unstable equilibrium. His prose writings are better known than his poetry; yet it is probably his poetry that is the most secure basis of his reputation. His crowning excellence is sublimity of conception: the character of Count Julian is his masterpiece, and it is ranked by so sober a judge as De Quincey with the Satan of Milton and the Prometheus of Eschylus. In his 'Imaginary Conversations,' as was to be expected from so wilful an egotist, dramatic exhibition of character is no part of their excellence. Some critics, indeed, profess to see a great deal of character in some of the dialogues. But the concession is made that it is not impossible that in many cases he first wrote the opinions and then looked about for a passably consistent mouthpiece; and in many cases personages are credited with opinions that they are very unlikely to have entertained. The 'Conversations' are interesting not from their dramatic propriety or significance, but as the vehicles of Landor's own opinions. He does not attempt to imitate the style of literary interlocutors in the dialogue between Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, Greville talks the language of Sidney's 'Arcadia,' and Sidney the language of Walter Landor. In his prose style two points of excellence may be singled out the aphoristic force of his general propositions, and the felicitous force of his imagery. In the opinion of many, his style has too much force. In addition to the vigour and occasional vehemence of the meaning, the minute observer will remark that the words are studiously chosen for emphatic articulation, containing an unusual proportion of energetic "labials," a choice doubtless apt and consistent, but, like all obtrusive arts, liable to be overdone.1

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), an eminent critic, born at Maidstone, in Kent, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was carefully educated by his father with a view to the same profession. As he grew up, his own wishes did not ratify his father's choice, and at the age of seventeen he was permitted to change the direction of his studies, and to indulge an ambition of becoming a great painter. He persevered in the study and practice of painting for several years, and is said to have been prevented from attaining eminence only by a too fastidious spirit of criticism, and a despair of working up to his high ideals. His first literary effort was a metaphysical work on the Principles of Human Action,'

1 Landor is the chief of De Quincey's "orthographic mutineers" (De Quincey's Works, xiii. 95): "As we are all of us crazy when the wind sits in some particular quarter, let not Mr Landor be angry with me for suggesting that he is outrageously crazy upon the one solitary subject of spelling.' Landor's views about spelling and purity of language in general are to be found in the dialogue between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor in Last Fruit off an Old Tree,' and in two 'Imaginary Conversations' between Johnson and Horne Tooke.

published in 1805, remarkable as advocating the disinterested side in human nature. From that date he subsisted by literature. He wrote an abridgment of Tucker's 'Light of Nature' in 1807; compiled a selection of Parliamentary speeches, under the title of 'The Eloquence of the British Senate,' in 1808; and did other "journey - work" for the booksellers. In 1813 he delivered at the Russell Institution a series of lectures on English Philosophy; a fact worth mention, as showing that for many years the chief studies of the future critic were philosophical. About this time he became connected with the press as a contributor of political and theatrical criticisms, some of which were afterwards worked up into the volumes Political Essays' and 'A View of the English Stage.' He was first brought prominently into notice by his lectures at the Surrey Institution on the "English Poets" (1818), on the "English Comic Writers" (1819), and on the "Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth" (1821). About the same time appeared his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays.' His other principal works were-Table-Talk,' 1821-22; the 'Spirit of the Age' (a series of criticisms on contemporaries, bitterly condemned by nearly all reviewers), 1825; the 'Plain Speaker,' a collection of Essays, 1826; and his last and greatest performance, 'The Life of Napoleon,' 1828-30. During the last ten years of his life he was a frequent contributor to various periodicals-the London Magazine,' the Edinburgh Review,' the New Monthly,' and the Monthly.' He died on the 18th of September 1830.-"In person Mr Hazlitt was of the middle size, with a handsome and eager countenance, worn by sickness and thought; and dark hair which had curled stiffly over the temples, and was only of late years sprinkled with grey. His gait was slouching and awkward, and his dress neglected; but when he began to talk he could not be mistaken for a common man. In the company of persons with whom he was not familiar, his bashfulness was painful; but when he became entirely at ease, and entered on a favourite topic, no one's conversation was ever more delightful." He was an excitable man, of intense and vehement feelings, nursing and indulging excitement to dangerous excess. He did not criticise in cold blood. The reviewers of his own time dwelt upon his intense love and admiration for great authors as one of his "noblest" qualifications for the office of critic. "He did not square and measure out his judgments by the pedantries of dry and lifeless propositions-his taste was not the creature of schools and canons, it was begotten of Enthusiasm by Thought." Critics who admired this qualification, as applied to the great men of former times, sharply resented its application in the Spirit of the Age' to the author's contemporaries. Enthusiasm was then spoken of as "bad taste" and "affectation ;" and poor Hazlitt was told the bitter truth that it

was his worst enemy. His criticisms of his contemporaries seem to us to be, taken all in all, neither more nor less just than his criticisms of departed poets, comic writers, and dramatists. In all his criticisms alike he strikes us as a man of extravagant sentiment and hyperbolical expression, widely read in philosophy and in general literature, a habitual and acute student of human character, more alive to varieties of excellence than any of his critical contemporaries, excepting De Quincey and John Wilson, and more, perhaps, than even these, alive to what may be called varieties of mood. His judgment was liable to be "deflected " by intemperate feeling, generous or splenetic. His criticisms' must be taken with some grains of allowance on this score before we appreciate their substantial body of sound discernment. He often puts things graphically and incisively; but his composition strikes the general taste of critics as wearing too much an appearance of effort, and straining too much at flashing effects. "Hazlitt," says De Quincey, was not eloquent, because he was discontinuous. No man can be eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and non-sequacious. Now Hazlitt's brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment, but spread no deep suffusions of colour, and distribute no masses of mighty shadow. A flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone." De Quincey objects also to Hazlitt's habit of trite quotation, of ornamenting his pages with "tags of verse and 'cues' of rhyme."

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), journalist, essay-writer, book-compiler, and poet, may be placed with Hazlitt as another distinguished member of what was derisively termed "The Cockney School." He was the son of a West Indian lawyer, settled at Southgate in Middlesex, and received his schooling at Christ's Hospital. His father published a collection of his verses in 1802, under the title of 'Juvenilia,' when he was but eighteen-a collection which met with a much more favourable reception than Byron's 'Hours of Idleness,' published some five years later. Throughout his life his aspirations and pursuits were exclusively literary. The short trial that was made of his business abilities in a law office, and subsequently in the War Office, could hardly be said to be an interruption. When he was little more than twenty he made a sensation as a dramatic critic in his brother's paper, the News.' In 1808 he joined with his brother in setting up the Examiner,' designed as a weekly organ for political views more advanced than were then current in the press. The attacks of the Examiner' upon the Government involved it in more than one prosecution for libel; and in 1813 our author was indicted for certain sarcastic comments on the Prince Regent, and suffered im

prisonment for two years, glorying in his bonds, and declining several offers from friends to pay his fine and procure his release. In 1816 his 'Story of Rimini' presented him to the public as a poet; and as he had, some years before, in his Feast of the Poets,' rather captiously insulted the whole of that irritable race, his performance was reviewed and himself reviled with the utmost spirit. In 1819-21, he published the Indicator,' a weekly series of essays on the model of the 'Spectator.' The most notorious event in his life, next to his imprisonment for a political offence, was his connection with Lord Byron. He set sail for Italy in 1821 to assist Byron and Shelley in establishing the Liberal,' a projected new light in matters social, political, and religious; but the scheme failed through want of congeniality among the collaborateurs; and Hunt, after his return to England, published Recollections of Lord Byron,' in which he tried to exculpate himself at the expense of his friend. He returned to England in 1825. For the remaining thirty-four years of his life he lived as a man of letters in London, the fruits of his pen being eked out by occasional contributions from his friends, and after 1847 by a Government pension of £200, bestowed by Lord John Russell. He projected periodicals the 'Companion' (shortly after his return, a continuation of the Indicator'), the 'Tatler' (1830-33), the 'London Journal' (1834), and wrote to periodicals already established; composed a fictitious autobiography of Sir RALPH ESHER, a gentleman of the Court of Charles II. (1832), a poem, 'Captain Sword and Captain Pen,' 1839, and a play, The Legend of Florence,' 1840; and published various compilations, criticisms, and books of gossip-Imagination and Fancy,' 1845; 'Wit and Humour,' 1846; Stories from the Italian Poets,' 1846; Men, Women, and Books' (a collection from his periodical essays), 1847; A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla,' 1847; The Town,' 1848; Autobiography,' 1850; The Religion of the Heart,' 1853; The Old Court Suburb,' 1855. He died on the 28th of August 1859.-He is described as a rather tall man, of dark complexion, with erect carriage, and engaging liveliness and suavity of address. "His hair was black and shining, and slightly inclined to wave; his head was high, his forehead straight and white, his eyes black and sparkling." The inner as well as the outer man differed considerably from the typical John Bull. He was ruled by sentiment. His capacities for business were of the poorest order. He had no sense of the value of money, and would often have been in great distress had not the amiability of his character procured him relief from the generosity of his friends. As a youth he was spoiled by the praise of his precocity; overweeningly self-complacent, he sat in judgment with a patronising air upon his elders and superiors, and, meaning no harm in the world, made hosts of enemies on

every side. When his eyes were opened to the unconscious offensiveness of his behaviour, he appeared in a more amiable aspect. His Autobiography' is brimming with expressions of goodwill to all mankind, and frank confession of youthful offences. His philanthropic sentiment was overflowing. Uncle Toby was his ideal -"divine Uncle Toby." "He who created Uncle Toby was the wisest man since the days of Shakspeare." "As long as the character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the heart of man is noble." In point of style, his model was Addison. In simplicity and felicitous grace of expression he may be contrasted with the more robust and careless vigour predominant in the early days of the 'Edinburgh Review' and 'Blackwood.' particularly excels in graceful touches of humorous caricature.

He

John Wilson, "Christopher North" (1785-1854) was the son of a prosperous manufacturer in Paisley. When he was six or seven years old, he was placed under the care of the minister of the neighbouring parish of Mearns, and displayed from the first his singular union of muscular vigour with love of intellectual distinction. Jack was anything but a dull boy; his enthusiasm for angling and other sports, and his rattling youthful eloquence, were no less conspicuous than his quickness in booklearning. He studied at Glasgow, and subsequently at Oxford. At Glasgow he carried off the first prize in the Logic class; and at Oxford, besides being distinguished as a boxer and as the best farleaper of his day in England, he was said to have passed for his degree "the most illustrious examination within the memory of man." He left Oxford in 1807, and soon after, having purchased the beautiful residence of Elleray on the banks of the Windermere, he married, and lived there for several years in Utopian health and happiness, surrounded by the finest of scenery, and varying his poem-writing and halcyon peace with walking excursions and jovial visits from friends that, like himself, entered with zest into the hearty enjoyment of life. During this period he wrote his 'Isle of Palms,' a beautiful reflection of the soft passage of his days. In 1815, in consequence of pecuniary embarrassment, brought on by the misfortunes of the trustee of his father's property, he was under the necessity of choosing a profession, and decided for the Scottish bar. He made no effort to secure a practice. In 1820 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh. The duties of this Chair he discharged till 1851, when he retired upon a pension of £300, all the more gratifying as a mark of public respect that it was bestowed by his political enemies. But the most brilliant side of his life was his activity in connection with 'Blackwood's Magazine,' which, after a short tentative flight,

1 See Recreations of Christopher North.