than to Sir Egerton Brydges, and in no one can be found finer passages of just thought, genial and tasteful criticism, pure and ennobling sentiment, and beautiful and eloquent writing. The branches of literature to which he chiefly devoted himself were poetry, romance, the republication of old English poetry, and genealogy. It would be hardly possible to enumerate all his works; but the following are the principal. His first publication was a volume of Sonnets, in 1785: some of these possess great merit, particularly one on Echo and Silence, which has been warmly praised by Wordsworth. In 1792, appeared "Mary de Clifford," a novel; in 1798, another, entitled "Arthur Fitz Albini ;" and in 1800,"Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum," being a new edition, with additions, of a work under the same title by Edward Philips, nephew of Milton. In 1805, he commenced that curious and most valuable bibliographical and critical work, the "Censura Literaria," which was continued to the year 1809, and forms ten volumes octavo. In 1814, he published "Occasional Poems;" in 1818, "Excerpta Tudoriana, or Extracts from Elizabethan Literature;" in 1821, "Letters from the Continent;" in 1832, "Lake of Geneva," in two volumes; and in 1834, "Imaginary Biography," a work in which the literary characters of many English scholars are drawn with great fidelity, taste, and discrimination. In the same year appeared "The Autobiography, Times, Opinions, and Contemporaries of Sir Egerton Brydges." 2 "2 He was also a large contributor to periodical publications, particularly to "The Gentleman's Magazine," on genealogy and antiquity. Besides these works he edited an edition of "Milton's Poetical Works," enriched with his own tasteful and discriminating remarks, and with a selection of notes from the best commentators, prefixed with a life of the great poet. This I consider, on the whole, the best edition of Milton. It has been most truthfully remarked, that the student of English literature is deeply indebted to Sir Egerton Brydges "for valuable accessions to our know Of this work, there were but one hundred copies printed. I have the good fortune to have one of them, and consider it one of the most interesting and valuable books in my library, replete with sound criticisins and curious information, especially in old English lite rature. Of this remarkable book, a writer in the number of the "Gentleman's Magazine" for March, 1835, thus speaks: "In this singular work there are lofty conceptions enough to form a poet, and moral wisdom enough to make a sage. It is a book that to be estimated must be read with an honest and true heart: much must be forgiven, and much overlooked: but after all that is offensive and all that is eccentric is removed from the service, there will remain a knowledge, a power, a feeling, and a perseverance that must inspire respect and admiration. We hesitate not to say that in these volumes are some of the most beautiful pas sages that are to be found in English prose. Were we (which Heaven forbid!) to educate a poet; were we to feed him with the choicest honey-bread, which is royal food; to inspire him with the noblest sentiments, expressed in the most masterly and harmonious language, we should send him into the woods, and by the sounding waters, with those very books which Sir Egerton so wisely edited." Again, the same charming critic remarks upon the studious habits of our best poets-"Look at all our great poets, and see the means which they took to obtain immortality. How laborious their studies, how large their materials, how extensive their erudition, how vigorous their efforts, and how deep and majestic their repose! The example of Milton is in every one's mouth, he wrote grainmars, and compiled dictionaries, and taught obstinate little urchins, and constructed treatises of faith, and worried Hall, and abused Usher, and pelted Salmasius into Sweden, and pelted him out again; and then took wing, and soared away into Paradise. Pope, Butler, Akenside, Gray, were all men of great reading and study, independent of their poetry. So it is down to Scott and Southey, and so must ever be. Beautiful as is the poetry of Goldsmith, it would be still more gratifying to the reader, if his knowledge had been more perfect, and his reasoning more orderly and accurate." ledge of our earliest writers-for fine and just trains of poetical criticismfor some touching and elegant poetry, and for a few ingenious tales of fiction." Indeed, I know of no one who has written so much himself, and who, at the same time, has done so much to bring forward the writings of others—to bring out the hidden to revive the forgotten-and to honor the neglected but true genius. We are most deeply indebted to him, too, for his labors of love upon our great Epic; for no critic, not excepting Addison himself, has had a more just appreciation of the genius of Milton, or has criticised him with truer taste or sounder judgment.' SIR WALTER RALEIGH. It was now resolved that Sir Walter should be brought to the bar of the King's Bench by habeas corpus, and execution awarded upon his former sentence. He was accordingly brought up, on October 28, 1618, though taken from his bed under the affliction of an ague fit. Execution was accordingly granted; and he was delivered to the sheriffs of Middlesex, and conveyed to the Gate House, near the Palace-yard. His heroism did not forsake him. To some, who deplored his misfortunes, he observed, with calmness, that "the world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution." On Thursday, October 29th, he was conducted to the scaffold, in Old Palace-yard. His countenance was cheerful; and he said, “I desire to be borne withal, for this is the third day of my fever; and if I shall show any weakness, I beseech you to attribute it to my malady, for this is the hour in which it was wont to come." He then addressed the spectators in a long speech, which ended thus :— "And now I entreat you to join with me in prayer to the great God of Heaven, whom I have grievously offended, being a man full of all vanity, and have lived a sinful life, in all sinful callings-for I have been a soldier, a captain, a sea captain, and a courtier, which are courses of wickedness and vice-that God would forgive me, and cast away my sins from me, and that he would receive me into everlasting life. So I take my leave of you all, making my peace with God." When he bade farewell to his friends, he said, "I have a long journey to go, and therefore I will take my leave." Having asked the executioner to show him the axe, which the executioner hesitated to do, he said, "I prithee let me see it! Dost thou think I am afraid of it?" He then took hold of it, felt the edge, and, smiling, said to the sheriff, "This is a sharp medicine; but it is a physician for all evils." He forgave the executioner; and being asked which way he would lay himself on the block, he answered, "So 1 Read Edinburgh Review, lix. 439, and American Quarterly, xvi. 457. the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies." At two strokes his head was taken off, without the least shrink or motion of his body. * * * If there were no other blots in King James's reign, Raleigh's death alone would render it intolerable to every generous and reflecting mind. When I consider what sort of talents and conduct covered Cecil's grave with wealth and honors, while those of Raleigh led him to the scaffold, and his posterity to extinction in poverty and ruin, my heart bursts with indignation and horror! Raleigh's mind appears to have been characterized by boldness, and freedom from nice scruples, either in thought or action. He possessed all the various faculties of the mind in such ample degrees that, to whichever of them he had given exclusive or unproportionate cultivation, in that he must have highly excelled. There are so many beautiful lines in the poem prefixed to Spenser's "Faerie Queene," beginning "Methought I saw," &c., that it is clear he was capable of attaining a high place among poetical writers. Do I pronounce Raleigh a poet? Not, perhaps, in the judgment of a severe criticism. Raleigh, in his better days, was too much occupied in action to have cultivated all the powers of a poet; which require solitude and perpetual meditation, and a refinement of sensibility, such as intercourse with business and the world deadens. But, perhaps, it will be pleaded, that his long years of imprisonment gave him leisure for meditation more than enough. It has been beautifully said by Lovelace that "Stone walls do not a prison make, so long as the mind is free. But broken spirits and indescribable injuries and misfortunes do not agree with the fervor required by the muse. Hope, that "sings of promised pleasure," could never visit him in his dreary bondage; and ambition, whose lights had hitherto led him through difficulties and dangers and sufferings, must now have kept entirely aloof from one whose fetters disabled him to follow as a votary in her train. Images of rural beauty, quiet, and freedom might, perhaps, have added, by the contrast, to the poignancy of his present painful situation; and he might rather prefer the severity of mental labor in unravelling the dreary and comfortless records of perplexing history in remote ages of war and bloodshed. We have no proof that Raleigh possessed the copious, vivid, and creative powers of Spenser; nor is it probable that any cultivation would have brought forth from him fruit equally ich. But in his poetry, I think we can perceive some traits of attraction and excel See this poem in "Compendium of English Literature." lence which perhaps even Spenser wanted. If less diversified than that gifted bard, he would, I think, have sometimes been more forcible and sublime. His images would have been more gigantic, and his reflections more daring. With all his mental attention keenly bent on the busy state of existing things in political society, the range of his thought had been lowered down to practical wisdom: but other habits of intellectual exercise, excursions into the ethereal fields of fiction, and converse with the spirits which inhabit those upper regions, would have given a grasp and a color to his conceptions as magnificent as the fortitude of his soul. His "History of the World" proves the extent of his knowledge and learning, and the profundity of his opinions: and this written with a broken spirit, in prison, and under the pining health produced by close air, and want of exercise and every cheering comfort. How grand must have been his fiery feelings in the high hope of enterprise, bounding over the ocean, and with new worlds opening before him! Well might Spenser call him "The Shepherd of the Ocean." Raleigh was, above other men, one who had a head to design, a heart to resolve, and a hand to execute. He lived in an age of great men in every department; but, taking a union of splendid qualities, he was the first of that most brilliant and heroic epoch. He was not a poet of the order of Spenser and Shakspeare; but in what other gift and acquirement was he not first? JOHN MILTON.1 Of this " greatest of great men," the private traits and whole life were congenial to his poetry. Men of narrow feeling will say that his political writings contradict this congeniality. His politics were, no doubt, violent and fierce; but it cannot be doubted that they were conscientious. He lived at a crisis of extraordinary public agitation, when all the principles of government were moved to their very foundations, and when there was a general desire to commence institutions de novo. His gigantic mind gave him a temper that spurned at all authority. This was his characteristic through life: it showed itself in every thought and every action, both public and private, from his earliest youth; except that he did not appear to rebel against parental authority for nothing is more beautiful than his mild and tender expostulation to his father. His great poems require such a stretch of mind in the reader, as "We venerate Milton as a man of genius, but still more as a man of magnanimity and Christian virtue; who regarded genius and poetry as sacred gifts imparted to him, not to amuse men, or to build up a reputation, but that he might quicken and call forth what was great and divine in his fellow creatures."-CHANNING, to be almost painful. The most amazing copiousness of learning is sublimated into all his conceptions and descriptions. His learning never oppressed his imagination; and his imagination never obliterated or dimmed his learning: but even these would not have done, without the addition of a great heart and a pure and lofty mind. That mind was given up to study and meditation from his boyhood till his death: he had no taste for the vulgar pleasures of life; he was all spiritual. But he loved fame enthusiastically, and was ready to engage in the great affairs of public business; and when he did engage, performed his part with industry, skill, and courage. Courage, indeed, mingled in a prominent degree among his many other mighty and splendid qualities. Who is equal to analyze a mind so rich, so powerful, so exquisite? I do not think that tenderness was his characteristic; and he was, above all other men, unyielding. His softer sensibilities were rather reflective than instantaneous: his sentiments came from his imagination, rather than his imagination from his sentiments. The vast fruits of his mind always resulted from complex ingredients; though they were so amalgamated that with him they became simple in their effects. It is impossible now to trace the processes of his intellect. We cannot tell what he would have been without study; but we know that he must have been great under any circumstances, though his greatness might have been of a different kind. He made whatever he gathered from others his own; he only used it as an ingredient for his own combinations. His earliest study seems to have been the holy writings: they first fed his fancy with the imagery of eastern poetry; and nowhere could he have found so sublime a nutriment. But what is any nutriment to him who cannot taste, digest, and be nourished? It depends not upon the force and excellence of what is conveyed; but upon the power of the recipient: it is, almost all, inborn genius, though it may be under the influence of some small modification from discipline. Superficial minds, affecting the tone of wisdom, hold out that the gifts of the Muse are incompatible with serious business. Milton, the greatest of poets, affords a crushing answer to this. In the flower of his manhood, and through middle age, he was a statist, an active man of executive affairs in a crisis of unexampled difficulty and danger. His controversial writings, both in politics and divinity, are solid, vigorous, original, and practical; and yet he could return at last to the highest flights of the Muse, undamped and undimmed. The lesson of his life is one of the most instructive that biography affords: it shows what various and dissimilar powers may be united |