knowledged plagiarisms were detected, denounces him for being a free-thinker all the time that he drew his bread from the Church, and says that his style "at one time obtained credit through the caprice of a fashionable critic."

The antiquaries of the period were,-William Stukeley (16871765), author of an Itinerary; Dr Thomas Birch (1705-1765), an industrious and faithful Dryasdust, associated with Sale in editing Bayle's Dictionary, writer of biographical memoirs, editor of Milton, of Dr Robert Boyle, of Thurloe's State Papers, &c. &c. ; Thomas Blackwell (1701-1757), Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, a great enthusiast, who gave a new impulse to classical studies in the North, and whose Memoirs of the Court of Augustus' was ridiculed by Johnson for its affectations of style.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the famous discoverer of the identity of lightning with the electrical spark, wrote several miscellaneous papers, scientific and political, which have doubtless had no small influence in forming American style. His chequered life is pretty generally known. He made his fortune as a printer, solely by his own sagacity, industry, and prudence, and bore a distinguished part in the assertion of American independence, acting as ambassador to France. His writings are remarkable for simplicity, terseness, and force. Both the language and the illustrations fit the meaning with emphatic closeness. He affects no graces of style: a hard-headed, practical man, he seeks to convey his meaning as briefly and as emphatically as possible. Thus

"Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy; at least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences."

"He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face."

"He that for giving a draught of water to a thirsty person should expect to be paid with a good plantation, would be modest in his demands compared with those who think they deserve heaven for the little good they do on earth."

A writer of a very different stamp is William Melmoth (1710-1799), the elegant translator of Pliny and Cicero, and author of Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne on several Subjects' (1742). "The style of Melmoth," says Dr Nathan Drake, "both in his original and translated works, is easy, perspicuous, and elegant. He is more correct in grammatical construction, more select in his choice of words, than any preceding writer; but he is sometimes languid and verbose. His taste, which was very refined and pure, has seldom permitted him to adopt ornament not congenial to the

subject of discussion, and his diction is therefore singularly chaste and free from inflation."

James Harris (1709-1780), a man of fortune, who rose to be a Lord of the Treasury, was celebrated as a writer on Art, Grammar, and Logic. His most famous work is entitled 'Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar.'

Dr John Brown (1715-1766), a friend of Warburton and Pope, a critic of the Earl of Shaftesbury, is praised by Wordsworth as the first to appreciate and describe the scenery of the English Lakes.

UNTIL the publication of Mr Macknight's 'Life of Burke,' the biographies of this eminent orator, writer, and statesman were full of minute errors. Contradictory statements prevailed concerning the date and place of his birth, the religion of his parents, his early education, his employments before he entered Parliament, and many other points wherein assurance is to be desired regarding a man of such eminence.

He was born in a house on Arran Quay, Dublin, most probably on January 12, 1728 or 1729.1 His supposed ancestors were wealthy citizens of Limerick, who adhered to the Catholic faith, and lost their possessions in the time of Cromwell. His father was a solicitor in good practice, and belonged to the Protestant communion. His mother's name was Nagle; she was a Roman Catholic. It is of some consequence to note that Burke's earliest years were spent under the care of his Catholic uncles, who farmed some land of their own in the south of Ireland, and that his schoolmaster (Abraham Shackleton, of Ballitore, in Kildare) was a Quaker. He had thus the best possible training in the toleration of different creeds. From 1743 to 1748 he was a student in Trinity College, Dublin. He was too desultory to excel in the studies of the place; he had occasional fits of application to mathematics and logic; and he was awarded a scholarship in classics : but he did not carry off the highest honours in any one department.

11728 according to the register of Trinity College; 1729 according to the tablet in Beaconsfield Church.

Not that, like his contemporary the gay Goldsmith, he wasted his time in frolic and dissipation; but he gave himself up to miscellaneous reading, especially of poetry, to verse-making, and to daydreaming. In 1747 he entered his name at the Middle Temple, and in 1750 went to London to keep law terms; but in this new study he showed equally little diligence, and for some years is to be conceived "as a young Templar, in delicate health, fond of jaunting about England, fond of literature, and anything but fond of law."1

His first literary productions appeared in 1756. A Vindication of Natural Society,' intended as a parody of Bolingbroke's reasonings on religion, is sometimes praised as a successful piece of mimicry; but it contains more of the real Burke than of the sham Bolingbroke. It may be viewed as an exercise in the style that the author ultimately adopted as his habitual manner of composition. The Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful' has much less glow and sweep of style; the writer's flow of words seems to be painfully embarrassed by the necessity of observing order and proportion of statement. In 1757 he married. The same year he wrote An Account of European Settlements in America,' and an unfinished Essay towards an Abridgment of English History.' Next year he suggested to Dodsley the Annual Register,' a yearly summary of notable facts. He is supposed to have written the whole of this annual for 1758 and for 1759, and to have contributed the political summary for a good many years after.

He

In 1759 he was introduced more intimately to political life. In that year he became connected with "Single-Speech" Hamilton as private secretary, or, as he was nicknamed, "jackal," his previous studies making him well qualified to act as political tutor. accompanied Hamilton to Ireland in 1761, and is supposed to have been the original prompter of the efforts then instituted by Government to relax the inhuman penal laws against the Roman Catholics. In 1765, his connection with Hamilton having ended in an open rupture, he was fortunate enough to obtain the higher appointment of private secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord Rockingham, who continued his friend and patron to the last.

He entered Parliament in 1766 as member for Wendover. Our space will not allow us to trace his career minutely. During his first session he supported Rockingham's conciliatory policy towards the irritated colonies of North America in speeches that fairly rivalled the eloquence of the veteran Chatham. Thereafter he vigorously defended this policy both in Parliament and out of it, with speech and with pamphlet, through several stormy years until the final rupture and Declaration of Independence. Observations

1 The story that in 1751 he applied for the Professorship of Logic in Glasgow is discredited as absurd, and its origin sufficiently accounted for.

on a late Publication, intituled The Present State of the Nation,' a reply to a jeremiad supposed to be written by Grenville, appeared in 1769; Thoughts on Present Discontents' in the following year. His patronage of the colonies was widely acknowledged. In 1771 he was appointed agent for the state of New York, with a salary of £500 a-year; and in 1774 he was returned to Parliament free of expense by the peace-loving merchants of Bristol. His famous speech "on conciliation with America" was made in support of certain resolutions that he introduced in 1775.

In 1778 he supported Lord Nugent's proposals for freeing the trade of Ireland from certain restrictions. The credit of this action which, indeed, "the impartial historian" would have expected from any Irishman of moderately patriotic feelings-is not a little diminished by his factious opposition to Pitt's endeavours in 1785 to procure the abolition of the remaining restrictions.

In 1780 he brought forward his great scheme of economical reform. The ministers of the Crown had at their disposal a large number of lucrative sinecures, nominal posts in the royal household, and suchlike. On this patronage a gigantic system of corruption, used by the Government to bribe adherents-Burke proposed to make considerable curtailments. Only a small part of his scheme was carried.

About the same time his attention was powerfully drawn to Indian misgovernment by his kinsman William Burke. In 1781 he sat on a committee of inquiry. In 1783 he assisted in concocting Fox's India Bill, which proposed to abolish the East India Company and vest the government in seven commissioners appointed for life. Shortly afterwards he opposed the more constitutional and judicious Bill introduced by Pitt. One of the most

memorable events of his life was the conduct of the impeachment of Warren Hastings for tyrannical abuse of his power as Governor of India. The trial lasted from 1788 to 1794, judgment not being pronounced till 1796.

Much has been said regarding his views of the French Revolution, and his consequent separation from his political associates. In a debate on the Army Estimates in 1790, Fox took occasion to praise the French Guards, because, during the late commotions, they had sided, not with the Court, but with the people; they "had shown that men, by becoming soldiers, did not cease to be citizens." In the course of the same debate Burke deprecated this praise, called them "not citizens, but base hireling mutineers, and mercenary sordid deserters," and warmly asserted that rather than give the least countenance in England to the distemper of France, he would "abandon his best friends, and join with his worst enemies." Afterwards, when the leading members of his party