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tain: about the middle of March he experienced, while at dinner, a difficulty of respiration and deglutition; and after some fluctuations of his complaint, which arose from muscular debility, pains in the head and limbs came on, and were followed by brain fever and delirium; his case became hopeless, and he expired in a state of insensibility on the 30th of May, and was buried in the parish church of Hampstead, on the 4th of June, 1832.

We have already exhausted all the space we had to spare, and perhaps even too long wearied the attention of our readers; we must therefore decline any formal summary of the varied excellencies and characteristics of Sir James Mackintosh's mind, which may be sufficiently gathered from the preceding narration; though we must lament the absence of all that personal recollection, and social and domestic intercourse, could have added to enrich the pages of his biography. This is a defect that we trust the attachment and veneration of his friends will supply; in the mean time, we think that we cannot better conclude, than in applying the same language in which he recorded the merits of the great Leader of the Opposition, to himself: " He will most certainly command the unanimous reverence of future generations by his pure sentiments towards the Commonwealth; by his zeal for the civil and religious rights of all men; by his liberal principles, favourable to mild government, to the unfettered exercise of the human faculties, and the progressive civilization of mankind; by his love for a country of which the well-being and greatness were indeed inseparable from his own glory, and by his profound reverence for that free constitution which he was universally admitted to understand better than any other man of his age, both in an exactly legal, and in a comprehensively philosophical sense.'

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DIARY OF A LOVER OF LITERATURE.

BY THOMAS GREEN, ESQ.

(Continued from p. 253.)

1804.

Nov. 15. Kotzebue, in his Travels to Paris, mentions that Madame Talma, who was a fellow-prisoner with Madame Roland, relates that the latter spent two nights before her execution in playing on the harpsichord but that the airs she struck, and her manner of playing, was so strange, so striking, and so frightful, that the sounds will never escape her memory:

Dec. 1. In the review in the Literary Journal of Brougham's Colonial Policy, No. 9, they speak of him as a writer in the Edinburgh Review, and as a youth of great promise.

Dec. 16. Finished Wakefield's Life. His fancy was fine, his sensibility exquisite, his taste delicious, and his language combining an exuberant flow, with apposite felicity, beyond any I ever met with: but I have no opinion of his judgment; his distinguishing virtues were mischievous for want of discretion, and though artless, candid, and at the bottom highly amiable, I am not surprised that he appeared a malicious and dangerous incendiary in the Court of King's Bench. I cannot read his political works myself without a violent indignation. His epistolary effusions are very happy; though he sets out with broadly stating his incessant thirst of knowledge, he afterwards mentions periodical fits of indolence. He ac

knowledges too a peevishness of temper and frowardness of mind. The endeavour which he makes to found the authenticity of the Old Testament on the New, has always appeared to me a very injudicious and suspicious inversion. He more than once explicitly and emphatically states, that the only foundation of morality is Revelation; this is strange, and evinces how far a favourite notion may monopolize the mind. Parr, in his view of Wakefield's literary character, thinks less highly of his critical abilities (in the pedantic sense of the term) than I should have supposed. Of classical criticism, in that sense, I know nothing, but certainly nothing can be more weak or absurd than his favourite emendation in " As you like it."

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Dec. 22. Dined at Doctor Williams's. Many interesting anecdotes from Mr. C. Williams. Dunning, whose debauched habits often made him late, came shuffling into Court at half past nine. Lord Mansfield was very vexed. "Do you know what hour it is, Mr. Dunning?" Mr. D. pulling out his watch, "Half past nine, my Lord." I have been here an hour, Mr. Dunning." "Then, my Lord, we have been equally irregular, you half an hour too soon, and I half an hour too late." -Dunning had been strongly contesting a point of law, and urging Lord Mansfield to revise his opinion. "Mr. Dunning, I apprehend, I sit here, by his Majesty's gracious permission, to decide what is the law-at this rate I had better go home and burn my books."-" You had better by half go home and read them," said Dunning aside, but pretty loud. Lord Mansfield, after having examined the two old Mr. Elms, respecting their modes of life, and having applied the answer of the first sarcastically to Dunning, but receiving a very different answer from the second, "Well, my Lord," said Dunning, "what do you collect?"-" That Elm, Mr. Dunning, wet or dry, is a very tough wood."Sir Pepper Arden had been ill, to the great vexation of Lord Thurlow. The messenger came again, with his Honour's respects, and was sorry he could not sit at the Rolls. "What the devil ails him?" thundered Thurlow. "Please your Lordship, he is so relaxed, every thing goes through him." "D-n his eyes," said Thurlow, "let him take* an Act of Parliament, there is nothing so binding."- -An anecdote of him, when young, was characteristic. He used to annoy the Master of Caius, by walking across the grass. Seeing him coming, the Master opens the window, and cries, "Mr. Thurlow! Mr. Thurlow! I never look out at this window, but I see you walking across that grass." "And I," said Thurlow, never walk across this grass, but I see you looking out of that window.". sell said, Charles Townshend gave at a party, as a sentiment, nister of State." Lady Cowper asked him for an explanation. Madam, we get in with difficulty, we stay in as long as we can-and we go out whenever we can be of no further use."- -Was very drunk when he made his speech, in which he depicted the quiet succession of administrations-said he went with Erskine, in his uniform, to be admitted at Lincoln's Inn; Erskine had lately affirmed, that he meant to take orders, and hoped to die a Bishop. The Prince promised him the first that fell.

-Rus

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Dec. 23. The third volume of Burney's History of Music closes with an interesting account of the great Henry Purcell, whom he justly considers as the father of English musical expression; having fortified,

The Editor has softened the expression of the Lord Chancellor, though much at the expense of the wit.

lengthened, and tuned, the true accents of our mother tongue, those notes of passion which an Englishman would naturally breathe, and enforced those indigenous tones, by a modulation bold, affecting, sublime in the accent, passion, and expression of English words, he considers his vocal music as far superior to Handel's as an original poem to a translation. "From rosie bowers," he thinks his masterpiece this way. T. Salmon proposes a scheme, which has often occurred to me, of abolishing the plague of cliffs, by marking all unisons alike, and distinguishing octaves! On Stradella's unintentionally causing two assassins, hired to murder him, to relent by the charms of his composition, Burney observes, that it is a miraculous power of modern music, superior perhaps to any that can be well authenticated of the ancients. He considers Handel's "He was despised and rejected of men," in the Messiah, as the first English air for pathetic expression. He observes of Handel's music, that it requires a more powerful agency in the orchestra to develope and display it, than that of any other composer. Nothing can express his conceptions, but an Omnipotent hand. His pauses, he remarks, often "catch loquacity in the fact."

Dec. 30. Read the first part of Bentley's remarks on Collins. In the assumed and well-sustained part of a Leipsic scholar, he wields the weapons of controversy with matchless dexterity and vigour; and he particularly luxuriates, when he evinces how little the various lections in the New Testament affect the integrity of the text. He positively affirms what I cannot believe, "That no man in his senses ever fell from Christianity to Atheism, who did not, from ill conduct, look on Christianity with fear and terror."

1805.

June 12. Read several of Gay's Fables. The thoughts are often neatly and sweetly expressed, but the moral sometimes is by no means clear in itself, nor clearly deduced from the fiction, an essential failing: it ought to stand forth in the brightest evidence. The happiest of all seems to be the 42d of the first set, exhibiting the contention between Vice and a Juggler, in which there is infinite wit and playfulness.

Jan. 15. Read Hurd's Lectures, in which he contends, with much subtlety of discrimination and refinement of reasoning, but with too curious and too captious a show of both, that the evidence of prophecy cannot properly be examined either by believers or unbelievers, without considering it as being what it professes to be, of divine suggestion, and having its ultimate accomplishment in the history and dispensation of Christ. In other lights, we attack or defend a phantom. Hurd's subtle preparative discriminations are very ensnaring, and would require infinite exertion in his antagonist. The paltry, provoking vulgarisms with which his style is polluted, are relieved by sentences and by passages of excelling majesty and captivating grace.

Read H. Tooke's defence on the Lexington libel. Exquisite discernment and penetration, perversely and mischievously misapplied. His future biographer may glean much information from passages in these speeches. Jan. 17. Finished Johnson's Letters to Mr. Thrale. They raise him, if possible, still higher than ever in my esteem and veneration. His wonderful insight into the real springs of human actions, is often apparent where he trifles most; and when he summons his powers, he pours new and unexpected lights even on the clearest and most obvious topics. See

his letter on Old Friendships. His fertility of logical invention is probably unrivalled.

Jan. 30. Read the Life of Sir William Jones. Burke mentions in a letter, that he had been long disused to Greek literature; that the orators had fared worse from the translators than the poets; that he could never bear to read a translation of Cicero; that Demosthenes suffers less, but that the English reader must still marvel whence he acquired his transcendant fame. Sir William Jones was a man who, without anything strikingly original or profound in his genius, appears to have possessed greater attainments, a more extensive and mixed erudition, and more personal accomplishments, than any man perhaps in the records of biography. His belief (not very deep rooted, perhaps) in Christianity, appears to have been founded on the prophecies in the Old Testament.

March 19. Read Twining's Preface to his Aristotle, and his first Dissertation. I am charmed with his masculine sense and good taste, transferred in an original and nervous style, defective in nothing but facility. Of Aristotle, he observes in his preface, that, austere and cold as his philosophy appears, it has not encroached on his taste; that he has not indeed expressed that taste, but has discovered it in his principles, which are truly poetical, never losing sight of the end of poetry-" Pleasure"-and allowing every means for the attainment of that end. Good and original criticism, he maintains, depends on a combination of taste and philosophy, strength of feeling, and strength of thought. In the Dissertation, he examines how far poetry is or is not an imitative art, as Aristotle considers it: a perplexing discussion, as the two terms seem neither co-extensive nor commensurable, but his treatment of it renders it agreeable. I have heard Kilburne speak with rapture of his (Twining's) thrilling expression on the violin-he exalts the expressive powers of Pergolesi, above those of Handel and Purcell.

March 24. Finished Lord Melcombe's Diary. He exhibits in his own person, a finished portrait of the thorough-paced, unprincipled, political courtier, to which nothing but his own representation of his overtures, soundings, professions, insinuations, smooth menaces, reflections, in his own ineffable language, can do justice. He carries the courtier with him to his closet, and even his very scoldings are in that character. What a despicable and detestable scene does he open, enough to sicken one of Courts and Kings for ever. The education of the Prince (George III.) appears to have been a wretched one. Shut up from all liberal acquaintance and liberal knowledge, his mother represents him as shy, backward, good-natured, cheerful, but with a serious cast of mind; not quick, but to those whom he knew, intelligent.

May 8. The Memoires de Bailly exhibit a most masterly view of the errors in the early part of the French Revolution. To be secure and respectable, the authority of a Representative Assembly (the Edinburgh Review of the book, p. 17, justly observes) should be made up of the separate authority of the individuals who compose it, not artificially derived from delegation. The men should confer dignity and weight on the office, not the office on the men. They should not operate as on a foreign substance, but be consubstantiated with the people for whom they legislate. Is not this article by Mackintosh, aided by Burke's conversation?

May 8. Walked with Mr. Prentice round the Park. Had much interesting conversation with him on religious subjects. Opened his mind very freely, and a little surprised me by some of his statements.

GENT. MAG. VOL. I.

30

Said

that, though impressed with a deep and firm conviction of the truth of revelation, he was sometimes staggered by the nature of the dispensation itself. He was much impressed with the failures of the promises of Christ in his own person; he could say, he never had a prayer answered: and often was in a state of alienation from religion. He heard with much temper my free declaration. The description of his feelings on the repeated rejection of his prayers, reminded me of the conduct of the people who flog their idols when disappointed of their petitions to them.

June 25. Dined at Ellis's. Tooke said, that Erskine affirmed to him, that the man whom for his abilities he least liked to have opposed to him, was Law,

June 26. After dinner, went with Ellis to tea at Shee's. Opie called in. He possesses, I think, but a very ordinary mind. Had much political discussion. It is remarkable that all artists and literati have a tendency, more or less, to revolutionary principles. Talleyrand flew into a passion when asked by an Englishman whether he might remain in safety after the desertion of our ambassador. “Prenez-vous nous pour des barbares ?” he eried: the day but one after they were all seized.

July 21. Read Marmontel's romantic account of his life. The French appear to have a wonderful deal of feeling in the domestic relations,* to which we are utter strangers in this country. He says that he soon found that the study of languages is also that of distinguishing the shades of ideas, of decomposing and seizing with precision their characteristic relations; that it forms in truth a rich sense of elementary philosophy. There is truth and depth in this remark. He affirms that the practice of monthly confession - that modest, chaste, and humble avowal of our most accret faults, perhaps prevented a greater number of them than all the most holy motives put together: I can readily believe him. He described Rousseau precisely as Burke has done, as actuated by consuming vanity, destroying all the better parts of his character, and inflaming his mind to insano suspicions and distrust of all around him-loving mankind at a distance, but hating all who approached him. How accurate all Burke's information appears to have been! He neatly observes, that Voltaire had rather insects to brush, than serpents to strangle.

day. 13. Read Hume's Essay on Miracles. The longer I live, and the more I read and reflect, the higher I estimate Hume's merits. I never however could admit the principle he assumes in this essay that we believe in testimony solely because we observe the connection that exists between testimony and truth. There can be no doubt, I think, that we are disposed to believe in testimony, antecedently to the observation of any such connection. He admits that we are naturally inclined to speak Bruth Why should be not have admitted that we are naturally inclined to believe what is asserted? And it appears to me that he might have ac

* A true, though to us a most melancholy remark, which Mr. Green might have extended beyond France. There is no Christian country which I ever visited, or with which I am acquainted, where the domestic charities are so cold, and the ties of kindred so weak, as in the most moral country of the world; they are more alive and more plainly to be seen, I think, in the higher and the lower classes of the communities, which will lead perhaps to the cause why they are so weakened and impaired in the intermediate stations of society, and will suggest some salutary reflections. The Apostle tells us that "the love of money is the root of all evil!" Would it be very difficult then, when we know that the "root is evil," to agree also with the deduction of the Gospel, "that a corrupt tree bringeth not forth good fruit," and that the possessions of men are indeed snares to them.-EDIT.

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