was perhaps a tincture of unnecessary gloom or severity in her religious views; yet, when we recollect her unfeigned sincerity and practical benevolence -her exertions to instruct the poor miners and cottagers-and the untiring zeal with which she laboured, even amidst severe bodily infirmities, to inculcate sound principles and intellectual cultivation, from the palace to the cottage, it is impossible not to rank her among the best benefactors of mankind.

The great success of the different works of our authoress enabled her to live in ease, and to dispense charities around her. Her sisters also secured a competency, and they all lived together at Barley Grove, a property of some extent which they purchased and improved. From the day that the school was given up, the existence of the whole sisterhood appears to have flowed on in one uniform current of peace and contentment, diversified only by new appearances of Hannah as an authoress, and the ups and downs which she and the others met with in the prosecution of a most brave and humane experiment-namely, their zealous effort to extend the blessings of education and religion among the inhabitants of certain villages situated in a wild country some eight or ten miles from their abode, who, from a concurrence of unhappy local and temporary circumstances, had been left in a state of ignorance hardly conceivable at the present day.'* These exertions were ultimately so successful, that the sisterhood had the gratification of witnessing a yearly festival celebrated on the hills of Cheddar, where above a thousand children, with the members of female clubs of industry-also established by them-after attending church-service, were regaled at the expense of their benefactors. Hannah More died on the 7th of September 1833, aged eightyeight. She had made about £30,000 by her writings, and she left, by her will, legacies to charitable and religious institutions amounting to £10,000.

In 1834, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More, by William Roberts, Esq., were published in four volumes. In these we have a full account by Hannah herself of her London life, and many interesting anecdotes.

SAMUEL AND WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND.

SAMUEL IRELAND, a dealer in scarce books, prints, &c., was author of several picturesque tours, illustrated by aquatinta engravings; but is chiefly remarkable as having been made by his son, a youth of eighteen, the unconscious instrument of giving to the world a variety of Shakspearean forgeries. WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND (1777-1834) was articled to a conveyancer in New Inn, and, like Chatterton, began early to imitate ancient writings. His father was morbidly anxious to discover some scrap of Shakspeare's handwriting, and this set the youth to manufacture a number of documents, which he pretended to have accidentally met with at the house of a gentleman of fortune. 'Amongst a mass of family papers,' says the elder Ireland, 'the contracts between Shakspeare, Lowine, and Condelle, and the lease granted by him and Hemynge to Michael Fraser, which was first found, were discovered; and soon afterwards the deed of gift to William Henry Ireland (described as the friend of Shakspeare, in consequence of his having saved his life on the river Thames), and also the deed of trust to John Hemynge, were discovered. In pursuing this search, he (his son) was so fortu* Quarterly Review, 1834.

nate as to meet with some deeds very material to the interests of this gentleman, and such as established beyond all doubt his title to a considerable property; deeds of which this gentleman was as ignorant as he was of his having in his possession any of the manuscripts of Shakspeare. In return for this service, added to the consideration that the young man bore the same name and arms with the person who saved the life of Shakspeare, this gentleman promised him everything relative to the present subject, that had been, or should be found, either in town or at his house in the country. At this house the principal part of the papers, together with a great variety of books, containing his manuscript notes, and three manuscript plays, with part of another, were discovered.' These forged documents included, besides the deeds, a Protestant Confession of Faith by Shakspeare, letters to Anne Hathaway, the Earl of Southampton, and others, a new version of King Lear, and one entire original drama, entitled Vortigern and Rowena. Such a treasure was pronounced invaluable, and the manuscripts were exhibited at the elder Ireland's house, in Norfolk Street. A controversy arose as to the genuineness of the documents, in which Malone took a part, proving that they were forged; but the productions found many admirers and believers. They were published by subscription, in a large and splendid volume, and Vortigern was brought out at Drury Lane Theatre, John Kemble acting the principal character. Kemble, however, was not to be duped by the young forger, being probably, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, warned by Malone. The representation of the play completely broke up the imposture. The structure and language of the piece were so feeble, clumsy, and extravagant, that no audience could believe it to have proceeded from the immortal dramatist. As the play proceeded, the torrent of ridiculous bombast swelled to such a height as to bear down critical patience; and when Kemble uttered the line,

And when this solemn mockery is o'er,

the pit rose and closed the scene with a discordant howl. We give what was considered the 'most sublime passage' in Vortigern:

O sovereign Death!
That hast for thy domain this world immense;
Church-yards and charnel-houses are thy haunts,
And hospitals thy sumptuous palaces;
And when thou wouldst be merry, thou dost choose
The gaudy chamber of a dying king.

Oh, then thou dost wide ope thy bony jaws,
And with rude laughter and fantastic tricks,
Thou clapp'st thy rattling fingers to thy sides;
With icy hand thou tak'st him by the feet,
And upward so till thou dost reach his heart,
And wrapt him in the cloak of lasting night.

So impudent and silly a fabrication was perhaps never before thrust upon public notice. The young adventurer, foiled in this attempt, attempted to earn distinction as a novelist and dramatist, but utterly failed. In 1805, he published a confession of the Shakspearean forgery, An Authentic Account of the Shakspeare Manuscripts, in which he makes this declaration: 'I solemnly declare, first, that my father was perfectly unacquainted with the whole affair, believing the papers most firmly the productions of Shakspeare. Secondly, that I am myself both the author and writer, and had no aid from any soul living, and that I should never have gone so far, but that the world praised the papers so | much, and thereby flattered my vanity. Thirdly,

that any publication which may appear tending to prove the manuscripts genuine, or to contradict what is here stated, is false; this being the true account.' Several other novels, some poems, and attempts at satire proceeded from the pen of Ireland, but they are unworthy of notice, and the last thirty years of the life of this industrious but unprincipled littérateur were passed in obscurity and poverty.

EDMUND MALONE-RICHARD PORSON.

EDMUND MALONE (1741-1812), who was conspicuous in the detection and exposure of Ireland's forgeries, was an indefatigable dramatic critic and commentator, as well as a zealous literary antiquary. He edited Shakspeare (1790), wrote memoirs of Dryden, Sir Joshua Reynolds, W. Gerard Hamilton, &c.; was the friend of Goldsmith, Burke, and Johnson, and still more emphatically the friend of Johnson's biographer, Boswell; and in nearly all literary questions for half a century, he took a lively interest, and was always ready with notes or illustrations. Mr Malone was the son of an Irish judge, and born in Dublin. After studying at Trinity College, he repaired to London, was entered of the Inner Temple, and called to the bar in 1767. His life, however, was devoted to literature, in which he was a useful and delighted pioneer.

The fame of English scholarship and classical criticism descended from Bentley to Porson. RICHARD PORSON (1759-1808) was in 1793 unanimously elected professor of Greek in the university of Cambridge. Besides many fugitive and miscellaneous contributions to classical journals, Porson edited and annotated the first four plays of Euripides, which appeared separately between 1797 and 1801. He collected the Harleian manuscript of the Odyssey for the Grenville edition of Homer (1800), and corrected the text of Eschylus and part of Herodotus. After his death, his Adversaria, or Notes und Emendations of the Greek Poets, were published by Professor Monk and Mr J. C. Blomfield-afterwards bishop of London-and his Tracts and Miscellaneous Criticisms were collected and published by the Rev. T. Kidd. Porson, as a Greek critic, has never perhaps been excelled. He rose from a humble station-his father was a parish-clerk in Norfolksolely by his talents and early proficiency; his memory was prodigious, almost unexampled, and his acuteness and taste in Greek literature were unerring. The habits of this great scholar were, however, fatal to his success in life. He was as intemperate as Sheridan, careless of the usual forms and courtesies of society, and impracticable in ordinary affairs. His love of drink amounted to a passion, or rather disease. His redeeming qualities besides his scholastic acquirements and natural talents, were his strict integrity and love of truth. Many of his pointed sayings were remembered by his friends. Being on one occasion informed that Southey considered his poem of Madoc as likely to be a valuable possession to his family, Porson answered: Madoc will be read-when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.' The ornate style of Gibbon was his aversion: "There could not,' he said, 'be a better exercise for a school-boy than to turn a page of The Decline and Fall into English.' He disliked reading folios, because,' said he, 'we meet with so few mile-stones'-that is, we have such long intervals between the turning over of the leaves. On the whole, though Porson was a critic of the highest order, and though conceding to classical literature all the respect that can be claimed for it, we must lament, with one of his friends, that such a man

should have lived and laboured for nearly half a century, and yet have left little or nothing to the world that was truly and originally his own.'

WORKS ON TASTE, NATURAL HISTORY, AND ANTIQUITIES.

Several interesting and valuable treatises on subjects of Taste, Natural History, and Antiquities, were published about this time, and had considerable influence.

The Discourses on Painting, by SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (1723-1792), are elegant and agreeable compositions, containing a variety of literary illustration, and suggestive thought, but they are not always correct or definite in their criticism and rules for artists. Sir Joshua was elected president of the Royal Academy on its institution in 1769, and from that time to 1790, he delivered fifteen lectures or discourses on the principles and practice of painting. The readers of Johnson and Goldsmith need not be told how much Reynolds was beloved and respected by his associates, while his exquisite taste and skill as a portrait-painter have preserved to us, as Macaulay remarks, 'the thoughtful foreheads of many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of many noble matrons.'

THOMAS PENNANT (1726-1798) commenced in 1761 a body of British zoology, originally published in four volumes folio, and afterwards gave to the world treatises on quadrupeds, birds, arctic zoology, and other departments of natural science. He made tours into Scotland and Wales, of which he published copious accounts; but though a lively and pleasant traveller, and diligent antiquary, Pennant was neither correct nor profound. The popularity of his works stimulated others, and had the effect of greatly promoting the extension of his favourite studies.

FRANCIS GROSE (1731-1791) was a still more superficial antiquary, but voluminous writer. He published the Antiquities of England and Wales, in eight volumes, the first of which appeared in 1773, and the Antiquities of Scotland, in two volumes, published in 1790. To this work Burns contributed his Tam o' Shanter, which Grose characterised as a 'pretty poem!' He wrote also treatises on ancient armour and weapons, military antiquities, &c.

RICHARD GOUGH (1735-1809) was a celebrated topographer and antiquary. His British Topography, Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain, his enlarged edition of Camden's Britannia, and various other works, evince great research and untiring industry. His valuable collection of books and manuscripts he bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The REV. GILBERT WHITE (1720-1793) published a series of letters addressed by him to Pennant and Daines Barrington, descriptive of the natural objects and appearances of the parish of Selborne in Hampshire. White was rector of this parish, and had spent in it the greater part of his life, engaged in literary occupations and the study of nature. His minute and interesting facts, the entire devotion of the amiable author to his subject, and the easy elegance and simplicity of his style, render White's history a universal favourite-something like Izaak Walton's book on angling, which all admire, and hundreds have endeavoured to copy. The retired naturalist was too full of facts and observations to have room for sentimental writing, yet in sentences like the following-however humble be the theme-we may trace no common power of picturesque painting.

-for it is always a vanishing scene-it furnishes an idea worth treasuring among the choicest appearances of nature. Mistiness alone, we have observed, occasions a confusion in objects which is often picturesque; but the glory of the vision depends on the glowing lights which are mingled with it.

Landscape-painters, in general, pay too little attention to the discriminations of morning and evening. We are often at a loss to distinguish in pictures the rising from the setting sun, though their characters are very different both in the lights and shadows. The ruddy lights, indeed, of the evening are more easily distinguished, but it is not perhaps always sufficiently observed that the shadows of the evening are much less opaque than those of the morning. They may be brightened perhaps by the numberless rays floating in the atmosphere, which are incessantly reverberated in every direction, and may continue in action after the sun is set; whereas in the morning the rays of the preceding day having subsided, no object receives any light but from the immediate lustre of the sun. Whatever becomes of the theory, the fact I believe is well ascertained.

The incidental beauties which the meridian sun exhibits are much fewer than those of the rising sun. In summer when he rides high at noon, and sheds his perpendicular ray, all is illumination; there is no shadow to balance such a glare of light, no contrast to oppose it. The judicious artist, therefore, rarely represents his objects under a vertical sun. And yet no species of landscape bears it so well as the scenes of the forest. The tuftings of the trees, the recesses among them, and the lighter foliage hanging over the darker, may all have an effect under a meridian sun. I speak chiefly, however, of the internal scenes of the forest, which bear such total brightness better than any other, as in them there is generally a natural gloom to balance it. The light obstructed by close intervening trees will rarely predominate; hence the effect is often fine. A strong sunshine striking a wood through some fortunate chasm, and reposing on the tuftings of a clump, just removed from the eye, and strengthened by the deep shadows of the trees behind, appears to great advantage; especially if some noble tree, standing on the foreground in deep shadow, flings athwart the sky its dark branches, here and there illumined with a splendid touch of light.

In an open country, the most fortunate circumstance that attends a meridian sun is cloudy weather, which occasions partial lights. Then it is that the distant forest scene is spread with lengthened gleams, while the other parts of the landscape are in shadow; the tuftings of trees are particularly adapted to catch this effect with advantage; there is a richness in them from the strong opposition of light and shade, which is wonderfully fine. A distant forest thus illumined wants only a foreground to make it highly picturesque. As the sun descends, the effect of its illumination becomes stronger. It is a doubt whether the rising or the setting sun is more picturesque. The great beauty of both depends on the contrast between splendour and obscurity. But this contrast is produced by these different incidents in different ways. The grandest effects of the rising sun are produced by the vapours which envelop it-the setting sun rests its glory on the gloom which often accompanies its parting rays. A depth of shadow hanging over the eastern hemisphere gives the beams of the setting sun such powerful effect, that although in fact they are by no means equal to the splendour of a meridian sun, yet through force of contrast they appear superior. A distant forest scene under this brightened gloom is particularly rich, and glows with double splendour. The verdure of the summer leaf, and the varied tints of the autumnal one, are all lighted up with the most resplendent colours.

The internal parts of the forest are not so happily disposed to catch the effects of a setting sun. The meridian ray, we have seen, may dart through the openings at the top, and produce a picture, but the flanks of the forest are generally too well guarded against its horizontal beams. Sometimes a recess fronting the west may receive a beautiful light, spreading in a lengthened gleam amidst the gloom of the woods which surround it; but this can only be had in the outskirts of the forest. Sometimes also we find in its internal parts, though hardly in its deep recesses, splendid lights here and there catching the foliage, which though in nature generally too scattered to produce an effect, yet, if judiciously collected, may be beautiful on canvas.

We sometimes also see in a woody scene coruscations like a bright star, occasioned by a sunbeam darting through an eyelet-hole among the leaves. Many painters, and especially Rubens, have been fond of introducing this radiant spot in their landscapes. But in painting, it is one of those trifles which produces no effect, nor can this radiance be given. In poetry, indeed, it may produce a pleasing image. Shakspeare hath introduced it beautifully, where, speaking of the force of truth entering a guilty conscience, he compares it to the sun, which

Fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,

And darts his light through every guilty hole.

It is one of those circumstances which poetry may offer to the imagination, but the pencil cannot well produce to the eye.

The Essays on the Picturesque, by Sir Uvedale Price, were designed by their accomplished author to explain and enforce the reasons for studying the works of eminent landscape-painters, and the principles of their art, with a view to the improvement of real scenery, and to promote the cultivation of what has been termed landscape-gardening. He examined the leading features of modern gardening, in its more extended sense, on the general principles of painting, and shewed how much the character of the picturesque has been neglected, or sacrificed to a false idea of beauty. The best edition of these essays, improved by the author, is that of 1810; but Sir Thomas Dick Lauder has published editions of both Gilpin and Price-the latter a very handsome volume, 1842-with a great deal of additional matter. Besides his Essays on the Picturesque, Sir Uvedale has written essays on artificial water, on house decorations, architecture, and buildings-all branches of his original subject, and treated with the same taste and elegance. The theory of the author is, that the picturesque in nature has a character separate from the sublime and the beautiful; and in enforcing and maintaining this, he attacked the style of ornamental gardening which Mason the poet had recommended, and Kent and Brown, the great landscape improvers, had reduced to practice. Some of Price's positions have been overturned by Dugald Stewart in his Philosophical Essays; but the exquisite beauty of his descriptions must ever render his work interesting, independently altogether of its metaphysical or philosophical distinctions. His criticism of painters and paintings is equally able and discriminating; and by his works we consider Sir Uvedale Price has been highly instrumental in diffusing those just sentiments on matters of taste, and that improved style of landscape-gardening, which so eminently distinguish the English aristocracy of the present times.

The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON published in 1790 Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, designed to prove that material objects appear beautiful or

sublime in consequence of their association with our moral feelings and affections. The objects presented to the eye generate trains of thought and pleasing emotion, and these constitute our sense of beauty. This theory, referring all our ideas of beauty to the law of association, has been disputed and condemned as untenable, but part of Mr Alison's reasoning is just, and his illustrations and language are particularly apposite and beautiful. For example, he thus traces the pleasures of the antiquary:

[Memorials of the Past.]

Even the peasant, whose knowledge of former times extends but to a few generations, has yet in his village some monuments of the deeds or virtues of his forefathers, and cherishes with a fond veneration the memorial of those good old times to which his imagination returns with delight, and of which he loves to recount the simple tales that tradition has brought him. And what is it that constitutes the emotion of sublime delight, which every man of common sensibility feels upon his first prospect of Rome? It is not the scene of destruction which is before him. It is not the Tiber, diminished in his imagination to a paltry stream, flowing amidst the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of superstition over the wreck of human greatness, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the first honours of humanity have been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Cæsar, of Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. It is the mistress of the world which he sees, and who seems to him to rise again from her tomb to give laws to the universe. All that the labours of his youth, or the studies of his maturer age, have acquired with regard to the history of this great people, open at once on his imagination, and present him with a field of high and solemn imagery which can never be exhausted. Take from him these associations-conceal from him that it is Rome that he sees, and how different would be his

emotion !

[The Effect of Sounds as modified by Association.] The howl of the wolf is little distinguished from the howl of the dog, either in its tone or in its strength; but there is no comparison between their sublimity. There are few, if any, of these sounds so loud as the most common of all sounds, the lowing of a cow. Yet this is the very reverse of sublimity. Imagine this sound, on the contrary, expressive of fierceness or strength, and there can be no doubt that it would become sublime. The hooting of the owl at midnight, or amid ruins, is strikingly sublime; the same sound at noon, or during the day, is very far from being so. The scream of the eagle is simply disagreeable when the bird is either tame or confined; it is sublime only when it is heard amid rocks and deserts, and when it is expressive to us of liberty and independence, and savage majesty. The neighing of a war-horse in the field of battle, or of a young untamed horse when at large among mountains, is powerfully sublime. The same sound in a cart-horse, or a horse in the stable, is simply indifferent, if not disagreeable. No sound is more absolutely mean than the grunting of swine. The same sound in the wild boar-an animal remarkable both for fierceness and strength-is sublime. The low and feeble sounds of animals which are generally considered the reverse of sublime, are rendered so by association. The hissing of a goose, and the rattle of a child's plaything, are both contemptible sounds; but when the hissing comes from the mouth of a dangerous serpent, and the noise of the rattle is that of the rattlesnake, although they do not differ from the others in intensity, they are both of them highly sublime.

There is certainly no resemblance, as sounds, between the noise of thunder and the hissing of a serpentbetween the growling of a tiger and the explosion of gunpowder-between the scream of the eagle and the shouting of a multitude; yet all of these are sublime. In the same manner, there is as little resemblance between the tinkling of the sheep-fold bell and the murmuring of the breeze-between the hum of the beetle and the song of the lark-between the twitter of the swallow and the sound of the curfew; yet all these are beautiful.

Mr Alison published also two volumes of Sermons, remarkable for elegance of composition. He was a prebendary of Salisbury and senior minister of the Episcopal Chapel, Edinburgh-a man of most amiable character and varied accomplishments. He died, at an advanced age, in 1839.

BIOGRAPHERS.

The French have cultivated biography with more diligence than the English; but much has been done of late years to remedy this defect in our national literature. Individual specimens of great value we have long possessed. The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert, by Izaak Walton, are entitled to the highest praise for the fulness of their domestic details, no less than for the fine simplicity and originality of their style. The Lives of the Poets by Johnson, and the occasional memoirs by Goldsmith, Mallet, and other authors, are either too general or too critical to satisfy the reader as representations of the daily life, habits, and opinions of those whom we venerate or admire. Mason's life of Gray was a vast improvement on former biographies, as the interesting and characteristic correspondence of the poet and his literary diary suing the silent course of his studies, or mingling and journals, bring him personally before us puroccasionally as a retired scholar in the busy world around him. The success of Mason's bold and wise experiment prompted another and more complete BOSWELL (1740-1795) was by birth and education a work-the life of Dr Johnson by Boswell. JAMES gentleman of rank and station-the son of a Scottish judge, and heir to an ancient family and estate. He had studied for the bar, but being strongly impressed with admiration of the writings and character of Dr Johnson, he attached himself to the rugged moralist, soothed and flattered his irritability, submitted to his literary despotism and caprice; and, sedulously cultivating his acquaintance and society whenever his engagements permitted, he took faithful and copious notes of his conversation. In 1773 he accompanied Johnson to the Hebrides, and after the death of the latter, he published, in 1785, his journal of the tour, being a record of each day's occurrences, and of the more striking parts of Johnson's conversation. The work was eminently successful; and in 1791 Boswell gave to the world his full-length portrait of his friend, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., in two volumes quarto. A second edition was published in 1794, and the author was engaged in preparing a third when he died. A great number of editions have since been printed, the latest of which was edited by Mr J. W. Croker. Anecdotes and recollections of Johnson were also published by Mrs Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, Malone, Miss Reynolds, &c. Boswell had awakened public curiosity, and shewn how much wit, wisdom, and sagacity, joined to real worth and benevolence, were concealed under the