution of the original design.

Mr. Bentham died at his residence in Queen Square, Westminster, June 6,
1832, at the advanced age of eighty-five. He had long been possessed of
a handsome patrimony, which afforded him an income considerably
exceeding his own necessities. His studies were pursued without being
affected by any of the interruptions which arise, either from an
insufficient income, or from the occupations or distractions which a
large one invites. His habits were retiring, and the number of his
intimate friends were few, but this arose from no moroseness or
unkindness of disposition. “Had he engaged,” says his friend Dr.
Southwood Smith, “in the active pursuits of life,—money-getting,
power-acquiring pursuits,—he, like other men so engaged, must have had
prejudices to humour, interests to conciliate, friends to serve, and
enemies to subdue; and, therefore, like other men under the influence of
such motives, must sometimes have missed the truth, and sometimes have
concealed or modified it. But he placed himself above all danger of the
kind, by retiring from the practice of the profession for which he had
been educated, and by living in a simple manner on a small income
allowed him by his father: and when, by the death of his father, he at
length came to the possession of a patrimony which secured to him a
moderate competence, from that moment he dismissed from his mind all
further thoughts about his private fortune, and lent the whole power of
his mind, without distraction, to his legislative and moral labours. Nor
was he less careful to keep his benevolent affections fervent, than his
understanding free from a wrong bias. He surrounded himself only with
persons whose sympathies were like his own, and whose sympathies he
might direct to their appropriate objects in the active pursuits of
life.”

Though his frame of body was weak, he enjoyed remarkable health. For
upwards of sixty years he never suffered from any serious indisposition;
and at eighty, his appearance by no means indicated his advanced age.
For upwards of fifty years, he devoted eight, and often ten hours,
daily, to study, and he adhered with punctilious regularity, to a
certain fixed distribution of his time and employments.

The works published during his life, though very numerous, formed but a
small part of his manuscripts. Those that were published were chiefly
edited by friends, who, in most instances, performed the task with great
ability and fidelity. Some of his best treatises were published first in
France, and in the French language, by his friend M. Dumont, who was
also the well-known friend of Romilly and Mirabeau. Through them Mr.
Bentham obtained a very extensive reputation in foreign countries,
before his name was generally known in England. His admirable book upon
Fallacies was also edited in a similar manner; and his masterly treatise
upon the Rationale of Evidence was prepared for the press by Mr. John
Mill, with more correctness, and a more careful regard for the
expressions of Mr. Bentham, than most of his other works. It exhausts
its subject, and most thoroughly investigates the doctrines of the
English law of evidence. The leading principle which it establishes is,
that objections may be made to the _credibility_ of witnesses, but that
none should be admitted to their _competence_. The manuscripts of Mr.
Bentham were generally in a state requiring great trouble and labour to
render them fit for the press. He often wrote upon the same branch of a
subject at different times, adding to and repeating what he had before
written. In order, therefore, to bring together all his remarks upon the
same subject, much discrimination was required. The temptation to
neglect the words of the author, under such circumstances, is
necessarily great, and that some of his writings should be published
with less attention to them than those above-mentioned, can excite no
surprise. He ordered by his will, that his manuscripts should be
published by his executors, and left a considerable sum of money for the
purpose. One posthumous publication has already shown the difficulty
that attends the fulfilment of his directions.

The chief merits of Bentham have been thus stated by Mr. Mill in the
Appendix to Mr. E. L. Bulwer’s work, entitled England and the English,
in the following words:—“Mr. Bentham, unlike Bacon, did not merely
prophesy a science; he made large strides towards the creation of one.
He was the first who conceived, with anything approaching to precision,
the idea of a Code, or complete body of law; and the distinctive
characters of its essential parts,—the Civil Law, the Penal Law, and the
Law of Procedure. On the first of these three departments, he rendered
valuable service; the third, he actually created. Conformably to the
habits of his mind, he set about investigating, _ab initio_, a
philosophy, or science, for each of the three branches. He did, with the
received principles of each, what a good code would do with the laws
themselves;—extirpating the bad; substituting others; re-enacting the
good, but in so much clearer and more methodical a form, that those who
were most familiar with them before, scarcely recognised them as the
same. Even upon old truths, when they pass through his hands, he leaves
so many of his marks, that often he almost seems to claim the discovery
of what he only systematized.

“In erecting the philosophy of the civil law, he proceeded not much
beyond establishing upon its proper basis some of its most general
principles, and cursorily discussing some of the most interesting of its
details. Nearly the whole of what he has published upon this branch of
the law is contained in the _Traités de Législation_, edited by M.
Dumont. To the most difficult part, and that which needed a master-hand
to clear away its difficulties, the nomenclature and arrangement of the
civil code, he contributed little, except detailed observations and
criticisms upon the errors of his predecessors. The “Vue Générale d’un
corps complet de Législation,” included in the work just cited, contains
almost all that he has given to us upon this subject. In the department
of the penal law, he is the author of the best attempt yet made towards
a philosophical classification of offences. The theory of punishments
(for which, however, more had been done by his predecessors than for any
other part of the science of law), he left nearly complete. The theory
of procedure (including that of the constitution of the courts of
justice), he found in a more utterly barbarous state than even either of
the other branches; and he left it incomparably the most perfect. There
is scarcely a question of practical importance in the most important
department which he has not settled. He has left next to nothing for his
successors.”

His work on Judicial Establishments, is one of the best and the most
important of those he published; and it will afford the great tests that
must hereafter be applied to ascertain the progress of principles which
he first expounded. His labours were so much a series of attacks upon
the faults of existing institutions, accompanied at the same time with
the specific reforms that should follow their correction, and related to
matters generally so far removed from the studies of the great body of
readers, that they could not be expected to obtain, for many years, that
popularity for their writer which he deserved. It is, however, not
difficult already to trace the progress of opinions which he was the
first to advance, and we may already observe changes suggested and
adopted by the legislature, which he many years since proposed. The same
reasons which have secured to Bacon a reputation upon questions of
physical science, which his contemporaries refused to award to him,
will, in legislative science, secure a similar reputation to Bentham.
The talents of the latter will appear not less important than those of
the former, when their effects shall, in the progress of time, be traced
upon the opinions and the institutions of the people of this and of
other countries.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by R. Woodman._

  CATHERINE.

  _From a Print by Caroline Watson, after a Picture by Rosselin._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                             CATHERINE II.


After the death of Peter I., the sceptre of Russia passed into hands
incompetent to carry on the great scheme of national aggrandizement and
civilization which he had originated. Nearly forty years elapsed before
there appeared a worthy successor to that remarkable prince: and at last
it was a German woman, who, under the title of CATHERINE II.,
established Russia in that lofty position which she now occupies among
the powers of Europe.

This masculine-minded woman was the daughter of Christian Frederic,
prince of Anhalt Zerbst Dornberg, and major-general in the Prussian
service. She was born at Stettin, May 2, 1729, and was named at her
baptism Sophia Augusta Frederica. In her sixteenth year she was selected
by the Empress Elizabeth to become the wife of the Grand-Duke,
afterwards Peter III.; and their marriage was solemnized, September 1,
1745, after the bride had made public profession of the faith of the
Greek church, and received the name of Catherina Alexiewna. On the
events of her life during the next sixteen years, until the death of
Elizabeth, it is not necessary to dwell: she then exercised no influence
in affairs of state. The example of a most corrupt court, and a
sovereign sunk in the grossest sensuality, exerted their natural effect
upon her youthful mind: and if she brought principles of morality and
chastity from Germany, they were soon extinguished by the evil influence
of all around her, and the disgust inspired by an ignorant and besotted
husband; during whose life, as well as after her own accession to the
throne, she bestowed her favour on a succession of paramours. Her
behaviour was less revolting, but her rule of life was hardly more
strict than that of the Empress Elizabeth.

The history of Russia gave encouragement to an able, ambitious spirit,
like that of Catherine, to shape for itself a more brilliant prospect
than that which lay before her as the wife of a despotic prince, whom
she hated, and had reason to fear. Even before the death of Elizabeth,
which took place January 2, 1762, N. S., she had intrigued to supplant
her husband on the throne; and he had hardly occupied it six months,
before she organized the revolution which conducted him to a prison and
a grave. The only extenuation of her conduct in this crisis, is the
probability, we might almost say certainty, that a similar fate would
otherwise have befallen herself. Early on the morning of the 9th of
July, Catherine quitted the palace of Peterhoff, on the Neva, to invoke
the affection of the regiments of guards at St. Petersburg, who, like
the Prætorian troops of Rome, had often bestowed the crown at their free
pleasure. Her ready attention to Russian habits and prejudices, her
assumed devotion to the Greek church, and the arts of her accomplices,
had disposed, not only the soldiers, but a large portion of the
citizens, to declare in her favour: and when she applied for protection,
and told them “that her danger had driven her to the necessity of coming
to ask their assistance, that the Czar had intended to put her to death
that very night, together with her son; that she had no other means than
by flight of escaping death, and that she had so much confidence in
their dispositions as to put herself entirely in their hands,” the
assembled crowd was not slow to hail her as their prince, and before the
end of the day she had been crowned and proclaimed sovereign of all the
Russias, by the title of Catherine II., had been acknowledged by crowds
of citizens, and saw herself at the head of 15,000 picked soldiers. The
Czar, confused and affrighted, consulted neither his safety nor his
honour. On the following day, after some futile demonstrations of
resistance, he surrendered his person unconditionally; and on the 17th
he perished by a violent death, with the concurrence, no doubt, if not
by the command of Catherine.

Nevertheless her situation for some time was critical. The common people
reverenced the blood of Peter the Great, and lamented, with anger, the
cruel fate which had befallen his grandson. The priests, whose favour
Catherine had courted while Grand-Duchess, were disappointed and
indignant to find her resolved to cast them off, when they had served
her turn, and to limit as much as possible their influence, which had
often been troublesome to her predecessors. The courtiers, many of them,
were indignant at the sudden elevation of the daring adventurers who had
won Catherine her throne. But her promptitude and sagacity overcame
these troubles and difficulties; and without any very alarming
commotions, she gradually acquired that prescriptive right to the
throne, which does so much for princes of doubtful title.

The power thus acquired by fraud and murder, Catherine used, on the
whole, to the benefit of her subjects, with liberal intentions and with
a judicious and enlightened policy. Abroad her views were directed to
conquest, with the usual disregard of the common rules of honour and
justice, as they are recognised between man and man. This fault she
shares with the majority of princes: but the dismemberment of Poland
pollutes her memory with one of the foulest stains recorded in history.
Without proceeding seriatim through the multifarious events of her long
reign, we shall attempt a short sketch of the leading features of her
domestic policy and meditated improvements; and conclude with an equally
concise outline of its foreign relations.

Her earliest cares and her zealous attention were directed to the
fostering of commerce, and the encouragement of national industry in all
its important branches: and it ought not to detract from her credit,
that some of her measures, in accordance with the system of the age,
were not such as modern economical science approves. But we may mention
with unmixed praise, as indicative of a far-sighted and disinterested
policy, the abolition of numerous monopolies, as well belonging to the
crown, as granted to trading companies and private persons. Among these
were the caravan-trade between Russia and China, several branches of
fisheries, the manufacture of chintzes, the preparation of sugar, the
tobacco-trade, and other things which were freely thrown open to
individual competition. In promoting agriculture she was no less
zealous. She established an experimental school of farming at her
country-palace of Tzarsko-Tzelo, at which the most improved system of
English agriculture was introduced, and gratuitous instruction was given
to persons from all parts of the empire. One of her schemes was the
establishment of numerous colonies over the uncultivated steppes of her
vast empire: and thousands of families were allured from Poland,
Germany, and even France, by the advantages which she held out, not
merely to agricultural settlers, but to artificers, merchants, and all
who were willing to aid in developing by their industry the unknown
resources of the Russian empire. She sought to amend the administration
of justice, and, to her high honour, put an end to the use of torture
for extracting the truth in criminal proceedings. She abolished an
odious tribunal, established by Peter I., called the Secret Inquisition
Chancery, a kind of Star-Chamber, which gave facility to the most
frivolous and malicious investigations, and had recourse to the most
intolerable severities in conducting its inquiries. Aspiring to the
glory of reforming the government, and giving a new code of laws to the
empire, she summoned, in 1767, deputies to Moscow from every part and
nation of her dominions, for whose consideration she had previously
drawn up a body of instructions, of which the original manuscript,
written in her own hand, is preserved in the library of the Academy of
Petersburg. The work was greatly needed; for not merely were the general
laws of the empire voluminous, insufficient, perplexed, and
contradictory, but the particular laws of different provinces were
confused and conflicting, and the difficulties arising out of this state
of things were increased in a tenfold degree by the venality of the
judges. But Catherine wanted perseverance and vigour to work out her
scheme through the vexations of conflicting interests and tedious
details. The history of this meeting of legislators illustrates the fate
of most of her mighty undertakings. In their early sittings anger rose
so high on the question of emancipating the serfs, that Catherine
dismissed them, never to be recalled. She had acquired the glory of
propounding a new code, not of laws, but of instructions for
legislators; and the restless activity of her mind was satisfied, and
passed to spend itself in some other channel. The instructions abound in
philanthropic and wise suggestions; and satisfactorily show that it is
much easier to talk than to perform. They are printed under the title
“Instructions de Catherine II., pour la Commission chargée de dresser le
projet d’un nouveau code des Loix.”

Of learning and of learned men Catherine was a liberal patroness. The
love of glory was her ruling passion, and those whose praise was fame
were sure of her favourable regard. The French writers were the chief
objects of her attention and bounty. She corresponded with Voltaire,
whom she earnestly invited to Petersburg: but, as we learn from his
correspondence with the Empress, he feared in old age the rigour of a
northern climate; perhaps too he recollected how Frederic of Prussia had
sunk the philosopher in the king, and felt reluctant to trust himself
again within the reach of despotic power: at all events he declined the
intended honour. Diderot, at her request, visited Petersburg, and spent
several months there; contriving, if Frederic’s account be true, to
weary the imperial patience by his turn for argument and repetition. Her
benefactions to him had been delicate and splendid. Being informed that
poverty compelled him to dispose of his library, she purchased it for
15,000 livres, and at the same time left it in his care, and for his use
and enjoyment, granting to him an annual salary, under the title of her
librarian. With similar liberality she purchased and entrusted to the
care of Professor Pallas his own valuable collections of natural
history. She sought to attract D’Alembert to Petersburg, and invited him
to superintend the education of her son, the Grand-Duke Paul: but he
declined her offers. She patronized all institutions for the promotion
of science and literature; and the Academy of Sciences at Petersburg
owes to her generous support the greater part of its foreign associates,
and its high reputation. The discoveries of Billings and others in the
Northern and Eastern seas, and the expedition of Pallas and his
associates to explore and describe the less known portions of the
empire, are also to be mentioned among the scientific honours of her
reign. In the patronage of art she was splendid; she loved magnificence,
was regardless of expense, and spared no cost to assemble round her
throne the greatest rarities of nature, and the most admirable or
wonderful productions of man. And the architectural magnificence of St.
Petersburg still bears witness to the elevation and splendour of her
taste, and the extent of her revenues.

By much the greater part of what has been said, may appear to vindicate
Catherine’s title to be called a good, as well as a great sovereign.
Such, no doubt, had her moral faculties been better educated, she might
have been: but her reign was vitiated, and her talents rendered
comparatively useless to her subjects, by one prevailing fault of
selfishness. Her temper was averse from wanton cruelty; she loved to see
prosperity around her; she loved, still more, the glory of being reputed
the author of that prosperity. But she loved to see others happy, not
for their sakes, but for her own; we seek in vain in the records of her
life for that laborious and self-denying spirit, which is ready to
sacrifice its own will for the good of others. Hence the multiplicity of
her plans, and the inconstancy of her purposes: she persevered in no
task which had lost the excitement of novelty, or no longer nourished
the craving appetite for praise. She was too eager to build, to allow
the requisite time for laying foundations: and the consequence was seen,
even before her death, in the ruined and neglected state of
establishments on which she had prided herself, and which men who were
no flatterers had regarded as the marks of a new era of civilization in
Russia. A French writer, in the Biographie Universelle, says,
“Legislation, colonies, education, institutions, canals, towns,
fortresses, every thing had been begun, and abandoned before
completion.” This passion of Catherine, for sketching every thing and
finishing nothing, is well characterised by a saying of Joseph II. In
her journey to the Crimea, she invited him to lay the second stone of
Ekaterinoslaf, of which she herself had just laid the first. Joseph
said, after his return, “The Empress of Russia and I completed a great
undertaking in one day: she laid the first stone of a city, and I the
last.”

Of the more than imperial splendour—the profuse extravagance—of her
court and social life, space will not allow us to speak: a number of
curious and amusing anecdotes on this subject, and other details
relative to her person, manners, and habits, are to be found in Coxe’s
Travels in Russia, and Tooke’s Life of the Empress Catherine II. The
licentiousness of her conduct we should alike pass over, but for its
connexion with affairs of state: for she paraded her prostitution before
the eyes of all, apparently considering herself released by supreme rank
and irresponsible power, from the control of those decencies which
fetter even the vicious. A lover was part of Catherine’s state
furniture, and a most expensive one: since the sums lavished on her
series of favourites during her reign of thirty-four years, without
including the enormous annual expense of their establishment, amounted,
according to Mr. Tooke, (vol. iii. p. 374,) to more than eighty millions
of roubles. This, at the lowest rate of two shillings a rouble, (Mr.
Tooke states it to have been then worth four,) would be more than eight
millions of pounds sterling. Nor was this the only evil: though
Catherine suffered none of her favourites, except Potemkin, to interfere
in the chief affairs of the state, their influence at a distance and in
subordinate departments was immense; and whoever enjoyed their
protection was sure of advancement beyond his merits, and enabled to
tyrannize over others, and trample on law with impunity. Chosen for the
most part from officers of the Guard, without a particle of sentiment,
solely for personal attractions, we look in vain among them for one
raised above the common level by talent or accomplishment, except the
celebrated Potemkin, and perhaps the coarse and brutal Orloff, her
husband’s murderer, and one of the chief instruments in placing herself
upon the throne. Potemkin did possess a certain barbarous grandeur of
ideas, fitted to strike an answering chord in Catherine’s ambitious and
ostentatious mind; together with an aptitude for affairs, and a nature
born to command, had it been improved by education and self-restraint,
or chastened by adversity: and he alone, after he ceased to be a lover,
preserved an all-ruling influence as a friend and confidant.

In speaking of Catherine’s foreign policy we must confine ourselves
chiefly to two heads,—the humiliation of Turkey, and the spoliation of
Poland. Very soon after her accession, a vacancy in the throne of Poland
gave her the opportunity of imposing upon that unhappy nation as its new
king one of her former lovers, Stanislaus Poniatowsky, whom she knew,
from the weakness of his character, to be a fit instrument of
maintaining and increasing her influence. Fear of the aggrandizement of
so powerful and hostile a neighbour, and, more especially, jealousy of
her designs upon Poland, induced the Porte to declare war against her in
1768. For eight years the contest continued, in all respects to the
advantage of the Russians; and during the course of it a Russian fleet
(conducted, however, in great measure by British officers) appeared for
the first time in the Mediterranean, and signalized its prowess by the
total destruction of a superior Turkish armament in the bay of Tchesme,
in Lemnos. Not less successful were the Russian arms in the Black Sea,
and in Moldavia and Wallachia. Still peace was desirable, even to the
victor, from the exhaustion of the contest, and it was concluded in
1774, by the treaty of Kainardgi, upon terms very advantageous to
Russia, yet perhaps more favourable than Turkey had cause to expect. The
reason of this moderation we shall see presently. The free navigation of
the Mediterranean seas and the passage of the Dardanelles were secured
to Russia, and the district between the rivers Dnieper and Bog was ceded
to her. The Tartars of the Crimea were declared independent, which was
nearly equivalent to rendering them tributary to Russia: and in fact
that country was formally ceded to Catherine in 1783, by the reigning
Cham, and the Porte, unwillingly enough, yielded to that arrangement.
But the insulting pomp of Catherine, which almost dared in a moment of
bravado to threaten Constantinople itself with an invasion, led to a
second war in 1786, which, after a bloody and exhausting conflict,
terminated in 1791–2, by the treaty of Jassy, by the farther cession, on
the part of Turkey, of the provinces between the Bog and the Dniester,
which was declared to be thenceforward the frontier of the two empires.
The Russian conquests in Bessarabia, Moldavia, and Wallachia were
restored. Memorable in this war, for the desperation of their defence by
the Turks, and the awful cruelties which attended their capture by the
Russians, were the sieges of the strong fortresses of Oczakow at the
mouth of the Dnieper, and Ismail on the Danube. On this occasion again,
but for the intervention of other European powers, especially England
and Prussia, Catherine might probably have obtained more favourable
terms. But the importance of the acquisitions thus made by her on the
Black Sea, from the Straits of Kertsh to the Dniester, is not to be
measured by their wealth, scarcely by their extent. It was the command
of the commerce of the Black Sea, and the opening a passage to
Constantinople, which she had so much desired, and the Porte so much
feared, that formed her chief triumph; and in the height of her ambition
she dared to project the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, and the
re-establishment of a Christian empire in Constantinople.

Not less important were her acquisitions on the western frontier. The
atrocious project of partitioning Poland between her three most powerful
neighbours, is said by Koch (Tableau des Révolutions) to have originated
in the Turkish wars which we have just described. The occupation of
Moldavia and Wallachia by the Russians was calculated to alarm the
jealousy of Austria; and Koch states, that Frederic II. suggested to the
Empress that if she resigned them, as was done by the treaty of
Kainardgi, she might take her equivalent from Poland, to a part of which
Austria had already laid claim. Other writers have maintained that the
scheme originated with Catherine. Be this as it may, the two monarchs
readily came to an agreement, at the end of July, 1772: and as the Poles
were in no condition to resist, and the powers which had guaranteed the
independence of Poland looked on in silence, no opposition beyond
remonstrance was made. In 1773, the Diet made a formal act of cession at
Warsaw. In this first division, about 6500 square leagues of land, and
five millions of human beings were thus robbed of their nationality: and
the larger share, containing more than 4000 square leagues and three
millions of people, situated in Livonia and Lithuania, was transferred
to Russia, and formed into the governments of Polotsk and Mohilow. At
the same time the three powers formally renounced all farther claims on
Poland, and guaranteed to it its constitution and existence. But
treaties are seldom able to bind ambition. A coldness succeeded between
Russia and Prussia; and the latter, whose conduct ought to be marked
with especial infamy, excited the Polish Diet, under promises of
support, to make alterations in the constitution calculated to diminish
the influence and rouse the jealousy of Russia. Catherine marched an
army into the country in 1792, to support her party; the Poles flew to
arms; and the King of Prussia, instead of sending the assistance which
he had pledged himself to give, openly joined the Empress. A second
partition of the spoil ensued in 1793, in which another portion of
Lithuania was assigned to Russia; and another treaty of alliance, or
rather of subjection, was made. But the nation was roused by despair;
and in the following spring that general insurrection broke out, which
has given undying fame to the name of Kosciusko. There is a short
account of this struggle in the memoir of that hero in our first volume;
it terminated in the total subjection and final partition of Poland: in
which Russia obtained the remainder of Lithuania, with Semigallia,
Courland, &c., to the amount of about 2000 square leagues more. This
took place in 1795.

We must refer to the various historical works on these times for an
account of Catherine’s complicated negotiations with foreign courts, the
blow which she aimed at the British dominion of the sea by the
establishment, in 1780, of the celebrated Armed Neutrality, the war
which she commenced against Persia at the end of her reign, and other
events inferior in importance to those of which we have here given an
imperfect outline. It is asserted that, having turned her arms towards
the east, she had ventured to conceive the design of overturning the
British empire in India. But her ambition and her life were
simultaneously cut short by an attack of apoplexy, which carried her off
very suddenly, November 9, 1796. She was succeeded by her grandson Paul
I.

Catherine, in imitation of Frederic II., aspired to fame as an author.
Besides the Instructions, she wrote moral tales and allegories, for the
education of her grandchildren, and a number of dramatic pieces and
proverbs acted at the Hermitage, and published under the title of
Theatre of the Hermitage. Her correspondence with Voltaire and others is
published.

[Illustration: [The Pavilion at Tzarsko-Tzelo. From a Print in the
King’s Library.]]

[Illustration]




                                 DEFOE.


Daniel, the son of James Foe, citizen and butcher, was born in London,
in the parish of Cripplegate, in or about the year 1663: at what time,
or on what account he prefixed the syllable De to his paternal name,
does not clearly appear. He was a Dissenter himself, and appears to have
been of a dissenting family. Early imbued with a dread of Papal
ascendancy, he took up arms to support the Duke of Monmouth’s
insurrection, and was fortunate in escaping not only the sword, but the
legal consequences of that rash adventure. In 1685 he went into business
as a hosier, in Freeman’s Yard, Cornhill. He was not successful,
probably because his attention was engrossed by affairs foreign to his
trade: for he not only mingled in the political and religious
dissensions of that stormy time, but was too much occupied, according to
his biographer Mr. Chalmers, by engagements, which became neither the
conscientious dissenter, nor the steady man of business. “With the usual
imprudence of superior genius, he was carried by his vivacity into
companies who were gratified by his wit, and he spent those hours in the
idle hilarity of the tavern, which he ought to have employed in the
calculations of the counting-house; and being obliged to abscond from
his creditors in 1692, he attributed those misfortunes to the war, which
were doubtless owing to his own misconduct. He afterwards carried on the
brick and pantile works near Tilbury Fort, though probably with no
success. He was in after-times wittily reproached, ‘that he did not,
like the Egyptians, require bricks without straw, but, like the Jews,
required bricks without paying his labourers.’ He was born for other
enterprises, which, if they did not gain him wealth, have conferred a
renown, that will descend the current of time with the language wherein
his works are written.” His misfortunes however, even if accompanied by
some imprudence, did not alienate his friends. “I was invited,” he says
in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, “by some merchants with whom I had
corresponded abroad, and some also at home, to settle at Cadiz, and that
with offers of very good commissions; but Providence, which had other
work for me to do, placed a secret aversion in my mind. Some time after,
I was, without the least application of mine, and being then seventy
miles from London, sent for to be Accomptant to the Commissioners of the
Glass Duty; in which service I continued to the determination of their
commission.”

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Thomson._

  DE FOE.

  _From a Print by M. Vandergucht._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

Having lost this occupation, Defoe’s active mind expanded itself in a
variety of schemes. He wrote, he tells us, many sheets about the coin;
he proposed a law for registering seamen; he projected county banks;
factories for goods; a commission of inquiry into the estates of
bankrupts; a pension-office for the relief of the poor; an academy “to
encourage polite learning, and to polish and refine the English tongue;”
and an academy for the education of women, with a view to the
improvement of society, by training them to a more exemplary discharge
of their social duties. Notices of various of these schemes, and of the
use or abuse of a speculative spirit in a mercantile country, will be
found in his Essay on Projects, published in January, 1697. In 1701 he
produced a satire in verse, called The True-born Englishman, which arose
out of a personal and virulent attack, by one Tutchen, on William III.,
whose faults were finally summed up in the epithet “foreigner.” “This,”
Defoe says, “filled me with a kind of rage against the book, and gave
birth to a trifle, which I never could hope should have met with such
general acceptation as it did—I mean, The True-born Englishman. How this
poem was the occasion of my being known to his Majesty; how I afterwards
was received by him; how employed; and how, above all my capacity of
deserving, rewarded, is no part of the present case:” and history does
not supply us with the particulars here left unnoticed. But whatever
were Defoe’s services or their rewards, he always expressed his
gratitude and affection for King William’s memory in ardent terms. In
the same year he published two able tracts in support of the principles
of the Revolution, entitled, one, The Original Power of the Collective
Body of the People of England Examined and Asserted; the other, The
Freeholder’s Plea against the Stock-jobbing Elections of Parliament-men.
The following pithy sentence may give some notion of the general tenor
of the latter. “It is very rational to suppose that those who buy will
sell, or what seems more rational they who have bought, must sell.” In
these pieces the ultimate resort of all power in the people, and the
responsibility of the parliament to the people, inasmuch, to use his own
words elsewhere, “as the person sent is less than the sender,” are
forcibly explained and asserted. The same principles were developed more
strongly in what is commonly called The Legion Letter, a remonstrance
against certain exertions of the privilege of parliament, by which the
subject’s right of petitioning was thought to be curtailed. This
remarkable paper, which, though never clearly avowed, is believed to
have been written by Defoe, and presented by him, dressed in women’s
clothes, to the Speaker, was entitled, A Memorial from the Gentlemen,
Freeholders, and Inhabitants of the Counties of ——, in behalf of
themselves, and many thousands of the good people of England, to the
Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses in Parliament assembled; and ends in
the following words: “For Englishmen are no more to be slaves to
Parliaments than to Kings.

                          “Our name is LEGION,
                          “And we are MANY.

“If you require to have this Memorial signed with our names, it shall be
done on your first orders, and formally presented.”

Of this attempt to intimidate the House no open notice was taken, nor
does it appear to have been known at the time who was the author. But
any ill-will which the Tories might have against Defoe, if suspected,
was gratified by the consequences of a pamphlet which he published in
1702, entitled, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, or Proposals for
the Establishment of the Church. In this ironical performance, which
ostensibly recommends the total extirpation of Dissenters from England,
he intended to satirize the blind prejudices and headstrong zeal of the
high Tory faction: but he had the misfortune to raise up enemies on
every side. Some of the Dissenters took it literally, and raised an
outcry against him as a persecutor: the Tories understood it better, and
had influence enough to get a prosecution commenced against him, and a
reward offered for his apprehension, by the government. The House of
Commons voted the book a libel, and ordered it to be burnt by the
hangman. The printer and the publisher of it were taken into custody,
upon which Defoe, who had secreted himself, came forward, “to throw
himself upon the favour of Government, rather than that others should be
ruined for his mistakes.” He was tried in July, 1703, found guilty of
composing and publishing a seditious libel, and, by a very oppressive
sentence, was condemned to be imprisoned, to stand in the pillory, to
pay a fine of 200 marks, and to find security for his good behaviour
during seven years. It is in allusion to this that Pope, who ought to
have better appreciated such a man, has made an unworthy attack upon
Defoe in the Dunciad,

                 Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe.

He had no reason to be, and was not, abashed; and he composed a Hymn to
the Pillory, and an Elegy on the Author of a True-born Englishman,
esteeming himself defunct as an author, when he was obliged to find
sureties for good behaviour. These, like all his works, contain the
energetic expression of an independent spirit: to poetical merit they
have no claim.

Early in 1704, while he was still in prison, Defoe commenced a
periodical paper, entitled The Review, which, in addition to the usual
topics of news, contained a report of the proceedings of a “Scandal
Club, which discusses questions in divinity, morals, war, trade,
language, poetry, love, marriage, drunkenness, and gaming. Thus it is
easy to see that the Review pointed out the way to the Tatlers,
Spectators, and Guardians, which may be allowed, however, to have
treated these interesting topics with more delicacy of language, more
terseness of style, and greater depth of learning: yet has Defoe many
passages, both of prose and poetry, which for refinement of wit,
neatness of expression, and efficacy of moral, would do honour either to
Steele or Addison.” (Chalmers.) This periodical was published three
times a week, until May, 1713, when it was brought to a close. Defoe
continued in Newgate until August, 1704, when Harley procured his
release, and recommended him to Queen Anne, who seems to have thought
that he had been hardly used, and contributed generously towards the
relief of his family, reduced to poverty by the misfortunes of its head.
She employed him, he says, in “several honourable, though secret
services;” and he speaks, in his Appeal to Honour and Justice, of a
“special service, in which I ran as much risque of my life as a
grenadier upon the counterscarp.” These seem to have been rewarded by a
pension, or by some subordinate office; but the exact nature of the
recompense is not known. In October, 1706, he was dispatched to
Scotland, to assist in promoting the union between the two kingdoms. In
addition to his talents and readiness as an author, he possessed great
practical knowledge of commerce and matters connected with the revenue:
he frequently attended the committees of the Scottish parliament, and
made a variety of calculations, relative to trade and taxes, for their
use; and he was very serviceable, as a popular writer, in replying to
the various attacks which were made upon that hated measure. His
intimate acquaintance with the transactions of this period qualified him
well for a work, which now probably is known to few readers, but which
contains a great body of minute information concerning the condition and
the history of Scotland at that period,—The History of the Union between
England and Scotland: of which Mr. Chalmers says, “The minuteness with
which he describes what he saw and heard upon that turbulent stage,
where he acted a conspicuous part, is extremely interesting to us, who
wish to know what actually passed, however this circumstantiality may
have disgusted contemporaneous readers. History is chiefly valuable, as
it transmits a faithful copy of the manners and sentiments of every age.
This narrative of Defoe is a drama, in which he introduces the highest
peers and the lowest peasants speaking and acting, according as they
were each actuated by their characteristic passions; and while the man
of taste is amused by his manner, the man of business may draw
instruction from the documents, which are appended to the end, and
interspersed in every page. This publication had alone preserved his
name, had his Crusoe pleased us less.” Chalmers naturally makes the most
of its merits, for his Life of Defoe was originally prefixed to a
reprint of it in 1786: but the author would have been little known if
his popularity had depended on this work only.

After his return from Scotland, Defoe resided for some time at
Newington. He incurred great obloquy, he says, for trying to make the
best of the peace of Utrecht after it was concluded, and bore infinite
reproaches as having been hired and bribed to defend a bad peace, upon
the supposition that he was the author of pamphlets in which he had no
share. To escape from this persecution he went to Halifax, in Yorkshire,
where he had ample opportunity to observe the confidence of the Jacobite
party, and the success with which they laboured to make converts among
the lower ranks. To counteract these plottings, he wrote A Seasonable
Caution, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover, and
some other pamphlets with similar titles; intending, he says, by means
of their apparent drift, to put them into the hands of persons whom the
Jacobites had deluded. But Defoe was unfortunate as an ironical writer:
perhaps the same qualities which gave his fictions such an air of truth
tended to give his irony too much the appearance of earnest. On this, as
on a former occasion, some persons were foolish or malicious enough to
misconstrue his meaning, and to accuse him of writing seditious libels
in favour of the Pretender. On this frivolous charge an information was
filed against him in the spring of 1713, on which he was taken into
custody, and obliged to find bail to a large amount; and the
consequences might have been still more serious, but for a second
intervention of Harley, who procured a free pardon for him in the
following November. Speaking of these very publications in his Appeal,
he protests that “if the Elector of Hanover had given me a thousand
pounds to have written for the interests of his succession, and to
expose, and render the interest of the Pretender odious and ridiculous,
I could have done nothing more effectual to these purposes than these
books were.”

Well intended and valuable as his labours might be, his only recompense
for them was a bare immunity from persecution. After the accession of
George I. he was discountenanced and neglected. In 1715 he wrote An
Appeal to Honour and Justice, comprising a defence of his character, and
a general account of his life, principles, and conduct. He was struck by
apoplexy before he had quite completed this work, but recovered the full
possession of his faculties, and lived until April 26, 1731. After this
attack, whether from the wish to avoid excitement and anxiety, or from
the little advantage which his political writings had produced to him,
he almost ceased to handle controversial subjects, and devoted himself
with unwearying industry to works of a more popular and lucrative kind.
Upon the profits of his pen he seems to have depended for his
livelihood; and to the necessity of courting popular favour it may
probably be attributed, that the subjects of some of his works are
vulgar, and the style coarse: but even out of vicious and revolting
subjects he had the art of extracting a wholesome moral. The following
are the names and dates of the principal productions of his declining
years; and it is very remarkable, considering the circumstances in which
they were composed, that they should comprise all those fictions to
which he owes his imperishable name in British literature:—Life and
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719. Life, Adventures, and Piracies of
the Famous Captain Singleton, 1720. Fortunes and Misfortunes of the
Famous Moll Flanders, 1721. Religious Courtship; Journal of the Plague
Year, 1722. Life of Colonel Jack, 1723. Tour through the whole Island of
Great Britain, 1724–7. New Voyage round the World, 1725. Political
History of the Devil, 1726. Complete English Tradesman, 1727. Plan of
English Commerce, 1728. Memoirs of a Cavalier—date uncertain. But
notwithstanding the unceasing industry which enabled him to produce
these, and many other works, in the time specified, he appears to have
died insolvent, for a creditor took out letters of administration on his
effects.

A catalogue of the numerous works known, or confidently believed by the
compiler to be Defoe’s, and of those also which are attributed to him on
more doubtful evidence, is given by Mr. Chalmers at the end of that
edition of his Life which is subjoined to Stockdale’s edition of
Robinson Crusoe, in 2 vols. 8vo., 1790; hardly one in four of them has
been named in this short account. Defoe was a very rapid, as well as a
laborious composer: it is said that he once wrote two shilling pamphlets
in a single day. His controversial works however have long lost their
interest; and his principal historical work, that on the Union, is too
prolix and minute to find general acceptation in our days. In his
acquaintance with commerce, and insight into the principles by which it
is governed, he is entitled to rank with the most skilful of his
contemporaries; but the progress of economical science has of course
deprived his commercial writings of most of their value, except as
records of the past. Of his numerous works of fiction, we may notice the
History of the Plague of London in 1665, Memoirs of a Cavalier, and
Robinson Crusoe, as the best known and the most deserving. The first,
which professes to be the journal of a saddler resident in Whitechapel
during the awful visitation which he describes, is said to have been
received as genuine even by Dr. Mead, as no doubt it has been by very
many of those who are unacquainted with its real history. There is a
homely pathos, a minute and scrupulous adherence to verisimilitude in it
which almost irresistibly persuades the reader that none but an
eyewitness could have written such an account. The Memoirs of a Cavalier
possess the same air of truth. They relate the campaigns of a young
Englishman of good family, first in Germany under Gustavus Adolphus,
afterwards on the royal side in our civil wars; and depict with great
vividness and fidelity the principal events of those interesting and
stirring times. But popular as these works have been and deserve to be,
they sink into obscurity when compared with the universal acceptation of
Robinson Crusoe; the only thing, according to Dr. Johnson, written by
mere man, that was ever wished longer by its readers, except Don Quixote
and the Pilgrim’s Progress. And Bunyan and Defoe had some points in
common. Both came of the people, and both, without the advantages or
trammels of a learned education, wrote for and to the people; they
slighted no source of pathos or eloquence as being too humble, and cared
little for homeliness of phrase, if it expressed their meaning clearly
and strongly. It is needless to give any account of a book, which in one
shape or other, for in the numerous reprints it has often been curtailed
and mutilated, must be familiar to every reader. The story is well known
to be identical with that of Alexander Selkirk, who, after a solitary
abode of four years on the island of Juan Fernandez, returned to England
in 1709. Defoe has been charged with surreptitiously obtaining and
making an unfair use of this man’s papers; but there seems to be no
ground whatever for the accusation. Selkirk’s story had been made public
in several forms seven years at least before Robinson Crusoe was
written, and it was free to Defoe or to any man to take it as the ground
upon which to build a tale. And far from Selkirk’s papers having been
traced into Defoe’s hands, it does not even appear that these pretended
papers ever were in existence: indeed Selkirk seems, from the published
accounts of him, to have been so much below the fictitious Crusoe in the
extent of his resources, and the fertility of his ingenuity (and we say
this with no desire to undervalue his active spirit and contented
temper), that it is hardly possible that he should have furnished more
than the first hint, which Defoe has expanded into so instructive,
fascinating, and varied a story.

The following lively criticism of this remarkable work is extracted from
Dunlop’s History of Fiction:—

“Defoe and Swift, though differing very widely in education, opinions,
and character, have at the same time some strong points of resemblance.
Both are remarkable for the unaffected simplicity of their
narratives—both intermingle so many minute circumstances, and state so
particularly names of persons, and dates, and places, that the reader is
involuntarily surprised into a persuasion of their truth. It seems
impossible that what is so artlessly told should be a fiction,
especially as the narrators begin the account of their voyages with such
references to persons living, or whom they assert to be alive, and whose
place of residence is so accurately mentioned, that one is led to
believe a relation must be genuine, which could, if false, have been so
easily convicted of falsehood. The incidents too are so very
circumstantial, that we think it impossible they could have been
mentioned, except they had been real....” Speaking of the moral of
Robinson Crusoe, he continues, “We are delighted with the spectacle of
difficulty overcome, and with the power of human ingenuity and
contrivance to provide not only accommodation but comfort, in the most
unfavourable circumstances. Never did human being excite more sympathy
in his fate than this shipwrecked mariner: we enter into all his doubts
and difficulties, and every rusty nail which he acquires fills us with
satisfaction. We thus learn to appreciate our own comforts, and we
acquire, at the same time, a habit of activity; but above all we attain
a trust and devout confidence in Divine mercy and goodness. The author
also, by placing his hero in an uninhabited island in the Western Ocean,
had an opportunity of introducing scenes which, with the merit of truth,
have all the wildness and horror of the most incredible fiction. _That_
foot in the sand—_Those_ Indians who land on the solitary shore to
devour their captives, fill us with alarm and terror; and after being
relieved from the fear of Crusoe perishing by famine, we are agitated by
new apprehensions for his safety. The deliverance of Friday, and the
whole character of that young Indian, are painted in the most beautiful
manner; and, in short, of all the works of fiction that have ever been
composed, Robinson Crusoe is perhaps the most interesting and
attractive.”

[Illustration: [Robinson Crusoe building his Boat. From a design by
Stothard, R.A.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  DAVID HUME.

  _From a Print by A. Smith, after a Picture by Allen Ramsay._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                 HUME.


David Hume was born in Edinburgh, April 26, 1711. His father, who was
descended from a branch of the Earl of Home’s, or Hume’s, family, died
while David was an infant, leaving him, with an elder brother and
sister, to the care of his mother, the daughter of Sir Edward Falconer,
who devoted the remainder of her days to the welfare of her children.
Her property was inconsiderable, and that which fell to David, as a
younger son, was very slender. His family, observing the manner in which
he acquitted himself at college, would have fixed his attention on the
law; but his growing passion for philosophy and general learning
rendered him averse to that pursuit, and after a fruitless attempt at
Bristol to reconcile himself to a more active kind of employment, he
went to France, where he laid down that plan of life to which he ever
afterwards adhered. It now became his fixed resolve to secure his
independence by means of the most rigid frugality; and to deem every
acquisition contemptible, except the improvement of his talents in
literature. This was in 1734.

During his three years’ residence in France, Hume composed his Treatise
of Human Nature, which he published on his return to England in 1738.
The work failed to attract the slightest notice from friend or foe. But
our young aspirant was not dismayed; and his buoyant spirit was much
strengthened by the degree of success which attended the appearance of
the first part of his Essays, which were published at Edinburgh in 1742.

In 1745 Hume quitted the residence of his mother and brother, in
compliance with an invitation from the Marquis of Annandale; the friends
of that young nobleman having thought that his health and mind required
the aid which such a tutorship, or companionship, for we hardly know
which to call it, would afford. Hume states, that his employment during
the twelve months thus passed in England made a considerable accession
to his small fortune. “I thus received,” he says, “an invitation from
General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which
was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the
coast of France. Next year, to wit 1747, I received an invitation from
the General to attend him in the same station in his military embassy to
the courts of Vienna and Turin. I then wore the uniform of an officer,
and was introduced at those courts as aid-de-camp to the General, along
with Sir Harry Erskine, and Captain Grant, now General Grant. These two
years were almost the only interruptions my studies received during the
course of my life.”

In 1747 Hume re-cast the first part of his Treatise of Human Nature, and
published it under the title of an Inquiry concerning Human
Understanding. But this amended performance also failed to produce any
immediate effects; and a new edition of his Essays Moral and Political,
published about the same time in London, found scarcely a better
reception. Still looking to the hopeful side of things, our author
composed during 1749 and 1750 the second part of his Essays, which were
called Political Discourses; and also his Inquiry concerning the
Principles of Morals, which was another part of his ill-fated Treatise
of Human Nature, in a new form. By this time some of the more obnoxious
parts of that treatise began to call forth opponents, and it became
evident that its author, though much more frequently censured than
applauded, was a man of rising reputation. This result was favoured by
his determination never to reply to any of his critics, a resolve which
the peculiarities of his temper enabled him to act upon to the end of
life.

In 1751 he removed to Edinburgh, and being chosen librarian by the
Faculty of Advocates in the following year, the plan of writing his
History of England was formed. This memorable work commenced with the
accession of the House of Stuart; and the author, who was sanguine as to
its success, relates that “on the publication of the first volume, he
scarcely knew a man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or
letters, that could endure the book.” After a sale of less than fifty
copies in the first year, the work seemed fast sinking into oblivion.
This disappointment appears to have affected Hume more than any event
which had befallen him; and, had not the war with France at that
juncture prevented it, he would probably have gone to that country,
never again to have seen his own. But the habits induced by a passion
for literature are not easily put in abeyance. Soon after receiving this
discouragement, Hume published his Natural History of Religion. In 1756
the second volume of the History of England made its appearance, “which
not only rose itself, but helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother.”
The third volume, relating to the House of Tudor, appeared in 1759, and
was censured hardly less than the first. In 1761, the two volumes
embracing the early period of our history were published, and, according
to their author “with tolerable, and but tolerable success.”

Hume now formed the purpose of spending the remainder of his days in
philosophical retirement in Scotland; but was induced in 1763 to visit
Paris, in connexion with the embassy of the Earl of Hertford to that
city. The honours paid to our philosopher and historian in that capital
once disposed him to think of settling there for life. He had now passed
his fiftieth year, and his official residence in Paris extended, with a
slight intermission, to six years—from 1763 to 1769. From the period of
his leaving Paris, to 1775, when his last sickness came upon him, his
time appears to have been given chiefly to the enjoyment of his friends;
his authorship, and other employments, having secured him an income of
not less than 1000_l._ a year. A disorder in the bowels, which reduced
him considerably, but without becoming the occasion of much pain, or at
all affecting his spirits, ended his life, August 25, 1776, in the
sixty-fifth year of his age.

Hume’s character as a man has been sketched by himself, and his account
may be admitted as, in most respects, substantially accurate. He
describes himself as mild in disposition, possessing a command of
temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment,
but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in his
passions. “Even my love of literary fame,” he adds, “my ruling passion,
never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My
company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to
the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the
company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the
reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men any wise
eminent, have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched,
or even attacked by her baleful tooth: and though I wantonly exposed
myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to
be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had
occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct.”
Much to this effect is the testimony of Dr. Adam Smith, the intimate
friend of Hume. This writer, indeed, does not hesitate to speak of him
“as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous
man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.” Some deduction
should of course be made from this language, as that of a natural
self-love in the one instance, and of an ardent friendship in the other.
It is no proof, for example, of Hume’s exemption from the irascible
passions, that he should have been so rarely capable of adverting to the
opponents of his favourite speculations in morals or religion, without
indulging in reproachful and degrading language; “bigots” and “zealots”
being the designations flung at such persons on almost all occasions. In
the same spirit the name of a “faction,” is his favourite one for that
large class of politicians in this country whose principles did not
embrace so much of “the monstrous creed of many made for one,” as
belonged to his own. And it is worthy of notice, that a passage in his
memoirs, which was inserted by him as an evidence of his exemption from
this sort of prejudice and resentment, affords one of the most decisive
proofs that he shared in this common weakness much more than himself or
his admirers were willing to allow. “Though I had been taught by
experience,” he writes, “that the Whig party were in possession of
bestowing all places, both in the state and in literature, I was so
little inclined to yield to their senseless clamour, that in above a
hundred alterations, which further study, reading, or reflection,
engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made
all of them invariably to the Tory side.” Now what reader can suppose
that the inaccuracies detected by a mind without bias, could possibly
have occurred in this shape—a hundred on one side, and not one on the
other! The fact itself, and the tone in which it is recorded, disclose
what our philosopher would fain have concealed. We leave the moral
conduct of Hume in the spotless state set forth by his own description
of it, though we cannot forbear to remark that such language comes
somewhat strangely from a gentleman who had been so fascinated with the
manner of the Parisian fashionables under Louis XV., as to have thought
of never leaving them. We believe, however, that in his case, the
principal attraction of such society was its polish, and not its almost
incredible licentiousness. We learn, that in one of those gay
assemblies, Hume was induced to make his appearance in the character of
a Sultan, placed on a sofa between two of the most beautiful women in
Paris. It was his province to solicit the favours of these ladies, and
it was theirs to act the part of fair ones who were not to be subdued,
and in the dialogue, or rather trilogue, which lasted some quarter of an
hour, the author of the Treatise of Human Nature, and of the History of
England, acquitted himself, we are told, much to the edification of all
who were present[3]. In these moments of relaxation, the philosopher was
regarded as discovering his amiable sympathy with the ordinary feelings
of humanity. It does not appear to have occurred to him, or to his
flatterers, to consider the much stronger evidence of the want of such
sympathy, which was afforded by his approval of the system of government
which had so long spread its terrors and its wrongs over the length and
breadth of that splendid, miserable country. Our limits will not allow
of any reference to the particulars of the public dispute between Hume
and Rousseau, and we therefore abstain from expressing any opinion
respecting it.

Footnote 3:

  ‘Mémoires et Correspondance de Madame d’Epinay.’ III., 284, 285.

In the philosophical writings of Hume, the great element is scepticism.
He had many precursors in that sort of amusing speculation which tends
to throw doubt over received opinions; and which, as a natural effect of
human vanity, does so the more in regard to those notions which happen
to be retained most generally and with the greatest confidence. But
these limits did not satisfy the author of the Treatise of Human Nature.
The drift of his philosophy is to prove, not only that nothing _is_
known, but that nothing _can_ be known; that the human race are shut up
in the most entire ignorance, partly from the character of the objects
around them, but mainly from the very framework and nature of the human
understanding. Much ingenuity and acuteness was required to give any
plausible appearance to a theory so contrary to the natural impressions
of mankind, and Hume’s philosophical works afford evidence enough of the
sort of talent necessary to his object. But he well knew, that however
proper, and however felicitous it might be, to lay low the giant spirit
of dogmatism by such means, his own conclusions, in every instance of
importance, were hardly less dogmatic than those of his opponents, the
principal difference being, that the sources of _his_ assumptions were
somewhat more difficult to detect and expose. For what assumption can be
greater than that of a right to believe in all unbelief? In this case,
the very faculty that doubts must be a figment of vanity. The writer who
determines to assail everything, forces on mankind a suspicion of
caprice and insincerity, and is not likely to demolish anything. By
attempting less, Hume would have accomplished more; and he would not
then have called forth that array of philosophic power against himself,
which has done so much damage to his reputation in this department of
his labours. His miscellaneous Essays abound in valuable observations,
and are fine models of English composition. The manner in which he met
his death is the stock theme with the superficial, as illustrating the
power of philosophy. But the man of reflection may perhaps see as much
of the weakness of humanity in that event, as of the strength of
philosophy; and certainly he will not need to be told, that nothing can
be more delusive than the use generally made of such scenes.

It is not however as the philosopher, but as the historian, that Hume is
known to the majority of persons, both in this country and on the
continent. Those habits of close thought, and that careful use of
language, to which he had been so long accustomed in his philosophical
studies, qualified him, in a high degree, to treat the topics of history
with discrimination, simplicity, and clearness. The evil to be feared
was, that he would often allow the sprightliness of narrative to sink
into the dullness of disquisition; and that even his narrative would be
deficient in that selection of familiar anecdote, and in those
picturesque descriptions, which, while having little relation to the
great lessons of history, are certainly among its great attractions. But
it happens that the narrative of Xenophon himself is not more easy and
uninterrupted than that of Hume; nor has the former writer shown a
stronger disposition to dwell on domestic incidents, or to throw a
dramatic colouring over public occurrences, than the latter. Never did
any man bring so much of the power of abstruse thought to the writing of
history, and appear to be so much served and so little inconvenienced by
it. His station and intercourse in society added much of the feeling and
manners of the gentleman to the more grave attainments of the man of
learning, and tended to produce that combination of qualities, which
made his society at all times agreeable, and has thrown a nameless and
irresistible charm over his historical writing. His style was the result
of great elaboration, but has every appearance of being that which must
have been adopted without effort. It is open, indeed, in almost every
page, to much verbal criticism, no book perhaps of the same standing
being in this respect so vulnerable. But these lesser blemishes are
forgotten amid the many natural and delightful graces with which it is
adorned; graces which no one can help feeling, but which it would be as
difficult to describe as to imitate.

Having however spoken thus of Mr. Hume’s style, and remarked the general
acuteness and frequent justice of his observations, we have fairly
exhausted our topics of praise. With regard to the two most valuable
qualities of a historian—research and integrity, the claims of Hume are
in the inverse position of his pretensions in other respects. Instead of
seeking, as the author of the Essay on Miracles might have been expected
to do, for the best possible testimonies, for these in the greatest
possible number, and then sifting them to the utmost, we find him
committing himself, with apparent unconsciousness, to the most
incompetent guides, often to a single authority where several were
accessible, and where several are adduced, attaching no more credit to
the depositions of an intelligent writer contemporary with what he
records, than to that of some worthless chronicler, who lived some
centuries later! This is particularly the case with regard to that
portion of our history which precedes the Reformation; and there cannot
be a greater mistake than to suppose that his references at the foot of
the page in these earlier volumes indicate the sources from which the
material of his text was derived. “Ingenious but superficial” is the
description of these volumes which Gibbon recorded in his diary, after
reading them. In the more modern period of our history, as the
authorities relating to it may be consulted by an indolent man with less
labour, and by a man of taste with less disgust, we find a little more
research and discrimination, but by no means sufficient to render his
accounts worthy of implicit confidence, even when not liable to be
affected by any of his known partialities. It is to this deficient
industry, and to the consequent want of a steady mastery of his subject
before beginning to write upon it, that we have mainly to attribute the
perpetual contradictions which occur in his description of the great
contest under the Stuart princes; contradictions which are so many and
so irreconcilable as to make his book one of the most inconsistent that
ever emanated from a man of ordinary powers. We have not, of course,
space in which to exhibit the proofs of this statement;—but we are
confident that inquiry will prove it to be correct.

But the want of industry, though a serious delinquency in a historian,
is almost venial when compared with a want of impartiality, and the
deficiency of Hume in this last quality has been often and largely
exposed. The extent in which the historian was conscious of his own
habit of unfairness, it is not in our power to determine; but there is
hardly a conceivable form of disingenuousness, of which his volumes
might not be shown to afford numerous and striking examples. The volume
embracing the reigns of James and Charles was first published, and we
have seen that the reception it met with only taught the author to
resolve, with a more fixed purpose, as to the complexion of those which
were to follow. In instances where his integrity is in the main
preserved, his eloquence is often so far misdirected that the truth
becomes discoloured, and makes the impression of falsehood. In his hands
the faults of his favourites lose much of their magnitude and grossness,
while their merits are raised much above their proper level, and with
regard to their opponents, the inverse process is adopted. Disagreeable
facts are passed over, or but partially and very artfully developed;
while others, of an opposite nature, have all prominence, and all
imaginable force assigned them. Incidents of very rare occurrence, and
existing only as exceptions, are culled with the greatest care, and
presented as the rule, and as no more than samples of the abundance that
might be adduced. And in describing the reasonings and the motives by
which the contending parties from time to time were influenced, it is
the fixed usage of this writer to consult his own prejudices or
imagination much more than the lights afforded by the documents of the
times. These summaries, as they are called, are inserted by Hume, in the
place of the speeches which the ancient historians were wont to put into
the mouth of their leading men; and, interesting as they are, deserve no
more credit, considered as the character of parties, or as accounts of
what was really said, than it is usual to bestow on those elaborate
harangues. There is much reason to believe that the historian began the
reigns of the two first Stuarts with a sincere conviction that
sufficient allowance had not been made for the peculiar situation of
those princes. But his delinquencies are such, that this excuse must be
of small avail in his defence. The majority of more than one generation
in this country have derived their notions of English history almost
exclusively from the pages of Hume; but so low has he fallen as a
historical authority, that the persons who have read scarcely anything
else, rarely show courage, or rather weakness, enough to make any appeal
to him.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by E. Scriven._

  DE WITT.

  _From a Picture by Netscher, in the possession of M^r. Lenoir, at
    Paris._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                DE WITT.


The father of this wise and honest statesman was burgomaster of the town
of Dort, or Dordrecht, and one of its representatives in the Assembly of
the States of Holland, a man of patriotism, courage, and integrity, who
apprehended danger to the liberties of the United Provinces from the
hereditary power of the House of Orange, and used his best exertions to
counteract it. His sons, Cornelius and John De Witt, born at Dort, the
former June 25, 1623, the latter September 25, 1625, inherited his
principles and his integrity; and rendered his name illustrious by
greater talents exerted in a higher sphere of action. Of these brothers,
united in their counsels, their lives, and their deaths, it is the
younger, John, the original of our portrait, who rendered the name of De
Witt most illustrious, by the ability and virtue with which, during
eighteen years, he directed the government of his country.

Cornelius De Witt served in the navy during several years, and
distinguished himself in the bloody wars of England and Holland; he also
studied jurisprudence in his youth, and displayed talents for civil and
military business not unnoticed by his fellow-citizens, who bestowed
several municipal offices on him at an early age. The youth of John De
Witt appears to have been less occupied by active employments; though he
possessed great knowledge and practical skill in maritime affairs, and
was esteemed one of the best pilots of his time. The early development
of his political talents, aided probably by family connexion, and the
respect due to his father’s services, soon introduced him to high civil
employment. In 1650 he was appointed Pensionary of his native town, and
in 1652, Grand Pensionary of Holland, an office which gave him a
commanding influence over the deliberations of the whole Union. It was
granted nominally only for five years, but in effect was permanent,
since at the end of each period it was customary to re-appoint the
holder.

It was the leading object of De Witt’s policy to diminish the influence
which the princes of the House of Orange had acquired, as much by their
services and high personal qualities, as by their power and territorial
possessions, and to strengthen the republican institutions of his
country, which he saw to be endangered, as it was ultimately destroyed,
by their hereditary tenure of the office of Stadtholder. “The chief
direction of the affairs of Holland, for eighteen years, continued in
the hands of their Pensionary De Witt, a minister of the greatest
authority and sufficiency, the greatest application and industry, ever
known in their state. In the course of his ministry he and his party
reduced, not only all the civil charges of the government in this
province, but in a manner all the military commands of the army, out of
the hands of persons affectionate to the Prince of Orange, into those
esteemed more sure and fast to the interests of their more popular
state. And all this was attended for so long a course of years with the
perpetual success of their affairs, by the growth of their trade, power
and riches at home, and the consideration of their neighbours abroad.”
Such is the testimony of Sir William Temple, (Essay on the Origin and
Nature of Government,) to the policy, success, and merits of a friend
whom he loved and venerated. The position of affairs, when De Witt
attained to the direction of the state, favoured the development of his
republican views. William II., Prince of Orange, had died in 1650, and
his posthumous son and heir, afterwards William III. of England, was an
infant. Had the representative of that house been of mature age, we may
conclude that gratitude for the eminent services of his predecessors,
and the natural inclination of the people towards the form of government
to which they had been accustomed, would have led again to the
appointment of a Stadtholder in his person. But the office was of a
nature which could not be well exercised by a regent, or committed to an
infant, without acknowledging a species of hereditary right, scarcely
differing from the claims of royalty: and accordingly in some provinces
another prince of the Nassau family was appointed Stadtholder, in
others, of which Holland was one, the office continued in abeyance, and
De Witt, thwarted by no superior, was able to direct his best efforts to
counteract the workings of the Orange party, and to effect those changes
in the civil and military organization of the state, which are mentioned
in the above quotation from Sir W. Temple. The same leading principle
guided his foreign policy. When he was appointed Grand Pensionary, the
Provinces were engaged in war with England; an unequal contest while her
government was directed by Cromwell. But the true interest of both
parties lay in their amity, and peace was concluded in 1654. While
Cromwell lived, the republican party was upheld by his influence. He
endeavoured to obtain from the States General, in the treaty of 1654,
the perpetual exclusion of the Prince of Orange from the
Stadtholdership: but not being able to obtain their consent to this,
contented himself with the assent of the States of Holland, as far as
regarded their own province, which was accorded by a secret article.
After the Restoration it was to be expected that Charles II. would
support the interests of his nephew the Prince of Orange; and De Witt
thenceforward cultivated the alliance of France in preference to that of
England. This, and the jealousy of the English nation at the commercial
prosperity of the Dutch, led to the breaking out of a bloody war in
1665, in which the preponderance of success was on the side of England.
The spirit, energy, and ability of De Witt was the main stay of his
countrymen under the reverses which they sustained in this contest:
their disasters were promptly repaired, their defeated armaments
refitted, their credit sustained; and Charles II. becoming weary of a
war which brought no advantages to compensate for the drain which it
occasioned on the treasury, condescended to open negotiations for peace
in 1667. These, however, proceeded but slowly: and while they were yet
pending, De Witt planned that memorable expedition which surprised our
ill-guarded shores, burnt our ships in the Thames, and threw the
metropolis into the utmost alarm. The course of diplomacy being
quickened by this event, the treaty of Breda was soon after concluded,
on terms not disadvantageous to Holland.

In the following year a closer union, called the Triple League, was
formed, chiefly by the agency of De Witt and Sir William Temple, between
these two powers, in conjunction with Sweden. It was intended to
restrain the ambition of Louis XIV., which had manifested itself in such
encroachments upon the Spanish Netherlands as gave just cause of anxiety
to the United Provinces. De Witt saw that a new danger threatened the
independence of his country from abroad, and sacrificed to the emergency
his own political prepossessions and his jealousy of everything which
could restore the House of Orange to power. So great was his
earnestness, that he violated a fundamental principle of the Union, by
inducing the States General to ratify the treaty at once, instead of
referring it, as was prescribed by the constitution, to the acceptance
of the several provinces: an act by which, had it proved unpalatable to
the nation, the lives of all who were concerned in it were endangered,
and which is only to be excused on the plea of necessity, and by the
certainty that the measure, which its framers regarded as essential to
the welfare of the whole confederacy, would have been frustrated by the
influence of France over some or other of its least important members.
In 1670 De Witt concluded another treaty with the emperor of Germany and
the King of Spain, with the same object of maintaining the power of
Spain in the Netherlands, as a barrier against the encroachments of
France.

All these precautions were rendered vain by the weak and corrupt conduct
of the English Court. The ministers were bribed, and the King cajoled by
a French mistress, sent over in the train of his sister the Duchess of
Orleans, to renounce the Triple League and to declare war against the
United Provinces, in 1672, on the most frivolous pretences. At the same
time the king of France in person led against them a numerous, well
appointed, and well officered army. It is probable that De Witt had
relied with confidence on the sincerity of England in promoting the
objects of the Triple League, and that though well aware of the
disposition of Louis, he had not thought the danger so near at hand. At
all events he had made no sufficient preparation to meet it; and the
consequences of this omission were most disastrous. The troops of the
Provinces, composed in a great measure of new levies, could make no
head; the frontier fortresses yielded almost without resistance; the
Rhine was passed, an event remarkable only by the flatteries for which
it gave a subject to the French poets; and Louis held his court at
Utrecht, while his troops advanced within a few miles of Amsterdam. A
loud clamour was now raised against De Witt, who was roundly accused of
having disbanded the veteran troops of the Republic, dismantled the
fortresses, and exhausted the treasury, that his country might fall an
easier prey to the French connexion. This calumny, even at the time,
probably, was hardly believed: but too great neglect of the military
establishment seems justly chargeable as a fault on his administration.
For this, however, some excuse may be found in the necessity of economy,
the inconsistency of a mercenary army of foreigners with republican
principles, and the readiness of the Orange party to misrepresent this
policy of the Pensionary, as tending to concentrate in himself the
powers of Stadtholder, a name and office which he had been so eager to
abolish. By the machinations of that party the embarrassments of the
government were increased, and discontent was fomented; and their
sufferings and danger led the people to think more and more favourably
of the claims of William of Orange. The natural high qualities of that
prince had received most careful cultivation under the superintendence
of De Witt, who was resolved, he said, to render him capable of serving
his country, if any change should throw the administration into his
hands. Already, February 25, he had been declared captain-general and
admiral of the Provinces. Shortly after, De Witt’s life was attempted by
four assassins, who left him for dead, as he was returning home at
night, unattended, with his usual simplicity of demeanour. While he lay
ill of his wounds, the repeal of the Perpetual Edict passed in 1667, by
which the office of Stadtholder was abolished for ever in the province
of Holland, was demanded by the populace, with much violence and
sedition. That State yielded to the clamour, and the Prince was thus
reinstated in the full power enjoyed by his predecessors.

Cornelius De Witt was induced, with great difficulty, to sign the
revocation of the Edict. Soon after, he was accused of being concerned
in a plot to murder the Prince of Orange. The informer and only witness,
one Tichelaer, was a person of infamous character: yet on his evidence
this brave and well-deserving citizen was thrown into prison at the
Hague, and cruelly tortured to extort confession of a plot, the very
existence of which, without that confession, could not be proved. He
bore the trial with unshaken constancy, protesting that if they cut him
to pieces, they should not make him confess a thing which he had never
thought of. Without it, he could not be convicted: but he was stripped
of his employments and banished from Holland; and such was the madness
of the time, that even this iniquitous decree gave great offence, by its
leniency, to the people, who were fully persuaded of Cornelius De Witt’s
guilt. John De Witt meanwhile had recovered from his wounds; and finding
that in the existing state of public feeling his continuance at the head
of affairs was both undesirable for himself and unpleasing to the
country, he resigned his office. After the promulgation of his brother’s
sentence, he went to receive him upon his delivery from prison; and
probably to do him more honour, and testify his own sense of the malice
of the charge, and the unworthiness of the treatment which he had
received, repaired to the Hague in his coach and four, a sort of display
which he was not wont to affect. This bravado proved still more
unfortunate than ill-judged. The people, collected by the unusual
spectacle, began to murmur at the presumption of one suspected traitor
coming in state to insult the laws, and triumph in the escape of a
traitor-brother from a deserved death. De Witt went to the prison, to
convey his brother to his own house; but Cornelius replied, that having
suffered so much, being innocent, he would not leave the prison as a
culprit, but remain, and appeal against the sentence; a resolution which
John De Witt strove in vain to shake. Meanwhile Tichelaer, the informer,
was busily engaged in stirring up the populace to riot. Apprehending
some disturbance, the States of Holland, which were then sitting at the
Hague, requested the Prince of Orange to repair thither with a military
force. Meanwhile the tumult spread from the lowest people to the
burghers, and a furious mob collected round the gates of the prison
where the brothers still remained. The military force which had been
sent for did not arrive, and that which was in the city was drawn off,
by written order from one or more of the magistrates, upon a false
report, that a body of peasants was advancing to pillage the Hague.
Actuated by fear, or some worse motive, the gaoler opened the gates, the
leaders of the mob rushed in, the brothers were violently dragged from
their chamber, and massacred as soon as they reached the street, with
circumstances of brutality too revolting to be narrated in detail. Their
corpses were dragged to the gibbet, and publicly suspended with the
heads downwards; and the mangled limbs of these upright magistrates and
patriotic citizens were offered for sale, and bought at prices of
fifteen, twenty, and thirty sols.

There is another account, different in some particulars, which intimates
that this atrocious murder was preconcerted, and that a train was laid
for it, if not by the Prince of Orange himself, at least by the leaders
of his party. Such charges are often lightly made; and we are not aware
that there is any direct evidence to fix this guilt on any one,
certainly not personally on that distinguished monarch. But that there
was culpable neglect, even acquitting those in power of wilful
connivance, seems certain; and the proceedings of the court which
sentenced Cornelius, show that the government was not delicate in
finding means to remove those whom it disliked. And William’s subsequent
conduct may almost be said to have merited the imputation which he
incurred; for though the States of Holland voted the murder detestable
in their eyes and the eyes of all the world, and requested the
Stadtholder to take proper measures to avenge it, none of the murderers
were ever brought to justice. The flimsy pretext for this neglect was,
that it would be dangerous to inquire into a deed in which the principal
burghers of the Hague were concerned.

Mr. Fox, in his History of James II., has made the following reflections
on this event. “The catastrophe of De Witt, the wisest, best, and most
truly patriotic minister that ever appeared upon the public stage, as it
was an act of the most crying injustice and ingratitude, so likewise it
is the most completely dis-encouraging example that history affords to
the lovers of liberty. If Aristides was banished, he was also recalled:
if Dion was repaid for his service to the Syracusans by ingratitude,
that ingratitude was more than once repented of: if Sidney and Russell
died upon the scaffold, they had not the cruel mortification of falling
by the hands of the people; ample justice was done to their memory, and
the very sound of their names is still animating to every Englishman
attached to their glorious cause. But with De Witt fell also his cause
and his party; and although a name so respected by all who revere virtue
and wisdom when employed in their noblest sphere, the political service
of the public, yet I do not know that even to this day any public
honours have been paid by them to his memory.”

After De Witt’s death, all his papers were submitted to the most
rigorous examination, in hope of discovering something which should
confirm the popular notion of his being traitorously in league with
France. One of the persons appointed to perform this service being asked
what had been found in De Witt’s papers, replied, “What could we have
found? Nothing but probity.” To the moral qualities of integrity,
intrepidity, and patience, he added intellectual endowments of the
highest order: his perception was acute, his judgment solid; he
possessed great skill and readiness in transacting business, and that
persuasive influence over those who came in contact with him, which is
perhaps the most serviceable gift of a statesman. His manners, we are
told by Sir William Temple, (Observations on the United Provinces, c.
11), were such as befitted his station and his principles. “His habit
was grave, plain and popular; his table, what only served turn for his
family or a friend; his train was only one man, who performed all the
menial service of his house at home, and upon his visits of ceremony,
putting on a plain livery cloak, attended his coach abroad; for upon
other occasions he was seen usually in the streets on foot and alone,
like the commonest burgher of the town. Nor was this manner of life
affected; but was the general fashion and mode among all the magistrates
of the state.”

De Witt cultivated mathematics, and published a Treatise on Curves.
Burnet says, “Perhaps no man ever applied algebra to all matters of
trade so nicely as he did. He made himself so entirely master of the
state of Holland, that he understood exactly all the concerns of their
revenue, and what sums, and in what manner, could be raised upon any
emergent of state. For this he had a pocket book full of tables, and was
ever ready to show how they could be furnished with money.” The most
remarkable of his works are his Memoirs, published during his life in
1667, in which, after examining the principles which govern the
prosperity and decline of states, he proceeds to apply them to Holland,
and to review the condition and prospects of the country. They have been
translated into French by Mad. Zoutelandt, who has also written a life
of the two brothers. De Witt’s correspondence with the plenipotentiaries
of France, England, Sweden, Denmark, and Poland, has also been
published, and translated into French.

[Illustration: [Murder of the brothers De Witt, from a Dutch print in
Wagenaar’s ‘Vaterlandsche Historie,’ 1770.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  HAMPDEN.

  _From a Print by J. Houbraken 1740._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                HAMPDEN.


John Hampden was the head and representative of an ancient and opulent
family, which had received the lands of Hampden in Buckinghamshire from
Edward the Confessor, and boasted to have transmitted its wealth,
honours, and influence, unimpaired and increasing, in direct male
succession, down to this the most illustrious of the house. The date of
his birth is 1594; the place of it is generally believed to have been
London. Under four years of age, he came, by the death of his father,
into possession of the family estates, which, besides the ancient seat
and extensive domain in Buckinghamshire, comprehended large possessions
in Essex, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire. Our knowledge of his early life
may be summed in a few facts and dates. He was brought up at the
free-school of Thame, in Oxfordshire; entered as a commoner at Magdalen
College, Oxford, in 1609; and was admitted student of the Inner Temple
in 1613, where he made considerable progress in the knowledge of common
law. His classical attainments also seem to have been respectable, since
he was associated, oddly enough, with Laud, then Master of St. John’s,
in writing the Oxford gratulatory poems on the marriage of the Elector
Palatine and the Princess Elizabeth; from which sprung Prince Rupert,
who led the Royalist troops when Hampden received his death-wound. In
1619, he married his first wife Elizabeth Symeon. Inheriting a noble
property, he devoted himself, without suffering his literary habits to
fall into desuetude, principally to the business and amusements of a
country life, having, says Lord Clarendon, “on a sudden retired from a
life of great pleasure and licence, to extraordinary sobriety and
strictness, and yet retained his usual cheerfulness and affability.” His
first entrance into public life was in January, 1620–1, when he took his
seat in the Parliament then convened, for Grampound, at that time a
borough of wealth and importance: a prevalent error, that he sat for the
first time in the first Parliament summoned by Charles I. in 1625, is
corrected by Lord Nugent, who in his Memorials of Hampden has shown that
he sat in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624; that he was active and
diligent in his attendance, and intimately connected himself with
Selden, Pym, St. John, and other leaders of the popular party; and that,
though he seldom spoke, his capacity for business was known and
respected, as appears from the employments in committees and
conferences, imposed on him by the House.

In the first Parliament of Charles I., Hampden sat for Wendover, an
ancient borough of Buckinghamshire, which with two others had lately
regained their dormant privilege of returning members, chiefly by his
exertions, and at his expense. In this and in the following Parliament,
summoned in February, 1627, Hampden still appears to have taken no
leading part. After the dissolution of the latter, he was called upon to
contribute to a general loan, which he refused, and was in consequence
imprisoned for a time in the Gate House, and then sent still under
restraint to reside in Hampshire. The order for his release, with many
others, is dated March, 1627–8. On this occasion, he made the remarkable
reply to the demand, why he would not contribute to the king’s
necessities, that “he could be content to lend as well as others, but
feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta, which should be
read twice a year against those who infringe it.”

In the new Parliament which met in March, 1628, Hampden again sat for
Wendover, and having become more generally known by the part which he
had taken in resisting the demands of the crown, from this time forward,
says Lord Nugent, “scarcely was a bill prepared, or an inquiry begun,
upon any subject, however remotely affecting any one of the three great
matters at issue—privilege, religion, or the supplies—but he was thought
fit to be associated with St. John, Selden, Coke and Pym, on the
committee.”

That Parliament, after framing the Petition of Right, voting supplies,
and taking resolute steps towards procuring a redress of grievances, was
hastily and angrily dissolved in May, 1629. Previous to this, Hampden,
“although retaining his seat for Wendover, had retired to his estate in
Buckinghamshire, to live in entire privacy, without display, but not
inactive; contemplating from a distance, the madness of the Government,
the luxury and insolence of the courtiers, and the portentous apathy of
the people, who, amazed by the late measures, and by the prospect of
uninterruptedly increasing violence, saw no hope from petition or
complaint, and watched, in confusion and silence, the inevitable advance
of an open rupture between the King and the Parliament. The literary
acquirements of his youth he now carefully improved; increasing that
stock of general knowledge which had already gained him the reputation
of being one of the most learned and accomplished men of his age: and
directing his attention chiefly to writers on history and politics.
Davila’s History of the Civil Wars of France became his favourite study,
his vade mecum, as Sir Philip Warwick styles it; as if forecasting from
afar the course of the storm which hung over his own country, he already
saw the sad parallel it was likely to afford to the story of that work.
In his retirement, he bent the whole force of his capacious mind to the
most effectual means by which the abuses of ecclesiastical authority
were to be corrected, and the tide of headlong prerogative checked,
whenever the slumbering spirit of the country should be roused to deal
with those duties to which he was preparing to devote himself.”
(Memorials of Hampden, p. 175.) It may here be added that Hampden’s
religious opinions were those of the Independent party, who were
honourably distinguished, no less from the Presbyterians than the
Episcopalians, by granting to all persons that freedom of conscience and
full toleration which they claimed for themselves. While thus awaiting,
with study and patient observation, the time when the active service of
a real patriot might benefit his country, his domestic happiness
received a severe blow by the death of his wife, Aug. 20, 1634.

In the same autumn the scheme of raising a revenue by ship-money was
devised. Confined in the first instance to seaport towns, it proved so
profitable that the levy was soon extended to inland places. In 1636,
the charge was laid, by order of council, upon all counties, cities, and
corporate towns, and the sheriffs were required, in case of refusal or
delay, to proceed by distress. Here Hampden resolved to make a stand.
The sum demanded of him was but thirty-one shillings and sixpence; but
the very smallness of the sum served to show that his opposition was
directed against the principle of the exaction, and rested on no ground
of personal inconvenience, or individual injustice. Proceedings being
instituted in the Exchequer for recovery of the money, the case was
solemnly argued before the twelve judges, who severally delivered their
opinions, and by a majority of eight to four, determined in favour of
the crown. “But the judgment,” says Lord Clarendon, “infinitely more
advanced him, Mr. Hampden, than the service for which it was given. He
was rather of reputation in his own country, than of public discourse,
or fame in the kingdom, before the business of ship-money: but then he
grew the argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who or what he
was, that durst, at his own charge, support the liberty and property of
the country, as he thought, from being made a prey to the court. His
carriage, throughout this agitation, was with that rare temper and
modesty, that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage
against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were
compelled to give him a just testimony.”

These measures, which placed at the king’s disposal the property, were
accompanied by equally stringent attacks on the liberties of the
country. Tutored by the lofty spirit of Wentworth, Charles resolved, and
seemed likely to succeed, to rule independently of Parliaments: and in
the sycophancy of the judges, and the unlimited and illegal severities
of the courts of the Star-Chamber and High Commission, he had ample
means of suppressing murmur, and punishing the refractory. We need not
dwell upon the state to which the country was reduced, during the eleven
years which elapsed without the meeting of a Parliament: so unpromising
did it appear, that even the most resolute of that party comprehended by
the Royalists under the general name of Puritans, meditated a withdrawal
from the tyranny which they had almost ceased to hope to restrain. Even
this however was denied to them by the infatuated jealousy of popular
principles entertained by the king and his advisers, who issued an
order, April 6, 1638, by which masters of ships were prohibited to carry
passengers to America, without special licence. It has often been dwelt
on as a very remarkable circumstance, that Hampden, and his cousin
Oliver Cromwell, were at this time actually embarked for New England on
board one of eight ships then lying in the river and freighted with
emigrants, and that these eight ships were specially ordered to be
detained.

A dawn of better times appeared, when in consequence of the king’s rash
attempt to impose the English ritual upon Scotland, and restore
Episcopacy, that country rose in rebellion. The expenses of the war
rendered it imperative to obtain supplies; and Charles, fearing at this
juncture to resort to fresh impositions, saw no resource except in
summoning that which is commonly called the Short Parliament, which met
in April, 1640. Hampden was returned for Buckinghamshire. About this
time he had married his second wife, Letitia Vachell, but the quiet
happiness of his home was henceforth entirely broken up by the
disturbances of the times, and he never returned to any settled
residence at his paternal mansion. In the short and energetic session of
this spring he displayed his usual diligence and activity; and his
influence was much increased in consequence of his resistance to the
demand of ship-money, which had attracted such notice, that Clarendon,
in speaking of the opening of the Long Parliament in November following,
observes, “the eyes of all men were fixed upon him as their Pater
Patriæ, and the pilot that must steer the vessel through the tempests
and rocks which threatened it. And I am persuaded his power and
interest, at that time, was greater to do good or hurt, than any man in
the kingdom, or than any man of his rank hath held in any time: for his
reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so
publicly guided, that no corrupt or private ends could bias them.”

The causes of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, and the history
of the second Scottish war which compelled Charles I. to summon the Long
Parliament, hardly form a part of our subject: it is to be observed
however that during the summer and autumn, Hampden, with other leading
persons of the popular party, was engaged in active correspondence with
the leaders of the Scottish insurrection, in whose success, as tending
to the further embarrassment of the king, they placed their best hope of
obtaining security for the maintenance of the liberties and privileges
of the English people. Of the first great act of that Parliament, the
impeachment of Strafford, he was a zealous supporter, and a member of
the committee of twelve appointed to arrange the evidence, and to
conduct that memorable trial. After the Commons, for reasons which have
never been satisfactorily explained, thought fit to change the method of
proceeding by introducing a bill of attainder, the name of Hampden
appears in none of the records: and it is probable that he abstained
from taking any part in the business. It is important to keep this in
mind, because the censure, which has justly been cast upon the
proceedings of the House of Commons against Lord Strafford, applies
solely to the attainder, not to the impeachment. To the question, why,
if Hampden disapproved of the attainder, he did not as resolutely oppose
it as he had supported the impeachment, the following hypothetical
answer is supplied by Lord Nugent. “In a case doubtful to him only as
matter of precedent; but clear to him in respect of the guilt of the
accused person; in a case in which the accused person, in his
estimation, deserved death, and in which all law, except that of the
sceptre and the sword, was at an end if he had escaped it; when all the
ordinary protection of law to the subject throughout the country was
suspended, and suspended mainly by the counsels of Strafford himself,
Hampden was not prepared to heroically immolate the liberties of England
in order to save the life of him who would have destroyed them. Hampden
probably considered the bill which took away Strafford’s life (and
indeed it must in fairness be so considered) as a revolutionary act
undertaken for the defence of the Commonwealth.”

He was an active supporter of two important measures which occupied the
Parliament simultaneously with Strafford’s impeachment, the Triennial
Bill, for securing the convocation of Parliaments, and the bill for
excluding bishops from the House of Lords. After the rejection of the
latter, he adopted the views of that more violent party who urged the
necessity of abolishing episcopacy altogether. But, notwithstanding his
recognised position as a leader of his party, and his known weight in
determining the line of conduct to be pursued by it, he was not a
frequent speaker, and his name therefore occurs less frequently than
would be expected in the records of this eventful period. “His practice
was usually to reserve himself until near the close of a debate; and
then, having watched its progress, to endeavour to moderate the
redundancies of his friends, to weaken the impression produced by its
opponents, to confirm the timid, and to reconcile the reluctant. And
this he did, according to the testimony of his opponents themselves,
with a modesty, gentleness, and apparent diffidence in his own judgment,
which generally brought men round to his conclusions.”—(Memorials of
Hampden, ii. 47.) He was one of the five members accused of treason, and
demanded personally by Charles in the House of Commons, January 6, 1642;
“and from this time,” says Clarendon, “his nature and carriage seemed
much fiercer than it did before.” Unquestionably that ill-advised step
was not likely to conciliate those whose life was aimed at, but it is
also clear that before that event, the party, with whom he acted, were
preparing for a struggle more serious than that in which they were as
yet engaged. A Committee of Public Safety was formed, of which Hampden
was a member, the power of the sword was claimed by the Ordinance of
Militia, the king on his part issued his Commission of Array, and at
last raised his standard at Nottingham, August 22.

In the military events of the first year of the war, Hampden took an
active, but subordinate share, as colonel of a regiment of infantry,
which he himself raised in Buckinghamshire. Nor did he intermit, as the
exigencies of war allowed him, to continue his attendance in Parliament,
and to urge there that decisive course of action, which he knew to be
necessary to the success of the cause, and laboured in vain to recommend
to the Parliamentary general. At the battle of Brentford, his troops,
and those of Lord Brook, in support of the London regiment under Hollis,
bore the brunt of the day against superior numbers, until the army
arrived from London in the evening: and on this occasion (as before at
Edge Hill, where he arrived too late to take part in the fight,) he in
vain urged Essex to convert, by a decisive forward movement, the
doubtful issue of the day into victory. During the winter months, while
the king held his court at Oxford, and a Parliamentary army lay between
London and that city, Hampden’s regiment was quartered in
Buckinghamshire, and his own time was divided between the seat of war
and the House of Commons.

To this period also, is to be referred the association of six midland
counties for the purposes of the war, Bedford, Buckingham, Hertford,
Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton; a step which proved of material
service in giving strength and union to the Parliamentary cause, and
which probably would not have been carried into operation but for
Hampden’s peculiar talent of allaying jealousies, reconciling
conflicting interests, and smoothing away the obstacles to any business
which he undertook.

From March 1, to April 15, a cessation of arms was agreed on in
Oxfordshire and Bucks, while an attempt was made to arrange terms of
pacification. The treaty having been broken off, war recommenced with an
incessant and generally successful series of predatory incursions,
conducted by Prince Rupert, on the Parliamentary outposts, which lay
widely dispersed in the intricate country on the borders of
Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. In this district, with which his early
habits of the chase had made him familiar, Hampden’s regiment was
quartered. He had laboured incessantly, but in vain, to promote some
great enterprise, which might give lustre to the seemingly declining
cause, and confidence to the adherents, of the Parliament. Failing in
this, he manifested no less alacrity in performing his duty than if his
views and his suggestions had been adopted: indeed it would be consonant
to his character to suppose, that a strict sense of what is due to
military discipline, and a desire to avoid even the appearance of
slighting his commanding officer, led him to still more zealous
exertions. It was in a matter beyond the strict line of his duty that he
received his death-wound. On the evening of the 17th of June, Rupert set
out from Oxford with about 2000 men, and surprised and burnt two
villages, Postcombe and Chinnor, which were occupied by the
Parliamentary troops. When the alarm reached Hampden, he instantly set
out at the head of a small body of cavalry, which volunteered to follow
him, in hopes of being able to delay the Royalists sufficiently to
enable Essex to occupy the passes of the Cherwell, and cut them off from
Oxford. Strengthened by the accession of four troops of horse, he
overtook Prince Rupert, who drew up to receive the attack on
Chalgrove-field. Early in the action Hampden received two bullets in the
shoulder, which shattered the bone, and in an agony of pain he rode off
the field; “a thing,” says Clarendon, “he never used to do, and from
which it was concluded he was hurt.” Two others of the chief
Parliamentary officers present were killed or taken, and the Royalists
made good their retreat. Hampden expired at Thame, after six days severe
suffering. His last words are thus given from a contemporary
publication. “O Lord God of Hosts, great is thy mercy, just and holy are
thy dealings unto us sinful men. Save me, O Lord, if it be thy good
will, from the jaws of death. Pardon my manifold transgressions, O Lord,
save my bleeding country. Have these realms in thy especial keeping.
Confound and level in the dust those who would rob the people of their
liberty and lawful prerogative. Let the king see his error, and turn the
hearts of his wicked counsellors from the malice and wickedness of their
designs. Lord Jesu, receive my soul!” He then mournfully uttered, “O
Lord, save my country—O Lord, be merciful to” ... and here his speech
failed him. He fell back in the bed, and expired.

His death, according to Sir Philip Warwick, was regretted even by the
king, “who looked on his interest, if he could gain his affections, as a
powerful means of begetting a right understanding between him and the
two Houses.” To his own party it was irreparable. It removed the fittest
person for the chief command of their troops, which it is not
unreasonable to suppose would, upon the removal of Essex, have been
vested in him; deprived them of a leader and adviser, who, of all, was
the most likely to have confined his wishes to the establishment of a
secure peace, on the basis of a strictly limited monarchy; and opened
way to the ambition of Cromwell, which probably would never have been
developed if Hampden had lived to direct the counsels of the Parliament.

We have already given a portion of Clarendon’s character of Hampden; for
the rest of that celebrated passage, we must refer to the History of the
Rebellion, book vii. It describes a man of rare virtues, though the
political bias of the noble author has thrown a dark colouring over the
whole. The latest, and we believe the most elaborate account of this
eminent patriot, is that of Lord Nugent, from which the greater part of
our memoir is derived. But the memoirs and pamphlets of the time must be
intimately studied by those who wish for full information concerning
Hampden’s parliamentary life.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  JOHNSON.

  _From a Picture by Sir J. Reynolds, in the possession of Sir Robert
    Peel Bar^t._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                                JOHNSON.


Samuel Johnson was born September 18, 1709, in the city of Lichfield,
where his father, a man well respected for sense and learning, carried
on the trade of a bookseller, and realized an independence, which he
afterwards lost by an unsuccessful speculation. His mother also
possessed a strong understanding. From these parents Johnson derived a
powerful body, and a mind of uncommon force and compass. Unfortunately
both mind and body were tainted by disease: the former by a melancholy,
of which he said that it had “made him mad all his life—at least not
sober;” the latter by that scrofulous disorder called the king’s evil,
for which, in compliance with a popular superstition, recommended by the
Jacobite principles of his family, he was _touched_ by Queen Anne. By
this disease he lost the sight of one eye, and the other was
considerably injured: a calamity which combined with constitutional
indolence to prevent his joining in the active sports of his
school-fellows. Tardy in the performance of his appointed tasks, he
mastered them with rapidity at last, and he early displayed great
fondness for miscellaneous reading, and a remarkably retentive memory.
After passing through several country schools, and spending near two
years in a sort of busy idleness at home, he went to Pembroke College,
Oxford, about the age of sixteen. There he made himself more remarkable
by wit and humour, and negligence of college discipline, than by his
labours for University distinction: his translation of Pope’s Messiah
into Latin hexameters was the only exercise on which he bestowed much
pains, or by which he obtained much credit. But his high spirits, unless
the recollections of his earlier years were tinctured by his habitual
despondency, were but the cloak of a troubled mind. “Ah! Sir,” he said
to Boswell, “I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook
for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my
literature and my wit, so I disregarded all power and all authority.”
His poverty during this period was indeed extreme: and the scanty
remittances by which he was supported, in much humiliation and
inconvenience, were altogether stopped at last by his father’s
insolvency. He had the mortification to be compelled to quit Oxford in
the autumn of 1731, after three years’ residence, without taking a
degree; and his father’s death in the December following threw him on
the world, with twenty pounds in his pocket.

He first attempted to gain a livelihood in the capacity of usher to a
school at Market-Bosworth, in Leicestershire. For that laborious and
dreary task he was eminently unfit, except by talent and learning, and
he soon quitted a situation which he ever remembered with a degree of
aversion amounting to horror. After his marriage he tried the experiment
of keeping a boarding-house, near Lichfield, as principal, with little
better success. From Bosworth he went to Birmingham, in 1733, where he
composed his first work, a translation of the Jesuit Lobo’s Voyage to
Abyssinia. He gained several kind and useful acquaintance in the latter
town, among whom was Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he married in
1735. She was double his age, and possessed neither beauty, fortune, nor
attractive manners, yet she inspired him with an affection which
endured, unchilled by the trials of poverty, unchanged by her death,
even to the end of his own life, as his private records fully testify.
She died in 1752.

In March, 1737, Johnson set out for the metropolis, in hopes of mending
his fortunes, as a man of letters, and especially of bringing on the
stage his tragedy of Irene. It was long before his desires were
gratified in either respect. Irene was not performed till 1749, when his
friend and former pupil, Garrick, had the management of Drury-Lane.
Garrick’s zeal carried it through nine nights, so that the author, in
addition to one hundred pounds from Dodsley for the copyright, had the
profit of three nights’ performance, according to the mode of payment
then in use. The play however, though bearing the stamp of a vigorous
and elevated mind, and by no means wanting in poetical merit, was unfit
for acting, through its want of pathos and dramatic effect: and Johnson
perhaps perceived his deficiency in these qualities, for he never again
wrote for the stage. Garrick said of his friend, that he had neither the
faculty to produce, nor the sensibility to receive the impressions of
tragedy: and his annotations upon Shakspeare confirm this judgment.

His first employment after his arrival in London, was as a frequent
contributor to the Gentleman’s Magazine, from which, during some years,
he derived his chief support. This was a period of labour, poverty, and
often of urgent want. Sometimes without a lodging, sometimes without a
dinner, he became acquainted with the darker phases of a London life;
and among other singular characters, a similarity of fortunes made him
acquainted with the notorious Richard Savage, whom he regarded with
affection, and whose life is one of the most powerful productions of
Johnson’s pen.

In the thoughts suggested, and the knowledge taught, by this rough
collision with the world, we may conjecture his imitation of the third
satire of Juvenal, entitled London, to have originated. To the majority
of the nation it was recommended by its strong invectives against the
then unpopular ministry of Sir Robert Walpole, as well as by the energy
of thought and style, the knowledge of his subject, and the lively
painting in which it abounds: it reached a second edition in the course
of a week, and Boswell tells us, on contemporary authority, that “the
first buz of the literary circles was, ‘here is an unknown poet, greater
even than Pope.’” Yet this admired poem produced only ten guineas to its
author, and appears to have done nothing towards improving his
prospects, or giving a commercial value to his name: his chief
employment was still furnished by the Gentleman’s Magazine; and in
November, 1740, he undertook to report, or rather to write, the
Parliamentary debates for that publication. At that time the privileges
of Parliament were very strictly interpreted, and the avowed publication
of debates would have been rigorously suppressed. Such a summary however
as could be preserved in the memory, was carried away by persons
employed for the purpose, and the task which Johnson undertook was to
expand and adorn their imperfect hints from the stores of his own
eloquence: in doing which he took care, as he afterwards acknowledged,
that “the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” The speeches of
course were referred to fictitious names, and were published under the
title, Debates of the Senate of Lilliput: but in February, 1743,
Johnson, on finding that they were esteemed genuine, desisted from the
employment, declaring that he would not be accessary to the propagation
of falsehood. So scrupulous was he on this score, that forty years
after, not long before his death, he expressed his regret at having been
the author of fictions that had passed for realities.

For a detailed account of this early portion of Johnson’s literary
history, we refer the reader to Boswell’s Life, and the list of
Johnson’s works thereto prefixed, and pass on at once to those greater
performances, to which he owes his eminent rank among British writers.
Of these the earliest and most celebrated is his Dictionary of the
English Language. How long the plan of this work had been meditated,
before it was actually commenced, is uncertain: he told Boswell, that
his knowledge of our language was not the effect of particular study,
but had grown up insensibly in his mind. That he under-rated the time
and labour requisite for such a work, is evident from his promising in
his prospectus, issued in 1747, to complete it in three years: he
probably had also under-rated the needful knowledge, and amount of
preparatory study. In fact it was not published till 1755. He received
for it 1575_l._, of which however a very considerable portion was spent
in expenses. The prospectus was addressed to Lord Chesterfield; who
expressed himself warmly in favour of the design, and from that time
forward treated the author with neglect until the time of publication
drew nigh, when he again assumed the character of a patron. Fired at
this, Johnson repudiated his assistance in a dignified but sarcastic
letter, which is printed by Boswell. The transaction merits notice, for
it is characteristic of Johnson’s independent spirit, and excited at the
time much curiosity and comment.

The Dictionary was justly esteemed a wonderful work: it established at
once the author’s reputation among his contemporaries, and was long
regarded as the supreme standard by which disputed points in the English
language were to be tried. Johnson’s chief qualification for the task
lay in the accuracy of his definitions, and the extent of his various
and well-remembered reading; his chief disqualification lay in his
ignorance of the cognate Teutonic languages, the stock from which the
bulk and strength of our own is derived: and in proportion as the
history and philosophy of the English language have been more
extensively studied, has the need of a more learned and philosophical
work of reference been felt. The verbose style of his definitions is
rather a fruitful theme of ridicule than an important fault. Shortly
before its publication he received from the University of Oxford, which
through life he regarded with great affection and veneration, the
honorary degree of M.A., a mark of respect by which he was highly
gratified.

That his labour in composing this work was not severe, may be inferred
from the variety of literary employments in which, during its progress,
he found time and inclination to engage: among which we may select for
mention the imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire, entitled Vanity of
Human Wishes, and the periodical paper called the Rambler, which was
published twice a week, from March 20, 1750, to March 17, 1752. Of the
whole series, according to Boswell, only four papers, and a part of a
fifth, were contributed by other pens: and it is remarkable, considering
the general gravity of the subjects, and the elaboration of the style,
that most of them were struck off at a heat, when constitutional
indolence could procrastinate no longer, without even being read over
before they were printed. The circulation of the work was small; for its
merits, which lie chiefly in moral instruction and literary criticism,
were of too grave a cast to ensure favour: the lighter parts, and the
attempts at humour, are the least successful. But its popularity
increased as the author’s fame rose, and fashion recommended his
grandiloquent style; and before his death it went through numerous
editions in a collected form.

In 1756 he issued proposals for an edition of Shakspeare, a scheme which
he had contemplated as long back as 1745, when he published
Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth. He promised to
complete it before Christmas, 1757, but it did not appear until October,
1765. Imperfectly versed in the antiquities, literature, and language of
the Elizabethan era, the source from which almost all valuable comment
on our early dramatists has been drawn, he has done little to elucidate
difficulties or correct errors. His preface has been esteemed among the
most valuable of his critical essays. But the perusal of his notes, and
especially of his summary criticisms on the several plays, will confirm
Garrick’s judgment as to his sensibility, and show that he wanted that
delicate perception and deep knowledge of the workings of the passions
which were necessary to the adequate fulfilment of his most difficult
task.

From April 15, 1758, to April 5, 1760, Johnson wrote a second periodical
paper, called the Idler. Twelve only, out of one hundred and three
essays, were contributed by his friends; the rest were generally written
with as much haste, and are of slighter texture, than those of the
Rambler. Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, he wrote in the beginning of
1759, to defray the expenses of his mother’s funeral, and pay some
trifling debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds, that it
was composed in the evenings of one week, and sent to the press in
portions as it was written. This anecdote affords a good instance of
Johnson’s facility and power, when an adequate stimulus was applied:
from the rich imagery, and the varied, powerful strain of reflection
which pervade it, and the elaborated pomp of its style, it would
assuredly be taken for the product of mature consideration, labour, and
frequent revision. For this he received one hundred pounds, and
twenty-five pounds more at a second edition. It has been translated into
most European languages.

In 1762 Johnson accepted a pension of 300_l._, for which he underwent
considerable obloquy. This was entirely undeserved, though in some sort
he had brought it on himself by indulging his satirical bias and
political predilections in a wayward definition of the words _pension_
and _pensioner_, in his Dictionary; where other instances occur of his
indulging the humour of the moment, whether it prompted him to spleen or
merriment. Why he should not have accepted the pension, no sound reason
can be given: his Jacobitical predilections, never probably so strong as
he used to represent them in the heat of argument, were lost, like those
of others, in the hopelessness of the cause; and his Toryism naturally
led him to transfer his full respect and allegiance to the reigning
king, who never was suspected of an undue bias towards Whiggism. The sum
bestowed was no more than an honourable testimony to his literary
eminence, and a comfortable provision for his declining age: and as far
as it is possible to form an opinion on such matters, the gift was
unstained by any compact, expressed or understood, for political
support.

Among the more important events of Johnson’s life, we are bound to
mention his acquaintance with Mr. Boswell, which commenced in 1763, not
only because it formed an important article among the pleasures of the
philosopher’s declining years, but because it led to the composition and
publication of the most lively and vivid picture ever given by one man
of another, the Life of Johnson. By Boswell, Johnson was induced, in
compliance with a wish that he had long before entertained, to undertake
a journey to the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides: and it is
remarkable that the first English book of travels (as we believe,) into
what to the English was then almost a _terra incognita_, should have
been composed by a man so careless of natural beauty, and so little
disposed to sacrifice his ease and habits to the cravings of curiosity,
as Johnson. His desire to visit that country seems to have arisen rather
from a wish to study society in a simple form, than from any taste for
the wild beauties of our Northern regions, of which he saw not the most
favourable specimen, and has given not a flattering account. His Journey
to the Western Islands will be read with pleasure, abounding in acute
observation, passages of lofty eloquence, and grateful acknowledgment of
the kindness and hospitality which he received; kindness which his
snappish railings against the Scotch in general never led him to
undervalue or forget. His companion and disciple’s account of their
expedition will, however, be read with more amusement, from presenting
such vivid pictures of the author himself, as well as of the subject
which he painted, and of the varied characters to which they were
introduced, and scenes in which they intermingled. We may here add that
Johnson was a resolute unbeliever in the authenticity of Macpherson’s
Ossian, against which, in his book, he pronounced a decided judgment. He
thus gave considerable offence to national vanity. To the claims of
second-sight he was more favourable. Throughout life he was influenced
by a belief, not only in the possibility, but in the occasional exertion
of supernatural agencies, beyond the regular operation of the laws of
nature.

In 1775, Johnson received from the University of Oxford the honorary
degree of D.C.L. The same degree had been conferred on him some time
before by the University of Dublin; but he did not then assume the title
of doctor. His only subsequent work which requires notice is the Lives
of the English Poets, written for a collective edition of them, which
the booksellers were about to publish. To the selection of the authors,
praise cannot be given: many ornaments to our literature are omitted,
and many obscure persons have found a place in the collection: this
however, probably, was not Johnson’s fault. The publication began in
1779, and was not completed till 1781: the lives have gone through many
editions by themselves. Though strongly coloured by personal and
political predilections, they contain much sound criticism, and form a
valuable article in British biography.

Many incidents connected with Johnson’s life, his places of residence,
his domestication in Mr. Thrale’s family, his connexion with The Club,
and the like, have been made generally known by the amusing works of
Boswell, Mrs. Piozzi, and others. Perhaps public curiosity was never so
strongly directed towards the person, habits, and conversation of any
man known only as an author; and certainly it never has been so amply
gratified. Boswell’s Life of Johnson is unique in its kind.

His powers of conversation were very great, and not only commanded the
admiration and deference of his contemporaries, but have contributed in
a principal degree to the upholding of his traditionary fame. They were
deformed by an assumption of superiority, and an intolerance of
contradiction or opposition, which often betrayed him into offensive
rudeness. Yet his temper was at bottom affectionate and humane, his
attachments strong, and his charity only bounded, and scarcely bounded,
by his means.

The latter years of Dr. Johnson’s life were overshadowed by much gloom.
Many of his old and most valued friends sank into the grave before him;
his bodily frame was much shattered by disease; his spirits became more
liable to depression; and his sincere and ardent piety was too deeply
tinged by constitutional despondency to afford him steady comfort and
support under his sufferings. He was struck by palsy in 1783, but
recovered to the use both of his bodily and mental faculties. A
complication of asthma and dropsy put an end to his existence, December
13, 1785. During his illness, his anxiety for a protracted life was
painfully intense: but his last hours are described by the bystanders to
have been calm, happy, and confident. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey. A statue to his memory is erected in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

[Illustration: [Monument to Dr. Johnson in St. Paul’s Cathedral.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  JEFFERSON.

  _From a Print engraved by A. Desnoyers._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                               JEFFERSON.


From the American Revolution of 1776 we may date the commencement of
that struggle which has agitated and still agitates Europe and the two
Americas. By whatever words the character of this struggle may be
expressed,—whether under the name of popular rights against exclusive
privileges, or self-government or the government of the people, against
absolute government or the government of a few, or by any other terms
more or less appropriate,—the contest is still going on, openly and
actively in those called free governments, silently and languidly in
those where the sovereign power is opposed to the extension or
introduction of the new doctrines. The contest is between progress (not
here considered whether as right or wrong) and standing still; between
change, without which there cannot be improvement, and a desire to
resist all change, which can hardly end in keeping things stationary,
but almost necessarily leads to a backward movement. The contest is not
only for the practical application of principles in government, which
are vigorously maintained by the one party, and either not denied or
faintly opposed by the arguments of the other; but also for the free
expression and publication of all opinions on all subjects affecting the
moral and political condition of society.

There is no individual, either in America or in Europe, who by his
actions and opinions has had a greater influence on this contest than
THOMAS JEFFERSON. During a long and laborious life, both in official
situations which gave him opportunities that his activity never let
slip, and in private life in his extensive correspondence and
intercourse with persons of all countries, he constantly, perseveringly,
and honestly maintained what he conceived to be the principle of pure
republican institutions. In the ardour of youth, his zeal and energy
mainly contributed to animate his countrymen to declare their
independence on a foreign power. In his maturer age, when a member of
the General Administration, he struggled, and he struggled at one time
almost alone, against a monarchical and aristocratical faction, to
maintain the great principles of the Revolution, and develop the
doctrines of a pure unmixed popular government. His influence gave to
these doctrines a consistency, and a form, and a distinctness, which the
mass of the nation could easily seize and retain. He thus became the
head of a party in the United States, which, whether always rightly
appealing to his doctrines or not for the vindication of their acts,
still regards him as the father of their school and the expounder of
their principles. By his plain and unaffected manners, and the freedom
with which he expressed his opinions on all subjects, he gave a
practical example of that republican simplicity which he cultivated, and
of that free inquiry which he urged upon all. Such a man must always
have many friends and many enemies. From his friends and admirers he has
received, perhaps, not more praise than those who believe in the truth
of his doctrines and the purity of his conduct are bound to bestow; by
his enemies, both at home and abroad, he has been blackened by every
term of abuse that bigotry, malice, and falsehood can invent.

Thomas Jefferson was born April 2, 1743, at Shadwell, now in the county
of Albemarle, in Virginia. He was educated at the College of William and
Mary, at Williamsburg, then the capital of the colony, where, under Dr.
Small, a native of Scotland, who was then Professor of Mathematics in
the College, he studied mathematics, ethics, and other branches of
knowledge. His education, owing to the care of this excellent instructor
and his own industry, must have been of a superior kind. In addition to
his general acquirements, he made himself well acquainted with the best
Greek and Latin writers, and to the end of his long life retained his
ability to read them. Mr. Jefferson studied law under Mr. Wythe, then a
lawyer of eminence. He made his first appearance at the bar of the
General Court in 1767, at the age of twenty-four, about two years after
the misunderstanding between Great Britain and the Colonies had
commenced. He practised for seven or eight years in the General Court,
and was gradually rising to the first rank as an accurate and able
lawyer, when he was called away to more important duties by the
political events that preceded the American Revolution. In 1769 he was
elected a member of the House of Burgesses for the County of Albemarle.
In the session of this spring the House unanimously came to resolutions
in opposition to those which had been lately passed in England by both
Houses of Parliament on the affairs of Massachusetts. This measure,
which was accompanied with the declaration that the right of laying
taxes in Virginia was exclusively vested in its own legislature, and
others of a like tendency, induced the Governor, Lord Botetourt,
abruptly to dissolve the Assembly. The next day the members met at the
Raleigh Tavern, and entered into articles of agreement, by which they
bound themselves not to import or purchase certain specified kinds of
British merchandise, till the act of parliament for raising a revenue in
America was repealed; and they recommended this agreement to be adopted
by their constituents. Eighty-eight members signed the agreement, among
whom were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others, who
afterwards took a distinguished part in public affairs.

In 1773, on the meeting of the Virginia Assembly in the spring, Mr.
Jefferson was an active member in organizing the Standing Committee of
Correspondence and Inquiry, the main objects of which were to procure
early intelligence of the proceedings of the British Parliament, and to
maintain a constant communication among all the Colonies. On the
dissolution of the Assembly, in May 1774, by the Governor, Lord Dunmore,
eighty-nine members met at the Raleigh Tavern, and, among other things,
recommended the Committee of Correspondence to communicate with the
Committees in the other colonies “on the expediency of appointing
deputies for the several colonies of British America, to meet in General
Congress, at such place annually as should be thought most convenient,”
to consult on their common interests. It was also forthwith agreed that
the members who might be elected under the writs at that time issuing in
the colony of Virginia, should meet in Convention at Williamsburg on the
1st of August following, in order to appoint delegates to the Congress,
if such General Congress should be approved by the other colonies. The
Convention did meet, and thus formed the first popular assembly in
Virginia, uncontrolled by Governor or Council. Mr. Jefferson, who was
one of the deputies, prepared instructions for the delegates who might
be sent to the Congress. In his absence, for illness prevented him from
attending on this occasion, his instructions were laid on the table for
perusal, and were generally approved, but thought too bold in the
existing state of affairs. Still the Convention printed them, in the
form of a pamphlet, under the title of A Summary View of the Rights of
British America. The Convention drew up another set of instructions,
which, though not so strong as Mr. Jefferson’s, expressed with great
clearness the points at issue between the colonies and the
mother-country, and the grievances of which the colonies had to
complain. The General Congress, consisting of fifty-five members, met at
Philadelphia, September 4, 1774. The disputes which had broken out
between Lord Dunmore and the Assembly of Virginia were continually
increased by fresh causes of mutual irritation. The Governor at last
thought it prudent to remove himself and his family into a British ship
of war that was lying at York in York River. His whole conduct during
this period was feeble and contemptible. His last acts from his
head-quarters at Norfolk were to annoy the inhabitants on the rivers and
bays by a predatory kind of warfare, to proclaim martial law in the
colony, and to give freedom to such of the slaves as would bear arms
against their masters. At last, after setting fire to Norfolk, he was
obliged to take refuge in his ships, and soon after to leave the
country. Thus ended the colonial government in Virginia.

June 21, 1775, Mr. Jefferson took his seat in the General Congress, as
one of the delegates from Virginia, and was appointed one of a Committee
for preparing a declaration of the cause of taking up arms. A part of
the address which he drew up was finally adopted, and no doubt greatly
contributed to bring about the more decisive declaration of the
following year. In 1776, Mr. Jefferson was again a delegate to Congress,
and one of a committee appointed to draw up a Declaration of
Independence. The committee was chosen in the usual way, by ballot, and
as Mr. Jefferson had received the greatest number of votes, he was
deputed by the other members to make the draught. Before it was shown to
the committee, a few verbal alterations were made in it by Dr. Franklin
and Mr. Adams. After being curtailed about one-third, and with some
slight alterations in the part retained, it was agreed to by the House,
July 4, and signed by all the members present, except one. This
instrument is too well known to require any remarks. It has both merits
and defects; but it possessed one great quality. It served the purpose
for which it was intended, and its author had the satisfaction of seeing
the mighty question between the mother-country and the colonies referred
to the decision of the sword, the only alternative then left except
unconditional and disgraceful submission.

Before their adjournment the Virginia Convention, July 5, had elected
Mr. Jefferson a delegate to Congress for another year; but he declined
the honour on various grounds, among which was his desire to assist in
reforming the laws of Virginia, under the New Constitution, which had
just been adopted. Congress also marked their sense of his services by
appointing him joint envoy to France, with Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane;
but domestic considerations induced him to decline this honour also.

From this time Mr. Jefferson’s public life is interwoven with the
history of his native state, and with that of the United States. During
the war, he took no part in military movements. He was governor of
Virginia in part of 1779, 1780, and part of 1781, in which year the
State suffered considerably from the incursions of Lord Cornwallis; and
at the close of his period of office, he narrowly escaped being taken
prisoner by Colonel Tarleton, in his own house at Monticello.

In May, 1784, Mr. Jefferson was appointed by Congress minister to
France; where he remained five years, during which he was actively
employed in promoting the general interests of his country, and in
keeping up an extensive correspondence. His industry and methodical
habits enabled him to devote a great deal of his time to the examination
of everything that could in any way prove beneficial to his countrymen.
His correspondence during this period shows the variety of his pursuits,
his unwearied industry, and unbounded zeal for every improvement that
could benefit the social condition of man. His remarks on the political
troubles of France, of which he witnessed the beginning, are
characterized by his usual closeness of observation, and his sanguine
anticipations of the benefit that would result from the people being
called to participate in the exercise of the sovereign power. After all
that has been written on the subject, they will still be read with
interest.

He returned to America at the close of 1789, and early in the next year
he was appointed Secretary of State by the President, General
Washington. He held this office till the end of 1793, when he resigned.
From 1793 to 1797 he lived in retirement. In 1797 he was elected
Vice-President of the United States; and in 1801 was chosen President,
in place of Mr. Adams, by the House of Representatives, on whom the
election devolved in consequence of the equal division of the electors’
votes between Mr. Jefferson and Colonel Burr. He was elected a second
time, and after fulfilling his term of eight years retired to his
favourite residence at Monticello, near the centre of the State of
Virginia.

On Mr. Jefferson’s retirement from the Presidency of the United States
he received, in the form of a farewell address, the thanks of the
General Assembly of his native State, Feb. 9, 1809. After briefly
recapitulating the leading measures of his administration, most of which
faction itself must allow were eminently calculated to promote the
happiness of the nation, and secure those republican principles on which
the constitution was founded, the General Assembly conclude with bearing
testimony to his unvarying singleness of purpose, from the days of his
youth when he resisted the Governor Dunmore, to his retirement from the
highest honours which the united nation could bestow. This address,
which, in point of style, is more free from objection than most American
productions of the same class, is such as few men on retiring from power
have received, and it was offered for services which few have performed.

In this document, among the advantages for which the nation was indebted
to Mr. Jefferson’s administration, the acquisition of Louisiana and with
it the free navigation of the Mississippi, are not forgotten. Mr.
Jefferson early saw the importance of the United States possessing this
great outlet for the commerce of the Western States, and strongly urged
it while he was Secretary of State under General Washington. The object
was accomplished in 1803, when Louisiana was purchased from the French,
for 15,000,000 dollars.

Mr. Jefferson himself thought that the most important service which he
ever rendered to his country, was his opposition to the federal party
during the presidency of Mr. Adams, while he was himself Vice-President
of the United States. Himself in the Senate, and Mr. Gallatin in the
House of Representatives, had alone to sustain the brunt of the battle,
and to keep the Republican party together. The re-action that ensued,
drove Mr. Adams from his office, and placed Mr. Jefferson there. Mr.
Jefferson’s administration was characterized by a zealous and unwearied
activity in the promotion of all those measures which he believed to be
for the general welfare. He never allowed considerations of relationship
or friendship to bias him in the selection of proper persons for
offices; he always found, as he says, that there were better men for
every place than any of his own connexions.

The last years of his life, though spent in retirement, were not wasted
in inactivity. He continued his habits of early rising and constant
occupation: he maintained a very extensive correspondence with all parts
of the world, received at his table a great number of visitors, and was
actively engaged in the foundation and direction of the University of
Virginia, which was established by the State of Virginia, near the
village of Charlottesville, a few miles from Monticello.

The last letter in Mr. Jefferson’s published correspondence, and it is
probably the last that he wrote, is in reply to Mr. Weightman of
Washington, on behalf of the citizens of Washington who had invited Mr.
Jefferson to the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of American
Independence. His health would not permit him to accept the invitation:
his reply is characteristic. The zeal for republican institutions which
had animated him during a long life still glows warm and fresh in the
letter of a man of the age of fourscore and three, suffering under a
painful malady. His firm conviction in the truth of those principles
which he had maintained through life, appears stronger as he approaches
the termination of his career. He died July 4, 1826, the day of the
celebration, just half a century after that on which the instrument was
signed. Mr. Adams died on the same day. Mr. Jefferson is buried in the
grounds near his own house, with a simple inscription recording him as
the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the Act for Religious
Toleration; and as the Rector of the University of Virginia. The fact of
his having been President of the United States is not mentioned.

The latter days of Mr. Jefferson were embittered by pecuniary
difficulties, which were owing, no doubt, in some measure to the neglect
of his estates during his long absence on the public service; and in a
great degree to an obligation which he incurred to pay a friend’s debts
(see an excellent letter to Mr. Madison, Feb. 17, 1826).

In the 4th vol. of his Memoirs, &c., p. 439, are printed his Thoughts on
Lotteries, which were written at the time when he was making his
application to the Legislature of Virginia for permission to sell his
property by lottery, in order to pay his debts and make some provision
for his family. The general arguments in defence of lotteries are
characterized by Mr. Jefferson’s usual felicity of expression and
ingenuity in argument, and they are also in like manner pervaded by the
fallacies which are involved in many of his political and moral
speculations. But this paper has merits which entitle it to particular
attention. It contains a brief recapitulation of his services; and is in
fact the epitome of the life of a man who for sixty years was actively
and usefully employed for his country. “I came,” he says, “of age in
1764, and was soon put into the nomination of justices of the county in
which I live, and at the first election following I became one of its
representatives in the legislature;

“I was thence sent to the old Congress;

“Then employed two years with Mr. Pendleton and Wythe, on the revisal
and reduction to a single code of the whole body of the British
Statutes, the acts of our Assembly, and certain parts of the Common Law;

“Then elected Governor;

“Next to the legislature, and to Congress again;

“Sent to Europe as Minister Plenipotentiary;

“Appointed Secretary of State to the new government;

“Elected Vice-President and President;

“And lastly, a Visitor and Rector of the University of Virginia. In
these different offices, with scarcely any interval between them, I have
been in the public service now sixty-one years, and during the far
greater part of that time in foreign countries, or in other states.”

This is the outline of Mr Jefferson’s public life: to fill it up would
be to write the history of the United States, from the troubles which
preceded the declaration of Independence, to Mr. Jefferson’s retirement
from the Presidency in 1809.

The paper from which we have already made one extract, presents us with
his services, in another point of view, still more interesting. It is an
epitome of those great measures which were due mainly or entirely to his
firm resolution, unwearied industry, and singleness of mind, in his
pursuit of objects which he believed essential to the stability and
happiness of his country.

“If legislative services are worth mentioning, and the stamp of
liberality and equality, which was necessary to be impressed on our laws
in the first crisis of our birth as a nation, was of any value, they
will find that the leading and most important laws of that day were
prepared by myself, and carried chiefly by my efforts; supported,
indeed, by able and faithful coadjutors from the ranks of the House,
very effective as seconds, but who would not have taken the field as
leaders.

“The prohibition of the further importation of slaves was the first of
these measures in time.

“This was followed by the abolition of entails, which broke up the
hereditary and high-handed aristocracy, which by accumulating immense
masses of property in single lines of families, had divided our country
into two distinct orders, of nobles and plebeians.

“But further to complete the equality among our citizens, so essential
to the maintenance of republican government, it was necessary to abolish
the principle of primogeniture. I drew the law of descents, giving equal
inheritance to sons and daughters, which made a part of the revised
code.

“The attack on the establishment of a dominant religion was first made
by myself. It could be carried at first only by a suspension of salaries
for one year, by battling it again at the next session for another year,
and so from year to year, until the public mind was ripened for the bill
for establishing religious freedom, which I had prepared for the revised
code also. This was at length established permanently, and by the
efforts of Mr. Madison, being myself in Europe at the time that work was
brought forward.

“To these particular services, I think I might add the establishment of
our University, as principally my work, acknowledging at the same time,
as I do, the great assistance received from my able colleagues of the
Visitation. But my residence in the vicinity threw of course on me the
chief burden of the enterprise, well as of the buildings, as of the
general organization and care of the whole. The effect of this
institution on the future fame, fortune, and prosperity of our country,
can as yet be seen but at a distance. That institution is now qualified
to raise its youth to an order of science unequalled in any other state;
and this superiority will be the greater from the free range of mind
encouraged there, and the restraint imposed at other seminaries by the
shackles of a domineering hierarchy, and a bigoted adhesion to ancient
habits.”

When Mr. Jefferson was a member of the Colonial Legislature, he made an
effort for the emancipation of slaves; but all proposals of that kind,
as well as to stop the importation of slaves, were discouraged during
the colonial government. The importation of slaves into Virginia,
whether by sea or land, was stopped in 1778, in the third year of the
Commonwealth, by a bill brought in by Mr. Jefferson, which passed
without opposition, and as Mr. Jefferson observes, “stopped the increase
of the evil by importation, leaving to future efforts its final
eradication[4].” The Act for the Abolition of Entails was not carried
without some opposition, and that for the abolition of the Established
Anglican Church was not finally carried till 1778, though before the
Revolution the majority of the people had become dissenters from the
Church. The reason of the difficulty lay in the majority of the
legislature being churchmen.

Footnote 4:

  Act in Hening’s Statutes at Large, vol ix., p. 471. Act declaring
  tenants of lands, or slaves in taille, to hold the same in fee simple.
  Hening, ix., p. 226.

Mr. Jefferson married, in 1772, Martha Skelton, the widow of Bathurst
Skelton. She died ten years after their marriage. One daughter, and a
numerous family of grandchildren and great grandchildren, survived him.
He was the author of Notes on Virginia, which have been several times
printed; but his reputation as a writer rests on his official papers and
correspondence, of which latter, we believe, that which is published
forms only a part of what he left behind him.

The authorities here used are Jefferson’s Memoirs, Correspondence, &c.,
London, 1829, and part of the forthcoming Life of Jefferson, by
Professor Tucker, of the University of Virginia. An article in the
Journal of Education, No. 7, by Professor Tucker, contains a full
account of the University of Virginia. To these sources we add, as
evidence for some opinions expressed, some personal knowledge of Mr.
Jefferson during the last two years of his life.

[Illustration]




                              WILBERFORCE.


William Wilberforce, whose name a heartfelt, enlightened, and unwearied
philanthropy, directing talents of the highest order, has enrolled among
those of the most illustrious benefactors of mankind, was born August
24, 1759, in Hull, where his ancestors had been long and successfully
engaged in trade. By his father’s death he was left an orphan at an
early age. He received the chief part of his education at the grammar
school of Pocklington, in Yorkshire, and at St. John’s College,
Cambridge, of which he became a fellow-commoner about 1776 or 1777. When
just of age, and apparently before taking his B.A. degree, he was
returned for his native town at the general election of 1780. In 1784 he
was returned again; but being also chosen member for Yorkshire, he
elected to sit for that great county, which he continued to represent
until the year 1812, during six successive parliaments. From 1812 to
1825, when he retired from parliament, he was returned by Lord Calthorpe
for the borough of Bramber. His politics were in general those of Mr.
Pitt’s party, and his first prominent appearance was in 1783, in
opposition to Mr. Fox’s India Bill. In 1786 he introduced and carried
through the Commons a bill for the amendment of our criminal code, which
was roughly handled by the Lord Chancellor Thurlow, and rejected in the
House of Lords without a division.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by E. Scriven._

  WILBERFORCE.

  _From a Picture by George Richmond._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

At the time when Mr. Wilberforce was rising into manhood, the iniquity
of the Slave Trade had engaged in a slight degree the attention of the
public. To the Quakers belongs the high honour of having taken the lead
in denouncing that unjust and unchristian traffic. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century, during the life of Penn, the Quakers of
Pennsylvania passed a censure upon it, and from time to time the Society
of Friends expressed their disapprobation of the deportation of negroes,
until in 1761 they completed their good work by a resolution to disown
all such as continued to be engaged in it. Occasionally the question was
brought before magistrates, whether a slave became entitled to his
liberty upon landing in England. In 1765 Granville Sharp came forward as
the protector of a negro, who, having been abandoned and cast upon the
world in disease and misery by his owner, was healed and assisted
through the charity of Mr. Sharp’s brother. Recovering his value with
his health, he was claimed and seized by his master, and would have been
shipped to the colonies, as many Africans were, but for the prompt and
resolute interference of Mr. Sharp. In several similar cases the same
gentleman came forward successfully: but the general question was not
determined, or even argued, until 1772, when the celebrated case of the
negro Somerset was brought before the Court of King’s Bench, which
adjudged, after a deliberate hearing, that in England the right of the
master over the slave could not be maintained. The general question was
afterwards, in 1778, decided still more absolutely by the Scotch Courts,
in the case of Wedderburn _v._ Knight. In 1783 an event occurred well
qualified to rouse the feelings of the nation, and call its attention to
the atrocities of which the Slave Trade was the cause and pretext. An
action was brought by certain underwriters against the owners of the
ship Zong, on the ground that the captain had caused 132 weak, sickly
slaves to be thrown overboard, for the purpose of claiming their value,
for which the plaintiffs would not have been liable if the cargo had
died a natural death. The fact of the drowning was admitted, and
defended on the plea that want of water had rendered it necessary;
though it appeared that the crew had not been put upon short allowance.
It now seems incredible that no criminal proceeding should have been
instituted against the perpetrators of this wholesale murder.

In 1785 the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge proposed, as the subject for
the Bachelor’s Prize Essay, the question, Is it allowable to enslave men
without their consent? Thomas Clarkson, who had gained the prize in the
preceding year, again became a candidate. Conceiving that the thesis,
though couched in general terms, had an especial reference to the
African Slave Trade, he went to London to make inquiries on the subject.
Investigation brought under his view a mass of cruelties and
abominations, which engrossed his thoughts and shocked his imagination.
By night and day they haunted him; and he has described in lively
colours the intense pain which this composition, undertaken solely in
the spirit of honourable rivalry, inflicted on him. He gained the prize,
but found it impossible to discard the subject from his thoughts. In the
succeeding autumn, after great struggles of mind, he resolved to give up
his plan for entering the Church, and devoted time, health and substance
(to use his own words) to “seeing these calamities to an end.” In
sketching the progress of this great measure, the name of Wilberforce
alone will be presented to view; and it is our duty therefore, in the
first place, to make honourable mention of him who roused Wilberforce in
the cause, and whose athletic vigour and indomitable perseverance
surmounted danger, difficulties, fatigues, and discouragements, which
few men could have endured, in the first great object of collecting
evidence of the cruelties habitually perpetrated in the Slave Trade.

In the first stage of his proceedings, Mr. Clarkson, in the course of
his application to members of Parliament, called on Mr. Wilberforce, who
stated, that “the subject had often employed his thoughts, and was near
his heart.” He inquired into the authorities for the statements laid
before him, and became, not only convinced of, but impressed with, the
paramount duty of abolishing so hateful a traffic. Occasional meetings
of those who were alike interested were held at his house; and in May,
1787, a committee was formed, of which Wilberforce became the
Parliamentary leader. Early in 1788 he gave notice of his intention to
bring the subject before the House: but owing to his severe
indisposition that task was ultimately undertaken by Mr. Pitt, who moved
and carried a resolution, pledging the House in the ensuing session to
enter on the consideration of the subject. Accordingly, May 12, 1789,
Mr. Wilberforce moved a series of resolutions, founded on a report of
the Privy Council, exposing the iniquity and cruelty of the traffic in
slaves, the mortality which it occasioned among white as well as black
men, and the neglect of health and morals by which the natural increase
of the race in our West India islands was checked; and concluding with a
declaration, that if the causes were removed by which that increase was
checked, no considerable inconvenience would result from discontinuing
the importation of African slaves. Burke, Pitt, and Fox supported the
resolutions. Mr. Wilberforce’s speech was distinguished by eloquence and
earnestness, and by its unanswerable appeals to the first principles of
justice and religion. The consideration of the subject was ultimately
adjourned to the following session. In that, and in two subsequent
sessions, the motions were renewed, and the effect of pressing such a
subject upon the attention of the country was to open the eyes of many
who would willingly have kept them closed, yet could not deny the
existence of the evils so forced on their view. In 1792 Mr.
Wilberforce’s motion for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was met by a
proposal to insert in it the word “gradually;” and in pursuance of the
same policy, Mr. Dundas introduced a bill to provide for its
discontinuance in 1800. The date was altered to 1796, and in that state
the bill passed the Commons, but was stopped in the Upper House by a
proposal to hear evidence upon it. Mr. Wilberforce annually renewed his
efforts, and brought every new argument to bear upon the question, which
new discoveries, or the events of the times, produced. In 1799 the
friends of the measure resolved on letting it repose for a while, and
for five years Mr. Wilberforce contented himself with moving for certain
papers; but he took an opportunity of assuring the House that he had not
grown cool in the cause, and that he would renew the discussion in a
future session. On the 30th of May, 1804, he once more moved for leave
to bring in his bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in a speech
of great eloquence and effect. He took the opportunity of making a
powerful appeal to the Irish members, before whom, in consequence of the
Union, this question was now for the first time brought, and the greater
part of whom supported it. The division showed a majority of 124 to 49
in his favour; and the bill was carried through the Commons, but was
again postponed in the House of Lords. In 1805 he renewed his motion,
but on this occasion it was lost in the Commons by over-security among
the friends of the measure. But when Mr. Fox and Lord Grenville took
office in 1806, the Abolition was brought forward by the ministers, most
of whom supported it, though it was not made a government question in
consequence of several members of the cabinet opposing it. The Attorney
General (Sir A. Pigott) brought in a bill which was passed into a law,
prohibiting the Slave Trade in the conquered colonies, and excluding
British subjects from engaging in the foreign Slave Trade; and Mr. Fox,
at Mr. Wilberforce’s special request, introduced a resolution pledging
the House to take the earliest measures for effectually abolishing the
whole Slave Trade: this resolution was carried by a majority of 114 to
15; and January 2, 1807, Lord Grenville brought forward a bill for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade, in the House of Lords, which passed safely
through both Houses of Parliament. As however the King was believed to
be unfriendly to the measure, some alarm was felt by its friends, lest
its fate might still be affected by the dismissal of the ministers,
which had been determined upon. Those fears were groundless; for though
they received orders to deliver up the seals of their offices on the
25th of March, the royal assent was given by commission by the Lord
Chancellor Erskine on the same day; and thus the last act of the
administration was to conclude a contest, maintained by prejudice and
interest during twenty years, for the support of what Mr. Pitt
denominated “the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted the human
race.”

Among other testimonies to Mr. Wilberforce’s merits, we are not inclined
to omit that of Sir James Mackintosh, who in his journal, May 23, 1808,
speaks thus of Wilberforce on the “Abolition.” This refers to a pamphlet
on the Slave Trade which Mr. Wilberforce had published in 1806. “Almost
as much enchanted by Mr. Wilberforce’s book as by his conduct. He is the
very model of a reformer. Ardent without turbulence, mild without
timidity or coolness, neither yielding to difficulties, nor disturbed or
exasperated by them; patient and meek, yet intrepid; persisting for
twenty years through good report and evil report; just and charitable
even to his most malignant enemies; unwearied in every experiment to
disarm the prejudices of his more rational and disinterested opponents,
and supporting the zeal, without dangerously exciting the passions, of
his adherents.”

The rest of Mr. Wilberforce’s parliamentary conduct was consistent with
his behaviour on this question. In debates chiefly political he rarely
took a forward part: but where religion and morals were directly
concerned, points on which few cared to interfere, and where a leader
was wanted, he never shrunk from the advocacy of his opinions. He was a
supporter of Catholic Emancipation and Parliamentary Reform; he
condemned the encouragement of gambling, in the shape of lotteries
established by Government; he insisted on the cruelty of employing boys
of tender age as chimney sweepers; he attempted to procure a legislative
enactment against duelling, after the hostile meeting between Pitt and
Tierney; and on the renewal of the East India Company’s charter in 1816,
he gave his zealous support to the propagation of Christianity in
Hindostan, in opposition to those who, as has been more recently done in
the West Indies, represented the employment of missionaries to be
inconsistent with the preservation of our empire. It is encouraging to
observe, that with the exception of the one levelled against duelling,
all these measures, however violently opposed and unfairly censured,
have been carried in a more or less perfect form.

As an author, Mr. Wilberforce’s claim to notice is chiefly derived from
his treatise entitled A Practical View of the prevailing religious
system of professing Christians in the higher and middle classes in this
country, contrasted with Real Christianity. The object of it was to show
that the standard of life generally adopted by those classes, not only
fell short of, but was inconsistent with, the doctrines of the Gospel.
It has justly been applauded as a work of no common courage, not from
the asperity of its censures, for it breathes throughout a spirit of
gentleness and love, but on the joint consideration of the unpopularity
of the subject and the writer’s position. The Bishop of Calcutta, in his
introductory essay, justly observes, that “the author in attempting it
risked every thing dear to a public man and a politician, as
such—consideration, weight, ambition, reputation.” And Scott, the
divine, one of the most fearless and ardent of men, viewed the matter in
the same light, for he wrote, “Taken in all its probable effects, I do
sincerely think such a stand for vital Christianity has not been made in
my memory. He has come out beyond my expectations.” Of a work so
generally known we shall not describe the tendency more at large. It is
said to have gone through about twenty editions in Britain, since the
publication in 1797, and more in America; and to have been translated
into most European languages.

In the discharge of his parliamentary duties Mr. Wilberforce was
punctual and active beyond his apparent strength: and those who further
recollect his diligent attendance on a vast variety of public meetings
and committees connected with religious and charitable purposes, will
wonder how a frame naturally weak should so long have endured the wear
of such exertion. In 1788, when his illness was a matter of deep concern
to the Abolitionists, Dr. Warren said that he had not stamina to last a
fortnight. No doubt his bodily powers were greatly aided by the placid
and happy frame of mind which he habitually enjoyed: but it is important
to relate his own opinion, as delivered by an ear-witness, on the
physical benefits which he derived from a strict abstinence from
temporal affairs on Sundays. “I have often heard him assert that he
never could have sustained the labour and stretch of mind required in
his early political life, if it had not been for the rest of his
Sabbath: and that he could name several of his contemporaries in the
vortex of political cares, whose minds had actually given way under the
stress of intellectual labour, so as to bring on a premature death, or
the still more dreadful catastrophe of insanity and suicide, who,
humanly speaking, might have been preserved in health, if they would but
conscientiously have observed the Sabbath.” (Venn’s Sermon.)

In 1797 Mr. Wilberforce married Miss Spooner, daughter of an eminent
banker at Birmingham. Four sons survive him. He died, after a gradual
decline, July 29, 1833, in Cadogan Place. He directed that his funeral
should be conducted without the smallest pomp; but his orders were
disregarded in compliance with a requisition addressed to his relatives
by many of the most distinguished men of all parties, and couched in the
following terms:—“We, the undersigned Members of both Houses of
Parliament, being anxious, upon public grounds, to show our respect for
the memory of the late William Wilberforce, and being also satisfied
that public honours can never be more fitly bestowed than upon such
benefactors of mankind, earnestly request that he may be buried in
Westminster Abbey, and that we, and others who may agree with us in
these sentiments, may have permission to attend his funeral.” The
attendance of both Houses was numerous. Mr. Wilberforce was interred
within a few yards of his great contemporaries Pitt, Fox, and Canning.

Among the other honours paid to his memory may be mentioned the York
meeting, held October 3, 1833, at which it was resolved to erect a
public memorial in testimony of the high estimation in which Mr.
Wilberforce’s character and services were held by men of all parties:
and further, “that it is advisable (if the sum raised be adequate) to
found a benevolent institution, of a useful description, in this
country, and to put up a tablet to the memory of Mr. Wilberforce; but
should the subscriptions be insufficient to accomplish such an object,
that they should be applied to the erection of a monument.” An asylum
for the indigent blind has in consequence been founded. At Hull a
monument has likewise been erected to his memory by public subscription;
and a statue by Joseph is about to be placed in Westminster Abbey, also
by subscription, the surplus of the fund thus raised being reserved for
founding an institution congenial to his principles, as soon as it shall
be sufficient for the purpose.

No fitting life of Mr. Wilberforce has yet appeared. A short memoir,
from the pen of a friend, appeared in the Christian Advocate, August 5,
1833; which we believe may be relied on for accuracy, and which seems to
form the basis of other memoirs in the periodical publications. The
funeral sermons of Messrs. Brown, Scott, and Venn contain some
interesting anecdotes, which are told on good authority.

[Illustration]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  BLACK.

  _From a Print by Ja^s. Heath, after a Picture by Raeburn._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                               DR BLACK.


Joseph Black was born in 1728, near Bourdeaux in France, where his
father, a native of Ireland, but of Scottish extraction, who was engaged
in the wine trade, then resided. In 1740 young Black was sent home to
receive the rudiments of education at a grammar-school in Belfast.
Thence he went, in 1746, to Glasgow, and having chosen the profession of
medicine, proceeded in that university with the preliminary studies.

At that period, Dr. Cullen had just entered on the then untrodden paths
of philosophical chemistry in his lectures, at which Black was an
assiduous attendant. He soon formed an intimacy with his instructor,
with whom he associated himself in the toils of the laboratory. It was
here that he laid the foundation of his future attainments and
discoveries, in an accurate and practical knowledge of the science as
far as it then reached, and above all in the cultivation of habits of
precise and cautious inductive investigation.

In 1750 he removed to Edinburgh to complete his medical course; and it
was in connexion with the important inquiries belonging to that
department that he made his first discoveries in chemistry.

His first object of research was one which possessed high medical as
well as chemical interest:—the nature and properties of magnesia. This
substance had hitherto been confounded with lime: Dr. Black first showed
it to be characterized by peculiar properties which demonstrate its
distinct nature as a separate species of earth. The second point of his
investigation was the difference between mild and caustic alkalis,
between limestone and quick-lime, common and calcined magnesia, &c. The
whole of this subject was at that period involved in complete obscurity.
Dr. Black showed by simple and decisive experiments the real condition
of these substances, and indicated the general law by which they are
governed, viz.:—that the difference consists merely in the combination
of the simple earth or alkali with a peculiar air, which is driven off
by heat, and which was called _fixed air_ by him, and _carbonic acid
gas_ by later chemists. He did not however prosecute the inquiry into
the nature and properties of this gas. This discovery supplied the
foundation on which all subsequent researches and theories have been
built. He gave an account of these investigations in an inaugural
dissertation, composed as an exercise on taking his Doctor’s degree, and
in a paper entitled Experiments on Magnesia Alba, &c., first published
in the Edinburgh Physical and Literary Essays in 1755.

It was almost immediately after the publication of these researches that
Dr. Cullen was elected Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh. The
reputation which Dr. Black had now acquired pointed him out as the
proper person to succeed to the vacant chair at Glasgow, to which he was
accordingly appointed in 1756. His department included chemistry and
medicine; and he also practised as a physician. His lectures soon became
highly popular from the clearness of his style and method, and the
beauty and simplicity of his experimental illustrations. He did not
however prosecute his inquiries, in that particular department of
chemistry, in which he had already had so much success. But in another
branch of science his power of original research was signally displayed.

The relations of bodies to heat, especially in connexion with the
changes of state they undergo, was a subject which had hitherto excited
hardly any notice; and though some effects were such as might have been
supposed obvious, still no one had as yet reasoned on them, or
understood their nature.

It is a characteristic of great genius to find important matter of
reflection in objects which the vulgar pass by as too common to excite
notice, and Dr. Black having remarked some very common facts with regard
to heat, was conducted to those great discoveries on which his celebrity
rests:—that of _latent heat_, and that of _specific heat_; which last
term is, in fact, only another mode of expressing the same principle.
This great truth, the foundation of all our determinate ideas of the
causes of those diversities of physical condition which the same mass of
matter is capable of assuming, seems to have suggested itself to the
mind of the discoverer about the year 1757.

After the invention of the thermometer, it had been among the earliest
facts observed that changes in the state of bodies, such as boiling,
freezing, melting, &c., take place always at certain fixed temperatures
as indicated by the thermometer; and at a different degree of the scale,
for each different substance. And several of these remarkable points
came by custom to be marked upon the thermometric scale.

When however it was said that water always boiled at 212° of Fahrenheit,
or froze at 32°, &c., it was not meant that the mass would boil or
freeze the instant the thermometer reached that point. It was supposed
that a certain increase or diminution of temperature (as the case might
be) was necessary for the production of the effect beyond that precise
point; though that point marked, as it were, the commencement of the
process. The views generally entertained on this subject were however so
vague, that it is difficult to make out precisely what was imagined to
take place; but it seems to have been supposed, that a very slight
accession or loss of heat was sufficient completely to accomplish the
change.

Such were the notions which prevailed on the subject prior to the
commencement of Dr. Black’s researches. No one advanced, or seemed to
have any desire to advance, a step nearer to the truth: yet the whole
was a mere question of fact, and a fact of the most obvious nature. In
this we cannot fail to observe one of those instructive instances, which
the history of science often brings before us, of the unaccountable
blindness, even of inquiring minds, to truths constantly before their
eyes, or, if perceived, to the importance of their being thoroughly
examined. A very little consideration ought to have shown any observer,
that the gain or loss of heat in the cases in question is by no means
slight or trifling in amount: yet no one thought of this till Dr. Black
pointed it out; and no one reasoned upon it, or perceived its bearing,
till that philosopher showed the curious inference to be drawn from it.
The case was simply this:—Two equal vessels, one full of water just at
the freezing temperature, the other of actual ice, are brought into a
warm room. In a short time the water acquires the temperature of the
room. Exactly the same quantity of heat has been communicated to the
vessel of ice; yet, at the end of the same time, it is found to retain
precisely the same temperature as at first. A considerable part of it
indeed has been melted, but it may take several hours more to melt the
whole. Until that change is completed, the temperature does not vary a
single degree. As soon as all the ice is liquefied, and not before, the
temperature of the mass begins to rise, and proceeds to increase, from
this time, as rapidly as that of the water in the other vessel did
before, until it acquires the temperature of the room.

What then, Dr. Black enquired, becomes of the heat which has been all
along given to the vessel of ice? Heat has been communicated to it as
well as to the other vessel; yet it has not been employed in raising the
temperature, but in some way has been expended in converting the ice
into water. It is but this simple fact otherwise stated, when we say
that the heat so imparted has _disappeared_ as heat of temperature; but
may it not have been destroyed or annihilated? To reply to this question
we have only to consider that the same vessel of water, cooled nearly to
the freezing point, and then exposed to a much greater degree of cold,
must, by the same rule, continue parting with its excess of temperature
above that of the colder bodies around it. Yet a thermometer immersed in
it continues invariably at 32° till the whole has become ice; it then
will sink to the lower temperature, but not before. Thus there must be
within it a continued supply of _heat_ in order to keep it up to 32° all
the time.

Is not this a sufficient answer to the question just proposed? Adopt any
theory you please respecting the nature of heat: suppose a material
substance, or conceive an effect, or quality, or a series of vibrations;
in any case, what is apparently lost in the former case is regained in
the latter. Without sacrifice of accuracy we may affirm, in any sense,
that the heat which had disappeared in the process of thawing has
re-appeared in the process of congealing. Moreover, the most exact
thermometric observations showed the _amount_ in the two cases to be the
same. Thus, without reference to any particular theory of the nature of
heat, Dr. Black was justified in asserting that a certain portion of
heat becomes _latent_ in the water; and that it owes its fluid state to
this latent heat.

We have here referred only to one class of these phenomena; to one
particular application of the general law. Similar results take place
when water boils: the boiler receives as much heat from the fire during
the time requisite to raise it to 212° as it does during the next equal
portion of time; but its temperature (in an open vessel) will not rise
beyond that point. Here then again a quantity of heat has disappeared;
but the water is converted into vapour. Collect the vapour in a cold
receiver; it produces a high degree of heat, and is re-condensed into
the form of water.

The heat then, whatever it be, Dr. Black inferred, is latent in the
steam. It is not destroyed; it disappears as temperature, but under
other circumstances it can be made to re-appear: it is therefore merely
concealed, or dormant for the time; and no term can be so proper to
describe its condition as _latent heat_.

Analogous facts are presented by all other bodies which have been
subjected to examination. Whenever a change of state from the aëriform
to the liquid, or from the solid to the liquid takes place, a
corresponding evolution or absorption of heat accompanies it. Every
research of experimenters on this subject, since Dr. Black, has
contributed fresh instances confirming the universality of this great
law of nature.

A solid body then requires a certain portion of heat to be thrown into
it, in order to melt, or convert it into a liquid: and the liquid again
requires a similar supply to evaporate it into steam, or convert it into
an elastic fluid state; and this portion of heat produces no influence
on the temperature of the body. The reverse is true of the reverse
processes. The quantity of heat so absorbed or given out is different in
different bodies.

Not only indeed is this the case in these changes of state, but it is
also the case in the simple instance of mere changes in the temperature
of bodies; different bodies require different degrees of heat to be
communicated, or thrown into them, in order to produce the same increase
of sensible temperature. This was the other great result to which we
referred at first as the discovery of Dr. Black: he designated this
peculiarity in bodies their _capacity for heat_; a term sufficiently
expressive, but which is now more usually exchanged for the term
_specific heat_. The establishment of the accurate values of this
capacity or specific heat, in a number of different bodies, has afforded
a wide field of research for subsequent experiments. It has been
sometimes said that to Dr. Black’s discovery of latent heat we owe the
steam-engine. This is, we think, a mistaken view of the matter. That
heat will generate steam, and cold condense it, are facts that were well
known, independently of the doctrine of latent heat; though that
doctrine undoubtedly gives the explanation of them. The knowledge of
these facts might therefore have been practically applied in the
construction of the steam-engine, had Dr. Black’s discovery never been
made. It is at the same time perfectly true, that this theory supplies
us with accurate data dependent on the quantity of heat necessary to be
communicated, on which calculation must proceed: and it is on the basis
of such exact investigation, that the great improvements in the
application of steam have been brought about.

To return however to our narrative: though, as we have said, the leading
ideas of these discoveries had occurred to the author probably about the
year 1757, yet it was not till a few years afterwards that he had fully
made out his theory. The discovery of specific heat was announced in
1760; and that of latent heat, with all the details of its experimental
proof, was laid before a literary society in Glasgow, in a paper read
April 23, 1762. After this period a full account of both subjects was
regularly introduced by the author into his courses of lectures. He did
not himself follow out the train of experimental research to which he
had opened the way, but his friends and disciples entered largely upon
the investigation of those valuable data, the numerical values
expressing the quantities of latent heat and specific heat belonging to
different substances.

In 1766, Dr. Cullen having been promoted to the chair of medicine, Dr.
Black, again treading in the steps of his revered friend and instructor,
was called from Glasgow to the professorship of chemistry at Edinburgh.
He was thus placed in a more conspicuous position, and the fame of the
Edinburgh school was not a little raised by his accession to it.
Students flocked from all quarters in increasing numbers, and Dr. Black
now devoted himself entirely to perfecting his chemical lectures.

In reference to this period, it has been sometimes remarked as singular,
that while chemical science was beginning to make those rapid strides by
which its modern advance has been so much accelerated, Dr. Black should
have been contented to go on merely as an able expositor and illustrator
of what others were doing, without himself taking any share in their
labours. Perhaps it might be difficult to assign any better reasons for
this conduct than are to be found in the peculiar disposition of the
individual, though it has been alleged that he was actuated by a dread
of criticism; this, indeed, can only be regarded as itself an indication
of a morbid sensitiveness of mind, of which, unhappily, we have other
instances in individuals of the highest philosophical genius; and which
has probably, in more than one instance, deprived the world of services
which would have been invaluable in the cause of science. Be this as it
may, Dr. Black, though he continued by constant revisions and additions
to make his lectures amply keep pace with the discoveries of the day,
yet himself produced during this period only two papers, and those of
minor importance: one appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for
1774, in which he assigned the reason why water which has been boiled
freezes more easily than that which has not, viz., the expulsion of the
air: another was inserted in the second volume of the Edinburgh
Transactions, on the analysis of the water from the Geysers of Iceland.

It appears from an anecdote related on good authority, (see Edinburgh
Encyclopædia, article, Dr. Black) that so early as 1766, when the low
specific gravity of hydrogen as discovered by Mr. Cavendish had been
announced, the idea of employing it for balloons occurred to Dr. Black;
and that he actually exhibited a small one, to the extreme astonishment
of a party of friends. It was not till 1782 Montgolfier claimed the
merit of originating this idea.

Dr. Black never enjoyed very robust health, but by great care and
attention he managed to the best advantage a constitution naturally
delicate, pursuing, especially towards the latter part of his life, an
extremely regular and abstemious mode of living. About 1793 his strength
began to fail. In 1796 he became unequal to the sole discharge of his
duties as a lecturer, and employed an assistant. In the following year
he was compelled to relinquish lecturing altogether. Though in great
weakness, he was able by unremitting precautions to preserve a
considerable share of general health. He had always expressed a hope
that he might be spared the distress of a long illness; and, in
accordance with this wish, while sitting at table partaking of his usual
simple fare, he expired November 26, 1799, in so tranquil a manner, that
a cup of milk which he had placed on his knee remained unspilt; and it
was some time before his servant perceived that life was extinct.

The cast and character of Dr. Black’s mind is illustrated by the whole
nature and course of his labours and investigations. Methodical
precision and originality of thought were the qualities which
pre-eminently distinguished him. In framing general conclusions he was
peculiarly cautious and exact. It is clear that he possessed abilities
which might have placed him much higher in the rank of original
discoverers, had not an unfortunate backwardness, perhaps the result of
natural timidity or indolence, perhaps of weak health and incessant
employment, withheld him from pushing his researches to a greater
extent, and even from asserting his just claims to what he had done,
which was in some instances wrongfully appropriated by others. Some
charges of this nature have been brought against Lavoisier, in reference
to the discovery of the nature of alkalies; but in his writings
Lavoisier certainly does ample justice to Black.

In all the best and most substantial qualifications of a teacher and
lecturer, he has seldom been surpassed. His method was luminous and
natural; his style unadorned, but beautifully perspicuous; his
experimental illustrations completely satisfactory and convincing, yet
always of the simplest possible kind. He manifested a great dislike to
any unnecessary parade of apparatus, and the exhibition of showy and
striking, but useless phenomena. He aimed not at display and popular
fame, but to arrive at the best means of interesting, instructing, and
enlightening his pupils. He led them by his own example pre-eminently to
value accuracy in the establishment of facts, caution in deducing
general conclusions, and a resolute adherence to the results derived
from experiment and induction.

Dr. Black’s moral and social character was exactly such as harmonized
with his mental endowments. He was moderate in his desires, temperate in
his enjoyments, benevolent and warm in his affections. He manifested a
strong love of order, propriety, and decorum, and a total absence of
jealousy against scientific rivals, or envy of their fame. His
disposition was at once serious and cheerful; and he was distinguished
by a happy equanimity of temper. He was sometimes accused of
penuriousness: but the charge is wholly denied by his relative, Dr.
Ferguson; and his intimate friend, Professor Robison, has related many
instances of his conduct totally incompatible with such a disposition.
In person he was rather above the middle height; of a slender figure,
with a mild and engaging countenance.

After Dr. Black’s death his manuscript lectures were revised and
published by Professor Robison, in two quarto volumes, in 1803. The
first and most important portion of the work is devoted to the subject
of heat; and contains the development of the author’s original
researches to which we have referred. The simplicity of style, the
admirable taste and propriety of language, and the perspicuous and
luminous method of illustration, cannot be too highly praised. With
respect to the other portion, embracing the details of chemistry
properly so called, though the same commendation as to the manner must
be bestowed, the matter, which was not less excellent for the time at
which the lectures were delivered, was yet, at the period of the
publication, necessarily much behind the advance of discovery.

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._

  LORD BACON.

  _From a Print by J. Houbraken 1738._

  Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                              LORD BACON.


Among the many great names which England boasts of, few have such claims
to her gratitude as that of FRANCIS BACON. For besides the unparalleled
services which science received from him, to his _original_ genius we
may indirectly ascribe many, if not most, of those large improvements in
the arts of life which have raised this nation to the highest place
among the countries of the world.

Francis Bacon was the second son, by a second marriage, of Sir Nicholas
Bacon, twenty years Keeper of the Great Seal in the reign of Elizabeth,
and Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, the preceptor of Edward the
Sixth. He was born at York House or Place, in the Strand, January 22,
1561. In 1573 he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he
speedily acquired more than the ordinary learning of the age, becoming
deeply versed in classical literature. Although taught to look up to
Aristotle as to a writer whom it was almost heresy to question, yet at
that early age he began to perceive where his philosophy failed, and to
conceive the reorganization of a purer and better system. “His
exceptions against that great philosopher not being founded on the
worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ascribe all high
attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy
only for disputations and contentions, but barren in the production of
works for the benefit of the life of man, in which mind he continued to
his dying day.”—(Dr. Rawley’s Life of Bacon.) His intellectual efforts
were ever after bent on working out and declaring these novel views, of
which, through many modifying and expanding minds, we now reap the
fruits.

In 1576 he was entered as a Student in the Society of Gray’s Inn, with
the view of keeping his terms for the bar. Before, however, he commenced
his legal studies, his father sent him to France, in the suite of the
Queen’s Ambassador, Sir Amias Paulet. During his residence abroad he
wrote his first work, which was not intended originally for publication,
but was improved and printed after some years. It is called, A short
View of the Present State of Europe. It derives its chief interest from
having been written at the early age of nineteen; but the civil and
political views are sound, and the composition graceful.

In 1579 Sir Nicholas Bacon died, leaving Francis but a small share of
his fortune, in consequence of family circumstances, which we need not
here relate. Finding his private means insufficient for his support, he
returned to England, and commenced the study of the Law, to which he
applied himself with great diligence.

He did not, however, suffer the demands of his profession to interfere
with those pursuits, in which he was fully persuaded that his great
strength lay. Between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight he produced a
work, which he called the Greatest Birth of Time. It was never
published, and is lost in its separate form, but the substance of it
remains in his Instauration.

In 1582 Bacon was called to the bar, and in 1588 was chosen Reader or
Lecturer by the Society of which he was a member, and the same year he
received the only mark of honour conferred upon him in the reign of
Elizabeth, in the title of Counsel Learned in the Law Extraordinary. It
seems strange that Bacon, who was the nephew of the Lord High Treasurer
Burleigh, and cousin of the principal Secretary of State Sir Robert
Cecil, should never have been able to obtain any office in the Court of
Elizabeth. The reason possibly was that he had early attached himself to
the faction of the Earl of Essex, who, though the Queen’s greatest
favourite, was in constant opposition to her ministers. This unfortunate
nobleman exerted himself to the utmost, at the extreme risk of
offending: his testy mistress, to secure for Bacon the place of
Solicitor General, as the first step of legal advancement; but he was
unsuccessful. The ministers declared their belief that Bacon was merely
a theorist, and that his talents were not of a nature fitted for
practical purposes: perhaps there was no small mixture of jealousy in
this declaration. To make some amends to his friend for this
disappointment, Essex gave him an estate (which he afterwards sold at an
under price for 1300_l._) out of his private fortune: one of many
kindnesses which Bacon too ill requited.

In 1592 Bacon published a defence of the government, in answer to a
libel, in consequence of which he received the reversion of the
register’s office to the Star-chamber, which he did not enjoy till
twenty years after. In the Parliament of 1593 he was chosen member for
the county of Middlesex, a proof that his public talents were not
unappreciated by his countrymen. In the House he shone as an orator of
the first class, his speeches were extremely elegant and forcible, and
his wit so well blended with good sense and winning manners, as to
secure to him the favourable attention of that assembly. He was
frequently employed by the government to defend their measures in
Parliament, which he did with consummate prudence, but he still went
unrewarded.

In 1596 Bacon composed, but did not then print, his Maxims of the Law;
and in the year following he published his first edition of Essays, or
Counsels Civil and Moral; the work by which he is best known to the
general reader. In the trial of the Earl of Essex for high treason
(1601) Bacon appeared as counsel for the Crown; and after the execution
of that unfortunate nobleman, the Queen directed him to compose and
publish An Account of the Earl of Essex’s Treasons. His apparent zeal on
this occasion excited the indignation of the people, among whom Essex
was much beloved, and he was obliged to apologize for his conduct, by a
letter to the Earl of Devonshire, one of the firm partisans of Essex.

The death of Elizabeth, which soon followed that of her favourite,
revived Bacon’s hopes of advancement. He applied himself early to obtain
the favour of the new king; and a proclamation, which he drew up on
James’s arrival, though never published, did him great service. He was
introduced to the King at Whitehall, and was knighted, July 23, 1603. In
the following year his services to the court in Parliament, and
elsewhere, were rewarded by the title of King’s Counsel, with a stipend
of forty, and an additional pension of sixty pounds.

But though he seemed in the high road to preferment, Bacon had powerful
enemies to obstruct his advancement. Sir Robert Cecil, son of Lord
Burleigh, created Earl of Salisbury by James I., though Bacon’s cousin
by the maternal side, had always shown himself averse to his kinsman’s
preferment, apparently from jealousy of his uncommon talents. Between
Bacon and the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, there existed a more
violent hostility, arising from various causes. Sir Edward was
successful early, Bacon late, and the power which Coke obtained, he used
to depress his antagonist. They had both been suitors of the rich Lady
Hatton, Lord Burleigh’s grand-daughter, whom Coke married; and, as a
farther exasperation of their enmity, in that celebrated dispute, which
occurred in 1616, between the courts of King’s Bench and Chancery,
“Whether the Chancery, after judgment given in the Courts of Law, was
prohibited from giving relief upon matters arising in equity, which the
judges at law could not determine or relieve,” Bacon had a leading share
in obtaining that decision in favour of the privileges of the Court of
Chancery, which has had so great an influence upon the jurisdiction of
courts.

In 1605 Bacon published his first specimen of The Advancement of
Learning. His view of the service he was doing to science, is shewn in a
letter to Lord Salisbury, sent with a copy of this work, where he says,
that “in this book he was contented to awake better spirits, being
himself like a bell-ringer, who is the first to call others to church.”

The following year he married Alice, the daughter of Benedict Barnham,
alderman, a lady of large fortune, who outlived him many years, and by
whom he had no children. The year 1607 produced him his first solid
success. Lord Salisbury had arisen to such power and confidence with his
master, that he no longer feared the talents of Bacon, and with his
concurrence, if not by his means, Bacon was at length appointed
Solicitor-General, which, besides its future promise, was an office
worth 5000_l._ or 6000_l._ a-year to him in private practice. Though now
a busy man, and constantly engaged in affairs of the Crown, he
nevertheless found time to write and publish his Wisdom of the Ancients,
a work of great elegance and profound learning, but not one to which the
present age owes much. In 1611 he was appointed joint judge of the
Marshal’s court, and immediately afterwards Attorney-General, on the
promotion of Lord Coke to the office of Chief Justice of the King’s
Bench. Bacon did not attach himself to the fortunes of the reigning
favourite Somerset, and when that lord and his countess were brought to
trial for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, he had the management of
the case for the Crown, which he so conducted as to keep himself out of
the disgrace into which Coke and others fell with the King, on account
of this critical affair.

He was farther advanced to the office of Lord Keeper in March, 1617, on
the resignation of the Lord Chancellor Viscount Brackley, and the same
year sat at the head of the council-board, as manager of the King’s
affairs, during the absence of the monarch and his new favourite
Buckingham in Scotland. On the return of the King, Bacon was made Lord
High Chancellor, Jan. 4, 1618; and in July following he was created
Baron of Verulam. In 1620 he sent to the King his Novum Organum, or ‘New
Instrument of Logic, better calculated for the real progress of science
than that of Aristotle.’

The next year Bacon received the title of Viscount St. Albans, and
opened the Parliament of February, 1621, the most honoured, and among
the most powerful subjects of the realm. But this parliament was fatal
to him. James had not called this assembly together for more than ten
years, except for the short session of two months in 1614, and during
that period had been subsisting on the unconstitutional resources of
benevolences, and the sale of monopolies. Almost the first act of this
parliament was the inquiry into abuses, and more particularly those of
the courts of justice, and the sale of patents. As all patents had to
pass the seal, it was natural that the conduct of the Lord Keeper should
be looked into, and this led to farther inquiry concerning the
administration of justice in the Chancellor’s court. The chairman of a
committee appointed to conduct this inquiry, brought up two charges of
bribery against Bacon. This alarmed James and his favourite, and the
parliament was adjourned for three weeks, in the hope that the affair
would blow over. But during this recess, twenty-two cases of bribery
were charged upon the Chancellor, and a deputation from the lower House
waited on him to know whether he would confess or refute them. In a few
days he chose to make confession, and threw himself on the mercy of his
peers. His confession was not thought ample enough, and too extenuatory;
and he was obliged to make one still more full, in writing, upon which a
deputation of thirteen Lords was sent to him, to know whether it were
really his. His answer to them was, “My Lords, it is my act, my hand, my
heart; I beseech your Lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.” At the
petition of the Peers, the seals were sequestrated, Bacon was deprived
of his speakership and of his seat in Parliament, and farther was fined
40,000_l._, sentenced to imprisonment during the King’s pleasure,
debarred from entering the verge of the Court, and declared incapable of
holding any office in future. This penalty was considerably mitigated by
James, who confined him but for a short space in the Tower, allowed him
to make over the fine to assignees of his own choosing, and, for the
settling of his affairs, gave him leave to reside for some time within
the verge of the Court. After some years, at the earnest solicitation of
Bacon, “that his royal master would be pleased to wipe out his disgrace
from the page of history by his princely pardon,” he received the favour
he so much desired.

At the age of sixty-one, Bacon retired to his country-seat at
Gorhambury, having an income of about 2500_l._ His debts amounted to
about 30,000_l._, of which he liquidated a third before his death.

Apart from the noise and stir of life, Bacon more sedulously bent his
mind to the cultivation of philosophy, his true field of labour. With
the exception of his Reign of Henry the Seventh, and a tract written
against the match between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain, the
five last years of his life were spent in making philosophical
experiments, and in moulding his works to a more perfect form. It was
his great wish that what he had written should be translated into the
general language of learning, Latin; consequently much of his time
during this period was employed in translating himself, or revising the
translations of his friends. His chief labour, however, was the
reduction of his Instauration to a most highly finished state of
aphorisms. He took incredible pains with this great performance. His
biographer and editor, Dr. Rawley, declares that this work was revised
and corrected, almost re-written, at least ten times, and finally left
_unfinished_: for a book which taught what was known in the world, and
wherein that knowledge was defective or pretended; which professed to
teach a new system, by which general laws should be made for the
foundation of true science; and which pointed out what remained to be
known, was indeed rather the undertaking of many lives of manhood, than
a few years of one suffering under a load of debt, disgrace, infirmity,
and age. The peculiarity of Bacon’s philosophical doctrine may be
expressed in few words. He found that the beliefs of learned men (apart
from religious beliefs) rested upon the authority of one unquestionably
great intelligence, Aristotle, who had invented laws of science,
unfounded except in the speculations of his own mind, and many of them
misunderstood by his idolizers. These laws were given or made, and facts
were supposed to follow from them necessarily and without question. But
Bacon proposed to found his general laws on actual experiments. So that
when by a multitude of facts arising from this course of proceeding,
laws should be produced which fairly accounted for phenomena, the
application of such laws might farther become the confirmation of fresh
and, it may be, more difficult, combinations. It is curious that Bacon’s
own experiments should, for the most part, be so signally frivolous and
inconclusive. This may be accounted for, in some measure, by the novelty
of the method,—his own defence, for he was aware of the fact, is, “that
he did not like to throw away any experiment, however seeming foolish,
in case that some spark of truth should be contained in it, or suggested
by it.” But he certainly did not possess the power of applying his own
principles to practice, and far better examples of the inductive powers
may be found, even in the labours of his predecessors, than any which
his own writings afford.

After having spent five years in this labour for posterity, on the 9th
of April, 1626, Bacon died at the age of 66, at the house of Lord
Arundel, in Highgate, on his way to London. A week’s acute illness
carried him to his grave. He was buried at Old Verulam, and for a long
time no “stone told where he lay,” till the affection of an old servant
erected a marble monument to the memory of his noble master. His name
was well known among the continental nations, and he himself was
understood and appreciated by them, to a far greater extent than by his
fellow-countrymen. Some allusion to this is found in his will, in which,
after having commended his soul to God, and his body to the dust, he
proceeds, prophetically, to “bequeath his name and fame to foreign
nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over.”

The character of Bacon has been held up as an extraordinary anomaly, as
containing the extremes of strength and weakness. Pope was pleased to
call him

              “The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,”

probably for the sake of the powerful contrast presented in the line.
That his great strength lay in his intellectual powers there is no
doubt, but that his moral power was slight enough for him to deserve the
character of “meanest of mankind,” is not to be believed. The wrong he
did to Essex is perhaps the strongest stain that remains on his memory.
The charge of bribery is not so heinous in him as it appears to be at
first sight. He says (and though it be a sophism yet it has some
weight,) “that he never sold injustice,” nor did he: his decrees were
pronounced without regard to the parties concerned, and were none of
them reversed; moreover, judicial bribery was not thought so vicious
then as it is now; in France, it was open and daily. Of the twenty-two
charges brought against him, five only were really for bribery, that is,
while the suit was pending. The rest were presents. He had lived in want
for the greater portion of his life, and becoming suddenly rich, and
full of various business, he was naturally careless of expenses, and
left a great deal more than he ought to have done in the hands of his
servants; who lived upon him so extravagantly, that on passing through
his hall (when they rose at his presence) he said, “Sit down, my
masters, your rise hath been my fall.” There is also every reason to
believe that he was induced to suppress his defence by the intrigues of
James, and his favourite Buckingham; to whose escape he had the weakness
to let himself be made a sacrifice. He has been accused of cringing to
this powerful favourite in less important particulars; but his letters
are no more than a type of the usual style of an inferior to a superior
in the Court in which he lived. He fell upon hard times, first the
courtier of a princess whose thirst of praise and requisition of
humility was unbounded, then the courtier and servant of a king who all
but believed himself to be a god. The most marvellous fact of Bacon’s
character is, that he who knew men so well, and whose insight into their
feelings and motives was so clear, should have been so blind as to
remain totally ignorant, as is apparent from all his letters and
writings, of that youthful spirit of freedom which in the subsequent
reign sprung into such vigorous manhood. But he seems to have been “the
king’s true chancellor,” and to have believed most firmly in that Divine
right for which James argued and his son died.

Bacon’s private character was generous and humane almost to a fault. His
manners were exceedingly winning, and his method of drawing from all
sorts of men the information belonging to their separate callings was
wonderful. He was constitutionally timid, and was always in weak health.
His person was slightly above the common height, his countenance most
dignified, and intellectually commanding.

[Illustration: [Statue of Lord Bacon in St. Michael’s Church, St.
Alban’s.]]

[Illustration:

  _Engraved by W. Holl._

  SIR WALTER SCOTT.

  _From a Bust by Chantrey._

  Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
    Knowledge.

  _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._
]

[Illustration]




                             SIR W. SCOTT.


Walter Scott was born in the Old Town of Edinburgh, April 15, 1771, in a
house at the head of the College Wynd, which has been pulled down to
make way for the new buildings of the University. His father was a
writer to the signet, his grandfather a farmer resident in
Roxburghshire, who traced his descent to the ancient Border family of
Scott of Harden. His infancy gave no promise of the robust manhood which
he attained: and in addition to general weakness of constitution, his
right foot received an early injury, which rendered him lame through
life. This delicacy of health induced his parents to send him, when
almost an infant, to his grandfather’s farm at Sandyknow in
Roxburghshire, adjoining the Border fortress called Smailholm Tower, in
the heart of that romantic pastoral district whose scenery and legends
he has rendered famous. [5]“His residence at this secluded spot, which
after early boyhood was, we believe, occasionally renewed during the
summer vacations of the High School and College, was undoubtedly fraught
with many advantages, physical and mental. It was here that his feeble
constitution was, by the aid of free air and exercise, gradually
strengthened into robustness; and though he never got rid of his
lameness, it was so far overcome as to be in after life rather a
deformity than an inconvenience. It was here that his love of ballad
lore and border story was fostered into a passion; and it was here
doubtless, and at the house of one of his uncles, Mr. Thomas Scott, of
Woolee, also a Roxburghshire farmer, that he early acquired that
intimate acquaintance with the manners, character, and language of the
Scottish peasantry, which he afterwards turned to such admirable account
in his novels.”

Footnote 5:

  This, and the other passages marked with inverted commas, except those
  taken from Scott’s Autobiography, are derived from a memoir of Sir
  Walter Scott published in the Penny Magazine, No. 37, and written by
  Scott’s countryman and acquaintance, the late Mr. Pringle.

In October, 1779, he entered the High School of Edinburgh, which he
attended during four years. He there acquired the character of being “a
remarkably active and dauntless boy, full of all manner of fun, and
ready for all manner of mischief;” and so far from being timid or quiet
on account of his lameness, that very defect, (as he himself remarked to
be usually the case in similar circumstances with boys of enterprising
disposition) prompted him to take the lead among all the stirring boys
in the street where he lived, or the school which he attended. In Greek
and Latin he made little progress, and obtained little credit for talent
or industry from his masters; but he has invoked his surviving
school-fellows, in the Introduction to the last edition of the Waverley
Novels, “to bear witness that I had a distinguished character for talent
as a tale-teller, at a time when the applause of my companions was the
recompense for the disgraces and punishments which the future
romance-writer incurred for being idle himself, and keeping others idle,
during hours of the day that should have been employed upon our tasks.”

He entered the University of Edinburgh in October, 1783; but his
attendance there was only for two sessions. About the age of fifteen the
rupture of a blood-vessel again reduced him to a very weak state, and
during the space of two years bodily and mental exertion were forbidden.
He had recourse for amusement to a circulating library, “rich,” he says,
“in works of fiction, from the romances of chivalry, and the ponderous
folios of Cyrus and Cassandra, down to the most approved works of later
times. I was plunged into this great ocean of reading without compass or
pilot, and unless when some one had the charity to play at chess with me
I was allowed to do nothing, save read, from morning to night.... I
believe I read almost all the old romances, old plays, and epic poetry
in that formidable collection, and no doubt was unconsciously amassing
materials for the task in which it has been my lot to be so much
employed. At the same time I did not in all respects abuse the license
permitted me. Familiar acquaintance with the specious miracles of
fiction brought with it some degree of satiety, and I began by degrees
to seek in histories, memoirs, voyages and travels, and the like, events
nearly as wonderful as those which were the work of the imagination,
with the additional advantage that they were at least in a great measure
true. The lapse of two years, during which I was left to the service of
my own free will, was followed by a temporary residence in the country,
where I was again very lonely but for the amusement which I derived from
a good though old-fashioned library. The vague and wild use which I made
of this advantage I cannot describe better than by referring my reader
to the desultory studies of Waverley in a similar situation; the
passages concerning whose reading were imitated from recollections of my
own.”

After recovering from this illness his constitution changed, and he
became unusually robust, and capable of enduring great bodily and mental
fatigue; even his lameness occasioning no serious inconvenience. He then
applied himself in earnest to the study of law, and, to acquire a
thorough knowledge of its technicalities, went through the duties of a
clerk in his father’s office. He completed the usual course of legal
education, and was called to the bar in July, 1792. He seemed however
little anxious for business; and as usual, business unsought came
slowly: in his legal capacity he acquired neither wealth nor
distinction. But, in amends for this, in those days of volunteer corps,
he made an admirable quarter-master to the Edinburgh Light Dragoons; and
his zeal and skill, and the popularity which his high powers of social
entertainment procured, recommended him to the friendship of the Duke of
Buccleugh, by whose interest he obtained, in December, 1799, the
appointment of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, with a salary of 300_l._ He had
married in 1797 Miss Carpenter, a lady of foreign birth but English
parentage, possessed of fortune sufficient, when added to the salary of
his office, and his own patrimonial inheritance, to release him from the
necessity of labouring at the bar for a livelihood. This was a step on
which his mind had been some time bent. “My profession and I,” he says,
“came to stand nearly on the footing which honest Slender consoled
himself on having established with Mistress Anne Page—‘There was no
great love between us at the beginning, and it pleased Heaven to
decrease it on farther acquaintance.’ I became sensible that the time
was come when I must either buckle myself resolutely to ‘the toil by
day, the lamp by night,’ renouncing all the Dalilahs of my imagination,
or bid adieu to the profession of the law, and hold another course.”

Scott was not a premature writer; he had reached his twenty-fifth year
before he tried his strength in composition, excepting a few trivial
attempts in childhood; and his name was still unknown to the public,
when he resolved to devote his powers to literature. His first essays
were made about 1796, when his attention was caught by the Leonora, and
other poems of Bürger, which he translated and published anonymously.
“The adventure,” he says, “proved a dead loss, and a great part of this
edition was condemned to the service of the trunk-maker.” His next
performance was a translation of Goethe’s drama, Goetz of Berlichingen,
published in 1799. But he continued his devotion to ballad poetry, and
as his confidence rose, essayed his strength in Glenfinlas, and the Eve
of St. John, his first original compositions. At Lasswade on the banks
of the Esk, about five miles from Edinburgh, where he spent several
summers after his marriage, he prosecuted with increased zeal and
success his favourite inquiries into the antiquities and legendary song
of his country, and commenced the work which gave him a name in
literature, the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. “The materials for
this work were collected during various excursions, or _raids_, as Sir
Walter was wont to call them, through the most remote recesses of the
border glens, made by the poetical compiler in person, assisted by one
or two other enthusiasts in ballad lore. Pre-eminent among his
coadjutors in this undertaking was Dr. John Leyden, an enthusiastic
borderer and ballad-monger like himself, and to whom he has gratefully
acknowledged his obligations both in verse and prose.”

“Some amusing anecdotes have been printed, and others are still extant
in oral tradition among the border hills, of the circumstances attending
the collection of these ballads. The old women, who were almost the only
remaining depositories of ancient song and tradition, though proud of
being solicited to recite them by ‘so grand a man’ as an Edinburgh
Advocate, could not repress their astonishment that ‘a man o’ sense and
lair’ should spend his time in writing into a book ‘auld ballads and
stories of the bluidy Border wars, and paipish times....’ The Minstrelsy
was printed at Kelso, in 1802, at first in two volumes, to which a third
was added in the second edition. Two years subsequently Scott published
the romance of Sir Tristram, a Scottish metrical tale of the thirteenth
century, which he showed, in a learned disquisition, to have been
composed by Thomas of Ercildown, commonly called the Rhymer.”

“These works, especially the Border Minstrelsy, were favourably received
by the public, and established Scott’s reputation on a very respectable
footing, as an excellent poetical antiquary, and as a writer of
considerable power and promise, both in verse and prose. As yet,
however, he had produced no composition of originality and importance
sufficient to secure that high and permanent rank in literature, to
which his secret ambition led him to aspire. But he had now a subject in
hand which was destined to attain for him a popularity far beyond what
his most sanguine hopes could have ventured to anticipate.”

“The Lay of the Last Minstrel appeared in 1805. The structure of the
verse was suggested, as the author states, by the Christabel of
Coleridge; a part of which had been repeated to him about the year 1800.
The originality, wildness, poetical beauty, and descriptive powers of
Scott’s Border romance produced an effect on the public mind, only to be
equalled perhaps by some of the earlier works of Byron.”

“In the spring of 1806 Sir Walter obtained an appointment, which, he
says, completely met his moderate wishes as to preferment. This was the
office of a principal Clerk of Session, of which the duties are by no
means heavy, though personal attendance during the sitting of the courts
is required. Mr. Pitt, under whose administration the appointment had
been granted, having died before it was officially completed, the
succeeding Whig ministry had the satisfaction of confirming it. The
emoluments of this office were about 1200_l._ a year; but Scott received
no part of the salary till 1812, the appointment being a reversionary
one.”

His reputation and his fortune seemed now to be completely established.
Marmion, published in 1808, and the Lady of the Lake, in 1810, were
received each with greater favour than its predecessor. Don Roderick,
1811, was not successful; Rokeby, 1813, and The Lord of the Isles, 1814,
were generally thought inferior in merit to his earlier works. This
might arise, in part, from the extraordinary rapidity of their
composition: for Rokeby was commenced September 15, and finished
December 31, 1812; and the Lord of the Isles was written in the
following autumn, with equal rapidity, but under circumstances which
rendered the task a burden, and damped the fire of his muse. Still
these, like their predecessors, commanded very large sales, and brought
in large sums to the author, and large profits to the publishers. His
popularity, however, was on the ebb, and it was the general impression
that Scott had nearly written himself out. At the time when this was
said, he had already published one anonymous poem, the Bridal of
Triermain, 1810, as if ashamed of his prolific pen. Afterwards, in 1817,
he published Harold the Dauntless, in the same way. The censure,
however, was not unfounded; and the two last acknowledged poems of Scott
were inferior in interest and execution to his earlier productions.
Another reason for the decrease of Scott’s popularity he has himself
assigned, in the rapid growth of Lord Byron’s.

It was about the end of 1813 that accident threw in his way the mislaid
manuscript of the beginning of Waverley, seven chapters of which he had
composed in 1805, and had thrown aside, in deference to the unfavourable
opinion of a critical friend. At different times he had been inclined to
resume this work, but had been prevented by the loss of the manuscript:
which he now applied himself in earnest to complete. Waverley was
published in the summer of 1814; and obtained success beyond the
author’s fondest expectations. The history of this wonderful series of
works of fiction, and the author’s reasons for adopting and retaining
his incognito, are familiar to the public, through his own account in
the Introduction to the Waverley Novels. The manner in which the secret
was kept is a remarkable anecdote in literary history: for, whatever
conclusions might be drawn from internal evidence by Scott’s intimate
friends, and from putting things together by the public, not a particle
of external evidence was produced to fasten it upon him, until the
failure of Constable’s house in 1826 led to Scott’s public avowal of the
authorship in 1827. Perhaps this mystery tended to keep alive the public
interest: perhaps also Scott had a keener relish of the homage paid to
the Great Unknown, than if it had been offered to him in his own person.

Scott’s metrical romances, as they were composed with unexampled
rapidity, commanded also unexampled prices from the booksellers. And at
the same time he found leisure for a variety of laborious works in
criticism, biography, and miscellaneous literature, which added
considerably both to his funds and his reputation. Among these were new
editions of the works of Dryden and Swift, with biographical accounts;
Sadler’s State Papers; Somers’s Tracts; Lives of the Novelists; besides
numerous contributions to encyclopædias, reviews, and other periodical
publications. His scheme of devoting himself to literature had borne
fruit of fame and profit beyond his brightest anticipations. His certain
income (we presume after the year 1812) is said by Mr. Pringle to have
exceeded 2000_l._: and he was supposed to double that sum by the
exuberant harvest of his brain.

“Amidst all this labour Scott found abundant leisure not only for his
official avocations, but for social enjoyment and rural recreation.
While the Court of Session was sitting, he lived in Edinburgh, in a good
substantial house in North Castle Street. During the vacations he
resided in the country, and appeared to enter with ardour into the
ordinary occupations and amusements of country gentlemen. After he was
appointed Sheriff of Selkirk he hired for his summer residence the house
and farm of Ashiesteil, on the banks of the Tweed; and here many of his
poetical works were written. But with the increase of his resources grew
the desire to possess landed property of his own, where he might indulge
his tastes for building, planting, and gardening. Commencing with
moderation, he purchased a small farm of about one hundred acres, lying
on the south bank of the Tweed, three miles above Melrose, and in the
very centre of that romantic and legendary country which his first great
poem has made familiar to every reader. This spot, then called Cartly
Hole, had a northern exposure, and at that time a somewhat bleak and
uninviting aspect: the only habitable house upon it was a small and
inconvenient farm-house. Such was the nucleus of the mansion and estate
of Abbotsford. By degrees, as his resources increased, he added farm
after farm to his domain, and reared his chateau, turret after turret,
till he completed what a French tourist not inaptly terms ‘a romance of
stone and lime,’ clothing meanwhile the hills behind, and embowering the
lawns before, with flourishing woods of his own planting. The
embellishment of his house and grounds, and the enlargement of his
landed property, became, after the establishment of his literary
reputation, the objects, apparently, of Scott’s most engrossing
interest; and whatever may be the intrinsic value of the estate as a
heritage to his posterity, he has at least succeeded in erecting a scene
altogether of no ordinary attractions, and worthy of being associated
with his distinguished name.”

“During the greater part of the summer and autumn he kept house at
Abbotsford like a wealthy country gentleman, receiving with a cordial,
yet courtly, hospitality, the many distinguished persons, both from
England and the Continent, who found means to obtain an introduction to
his enchanted castle. Anything more delightful than a visit to
Abbotsford, when Sir Walter was in the full enjoyment of his health and
spirits, can scarcely be imagined. After his morning labours, which,
even when busiest, were seldom protracted beyond mid-day, (his time for
composition being usually from seven to eleven or twelve o’clock,) he
devoted himself to the entertainment of his guests with so much
unaffected cordiality, such hilarity of spirits, and such homely
kindliness of manner, and above all with such an entire absence of
literary pretension, that the shyest stranger found himself at once on
terms of the easiest familiarity with the most illustrious man in
Europe.”

In the spring of 1820, Scott was created a baronet by George IV., as a
testimony of personal regard; and on the King’s visit to Scotland in
1822, he was appointed to superintend the arrangements for his Majesty’s
reception; an office gratifying to his national feelings and antiquarian
tastes, as well as to his aristocratical predilections.

The profusion of his expenditure no doubt had considerable effect in
strengthening the general belief that Scott was the author of the
Waverley Novels; inasmuch as he possessed no ostensible means from which
the sums expended in the purchase and improvement of Abbotsford, as well
as the liberal hospitality which he there exercised, could be defrayed.
His urbanity, his innate kindliness of nature, his unassuming demeanour,
and readiness to foster humble merit, had almost disarmed ill-will,
besides softening the asperity of party feelings; and men looked without
envy on a fortune which, to be the produce of one man’s literary labours
for the short space of twenty years, seemed almost beyond belief, as
well as beyond example, and acknowledged it to be deserved, without a
doubt of its continuance, or reality. In this belief, (for otherwise he
would have acted differently, being naturally a prudent man,) Scott
himself rested secure, until January, 1826, when the house of Constable
and Co. became bankrupt, at the close of that calamitous season which
pressed so heavily upon all branches of trade. He then, to use his own
words, found himself called on to meet the demands of creditors upon
commercial establishments with which his fortunes had long been bound
up, to the extent of no less a sum than 120,000_l._ How and why he was
led into so deep a confidence, and how far the prices received for his
works were connected with his commercial transactions, has never, we
believe, been clearly explained, nor does it much import the public to
know; the error, so far as his reputation is concerned, (and the only
charge against him was want of prudence,) he amply redeemed by the
nobleness of his conduct under this crushing misfortune; and it has been
truly said that “the honour which rests upon his memory for his gigantic
exertions to pay off this immense debt without deduction, is a far
nobler heritage to his posterity than the most princely fortune.”

“On meeting his creditors, he refused to accept of any compromise, and
declared his determination, if life was spared him, to pay off every
shilling. He insured his life in their favour for 22,000_l._;
surrendered all his available property in trust (Abbotsford being
rendered inalienable by the marriage articles of his eldest son); sold
his town house and furniture, and removed to a humbler dwelling; and
then set himself calmly down to the stupendous task of reducing this
load of debt. The only indulgence he asked for was time; and, to the
honour of the parties concerned, time was liberally and kindly given
him. A month or two after the crash of Constable’s house, Lady Scott
died; domestic affliction thus following fast upon worldly calamity.”

For five years after his pecuniary misfortunes, namely, from January
1826 to the spring of 1831, Sir Walter continued his indefatigable
labours; and in that period, besides several new works of fiction, he
produced the History of Scotland, published in Lardner’s Cyclopædia,
Tales of a Grandfather, Letters on Demonology, and a number of smaller
pieces. The Life of Napoleon was in part composed anterior to the
calamity of which we speak: it was published in 1827, and though read
with interest, did not display the research and impartiality which the
character of an historian requires. He also superintended a new edition
of the Waverley Novels, with prefaces and illustrative notes; and the
profits of all these works were so considerable, that by the close of
1830, 54,000_l._ had been paid off; all of which, except six or seven
thousand, had been produced by his own literary labours. The copyright
of the published novels was sold by Constable’s creditors for 8,400_l._,
half of which was assigned to Sir Walter by his creditors, in
consideration of his assistance in furnishing prefaces and notes to the
new edition.

But over-exertion in the evening of life, and under circumstances too
well calculated to weaken the elasticity of his spirits, and to destroy
the pleasure which he used to feel in composition, broke his
constitution and brought on premature old age. In the autumn of 1830 he
retired from his office of Clerk of Session. In the following winter,
symptoms of paralysis began to appear. Still he continued to labour
until the summer of 1831, in the course of which mental exertion was
strictly forbidden. He was advised to visit Italy in the following
autumn, and even in his declining condition must have been gratified by
the sympathy and the honour rendered to him. A passage to Malta in the
Barham man-of-war was granted to him by the British Government; and at
Rome and Naples he was received with honours rarely paid except to royal
blood. But his desire to return to his native land became irrepressible;
and he hurried homewards, taking the route by the Rhine, with a rapidity
which proved very injurious. He reached London in nearly the last stage
of physical and mental weakness. Still the love of his native land was
strong in death, and after remaining some weeks in the metropolis, he
was conveyed at his own earnest desire by sea to Leith, and reached
Abbotsford, July 11. After lingering two months, almost without
consciousness, in the last stage of his most afflictive malady, he
expired, September 22, 1832. His body was laid in his family
burial-place in the ruined abbey of Dryburgh on the Tweed.

Throughout the kingdom his death was regarded like the loss of a friend;
and the general admiration of his talents, respect for his conduct, and
sympathy for his misfortunes, was shown by the favourable reception of a
project for raising a subscription to discharge the incumbrances
existing on the Abbotsford estate, and to preserve it by entail in Sir
Walter’s family, as a lasting memorial of his genius.

Scott’s works, in the last uniform edition, fill eighty-eight closely
printed duodecimo volumes. Of these his poems occupy twelve, the novels
forty-eight, the miscellaneous prose works twenty-eight. The Letters on
Demonology, History of Scotland, and a few minor productions are not
included herein, in consequence of the copyrights being vested in
different hands. From his numerous unnamed works, we may select for
mention his Border Antiquities, Picturesque Scenery of Scotland, his
share in Weber and Jameson’s Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,
Paul’s Letters, which contain the liveliest description ever given of
the Battle of Waterloo, and three dramas, Halidon Hill, the Doom of
Devorgoil, and the Auchindrane Tragedy.

[Illustration: [View of Abbotsford.]]




In closing this Series, an apology may be thought necessary for the
omission of many portraits which have formerly been advertised for
publication. In a few instances this has arisen from the nonexistence of
authentic portraits; in some from their remoteness, or the difficulty of
obtaining leave to copy those which are known to exist: the latter
causes have compelled us to engrave from prints to a greater extent than
was at first contemplated. But where access could be had to the
originals, in France and Italy as well as England, artists have been
employed to copy them for the engraver’s use; and it is our duty to
express our gratitude for the liberality with which applications for
this purpose have, for the most part, been acceded to. One important
branch of science, metaphysics, has been left with very few
representatives, in consequence of the highly controversial nature of
the subject. This work was planned to include those, and those only, of
all nations, who since the revival of art and within the era of
authentic portraiture, have been great originators and inventors in
arts, sciences, and literature: but the line which separates those who
have originated from those who have improved or greatly excelled, is so
hard to draw, that many persons have been admitted, whose claims may not
be reconcilable with a strict adherence to the principle at first laid
down; and one extension forms a precedent and reason for another.
Regarding it as a collection of the most distinguished men of modern
times, completeness is impossible, from the vast extent of the subject
and the diversities of judgement which differences in character, the
bias of natural prejudices, and greater or less familiarity with the
results of their lives, cause men to pass upon the worth and eminence of
others. A Briton may think the foreigners in our collection too
numerous; a foreigner will be as likely to say, that in choosing full
one half from our own countrymen, we have given way to national pride:
but to every nation its own great men are the most interesting and the
most important. We believe, however, that except where no portraits can
be found, as in the cases of the inventor of Printing, and the
discoverer of the New World[6], no branch of science is without one or
more of its fittest and most distinguished representatives; and we claim
the merit of having brought together, in a book of easy access, a
greater number of the genuine likenesses of men eminent in every branch
of honourable distinction than has ever been included in a similar
scheme.

Footnote 6:

  There is a Portrait of Columbus at Naples, but it is of a late age.

An extension of the work would no doubt have allowed us to approximate
somewhat nearer to completeness. But in every undertaking of this sort
there is a limit in respect of size and expense which it is inexpedient
to pass: and this consideration prescribes that for the present we
should end our labour. But death has added many illustrious names to our
list since it was first drawn up; and as every year lays some honoured
head in the grave, a fresh fund of interest, and fresh reasons for the
resumption of the work, will be continually accruing. It is, therefore,
not unlikely that the Gallery of Portraits may hereafter be resumed and
continued in a similar form.

A series of Indexes is subjoined, which present the portraits in
alphabetical and chronological order, and classed according to the
pursuits in which they have excelled, and the nations to which they
belong. This it is hoped will make amends for the absence of any system
in the order of their issuing, which would have rendered it almost
impossible to maintain the monthly publication with punctuality.

We avail ourselves of this opportunity to correct a few mistakes in the
text; but have not thought it necessary to give a list of obvious or
unimportant errata.

  Life of Fox, vol. i., p. 107, par. 3. The anecdote here told,
  applies, we have been informed, not to the debate on the Test Act,
  but to the application of dissenting ministers for relief on the
  subject of Subscription.

  Life of Banks, vol. i., p. 193, _for_ February 13, _read_ January 4:
  on the authority of his baptismal register. See Penny Cyclopædia.

  Life of More, vol. ii., p. 32, line 22, _for_ 1555, _read_ 1535.

  Life of Pascal, vol. ii., p. 51, _for_ Sir W., _read_ Sir John
  Herschel.

  Life of Bentley, vol. iii., p. 51, three lines from bottom, _for_
  1781, _read_ 1701.

  Life of Schwartz, vol. iii., p. 93, last line but one, _for_ being,
  _read_ besides.

  Life of D’Aguesseau, vol. iv., p. 5, eleven lines from bottom,
  _read_, in which, it was said, the obnoxious.

  Life of Blake, vol. v., p. 77, _read_, Robert Blake was born at the
  seaport town of Bridgewater in Somersetshire, where his father
  followed the occupation of a merchant, in August, 1598.

  Ib., p. 82, line 5, _after_ April 20, _insert_ 1657.

  Ib., p. 83, line 15, _for_ revolution, _read_ restoration.

  Life of Maskelyne, vol. vi., p. 21, last line but six, _omit_ did.

  Life of Jenner, vol. vi., p. 28, line 18. We believe this statement
  to be exaggerated; but have not the means before us of tracing the
  error.




                          ALPHABETICAL INDEX.


   The paging of the three lives thus * marked has accidentally been
                               repeated.

                                            Date of  Date of │Vol. Page.
                                             Birth.   Death. │
 Addison                                        1672     1719│vi.    147
 Aguesseau                                      1668     1751│iv.      1
 Alembert                                       1717     1783│iii.   101
 Antonio (_see_ Raimondi).                                   │
 Ariosto*                                       1474     1533│iv.     93
 Arkwright                                      1732     1792│v.     181
                                                             │
 Bacon                                          1560     1626│vii.   177
 Banks                                          1743     1820│i.     193
 Barrow                                         1630     1679│iii.    94
 Bentham                                        1748     1832│vii.    97
 Bentley                                        1662     1742│iii.    49
 Black                                          1728     1799│vii.   169
 Blake                                          1598     1657│v.      77
 Boccacio                                       1313     1375│ii.    126
 Bolivar                                        1783     1830│v.     173
 Bossuet                                        1627     1704│i.     113
 Boyle                                          1627     1691│i.      72
 Bradley                                        1693     1762│vi.     68
 Bramante                                       1444     1514│vi.    156
 Brindley                                       1716     1772│vii.    81
 Buchanan                                       1506     1580│i.     129
 Buffon                                         1707     1788│ii.     19
 Buonarotti (_see_ Michael Angelo).                          │
 Burke                                          1730     1797│iii.    33
                                                             │
 Calvin                                         1509     1564│vi.     55
 Canova                                         1757     1822│iii.   165
 Cartwright                                     1743     1823│vi.    102
 Catherine II.                                  1729     1796│vii.   103
 Cervantes                                      1547     1616│iv.    147
 Charles V.                                     1500     1558│iv.    179
 Chatham, Earl of                               1708     1778│vii.    55
 Chaucer                                    doubtful     1400│iii.   176
 Clarendon                                      1609     1673│v.      25
 Claude Lorraine                                1600     1682│ii.    136
 Coke                                           1551     1632│vii.    15
 Colbert                                        1619     1683│iv.    122
 Cook                                           1728     1779│ii.    165
 Copernicus                                     1473     1543│i.      34
 Corneille                                      1606     1684│i.     153
 Corregio                                       1493     1534│i.      57
 Cortez                                         1485     1547│vi.    122
 Cowper                                         1731     1800│v.     189
 Cranmer                                        1489     1536│iii.   141
 Cromwell                                       1599     1658│iv.     11
 Cuvier                                         1769     1832│ii.    150
                                                             │
 Dante                                          1265     1321│i.       1
 Davy                                           1778     1829│i.      11
 Defoe                                          1663     1731│vii.   112
 Delambre                                       1749     1822│iv.    165
 Descartes                                      1596     1650│iv.    189
 Dollond                                        1706     1761│ii.     12
 Drake                                          1545     1591│iv.    170
 Dryden                                         1631     1701│iii.   127
                                                             │
 Elizabeth                                      1533     1603│vi.    177
 Epée, De l’                                    1712     1789│iv.    113
 Erasmus                                        1467     1536│ii.     56
 Erskine                                        1748     1823│iii.     1
 Euler                                          1707     1783│v.     129
                                                             │
 Fénélon                                        1651     1715│i.     137
 Flaxman                                        1755     1826│i.      27
 Franklin                                       1706     1790│iii.    72
 Frederick II.                                  1712     1786│iv.    155
 Fox                                            1749     1806│i.     101
                                                             │
 Galileo                                        1564     1642│iii.   113
 Gibbon                                         1737     1794│vii.    25
 Goethe                                         1749     1832│iv.     46
 Grotius                                        1583     1645│iv.    201
 Gustavus                                       1594     1632│vii.     1
                                                             │
 Hale                                           1609     1676│iii.    66
 Halley                                         1656     1742│i.     161
 Hampden                                        1594     1643│vii.   137
 Handel                                         1684     1759│ii.     10
 Harrison                                       1693     1776│v.     153
 Harvey                                         1578     1657│i.     185
 Henry IV.                                      1553     1610│iii.    41
 Herschel                                       1738     1822│v.     105
 Hobbes                                         1588     1679│vi.     25
 Hogarth                                        1697     1764│iii.   106
 Hume                                           1711     1776│vii.   121
 Hunter                                         1728     1793│iii.    19
                                                             │
 Jefferson                                      1743     1826│vii.   153
 Jenner                                         1749     1823│vi.     11
 Johnson                                        1709     1785│vii.   145
 Jones, Sir W.                                  1746     1794│v.     134
 Jonson                                         1574     1637│iii.   156
                                                             │
 Kepler                                         1571     1630│iii.    59
 Knox                                           1505     1572│vi.     40
 Kosciusko                                      1755     1817│i.      21
                                                             │
 La Grange                                      1736     1813│ii.     88
 La Place                                       1749     1827│ii.     34
 Lavoisier                                      1743     1794│v.       9
 Leibnitz                                       1646     1716│vi.    132
 L’Hôpital                                      1505     1573│v.      85
 Lionardo da Vinci                              1452     1519│iv.     21
 Linnæus                                        1707     1778│iv.     77
 Locke                                          1632     1704│v.      53
 Lorenzo de’Medici                              1448     1492│i.     122
 Loyola                                         1491     1566│vii.    73
 Luther                                         1483     1546│ii.     73
                                                             │
 Mansfield                                      1704     1794│vi.     62
 Marlborough*                                   1650     1722│iv.    104
 Maskelyne                                      1732     1811│vi.     20
 Medici (_see_ Lorenzo).                                     │
 Melancthon                                     1497     1560│vi.     75
 Michael Angelo                                 1475     1564│i.      89
 Milton                                         1608     1674│i.      43
 Molière                                        1622     1673│i.      95
 Montaigne                                      1533     1592│v.     157
 More                                           1480     1535│ii.     25
 Mozart                                         1756     1792│vii.    66
 Murillo                                        1618     1682│iv.    137
                                                             │
 Napoleon                                       1769     1821│iv.     67
 Nelson                                         1758     1805│ii.    141
 Newton                                         1642     1727│i.      79
                                                             │
 Palladio                                       1518     1580│vi.    172
 Paré                                           1509     1590│v.      69
 Pascal                                         1623     1662│ii.     49
 Penn                                           1644     1718│vii.    39
 Perouse, La                                    1741     1788│iii.   135
 Peter I.                                       1672     1725│ii.    183
 Petrarch                                       1304     1374│iii.    25
 Pitt                                           1759     1805│vi.     83
 Pope                                           1688     1744│v.     164
 Porson                                         1759     1808│vi.    108
 Poussin                                        1594     1665│i.     177
 Priestley*                                     1733     1804│iv.     85
                                                             │
 Raimondi                                       1488 doubtful│vii.     9
 Raleigh                                        1552     1618│vi.      1
 Raphael                                        1483     1520│vi.     30
 Ray                                            1628     1705│ii.    160
 Rembrandt                                      1606     1674│iii.   121
 Reynolds                                       1723     1792│v.      35
 Richelieu                                      1586     1642│ii.    107
 Rodney                                         1718     1792│ii.     82
 Romilly                                        1757     1818│v.     111
 Rousseau                                       1712     1778│v.     143
 Rubens                                         1577     1640│ii.     99
                                                             │
 Scaliger, Joseph                               1540     1609│vii.    32
 Schiller                                       1759     1805│vii.    87
 Schwartz                                       1726     1798│iii.    86
 Scott                                          1771     1832│vii.   185
 Selden                                         1584     1654│v.      61
 Shakespear                                     1564     1616│v.     122
 Siddons                                        1755     1831│v.      94
 Smeaton                                        1724     1792│ii.     13
 Smith, Adam                                    1723     1790│vi.     49
 Sobieski                                       1629     1696│iii.   184
 Somers                                         1650     1716│ii.      1
 Spenser                                    doubtful     1599│iv.    194
 Staël, De                                      1766     1817│vi.    161
 Sully                                          1559     1641│i.     169
 Swift                                          1667     1745│v.      45
 Sydenham                                       1034     1689│v.      18
                                                             │
 Tasso                                          1544     1595│iii.   149
 Taylor, Jeremy                                 1613     1667│v.       1
 Thou, De                                       1553     1617│vii.    49
 Titian                                         1480     1576│ii.     63
 Turenne                                        1611     1675│i.      63
 Turgot                                         1727     1781│ii.    175
                                                             │
 Vauban                                         1633     1707│iv.     29
 Vinci (_see_ Lionardo).                                     │
 Voltaire                                       1694     1778│ii.     93
                                                             │
 Washington                                     1732     1799│iv.    128
 Watt                                           1736     1819│i.      55
 Wesley                                         1703     1791│vi.     93
 Wiclif                                         1324     1385│vi.    113
 Wilberforce                                    1759     1833│vii.   162
 Witt, De                                       1625     1672│vii.   129
 William III.                                   1650     1702│iv.     37
 Wollaston                                      1766     1828│ii.    121
 Wren                                           1632     1723│i.     144
                                                             │
 Ximenes                                        1437     1517│vi.    139




                           CLASSIFIED INDEX.


                         STATESMEN AND LAWYERS.

                               _Italian._

                                                  Died
                  Lorenzo de’ Medici              1492

                               _Spanish._

                  Ximenes                         1517
                  Bolivar                         1830

                       _British and_ _American._

                  More                            1535
                  Elizabeth                       1603
                  Raleigh                         1618
                  Coke                            1632
                  Hampden                         1643
                  Cromwell                        1658
                  Clarendon                       1673
                  Hale                            1676
                  Somers                          1716
                  Penn                            1718
                  Chatham                         1778
                  Mansfield                       1794
                  Burke                           1797
                  Washington                      1799
                  Pitt                            1805
                  Fox                             1806
                  Romilly                         1818
                  Erskine                         1823
                  Jefferson                       1826
                  Wilberforce                     1833

                          _Dutch and German._

                  Charles V.                      1558
                  De Witt                         1672
                  William III.                    1702

                               _Russian._

                  Peter I.                        1725
                  Catherine II.                   1796

                               _French._

                  L’Hôpital                       1573
                  Henry IV.                       1610
                  Sully                           1641
                  Richelieu                       1642
                  Colbert                         1683
                  D’Aguesseau                     1751
                  Turgot                          1781


                               SOLDIERS.

                               _British._

                  Blake                           1657
                  Marlborough                     1722
                  Rodney                          1792
                  Nelson                          1805

                     _Germans, Swedes, and Poles._

                  Gustavus Adolphus               1632
                  Sobieski                        1696
                  Frederick II.                   1786
                  Kosciusko                       1817

                               _French._

                  Turenne                         1675
                  Vauban                          1707
                  Napoleon                        1821

                               _Spanish._

                  Cortez                          1547


                              NAVIGATORS.

                               _British._

                  Drake                           1596
                  Cook                            1779

                               _French._

                  La Perouse                      1788


                                DIVINES.

                               _British._

                  Wiclif                          1385
                  Cranmer                         1556
                  Knox                            1572
                  Taylor                          1667
                  Barrow                          1679
                  Wesley.                         1791

                               _German._

                  Luther                          1546
                  Melancthon                      1560
                  Schwartz                        1798

                               _French._

                  Calvin                          1564
                  Bossuet                         1704
                  Fénélon                         1715

                               _Spanish._

                  Loyola                          1566


                            MEN OF LETTERS.

                               _Italian._

                  Dante                           1321
                  Petrarch                        1374
                  Boccacio                        1375
                  Ariosto                         1533
                  Tasso                           1595

                               _British._

                  Chaucer                         1400
                  Buchanan                        1580
                  Spenser                         1599
                  Shakespeare                     1616
                  Bacon                           1626
                  Jonson                          1637
                  Milton                          1674
                  Hobbes                          1679
                  Dryden                          1701
                  Locke                           1704
                  Addison                         1719
                  Defoe                           1731
                  Bentley                         1742
                  Pope                            1744
                  Swift                           1745
                  Hume                            1776
                  Johnson                         1785
                  Adam Smith                      1790
                  Gibbon                          1794
                  Jones                           1794
                  Cowper                          1800
                  Porson                          1808
                  Bentham                         1832
                  Scott                           1832

                               _Spanish_

                  Cervantes                       1616

                          _Dutch and German._

                  Erasmus                         1536
                  Grotius                         1645
                  Schiller                        1805
                  Goethe                          1832

                               _French._

                  Montaigne                       1592
                  Joseph Scaliger.                1609
                  De Thou                         1617
                  Pascal                          1662
                  Molière                         1673
                  Corneille                       1684
                  Rousseau                        1778
                  Voltaire                        1778
                  De Staël                        1817


                           ARTS AND SCIENCES.

                               _Italian._

                  Galileo                         1642

                        _British and American._

                  Harvey                          1657
                  Sydenham                        1689
                  Boyle                           1691
                  Ray                             1705
                  Newton                          1727
                  Halley                          1742
                  Dollond                         1761
                  Bradley                         1762
                  Brindley                        1772
                  Harrison                        1776
                  Franklin                        1790
                  Arkwright                       1792
                  Smeaton                         1792
                  Hunter                          1793
                  Black                           1799
                  Priestley                       1804
                  Maskelyne                       1811
                  Watt                            1819
                  Banks                           1820
                  Cartwright                      1823
                  Jenner                          1823
                  Wollaston                       1828
                  Davy                            1829

                          _German and Swedish_

                  Copernicus                      1543
                  Kepler                          1630
                  Leibnitz                        1716
                  Linnæus                         1778
                  Euler                           1783
                  Herschel                        1822

                               _French._

                  Pare                            1590
                  Descartes                       1650
                  D’Alembert                      1783
                  Buffon                          1788
                  De l’Epée                       1789
                  Lavoisier                       1794
                  La Grange                       1813
                  Delambre                        1822
                  La Place                        1827
                  Cuvier                          1832


                               FINE ARTS.

                               _Italian._

                  Bramante                        1514
                  Lionardo da Vinci               1519
                  Raphael                         1520
                  Corregio                        1534
                  Raimondi                        1540
                  Michael Angelo.                 1564
                  Titian                          1576
                  Palladio                        1580
                  Canova                          1822

                               _British._

                  Wren                            1723
                  Hogarth                         1764
                  Reynolds                        1792
                  Flaxman                         1826
                  Siddons                         1831

                               _Spanish._

                  Murillo                         1682


                          _Dutch and German._

                  Rubens.                         1640
                  Rembrandt                       1674
                  Handel                          1759
                  Mozart                          1792

                               _French._

                  Poussin                         1665
                  Claude                          1682




                          CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.


               Arranged according to the Dates of Death.

                                              Died
                     Dante                    1321
                     Petrarch                 1374
                     Boccacio                 1375
                     Wiclif                   1385

                     Chaucer            about 1400
                     Lorenzo de’ Medici       1492

                     Bramante                 1514
                     Ximenes                  1517
                     Lionardo da Vinci        1519
                     Raphael                  1520
                     Ariosto                  1533
                     Corregio                 1534
                     More                     1535
                     Erasmus                  1536
                     Copernicus               1543
                     Raimondi           after 1540
                     Luther                   1546
                     Cortez                   1547
                     Cranmer                  1536
                     Charles V.               1558
                     Melancthon               1560
                     Calvin                   1564
                     Michael Angelo           1564
                     Loyola                   1566
                     Knox                     1572
                     L’Hôpital                1573
                     Titian                   1576
                     Buchanan                 1580
                     Palladio                 1580
                     Paré                     1590
                     Montaigne                1592
                     Tasso                    1595
                     Drake                    1596
                     Spenser                  1599

                     Elizabeth                1603
                     Scaliger, Joseph         1609
                     Henry IV.                1610
                     Cervantes                1616
                     Shakespear               1616
                     De Thou                  1617
                     Raleigh                  1618
                     Bacon                    1626
                     Kepler                   1630
                     Coke                     1632
                     Gustavus Adolphus        1632
                     Jonson                   1637
                     Rubens                   1640
                     Sully                    1641
                     Richelieu                1642
                     Galileo                  1642
                     Hampden                  1643
                     Grotius                  1645
                     Descartes                1650
                     Selden                   1654
                     Blake                    1657
                     Harvey                   1657
                     Cromwell                 1658
                     Pascal                   1662
                     Poussin                  1665
                     Taylor                   1667
                     De Witt                  1672
                     Molière                  1673
                     Clarendon                1673
                     Rembrandt                1674
                     Milton                   1674
                     Turenne                  1675
                     Hale                     1676
                     Barrow                   1679
                     Hobbes                   1679
                     Claude                   1682
                     Murillo                  1682
                     Colbert                  1683
                     Corneille                1684
                     Sydenham                 1689
                     Boyle                    1691
                     Sobieski                 1696

                     Dryden                   1701
                     William III.             1702
                     Bossuet                  1704
                     Locke                    1704
                     Ray                      1705
                     Vauban                   1707
                     Fénélon                  1715
                     Leibnitz                 1716
                     Somers                   1716
                     Penn                     1718
                     Addison                  1719
                     Marlborough              1722
                     Wren                     1723
                     Peter I.                 1725
                     Newton                   1727
                     Defoe                    1731
                     Bentley                  1742
                     Halley                   1742
                     Pope                     1744
                     Swift                    1745
                     D’Aguesseau              1751
                     Handel                   1759
                     Dollond                  1761
                     Bradley                  1762
                     Hogarth                  1764
                     Brindley                 1772
                     Hume                     1776
                     Harrison                 1776
                     Rousseau                 1778
                     Chatham                  1778
                     Linnæus                  1778
                     Voltaire                 1778
                     Cook                     1779
                     Turgot                   1781
                     D’Alembert               1783
                     Euler                    1783
                     Johnson                  1785
                     Frederic II.             1786
                     Buffon                   1788
                     La Perouse               1788
                     De l’Epée                1789
                     Franklin                 1790
                     Adam Smith               1790
                     Wesley                   1791
                     Arkwright                1792
                     Mozart                   1792
                     Rodney                   1792
                     Reynolds                 1792
                     Smeaton                  1792
                     Hunter                   1793
                     Gibbon                   1794
                     Jones                    1794
                     Lavoisier                1794
                     Mansfield                1794
                     Catherine II.            1796
                     Burke                    1797
                     Schwartz                 1798
                     Black                    1799
                     Washington               1799

                     Cowper                   1800
                     Priestley                1804
                     Nelson                   1805
                     Pitt                     1805
                     Schiller                 1805
                     Fox                      1806
                     Porson                   1808
                     Maskelyne                1811
                     La Grange                1813
                     Kosciusko                1817
                     De Staël                 1817
                     Romilly                  1818
                     Watt                     1819
                     Banks                    1820
                     Napoleon                 1821
                     Canova                   1822
                     Delambre                 1822
                     Herschel                 1822
                     Cartwright               1823
                     Jenner                   1823
                     Erskine                  1823
                     Flaxman                  1826
                     Jefferson                1826
                     La Place                 1827
                     Wollaston                1828
                     Davy                     1829
                     Bolivar                  1830
                     Siddons                  1831
                     Bentham                  1832
                     Cuvier                   1832
                     Scott                    1832
                     Goethe                   1832
                     Wilberforce              1833

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                                LONDON:
                     Printed by W. CLOWES and SONS,
                            Stamford Street.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Changed the date “5570” to “1570” on p. 49.
 2. Corrected the repeated page numbers to volume iv in the ALPHABETICAL
      INDEX on p. 197.
 3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
 4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 6. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
      character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
      curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.