of the Best Voyages and Travels in the World, 1808-14, in seventeen volumes quarto, with maps and engravings; he also published an Early History of Scotland, and Select Scottish Ballads: some of these ballads are said to be fabrications by the editor. Piozzi, Hester Lynch (1740-1821) was first married to Mr. Henry Thrale, a rich brewer, whose house was always open to Dr. Johnson and the most eminent literary characters of the day. After the death of Mr. Thrale she was married to Signor Piozzi, an Italian music-master. She published a number of small works, but is now chiefly known by her Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. Price, Sir Uvedale (1747-1829), author of Essays on the Picturesque, and Criticisms on Painters and Paintings. Radcliffe, Ann (1764-1823), novelist of the Terrific School, published Romance of the Forest; Mysteries of Udolpho; The Italian; A Sicilian Romance, &c., all of which are written in the "Monk Lewis" style, though with much greater purity. Rees, Dr. Abraham (1743-1825), a Unitarian clergyman of great learning, published in 1802 the first volume of his Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, illustrated with numerous Engravings. The forty-fifth volume of this very learned and valuable work was finished in 1819. Ricardo, David (1772–1823), political economist, the son of a Dutch Jew, was an extensive stock-broker. His first publication was a pamphlet on The High Price of Bullion, 1809. But his fame rests on a valuable treatise, entitled The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817. Rich, Claudius James (1787-1821), traveller, and resident at Bagdad, published two Memoirs on the Ruins of Babylon. After his death his accomplished wife published his Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan. Stewart, Dugald (1753-1828), Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, three volumes; Philosophical Essays, one volume; A Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, written in 1815 for the Encyclopædia Britannica; A View of the Active and Moral Powers of Man; and Outlines of Moral Philosophy. Few men exerted a wider influence upon the mind of the early part of the nineteenth century than this eloquent philosopher: for thirty or forty years his works were text-books in our best colleges." Williams, Helen Maria (1762-1827), published a volume of Poems; also Letters from France; Travels in Switzerland, &c.; but she will ever be best remembered for her beautiful sacred lyric,— "While Thee I seek, protecting Power, Be my vain wishes still'd," &c. 1 Mr. Radcliffe is styled by Dr. Drake "the Shakspeare of romance-writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the *fter graces of a Claude." But her novels, cace so popular, are now seldom read. 1-All the years I remained about Edinburgh," says Mr. James, the historian of In 14 dia, "I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr. Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard any thing nearly so eloquent as some of the lectures of Professor Stewart." Fourth Decade. WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1778-1830. WILLIAM HAZLITT, a distinguished critic and miscellaneous writer, was the son of a Unitarian clergyman of Shropshire, and was born on the 10th of April, 1778. After having received his academical education at the college in Hackney, in Middlesex, he commenced life as a painter, and by this means gained an accurate knowledge of the principles of the arts. He, however, soon left the pencil for the pen, and, instead of painting pictures, it became his delight to criticize them. After having made various contributions to the periodical journals, he published an essay on the Principles of Human Action, a work which displayed considerable ingenuity and acuteness. This was followed, in 1808, by The Eloquence of the British Senate, a selection of the best parliamentary speeches since the time of Charles I., with notes, two volumes octavo. In 1810 appeared his New and Improved English Grammar, for the use of Schools, in which are incorporated the discoveries of Mr. Horne Tooke and other modern writers on the formation of language. In 1817 was published The Round Table, a collection of Essays on Men, Literature, and Manners, which had previously appeared in the periodical called The Examiner. These were succeeded by his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, a View of the English Stage, and Lectures on English Poetry, which he delivered at the Surrey Institution. After this appeared, from time to time, his contributions to various periodicals, under the titles of Table-Talk, the Spirit of the Age, the Plain Speaker, and the Literature of the Elizabethan Age. His largest and most elaborate work is his Life of Napoleon, in four volumes, which appeared in 1828,-a production which has given him a high rank among the philosophers and historians of the present age. Mr. Hazlitt also contributed many articles to the Edinburgh Review, some of which possess great merit. He continued to write and publish till the year of his death, which took place on the 18th of September, 1830. The writings of Mr. Hazlitt display much originality and genius, united with great critical acuteness and brilliancy of fancy. In the fine arts, the drama, and dramatic literature, he was considered one of the ablest critics of the day. His essays are full of wisdom, and it is almost impossible to rise from a perusal of them without having gained some original and striking ideas and very valuable thoughts. His Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, and his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, are among the most interesting and instructive books in English literature. His admiration for the writers of that period was intense, and he descants upon their beauties with great eloquence and joyous enthusiasm. An able and discriminating writer thus speaks of him: "His mind resembles the 'rich strande' which Spenser has so nobly described, and to which he has himself likened the age of Elizabeth, where treasures of every description lie, without order, in inex haustible profusion. Noble masses of exquisite marble are there, which might be fashioned to support a glorious temple; and gems of peerless lustre, which would adorn the holiest shrine. He has no lack of the deepest feeling, the profoundest sentiments of humanity, or the loftiest aspirations after ideal good. But there are no great leading principles of taste to give singleness to his aims, nor any central points in his mind, around which his feelings may revolve and his imaginations cluster." Allowing this to be true, there yet remains enough to constitute him one of the most tasteful, discriminating, and genial critics in the English language.2 THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honors, statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers: Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher,-men whom fame has eternized in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermentation: the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their 1 Edinburgh Review, xxxiv. 440. * Read Literary Remains of Mr. Hazlitt, &c., by E. L. Bulwer, 2 vols.; also articles upon his various works in the Edinburgh Review, xxviii. 72, and 1xiv. 395; and in the London Quarterly, xvii. 174, xix. 424, and xxvi. 103; also American Quarterly, xx. 265. hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks. The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in a common cause. Their hearts burned within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment; it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and embraces the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference; or, if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general character. But there is a gravity approaching to piety; a seriousness of impression, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervor and enthusiasm in their method of handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough; but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few; they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions "to run and read," with its wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Revelation. Every village in England would present the scenes so well described in Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." I cannot think that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon the minds of the people and not make some impression upon it, the traces of which might be discerned in the manners and literature of the age. For, to leave more disputable points, and take only the historical parts of the Old Testament or the moral sentiments of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and admiration or of riveting sympathy. We see what Milton has made of the account of the Creation, from the manner in which he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest and patriarchal simplicity which goes to the heart of a country, and rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) to the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachel and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from Babylon? There is in all these parts of the Scripture and numberless more of the same kind to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel-an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touching simplicity in the mode of narration, which he who does not feel need be made of no penetrable stuff." There is something in the character of Christ too (leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before nor since. This shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the disciples' feet the night before his death, -that unspeakable instance of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all pride; and in the leave he took of them on that occasion: "My peace I give unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto you;" and in his last commandment, that "they should love one another." Who can read the account of his behavior on the cross, when, turning to his mother, he said, "Woman, behold thy son!" and to the disciple John, "Behold thy mother!" and "from that hour that disciple took her to his own home," without having his heart smote within him? We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love, which is here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse with the disciples as they walked together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them; in his Sermon from the Mount, in his parable of the Good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal Son,-in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom, worthy of the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued, steeped, in this word, charity: it was the spring, the wellhead, from which every thought and feeling gushed into act; and it was this that breathed a mild glory from his face in that last agony upon the cross, "when the meek Saviour bowed his head and died," praying for his enemies. He was the first true teacher of morality; for he alone conceived the idea of a pure |