likewise perish." All that our philosopher had to deliver to the world on the many contested points of that unhappy reign, was the illustration of his principle, and not the infamy of vulgar calumny. With the phi losophic Harrington, Charles the First was but "a doomed man ;" not more a sinner, because the tower of Silo had fallen upon his head, than those who stood without. This was true philosophy, the other was faction.

The treatise on "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy," prominently placed at the opening of the works of Harrington, and inseparably combined with his opinions by the reference in the general index- this treatise which has settled like a gangrene on the fair character of the author of "Oceana,” which has called down on his devoted head the execrations of honorable men, and which has misled many generations of readers, is the composition of a salaried party writer, in no way connected with our author. Toland, the first editor of Harrington's works, introduced into the volume this anonymous invective, which has thus come down to us sanctioned by the philosopher's name. There was no plea of any connection between the two authors, and much less between their writings. The editor of the edition of 1771 has silently introduced the name of the real author in the table of contents, but without prefixing it to the tract, or without any further indication to inform the reader.

Whether zeal for "the cause" led Toland to this editorial delinquency, or whether he fell into this inadvertence from deficient acumen, it remains a literary calamity not easily paralleled, for a great author is condemned for what he never could have written.

The Art of Law-giving, 366, 4to edition.

See the solemn denunciations of the "Biographia Britannica," p. 2536, which are repeated by later biographers; see Chalmers.

403

THE AUTHOR OF "THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY."

THE author of "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy," whose historical libel is perpetuated in the works of Harrington, is John Hall, of Gray's Inn, sometimes described of Durham; one of those fervid spirits who take the bent of the times in a revolutionary period. He must be classed among those precocious minds which astonish their contemporaries by acquisitions of knowledge, combined with the finest genius, and in their boyhood betray no immaturity. We may receive with some suspicion accounts of such gifted youths, though they come from competent judges; but when we are reminded of the Rowley of Chatterton, and find what Hall did, we must conclude that there are meteorous beings, whose eccentric orbits we know not how to describe. Hall, prevented by the civil wars from entering the university, pursued his studies in the privacy of the library at Durham. When the war ceased, he was admitted at Cambridge; and in 1646 published, in his nineteenth year, Hore Vacivæ, or "Essays, with some Occasional Considerations." These are essays in prose; and at a time when our literature could boast of none except the masterpieces of Lord Bacon, a boy of nineteen sends forth this extraordinary volume. Even our plain Anthony caught the rapture; for he describes its appearance-"the sudden breaking forth of which amazed not only the university, but the more serious part of men in the three nations, when they [the Essays] were spread." Here is the puerility of a genius of the first order! A boy's essays raised the admiration of "the three nations!" and they remain

still remarkable!

This youth seems to have modelled his manner on Bacon for the turn of his thoughts, and on Seneca for the point and sparkle of his periods. The dwarf rose strong as a giant.*

The boy having astonished the world by a volume of his prose, amazed them in the succeeding year by a volume of his verse, poetry as graceful as the prose was nervous; his verses still adorn the most elegant of our modern anthologies.†

Attracted to the metropolis, he entered as a student at Gray's Inn; and there his political character soon assumed the supremacy over his literary. He sided with the independents, the ultra-commonwealthmen, and satirized the presbyterians, the friends of monarchy. He plunged into extreme measures; courting his new masters by the baseness of a busy pen, he justified Barebone's parliament, he got up a state-pamphlet against the Hollanders, proposed the reform of the universities, "to have the Frier-like list of the fellowships reduced, and the rest of the revenue of the university sequestered into the hands of the committee," of which, probably, he might himself been been one. The Exchequer was opened; he received "present sums of money ;" and the council granted the scribe a consider able pension.

During this life of political activity, Hall, in 1650, was commanded by the council of state, to repair to Scotland, to attend on Cromwell, for the purpose of settling affairs in favor of the commonwealth, and to wean the Scots from their lingering affection for the surviving Stuart. It was then that Hall, in his vocation, sent forth the thunder of a party-pamphlet, "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy." This extraordinary tract consists of two parts; the first, more elabo

* Three or four of these essays have been reprinted in "The Restituta." vol. iii. The original book is very rare.

† See Ellis's "Specimens."

rately composed, is an argumentative exposition of antimonarchical doctrines; in the second, to bring the business home to their bosoms, he offers a demonstration of his principles, in a review of the whole Scottish history, sarcastically reminding them of their kings "crowned with happy reigns, and quiet deaths (two successively scarce dying naturally)." It is a mass of invectives and calumnies in the disguise of grave history; and this historical libel, concocted for a particular time and a particular place, was eagerly received at Edinburgh, and immediately republished in London, where it was sure of as warm a reception.*

Hall's passion for literature must have been intense; for amid these discordant days, he found time to glide into hours of refreshing studies. He gave us the first vernacular version of "the Sublime" of Longinus,† and left another of the moral Hierocles. This gifted youth with sportive facility turned English into Latin, or Latin into English; it has been recorded of him that he translated the greater part of a singular work of the Alchemical Maier, in one afternoon over his wine at a tavern; and he entranced the ear of that universal patron, Edward Bendlowes, by turning into Latin verse three hundred lines of his mystical poem of "Theophila," at one sitting.

In this impassioned existence, excited by the acrimony of politics, and the enthusiasm of study, he fell into reckless dissipation, and undermined a constitution which probably had all the delicacy and sensitiveness

I found the origin of this eloquent and factious performance in an account of John Hall, prefixed to his translation of "Hierocles on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras :" it proceeds from a friend-John Davies of Kidwelly. The treatise of Hall, in its original edition, is so rare, that no copy has been found at the British Museum, nor in the King's Library; it was, however, reprinted at the time in London.

"A piece of great learning, entitled 'The Height of Eloquence,' writ ten in Greek, by Dionysius Longinus, rendered into English from the original, by John Hall, Esq.," London, 1652, 8vo.- Brüggeman's English Translations.

of his genius. He sunk in the struggle of celebrity and personal indulgence, and hastened back to his family to die, when he had hardly attained to manhood.

A true prodigy of genius was this John Hall; for not only he could warm into admiration our literary antiquary, but the greater philosopher Hobbes, not prone to flattery, has left a memorial of this impassioned and precocious being: "Had not his debauches and intemperance diverted him from the more severe studies, he had made an extraordinary person; for no man had ever done so great things at his age."