earth in civil or divine matters, maintaining that the people only have the right of government, their implacable hatred to the Episcopal order and the Church of England. He ob'served, that the first presbyter dissents from our discipline 'were introduced by the Jesuits order about the twentieth of 'Queen Elizabeth; a famous Jesuit among them feigning himself a Protestant, and who was the first who began to pray extempory, and brought in that which they since called, and are still so fond of-praying by the Spirit. '-Evelyn Memoirs, II. 19. *

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He was allowed to publish, while the censorship of the press still subsisted, a very inadequate Vindication of the Government of Scotland under Charles II. He died in St James's Street in May 1691; and his death is mentioned as that of an extraordinary person by several of those who recorded the events of their time, before the necrology of this country was so undistinguishing as it has now become. The pomp and splendour of his interment at Edinburgh, affords farther evidence how little the administration of William was disposed to discourage the funeral honours paid to his most inflexible opponents.

The writings of Sir George Mackenzie are literary, legal and political. His Miscellaneous Essays, both in prose and verse, may now be dispensed with, or laid aside, without difficulty. They have not vigour enough for long life. But if they be considered as the elegant amusements of a statesman and lawyer, who had little leisure for the cultivation of letters, they afford a striking proof of the variety of his accomplishments, and of the refinement of his taste. In several of his Moral Essays, both the subject and the manner betray an imitation of Cowley, who was at that moment beginning the reformation of English style. Sir George Mackenzie was probably tempted, by the example of this great master, to write in praise of Solitude: and Evelyn answered by a panegyric on Active life. It seems singular that Mackenzie, plunged in the harshest labours of ambition, should be the advocate of retirement; and that Evelyn, comparatively a recluse, should have commended that mode of life which he did not chuse. Both works were, however, rhetorical exercises, in which a puerile ingenuity was employed on questions which admitted no answer, and were not therefore the subject of sincere opinion. Before we can decide whether a retired or a public life be best, we must ask-best for whom?

* It is needless to warn any readers against fictions so absurd. It is wonderful that Sir George did not represent John Knox as a disguised Jesuit.

If the meaning be, best for all, the absurdity of the question strikes the mind at the first glance. If it be, best for some, we must be told who are the sorts and classes of men who are intended. The absurdity of these childish generalities, which exercised the wit of our forefathers, has indeed been long acknowledged. Perhaps posterity may discover, that many political questions which agitate our times, are precisely of the same nature; and that it would be almost as absurd to attempt the establishment of a Democracy in China, as the foundation of a Nobility in Connecticut. That Evelyn indeed did not believe his own book, we are assured by himself, in his letter to Cowley, 12th March 1666.- You had reason to be astonished that I, who had so much celebrated recess, should become ⚫ an advocate for the enemy. I conjure you to believe that I • am still of the same mind, and that there is no person who can do more honour, and breathe more after the life and repose you so happily cultivate and advance by your example; but as those who praised dirt, a flea, or the gout, so have I public employment, and that in so weak a style compared with my antagonists, as by that alone it may appear that I ♦ neither was nor could be serious.' The praise thus bestowed by so competent a judge as Evelyn, in a confidential letter to the greatest master of English prose then living, must be considered as a testimony of great weight to Mackenzie's character as an English writer. He is not, it must be owned, exempt from Scotticisms; but he is perfectly free from those, perhaps, more disagreeable vices into which more celebrated Scotch writers have been betrayed, by a constant, fear of Scotticism. He composes easily and freely; and his style is that of a man who writes his native language. Neither he, nor Burnet, nor Fletcher, has any degree of that painful constraint, that demure stiffness, that constant air of dreading impropriety, which makes the writings of some Scotchmen of distinguished talent, in more modern times, like compositions in a dead language;-in which indeed they avoid Scotch, but at the same time sacrifice all that is living and idiomatic in English. They use no spoken language; and their style has therefore, in many places, the cold and dull stateliness of a diction timidly selected by a foreigner from books. It would be injustice to the memory of Mackenzie, not to mention the extraordinary praise bestowed on him by Dryden, the successor, but hardly the superior, of Cowley, in English prose. The praises of that great poet are indeed not always of equal importance; and it is unfortunately neces sary to the value of the following commendation to say, that it was published in 1693, two years after the death of Sir George Mackenzie.

Had I time, I could enlarge on the beautiful turns of words and thoughts, which are as requisite in this as in heroic poetry itself. With these beautiful turns I confess myself to have been unacquainted, till, about twenty years ago, in a conversation which I had with that noble wit of Scotland, Sir George Mackenzie, he asked me why I did not imitate in my verse the turns of Mr Waller and Sir John Denham, of which he repeated many to me. I had often read with pleasure, and with some profit, these two Fathers of our English poetry; but had not seriously enough considered their beauties, which give the last perfection to their works. Some sprinklings of this sort I had also formerly in my Plays; but they were casual, and not designed. But this hint, thus seasonably given me, first made me sensible of my own wants, and brought me afterwards to seek for the supply of them in other English authors. I looked over the darling of my youth, the famous Cowley; t-there I found, instead of them, the points of wit and quirks of epigram; but no elegant turns, either on the word or on the thought. Then I consulted a greater genius, (without offence to the manes of that noble author), I mean Milton; but as he endeavours everywhere to express Homer, whose age had not arrived to that fineness, I found in him a true sublimity, lofty

* We must understand him to mean the authors of his own system. of diction and metre.

+ It has often been remarked that Dryden, in his earlier and less perfect works, betrayed many symptoms of a taste corrupted by the study of Cowley. But it has not been observed, that one of his noblest passages owes something to imitation of the same model.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call to-day his own,

He who, secure within, can say,

To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.

Be fair or foul, or rain or shine,

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine; Not Heav'n itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'

In The Epicure' of Cowley, the following couplet may be compared with the above passage.

tial.

'To-day is ours; what do we fear?

To-day is ours; we have it here.'

The same language is observable in one of his versions from Mar

To-morrow I will live, the Fool does say;

To-day itself's too late; the wise lived esterday.'

If it should be said that, in the latter case, the language is suggested by the original, it cannot be denied that, in the former, Dryden has not only borrowed the turn of expression, but caught the ire from Cowley.

thoughts which were cloathed with admirable Grecisms, and ancient words which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spencer, and which, with all their rusticity, had somewhat of venerable in them: but I found not there neither that for which I looked. At last I had recourse to his master, Spencer, the author of that immortal poem called the Fairy Queen, and there I met with that which I had been looking for so long in vain. Spencer had studied Virgil to as much advantage as Milton had done Homer.' +

We have been insensibly led to copy more of this passage than relates to Mackenzie, by the singular beauty of expression and occasional levity of critical judgment which distinguish it, and which render it no inadequate specimen of the general character of Dryden's miscellaneous writings. Without exaggerating the importance of the conversation to which it refers, we may consider it as an incident not without some influence on the literary habits of the poet; and we may venture to remark, that it was prior to the composition of any of those immortal works on which his fame will for ever rest,

Sir George Mackenzie is one of the few British advocates who have published their Speeches at Bar, which we in Scotland often call Pleadings, and which in England are called Arguments, when they are addressed to Judges on questions of law, and retain the general name of Speeches when they are addressed to a Jury, or to any other popular body. They show considerable knowledge, ingenuity, and address, and are never very defective, but in those passages which aim at eloquence. The speech before the Parliament for the Marquis of Argyll, handles the question- Whether passive compliance in public rebellions be punishable as treason?'-with no small ability. He compares the herd of servile witnesses who flocked in to Court favour, by bearing testimony against a fallen statesman, to the Roman slaves, who, vieing with each other in the indignities which they heaped on the dead body of Sejanus, called out Calcemus Cæsaris hostem!' The Eleventh Pleading' is against a most extravagant pretension of the Royal Burghs, who claimed an exclusive privilege to trade with foreigners. The Parliament determined that this monstrous monopoly was not warranted by law. The following passage of it is curious.

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I confess (may it please your Grace) that the erecting of socie ties, as to some trades and at some times, is necessary; but the ordinary rule extends there no further, than that trading to remote nations, and in rich commodities, should at first have some privileges as to their erections; for else private stocks would not be able to compass

Dryden's Discourse on the Origin and Progress of Satire, pres fixed to his Juvenal,

it: But even as to these, when the trade is once secured and becomes easy and manageable, then these privileges cease with the cause from which they had their origin. And therefore it is, that albeit trade with foreigners seemed at first above the reach of our first traders, when to sail to Spain seemed as hard as an India voyage now doth, yet now, when experience and increase of money has lessened these difficulties, I conceive the privileges should expire. It is known that the Bishop of Glasgow gave only his borough then liberty to trade into the shire of Argyll, and that the Burgh of Edinburgh had a special privilege of old to trade in the Isles.

In his Preface to the Pleadings, he lays down a doctrine which will not be very acceptable to English readers.

'It may seem a paradox to others, but to me it appears undeniable, that the Scottish idiom of the British tongue is more fit for pleading than either the English idiom or the French tongue; for certainly a pleader must use a brisk, smart, and quick way of speaking; whereas the English, who are a grave nation, use a too slow and grave pronunciation, and the French a too soft and effeminate one. And therefore, I think the English is fit for haranguing, the French for complimenting, but the Scotch for pleading. Our conversation is like ourselves, fiery, abrupt, sprightly, and bold. Their greatest wits being employed at Court, have indeed enriched their language very much as to conversation; but all ours, bending themselves to study the law, the chief science in repute with us, hath much smoothed our language as to pleading. And when I compare our law with the law of England, I perceive that our law favours more pleading than theirs does; for their statutes and decisions are so full and authoritative, that scarce any case admits pleading, but (like an hare killed in the seat) it is immediately surprised by a decision or a statute. Nor can I enough admire why some of the wanton English undervalue so much our idiom, since that of our gentry differs little from theirs ; nor do our commons speak so rudely as those of Yorkshire.'

All these speeches show a good sense, at that time rare, inasmuch as they are adapted to the real state of business in the age and country of the speaker, instead of being a puerile and frigid mimicry of ancient orations. And his characters of contemporary advocates, though, as no monuments of these lawyers are preserved, they are to us little more than portraits of imaginary persons, show that the author had the courage and understanding to think that modern speakers could deserve criticism; and that he was himself well employed in characterizing those men of eminent merit with whom he was familiarly conversant. Mackenzie was the first person who treated the Criminal Law of

* A Scotticism. This word, in English, no longer denotes a pub. lic speaker. That sense is obsolete,