COBBETT, FOSTER. HAZLITT, SMITH.

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COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON.-(1790-1849)-Miss Power-Knockbrit, near Clon. mel-The Repealers; Belle of a Season; Victims of Society; Idler in Italy; Idler in France.

ANNA PORTER.-(1780-1832)—Don Sebastian; and JANE PORTER—(1776-1850) -Thaddeus of Warsaw; Scottish Chiefs.

THOMAS C. GRATTAN.-(born 1796)-Dublin-Highways and Byways; Heiress of Bruges; History of the Netherlands.

MARY SHELLEY.-(1797-1851)-Miss Godwin-the poet's second wife-Franken

stein.

ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS.

WILLIAM COBBETT, born in 1762, at Farnham in Surrey, attracted considerable notice by his sturdy, fresh English writings. First a field-labourer, he became afterwards a soldier, rising to the rank of serjeant-major. After the passing of the Reform Bill he was elected member for Oldham, but failed as a public speaker. Rural Rides, Cottage Economy, works on America, and articles in the Political Register form his chief literary remains. These have an especial value, as illustrating a fine type of the English peasant mind. Cobbett died in 1835.

JOHN FOSTER, a farmer's son, was born in 1770, near Halifax in Yorkshire. He began public life as a Baptist preacher. His literary reputation rests partly on his articles in the Eclectic Review, but more especially on his four Essays, which were first published in 1805 in the form of letters. The Essays are-On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself; On Decision of Character; On the Epithet Romantic; On Evangelical Religion rendered less acceptable to Persons of Taste. He died in 1843.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, a brilliant and refined critic, was born in 1778, at Maidstone. Originally a painter, he became in 1803 author by profession, and through all his life contributed largely to the periodicals of the day. His Life of Napoleon was his most elaborate work. But he is chiefly celebrated for his Characters of Shakspere's Plays, his Table-Talk, and his Lectures upon the English Poets. Hazlitt died of cholera in 1830.

SYDNEY SMITH, born in 1771, at Woodford in Essex, earned, by his sayings and his works, the reputation of a brilliant wit. Entering the Church, he was at various times curate in a village

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on Salisbury Plain, a tutor in Edinburgh, a London preacher, rector of Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire, of Combe Florey in Somersetshire, and then a canon of St. Paul's. In 1802 he took a share in originating the Edinburgh Review, of which he was the first editor. His Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, by Peter Plymley, are, perhaps, the finest example we have of wit used as a political weapon. In Yorkshire, where he wrote these Letters, he lamented the solitude of his position, as being "ten miles from a lemon." His Letters to Archdeacon Singleton and Letters on the Pennsylvanian Bonds display the same wonderful power of sly and telling drollery. He died in February 1845.

FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY, a distinguished critic, was born in Edinburgh on the 23d of October, 1773. He became an advocate in 1794. Soon after the establishment of the Edinburgh Review he assumed the editorship, and in that position he continued, writing the chief poetical articles, until 1829, when he retired, on being elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. Raised to the bench in 1834, he died in 1850.

CHARLES LAMB, born in London in 1775, remained in heart a Londoner to the last. Becoming at seventeen a clerk in the India House, this gentle, stuttering recluse, devoted his life to the care of his sister Mary, who at dinner one day, in a fit of hereditary madness, stabbed her mother to death with a knife. He was a school-fellow and an attached friend of Coleridge, whose poetry prompted his own attempts in verse. He wrote John Woodvil, a tragedy; Tales Founded on the Plays of Shakspere, and occasional poems. But his literary fame rests chiefly upon Essays by Elia, which appeared originally in the "London Magazine." The delicate grace and flavour of these papers cannot be described. Retiring on a pension from his clerkship in 1825, "Coming home for ever on Tuesday week," as he tells Wordsworth in a letter, he spent the ten remaining years of his life chiefly at Enfield. He died in 1835 of erysipelas, caused by a fall which slightly cut his face.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR, born in 1775, at Ipsley Court in Warwickshire, though living still (1861), belongs to the generation

that is past. Besides Gebir, an epic, Count Julian, a tragedy, and various minor poems, he has produced a prose work, Imaginary Conversations, for which his name is most renowned. His later works, The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, and Dry Sticks Fagoted, especially the second, bear evident marks of a decayed and corrupted genius.

Supplementary List.

HORNE TOOKE.-(1736-1812)-son of a London poulterer-a lawyer-tried for high treason in 1794-Epca Pteroenta, or The Diversions of Purley. WILLIAM COMBE.-(1741-1823)-Letters of the late Lord Lyttelton; Tour of Dr. Syntax (verse).

ARCHIBALD ALISON.-(1757-1838)-Episcopal minister in Edinburgh-Essay on Taste.

ISAAC D'ISRAEL.I.-(1766-1848)-son of an Italian Jew-Curiosities of Literature; Quarre's of Authors; Calamities of Authors.

HENRY LORD BROUGHAM.-(1778-still living)—Edinburgh-Articles in Edinburgh Review; Observations on Light; Statesmen of George III.; England under the House of Lancaster.

SIR EGERTON BRYDGES.-(1762-1837)-editor of Retrospective Review; Censura Literaria, an account of Old English Books; Letters on the Genius of Byron.

JOHN WILSON CROKER.-(1780-1857)-Galway-secretary to the AdmiraltyArticles in the Quarterly; edited Boswell's Life of Johnson; Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Court of George 11.

SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.

JEREMY BENTHAM, born in 1748, was the son of a London solicitor. Beginning his literary career in 1776 with a Fragment on Government, founded on a passage in Blackstone, he continued through a long life to write upon law and politics. His grand principle of action, which he wished to push to a dangerous extreme, was "the greatest happiness to the greatest number." He died in 1832.

DUGALD STEWART, born in Edinburgh in 1753, became in 1780 Professor of Moral Philosophy in that University. His chief works, founded on the views of Reid, were The Philosophy of the Human Mind; a Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical

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and Ethical Philosophy (written for the "Encyclopædia Britannica"); and a View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man. His Outlines of Moral Philosophy form a favourite elementary text-book on that subject. He died in his native city in

1828.

DAVID RICARDO, born in London in 1772, was the son of a Dutch Jew. In the midst of his business as a thriving stockbroker, he found time to write several works on political economy. His pamphlet on The High Price of Bullion was his first publication. But his fame rests on a treatise called The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), which ranks next in importance to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." Ricardo died

in 1823, after some sessions of parliamentary life.

THOMAS BROWN, successor of Dugald Stewart, was a native of Galloway, born in 1778. After some practice as a physician, he found in 1810 a more congenial sphere in the work of the Moral Philosophy chair. His Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind are his chief production. He also published some graceful poetry. He died in 1820.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, born in 1778, at Penzance in Cornwall, became distinguished as a chemist, and read many valuable papers before the Royal Society, upon the results of his researches. Most of these were published in the Transactions of the Society. His great invention of the safety-lamp won for him in 1818 a baronetcy. In general literature he was the author of Salmonia, or Days of Fly-Fishing, and Consolations in Travel, or The Last Days of a Philosopher. He died in 1829.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, born in 1790, at Slough, near Windsor, received his education at St. John's, Cambridge. He is one of our most eminent scientific men. Among his many works we may name Treatises on Sound and Light; and, yet more popular, his Discourse on Natural Philosophy in Lardner's "Cyclopædia," and his Outlines of Astronomy, of which the original was published in the same work. He was Master of the Mint for some time, and lived for four years at the Cape, engaged in an astronomical survey of the southern hemisphere.

CLARKE, HALL, IRVING, PORSON.

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Supplementary List.

GEORGE COMBE.-(1788-1858)-an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet-Essays on Phrenology; The Constitution of Man.

JOHN ABERCROMBIE.-(1781-1844)—Aberdeen—an eminent Edinburgh physician —The Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth; Philosophy of the Moral Feelings.

ALEXANDER WILSON.-(1766-1813)-originally a Paisley weaver-American

Ornithology.

J. RAMSAY M'CULLOCH.-(1790-still living)-Galloway-in the Stationery OfficeElements of Political Economy; Dictionary of Commerce; Statistical Account of the British Empire.

THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS.

ADAM CLARKE, the son of a schoolmaster at Moybeg in Derry, where he was born in 1760, won great renown as an Oriental scholar and Biblical critic. He was a Wesleyan Methodist. A Commentary on the Bible and a Bibliographical Dictionary are his chief works. He died of cholera in 1832.

ROBERT HALL, born in 1764, at Arnsby in Leicestershire, was a distinguished Baptist preacher. Two of his leading publications were, An Apology for the Freedom of the Press, and A Sermon on Modern Infidelity. Perhaps his finest sermon was that upon the Death of the Princess Charlotte. Hall died at Bristol in 1831.

EDWARD IRVING, a tanner's son, was born in 1792, at Annan in Dumfries-shire. Having assisted Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, he removed to Cross Street Church, London, where his preaching created an extraordinary sensation. Many of his Sermons and Lectures were published. Charged in 1830 with heresy, he was soon deposed, and in 1834 died in Glasgow of consumption.

RICHARD PORSON, son of a parish-clerk in Norfolk, and born there in 1759, won great renown at Cambridge, where he was Professor of Greek. His critical pen was especially engaged upon Euripides, Homer, Eschylus, and Herodotus. Adversaria, or Notes and Emendations of the Greek Poets, was published after his death. In college-life he was notorious for deep drinking, and noted for his pungent sarcasms. He died in 1808..