of John Wesley. The name Methodist was first given to Charles Wesley, and from him extended to his companions.

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John Wesley (1703-1791), the son of an English clergyman, studied at Oxford and took orders. After officiating for some years as curate to his father, he returned to Oxford, was introduced by his brother Charles to the young "Methodists," and entered into their enthusiasm. He spent two years in evangelising the newly established colony of Georgia (1735-37). Returning to England, he found himself one of the leaders of an impetuous religious awakening. In 1741 he and Whitefield agreed to separate. Wesley was comparatively a cold man, with a genius for ruling, and strove rather to restrain the impetuosity of his followers, acting as a drag upon their estrangement from the Church of England. He did not permit the independent organisation of Methodism till 1784. His preaching had not the melting power of Whitefield's. It would seem to have been more strenuous; at least it had the peculiar effect of throwing excitable hearers into convulsions.

George Whitefield (1714-1770), the founder of Calvinistic Methodism, was celebrated for the marvellous power of his oratory. He preached in many parts of England, America, and Scotland. Everybody is familiar with the anecdotes of his preaching; with his drawing tears from the eyes of the Bristol colliers, and money from the pocket of Benjamin Franklin. His published sermons are far from equal to his reputation; the charm seems to have been in his voice, elocution, and gesture.

The founders of the Secession Church in Scotland, the two brothers, Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, were also noted preachers, especially Ebenezer. They were deposed by the General Assembly in 1740. The chief cause of the quarrel with the Established Church was the law of patronage. They are usually spoken of as heading in Scotland a religious revival such as Wesley and Whitefield began in England.

PHILOSOPHY.

The present is quite a flowering period in ethical and metaphysical literature. Hutcheson was in full vigour at the commencement of it; Edwards, Hartley, and Hume were publishing before it was far gone; Price and Adam Smith began to publish just before its close.

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747), a native of Ireland, a student at Glasgow, received in 1729 the appointment of Professor of

1 Charles Wesley was six years older than Hervey and Whitefield, and was the originator of the Club. When he introduced his brother John to the Club, John, being a senior of about thirty years of age, was looked up to with respect, and soon became their leader.

Moral Philosophy in Glasgow. He usually receives the credit of having by his eloquence and enthusiasm given the first great stimulus to mental philosophy in Scotland. His chief works were

Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,' first published in 1725; Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections,' 1728; A System of Moral Philosophy,' published in 1755, after his death, containing the completest exposition of his views. He adopted and worked out Shaftesbury's suggestion of a Moral Sense. He maintained the existence of disinterested feelings. He placed the Highest Good in the pleasures of sympathy, moral goodness, and piety-exalting these against creature comforts," Epicurean "enjoyment of life." His style was copious and glowing. He tries to engage the attention of the reader by great abundance of examples and comparisons.

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David Hartley (1705-1757), a physician, was the first to bring into prominence the doctrine of the association of ideas, explaining by this theory the growth of moral sentiments. He is still more famous as the first English writer to bring into prominence the doctrine that the brain and the nerves are the instruments of the mind. Not much has been added to his proofs. He held that the impressions of sense are conveyed along the nerves by a vibratory movement. His Observations on Man' was published in 1749. The style of this work is sober, and possesses few attractions. It is, however, sufficiently clear, and the doctrines not being abstruse, it is, for a psychological work, comparatively easy reading.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is notable in Philosophy for his arguments against the so-called Freedom of the Will, and in Theology for his defence of the doctrine of Original Sin. He was born in Windsor, Connecticut, became a preacher, was closely connected with the great religious revival, though himself too feeble and awkward to address multitudes, conducted a mission to the Indians, and died President of New Jersey College. His 'Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will' was published in 1754; his work on Original Sin in 1758. He was of a severe ascetic turn. He was driven from his first charge as a minister in consequence of his rigorous purging of the sacramental tables. His controversial acuteness and subtlety in drawing distinctions entitle his works to their high rank. He had little turn for style. Dry and precise, without either felicity or ornament, his writings are calculated to repel all but hard students of their particular subjects.

David Hume (1711-1776) is in this generation what Berkeley, Locke, and Hobbes were in theirs. He belonged to a good Scottish family. His strong literary turn appeared at an early age. He tried to learn first law and then commerce, but found both uncongenial. He spent three years in France at Rheims and at

the Jesuit College of La Fleche. Immediately thereafter, in 1739, he published his "Treatise of Human Nature.' In 1741-42 appeared his Essays Moral and Political'; in 1748 his Inquiry concerning Human Understanding'; in 1751 his 'Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals'; from 1754 to 1762 the various volumes of his History of England.' While these were in course of preparation he did not make his living by literature alone. During one year he had charge of an insane young nobleman; for two years he was secretary to General St Clair, accompanying him on an expedition to the coast of France and on a mission to Turin. Thereafter he had important appointments in the service of the Government. From 1763 to 1766 he was Secretary to the British Embassy at Paris, and on his return home became Under-Secretary of State for the Northern Department. The last six years of his life he spent in the pleasant society of Edinburgh. His 'Dialogues on Natural Religion' were published by his nephew in 1779, three years after his death. Hume is described as a corpulent man, "of happily-balanced temper," "of simple, unaffected nature, and kindly disposition.' He says of himself "I was, I say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions." He was not a very productive writer. He did not so much teem with ideas; he rather gave himself to the steady elaboration of a few. His philosophical writings, whatever may be their scientific value, have the merit of being clear and consistent. He was very painstaking with his composition. His manuscripts bear evidence of the most careful revision and fastidious choice of words and phrases. Especially was he anxious to weed his diction of Scotticisms, inviting criticism and correction with a genuine desire to profit thereby. He offends chiefly by using terms peculiar to Scotch law. The great beauty of his style is its perspicuity. His choice of words is often very apt, and the combinations felicitous. The heavy character of his subjects is enlivened by a constant dry sparkle of antithesis, and occasional touches of quiet sarcasm and humour. He is highly eulogised by Dr Nathan Drake "The Essays of Hume, in fact, sometimes present the reader with the grace and sweetness of Addison, accompanied with a higher finishing and more accurate tact in the arrangement and structure of periods; so that no language is more clear and lively, more neat and chaste, more durably and delicately pleasing to the ear, than what may be produced from the best portions of those elaborate but very sceptical disquisitions."

Adam Smith and Price published ethical works towards the close of this period, but they belong properly to the next generation.

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HISTORY.

The most famous historical work of this period is Hume's 'His tory of England,' from the earliest times down to the Revolution. The author's original idea was to write this History from the Union of the Crowns to the accession of George I. He never brought it further down than the Revolution; and when he had brought it to that point he enlarged his scheme in the other direction-went back to the invasion of Julius Cæsar, aud carried down the narrative to the Union. The work was highly popular. It is sometimes compared with the History of England' by Macaulay, who began where Hume left off, and who is said to have been ambitious of proving a worthy continuator of the elder historian. The style, though more abstract and much less spirited than Macaulay's, and though the writer aimed at being "concise after the manner of the ancients," was brilliant and sparkling as compared with the ordinary historical performances of that or of prior date. There was also in the work a great feature of novelty. Hume was the first to mix with the history of public transactions accounts of the condition of the people, and of the state of arts and sciences. Although these supplementary chapters of his are very imperfect, and though he had neither materials for the task nor a just conception of the difficulty of it, still the little that he gave was a pleasing innovation. Like Macaulay, he is accused of partiality in his explanation of events, but in the opposite direction. He is accused of giving a favourable representation of the despotic conduct of the Stuarts, and of trying to throw discredit on the popular leaders.

A Complete History of England,' also from the invasion of Julius Cæsar, but brought down to a later period than Hume's— to 1748 (afterwards to 1765), was published by Tobias Smollett, the novelist, in 1758. A narrative from Smollett's pen could not But such a work written in fourteen months fail to be attractive. could hardly compete in manner, and still less in matter, with the eight years' careful labour of Hume. The style is fluent and loose, possessing a careless vigour where the subject is naturally exciting, but composed too hastily to rise above dulness in the record of dry transactions. As regards matter, the historian can make no preHe executed the book as a piece of tension to original research. hack-work for a London bookseller, availing himself freely of previous publications, and taking no pains to bring new facts to light. He was in too great a hurry even to compare and check authorities: the history is said to be full of errors and inconsistencies. The concluding part of the work is sometimes printed as a continuation of Hume.

Among the minor historians of the period were Thomas Carte (b. 1686), an intense Jacobite, secretary to Bishop Atterbury, author of a 'General History of England' (1747), and of a 'History of the Life of James, Duke of Ormond'; Nathaniel Hooke (d. 1763), who assisted the famous Duchess of Marlborough in the vindication of her life, compiler of a History of Rome' (17331771), remarkable as taking the side of the plebeians; William Harris (1720-1770), author of memoirs of James I., Charles I., Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II.; and the compilers of a 'Universal History,' published about 1760-namely, three Scotsmen (Archibald Bower, John Campbell, and William Guthrie),1 George Sale (translator of the Koran), and George Psalmanazar, the pretended native of Formosa. With these we may reckon Lord Hervey, the Sporus of Pope, whose 'Memoirs of the Reign of George II., from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline,' were published by Mr Croker in 1848.

The writer of the Life of Cicero,' a historical biography, Dr Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), receives high praise for his style from Dr Nathan Drake, when that work is said to be "the earliest classical production which we possess in the department of history.' This, however, is considerably modified in what follows:

"Its reputation, however, as a specimen of fine writing, is on the decline. The chief defects of the composition of the 'Life of Cicero' have arisen from the labour bestowed upon it. The sentences are too often, in their construction, pedantic and stiff, owing in a great measure to the perpetual adoption of circumlocutions, in order to avoid customary phrases and modes of expression. The author has indeed, upon this plan, given a kind of verbose dignity to his style; but, at the same time, frequently sacrificed ease, perspicuity, and spirit. In grammatical construction, he is for the most part pure and correct; but in his choice of words he has exhibited frequent marks of defective taste. He is occasionally elegant and precise, but more commonly appears majestic, yet encumbered, struggling under the very mass of diction which he has laboured to accumulate. He has contributed, however, to improve English composition by affording examples of unusual correctness in the construction of his sentences, and of that roundness, plenitude, and harmony of period for which his favourite Cicero has been so universally renowned."

Middleton was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, an implacable enemy of the Master, Richard Bentley, with whom he had several lawsuits, and whose New Testament he attacked with extreme bitterness. He wrote several works of some note in their day. He is severely handled by De Quincey, who calls him "the most maliguant of a malignant crew," rejoices that his gross unac

1 Mentioned by Boswell as a political writer of such power, that Government "thought it worth their while to keep him quiet by a pension." He was one of the first authors by profession, unconnected with politics, though he did not scruple to enlarge his income by taking a side. He is praised as the first historian that made extensive searches among original documents.