century, not excepting even Macaulay, is THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859). He was born of wealthy parents near Manchester, August 15, 1785, and in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater he has left us an extraordinary account of his early life, in which, however, there is clearly a mixture of Dichtung and Wahrheit. As an undergraduate at Oxford, he was remarkable for his extraordinary stock of knowledge upon every subject that was started in conversation, but even at that period he had commenced taking large doses of opium. After leaving Oxford he settled at Grasmere, but resided during the latter part of his life at Glasgow and Edinburgh. He died December 8, 1859. Upon De Quincey's position in the literature of the present day an able critic observes :-"De Quincey's mind never wholly recovered from the effects of his eighteen years' indulgence in opium. He himself says, half jocularly, but apparently quite truly, that it is characteristic of the opium-eater never to finish anything. He himself never finished anything, except his sentences, which are models of elaborate workmanship. But many of his essays are literally fragments, while those which are not generally convey the impression of being mere prolegomena to some far greater work of which he had formed the conception only. Throughout his volumes, moreover, we find allusions to writings which have never seen the daylight. And finally, there is The Great Unfinished, the De Emendatione Humani Intellectus, to which he had at one time devoted the labour of his whole life. It is in fact the one half-melancholy reflection which his career suggests, that a man so capable as he was of exercising a powerful influence for good upon the political and religious thought of the present age, should have comparatively wasted his opportunities, and left us his most precious ideas in the condition of the Sibyl's leaves after they had been scattered by the wind. Hence those who approach him with any serious purpose are only too likely to come away disappointed. It is, therefore, rather on his style, at once complex and harmonious, at once powerful and polished, than on the substance of his works, that his posthumous fame will be dependent. The extraordinary compass and unique beauty of his diction, accommodating itself without an effort to the highest flights of imagination, to the minutest subtleties of reasoning, and to the gayest vagaries of humour, are by themselves indeed a sure pledge of a long if not undying reputation."

De Quincey's writings have been collected in fourteen volumes, The best known is the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, published in 1821, in which the language frequently soars to astonishing heights of eloquence. Of his historical essays and narratives,

* Quarterly Review, No. 219, pp. 15, 16,

the finest is his Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars, which is equal, in many passages, to the English Opium-Eater. His literary criticisms, both upon English and German writers, are very numerous, but cannot be further noticed here. Some of his essays are almost exclusively humorous, among which Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts is the best known. The critic whom we have already quoted, thus sums up De Quincey's literary merits :-"A great master of English composition; a critic of uncommon delicacy; an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions; a philosophic inquirer, second only to his first and sole hero (Coleridge): De Quincey has left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic rigour of his logic, form a combination which centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study as one of the marvels of English literature."

§ 14. One of the studies peculiar to the present century has been that of political economy. Adam Smith has been well called the creator of the science, and his followers in the present age have exercised no small influence in moulding the character of public opinion and in controlling the course of public events. RICARDO, SENIOR, MACULLOCH, and MILL, are writers whose place in a history of literature would perhaps be small, but whose influence on politics and commerce have been so great, that it would be a serious omission not to call the attention of the student to their works. The most important writer upon ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy is undoubtedly JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832). He was the son of a solicitor in London, was educated at Oxford, and called to the bar, but did not pursue it as a profession. For half a century Bentham was the centre of a small but influential circle of philosophical writers, and was the founder of what is called the utili tarian school. In one of his earliest works he laid down the principle that "utility was the measure and test of all virtue;" and the fundamental principle of his philosophy was, that happiness is the end and test of all morality. It is, however, as a writer on jurisprudence that his fame rests; and almost all the improvements in English law that have since been carried into effect may be traced, either directly or indirectly, to his exertions.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER PROSE WRITERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1759-1833) was born at Hull, and educated at Cambridge. He took a leading part in Parliament for the abolition of the Slave-trade, and deserves a notice in English Literature on account of his Practical View of Christianity, published in 1797, which had an immense sale, and exercised throughout the earlier part of the nineteenth century a great influence upon religious literature.

ling, and sometimes lead him astray; but there is a delicacy of taste, a richness of imagination, and a perceptive power, that make him a worthy second to De Quincey. His style is vivid and picturesque, and his evolutions of character are clear. His chief works are Principles of Human Action, Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, Table Talk, Lectures on various authors, Essays on English novelists in the Edinburgh, and a Life of Napoleon in four volumes.

WILLIAM COBBETT (1762-1835) was a native of Farnham in Suffolk. From an

then a writer on political questions, and finally member of Parliament for Oldham. In his paper, called The Weekly Register, he attacked all sides with rancour and bitterHis English is forcible and idiomatic. He published several other works, of which his English Grammar most deserves mention.

ness.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH (1765-1832) was born at Aldourie, on Loch Ness, Invernessshire, October 24, 1765, and was educated at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edin-agricultural labourer he became a soldier, burgh, for the medical profession; but he soon abandoned medicine and maintained himself by literature in London. In 1791 he published his Vindicia Gallica, a reply to Burke on the French Revolution, a work which at once gained him a great reputation. In 1795 he was called to the bar, and four years afterwards he delivered, with great applause, in the hall of Lincoln's Inn, his lectures On the Law of Nature and Nations. He rose rapidly at the bar; and his speech in defence of Peltier (Feb. 21, 1803), who had been prosecuted for a libel on Bonaparte, then First Consul, placed him among the great orators of the age. In 1804 he was appointed Recorder of Bombay; and after spending seven years in India he returned to England, was made a Privy Councillor, and in 1830 Commissioner for the Affairs of India. He died May 22, 1832. His principal works are, a Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, prefixed to the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica; three volumes of a History of England; a Life of Sir Thomas More, in Lardner's Cyclopædia; and a fragment of a History of the Revolution of 1688, which was published in 1834. Everything which Sir James Mackintosh has written is pleasing, but nothing striking; and in a few years more his writings will probably be forgotten.

WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830), son of a Unitarian minister, was born at Maidstone, April 10, 1778, was educated as an artist, but lived by literature. He was one of the best critics in the earlier part of this century. His paradoxes are a little start

JOHN WILSON CROKER (1780-1857), born in Galway, December 20, 1780, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He entered Parliament, and held the office of Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. He was one of the chief writers in the Quarterly Review. His Essays on the French Revolution, which originally ap peared in that Review, have been republished in a separate form, and exhibit a remarkable knowledge of that period of history. His principal work is an edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, which was criticised most severely, but most unfairly, by Macaulay, in the Edinburgh Review. Croker also edited the Suffolk Papers, Lady Hervey's Letters, Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., and Walpole's Letters to Lord Hertford.

The following historians deserve a brief notice:

JAMES MILL (1773-1836), a native of Montrose, rose to eminence as a writer in the leading periodicals of his time. His History of British India (1817-1818) is written with great impartiality, and procured for the author a place in the India House. The Analysis of the Mind is a useful contribution to mental science, and

has done much to illustrate the principle

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST

OF THE WORKS OF THE POETS

OF THE FOURTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, AND EIGHTEENTH

CENTURIES,

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF THE POET-LAUREATESHIP,