reprinted it as an essay on Beauty in the Encyclopædia Britannica.' He evidently regarded it as the corner-stone of his fame.

His great superiority consists in the versatility of his powers, and the perfect command he had over his faculties and acquirements. There was scarcely a region of the intellectual world that he had not explored, yet his natural endowments were greater than his acquisitions. The demands of a laborious profession precluded any profound knowledge in the sciences or abstruser branches of learning. He was more a man of the world than an erudite scholar—more of a popular orator and lawyer than an author; yet how few have been able to rival him in mental philosophy or polite literature! His perceptions were so quick, as to seem intuitive, and his sensibilities so keen, as to include every species of emotion. No poet could have a greater admiration of the beauties of external nature, yet his fertile imagination was but the handmaid of his clear and powerful understanding. His reasons and arguments on any subject were as strong and distinct as his illustrations were rich and fanciful. When these were aided by the fire of his eye, the animated expression of his countenance, and that flow of language which seemed as if it were never to cease running and sparkling, and which never made one abrupt or half-formed sentence, the impression made by his genius and acquirements on all minds of the slightest susceptibility was indescribable. Mrs Hemans compared the effect of his conversation to drinking champagne. But Jeffrey aimed at higher things than these. Both by his voice and his pen he sought to make men better, and wiser, and happier. He had a deep sympathy with his kind in all its joys and sorrows-a love of whatever was fair and good, and a scorn of whatever was base, or mean, or hypocritical. His candour was as transparent as his truth. His highest flights as an orator or writer were connected with the best feelings and interests of humanity.

At a late period of his life Lord Jeffrey was called upon, in his judicial capacity, to deliver judgment in a case connected with the political reformers, Muir, Palmer, and Gerald. It was proposed in the year 1845 to erect a monument to their memory, but the scheme was objected to chiefly on political grounds. The Court of Session, by a majority of its body, overruled the objection, Lord Jeffrey concurring. 'The thoughts,' he said, 'which such a monument should suggest, even to those most opposed to the views and opinions of its founders, are naturally of a solemn and sobering character. And if, in some, they may still be too much mixed up with feelings of anger at supposed injustice, and in others of unmerciful reprobation of offences, of which the mischief and the penalties have been long ago consummated, I can only say that the blame will be with those who continue, on either side, to cherish sentiments so uncharitable; and that, if there be any place where the influences of the scene in which they are suggested are likely to soften them down to a more humane and indulgent standard, it is when that scene is laid where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary rest; and where everything should remind us of our own frail mortality, and of that awful Seat of Judgment before which none of us can hope to be justified-except through mercy.'

This solemn and touching admonition may prepare us for the fastapproaching sequel of our narrative. Lord Jeffrey's health had been shaken by several severe attacks. His cheerfulness and clearness of

intellect, however, were undiminished. He scarcely seemed old even at seventy-six. His evening parties at Craigcrook, or at his house in Moray Place, were the special delight of his friends; his acts of generosity and charity and unaffected kindness were still more numerous. Recent circumstances had revived his interest in the 'Edinburgh Review.' His only child, a daughter, was married to Mr Empson, professor of law in the East India College at Haileybury; and in 1847, on the death of Mr Macvey Napier, Mr Empson succeeded to the editorship of that journal from which his illustrious relative had derived such solid and lasting honours. Lord Jeffrey might now be seen in his leisure hours turning over the leaves of a critique destined for publication, and perhaps suggesting some golden thought or happy illustration to be set like a 'coigne of vantage' in the text. He was so engaged within one week of his death! Within four days of that event he sat in court, not having missed a day during the season; and one of his last writings was a letter, full of tenderness, addressed to the widow of his early friend, Sydney Smith, who had sent him a printed copy of the Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered by Mr Smith so far back as 1806. His early associates and occupations-the names and the duties so long familiar- -were thus vividly before him at the last! The closing hours were linked in beautiful sequency and uniformity with the morning splendour. On returning from the court on Tuesday, January 26, 1850, Lord Jeffrey had a slight accession of cold, which brought on his constitutional complaint, bronchitis; fever followed, and at six o'clock on Saturday afternoon, while his medical attendant was in the act of feeling his pulse, life became extinct. His remains were interred in the Western Cemetery, without any funereal pomp, as was his own desire, but mourned deeply and widely with no common sorrow. He had lived and died among his own people; and his native country, amidst her grief, rejoiced, and will long rejoice-in his fame.

DANIEL DE FOE.

AMONG the books which may be reckoned as belonging to the world's

6

acknowledged stereotypes, there are probably few that have been read more frequently, or proved acceptable to a greater variety of tastes, than the illustrious Robinson Crusoe.' While, however, in connection with this performance the author's name has become so extensively familiar, it is principally by means of it that he continues to be remembered. The generality of modern readers know little of the extent and merit of De Foe's political and controversial writings, or of the conspicuous position which he occupied on account of them with his contemporaries. Having reference chiefly to the disputes and contentions of his times, these productions have naturally lost much of their original interest, and their value has been therefore considerably diminished. It is nevertheless conceived that they are worthy of a more general investigation and attention; and accordingly it is here intended to furnish some account of them, and also to present such an outline of the writer's personal history, character, sufferings, and disappointments, for conscience' sake and otherwise, as can be conveniently rendered within the limits of the present Paper.

De Foe's entire works consist of more than two hundred separate publications, embracing a vast variety of subjects, and all exhibiting evidences of great ability, honesty of intention, and a keen perception of just and wholesome principles. As a politician, he was throughout his whole career the steady advocate of liberal interests, the manly and upright champion of justice, of tolerance, and of all those citizen-rights valued by honest Englishmen. Living in a turbulent era of our history, when the pretensions of rival and selfish factions were agitated with an inveterate and unprincipled animosity, he seems to have been in great part proof against the prevalent contagion, and to have entertained the questions in dispute with a scrupulous regard to their truthfulness or reasonable expediency. By being an honester man than the generality, he became the object of general misapprehension and opprobrium. Few men had more of the world's notice in his day; none more of its calumny and persecution. In a more than ordinary degree he shared the fate of every man who, by genius or cultivation, is in advance of his own times. The party whose aims and schemings he opposed he very naturally offended; but he was also not unfrequently misrepresented and calumniated by the

very party whose interests he endeavoured to promote. This party consisted of the nonconforming Presbyterians, who, as the successors of the Puritans of the foregoing age, continued to protest against the narrowness and dominancy of the Protestantism of the Reformation. De Foe is in a certain sense the representative of the aims and spirit of modern Independency he was in creed and political principle a dissenting Presbyterian, and he advocated most of the claims and opinions by which the dissenting sects were then, and are still in part, distinguished; but he seems, upon the whole, to have been greatly superior to his party, inasmuch as he was less sectarian, and more liberal and catholic in his sentiments.

In proceeding to narrate the principal events and transactions of his life, it may be well to mention at the outset that the particle De—for reasons which cannot now be ascertained-was adopted, and not inherited, by our author; his original family name being simply Foe, without any euphonious or ornamental prefix. Of his ancestry or immediate progenitors there is very little known. The earliest that has been mentioned is his grandfather, Daniel Foe, who was a substantial English yeoman, and farmed his own estate at Elton in Northamptonshire. He is supposed to have been attached to the Cavalier and High Church party; and as an evidence of his respectability, it has been recorded that he kept a pack of hounds for his diversion. Daniel pleasantly relates, that his grandfather's huntsman had the irreverent habit of naming his dogs after the most illustrious officers in the Puritan and Royal forces: he had his Roundhead and his Cavalier, his Goring and his Waller, and all the generals in both armies were hounds in his pack; till the times turning, the old gentleman was fain to scatter the pack, and make them up of more dog-like surnames.' Besides scattering his hounds, it would seem that Mr Foe had also to disperse his family, for we find that James Foe, who is presumed to have been a younger son, was sent at a proper age to London,' and there apprenticed to a butcher. In this calling he became afterwards established in St Giles's, Cripplegate, and after flourishing in business for many years, he ultimately retired upon a decent competency, which he enjoyed until his death. He was the father of our celebrated Daniel, who was born in the parish of St Giles's aforesaid in the year 1661.

His parents having embraced the Nonconformists' principles, the boy was accordingly brought up in their faith. Of the manner in which he spent his early years there is no existing record. The imagination is left to picture him as it can. A lively and pleasant fellow we conceive him to have been, of quick and generous impulses, not backward to contend in feats of sport or warfare, but nowise given to the exaction of unfair advantages, for he says he learned from a boxing English boy not to strike an enemy when he is down.' One cannot readily bring his figure and appearance very near to us; but there assuredly, in St Giles's parish, Cripplegate, he once visibly lived and went to school with his contemporaries. Nightly for some years was he perhaps seated at the family table in the sitting-room-a little back parlour, as we fancy, behind the butcher's shop-conning lessons for the coming day, and possibly relieving his strained attention by counting the flies upon the ceiling. There were times, doubtless, when he read books for his own amusement: most likely the historical portions of the Bible, and probably the wondrous

allegory of the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' On Sundays he had to put on a grave face, and go forth with the family to the meeting-house in Little St Helen's, Bishopsgate Street,' to hear the Rev. Dr Annelsey, 'an esteemed Presbyterian minister,' who had been formerly ejected from the incumbency of Cripplegate. There, with subdued and steady countenance, in the grave Presbyterian congregation, Daniel undoubtedly sat and listened to the fervid eloquence of the preacher, and imbibed from it something of the manly independence and invincible love of liberty which he was destined afterwards to display in his own career. It is even conceivable that the good minister sometimes visited his father's house, and it is not unlikely that, on suitable occasions, he may have put his hand on the boy's head, and bade him remember to stand resolutely by the principles and religious doctrines in which he had been instructed.

It were interesting to know whether Daniel ever carried a butcher's tray, and what was the price of mutton, as his father retailed it to customers, two hundred years ago. To such questions as these, however, we can now obtain no answer. But judging from the prosperous circumstances of his family, and from the fact that young De Foe was early destined for the Presbyterian ministry, it seems improbable that he was ever actively connected with his father's business. At the age of fourteen, after he had been sufficiently qualified by inferior teachers, he was sent to a Nonconformist college, or academy, at Newington, then under the direction of the Rev. Charles Morton, a gentleman who had the reputation of being a 'polite and profound scholar.' Here he is reported to have had great advantages for learning, and to have lived in very agreeable society. Little, however, is known of his manner of life, or of the progress which he made while residing at this institution; but it has been concluded, from certain passages in his writings, that he had not failed to turn his opportunities to account. He has informed us that he had in his time been master of five languages, and that he had studied the mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, geography, and history. With the theory and practical capabilities of the English constitution he was thoroughly acquainted; and he sometimes boasts of having investigated politics as a science. Under the direction of his tutor, he went through the authorised courses of theology, in which he acquired such a proficiency as enabled him to cope with the acutest writers of the disputatious age in which he lived. His knowledge of ecclesiastical history was also very considerable; and indeed his attainments in all departments of general information were such as to entitle him to be considered a person of great intelligence and cultivation. A man of deep or extensive 'learning,' in the technical acceptation, he certainly never was, nor as such was he ever desirous of being regarded; but that he was anything like the illiterate person' which some of his opponents delighted to represent him to be, there is evidence enough in his writings to disprove. The poet Gay, adopting the cant of the Scriblerus Club, speaks of him as a fellow who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a smail foundation of learning,' and cites him as 'a lively instance of those wits who, as an ingenious author says, will endure but one skimming;' but this is a judgment which time has since emphatically reversed; and it is not likely that it will be again referred to, either in depreciation of De Foe, or by way of illustrating the poet's penetration.