of them, especially Chillingworth and Leslie. I apprehend our dissenters are not sufficiently acquainted with these antique gentlemen. Perhaps we are mortified at their striking superiority over all the non-cons. of that or the subsequent age. I have read more of Taylor than of the others that I have enumerated, and certainly should soon have discovered him to be passing eloquent and able in every respect, if I had never once heard of his name ;-very far beyond even such men as Bates and Howe. Reading such authors, and some others that I have looked into of late, tends to make one shrink from the thoughts of writing. To say nothing of the humiliating consciousness as to the degree of talent, one is made to feel that, in point of knowledge, one has a world to learn, before one can pretend to write in any commanding manner. I am trying, in the teeth of indolence, debility, and a wretched memory, to read and study hard, and will hope to become competent to something or other in time, that may considerably serve the cause of religion.

I am vexed to hear you again declare off from being a reviewer, after I have told you so many times of its palpable advantages, in a literary respect. I cannot forbear to renew my exhortations on the subject. It helps to toss abroad your manner of thinking and composing, and therefore to help your riddance from any bad habit that is in danger of becoming fixed and unalterable. I am bound in duty, therefore, once more to give and inculcate neglected good advice. Your last Tract Society report is freer than anything you have written before, from your literary besetting sin; indeed, it appeared to me about wholly free. I am always gratified to think of your various and active utility; but, at the same time, you ought to set it down in your purposes, and the train of your studies, to do something that shall continue to preach and persuade after you shall have become finally silent. And this, not for that bubble fame, but to protract, as far as possible, a beneficial agency.

DEAR SIR, It would be some consolation to poor authors, if they could know how reviewers plague one another. And truly it may be made a question how far that calling can be a good one which involves so much irregularity, idleness, threatening, reproach, disregard of promises, and consequent want of confidence and co-operation, among its agents. Only, however, set aside the morality of the employment, and all this may be very good for giving it effect, for depravity is allowed to be one of the best whetstones of ability. What would become, I wonder, of our preparing of vitriol for authors and their books, if we were always talking to one another in the style of Moravians at a lovefeast, and handing round candies and cowslip wine? This would be a poor mental diet for the noble profession of tomahawks. The more we can contrive to snarl and quarrel among ourselves, the more will our

nands be in, for the benefit of authors, the edification of our readers, and the sale of our Review.

I hope you have not engaged Coleridge's Poems soon to be published, to any of your gang. I shall be eager to see them, and should review them con amore. He is the poet that will overtop all his contem

poraries.

Jeremy Taylor will never more be read but by the curious few. He is too learned, too antiquated, and has too much of logical technicality, to be ever again a popular author. He is further removed from popular language, a good deal, than even Barrow, and incomparably further than Tillotson. So far as he shall be read, the only harm the critic has to prevent is of that kind which Hall describes so well in characterizing Tillotson's and Barrow's theology,* and the possibility of being tempted, under the notion of being ingenious and brilliant, to imitate, and produce a gross, conceited affectation in imitating, his rich novelties of phrase, his arbitrary combination of words-the result, in him, of an infinite variety of particularities of thought—such analogies, antitheses, and illusions, as no mind could have been capable of, that was not full of all manner of learning, and teeming with all manner of fancy..

LXXVI. TO D. PARKEN, ESQ.

Bourton, October 25, 1809.

The speaking in the personation on the stage intends, at least, and assumes to be something more than pure recitation; it will not suffer itself to be considered as merely free and memoriter reading; and its being so considered would destroy the greatest part of the fascination. It aims to impose itself on the fancy, as at the least some middle thing between mere recitation and an utterance of the living sentiments of real characters in a real situation. Indeed, that which it necessarily aims at, and by means of which it must captivate, has always appeared to us to involve so gross and monstrous an absurdity, that we are persuaded, if there shall ever come an age of sound sense, the acted drama will be contemned for being essentially irrational, setting aside all moral and religious considerations. For ourselves, we will own, that the suggestions and questions naturally arising in our minds, " What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ?" Who and what are you, that are vociferating those words of passion? What business have you to be in any passion on those boards, and to be taking all those postures and gesticulations about it, when you know the whole is a fiction, at which you are going to laugh at supper? And if you are in no passion at all, any more than you will then be, over your wine and ratafia, what a ridiculous thing it is to be thus whining, writhing and tossing, to keep up such a miserable

* HALL'S Works, vol. iv., p. 134 (Review of Gisborne's Sermons).

sham? We will own that such suggestions have always been to us a plentiful damper to any portion of that sympathy and rapture we have so often heard of.*

LXXVII. TO WALTER SHEPPARD, ESQ.

Bourton, December 25, 1809.

DEAR SIR,-A late letter from Miss A. gives me information respecting the state of your health, which, in common with every one of your friends, I am very sorry to hear. I have been so accustomed, in my own mind, and in speaking of you among our friends, to congratulate you on possessing an activity and an animated enjoyment of life, very unusual at your age, that I have very seldom anticipated for you a time when these would necessarily fail.

I have promised myself, almost, as a matter of course, that whenever I should see you again, I should find you just as before. But at last the time is come for the Disposer of life and health to intimate to you, and your surrounding friends, that he has a sovereign right to resume what he has so long bestowed.

Nevertheless, Miss A. B.'s account leads me to hope that your life may be spared to your friends yet a while longer; and I sincerely join with them all in wishing it might be even for a number of yearsthough I do not know whether, as to yourself, this should be the wish of true friendship, since every month and year through which we all wish your life may be protracted, would impose an exercise of your patience and resignation, and painfully remind you of that past vigor which you will not expect to possess any more on earth. Happily, the determination of this concern lies with the wisest and best of all your friends, and happily, too, you can rejoice that it does so. It is gratifying to me, though not at all surprising, to be informed that your mind is so tranquil and resigned. You can look back with thankfulness on a long life, during which you have been favored with prosperity, with affectionate friends, and with a most uncommon share of health and cheerfulness, and during which you have not forgotten to whom you owed all these blessings, and (which is a subject for still much greater thankfulness) you now look forward to an infinitely longer and better life, to be conferred by the same divine Benefactor. To be able thus to look back, and thus to look forward, with profound emotions of gratitude to that Benefactor at every step of the contemplation, will inspire a joy which

* "From J. Foster, Oct. 25, 1809, intended as part of a critique on Plumtre; preserved as indicating a curious trait in his character-the absolute control possessed by his judgment over his fancy, while that fancy, at the same time, is above all others electrically vivid and energetic. The fancy of other men is often the tyrant of their passions-his, the servant of his understanding."-Note by Mr. Parken; vide Contributions, &c., to the Eclectic Review, vol. i., p. 345, on Plumtre's Defence of the Stage

I trust will sustain you during your hours of greatest languor and weakness, and during all the remainder of your journey of life, whether longer or shorter. What a delightful resource is piety at such a season, when it is an old resource, instead of being then sought for the first time. It is not a trifling consolation, neither, that all your friends near at hand will cordially and anxiously contribute to alleviate the pressure of affliction, and that the best of them will petition our supreme Friend to make it light. I will hope to hear that you are considerably reviving, and likely to remain among them a while longer, and afford them pleasure without feeling life a burden yourself. I will hope to have myself the pleasure of seeing you yet again, and feeling some of that cheerfulness in your company, which I have scarcely ever been in it without enjoying. Whatever may be the divine dispensation concerning your health and life, it will assuredly be a merciful one. You yourself believe that it will, and this faith will be precious in every oppressive hour.

I most cordially wish you the recovered strength necessary for making your life, if protracted, more pleasing than painful, or the gracious support requisite for sustaining with Christian fortitude a prolonged illness which may terminate in a removal to a better world.

LXXVIII. TO THE REV. JOHN FAWCETT.

Bourton, January 7, 1810.

MY DEAR SIR,-Your letter did not, and could not, fail to awaken some of the most pleasing sentiments that I can ever feel, recollections of ancient friendship, and assurances that this friendship includes no principle of decay. I immediately recognized your hand, and was glad to see it; I had often wished, during the past half year, to hear from you again; but I knew you are at all times busy in the most useful engagements. I wish myself also to be usefully busy; but I would entreat you not to repeat such expressions as that in your letter of being "unwilling to intrude too much on my time;" such expressions have quite a mortifying and irksome effect, as coming from a most respected old friend, whose own time is employed to a much more valuable purpose, and, I am afraid, with much more unremitted industry.

I find myself naturally adopting such words as "old" and "ancient," in referring to the earlier periods of our friendship. Does not that period appear to you a very long time since? and have you not half a feeling, sometimes, as if you were growing old? I have, at times, very much of this kind of consciousness. It is not the being aware of any physical or mental decline, but a remoteness in my retrospects-the disappearance by death of so many of my elders, and even co-evalsthe dispersion and changed condition of my early companions—the alteration of a great part of the economy of my feelings-the five feet ten inches altitude of persons whom I recollect as infants when I first

reached that altitude-and the very sound and appearance of the word forty (to the number meant in which word I shall soon have a very particular relation)—these, and I suppose many more things, concur to make me feel how far I have gone already past the meridian hour of the short day of life. Nor do I in the least deplore this fact, in any other way than regretting the miserably deficient improvement of a life of which the best part is now gone.

This grand consideration of making the noblest use of life will be very animating and consoling to you, amidst a measure of labor which would otherwise be really oppressive to you. You will have the gratification of feeling that each week that passes away is filled with your very best efforts, in one of the most important departments of human industry. I earnestly wish your health may be habitually firm enough for your office, and that the health of your most intimate associate may be firm enough to bear her part of the economy. I am sorry to hear your unfavorable account of it, but wish to hope that by this time you have some more decisive indications of its being soon to be re-established. She must sustain a most ample share, indeed, of your domestic and even professional cares; and if it were only for your sake, I wish that such an important "helpmeet" may recover, and long retain her vigor and spirits; but also for her own sake, and for that of her children. I most sincerely wish she may have all the strength and animation which she possessed at those times, which I often recollect, when I used to frequent her house and her company, and derive vivacity from seeing so much of it displayed by her. Your children, I trust, will somewhat more than repay your incessant cares for them, by their affection, docility, and hopeful dispositions and faculties. The larger number of them, I believe, are boys, and I continue to wish that the larger number of them may some time turn out preachers, since there is no cause on earth so important as religion, since there is no chance of this cause being extensively served but by dissenters, and since it is exceedingly desirable that the dissenting teachers should spring from among the youth of a liberal and literary education.

I am glad your respected father does not experience so much of the infirmities of age as to prevent him from feeling great interest and pleasure in prosecuting his commentary. It appears to me an employment most happily chosen to beguile those infirmities, as well as to crown the conclusion of life with a peculiar utility. No doubt he feels it, next to the exercises of devotion, his most pleasing and even exhilarating resource, amidst those visitations of pain and languor from which the age of seventy can seldom be entirely exempt. I cannot wonder that your mother, as she is, I believe, some years older than your father, should show the evident signs of decline within a single year; but I hope, especially for his sake, that she is yet appointed to continue an inhabitant of the earth a good while longer. My imagination has often sought out the site of their house, and represented the calm and devout habits of its possessors.