the ability to concentrate its powers into a grand laboured effort. The hero of the tale, Captain Booth, who seems to possess no earthly quality except a dogged affection for his wife, is brought through all the usual difficulties, and placed on the pinnacle of happiness, not by his own endeavours, by which the moral might have been strengthened, but by the mere operation of chance; and cringing to great men for ‘a situation' seems all the effort of which the author thought him capable. He is however merely the point round which a fairy world of characters and incidents revolve. No one can read of Colonel Booth without recollecting how often he has met the man; and the ghastly horrors of the prison scene, with which the work commences, can never be erased from the mind of the reader. Still unwearied, although quickly declining in health, his next undertaking was The Covent-garden Journal, by Sir Alexander Drawcansir, knight, censor-general of Great Britain.' This periodical, published twice a week, he continued for a year, at the end of which the number and extent of his disorders prompted him to make a last effort to recover his health by a voyage to Portugal. At this time a dropsy had risen to so great a height, that he was compelled to submit to several operations of tapping; and in an account of his voyage, the last production of his active pen, he gives a mournful picture of the state of his health, while his remarks, although full of humour and his wonted vivacity, show occasional depression of spirits, and more than his usual acidity. He survived his arrival in Lisbon but two months, and died on the 8th of October, 1754, in the 48th year of his age. He left behind him a second wife, and four children.

John Henley.

BORN A. D. 1692.-DIED A. D. 1756.

THIS notorious character, better known by the appellation Orator Henley, was the son of the vicar of Melton-Mowbray, Leicestershire, in which parish he was born on the 3d of August, 1692.

In the early part of his life he exhibited great quickness of apprehension and more than ordinary talents. In 1709 he was entered of St John's college, Cambridge, where he prosecuted his studies with considerable diligence; but occasionally betrayed much arrogance of disposition. After taking his bachelor's degree, the trustees of Melton school gave him the head-mastership of that seminary, and for a time his exertions and skill conferred much celebrity upon it. But Henley was of much too aspiring a disposition to remain satisfied with a country mastership. Having been admitted into orders, he became inflamed with the ambition of figuring as a preacher in London. Accordingly to London he came, and by dint of pushing and consummate assurance obtained a lectureship, and was for a time a very popular preacher. His native arrogance however, soon burst forth, and vented itself in the most disgusting praises of himself and his oratorical powers, combined with the most intemperate abuse of all who seemed blind to his merits, or, as he supposed, set themselves to obstruct "his rising in town, from cuvy, jealousy, and a disrelish of those who are not qualified to be complete spaniels." The earl of Macclesfield presented him with a benefice

in the country of £80 per annum; and Lord Molesworth made him his chaplain; but all was esteemed too little for his worth; and in a fit of disappointment he flung up his benefice and lectureship, and set up an oratory, as he termed it, of his own, in Clare-market; whither he invited the world to come and listen to the only true orator that had yet appeared in modern times,-the recoverer of the action and the eloquence of Demosthenes.

These orations soon degenerated into downright buffoonery. His audience was composed of the very lowest ranks, and he sometimes fell upon singular expedients to extract money from them. On one occasion he got together a great number of shoemakers, by announcing that he would teach them the art of making a pair of excellent shoes in a few minutes. This wonderful abridgment of labour was effected before the eyes of his gaping auditory, by cutting off the tops of a pair of readymade boots!

Henley died in 1756. He was a man of considerable acquirements, and no mean genius; but he perverted all that might have raised him to respectability and even eminence, by his insatiable vanity and inordinate self-love. Hogarth has introduced him into some of his compositions, and Pope has immortalized him in the Dunciad.'

David Hartley, M. D.

BORN A. D. 1705.—died a. D. 1757.

THIS ingenious metaphysician was the son of a Yorkshire clergyman. He was educated at Cambridge, and chosen a fellow of Jesus college. He was originally intended for the church, but being unable to get over some religious scruples, he declined entering into orders, and applied himself to the study of medicine, in which profession he attained considerable reputation and practice. He died in 1757.

Hartley lived in terms of intimacy with most of the literary characters of his day. His talents were more than respectable, and his amiable dispositions and uncommon simplicity of character, endeared him to all who knew him. He was the author of several little professional tractates; but his great work, and that by which his name has been made familiar to all writers on metaphysical science, is his 'Observations on Man.' This work was begun by him in his twenty-fifth year, and published in his forty-third. It excited less interest when it first appeared than it perhaps does now; but we do not think justice has yet been done to the extraordinary sagacity and originality of thought every where conspicuous in the Observations.'

Hartley regards the brain, the nerves, and the spinal marrow, as the direct instruments of sensation. External objects, he conceives, excite vibrations in these medullary cords, which vibrations once communicated, are kept up by a certain subtle elastic fluid called ether. After a sufficient repetition of these vibrations, the sensations leave behind them types and images of themselves. Frequent repetition excites association, and association in its turn imparts to any one idea the power of exciting all the related ideas,--a power which belongs likewise to the vibratiuncles and their miniature images. Upon this principle

and theory of association, he attempts to account for all the phenomena of the mental constitution of man. It is unfortunate for Hartley's theory, that not only is his system of vibrations mere assumption, but it has been demonstrated by Haller, that there can be no such thing as vibrations in the nervous substance. Moreover, the theory granted, we are not a step nearer to the solution of the question as to the connection between matter and thought.

"The work of Dr Hartley, entitled 'Observations on Man,'" says Sir James Mackintosh, "is distinguished by an uncommon union of originality with modesty, in unfolding a simple and fruitful principle of human nature. It is disfigured by the absurd affectation of mathematical forms then prevalent; and it is encumbered and deformed by a mass of physiological speculations, groundless, or at best uncertain, wholly foreign from its proper purpose, which repel the inquirer into mental philosophy from its perusal, and lessen the respect of the physiologist for the author's judgment. It is an unfortunate example of the disposition predominant among undistinguishing theorists to class together all the appearances which are observed at the same time, and in the immediate neighbourhood of each other. At that period, chemical phenomena were referred to mechanical principles; vegetable and animal life were subjected to mechanical or chemical laws; and while some physiologists ascribed the vital functions to the understanding, the greater part of metaphysicians were disposed, with a grosser confusion, to derive the intellectual operations from bodily causes. The error in the latter case, though less immediately perceptible, is deeper and more fundamental than in any other; since it overlooks the primordial and perpetual distinction between the being which thinks and the thing which is thought of;-not to be lost sight of, by the mind's eye, even for a twinkling, without involving all nature in darkness and confusion. Hartley and Condillac, who, much about the same time, but seemingly without any knowledge of each other's speculations, began in a very similar mode to simplify, but also to mutilate the system of Locke, stopped short of what is called Materialism, which consummates the confusion, but touched its threshold. Thither, it must be owned, their philosophy pointed, and thither their followers proceeded. Hartley and Bonnet, still more than Condillac, suffered themselves, like most of their contemporaries, to overlook the important truth, that all the changes in the organs which can be likened to other material phenomena, are nothing more than antecedents and prerequisites of perception, bearing not the faintest likeness to it; as much outward in relation to the thinking principle, as if they occurred in any other part of matter; and of which the entire comprehension, if it were attained, would not bring us a step nearer to the nature of thought. They who would have been the first to exclaim against the mistake of a sound for a colour, fell into the more unspeakable error of confounding the perception of objects, as outward, with the consciousness of our own mental operations.'

As to Hartley's doctrine of association, Sir James remarks that both Hartley and Condillac "agree in referring all the intellectual operations to the association of ideas, and in representing that association as reducible to the single law, that ideas which enter the mind at

See Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica.

the same time, acquire a tendency to call up each other, which is in direct proportion to the frequency of their having entered together. In this important part of their doctrine they seem, whether unconsciously or otherwise, to have only repeated, and very much expanded, the opinion of Hobbes. In its simplicity it is more agreeable than the system of Mr Hume, who admitted five independent laws of association; and it is in comprehension far superior to the views of the same subject by Mr Locke, whose ill-chosen name still retains its place in our nomenclature, but who only appeals to the principle as explaining some fancies and whimsies of the human mind. The capital fault of Hartley is that of a rash generalization, which may prove imperfect, and which is at least premature. All attempts to explain instinct by this principle have hitherto been unavailing. Many of the most important processes of reasoning have not hitherto been accounted for by it. It would appear by a close examination, that even this theory, simple as it appears, presupposes many facts relating to the mind, of which its authors do not seem to have suspected the existence. How many ultimate facts of that nature, for example, are contained and involved in Aristotle's celebrated comparison of the mind in its first state to a sheet of unwritten paper? The texture of the paper, even its colour, the sort of instrument fit to act on it, its capacity to receive and to retain impressions, all its differences, from steel on the one hand, to water on the other, certainly presuppose some facts, and may imply many, without a distinct statement of which, the nature of writing could not be explained to a person wholly ignorant of it. How many more, as well as greater laws, may be necessary to enable mind to perceive outward objects! If the power of perception may be thus dependent, why may not what is called the association of ideas, the attraction between thoughts, the power of one to suggest another, be affected by mental laws hitherto unexplored, perhaps unobserved ?" 2

Hartley's work possesses few of the attractions of style. Its perspicuity is even not unfrequently affected by the awkwardness of the diction. But these minor blemishes are amply atoned for by the vigour and originality of the author's ideas, and the mild and philosophical spirit which breathes in every page of the 'Observations.'

Mr Stewart, in his preliminary dissertation to the same work to which Sir James has contributed the remarks we have just quoted, speaks of Hartley with much less respect than his illustrious coadjutor has done.

Edward Moore.

BORN A. D. 1712.-Died A. D. 1757.

EDWARD MOORE was born at Abingdon in Berkshire, in the year 1712. He started in life as a linen-draper, but business proving unsuccessful with him, "more from necessity than inclination," as he himself avers, he turned his attention to literature. His 'Fables for the Female sex,' first published in 1744, introduced him favourably to the public, and obtained for him the patronage of Mr Pelham.

'See Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica.

In 1748, his comedy of the Foundling,' for which Garrick wrote the epilogue, was produced and acted. Some critics have discovered in it too close a resemblance to the Conscious Lovers,' but its success upon the whole was flattering. His Gil Blas,' produced in 1751, was less favourably received. The Gamester,' a tragedy, first acted on the 7th of February, 1753, was the most successful of Moore's dramatic pieces, and still retains a place among our best acting plays. Davies, in his life of Garrick, claims for that actor the merit of having contributed some of the best and most striking passages of The Gamester,' especially the scene between Lewson and Stukely in the fourth act.

When Lord Lyttleton projected that pleasing periodical 'The World,' he placed the editorship of it in Moore's hands, and obtained for him the assistance of the earls of Chesterfield, Bath, and Corke, and of Messrs Walpole, Cambridge, Jenyns, and several other individuals of highly cultivated talents, whose contributions raised that miscellany to a high degree of popularity. Moore himself wrote sixty-one papers in this work. Their style is easy and graceful; the subjects are generally of a light and playful cast.

As a

Moore died in 1757. His acknowledged poems were collected and published in a quarto volume, the year preceding his death. poet he never rises above mediocrity.

John Dyer.

BORN A. D. 1700.-DIED A. D. 1758.

JOHN DYER, author of 'The Fleece,' was the son of a respectable Welsh attorney. He received his education at Westminster-school. His father wished him to be trained to his own profession, but the law proved too dry a study for the young poet, who greatly preferred rambling about his native hills to the irksome drudgery of the desk.

His first publication was a descriptive poem, called 'Grongar Hill,' which Johnson praises, affirming that "when it is once read, it will be read again." Having spent some time in Italy, on his return to England he published The Ruins of Rome,' in 1740. This poem was well-received. It is evidently the production of a mind well-stored with classical reminiscences, and gifted with a quick and accurate perception of the beautiful and sublime in nature.

He took orders in the church soon after his return from the continent, and obtained several small preferments from Lord-chancellor Hardwicke. In 1757 he published his last and best piece, 'The Fleece,' of which Akenside thought very highly; but Dr Johnson censures the lowness of the subject, contending that the cares of the wool-grower are beneath the dignity of verse. The critic's censure seems to us too severe. Dyer has succeeded in adorning his subject with the graces of poetry, and produced upon the whole a very pleasing poem.

He died on the 24th of July, 1758.