and sense, and fancy, and philosophy--now succeeded, or had already commenced. But it was the age peculiarly of fine writing,-with so much, therefore, of the excellences of art and discipline, as to be unfavourable to the bold and tumultuous license of diction, construction, and emotion, which Oratory asserts for herself. The style of Swift would be admirable at the Bar; but it should never, as indeed it could never, be the leading one. How much of what is called Swift's style resides in his singular cast of thought, wit, humour, wisdom, and imagination! And who could be endured as his imitator? It is, then, not at all surprising that the Bar, which had already failed to seize a congenial style of eloquence by which it was surrounded, should not adopt that which was uncongenial to it. Accordingly, in the most important trials of this period, political or private, there is nothing beyond short and negligent statement, and desultory or interlocutory discussion between the court and all the counsel of both sides. The affair of the Duchess of Norfolk affording matter the most prolific of eloquence in later times the basest profligacy and the highest rank-was treated without eloquence, or even a set speech. In the trial of Sacheverel, at the bar of the Lords, the speeches of Lawyers are decidedly inferior. In the case of Franklin, tried for a libel in "The Craftsman," written by Lord Bolingbroke, the defence is not alone ineloquent, but common-place. At length, when about the middle of the century that eloquence of free minds, created and inspired by Lord Chatham with little aid, and sustained by him without an equal, flourished in the senate, the Bar felt something of sympathy or emulation, and ventured in the wake of parliament, upon the untried current of oratory. The best, and one of the first specimens of this new eloquence in the courts, is to be found in the trial of Elizabeth Canning-one of the most truly curious affairs in the history of our jurisprudence. Nine innocent lives were compromised, and two ereatures on the verge of execution, " because," as a witty foreigner then in England said, "Elizabeth was pretty and could tell lies." He might have added, because jurors were blockheads, and the populace credulous and cruel. Those who are not acquainted with this trial, which made so much noise in its day, will understand enough of it from the following sketch, somewhat humorously dramatised, but mainly correct, by the same foreigner in his immortal defence of the family of Calas. “Elizabeth bad quitted the house of her parents, and disappeared for a month, when she returned thin, emaciated, and her clothes in rags, Good God! in what condition are you returned! Where have you been? Whence are you come? What has befallen you? Alas, my dear aunt, as I passed through Moorfields, in order to return home, two strong ruffians threw me down, robbed me, and carried me off to a house ten miles from London.' 6 "Her aunt and her neighbours wept at this tale. Oh, my dear child! Was it not to the house of that infamous Mrs. Webb, that the ruffians conveyed you? for she lives about ten miles from town? Yes, aunt, it was to Mrs. Webb's.' • To a great house on the right? Yes, aunt.' The neighbours then described Mrs. Webb: and the young Canning agreed, that she was exactly such a woman as they described her. One of them told Miss Canning, that people played all night in that woman's house; that it was a cut-throat place, where young men resorted to lose their money and ruin themselves. Indeed it is a cut-throat place,' replied Elizabeth Canning. They do worse,' said another neighbour, those two ruffians, who are cousins to Mrs. Webb, go on the highway, take up all the pretty girls they meet, and oblige them to live on bread and water, until they consent to abandon themselves to the gamblers in the house.' 'Good God! I suppose they obliged you, my dear niece, to live upon bread and water.' 'Yes, aunt,""&c. &c. The victims of this girl's wicked falsehoods having been saved, she was herself indicted for perjury. Her trial afforded the strongest excitement and the finest sphere to the counsel, and, for the first time, not in vain. Their speeches aim at dialectics in a better style, the constructions and movements, and energy, and fervour of legitimate declamation-something, in fine, which may be called elaborate and avowed oratory. The more inspiring side, from the peculiarity of the case, was that of the crown-on behalf of which Mr. Davy made an excellent reply. A single passage from his peroration will suffice as an example, and deserves moreover to be quoted for its eloquence. "Of all the crimes (says he) the human heart can conceive, perjury is the most impious and detestable. But the guilt of this person is so transcendent as to defy aggravation. To call upon the God of truth, in the most solemn form, and on the most awful occasion, to attest a falsehood-to imprecate the vengeance of Heaven upon her guilty head-to prostitute the law of the land to the vilest purpose-to triumph on the destruction of an innocent fellow-creature-to commit a murder with the sword of justice-and then, having stript her own heart of all humanity, to insinuate herself, by all the arts of hypocrisy into the compassion of others— such is the peculiar sin of this person, not yet twenty years of age!" The progress of eloquence from this period, and the distinctive merits of those who became eminent in the new generation which immediately succeeded at the bar, demands, even in mere outline, a separate notice. TIVOLI. BY WILLIAM SOTHEBY. "SPIRIT! who lovest to live unseen, Where wild woods burst the rocks between, Gush from their flinty cell! "Or where the ivy weaves her woof, Haunts the cool grotto, daylight proof, Where loitering drops that wear the roof, "Shield me from summer's blaze of day, From noon-tide's fiery gale, And as thy waters round me play, Beneath th' o'ershadowing cavern lay, Till Twilight spreads her veil. "Then guide me where the wandering moon Rests on Mæcenas' wall, And echoes at night's solemn noon In Tivoli's soft shades attune The peaceful water-fall. "Again they float before my sight "Down the steep cliff I wind my way And, 'mid the torrents' deafening bray, That wind, where'er you wander by, Of music on the ear: "And thou, that when the wandering moon Illumed the rocky dell, Didst to my charmed ear attune The echoes of Night's solemn noon, "Farewell!-O'er many a realm I go, Where summer sunbeams mildly glow, "Yet, there, to thy romantic spot Shall Fancy oft retire, And hail the bower, the stream, the grct, And Horace smote the lyre." LIST OF NEW BRITISH PUBLICATIONS. Rickman's Gothic Architecture, a new edition, 8vo. 14. 18. bds.; Porson and Schæfer's Euripides Hecubas, er. 8vo. 38. 6d. sewed; The History of the French Revolution, 3 vols. 8vo. 17. 16s. bds; Newton's Studies in Public Speaking, 12mo. 4s. bound; Budge's Practical Miner's Guide, royal 8vo. 11. 10s. bds.; Cary's Latin Versification, 12mo. 28. sp; Carey's Key to Do. 12mo. 2s. 6d. sp.; Rolls' Legends of the North, 8vo. 98. bds.; Stonard on the Seventy Weeks of Daniel, 8vo. 15s. bds; Boyle's Treatise on the Holy Scriptures. by Panter, 8vo. 78. bds.; Napier's Statistical Account of Cephalonia, 8vo. 78. bds.; Stirling's Journal, by Dr. Nuttall, 8vo. 10s. 6d. bds.; Bates's Select Works, 2vols. 12mo, 12s. bds.; Jowitt's Researches in Syria, 8vo. 10s. bds, MUSEUM OF Foreign Literature and Science. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ROBERT BAGE. BY SIR WALTER SCOTT. [From Ballantyne's Novelist's Library.] ROBERT BAGE, a writer of no ordinary merit in the department of fictitious composition, was one of that class of men occurring in Britain alone, who unite successfully the cultivation of letters with the pursuit of professions, which, upon the continent, are considered as incompatible with the character of an author. The professors of letters are, in most nations, apt to form a caste of their own, into which they may admit men educated for the learned professions, on condition, generally speaking, that they surrender their pretensions to the lucrative practice of them; but from which mere burghers, occupied in ordinary commerce, are as severely excluded, as roturiers were of old from the society of the noblesse. The case of a paper-maker or a printer employing their own art upon their own publications, would be thought uncommon in France or Germany; yet such were the stations of Bage and Richardson. The editor has been obliged by Miss Catherine Hutton, daughter of Mr. Hutton, of Birmingham, well known as an ingenious and successful antiquary, with a memoir of the few incidents marking the life of Robert Bage, whom a kindred genius, as well as some commercial intercourse, combined to unite in the bonds of strict friendship. The communication is extremely interesting, and the extracts from Bage's letters show, that amidst the bitterness of political prejudices, the embarrassment of commercial affairs, and all the teasing technicalities of business, the author of Barham Downs still maintained the good-humoured gaiety of his natural temper. One would almost think the author must have drawn from his own private letter-book and correspondence the discriminating touches which mark the men of business in his novels. The father of Robert Bage was a paper-maker at Darley, a hamlet on the river Derwent, adjoining the town of Derby, and was remarkable only for having had four wives. Robert was the son of the first, and was born at Darley, on the 29th of February, 1728. His mother died soon after his birth; and his father, though he retainVOL. VII. No. 41.-Museum. 3 A ed his mill, and continued to follow his occupation, removed to Derby, where his son received his education at a common school. His attainments here, however, were very uncommon, and such as excited the surprise and admiration of all who knew him. At seven years old he had made a proficiency in Latin. To a knowledge of the Latin tongue succeeded a knowledge of the art of making paper, which he acquired under the tuition of his fa ther. At the age of twenty-three, Robert Bage married a young woman, who possessed beauty, good sense, good temper, and money. It may be presumed, that the first of these was the first forgotten; the two following secured his happiness in domestic life, the last aided him in the manufacture of paper, which he commenced at Elford, four miles from Tamworth, and conducted to the end of his days. Though no man was more attentive to business, and no one in the country made paper so good of its kind, yet the direction of a manufactory, combined with his present literary attainments, did not satisfy the comprehensive mind of Robert Bage. His manufactory, under his eye, went on with the regularity of a machine, and left him leisure to indulge his desire of knowledge. He acquired the French language from books alone, without any preceptor; and his familiarity with it is evinced by his frequent, perhaps too frequent, use of it in The Fair Syrian. Nine years after his marriage, he studied mathematics; and, as he makes one of his characters say, and as he probably thought respecting himself, "he was obliged to this science for a correct imagination, and a taste for uniformity in the common actions of life." In the year 1765, Bage entered into partnership with three persons, in an extensive manufactory of iron (one of them the celebrated Dr. Darwin); and, at the end of about fourteen years, when the partnership terminated, he found himself a loser, it is believed, of fifteen hundred pounds. The reason and philosophy of the paper-maker might have struggled long against so considerable a loss; the man of letters committed his cause to a better champion -literary occupation-the tried solace of misfortune, want, and imprisonment. He wrote the novel of Mount Henneth, in two volumes, which was sold to Lowndes for thirty pounds, and published in 1781. The strong mind, playful fancy, liberal sentiments, and extensive knowledge of the author, are every where apparent; but, as he says himself, "too great praise is a bad letter of recommendation," and truth, which he worshipped, demands the acknowledgment, that its sins against decorum are manifest. The succeeding works of Bage were, Barham Downs, two volumes, published 1784; The Fair Syrian, two volumes, published (about) 1787; James Wallace, three volumes, published 1788; m as he is, four volumes, published 1792; Hermsprong, or as he is not, three volumes, published 1796. It is, perwithout a parallel in the annals of literature, that, of six dif |
