nificent part of the regions of poetry. There is rarely any thing to awaken for one moment the enthusiasm of an aspiring spirit, delighted to contemplate, and ardent to resemble, a model of ideal excellence. Indeed, a higher order of characters would in a great measure have precluded an exercise of her talents in which she evidently delights, and in which she very highly excels-that is, the analyzing of the mixed motives by which persons are often governed, while they are giving themselves credit for being actuated by one simple and perfectly laudable motive: the detecting of all the artifices of dissimulation, and the illustration of all the modes in which selfishness pervades human society. Scarcely has Swift himself evinced a keener scent in pursuit of this sort of game; a sort of game which, we readily acknowledge it is, with certain benevolent limitations, very fair and useful to hunt. And we must acknowledge too, that our author, while passing shrewd, is by no means cynical. She is very expert at contriving situations for bringing out all the qualities of her personages, for contrasting those personages with one another, for creating excellent amusement by their mutual reaction, and for rewarding or punishing their merits or faults. She appears intimately acquainted with the prevailing notions, prejudices, and habits, of the different ranks and classes of society. She can imitate, very satirically, the peculiar diction and slang of each; and has contrived, but indeed it needed very little contrivance, to make the fashionable dialect of the upper ranks sound exceedingly silly. As far as she has had opportunities for observation, she has caught a very discriminative idea of national characters: that of the Irish is delineated with incomparable accuracy and spirit. It may be added, that our author, possessing a great deal of general knowledge, finds many lucky opportunities for producing it, in short arguments and happy allusions.

XII.

HUGH BLAIR.

An Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair, D.D., F.R.S.E., one of the Ministers of the High Church, and Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. By JOHN HILL, LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Humanity in the University.

THERE appears to be some cause for apprehension, lest the extravagant admiration once lavished on Dr. Blair should decline, by degrees, into a neglect that will withhold even common justice. No productions so celebrated at first, as his sermons, have perhaps ever come in so short a time to be so nearly forgotten. Even before the conclusion of the series, the public enthusiasm and avidity had begun to languish, and the last volume seemed only announced in order to attend the funeral of its predecessors. The once delighted readers excused the change of their taste by pretending, and perhaps believing, that a great disparity was observable between the two prior volumes and those which followed them. The alleged inferiority might possibly exist in a certain degree; but the altered feeling was in a much greater degree owing to the recovery of sober sense, from the temporary inebriation of novelty and fashion; and the recovery was accompanied by a measure of that mortification, which seeks to be consoled by prompting a man to revenge himself on what has betrayed him into the folly.

As a critical writer, however, Dr. Blair has suffered much less from the lapse of years. His lectures have found their place and established their character among a highly respectable rank of books, and will always be esteemed valuable as an exercise of correct taste, and an accumulation of good sense, on the various branches of the art of speaking and writing. It was not absolutely necessary they should bear the

marks of genius, it was not indispensable that they should be richly ornamented; but yet we can by no means agree with this biographer, that ornament would have been out of place, and that the dry style which prevails throughout the lectures is the perfection of excellence in writings on criticism. It has been often enough repeated, that such a bare thin style is the proper one for scientific disquisitions, of which the object is pure truth, and the instrument pure intellect: but, in general criticism, so much is to be done through the intervention of taste and imagination, that these faculties have a very great right to receive some tribute, of their own proper kind, from a writer who wishes to establish himself in their peculiar province. And the writings of Dryden, Addison, and Johnson, will amply show what graces may be imparted to critical subjects by a fine imagination, without in the least preventing or perplexing the due exercise of the reader's understanding. We are not so absurd as to reproach Dr. Blair for not having a fine imagination; but we must censure his panegyrist for attempting to turn this want into a merit. Philosophical criticism, indeed, like that of Lord Kames and Dr. Campbell, which attempts to discover the abstract principles, rather than to illustrate the specific rules, of excellence in the fine arts,— and between the object of which, and of Dr. Blair's criticism, there is nearly the same difference as between the office of an anatomist who dissects, or a chemist who decomposes beautiful forms, and an artist who looks at and delineates them, may do well to adhere to a plainer language; but the biographer has judiciously withdrawn all claims, in behalf of Dr. Blair, to the character of a philosophical critic. He has acknowledged and even exposed the slightness of the Professor's observations on the formation of language. He has not, however, said one word of the irreligious inconsistency and folly of professing a zealous adherence to revelation, and at the same time, labouring to deduce the very existence of language, in a very slow progress, from inarticulate noises, the grand original element of speech, as it seems, among the primeval gentlefolk, at the time when they went on all-four, and grubbed up roots, and picked up acorns. Our readers will remember the happy ridicule of a part of this theory, in one of Cowper's letters, in which he humorously teaches one of these clever savages to make the sentence, "Oh, give me apple." They may find the system ably and argumentatively

exploded in Rousseau's "Discourse on the Inequality of Mankind." While this part of the lectures is given up to deserved neglect, we think the work will, on the whole, always maintain its character, as a comprehensive body of sensible criticism, and of very valuable directions in the art of writing. We agree with this biographer, in admiring especially the lectures on the subject of style.

But it is rather on the unrivalled excellence of the Sermons that Dr. Hill seems inclined to found the assurance of Dr. Blair's celebrity in future times. In order to persuade ourselves into the same opinion, we have been reading some of the most noted of those performances. And they possess some obvious merits, of which no reader can be insensible. The first is, perhaps, that they are not too long. It is not impertinent to specify the first, because we can put it to the consciences of our readers, whether, in opening a volume of sermons, their first point of inspection relative to any one which they are inclined to choose for its text or title, is not to ascertain the length. The next recommendation of the Doctor's sermons, is a very suitable, though scarcely ever striking, introduction, which leads directly to the business, and opens into a very plain and lucid distribution of the subject. Another is a correct and perspicuous language; and it is to be added, that the ideas are almost always strictly pertinent to the subject. This, however, forms but a very small part of the applause which was bestowed on these sermons during the transient day of their fame. They were then considered by many as examples of true eloquence; a distinction never perhaps attributed, in any other instance, to performances marked by such palpable deficiencies and faults.

*

In the first place, with respect to the language, though the selection of words is proper enough, the arrangement of them in the sentence is often in the utmost degree stiff and artificial. It is hardly possible to depart further from any resemblance to what is called a living, or spoken style, which is the proper diction at all events for popular addresses, if not for all the departments of prose composition. Instead of the thought throwing itself into words, by a free, instantaneous, and almost unconscious action, and passing off in that easy form, it is pretty apparent there was a good deal of handicraft employed in getting ready proper cases and trusses, of various but carefully measured lengths and figures, to put the thoughts

into, as they came out, in very slow succession, each of them cooled and stiffened to numbness in waiting so long to be dressed. Take, for example, such sentences as these: "Great has been the corruption of the world in every age. Sufficient ground there is for the complaints made by serious observers, at all times, of abounding iniquity and folly." "For rarely, or never, is old age contemned, unless when, by vice or folly, it renders itself contemptible." "Vain, nay often dangerous, were youthful enterprises, if not conducted by aged prudence." "If, dead to these calls, you already languish in slothful inaction," &c. "Smiling very often is the aspect, and smooth are the words of those who inwardly are the most ready to think evil of others." "Exempt, on the one hand, from the dark jealousy of a suspicious mind, it is no less removed, on the other, from that easy credulity which," &c. "Formidable, I admit, this may justly render it to them who have no inward fund," &c. Though such employments of fancy come not under the same description with those which are plainly criminal, yet wholly unblameable they seldom are." "With less external majesty it was attended, but is, on that account, the more wonderful, that under an appearance so simple, such great events were covered."

66

There is also a perpetual recurrence of a form of the sentence, which might be occasionally graceful, or tolerable, when very sparingly adopted, but is extremely unpleasing when it comes often; we mean that construction in which the quality or condition of the agent or subject is expressed first, and the agent or subject itself is put to bring up the latter clause. For instance, "Pampered by continual indulgence, all our passions will become mutinous and headstrong. "Practised in the ways of men, they are apt to be suspicious of design and fraud," &c. "Injured or oppressed by the world, he looks up to a judge who will vindicate his cause."

In the second place, there is no texture in the composition. The sentences appear often like a series of little independent propositions, each satisfied with its own distinct meaning, and capable of being placed in a different part of the train, without injury to any mutual connexion, or ultimate purpose, of the thoughts. The ideas relate to the subject generally, without specifically relating to one another. They all, if we may so speak, gravitate to one centre, but have no mutual attraction among themselves. The mind must often dismiss