with forced constructions, far-sought and ill-chosen expressions, and that sort of effort between obscurity and sense, from which it may be suspected that the writer derived his inspirations from the dictionary. The dedication to a familiar friend, rather than to a patron, contrary to usage, was independent; but the phrase "laude conspurcare" is not merely improper-it suggests a disgusting image. The first sentence of the thesis contains a glaring mistake of language. "Auxiliantibus musculorum fibris omnia omnino vitæ munera defungi quotidiano usu commonemur." Deceived by the passive termination of the deponent verb defungor, he misuses it in a passive sense. His motto from Persius is very happily chosen,

Latet arcanâ non enarrabile fibrâ.

Sir James Mackintosh has been described by others, and by himself, as indolent and dilatory at every period of his life. A curious instance of this disposition is related of him on the occasion of taking his degree. He not only put off the writing of his thesis to the last moment, but was an hour behind his time on the day of examination, and kept the academic senate waiting for him in full conclave. The latter instance, not so much of indolence as of gross negligence and bad taste on the part of a student, and of patient condescension on the part of the professors, is scarcely credible.

The bar is considered the proper sphere for a young man without fortune, who appears qualified to become a public speaker. Mackintosh signalised himself among the unfledged orators of the Medical and Speculative Societies, so called; and the profession of the law was recommended to him before he yet left Edinburgh. He, however, came to England with the intention to practise physic, and with recommendations to Dr. Fraser, a physician at Bath. Young, careless, and dissipated, he had squandered his money on becoming his own master; and before he left the University of Edinburgh, his uncle's legacy was exhausted. His relatives, who now supplied him, most probably dictated the continued pursuit of physic; and, on the advice of Dr. Fraser, he had thoughts of commencing practice at Bath. In 1788, however, he came to London, and resided in the house of a wine-merchant, also named Fraser, in Clipstone Street. This residence proved one of the fortunate circumstances of his life. It led to his acquaintance with Miss

Stuart, whom he married in January, 1789; so privately, that the pew-openers of Mary-le-bone Church were the witnesses. Mackintosh, with this seeming romance, was captivated wholly by the good sense and amiable character of this excellent woman. It will be found that she exercised the happiest influence on the conduct of his life and employment of his time. But the friends of both parties were equally incensed. The brothers of the lady were dissatisfied at her marriage with a young man who had neither fortune nor industry, and of whose capacity they had yet no idea. He had, indeed, on his arrival in London, published a pamphlet on the Regency question then pending, in support of the claims of the Prince of Wales and the views of the Whigs. But this first essay in politics failed to attract the notice either of the party or of the public. His family, to indulge their anger, or punish his imprudence, now withheld their supplies; and his situation would have been one of the most embarrassing, if his wife had not been possessed of some funds. This enabled and determined them to visit the Netherlands in the spring of 1789.

The Revolution now agitated France and Europe. Its principles, its passions, and its visions, were nowhere more deeply felt than in Brabant. Mackintosh continued in the Netherlands, residing chiefly at Brussels, until the end of the year. Arrived in London at the commencement of 1790, he found himself without money or means of living. But if his residence abroad exhausted his finances, it furnished him in return with a stock of information and enthusiasm, respecting foreign politics and the Revolution, which he was soon enabled to turn to account. Mr. Charles Stuart, the brother of his wife, was a contributor to the fugitive literature of the theatres and public press of London. Mackintosh, by his advice, aspired to become a journalist, and was introduced by him to that multifarious editor, John Bell, then editor and proprietor of a newspaper called The Oracle. The authorship of the defunct pamphlet, the advantages of having passed the preceding year on the Continent, and the title of Dr. Mackintosh, then borne by Sir James, were imposing recommendations in the eyes of the proprietor of the journal, and he was soon installed its sole organ in the department of foreign politics. It was agreed between the parties that the amount of remuneration should be regulated by admeasurement in the printed columns of The Oracle. Sir James, with the vigour and freshness of his youth, his opinions,

and his feelings, and inspired, moreover, by that which the Roman satirist ranked with Parnassus and the Pierian spring,* was declared by the proprietor ruinously prolific. One week his labours measured ten pounds sterling. "No paper," said Mr. Bell, with frank simplicity, "can stand this." An average was struck, and Sir James wrote at a fixed price.

Few persons think of asking others or themselves who is the writer of what they read in a newspaper;-either because the matter is so strictly ephemeral, and each daily impression obliterates that of the preceding day, or because the constant readers personify the journal itself by clothing its name with the attributes of authorship. Mackintosh, however, wrote so ably, that whilst the mass of constant readers quoted The Oracle with increased deference, the better informed and more inquisitive asked after the writer. He became acquainted, among others, with Felix Macarthy, an Irish compound of rake, gladiator, writer, and politician; the companion of Sheridan in his orgies and election scenes, and the humble follower of Lord Moira. Felix, as he appears to have been habitually called, both by strangers and his friends, made Mackintosh acquainted with the unfortunate Gerald, by whom he was thus early introduced to Doctor Parr. The brothers of Mrs. Mackintosh were now not only reconciled to the marriage, but attached to him personally, and proud of him. They advised him to attempt something more worthy of him than the diurnal supply of political vaticination, through the medium of The Oracle. Thus encouraged, he attended a public meeting of the county of Middlesex, and made a speech which was received with great applause. His friend Felix was present, and sounded the praises of the speaker and the speech among his numerous friends, whose number and constancy he was accustomed to attest by a punning quotation :

Donec eris Felix multos numerabis amicos.

The career of Mackintosh in London was now interrupted for a moment by the death of his father. He found it necessary to visit Scotland. Mrs. Mackintosh, with an infant of a few weeks old,

accompanied him. So fond was he of her person and society, that the shortest separation from her was painful, and a long absence intolerable to him. Having sold that part of the family property which came into his hands on his father's death, he returned to London with a few hundred pounds, took a house at Ealing, and undertook the hardy task of answering Burke's “Reflections on the French Revolution." He had a host of competitors already in the field. There were not wanting prudent counsellors who would divert him from a beaten subject,-upon which, they said, nothing new could be advanced,-and dissuade him from a vain trial where he had so many rivals to contend with. A subject is exhausted to those only whose barren or exhausted mediocrity can produce nothing new,-and there is, according to Swift, in the greatest crowd, room enough for him who can reach it, above their heads. Mackintosh proved both these truths, by persisting in his purpose. His talents, however, were already known and estimated. Paine, whilst writing his "Rights of Man," heard that Mackintosh also was employed in answering Burke. "Tell your friend," said he to an acquaintance of Sir James, "that he will come too late, unless he hastens; for, after the appearance of my reply, nothing more will remain to be said." It would seem that Paine instinctively knew the only rival whose work should divide opinion with him.

The Vindicia Gallicæ appeared among the latest of the replies to Burke. The work occupied the author several months. From a pamphlet, which he designed it should be, it came out a volume of 380 pages, in April, 1791. The period of composing it was, probably, the happiest of his life. The more generous principles and brighter views of human nature, society, and government,—of his own ambition and hopes,-which then engaged his faculties and exalted his imagination, were assuredly not compensated to him by the commendations which he subsequently obtained for practical wisdom, matured prudence, and those other hackneyed phrases which are doubtless often justly bestowed, but which are still oftener but masks for selfish calculation and grovelling ambition. His domestic life was, at the same time, the happiest that can be conceived. He had indulged, by his own avowal, in the vices of dissipation up to the period of his marriage; but now his life was passed in the solitude of his house at Ealing, without seeking or desiring any other enjoyment than the composition of his work, and the society of his

wife, to whom, by way of recreation in the evening, he read what he had written during the day. The Vindicia Gallicæ, accordingly, though not the most profound or learned of his productions, was never after equalled by him in vigour and fervour of thought, style, and dialectics. He sold the copyright for 301. Published in April, it reached a third edition in August; and the publisher had the liberality to give the author more than triple the stipulated sum.

Mackintosh had been already introduced by his brother-in-law to Sheridan, who was then what may be called manager of the press to the Whig party. Sheridan said that he supposed a hundred or two from the fund at Brookes's would not come amiss to the author of the Vindicia. The suggestion was no doubt readily assented to, but went no farther. The fund was at the time impounded, in consequence of the Whig schism on the subject of the French Revolution.

The author of the Vindicia Gallicæ started at once into celebrity: His acquaintance was sought by the chief Whigs,-by Fox, Grey, Lauderdale, Erskine, Whitbread; and he was invited to the Duchess of Gordon's rout. He was not only courted, but defamed; there could, therefore, be no doubt of the reality of his success.

"The vulgar clamour," says he, in an advertisement to the third edition, "which has been raised with such malignant art against the friends of freedom, as the apostles of turbulence and sedition, has not even spared the obscurity of my name. To strangers I can only vindicate myself by defying the authors of such clamours to discover one passage in this volume not in the highest degree favourable to peace and stable government. Those to whom I am known would, I believe, be slow to impute any sentiments of violence to a temper which the partiality of my friends must confess to be indolent, and the hostility of enemies will not deny to be mild."

Who does not know Burke's chivalrous and celebrated allusion to the Queen of France, in a passage of which the taste may be criticised, but of which the eloquence will never be unfelt by those who can appreciate imagination and sentiment? The following may be called an antagonist passage by Mackintosh in reply:

"In the eye of Mr. Burke, these crimes and excesses assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution, far more important than any change of government; a revolution, in which the sentiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguished for ever.' He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europe, when the nation that has been so long accustomed to give her the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and corrupted. A caviller