III. REVIEWERS AND POLITICAL WRITERS.

Gifford.

William Gifford, 1756–1826, obtained distinction in various walks of authorship, but is chiefly known by his labors as editor of the London Quarterly Review.

Gifford was born poor, and was left an orphan at twelve. He went to sea for a short time, and then was bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Through the liberality of a benevolent surgeon, Mr. Cookesley, Gifford was enabled to study the classics, and to attend for some time at Oxford. Spurred by a desire for literary life, he went to London.

Publications. Gifford's first publication was The Baviad, a poetical satire, published in 1794, and directed against Mrs. Piozzi and other second-class writers and pretenders to literature. His next was the Mæviad, 1795, likewise a satire, and aimed at the dramatists of the day. Both poems were successful, In 1797, he became editor of the famous Anti-Jacobin. In 1802, he published a translation of Juvenal, which has been pronounced on good authority to be "the best poetical version of a classic in the English language." He performed a large amount of critical work in editing old English authors. He gave critical editions of Massinger, 4 vols., 8vo; Ben Jonson, 9 vols., 8vo; Ford, 2 vols., 8vo; Shirley, 6 vols., 8vo. The editions of Ford and Shirley were unfinished at his death, and were completed by other hands.

Work as a Reviewer. - Gifford's crowning work, however, was his editorship of the London Quarterly Review, from 1809, the time of its inception, to 1824. Here he reigned supreme for a period of fifteen years, and his reign was one of terror. He was a man of great acuteness of intellect, coarse and savage in disposition, lynx-eyed to detect blemishes, and relentless in exposing them, yet enjoying a large measure of consideration in the literary world on account of the power which he wielded by virtue of his editorial position, and which he used with incessant and remorseless activity.

"As an editor of old authors, Mr. Gifford is entitled to considerable praise for the pains he has taken in revising the text, and for some improvement he has introduced into it. He had better have spared the Notes, in which, though he has detected the blunders of previous commentators, he has exposed his own ill temper and narrowness of feeling more. As a critic, he has thrown no light on the character and spirit of his authors. He has shown no striking power of analysis, nor of original illustration, though he has chosen to exercise his pen on writers most congenial to his own turn of mind from their dry and caustic wit: Massinger and Ben Jonson. What he will

make of Marlowe, it is difficult to guess. He has none of 'the fiery quality' of the poet." Hazlitt.

"He was a man of extensive knowledge; was well acquainted with classic and old English lore; so learned, that he considered all other people ignorant; so wise, that he was seldom pleased with anything; and, as he had not risen to much eminence in the world, he thought no one else was worthy to rise. He almost rivalled Jeffrey in wit and he surpassed him in scorching sarcasm and crucifying irony. Jeffrey wrote with a sort of levity which induced men to doubt if he were sincere in his strictures; Gifford wrote with an earnest fierceness which showed the delight which he took in his calling." Allan Cunningham.

"He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classical author; and his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad squabashed at once a set of coxcombs, who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have repressed his rancors against those who had preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford's eye a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labors, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal's guilt in dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says Fortune assigned him

One eye not over good,

Two sides that to their cost have stood

A ten years' hectic cough,

Aches, stitches, all the various ills

That swell the devilish doctor's bills,

And sweep poor mortals off.

He was a little man, dumpled up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his countenance."- Sir Walter Scott.

"William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, seems to have united in himself all the bad qualities of the criticism of his time. He was fierce, dogmatic, bigoted, libellous, and unsympathizing. Whatever may have been his talents, they were exquisitely unfitted for his position - his literary judgments being contemptible, where any sense of beauty was required, and principally distinguished for malice and wordpicking. The bitter and snarling spirit with which he commented on excellence he could not appreciate; the extreme narrowness and shallowness of his taste; the labored blackguardism in which he was wont to indulge, under the impression that it was satire; his detestable habit of carrying his political hatreds into literary criticism; his gross personal attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt, and others, who might happen to possess less illiberal principles than his own; made him a dangerous and disagreeable adversary, and one of the worst critics of modern times. Through his position as the editor of an influential journal, his enmity acquired an importance neither due to his talents nor his character."-Whipple.

Mackintosh.

Sir James Mackintosh, 1765-1832, obtained great and deserved celebrity as a writer on subjects connected with statesmanship and national polity.

Career. — He was a native of Scotland; was educated at Aberdeen, and afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh; abandoned the profession for the law; held the posts of recorder and admiralty judge under the East India Company; returned to England and was elected to Parliament; afterwards occupied the chair of politics and history in the College at Haylebury.

Publications. His first great work, Vindicia Gallica, was published in 1791, in reply to Burke's Reflections, and had the effect of staying for a while the tide that was then rising so high against France and the French Revolution. Subsequently, in 1799, he delivered a course of lectures On the Law of Nature and of Nations, which were the expression of his conversion to the opposite or conservative view. In 1803 he delivered an eloquent speech, afterwards translated into French, in defence of M. Peltier, who was tried for libel against Napoleon and acquitted. He contributed a number of articles to the Edinburgh Review, the most famous of which are those On the Philosophical Genius of Bacon and Locke, On the Authorship of the Eikon Basilike, The Partition of Poland, Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne, On the Right of Parliamentary Suffrage. He also published a Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, and began The History of England for Lardner's Cabinet Encyclopædia, but did not live to finish it beyond the middle of the third volume. This last work can scarcely be called a history; it is rather a collection of discourses on history. In 1834, after his death, there appeared a Review of the Causes of the Revolution in 1688, a fragment comprising all that Mackintosh had succeeded in realizing of his favorite project of writing a philosophical history of England.

Estimate of Him. — Mackintosh seems to have been greater as a man than as a writer. At least, no one of his works equals the wonderful reputation that he himself enjoyed among his contemporaries. All his large works are faulty in many respects. His Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, for instance, is glaringly deficient in its notices of the French and German schools. In the words of Allan Cunningham, “He seemed to want that scientific power of combination without which the brightest materials of history are but as a glittering mass; he was deficient in that patient but vigorous spirit which broods over scattered and unconnected things and brings them into order and beauty." In like manner, Judge Story expressed his impatience at Mackintosh's "want of decision and energy in carrying out his ideas and large designs." The explanation is found in the fascinations of London society and the brilliant rôle played in it by Sir James. In a circle of wits and writers, he was the brightest light. His good nature, his quickness, and his wonderful powers of memory invested him with a charm that fascinated everybody, and tempted him to lead a life of society which prevented him from achieving any results commensurate with his abilities.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1778-1830, wrote much on literary and political subjects.

Hazlitt was educated at the Unitarian College, at Hackley. He commenced as an artist, but soon abandoned the brush for the pen. He contributed a number of articles to the periodical press and the Edinburgh Review, and wrote several lectures upon English Poetry, English Comic Writers, The Age of Elizabeth, etc., etc. After his death his literary remains were published by his son, with a sketch of his life, and an essay on his genius, the latter by Bulwer and Talfourd. The miscellaneous works of

Hazlitt were published in Philadelphia, 1848, in 5 vols., to which was added a sixth volume, a reprint of the Life of Napoleon.

In Hazlitt's writings, merit is strangely jostled by demerit. He has a wide range of sympathy and appreciation, but is subject to blind prejudices. Especially is this defect manifest in his treatment of (then) living authors. He seems incapable of appreciating a writer until he is dead. In the words of Professor Wilson, he reverses the proverb, and thinks a dead ass better than a living lion.

...

"Hazlitt possessed, in a very eminent degree, what we are inclined to believe the most important requisite for true criticism - a great and natural relish for all the phases of intellectual life and action . . . but . . . there is scarcely a page of Hazlitt which does not betray the influence of strong prejudice, a love of paradoxical views, and a tendency to sacrifice the exact truth of a question to an effective turn of expression."-Tuckerman.

GEORGE CANNING, 1770-1827, was a statesman and Parliamentary leader of great celebrity.

In conjunction with some others, Canning started a satirical journal, The Anti-Jacobin, which was intended to ridicule and discountenance the principles of the French Revolution. The poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was remarkable for the keenness of its wit. One of the pieces contributed by Canning, The Knife-Grinder, a burlesque upon Southey, has been greatly admired. Mr. Canning had a strong propensity for literary pursuits, and would doubtless have made a great figure in the world of letters, had not his talents been put in requisition in the more important science of governing a great empire. His Speeches have been published in 6 vols., 8vo.

THOMAS ERSKINE, 1750-1823, is believed to have been the greatest legal advocate that England has ever produced. "As an advocate in the forum, I hold him to be without an equal in ancient or modern times."-Chief-Justice Campbell,

Erskine's father not being able to give him the advantages of a University educa tion, he entered the navy, and afterwards the army. After spending some years in this way, restless with the consciousness of powers for something better, he finally resolved upon the study of the law. The first case in which he was employed was a political trial for a libel on one of the members of the Cabinet. "Then was exhibited the most remarkable scene ever witnessed in Westminster Hall. It was the debut of a barrister, wholly unpracticed in speaking, before a court crowded with the men of the greatest distinction, belonging to all parties in the state. And I must own that, all the circumstances considered, it was the most wonderful forensic effort of which we have any account in our annals."-Campbell.

Erskine's success was instantaneous, and it never declined. He became Lord HighChancellor, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Erskine. His Speeches, with Memoir by Lord Brougham, have been published in 4 vols., 8vo. He wrote Armata, a political romance, 2 vols.; also, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France (1796), of which forty-eight editions were printed in a few months. "At the bar Erskine shone with peculiar lustre. There the resources of his mind were made apparent by instantaneous bursts of eloquence, combining logic, rhetorical skill, and legal precision, while he triumphed over the passions and prejudices of his hearers, and moulded them to his will."- Campbell.

LORD HOLLAND, Henry Richard Vassall Fox, (Third) Lord Holland, 1773-1840, was a nephew of the celebrated orator, Charles James Fox.

Lord Holland, educated at Oxford, was a warm supporter of his uncle in Parliament, and a constant adherent to the Whig party. His chief literary productions were a life of Lope de Vega, and Three Comedies from the Spanish, which have been pronounced excellent. But he is still better known by his Foreign Reminiscences and his Memoirs of the Whig Party, both edited by his son Henry Edward. These two works have been much read and reviewed, and are invaluable as a record of the growth of England and English politics during the first half of the present century.

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY, 1767-1818, the son of a London jeweller, entered the profession of the law, and attained to great distinction as a barrister and a statesman.

Sir Samuel was regarded by his contemporaries as a most eloquent speaker, and a thoroughly honest man. His Speeches were collected and published in 1820. His Memoirs, partly written by himself, were edited by his sons in 1840. Among his writings are conspicuous the fragment on the Constitutional Power and Duty of Juries, his Observations on the Criminal Law of England, and his Edinburgh Review article on Codification. One of his most celebrated speeches was that on the slave-trade, delivered in the House of Commons in 1806. He was a zealous advocate of the reformation of the English criminal law, and of Catholic Emancipation. His success as a barrister was unequalled in his day.

RT. HON. JOHN SINCLAIR, LL.D., 1754–1835, was born at Thurso Castle, Scotland. He was a member of Parliament for thirty years, from 1780 to 1810, and took a prominent part in public affairs. In 1786 he was made a baronet, and in 1810 Privy Councillor. He wrote much on subjects connected with political economy: History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire; Statistical Account of Scotland; Origin of the Board of Agriculture; Blight, Rust, and Mildew; Ilints on Longevity; Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee, etc.

Cobbett.

WILLIAM COBBETT, 1762-1835, was an English political writer of great notoriety. He wrote under the name of Peter Porcupine, and exercised his vocation partly in the United States and partly in England.

After a somewhat chequered career, Cobbett settled in Philadelphia in 1796, and started Peter Porcupine's Gazette, in which he entered with great bitterness and violence into the political questions of the day. Dr. Rush and others prosecuted him for slander, and obtained a verdict against him of $5000. In 1800 Cobbett returned to England and began The Porcupine, which he continued for some time. Subsequently he established the Weekly Register, which he kept up for thirty years. He returned to the United States in 1817, but went back finally to England in 1819, taking with him the bones of the infidel, Tom Paine.

The works of Peter Porcupine (that is the articles written by him in America) were