the peace of Amiens took place, he went to Paris, and, during the short interval of quiet that then occurred, studied regularly in the Louvre. On his return to England he continued to live with his brother, I believe, until his marriage with the sister of Dr Stoddart. Soon after this event, he established himself in a small house in Westminster This house was remarkable for having been formerly occupied byMilton; it was an old-fashioned place, but it had one pleasant goodsized room, that overlooked the garden of Mr Jeremy Bentham. During this period Hazlitt wrote his essay on 'The Principles of Human Action; he also abridged (1807) and wrote an introduction to 'Tucker's Light of Nature,' a book to which Paley confesses his obligations; he published, (1812) 'The Eloquence of the British Senate;' an English Grammar; and contributed successively to the Times and the Morning Chronicle newspapers. He projected also an extensive metaphysical work; but evidently gave it up and turned his attention to more attractive subjects. He became theatrical critic for the Morning Chronicle, (1814) and was the first person who insisted strenuously on the merits of Kean, the actor; and he wrote, at intervals, various papers on art in the Encyclopædia Britannica,' and elsewhere. The article on Painting, more especially, in the last-named work is from his pen.

"In 1816 he published his essays called the Round Table;' in 1817 his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays; and in the same, or the next year, lectured to full audiences at the Surrey Institution. He read his lectures in an abrupt yet somewhat monotonous voice, but they were very effective. If he failed in communicating, by his manner, the lighter graces of his authors, he established their graver beauties, and impressed on his auditors a due sense of their power. He was a great talker, when it was his cue to talk, and I have never known one more amusing. If he uttered fewer words than Mr Coleridge, or expatiated less, he developed his ideas more distinctly, and I think exhibited as many of them. The difference between these two was well expressed

by

6

I forget who, and was afterwards adopted by Mr de Quincy, in his Confessions of an Opium Eater.' Coleridge, he said, was a subtle and Hazlitt an acute thinker. There was the same distinction between them as between the alchymist and the regular professor of chemistry. This judgment, however, is too hard upon Mr Coleridge, who, if he soars too frequently in mid-air,' and traverses the regions of Mesmerism and astrology, can also descend upon the earth and reason like a philosopher."

In 1825 Mr Hazlitt visited France and Italy. In 1828 he published his largest work, The Life of Napoleon,' in 4 vols. 8vo. Besides the works above enumerated, he contributed largely to various periodical works. His death, which occurred in Frith street, Soho, on the 18th of September, 1850, was occasioned by an organic disease of the stomach. He retained the entire possession of his faculties to the last. Soon after his death, a character of him appeared in the Atlas; from which the following are extracts:-" All our contemporaries have mistaken, or otherwise failed to appreciate duly, the character of William Hazlitt. His memory is entitled to justice, of which he had but little when living. He was not the sort of man to whom justice could have been done effectually, for there was a waywardness in him that was sure to upset the cup before the wine was

emptied. Perhaps it is the nature of genius-and he had an abundant share-to make its own circumstances, and to make them, too, of the troubled cast. He made a name at little cost, and preserved it indifferently, as if it were to show the greatness of his powers, that could sustain without effort what the toil of others could not accomplish. Had he chosen to labour at the improvement of the faculties he had, and the enlargement of their application, there would be little need to inquire into the mysteries of his moral constitution. To those who knew him best he was the greatest marvel. They saw what the world could not see, the strangest combinations and the most perplexing contradictions. It is said that accident made Hazlitt a writer. He was originally a painter, or pursued his earliest studies with that end in view. But his taste was not satisfied with his labours: he never could embody his own conceptions, or transfer to the canvass his own principles complete. Instead of practising the art, he expounded it. Connected with the philosophical examination of painting and sculpture, the drama and the theatre came naturally within his inquiries. Into these subjects he poured the tide of his luminous mind, and soon acquired the reputation of being one of the highest critical authorities on the drama and the fine arts. He penetrated boldly, and wrote graphically; and whether his opinions were always profound or just, you felt that they were dexterously said, and hardly cared to question farther.

"The history of his mind was this:-He commenced with a certain stock of ideas, or, more properly, dogmas. These he never renounced, and rarely consented to modify. He was an indolent reader, and never increased them. To the end they remained with him, and were his penates. What he did, then, was out of his own thoughts, and not by any process of analysation or comparison of others. Reasoning was all in all with him. He started with a principle, and carried you through a chain of inductions admirable and perfect. The only doubt was, whether his first position were true. The results were generally incontrovertible. The obstinacy of mind, generated by a stern adherence to a few doctrines, which, with inconceivable weakness, he applied equally to all questions, produced prejudices at last, and prevented him from seeing the whole of a topic. He seized upon a feature-perhaps a grand one, but still only a part-and, arguing as if it were the whole, led the reader frequently into conclusions false as they respected truth, but true as they respected his view of it. He was deluded by his own powers of argument. They were so great, that they made him indifferent to all other means of greatness. That was his primary failing. What his enemies called bigotry, was in him habit. It would surprise the cursory admirer of Hazlitt's works to learn how little, how very little, he actually read throughout his life. The whole action was in his mind, which, being thus thrown back upon his own resources, was frequently forced into old and beaten tracks over and over again. The positive truths he originated are compressible into a small compass. But he repeated himself unconsciously, and always with an air of novelty. He thought he was creating, when he was in fact but re-combining. This peculiarity prevented him from progressing with the age. He was of the school that cried down the wisdom of our ancestors; but that was out of a sort of constitutional resistance to fanaticism and

despotism, and not because he was advancing with the world. He came in with the principles of freedom, and maintained them zealously in the abstract. But he could not, as knowledge accumulated, accumulate new stores with it; nor could he well understand how others could be always in motion that way. His habitual distaste for the toil of books, arising from his mental isolation, rendered him unfit for literary labours in a professional sense. But necessity forced him to write, whether he would or not. The consequence was, that in trying to re-shape old materials, or dig up fragments of reflection that might have hitherto escaped, he frequently fell into extravagance and mysticism. He has written things that resemble the dreams of a disturbed imagination. He either did not see his subject clearly, or did not feel it sufficiently to make it intelligible.

"Much has been said of the caustic bitterness of his style when occasion demanded it, and the public have not hesitated to ascribe it to his natural disposition. The inference was hasty and erroneous. Hazlitt was mild, even to a child's temper; he was self-willed, but who needed to have drawn out the venom? Had he been suffered to pursue his career at his ease, he would not have afforded grounds for charging malignity upon him. The malignity grew up elsewhere, and extracted from him all the gall that was in his heart. For some unaccountable reason, which Hazlitt could never fathom, Blackwood's Magazine took an extraordinary pleasure in ridiculing him. They went beyond ridicule,-they made him appear all that was base in public and private, until at last his fame became a sort of dangerous notoriety. His political and religious opinions were represented in such odious colours, that even the booksellers, our trading ones,-shrunk from the publication of his writings, as if they contained nothing but treason and blasphemy. That impression went abroad, and nearly ruined him. He attributed it solely to the writers in Blackwood, who painted him as a cockney of the worst description, mixing up wickedness with namby-pamby. Even Lady Morgan, smarting under his criticism in the Edinburgh Review, followed up the cry in her stupid Book of the Boudoir.' It was not surprising that a man of Hazlitt's solitary habits should feel and resent this in his brooding moods. He did resent it, and fearfully, and the passion of revenge was instilled into his being, subdued only by the imperious presence of philosophy. He had strong passions and affections; and they swelled the torrent. Those who charge him with evil should pause over the story of his agitated life.

"When you were first introduced to Hazlitt, with this previous impression of his bold character on your mind, you were disappointed or astonished to meet an individual, nervous, low-spoken, and feeble, who lived on tea as a regimen. There was not a particle of energy about him ordinarily. His face, when at repose, had none of the marks of extraordinary intellect, or even of animation. The common expression was that of pain, or rather the traces left by pain: it was languor and inertion. But when he kindled, a flush mantled over his sunken cheeks, his eyes lighted up wildly, his chest expanded, he looked like one in spired, his motions were eloquent, and his whole form partook of the enthusiasm. This is commonly the case with men of genius, but it was so in a remarkable degree with him. His conversation, generally, was ragged in expression, exceedingly careless as to phraseology, and not

always clear in purport. He used the most familiar words, and, for ease-sake, fell into conventional turns of language, to save himself the trouble of explanation. This was not so, however, when he grew warmed. Then he sometimes mounted into sublime flights. But his conversational powers were, at the best, below his literary capacity.

"As a periodical writer, for the reasons we have stated, Hazlitt was unable to sustain any rank. The best articles of that kind, for which we are indebted to his pen, are to be found in the Edinburgh Review, where he had scope to enlarge upon his principles of taste and his political theories. Of his dramatic criticisms it may be remarked, that they cannot claim to be considered as being comprehensive. He could not read enough to make them so. But they are acute, sound, and in a philosophical spirit. Few had a higher zest for the poetry of the drama, but he did not permit it to develope itself freely. He warped and narrowed it. Taking a single point of beauty, he followed it up into all its aspects, but had no relish for judging by the context. His criticisms on the fine arts are more elaborate and liberal. There all was contemplation, and he could master it. The subject required no aids from drudgery in the library, and happened to fall in felicitously with his tastes.

"But the work by which Hazlitt will be remembered, and through which he desired to transmit his name and his opinions to posterity, is his 'Life of Napoleon Bonaparte.' It was the greatest undertaking in which he ever engaged. It exhibits his powerful mind in a position most favourable for its display; and presents an imperishable record of the strength and versatility of his genius. As a history, it has the merit of rendering narrative subservient to instruction, by making events the keys to thought. Hazlitt was too abstract and philosophical for the labour of details: hence his work contains so much of fact as is necessary to the ends of truth, and may be perused from the beginning to the end without inspiring in the reader a single misgiving that a page of matter has been wasted. That is a merit in an extensive history, not to speak of its other higher merits, that we have rarely ar opportunity of applauding."

Sir John Leslie.

BORN A. D. 1766.-DIED A. D. 1832.

THIS eminent philosopher was born in April, 1766, near Largo, in Fifeshire. He was destined, we believe, by his parents, to follow the humble though respectable occupations connected with a small farm and mill. But before he reached his twelfth year, he had attracted considerable notice by his proneness to calculation and geometrical exercises; and he was, in consequence, early mentioned to Professor Robison of Edinburgh, and by him to Professors Playfair and Stewart. They saw him in his boyhood, and were much struck by the extraordinary powers which he then displayed. After some previous education, his parents were induced, in consequence of strong recommendations, and of obtaining for him the patronage of the earl of Kinnoul, to enter him a student at the university of St Andrew's. Having passed

some time in that ancient seminary, he removed to Edinburgh, in company with another youth, destined like himself to obtain a high niche in the temple of scientific fame-James Ivory. Whilst a student in Edinburgh, he was introduced to, and employed by, Dr Adam Smith, to assist the studies of his nephew, Mr Douglas, afterwards Lord Reston. Disliking the church, for which, we believe, he had been intended by his parents, he proceeded to London, after completing the usual course of study in Edinburgh. He carried with him some recommendatory letters from Dr Smith; and we recollect to have heard him mention, that one of the most pressing injunctions with which he was honoured by this illustrious philosopher, was to be sure, if the person to whom he was to present himself was an author, to read his book before approaching him, so as to be able to speak of it, if there should be a fit opportunity. His earliest employment in the capital, as a literary adventurer, was derived from the late Dr William Thompson, the author of many and various works, all of which, with the exception of his 'Life of Philip the Third,' have fallen into oblivion. Dr Thompson's ready pen was often used for others, who took or got the merit of his labours; and if we recollect rightly, he employed Mr Leslie in writing or correcting notes, for an edition of the Bible with notes, then publishing in numbers, under some popular theological name. But Mr Leslie's first important undertaking was a translation of Buffon's Natural History of Birds,' which was published in 1793, in nine octavo volumes. The sum he received for it laid the foundation of that pecuniary independence which, unlike many other men of genius, his prudent habits fortunately enabled him early to attain. The preface to this work, which was published anonymously, is characterised by all the peculiarities of his later style; but it also bespeaks a mind of great native vigour, and lofty conceptions, strongly touched with admiration for the sublime and the grand in nature and science. Some time afterwards he proceeded to the United States of America, as a tutor to one of the distinguished family of the Randolphs; and after his return to Britain he engaged with the late Mr Thomas Wedgwood to accompany him to the continent, various parts of which he visited with that accomplished person, whose early death he ever lamented as a loss to science and to his country.

At what period Mr Leslie first struck into that brilliant field of inquiry where he became so conspicuous for his masterly experiments and striking discoveries regarding radiant heat, and the connection between light and heat, we are unable to say; but his differential thermometer— one of the most beautiful and delicate instruments that inductive genius ever contrived as a help to experimental inquiry, and which rewarded its author by its happy ministry to the success of some of his finest experiments must have been invented before the year 1800; as it was described, we think, in Nicholson's Philosophical Journal' some time during that year. The results of those fine inquiries, in which he was so much aided by this exquisite instrument, were published to the world in 1804, in his celebrated Essay on the Nature and Propagation of Heat.' The experimental devices and remarkable discoveries which distinguish this publication. far more than atone for its great defects of method, its very questionable theories, and its transgressions against that simplicity of style which its aspiring author rather spurned than was unable to exemplify; but which must be allowed to be a quality