PART II.] REVIEW.-Clayton's Sketches of Biography. It would certainly be monstrous, that a man could enter himself at a University, he carrying on the trade of a horse-dealer (a very common practice with certain non-graduate Clergymen), keep three half-terms, and at the end of ten years throw up business, solicit Holy Orders from a Bishop, and shine forth a Doctor of Divinity. In our judgement, no man ought to hold a living in England who is not a M. A. of Oxford or Cambridge in the regular way; for it is certainly hard that a man who earned his trifling portion of Latin and Greek at a day-school of fourpence a week, should obtain the same pecuniary benefits, as he whose education at school and the University has cost one thousand pounds. If a necessity of ordaining NonGraduates be indispensable, let it be an act of favour in the Bishops, conferred only on men of eminent talent, or acquired knowledge, who can return the honour and kindness by reflecting high credit upon the order, and acting in its support. To claim ordination under the ten year statute is, however, a palpable absurdity; and as that alone is the case before us, we can only compliment Philotheologus for his wise and judicious view of the subject. 115. Sketches of Biography, designed to show the influence of Literature on Character and Happiness. By John Clayton, Esq. Post 8vo. pp. 402. THIS is a neat and well-written digest, upon the general biography plan, inculcating good principles, though founded upon the common error of considering negative innocence superior to positive excellence. Many of the characters will not, in the estimation of posterity, exceed the rank of good and worthy men; but the object of the Author is to show what is happiness, and much of this he very justly places in having literary pursuits. He very strongly recommends composition for this purpose, because he observes from Middleton, "that Literature adorns prosperity, and is a refuge and comfort in adversity." "In the course of my travels, I have seen many a promising and fine young man gradually led to dissipation, gambling, and ruin, merely by the want of means to make a solitary evening pass pleasantly. I GENT. MAG. Suppl. XCV. PART II. E 609 earnestly advise every youth, who quits that abode of purity, peace, and delight, his paternal home, to acquire a taste for reading and writing. At every place where he may reside long, either in England or on the Continent, let him study to make his apartsible, for he will find a little extraordinary ments as attractive and comfortable as posexpence so bestowed at the beginning, to be good economy in the end: let him read the best books in the language of the place in which he lives; and above all, let him never retire to rest without writing at least a page of original comments on what he has seen, read, and heard in the day. This habit will teach him to observe and discriminate, for a man ceases to read with a desultory and wandering mind, which is utter waste of time, when he knows that an account of all the information which he has gained must be written at night. His rule of conduct, with regard to society, will then be good company or none, and he will find literature the protector of independence, the promoter of peace and refinement, and the guardian of religion, in principle and practice." "Of the three great sources of earthly enjoyment, reading, conversation, and composition, it is remarkable that two are solitary. Over books, it is not uncommon to yawn in languor and weariness; in conversation with animated and intelligent friends, the hours pass uncounted; but the most soothing, the most absorbing, the most constantly delightful of all occupations is composition; for it can enable a man to forget pain, neglect poverty, and every ill of life except remorse, and the suffering of near connexions. I therefore advise every one to compose at least a journal, but I do not advise all my readers to follow my example by taking the hazard of publication. If fame or profit be expected, there must be anxiety, and there may be disappointment." Pref. vi. vii. This statement is too highly coloured; for musick and drawing are as much sources of innocent felicity as composition; and the process of writing fluently having been acquired, patient compilation bids fairer to form successful authors; but we would no more recommend all young men to turn Writers, than to turn Talkers. "Old heads cannot be put upon young shoulders," and it is utterly impossible for youth to think accurately upon subjects connected with the actual knowledge of life, without which knowledge composition upon general subjects is not worth a straw. We shall give one more extract, because it is extremely interesting. It is an 610 REVIEW.-Report of the African Institution. an account of the private life of the excellent Bishop Porteus. "Our hour of breakfast is ten. Immediately before it, the Bishop calls his family together, prays with them, and gives them his blessing. The same thing is constantly done after supper, when we part for the night. In the intervals of breakfast, and in the evening, when there is no company, his Lordship sometimes reads to us. After breakfast we separate and amuse ourselves as we think proper, till four, the hour of dinAt six, when the weather is fair, we ner. either walk or make a visit to some of the Clergy or Gentry in the neighbourhood, and return about eight. We then have music, in which I [Dr. Beattie] am almost the only performer; my audience is very willing to be pleased. On Sundays we repair at eleven to the small but neat Church, the congregation are exemplary in their decorum-the prayers are well read by the Curate, and the Bishop preaches. After evening service, during the summer months, he generally delivers from his pew a catechetical lecture addressed to the children, who for this purpose are drawn up in a line before him along the area of the Church. In these lectures, he explains to them, in the simplest and clearest manner, yet with his usual elegance, the fundamental and essential principles of religion and morality; and concludes with an address to the more advanced in years." P. 286. Well does our Author characterize this mode of living, as that which contains nearly all the elements of human happiness, because it implies amiable dispositions, refined society, and time rationally employed in acts of piety to God, and utility to mankind. We would add, that these details of private life, not only furnish the most interesting but most edifying forms of biography, which in our judgment is best composed of such details, anecdotes, and dialogues. Without these we can have no portrait of the character-no distinctive features-no estimate of the peculiar bearings of disposition and habits, and no precise ideas of intellectual powers. 116. Nineteenth Report of the Directors of the African Institution. 8vo. pp. 334. THE Slave Trade is piracy of the most nefarious and unnatural kind; and, by the common law of sense, every man engaged in it ought to be hanged, because his criminality is that both of murder and robbery. New lights are however thrown upon the subject by this Report, which has furnished us with some hopes of adding further preventives. In the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, settlements have been established, where civilization is making considerable progress. Now this is the very thing desirable. Extend such settlements to the coasts, where there are marts of slaves. Make them sanctuaries for all slaves who can escape, and empower their governors to seize all the pirates and their human cargoes. Make it also a capital felony for any man to purchase a slave, whatever be his nation. But the Report has some masterly arguments concerning the impolicy of the slave system, which shows, that we, as a commercial people, can have no hopes of opening a successful trade while the Slave Trade exists. "The civilization of Africa never can proceed until the Slave Trade is put down beyond a hope or possibility of return, for the appearance of a slave ship demoralizes the whole neighbourhood." P. 52. The Portuguese, it seems, a nation full of convents, crosses, and the various theatricals of ultra-religion, authorize the Slave-Trade by Law, and it appears, that they have in more than one instance saved themselves the expense of the purchase-money by attacking towns in the night, killing those vivors. P. 54. who resisted, and carrying off the sur remarks, and as they are very philosoUpon these facts the Society make phical, novel, and sound, we hope that They will previously recollect, that the our readers will peruse the extract. nations which are in the vicinity of the Slave factories, are kept in a continual state of warfare, by the profit of making and selling Slaves. "Men will not sow a field to day, which The present King of the Soolimas, in his is to morrow to be the place of battle. frequently to the strong temptation to conconversations with Captain Laing, recurred tinue the trade in slaves, whilst white men could be found to purchase them; because, money (he said) was got for them so easily and certainly, whilst new modes were doubtful until tried, and might take much trouble to establish. Here is a great and immediate cause of the degradation of Africa, for which Europe is mainly accountable, and which Europe can remove. It is only when a sufficient period shall have elapsed after a total suppression of the Slave Trade for its will have arrived, when, with the least delast effects to have died away, that the time cency or pretence to fairness, any one can pronounce a judgment against the capabi lities, PART II.] REVIEW.-Boys's Key to the Psalms. lities, either of Africa, for an extended commerce, or of its inhabitants for the arts aud institutions of Europe. That the Slaye Trade is directly answerable for that alledged inferiority of which it afterwards seeks to take such criminal advantage, is proved by a fact, which has often been adverted to, and in which Africa is an exception to every other quarter of the globe. Civilization elsewhere, naturally growing out of commerce, has been first seen on the shore, and by the river side; and has afterwards crept on by degrees into the more inland country. But Park found the interior of Africa in an advanced condition, compared with the coast; and Captain Laing, in his late journey from Sierra Leone to Soolimana, a distance less than that between York and London, observed the same successive degrees of civilization, approaching almost to different stages of society, as he receded from the Slave Trade and the sea. The Soolimas were more intelligent than the inhabitants of any country through which he had passed to reach them; and the people of Sangara, who lay in a line more backward still, were proved, by their manufactures and their arts, to be proportionably farther advanced. Thus has this horrible commerce reversed a law in the history of the human race, so that the improvement of a nation is measured by the difficulty of its communications. A lawful commerce and a pure religion will be alone sufficient to remove this anomaly and reproach." P. 56 seq. Every body knows the remarks of Gibbon and other philosophers, concerning the intellectual inferiority (as presumed) of Africans to Europeans. 117. A Key to the Book of Psalms. By the Rev. Thomas Boys, A. M. of Trinity College, Cambridge; Curate of St. Dunstan's in the West, London; Author of "Tactica Sacra." &c. 8vo. pp. 328. WE have before explained the system of parallelism or rhythm (to which in fact the peculiarity of the scriptural style is owing), in our review of Mr. Boys's former work the "Tactica Sacra" (see vol. XCIV. i. 619). This is an application of the same principle to the Psalms, but more elaborately executed. In the Appendix, No. IV. we have a new discovery, viz. that the rhythm, in which the classical prose writers composed, sometimes at least, partakes of the nature of that species of parallelism, which is called the introverted; i. e. where the last portion answers to the first, the penultimate to the second, as in the following verse. Provoked they him to anger. 611 Where a a show two sentences in parallelism, and 'A A and B B clauses in parallelism also. P. 5. Now Mr. Boys finds analogous comfrom Velleius Paterculus, and adds, position in the passage below quoted that the natural order of the words may be found by the following rule: "First, take the words at one extreat the other; then proceed in the same mity of the sentence or clause, then those way with the portions that remain, till you arrive at the centre, and the words thus taken will stand in their natural order. "Et Lucullus, summus alioqui vir, profusæ hujus in ædificiis, convictibusque et apparatibus luxuriæ primus auctor fecit." summus "Here I begin by taking the words at the beginning, Et Lucullus, alioqui vir.' I then take the word at the end, fuit.' The remaining portion will then be, profusæ hujus in ædificiis, convictibusque et apparatibus luxuriæ primus auctor.' Here I take the two final words primus auctor, then the two beginning ones, Profusæ hujus.' We have then only remaining in ædificiis, convictibusque, et apparatibus luxuriæ.' Here I take the last word luxuriæ,' and nothing now remains but the central terms ' in convictibusque et apparatibus.' And by this method I say, I get the words in their natural order, Et Lucullus, summus alioqui vir-fuitprimus auctor-profusæ hujus-luxuriæ in ædificiis convictibusque et apparatibus'." Pp. 229, 230. From Cicero's Orations, and other works, we think that styles were in part formed mechanically by rhythmical rules, which are now lost, and the words and clauses sorted and pointed according to those rules, for the purpose of producing a poetical effect. Mr. Boys gives us a perfect parallelism in Livy. 612 REVIEW. Campbell's Fruits of Faith. may like to improve upon these hints, will find great use in Mr. Boys's work. Buonaparte (speaking of business) said, "there is no telling what women will do;" and we shall make a parallelism by saying, "there is no telling what block heads will think;" a remark we make, because it seems "some such persons have found dunger" in these Scriptural investigations! (see p. 3.), Others have thought very highly of Mr. Boys's work, and so do we. The book is very instructive and curious, as a key of knowledge hitherto locked up from the world at large. 118. The Fruits of Faith, or Musing Sinner, with Elegies, and other moral Poems. By Hugh Campbell, of the Middle Temple, Illustrator of Ossian's Poems. 12mo. pp. 170. A VILLAGE Schoolmaster, who had written a poem upon the Redemption, complained bitterly of one Milton (as he stiled him); for when he went to solicit subscriptions, he was reprimanded for his presumption in attempt ing such a subject, after the said Milton; which rebuke he thought hard, because upon borrowing and examining the Paradise Lost, he found that it did not contain so many books and lines as his own poem. We think, that many modern pocts entertain the same opinions concerning religious poetry as the schoolmaster, viz. that the matter is not the main point; but we on the contrary have been taught to think, that sublimity is the indispensable characteristic of religious poetry, and we know that Dr. Johnson lays down the same position. Mr. Campbell, who has written some works of reputation in prose, will therefore attribute to our prejudices any apparent neglect of his religious poem. We do not deny animation, generous feelings, and a moral and amiable character to his muse; but on lofty subjects we want "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn," the Master's hand and Prophet's fire." The rest of the poems are chiefly sugar plumbs for spinsters. One of these fair-ones had, it seems, the honour of being kissed by the King of France on his public entry into London, and expressed a wish to accompany the Duchess d'Angoulême. Our author says, that had he been the King of France, he should not have been contented with one kiss. Very likely; but we [xcv. think such females as thrust themselves among mobs to be kissed, to be forward misses, and more deserving of reprehension than compliment. 119. The Semi-sceptic, or the Common Sense of Religion considered. By the Rev. LT. James, M.A. 8vo. pp. 398. THIS is a masterly work, and proceeds upon the evident principle that man can, in fact, prove nothing as to demonstration, because he must characterize every thing according to his senses; and in short, that metaphysics merely amount to what a particular person thinks upon particular subjects. that man is incapable of analysing his For our parts we seriously think, own faculties; and that metaphysics are, with regard to such an analysis, what the Aristotelian was to the Baco nian philosophy, mere arbitrary as sumption. Our reason for so thinking is, that our senses are too defective difficult intangible topics; and that a for the satisfactory elucidation of certain metaphysician is one who sets up to be an astronomer without a telescope. No man can pursue the infinite divisibility of matter to its primary atom, much more dissect the principles and powers which actuate it, so deeply as to inform us in what their essences consist. is composed of an aggregate of partiAccording to experiment, all matter cles, none of which appear to be in absolute contact; and could we pursue each particle, that would probably be the enquiry to the minutest atom of only another similar congeries. Whatever properties, therefore, matter posing medium, and until we know the sesses, must be derived from a pervad nature of that medium, we can never explain with philosophical accuracy the causes of action. Upon these grounds it is, that we consider metaphysics to be fallacious; and the fol lowing extract from the works of the powerful author of Hudibras, will show with us. very strong intellects coincide that REVIEW. James's Semi-sceptic. PART 11.] Turns truth to falsehood, falsehood into truth, By virtue of the Babylonian's tooth." BUTLER'S Remains, i. 225. The interference of Metaphysicks with Religion, is however the more especial bearing of the book before us; and that a more empirical quack never meddled with medicine, than this impostor with religion, is self-evident. Physicks are a real science, but Metaphysicks are the mere construction put upon physical subjects by a particular person. In short, it seems, that our incapability of comprehending the laws of our Being, was one instigating cause of Revelation; and he who sets up to prove it unfounded, takes upon himself to determine the possible actions of God, and in the words of our author (p. 261)," to build up another Babel to storm the heavens." Before we proceed to that part of the work from which we shall extract, we beg to enter our protest against the jargon of Kant being made " part and parcel" of sound philosophy, because we believe that it is nothing more than a nomenclature of sesquipedalia verba, founded upon a mere truism, viz. that we cannot think but accord ing to the modes and forms which Nature has prescribed; i. e. we cannot walk, but upon our legs, nor see, but with our eyes. The basis of the Kantian system is this: "The mind only perceives and thinks upon the objects that are without, according to a certain law, or rather certain laws, existing within itself; and which laws may or may not be, as far as human nature has the power of judging, wholly independent of the objects themselves." P. 181. The inferences deducible from this truism, are however very important. They inform us that we are able to understand nothing except so far as concerns ourselves; and, of course, cannot see the real intention of nature in created objects, further than that limited boundary. We think our Author peculiarly felicitous in his illustrations of the principles of" animal or mortal life," and the "thinking power," as in themselves separate and distinct. P. 127. "Life exists in the vegetable kingdom clearly apart from the thinking power: the same sort of life, too, is seen to exist in 613 several parts of the animal frame, in those, for instance, which are void of sensation, as the sinews, nails, &c.; these have the tone of life, for they have a power of resisting certain chemical agencies, while so living, P. 127. which ceases when vitality is removed. The foetus in utero, which is animated, but does not think, is another happy illustration, used by our author. He then proceeds to attack the strong fortress of the materialists, viz. that the powers of mind cease to exist upon the decease of the animal frame, by showing that the said fortress is a mere house of cards: "The thinking power, it is true, seems never to take its residence in any body, except while it is in that state which is fitted for its agency. But this is all which can be said; aud though our breath is thus connected with this thinking power, yet thinking is not breathing; a man can hold his breath at will, but cannot stop his power of thinking-his consciousness of existence is not to be dismissed even for an instant, by any exertion of his will." P. 130. The physical truth seems to be, that both animation and the thinking principle are divine elementary properties, which, as being divine, are indestructible by man, for though we may destroy instruments of sound, we cannot destroy sound itself, nor any one known law of nature. Some positions of our Author, we feel inclined to doubt, viz. that no similarity is observable between the external object creating an impression on the mind, and the internal impression itself (p. 136). From the experiments made in optics, upon the retina of the eye, this remark is not just with regard to visible subjects; and it has been mooted whether it is possible to have an abstract idea of an object, without the intrusion of a representation of it. The dispute however is of no moment, for the well-known instance of a shadow proves that there may be, notwithstanding the Hybernicism, existence without actual being. It appears from Dr. Hibbert's admirable work upon apparitions, that the exhibition and exercise of the thinking principle are only affected by organs, not the principle itself, which seems to be unassailable. Mr. James is a strong and well-informed writer; and his work does him much credit. 120. Characters |