LIVES OF MEN OF LETTERS AND SCIENCE, who flourished in the time of George III. By HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, F.R.S., &c. &c. 8vo. Charles Knight & Co.

THE reading public have been so familiarised with genius of all kinds, that a lord throwing off his robe of state and donning his morning gown, and condescendingly sitting down to literature, has no effect. Men are not led now by a high-sounding title, and care little for the author's rank. Fifty years since this work of Lord Brougham's would have been received with homage by the pompous gentlemen that formed the literary world; and, as far as the author is concerned, it is a great pity it was not his first instead of his last work. The book is a mistake in every way in the first place, it is a mistake to suppose that the present age will receive any work merely as the result of idle leisure. Literature has become a profession, and a man must devote his prime energies to it, or he has but little chance of escaping the trunk-maker. In the next place, the style and sentiments, and views are of two generations since. His lordship begins with a strange assertion, that the reign of George the Third should be regarded as the Augustan Age of Modern History, though he confesses that it had neither a Virgil, a Horace, nor a Mæcenas. That it was the age in which the liberties of the people were sapped and invaded; when wasteful and infamous wars and a narrow and despotic authority were carried to the highest pitch; are not the points we presume on which his lordship would liken it to this favourite pattern-period of mediocre historians. This unhappy period, which has been transferred first to the feeble Anne's time, then back to her more illustrious precursor, Elizabeth, is now for the first time bestowed on the bagwig and kneebreeches era of Farmer George.

The first sentence is the key-note to the whole book, which is as mediocre as the period it thus lauds. It has been said by some of our contemporaries that it is a pity to see a man in his lordship's station and of his reputation, thus committing himself to exploded prejudices and miserable commonplaces. The pity, however, appears to us to be, that an intellect so really mediocre as to produce and put forth such a volume, should, by mere skill in dialectics, raise itself to the most exalted and influential situations. It alarms us to see how common are the minds, how absolutely devoid of any of the attributes of true genius that can thus force themselves into important positions; and it is fair to conclude that other minds that rule the destinies of nations are equally destitute of real greatness, when we see that it is possible to acquire the power by the energetic exercise of such very mediocre abilities. It has been said that more men write themselves out of a reputation than into one, and here is a remarkable instance of the truth of the assertion. Lord Brougham seems not only to have remained stationary, but to have retrograded. He has learned nothing from the forty years existence of his own "Edinburgh Review," whence

could be culled passages that would confute almost every assertion his lordship has made. In the interminable pages of the blue and yellow, may be found many a laboured article to prove that Voltaire was neither a philosopher nor a historian; that Hume had almost as little pretension to either title; and that neither the history of the one nor the dramas of the other were of the genuine kind. Yet his Lordship has suddenly discovered that Voltaire's history is of the highest and most faithful kind, though he is obliged to give way a little about his most popular work, his "History of Peter the Great;" for which it is now known he received Russian money, and which is an outrageous_romance, falsified in every possible manner, as also is his other popular work, "The History of Charles the Twelfth. The same spirit it is known pervaded all his works, and that it is so is proved by the thirty volumes of his works being so frequently to be met with at waste paper price.

To come forward, therefore, with paradoxical assertions of their faithfulness, to endeavour to obliterate the just notion that has, by great diligence and accuracy of criticism been attached to them, is an insult and a wrong to the age.

That Voltaire did great good in his age; that his wonderful powers of satire, and his daring and democratic application of them, conferred great benefits on mankind, were already known and acknowledged, and needed not any new exposition, nor any such laboured and commonplace defences as his lordship gives. And here, again, we are perplexed and troubled to find that his learned lordship thinks it necessary to utter such an apology to those whom he knows will be more particularly his readers, namely, his fellow Senators. How is it that they require the bald reiteration of opinions and principles, which have long since been received as part of the habitual notions of every sensible man. Surely his lordship is defaming his order by exposing that the governors are in the rear of the governed, and, like other generals, have taken up their position behind, instead of before those they profess to lead.

Altogether, the work is a puzzle. Why was it undertaken? There are no new facts, no new deductions. The style is the perfection of commonplace. Phrases as familiar as halfpence are continually jingling in one's ears; periods that have a rhythm so monotonous that their dulness muffles the small portion of thought there is in them. We are told "that the tempest had set in," when a controversy is spoken of, and we meet in every page “It were vain to deny,' "The universal voice," &c. &c. Now, this poverty of metaphor and phrase might be excusable in a hurried pamphlet, written to serve a temporary purpose, but surely is not to be tolerated in the pages of one who aims at once to be the Cicero and the Aristarchus of the age, and who writes only to occupy his leisure.

The fact is, that the author is one of the last of the race of cultivated mediocres, who from the time of Drs. Blair and Campbell have endeavoured to reduce literature to a logical art, confounding mere literary expression with the profound emotions and thoughts of genius, and

judging the purest spiritual intuitions of the soul by the feeble percep tions of a feeble reason. Such men are fluent from their very frivolity, and harshly dogmatical from their utter want of kindred sympathy with, and incapacity to comprehend, the utterings of true genius. With such men Voltaire is a greater dramatist than Ben Jonson, and, did they dare say it, than Shakspeare; of whom they all think, as Hume, the mightiest of the school, wrote:-" that he was not capable of furnishing a proper entertainment to a refined or intelligent audience:" and again, "A reasonable propriety of thought he cannot for any time uphold" !!!

This logical and mathematical school of literature can only hold its sway with narrow minds, and in an unimpassioned age. Immediately the passions are aroused, the intellect is stirred, and the Byrons, Coleridges, and Shelleys, succeed and obliterate the Darwins, the Hayleys, and th Whiteheads; and with them their feeble admirers and advocates.

The lives contained in this volume are ten; but on what principle they are selected it is difficult to imagine. Gibbon (the greatest of the historians) is omitted, as well as Brindley and a host of others. This might, however, be passed over, but for the equivocal wording of the title-page. The ghosts of the men thus omitted will never reproach the illustrious author, should they encounter him in the Elysian Fields.

Had the Lives been put forward in the Shilling Weekly Volumes of Mr. Knight, of which they might have formed three or four, without any name, they would have passed muster as clear and tolerably careful compilations, though even here the editor should not have been sparing of his scissors; but, coming as they do from one who has taken no small share in all the great and complicated affairs of the nation, and who daily and hourly dogmatises on every question affecting the social condition, and the science, literature, and art of the country, they are only mournful proofs to what inferior minds the fate of whole generations are oftentimes confided.

VIOLINA A Miniature Romance. By FREDERIC BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. Translated from the German. 24mo. H. G. Clarke & Co. THIS is one of Mr. Clarke's neat pocket reprints, and forms a companion to "Undine.” It has not the merit of this latter work; and La Motte Fouquè, notwithstanding he has been much praised by a certain set of critics, is-always with the beautiful exception of "Undine"-but a feeble and fantastic writer. We cannot think that the reprinting a race of sentimental writers, whose school and style are being exploded in their own country, is likely to be profitable nor in any way desirable.

LONDON BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.