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LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.

From the New Quarterly Review.

tunate class, an usher at a school, a walk of life he quitted in disgust. "Lobo's History of Abyssinia" is among his early literary works it is a translation. In 1734, after quitting this employ, he marries a widow, a person of no personal recommendations, but one of more than ordinary mental powers, and one who succeeded in obtaining complete rule over his heart and affections for sixteen years, and after whose decease he ever kept the day of her death as a fast, and offered up prayers for her soul. We have witnessed a singu lar adherence to this habit of praying for the dead in many exalted minds. We trust they were personally benefited by it; but the souls of the dead are fixed in the bodements of glory or gloom, from which no prayer can rescue.

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Men of Letters of the time of George the Third. By LORD BROUGHAM. London: Colburn, 1846. WE are again indebted to the kindness of Lord Brougham for the proof-sheets of the work before us. It commences with the life of Dr. Johnson. No greater life does the period of George the Third contain; and, whether viewed as moralist, poet, critic, biographer, or lexicographer, Johnson is the most distinguished man of his day. Many may hesitate to assign him the second of these wreaths; but however slight in quantity, his poetry has in it a pith and vigor that well indicates to what points he had the power to ascend, had not the stern realities of existence destroyed the imaginative, and compelled him to fix his attention on In the spring of 1737 Johnson came to London, the real and practical objects in which lay his and commenced a literary life. Amid a mass of bread. Few things affect the mind more than the other matters he published his London" and desolation of poverty that visited most of the illus-"The Vanity of Human Wishes." Pope genertrious wits of that period: from it the Titan of the ously expressed his admiration of the "London." age was not exempt; and this moral and benefi- This period was, however, one of fearful struggle cent Prometheus, while pouring consolation to with him for the means of livelihood, as the corothers, was heart-devoured by the vulture of care respondence with Cave sadly indicates. Johnson and anxiety preying on the immortal liver. John-"impransus," was the signature to one letter, son was born on the 18th of September, 1709, at while he was translating "Fra Paolo." The Lichfield. His father was a bookseller. After a story of the "Rasselas," written in the evenings somewhat desultory education, he entered, at nine- of the week of his mother's death, to defray her teen years of age, Pembroke College, Oxford. funeral expenses and debts-that sacrifice to filial While there he was in great pecuniary difficulty, duty, which God remembered well, produced the and ultimately left it without a degree, though he sad and suffering son only one hundred pounds! continued to the close of life to honor his Alma The terrible affliction of his life preying on him Mater, and spent many of his happiest days in col- with the deeper affection of the heart. We have lege society. It must, however, be noted, that to direct the attention of our readers to the beautiJohnson never assumed the title of Doctor, which ful notice Lord Brougham has taken of this affection, was tardily bestowed upon him after the publica- and the comparison of an analogous instance at p. 16. tion of his dictionary, but wrote himself, on his "Great wits to madness sure are near allied, card," Mr. Johnson" to the last.

That morbid, or rather morbific, affection that at And small partitions do their bounds divide," times superinduced a torpor of faculties, began at is too true in the morbid tendency remarkable in an early period of even his college life; and this Collins, Johnson, and Newton. Among the contrigiant in intellect always labored under the fearful butions of Johnson to the Gentleman's Magazine," impression that he should become insane. It is were the debates in parliament. Johnson never more than probable, that the religious tendency of designed that these should be considered as actual Johnson's mind alone prevented him from suicide; reports of the proceedings in the house, but many for religion in a strong mind produces that requisite persons have viewed them in that light. The acbalance of the feelings that is essential to the right quaintance with Savage during his first five years use of them, subduing the intellectual and imagin- in London, was in all respects unfortunate for ative within due limits, and educing the moral, re- Johnson. Few, however, can do other than symflective, and spiritual faculties. Law's Serious pathize with the generous defence of Savage when Call to a Holy Life," (a work the writer has found dead, or feel other than astonished at the daring of admirable influence, notwithstanding its quaint-attack on his unfeeling mother. Lady Macclesfield ness,) has the honor of convincing the judgment was seventy years of age when the life of Savage of Johnson of the necessity for religion. He came to it to scoff, and remained to pray. It is not every book that brings a Johnson to his knees. The extent of Johnson's classical acquirements as a Latin versifier was certainly not equal to Milton's; but the suffrage of Pope on this question weighs with us but triflingly, since the brilliant bard knew but indifferently either Greek or Latin in a critical sense. Johnson became at first one of that unfor

CXII.

LIVING AGE.

VOL. X. 1

appeared, and the chief scandal of that life had been fifty years previous; so that we fully concur with Lord Brougham, that the escape of Johnson from action for libel is somewhat marvellous. The aged mother was therefore probably too conscious of the truth, if not of all, of much, that Johnson had written; still so aged a woman is not the light in which, from that life, we are prepared to regard Savage's mother.

The miscellaneous character of Johnson's labors, reputed to have been practised on him relative to as enumerated by Lord Brougham, is quite astound- the disposal of her property, Johnson would probaing during the twenty-five years of his London life, bly have approved much less: but surely he could but we doubt not is far below the truth. Yet how not have loved Mrs. Thrale, to which cause Lord inadequate the remuneration. "The Vanity of Brougham, and we own with some appearance of Human Wishes" produced him fifteen guineas! justice, appears to have assigned his irate feelings The "Irene" failed from want of dramatic in- on her marriage with Piozzi. But we entertain terest; and it is curious to see Johnson and Gold- little doubt that Madame Piozzi continued to sink smith both experiencing the vanity of dress in no lower and lower in the scale of society by her moderate degree. The author of " Irene," Sam- marriage, and at length found herself almost enuel Johnson, in a scarlet and gold-laced waistcoat tirely surrounded by mimes and musicians. We and gold-laced hat, fancying himself induing the are far from insinuating that some of the highest fitting costume for a dramatic author. The minds of our era are not to be found among these; "Rambler" appeared in 1750 and 1751. It will but the general class is unmixedly bad and frivolive in some of its papers while the language lous, and mere pretenders to intellectuality. The lasts. The "Idler" saw the light in 1758 and life of Johnson grew more pleasant and conven1759. They were nearly all Johnson's own pa- tional during his latter years, and tours in various pers, unsupported, as Addison was in his "Specta- parts enabled him to obtain deeper insight into tor," by numerous friends. He announced the mankind, which the "Rasselas" and many other Dictionary in 1747. His dispute with Lord Ches- of his works fail to exhibit. In 1783, when 74, terfield at its outset is not favorable to Johnson's he suffered from a paralytic stroke. Under amenity of disposition, a faculty in which he did this affliction he was still himself in a wonderful not abound; nor if the story of a small pecuniary degree. Conscious of the blow, from a confusion gift from the earl be true, which he neglected and indistinctness in his head for half a minute, he to acknowledge, in all respects to his seldom prayed for the preservation of his faculties, and impeached veracity. The stipulated price was then turned his devotions into Latin verse, to see £1575; but the expenses of amanuenses for a that he was equal to an effort of order. How long period of time, left him but a small gainer similar to the death of Wollaston, who, hearing by it. his friends speak of him as dead, motioned for a pencil, and continued to mark strokes on the paper fainter and fainter, until he expired! He recovered from the immediate effects of this first blow, but did not get his speech until the second day. For a year he remained in a weakly state, but not, however, without seeing his friends, and going out at times, but died on the 18th December, 1784, "having suffered," says Lord B., "far less from apprehension of the event than his former habit of regarding it with an extreme horror might have led us to expect." The following observations of Lord Brougham on his understanding are as sound as comprehensive :

In 1759 he lost his mother; in 1752 his wife. He then entered on that singular line of conventional existence with Miss Williams, Mrs. Desmoulines, and Mr. Levett, an apothecary, all of whom were materially aided by his benevolence, and the second only survived Johnson. His lines on this humble companion, Levett, show both -affection and imagination. Johnson had struggled on unstained by any act of meanness, subserviency, or dishonesty to fifty-four years of age. At this period Lord Bute incurred the rancor of the "North Briton" to no small extent, by conferring on the first of English lexicographers a pension from the crown of £300 per annum. How fearful an influence does party exercise! Men like Wilkes and Churchill grudging the veteran Johnson this £300 per annum, which, given earlier, had enriched England with many a noble and matured production, and enabled Johnson to write something nearer to the perfect model of an English dictionary. Wilkes did not fail to turn upon him the full force of his own definitions of a pensioner-" a slave of state paid to obey a master," and a pension, " pay, given to a state hireling for treason to his country." Both are as erroneous and prejudiced as possible, and certainly conduce in no respect to the credit of the writer of a dictionary, who ought to be unimpassioned. It is to us no sufficient answer to say, that the twenty-two years of his life that followed after the grant of the pension did not produce the same relative portion of high literary performance with the preceding twenty-five. Johnson had worked too hard to work long; his malady, too, gained on him. The "Lives of the Poets," however, his master-piece, was produced, and over this period his two pam-ceiving, either by inaccurate observation, by unrephlets, "Taxation no Tyranny," and "On the Falkland Isles." In 1765 he commenced his intimacy with Mrs. Thrale. The circumstances of this intimacy, and the marriage with Piozzi of this lady, are not dwelt upon by Lord Brougham with the same degree of bitterness that many persons have evinced. Of the character of Mrs. Piozzi and of her subsequent passion, we presume we must call it, for Conway, the actor, and of the deception

"The prevailing character of his understanding was the capacity of taking a clear view of any subject presented to it, a determination to ascertain the object of search, and a power of swiftly perceiving it. His sound sense made him pursue steadily what he saw was worth the pursuit, piercing at once the husk to reach the kernel, rejecting the dross which men's errors and defects of perspicacity or infirmity of judgment had spread over the ore, and rejecting it without ever being tempted by its superficial and worthless hues to regard it with any tolerance. Had he been as knowing as he was acute, had his vision been as extensive as it was clear within narrow limits, he would only have gained by this resolute determination not to be duped, and would not have been led into one kind of error by his fear of falling into another. But it must be allowed, that even in his most severe judgments he was far oftener right than wrong; and that on all ordinary questions, both of opinion and of conduct, there were few men whom it was more hopeless to attempt de

flecting appeals to the authority, whether of great names or of great numbers, by cherished prepossessions little examined, or by all the various forms which the cant of custom or of sentiment is wont to assume. Out of this natural bent of his understanding arose as naturally the constant habit of referring all matters, whether for argument or for opinion, to the decision of plain common sense. His reasonings were short; his topics were homely;

his way to the conclusion lay in a straight line, the weight of a style like Dr. Johnson's is somethe shortest between any two points; and though what oppressive, and that little meaning is at times he would not deviate from it so as to lose himself, concealed under pompous expression: still, even he was well disposed to look on either side, that this style without matter is better than that fearful he might gather food for his contemptuous and negation of both that so many modern writers exsomewhat sarcastic disposition, laughing at those hibit. The facility of Johnson's composition may whom he saw bewildered, rather than pitying be gathered from the fact, that he composed fortytheir errors. To the desire of short and easy eight printed pages of the life of Savage in one proof, and the love of accuracy when it could be night. On these matters of facility of composition, obtained, and to which he sometimes sacrificed persons must necessarily rely on the testimony of truth by striving after exact reasoning on subjects personal friends of one another. The following that admit not of it, we may ascribe this great remarks on Johnson, who was a stiff and uncomfondness for common arithmetic, one of the very promising Tory and a Jacobite, may not, however, few sciences with which he was acquainted. be far from truth. With the vices of such an understanding and such a disposition he was sufficiently imbued, as well as with its excellencies. He was very dogmatical -very confident, even presumptuous; not very tolerant. He was also apt to deal in truisms, and often inclined, when he saw through them himself, to break down an argument, sometimes overwhelming it with the might of loud assertion, sometimes cutting it short by the edge of a sneer. Seeing very clearly within somewhat narrow limits, he easily believed there was nothing beyond them to see; and fond of reducing each argument to its simplest terms and shortest statement, he frequently applied a kind of reasoning wholly unsuited to the subject matter, pronounced decisions of which the dispute was not susceptible, and fell into errors which more knowing inquirers and calmer disputants, without his perspicacity or his powers of combining, would easily and surely have avoided."

The remarks on the style, the well-known Roman, of our great lexicographer, we should scarcely have been led to anticipate from a writer so close to the model of Addison and Robertson as Lord Brougham.

"Yet he so greatly loved established things, so deeply venerated whatever had the sanction of time, that he both shut his eyes to many defects in his view consecrated by age, and unreasonably transferred to mere duration the respect which reason itself freely allows to whatever has the testimony of experience in its favor.

"The established church, the established government, the established order of things in general, found in him an unflinching supporter, because a sincere and warm admirer; and giving his confidence entirely, he either was content to suspend his reason in a great majority of instances, or, at least, to use it only for the purpose of attaining the conclusion in favor of existing institutions, and excluding all farther argument touching their foundations."

His prejudices were certainly strong, both with respect to the French and Americans. His horror of infidels we like, and wish only that the feeling were more general. Johnson did not possess any knowledge of the exact sciences; hence in his criticism on Newton, whom he undertook to review, he only indicated his own ignorance. His Dictionary, however faulty, and it is most remarkably so in etymons, and faulty where we should least have anticipated it, even in Latin and Greek derivations, is-notwithstanding the AngloSaxon deficiencies, which are still greater-a work of wonderful merit.

"The peculiarities of his style may be traced to the same source-the characteristic features of his understanding and disposition. What he perceived clearly, he clearly expressed. His diction was distinct; it was never involved; it kept ideas in their separate and proper places; it did not We have stated our high opinion of the "Lives abound in synonymes and repetition; it was of the Poets." The omission of Goldsmith is manly, and it was measured, despising meretri- certainly singular; and we quite agree with the cious and trivial ornament, avoiding all slovenli- noble lord before us in assigning very high merit ness, rejecting mere surplusage, generally through- to that of Pope, of Dryden, and of Cowley. He out very concise, often needlessly full, and almost is also, all things considered, wonderfully impartial always elaborate; the art of the workman being in his judgment on Milton. With regard to permade manifest in the plainly artificial workman- sonal character and habits, we think there is minship. A love of hard and learned words prevailed gled matter of praise and censure. Dogmatic he throughout; and a fondness for balanced periods most assuredly was, and often dogmatically wrong; was its special characteristic. But there was often as often insufferably right, repeatedly judicious, great felicity in the expression, occasionally a firm, and strenuous in opinions. Benevolence he pleasing cadence in the rhythm, generally an epi- possessed in a remarkable degree; and though his grammatic turn in the language as well as in the morals exhibited much to regret, from that feveridea. Even where the workmanship seemed most ish knowledge he ever appeared to possess, to to bias the material, and the word craft to be ex- investigate the feelings at heart of even the most ercised needlessly, and the diction to run to waste, depraved, and which often led him into that there was never any feebleness to complain of, and society, still was he sound at heart, and regretted always something of skill and effect to admire. that, knowing his duty well, his knowledge and The charm of nature was ever wanting, but the practice were not equal. Lord Brougham to us presence of great art was undeniable. Nothing does not appear, in the main, to have liked Johnwas of the careless aspect which the highest of son, who was certainly a hearty hater; but the artists ever give their master-pieces-the produce concluding paragraph of his life is as generous as of elaborate but concealed pains; yet the strong it is just. hand of an able workman was always marked; and it was observed, too, that he disdained to hide from us the far less labor which he had much more easily bestowed."

We perfectly agree with Lord Brougham that

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He was friendly, and actively so, in the greatest degree; he was charitable beyond what even prudential considerations might justify; as firmly as he believed the Gospel, so constantly did he practise its divine maxim, that it is more blessed

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to give than to receive.' His sense of justice was strict and constant; his love of truth was steady and unbroken in all matters, as well little as great; nor did any man ever more peremptorily deny the existence of white lies: for he justly thought that when a habit of being careless of the truth in trifling things once has been formed, it will become easily, nay, certainly applicable to things of moment. His habitual piety, his sense of his own imperfections, his generally blameless conduct in the various relations of life, has been already sufficiently described, and has been illustrated in the preceding narrative. He was a good man as he was a great man; and he had so firm a regard for virtue, that he wisely set much greater store by his worth than by his fame." (p. 85.)

The next life before us is Adam Smith. After a brief summary on economical science, commencing with Antonio Bandini, of Sienna, who in the year 1737 recommended to the Grand Duke of Tuscany a free trade in corn, and reviewing De Gournay, De Quesnay, and others, we have Adam Smith introduced: he was born in 1723. Smith, having received the rudiments of education in Scotland, entered Baliol College, Oxford. He remained at that university seven years. Oxford did not, however, rise higher in his estimation by residence, and probably, as Lord Brougham remarks, inhibiting him from reading Hume's "Treatise on Human Nature" did not much mend his dislike. In 1748 he removed to Edinburgh, and then became acquainted with most of the celebrated men of the day. Glasgow offered him the Professorship of Logic; but he soon exchanged it for that of Moral Philosophy. He taught moral philosophy for twelve years; but of these discoveries we have no remains. He was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review in 1755. His "Theory of Moral Sentiments" made its appearance in 1759, and to this was appended a "Dissertation on the Origin of Languages." He resigned his professorship in 1763, to attend the Duke of Buccleuch upon his travels. On this tour he made the acquaintance of various learned continental scholars; and among others, one whose pursuits were analogous to his own, Quesnay. He returned to England; and in 1766 his celebrated work, “The Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," made its appearance. Hume lived to see it, and to approve it. He became shortly after a Commissioner of Customs-an appointment certainly by no means suited to him, and ill chosen. In 1788 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow. That university conferred on him, in 1762, the degree of LL.D. The duties of his office in the Customs were extremely laborious; and no doubt the influence of these dull details affected the powers of a mind that might otherwise have produced a work to rival his "Opus Magnum." He died in 1790, and the account given in Hutton of his last interview with his friends is highly interesting. Great men mislike to see their immature productions outlive them, and Adam Smith made his friends promise that his should not survive their author; and consequently all his other writing, comprising eighteen folio volumes of MS., were destroyed, excepting his "Speculative History of Astronomy.'

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Lord Brougham's general summary of his character and acquirements is extremely fair.

"The true picture of the great author's intellectual character is presented by his writings; and of the depth, the comprehensiveness, the general

accuracy of his views on the various subjects to which his mind was bent, there can be but one opinion. His understanding was enlarged, and it was versatile; his sagacity, when he applied himself deliberately to inquiry or to discussion, was unerring; his information was extensive and correct; his fancy was rich and various; his taste, formed upon the purest models of antiquity, was simple and chaste. His integrity was unimpeachable, and the warmth of his affections knew no chill, even when the languor of age and the weight of ill-health was upon him; his nature was kindly in the greatest degree, and his benevolence was extensive, leading him to indulge in acts of private charity, pushed beyond his means, and concealed with the most scrupulous delicacy towards its objects. Stern votaries of religion have complained of his deficiencies in piety, chiefly because of his letter upon the death of his old and intimate friend, Mr. Hume; but no one can read the frequent and warm allusions, with which his works abound, to the moral government of the world, to reliance upon the All-wise Disposer, to the hopes of a future state, and not be convinced that his mind was deeply sensible to devout impressions. Nay, even as to his estimate of Mr. Hume's character, we are clearly entitled to conclude that he regarded his friend as an exception to the rule that religion has a powerful and salutary influence on morals, because he has most forcibly stated his opinion, that whenever the principles of religion which are natural to it are not perverted or corrupted, the world justly places a double confidence in the rectitude of the religious man's behavior.'" (p. 120)

Few persons were more opposite than Johnson and Smith. Johnson loved argument-engrossed conversation. Smith sat and watched. He was one of the most absent men conceivable; few more abstracted from common objects.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments" contains much beautiful writing; and Lord Brougham has selected some of the choicest morceaux. We own the notice which we subjoin rather amused us, when we read it.

"How well has he painted the man of systein, and how many features of this portrait have we recognized in Mr. Bentham, and others of our day! 'He is apt to be very wise in his own conceit, and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely, in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces on a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion beside that which the hand impresses upon them; but that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of action of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If these principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder. For a man to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once and in spite of all

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