No

the piety of the critic has played false with his judgment. thing short of an actual and plenary inspiration will enable any man who composes as rapidly as he writes, to give meet utterance to those ultimate secretions of the deepest thoughts and the purest feelings in which the essence of poetry consists. Baxter's verses, which however are not very numerous, would be decidedly improved by being shorn of their rhyme and rhythm, in which state they would look like very devout and judicious prose, as they really are.

Every man must and will have some relief from his more severe pursuits. His faithful pen attended Baxter in his pastime as in his studies; and produced an autobiography, which appeared after his death in a large folio volume. Calamy desired to throw these posthumous sheets into the editorial crucible, and to reproduce them in the form of a corrected and well-arranged abridgment. Mr Orme laments the obstinacy of the author's literary executor, which forbad the execution of this design. Few who know,the book will agree with him. A strange chaos indeed it is. But Grainger has well said of the writer, that 'men of his size are not to be drawn in miniature.' Large as life, and finished to the most minute detail, his own portrait, from his own hand, exhibits to the curious in such things a delineation, of which they would not willingly spare a single stroke, and which would have lost all its force and freedom if reduced and varnished by any other limner, however practised, or however felicitous. There he stands, an intellectual giant as he was, playing with his quill as Hercules with the distaff, his very sport a labour, under which any one but himself would have staggered. Towards the close of the first book occurs a passage, which, though often republished, and familiar to most students of English literature, must yet be noticed as the most impressive record in our own language, if not in any tongue, of the gradual ripening of a powerful mind under the culture of incessant study, wide experience, and anxious self-observation. Mental anatomy, conducted by a hand at once so delicate and so firm, and comparisons, so exquisitely just, between the impressions and impulses of youth and the tranquil conclusions of old age, bring his career of strife and trouble to a close of unexpected and welcome serenity. In the full maturity of such knowledge as is to be acquired on earth, of the mysteries of our mortal and of our immortal existence, the old man returns at last for repose to the elementary truths, the simple lessons, and the confiding affections of his childhood; and writes an unintended commentary, of unrivalled force and beauty, on the inspired declaration, that to become as little children is the

indispensable, though arduous condition of attaining to true heavenly wisdom.

To substitute for this self-portraiture any other analysis of Baxter's intellectual and moral character would indeed be a vain attempt. If there be any defect or error of which he was unconscious, and which he therefore has not avowed, it was the combination of an undue reliance on his own powers of investigating truth, with an undue distrust in the result of his enquiries. He proposed to himself, and executed, the task of exploring the whole circle of the moral sciences, logic, ethics, divinity, politics, and metaphysics, and this toil he accomplished amidst public employments, of ceaseless importunity, and bodily pains almost unintermitted. Intemperance never assumed a more venial form; but that this insatiate thirst for knowledge was indulged to a faulty excess no reader of his life, or of his works, can doubt. In one of his most remarkable treatises 'On Falsely Pretended Knowledge,' the dangerous result of indulging this omnivorous appetite is peculiarly remarkable. Probabilities, the only objects of such studies, will at length become evanescent, or scarcely perceptible, when he who holds the scales refuses to adjust the balance, until satisfied that he has laden each with every suggestion and every argument which can be derived from every author who has preceded him in the same enquiries. Yet more hopeless is the search for truth, when this adjustment, once made, is again to be verified as often as any new speculations are discovered; and when the very faculty of human understanding, and the laws of reasoning are themselves to be questioned and examined anew as frequently as doubts can be raised of their adaptation to their appointed ends. Busied with this immense apparatus, and applying it to this boundless field of enquiry, Baxter would have been bewildered by his own efforts, and lost in the mazes of an universal scepticism, but for the ardent piety which possessed his soul, and the ever recurring expectation of approaching death, which dissipated his ontological dreams, and roused him to the active duties, and the instant realities of life. Even as it is, he has left behind him much, which in direct opposition to his own purposes, might cherish the belief that human existence was some strange chimera, and human knowledge an illusion, did it not fortunately happen that he is tedious in proportion as he is mystical. Had he possessed and employed the wit and gaiety of Boyle, there are some of his writings to which a place must have been assigned in the Index Expurgatorius of Protestantism. Amongst his contemporaries, Baxter appears to have been the object of general reverence, and of as general unpopularity. His temper was austere and irritable, his address ungracious and un

couth. While cordially admitting the merits of each rival sect, he concurred with none, but was the common censor and opponent of all. His own opinions on church government coincided with the later judgment, or, as it should be rather said, with the concessions of Archbishop Usher. They adjusted the whole of that interminable dispute to their mutual satisfaction at a conference which did not last above half an hour; for each of them was too devoutly intent on the great objects of Christianity to differ with each other very widely as to mere ritual observances. The contentions by which our forefathers were agitated on these subjects, have now happily subsided into a speculative and comparatively uninteresting debate. They produced their best, and perhaps their only desirable result, in diffusing through the Church, and amongst the people of England, an indestructible conviction of the folly of attempting to coerce the human mind into a servitude to any system or profession of belief; or of endeavouring to produce amongst men any real uniformity of opinion on subjects beyond the cognisance of the bodily senses, and of daily observation. They have taught us all to acknowledge in practice, though some may yet deny in theory, that as long as men are permitted to avow the truth, the inherent diversities of their understandings, and of their circumstances, must impel them to the acknowledgment of corresponding variations of judgment, on all questions which touch the mysteries of the present or of the future life. If no man laboured more, or with less success, to induce mankind to think alike on these topics, no one ever exerted himself more zealously, or more effectually, than did Richard Baxter, both by his life and his writings, to divert the world from those petty disputes which falsely assume the garb of religious zeal, to those eternal and momentous truths, in the knowledge, the love, and the practice of which, the essence of religion consists.

One word respecting the edition of his works, to which we referred in the outset. For the reason already mentioned, we have stuck to our long-revered folios, without reading so much as a page of their diminutive representatives, and can therefore report nothing about them. But after diligently and repeatedly reading the two introductory volumes by Mr Orme, we rejoice in the opportunity of bearing testimony to the merits of a learned, modest, and laborious writer, who is now, however, beyond the reach of human praise or censure. He has done every thing for Baxter's memory which could be accomplished by a skilful abridgment of his autobiography, and a careful analysis of the theological library of which he was the author; aided by an acquaintance with the theological literature of the seventeenth century,

such as no man but himself has exhibited, and which it may safely be conjectured no other man possesses. Had Mr Orme been a member of the Established Church, and had he chosen a topic more in harmony with the studies of that learned body, his literary abilities would have been far more correctly estimated, and more widely celebrated. We fear that they who dissent from her communion, and who are therefore excluded from her universities and her literary circles, are not to expect for their writings the same toleration which is so firmly secured for their persons and their ministry. Let them not, however, be dejected. Let them take for examples those whom they have selected as teachers; and learning from Richard Baxter to live and to write, they will either achieve his celebrity, or will be content, as he was, to labour without any other recompense than the tranquillity of his own conscience, the love of the people'among whom he dwelt, and the approbation of the Master to whom every hour of his life, and every page of his books were alike devoted.

ART. VIII-A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language; with a Preface on the Origin and Connexion of the Germanic Tongues, a Map of Languages, and the Essentials of Anglo-Saxon Grammar. By Rev. T. Bosworth, LL.D. 8vo. London: 1838.

HIS work will be highly acceptable to Anglo-Saxon scholars;

Tnor are these the only persons to whom it is likely to prove

of value. There are, or at all events soon will be many, by no means ambitious of achieving the fame of profound Anglo-Saxon scholarship, to whose library a Saxon and English Lexicon of moderate size and reasonable price will be a welcome addition. As this may appear a somewhat paradoxical opinion, we crave leave to offer our reasons in support of it, before we proceed to estimate the merits of Dr Bosworth's Dictionary, as compared with any previous work of a similar kind.

Profound Anglo-Saxon scholarship has ever been, and in all probability ever will be, a very rare commodity in the market of letters. Indeed, a profound knowledge of any dead language will always be a rarity, if it can reward our industry only by a literature so scanty and so rude as that of the Anglo-Saxons; and it may therefore seem, at first sight, as unreasonable to expect any considerable patronage for a work like the present, as for a Dictionary of some dialect of Kamschatka or Madagascar.

Still, if we mistake not, the day is not far distant when it will be considered disgraceful to a well-bred Englishman-utterly disgraceful to a man who makes the slightest pretensions to scholarship-to be ignorant, as multitudes (otherwise well informed) now are of the history and structure of the English tongue; and above all, of the precise relations of modern English to that ancient dialect of the great Teutonic family, which has ever been, and still is, incomparably the most important element in its composition.*

Now, a competent knowledge of these subjects, though something very different from extensive Anglo-Saxon scholarship, and though attained with comparatively little trouble, must necessarily involve some attention to the ancient language. Of the extent to which the Anglo-Saxon modifies the structure and grammatical peculiarities of modern English, and in which it contributes to its vocabulary, those who have paid no attention to the subject are little aware. Nor, indeed, has the subject ever been treated with the fulness it deserves. We shall make no apology, therefore, for the following attempt to determine with some approach to precision, the proportions in which the different elements of our language are mingled; and especially the degree in which the Anglo-Saxon predominates over the rest.

We must premise, that when we speak of English words derived from Anglo-Saxon or Latin, or any other language, we mean immediately derived. We make this remark because there are many words derived, historically speaking, from the Anglo-Saxon, which, from their strong resemblance to words of the same meaning in the Latin, might be supposed to have had a classical origin. We are far enough from denying-what the researches of modern philology have clearly proved—that there is a close connexion amongst all those languages out of which our own has been formed; that is, between the classical and Teutonic nay, that the still subsisting resemblances amongst languages far more dissimilar than these, justify us in believing that they all had a common origin. If this be the case, it is by no means surprising that there should often be a strong resemblance between words, where there has been no derivation of the one from the other. Two branches of a tree may be perfectly independent of one another, though both must ultimately come from a common root; and there are other ties of consanguinity besides that be

:

We are glad to perceive that the University of London includes amongst the subjects of the Matriculation Examination,-The gramma⚫tical structure and peculiarities of the English Language.'