not earnestly." Johnfon, however, wrote the speech delivered at the Old Bailey when sentence of death was about to be pronounced on him, and which we have quoted. He alfo wrote the "Convict's Addrefs to his unhappy Brethren," the fermon which the Doctor, with a few additions, delivered in the chapel of Newgate, on the 6th of June, 1777, and which he afterwards publifhed as his own. Dr. Johnson was pleased with this fermon, and "wrote to Mrs. Thrale with fome degree of complacency, in Mifs Porteus' judgment (to whom he had not imparted his tranfactions with Dodd) :"Lucy faid, "When I read Dr. Dodd's fermon to the prisoners, I faid, Dr. Johnson could not make a better." "'* His activity did not ftop here; he wrote to the king, and took, as Mr. Croker calls it, the "liberty" to write to the Right Honourable Charles Jenkinson, the Secretary-at-War, foliciting his influence with his royal master. "But, although," fays Mr. Croker, "he thus actively affifted in the folicitations for pardon, yet, in his private judgment, he thought Dodd unworthy of it, having been known to fay, that had he been the adviser of the king, he fhould have told him that, in pardoning Dodd, his juftice in configning the

Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnfon; " Croker's edition, vol. iii.

P. 506.

*

Perreaus to their fentence would have been called

in question."†

To this conclufion we think all muft come, who have any fixed principles upon the impartiality with which justice ought to be administered. The wisdom or the justice of a law may be questionable; but while it exifts, all who violate it must expect the fame punishment. To hang a man for forgery was to punish him in cruel excefs of his crime. It was an unrighteous law. We ought to be glad that the true sense of the relationship which should exift between crime and punishment, that diftinguishes our own times, would not tolerate fuch a barbarous law; we ought to rejoice that the moral feeling of the nation has fo far improved, that for one crime alone (and this under the protest of many wife and good men) is capital punishment retained but while the justly condemned and wifely repealed law did exist, and while men fuffered the extreme penalty for fuch a crime, we think it may be safely averred that no one was ever fo punished more defervedly than the "young comedy divine," and "macaroni parfon," Doctor Dodd.

* The brothers Perreau were executed for forgery on the 17th January, 1776.

+ Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnson;" Croker's edition, vol. iii. P. 513.

JAMES MONTGOMERY.

"On the whole, my private thought was: First, How happy it comparatively is for a man of any earneftness of life, to have no Biography written of him; but to return filently, with his small, forely foiled bit of work, to the Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or him; and not to trouble the reviewers, and greater or leffer public, with attempting to judge it! The idea of 'fame,' as they call it, pofthumous or other, does not inspire one with much ecstacy in these points of view. Secondly, That Sterling's performance, and real or feeming importance in this world, was actually not of a kind to demand an exprefs Biography, even according to the world's ufages. His character was not fupremely original; neither was his fate in the world wonderful. What he did was inconfiderable enough; and as to what it lay in him to have done, this was but a problem, now beyond poffibility of fettlement. Why had a Biography been inflicted on this man; why had not No-biography, and the privilege of all the weary, been his lot?"

The above words, applied by Mr. Carlyle in respect to his own and Archdeacon Hare's Lives of the unfortunate Sterling, might with much more juftice be applied to James Montgomery. What crime had he committed, that his memory fhould be burdened with the feven volumes of biography which Meffrs. Holland and Everett have heaped upon it ? One volume about the fame fize as the fmalleft of the feven would have been an ample record of all that the amiable poet did or faid worth recording, and might, with taste and fkill, have formed a pleasant, a useful, and an interesting biography. This fpinning out of books is a great evil; and one against which every reader has a right to protest, unless the subject is of real importance, and its full treatment imperatively demands a large and extensive surface. We prefume that few will fay this of the life of Montgomery. A gentle, benevolent, pious, and amiable man; twice imprifoned on foolish charges, and without having committed any crime; for more than thirty years the proprietor and conductor of a weekly newspaper; a regular attendant at Bible, Miffionary, and kindred focieties' meetings; and the author of many poems which are pleasant to read, but which display little of that fire from heaven which is the true indication of the infpired poet, and which are even now more frequently talked of than read.-What

had this man done, that seven volumes of Biography fhould have been inflicted on him and the world? We ask this question with a ftrong feeling of the injury committed, being now fresh from-or rather weary of reading the more than two thoufand pages of miscellaneous fmall talk; calendar of attendance at meetings; dates when the mereft trifles were written; unimportant extracts from the Iris; and the interminable letters which make up this heavy and ponderous monument to James Montgomery. From thefe volumes we epitomise the following brief sketch.

James Montgomery was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, on the 4th of November, 1771. His parents were active members of the Moravian Church, in whose cause they laboured zealously, and to which they devoted their lives with all the calmness of the ancient martyrs. It is an honour of itself to be the child of fuch parents. When young Montgomery was four years of age, the family went to Ireland, where they remained until he was fix. His parents at the call of the Church accepted the office of miffionaries in the West Indian Islands, where they nobly did their work, and laid down their lives in the cause of their Mafter. Their fon was fent, to receive his education, to the Moravian Inftitution, which had been established in 1748 at Fulneck, near Leeds, Yorkfhire. He arrived here on the 16th of October,

U