With these recommendations, aided by the author's repu tation as an elegant critic, and by his acquaintance with persons of the highest note, the book became fashionable; it was circulated that Lord Mansfield had read some of the sermons to their Majesties; peers and peeresses without number were cited, as having read and admired; till at last it was almost a mark of vulgarity not to have read them, and many a lie was told to escape this imputation, by persons who had not yet enjoyed the advantage. Grave elderly ministers of much severer religious views than Dr. Blair, were, in sincere benevolence, glad that a work had appeared, which gave a chance for religion to make itself heard among the dissipated and the great, to whom ordinary sermons, and less polished treatises of piety, could never find access. Dainty young sprigs of theology, together with divers hopeful young men and maidens, were rejoiced to find that Christian truth could be attired in a much nicer garb than that in which it was exhibited in Beveridge, or in the Morning Exercises at Cripplegate.

If the huzzas attending the triumphal entry of these sermons had not been quite so loud, the present silence concerning them might not have appeared quite so profound. And if there had been a little more vigour in the thought, and any thing like nature and ease in the language, they might have emerged again into a respectable and permanent share of public esteem. But, as the case stands, we think they are gone or going irrevocably to the vault of the Capulets. Such a deficiency of ratiocination, combined with such a total want of original conception, is in any book incompatible with its staying long in the land of the living. And, as to the style, also, of these performances, there were not wanting, even in the hey-day and riot of their popularity, some doctors, cunning in such matters, who thought the dead monotony of the expression symptomatic of a disease that must end fatally.

We should apologize to our readers for having gone on thus far with our remarks, without coming to the work which has given the occasion for introducing them.

This volume has disappointed our expectation of finding a particular account of the life of Dr. Blair, enlivened with anecdotes illustrative of his character. Nearly half of it is occupied not in criticizing, but actually in epitomizing, the Doctor's writings, a labour of which it is impossible to comprehend the necessity or use, except to make up a handsome

looking volume. Several of the most noted of the sermons are individually dissected, in a tedious manner, and compared with several of the sermons on the same subjects, in the volumes of some of the celebrated French preachers, but without any critical remarks of consequence. The other half of

the book does relate mainly to the man himself, but is written much more in the manner of a formal academical eulogy, than of any thing like a lively and simple memoir. It is not florid, but it is as set and artificial as the composition of Dr. Blair himself; and indeed seems a very good imitation, or, at least, resemblance. Except in the acknowledgment of one or two slight weaknesses, as we are taught to deem them, in the Doctor's character, it is a piece of laboured and unvaried panegyric, carried on from page to page, with a gravity which becomes at length perfectly ludicrous. Hardly one circumstance is told in the language of simple narrative; every sentence is set to the task of applause. Even Dr. Blair himself, whose vanity was extreme, would have been almost satisfied, if such an exhibition of his qualities and talents had been written in time to have been placed in his view.

To avoid several pages of extracts, we must remark, that Dr. Blair was something of a beau, and very fond of novel reading. Every reader will be surprised and provoked to find so very small a share of personal history. It is well known that we are not in general to look for many incidents and adventures in the life of a scholar and clergyman: but we should have supposed that a period of eighty-three years might have furnished more matters of fact, than what could be comprised in a quarter of that number of pages. Those which are here afforded, consist of little beside the notice and dates of the two or three more obscure preferments of Dr. Blair, on his road to what is described the summit of ecclesiastical success and honour, the High Church of Edinburgh; his appointment as Professor of Belles Lettres; his failure of being placed in the situation of Principal of the University of Edinburgh, which he expected to receive from the pure gratitude and admiration of his country, without any solicitation; and, the important circumstance of preaching his last sermon. This circumstance, will be henceforward inserted, we trust, with its precise date, in all chronicles of the memorable things of past times; for it is enlarged on here, as if it had been one of the most momentous events of the century. He died De

cember 27th, 1800, in the eighty-third year of his age, and the fifty-ninth of his ministry.

The Doctor's successful progress through life was on the whole adapted to gratify, one should think almost to satiety, that love of fame which his biographer declares, in so many words, to have been his ruling passion; nor had the passion which, Dr. Hill does not say, was second in command, the love of money, any great cause to complain.

We sincerely wish to persuade ourselves that, with all his labour of encomium, this Dr. Hill has done less than justice to his subject. For if we are to take his representation as accurate and complete, we have the melancholy spectacle of a preacher of religion, whose grand and uniform object in all his labours was advancement in the world. This is clearly the only view in which his admiring friend contemplates those labours. The preacher's success is constantly dwelt on with delight; but this success always refers to himself, and his own worldly interests, not to any religious influence exerted on the minds of his inferior, and afterwards, his splendid, auditories. His evangelical office is regarded as merely a professional thing, in which it was his happiness to surpass his competi tors, to attain the highest reputation, to be placed in a conspicuous station, to obtain a comparative affluence, to be most sumptuously flattered by the great, and to be the intimate friend of Hume, Smith, Home, Ferguson, and Robertson. There is hardly a word that attributes to the admired preacher any concern about promoting the Christian cause, the kingdom of Christ, or the conversion of wicked men,-in short, any one of those sublime objects for which alone the first magnanimous promulgators of Christianity preached, and laboured, and suffered. It is easy to see that, though Dr. Blair's reputed eloquence had been made the means of imparting the light, and sanctity, and felicity, of religion, to ten thousand poor wicked peasants, yet if he had not sought and acquired high distinction in polished society, his learned biographer would have been utterly disinclined to celebrate him, as deeming him either a grovelling spirit, incapable of aiming at a high object, or the victim of malignant stars that forbade him to attain it. We could make plenty of citations to acquit ourselves of injustice in this representation: there are many passages of a quality similar to the following:

"His Lordship," (Chief Baron Orde,)" in his official capacity, was a

regular hearer of the Doctor's sermons, while his court sat, and there was no one better qualified to judge of the preacher's merit. This merit, too, was never more conspicuous than when it was honoured with the approbation of the venerable Judge. Dr. Blair's literary reputation was there thoroughly established. And the unwearied labour he underwent in his closet, while composing his sermons, was repaid by the admiration of a discerning audience."-P. 187.

The Doctor is commonly reputed to have had a tolerably sufficient attachment to pelf. He might have higher motives for clinging so fast to the patronage of Lord Melville, but it is irksome to hear of his being "so much indebted to that patron's munificence," with the addition of the fulsome cant that, "every favour which he received (from this patron) was multa dantis cum laude, and did honour to the hand that bestowed it. This patron is presumed to have been at the bottom of the pension of £200 granted from the public treasury.

In reading so many things about patronage, and munificence, and protection, and advancement, and success, it cannot fail to occur to any reader of sense to ask, with a sentiment very indignant in one reference, or very compassionate in the other-If all this was necessary to Dr. Blair, with a very small family, and with all the internal means attributed to him of advancing his interests, what is to become of ever so many hundred hapless clergymen, in Scotland and else where, who have large families, slender livings, and no General Frazers, Chief Barons, and Lord Melvilles to " protect" them, no means of getting into the High Church of Edinburgh, no chance of attracting the notice of Royalty, and a pension of £200, and no hope of collecting tribute by means of a literary reputation "extending beyond the bounds of the British empire ?"

XIII.

DAVID HUME

Account of the Life and Writings of David Hume, Esq. By THOMAS EDWARD RITCHIE.

THIS is by no means so ample a memoir as the number of pages would seem to indicate. The last eighty pages are occupied with Hume's publication in French, relative to the affair with Rousseau; a translation of this pamphlet is inserted in the narrative, accompanied by several additional letters on the same business, and engrossing more than a hundred pages; and about one hundred and thirty pages are filled with criticism on Hume's writings, eight pages that were printed in the first edition of his "Essays," but in the later ones omitted by the author, and a critique on Wilkie's “Epigoniad," sent by Hume to the "Critical Review." Much less than half the book, therefore, is occupied with what is strictly biographical, even if we include a considerable number of his letters to some of his distinguished friends, especially Dr. Robertson. In so much of the volume as we owe to the pen of Mr. Ritchie, we do not find occasion for any great measure of either praise or blame. It is written with perspicuity, in a style not clumsy, but not remarkable for elegance. The detail of the few events of Hume's life would be sufficiently orderly, if there appeared less eagerness to seize and dilate every circumstance that can be introduced as an episode. A character of sense and independence is visible throughout; and the present is one of the very few biographers who are free from the weakness of enthusiastically admiring, or the hypocrisy of affecting so to admire, the mixed and imperfect subject of their pages. If he could have brought himself to the obsequiousness of promising to laud his subject up to the pitch of eulogy which would have gratified the delicate ears of Hume's living relations, he might have been ena