With icy hand thou tak'st him by the feet, So impudent and silly a fabrication was perhaps never before thrust upon public notice. The young adventurer, foiled in this effort, attempted to earn distinction as a novelist and dramatist, but utterly failed. In 1805, he published a confession of the Shaksperean forgery, 'An Authentic Account of the Shakspeare Manuscripts,' in which he makes this declaration: 'I solemnly declare, first, that my father was perfectly unacquainted with the whole affair, believing the papers most firmly the productions of Shakspeare. Secondly, that I am myself both the author and writer, and had no aid from any soul living, and that I should never have gone so far, but that the world praised the papers so much, and thereby flattered my vanity. Thirdly, that any publication which may appear tending to prove the manuscripts genuine, or to contradict what is here stated, is false; this being the true account.' Several other novels, some poems, and attempts at satire, proceeded from the pen of Ireland; but they are unworthy of notice; and the last thirty years of the life of this industrious but unprincipled littérateur were passed in obscurity and poverty. EDMUND MALONE--RICHARD PORSON. EDMUND MALONE (1741-1812), who was conspicuous in the detection and exposure of Ireland's forgeries, was an indefatigable dramatic critic and commentator, as well as a zealous literary antiquary. He edited Shakspeare (1790), wrote Memoirs of Dryden, Sir Joshua Reynolds, W. Gerard Hamilton, &c.; was the friend of Goldsmith, Burke, and Johnson, and still more emphatically the friend of Johnson's biographer, Boswell; and in nearly all literary questions for half a century he took a lively interest, and was ready always with notes or illustrations. Mr. Malone was the son of an Irish judge, and born in Dublin. After studying at Trinity College, he repaired to London, was entered of the Inner Temple, and called to the bar in 1767. His life, however, was devoted to literature, in which he was a useful and delighted pioneer. The fame of English scholarship and classical criticism descended from Bentley to Porson. RICHARD PORSON (1759-180) was in 1793 unanimously elected Professor of Greek in the university of Cambridge. Besides many fugitive and miscellaneous contributions to classical journals, Porson edited and annotated the first four plays of Euripides, which appeared separately between 1797 and 1801. He collected the Harleian monascript of the Odyssey' for the Grenville edition of Homer (1809) and corrected the text of Eschylus and part of Herodotus After his death, his Adversaria, or Notes and Emendations of the Greck Poets,' were published by Professor Monk and Mr J. C. Blomfieid--afterwards Bishop of London--and his Tracts and Miscellaneous Criticisms' were collected and published by the Fer. Tid. The most important of these were the Letters to Archdeacon Travis' (1790), written to disprove the authenticity of I John, v. 7, and which are admirable specimens of learning, wit and acute argumentation. Porson as a Greek critic has never perhaps been excelled. He rose from a humble station-his father was a parish-clerk in Norfolk-solely by his talents and early proficiency; his memory was prodigious, a'most unexampled, and his acuteness and taste in Greek literature were unerring. The habits of this great 466 scholar were, however, fatal to his success in life. He was even more intemperate than Sheridan, careless of the usual forms and courtesies of society, and impracticable in ordinary affairs. His love of drink amounted to a passion, or rather disease. His redeeming qualities, besides his scholastic acquirements and natural talents, were his strict integrity and love of truth. Many of his pointed sayings were remembered by his friends. Being on one occasion informed that Southey considered his poem Madoc' as likely to be a valuable possession to his family, Porson answered: Madoc" will be readwhen Homer and Virgil are forgotten.' The ornate style of Gibbon was his aversion. There could not,' he said, 'be a better exercise for a school-boy than to turn a page of The Decline and Fall" into English. He disliked reading folios, because,' s id he, we meet with so few milestones'-that is, we have such long intervals between the turning over of the leaves. On the whole, though Porson was a critic of the highest order, and though conceding to classical literature all the respect that can be claimed for it, we must lament, with one of his friends, that such a man should have lived and laboured for nearly half a century, and yet have left little or nothing to the world that was truly and originally his own.' WILLIAM COBBETT. WILLIAM COBBETT (1762–1835), by his 'Rural Rides,' his 'Cottage Economy,' his works on America, and various parts of his 'Political Register,' is justly entitled to be remembered among the miscellaneous writers of England. He was a native of Farnham, in Surrey, and brought up as an agricultural labourer. He afterwards served as a soldier in British America, and rose to be sergeant-major. He first attracted notice as a political writer by publishing a series of pamphlets under the name of Peter Porcupine. He was then a decided loyalist and high-churchman; but having, as is supposed, received some slight from Mr. Pitt, he attacked his ministry with great bitterness in his 'Register.' After the passing of the Reform Bill, he was returned to parliament for the borough of Oldham; but he was not successful as a public speaker. He was apparently destitute of the faculty of general sing his information and details, and evolving from them a lucid whole. His unfixedness of principle also operated strongly against him; for no man who is not consid ered honest and sincere, or who cannot be relied upon, will ever make a lasting impression on a popular assembly. Cobbett's inconsistency as a political writer was so broad and undisguised, as to have become proverbial. He had made the whole round of politics, from ultra-Toryism to ult a-Radicalism, and had praised and abused nearly every public man and measure for thirty years. Jeremy Bentham said of him: 'He is a man filled with odium humani generis. His malevolence and lying are beyond anything. The retired philosopher did not make sufficient allowance for Cobbett: the latter acted on the momentary feeling or impulse, and never calculated the consequence to himself or others. No individual in Britain was better known than Cobbett, down to the minutest circumstance in his character, habits, and opinions. He wrote freely of himself as he did of other men; and in all his writings there was much natural freshness, liveliness and vigour. He had the power of making every one who read him feel and understand completely what he himself felt and described. The idiomatic strength, copiousness, and purity of his style have been universally acknowledged; and when engaged in describing rural subjects, or depicting local manners, he is very happy. On questions of politics or criticism he fails, because he seems resolved to attack all great names and established opinions. He remarks on one occasion that anybody could, at the time he wrote, be made a baronet, since Walter Scott and Dudley Coutts Trotter (what a classification!) had been so elevated. It has become,' he says, 'of late years the fashion to extol the virtues of potatoes, as it has been to admire the writings of Milton and Shakspeare;' and he concludes a ludicrous criticism on 'Paradise Lost' by wondering how it could have been tolerated by a people amongst whom astronomy, navigation, and chemistry are understood! Yet Cobbett had a taste for what may be termed the poetry of nature. He is loud in his praises of the singing-birds of England-which he missed so much in Amer ca-and he loved to write on green lancs and meadows. The following description is like the simple and touching passages in Richardson's 'Pamela:' Boyish Scenes and Recollections. The After living within a few hundred yards of Westminster Hall and the Abbey Church, and the Big and looking from my own windows into St. James's Park, all other buildings and spots app ar inean and insignificant. I went to-day to see the house I formerly occupied. How small! It is always thus: the words large and smal are carried about with us in our minds, and we form at real dimensions idea, such as it was received, remains during our absence from the object. When I returned to England in 1800, after an absence, from the country parts of it, of sixteen years, the trees, the hedges, even the parks and woods, seemed so small! It made me laugh to hear little gutters that I could jump over called rivers! The Thames was but a creek! But when, in about a month after my arrival in London. I went to Farnham, the place of my birth, what was my surprise! Everything was become so pitifully small! I had to cross, in my post-chaise, the long and dreary heath of Beg shot: then. at the end of it, to mount a hill called Hungry Hill: and from that hill I knew that I should look down into the beautiful and fertile vale of Farnham. My heart fluttered with impatience, mixed with a sort of fear, to see all the scenes of my childhood; for 1 had learned before the death of my father and mother. There is a hill not far from the town, called Crooksbury Hill, which rises up out of a flat in the form of a cone, and is planted with Scotch fir-trees. Here I used to take the eggs and young ones of crows and magpies. This hill was a famous object in the neighbourhood. It served as the superlative degree of height. As high as Crooksbury Hib,' meant, with us, the utmost degree of height. Therefore the first object that my eyes sought was this hill. I could not be leve my eyes! Literally speaking, I tor a moment thought the famous hili removed, and a little heap put in its stead; for I had seen in New Brunswick a single rock, or hill of sold rock, ten times as big, and four or five times as high! The post-boy go ng down hill, and not a bad road, whisked me in a few minutes to the Bush Inn, from the garden of which I could see the prodigious sand-hil where I had begun my gardening works. What a nothing! But now came rushing into my mind all at once my pretty little garden. my Litle blue smock-frock, my little nailed shoes, my pretty pigeons that I used to feed ont of my hands, the last kind words and tears of my gentle and tender-hearted and affectionate mother! I hastened back into the room. If I had looked a moment longer I should have dropped. When I came to reflect, what a change! I looked down at my dress. What a change! What scenes I had gone through! How altered my state! I had dined the day before at a secretary of state's in company with Mr. Pitt, and had been waited upon by men in gandy liveries! I had had nobody to assist me in the world. No teachers of any sort. Nobody to shelter me from the consequences of bad, and no one to counsel me to good behaviour. I felt proud. The distinctions of rank. birth, and wealth all became nothing in my eyes; and from that momentless than a month after my arrival in England-I reso.ved never to bend before them. There are good sense and right feeling in the following sentence: On Field-sports. Taking it for granted, then, that sports en are as good as other folks on the score of humanity, the sports of the field, like everything else done in the fields, tend to produce or preserve health. I prefer them to all other pastime, because they produce early rising; because they have a tendency to lead young men into virtnous habits It is where men congregate that the vices haunt. A hunter or a shooter may also be a gambler and a drinker; but he is less likely to be fond of the two latter if he be fond of the former. Boys will take to something in the way of pastime; and it is better that they take to that which is innocent, healthy, and manly, than that which is vicious, unhealthy, and effeminate. Besides, the scenes of rural sport are necessarily at a distance from cities and towns. This is another great consideration for though great talents are wanted to be employed in the hives of men, they are very rarely acquired in these hives; the surrounding subjects are too numerous, too near the eye, too frequently under it, and too artificial. WILLIAM COMBE-JOSEPH RITSON. WILLIAM COMBE (1741-1823) was an extensive miscellaneous writer both in prose and verse. To none of his works did he affix his name, but he had no reluctance in assuming the names of others. Among his literary frauds was a collection of Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton,' 1780-82. Thomas, the second or wicked Lord Lyttelton,’ was remarkable for his talents and profligacy, and for the romantic circumstances attending his death, which, he said, had been foretold by an apparition, but which it is now believed was an act of suicide. Combe personated the character of this dissolute nobleman-with whom he had been at school at Eton--and the spurious letters are marked by ease, elegance, and occasional force of style. An attempt was made in the Quarterly Review,' 1852, to prove that these Letters were genuine, and that Lyttelton was the author of 'Junius's Letters. The proof was wholly inconclusive, and there seems no doubt that Combe wrote the pseudo-Lyttelton epistles. In the same vein he manufactured a series of Letters supposed to have passed between Sterne and Eliza.' He wrote a satirical work, The Diaboliad,' and a continuation or imitation of Le Sage, entitled 'The Devil upon Two Sticks in England,' 1790; but the most popular of all Combe's works was 'The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque,' which was originally published in the Poetical Magazine,' with humorous illustrations by Rowlandson, and afterwards (1×12) printed separately in one volume. The Tour' went through several editions; the descript ons, in lively verse, were attractive, and the coloured engravings-in which the appearance of Syntax was well preserved― formed an excellent comment on the text. Combe wrote other poems in the style of Syntax-as Johnny Quae Genus,' The English Dance of Death,'The Dance of Life,' &c. None of these, though aided by humorous illustrations, had much success, and Syntax' itself, once so popular, is now rarely seen. A voluminous History of Westminster Abbey,' in two volumes quarto, was written by Combe, who, up to his eightieth year, and often in prison, continued to pour forth anonymous productions in almost every department of literature. He was well connected, and at one time rich, but a life of folly and extravagance kept him always in embarrassment. The following is a short specimen of the Lyttelton fabrication: Genius and Talent generally appreciated by the World-Case of Goldsmith. I sincerely lament with you the death of Dr. Goldsmith, as a very considerable loss to the learned, the laughing, and the sentimental world. His versatile genius was capable of producing satisfaction to persons of all these varying denominations. But I shall, without hesitation, combat the opinion which you derive from the insolvent state in which he died, that talent and genius meet with an ungrateful return from mankind. Tell me, I beg of you, in what respect Dr. Goldsmith was neglected? As soon as his talents were known, the public discovered a ready disposition to reward them; nor did he ever produce the fruits of them in vain. If your favourite author died in poverty. it was because he had not discretion enough to be rich. A rigid obedience to the Scripture demand of Take no thought for to-morrow,' with an ostentatious impatience of coin, and an unreflecting spirit of benevolence, occasioned the difficulties of his life and the insolvency of its end. He might have blessed himself with a happy independence, enjoyed withont interruption every wish of a wise man, secured an ample provision for his old age. if he had attained it. and have made a respectable last will and testament: and all this without rising up early or sitting up late, if common-sense had been added to his other attainments. Such a man is awakened into the exertion of his faculties but by the impulse of some sense which demands enjoyment, or some passion which cries aloud for gratification, by the repeated menace of a creditor or the frequent dun at his gate. Nay, should the necessity of to-day be relieved, the procrastinated labour will wait for the necessity of to-morrow; and if death should overtake him in the interval. it must find him a beggar and the age is to be accused of obduracy in suffering genins to die for want! If Pope had been a debauchee he would have lived in a garret, nor enjoyed the Attic elegance of his villa On the banks of the Thames. If Sir Joshua Reynolds had been idle and drunken, he might at this hour have been acquiring a sconty maintenance by painting coachpanels and Birmingham tea-boards. Had not David Hume possessed the invariable temper of his country, he might have been the actual master of a school in the Heb |