The idea of the following image, we be lieve, is not quite new; but it is expressed in a very lively and striking manner.

place. There can be no worse picture made of the They place a merit in extravagant passions; and Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the encourage young people to hope for impossible letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, events, to draw them out of the misery they choose ungrateful to the memory of his patron, making a to plunge themselves into; expecting legacies from servile court where he had any interested views, unknown relations, and generous benefactors to and meanly abusive when they were disappointed; distressed virtue, as much out of nature as fairy and, as he says (in his own phrase), flying in the face treasures."-Vol. iv. pp. 259, 260. of mankind, in company with his adorer Pope. It is pleasant to consider, that had it not been for the good nature of these very mortals they contemn, these two superior beings were entitled, by their birth and hereditary fortune, to be only a couple of link-boys. I am of opinion, however, that their friendship would have continued, though they had remained in the same kingdom. It had a very strong foundation-the love of flattery on one side, and the love of money on the other. Pope courted with the utmost assiduity all the old men from whom he could hope a legacy, the Duke of Buck ingham, Lord Peterborough, Sir G. Kneller, Lord Bolingbroke, Mr. Wycherly, Mr. Congreve, Lord Harcourt, &c., and I do not doubt projected to sweep the Dean's whole inheritance, if he could have persuaded him to throw up his deanery, and come to die in his house; and his general preaching against money was meant to induce people to throw it away, that he might pick it up."

Vol. iv. pp. 142–147.

Some of the following reflections will appear prophetic to some people; and we really did not expect to find them under the date of

1753.

"The world is past its infancy, and will no longer be contented with spoon-meat. A collective body like a single individual. When I reflect on the vast of men make a gradual progress in understanding, increase of useful as well as speculative knowledge, the last three hundred years has produced, and that than the first emperors of Rome had any notion of, the peasants of this age have more conveniences I imagine we may now be arrived at that period which answers to fifteen. I cannot think we are older; when I recollect the many palpable follies which are still (almost) universally persisted in. Among these I place that of War-as senseless as the boxing of school-boys; and whenever we come to man's estate (perhaps a thousand years hence), I do not doubt it will appear as ridiculous as the pranks of unlucky lads. Several discoveries will which we have now no more idea than the ancients then be made, and several truths made clear, of had of the circulation of the blood, or the optics of Sir Isaac Newton."-Vol. v. pp. 15, 16.

After observing, that in a preceding letter, "The confounding of all ranks, and making a her Ladyship declares, that "it is eleven years jest of order, has long been growing in England; since she saw herself in a glass, being so little and I perceive, by the books you sent me, has made a very considerable progress. The heroes and pleased with the figure she was then beginheroines of the age, are cobblers and kitchen-ning to make in it," we shall close these exwenches. Perhaps you will say I should not take tracts with the following more favourable acmy ideas of the manners of the times from such count of her philosophy. trifling authors; but it is more truly to be found among them, than from any historian: as they write merely to get money, they always fall into the notions that are most acceptable to the present taste. It has long been the endeavour of our English writers, to represent people of quality as the vilest and silliest part of the nation, being (generally) very low-born themselves. I am not surprised at their propagating this doctrine; but I am much mistaken if this levelling principle does not, one day or other, break out in fatal consequences to the public, as it has already done in many private families."

Vol. iv. pp. 223, 224. She is not quite so fortunate in her remarks on Dr. Johnson, though the conclusion of the extract is very judicious.

"The Rambler is certainly a strong misnomer: he always plods in the beaten road of his predecessors, following the Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the public, which is saying

"I no more expect to arrive at the age of the Duchess of Marlborough, than to that of Methusalem; neither do I desire it. I have long thought myself useless to the world. I have seen one gene ration pass away, and it is gone; for I think there are very few of those left that flourished in my youth. You will perhaps call these melancholy reflections; but they are not so. There is a quiet after the abandoning of pursuits, something like the rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you this for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying view to me, that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that nature has provided pleasures for every state. Those only are unhappy who will not be contented with what she gives, but strive to break through her laws, by affecting a perpetuity of youth,-which appears to ine as little desirable at present as the babies do to you, that were the delight of your infancy. I am at the end of my paper, which shortens the sermon."

Vol. iv. pp. 314, 315.

Lady Mary returned to England, and died Upon the death of Mr. Wortley in 1761, a great deal in their favour. There are numbers of both sexes who never read any thing but such there in October 1762, in the 73d year of her productions; and cannot spare time, from doing age. From the large extracts which we have nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Such been tempted to make from her correspondgentle readers may be improved by a moral hint, ence, our readers will easily be enabled to which, though repeated over and over, from gener- judge of the character and genius of this exation to generation, they never heard in their lives. I should be glad to know the name of this laborious traordinary woman. A little spoiled by flatauthor. H. Fielding has given a true picture of tery, and not altogether "undebauched by himself and his first wife, in the characters of Mr. the world," she seems to have possessed a and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own masculine solidity of understanding, great figure excepted; and I am persuaded, several of liveliness of fancy, and such powers of ob the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact.servation and discrimination of character, as I wonder, however, that he does not perceive Tom Jones and Mr. Booth to be both sorry scoundrels. to give her opinions great authority on all the All this sort of books have the same fault, which ordinary subjects of practical manners and I cannot easily pardon, being very mischievous. conduct. After her marriage, she seems to

that oblivion in which mediocrity is destined, by an irrevocable sentence, to slumber till the end of the world. The Essays are extremely insignificant, and have no other merit, that we can discover, but that they are very few and very short.

have abandoned all idea of laborious or regu- the polite and witty sort of poetry which Lady lar study, and to have been raised to the sta- Mary has attempted, is much more of an art tion of a literary character merely by her than prose-writing. We are trained to the vivacity and her love of amusement and anec- latter, by the conversation of good society dote. The great charm of her letters is cer- but the former seems always to require a good tainly the extreme ease and facility with deal of patient labour and application. This which every thing is expressed, the brevity her Ladyship appears to have disdained; and and rapidity of her representations, and the accordingly, her poetry, though abounding in elegant simplicity of her diction. While they lively conceptions, is already consigned to unite almost all the qualities of a good style, there is nothing of the professed author in them: nothing that seems to have been composed, or to have engaged the admiration of the writer. She appears to be quite unconscious either of merit or of exertion in what she is doing; and never stops to bring out a Of Lady Mary's friendship and subsequent thought, or to turn an expression, with the rupture with Pope, we have not thought it cunning of a practised rhetorician. The let- necessary to say any thing; both because we ters from Turkey will probably continue to be are of opinion that no new lights are thrown more universally read than any of those that upon it by this publication, and because we are now given for the first time to the public; have no desire to awaken forgotten scandals because the subject commands a wider and by so idle a controversy. Pope was undoubtmore permanent interest, than the personali-edly a flatterer, and was undoubtedly suffi ties and unconnected remarks with which the ciently irritable and vindictive; but whether rest of the correspondence is filled. At the same time, the love of scandal and of private history is so great, that these letters will be highly relished, as long as the names they contain are remembered; and then they will become curious and interesting, as exhibiting a truer picture of the manners and fashions of the time, than is to be found in most other publications.

The Fifth Volume contains also her Ladyship's poems, and two or three trifling papers that are entitled her Essays. Poetry, at least

his rancour was stimulated, upon this occasion, by any thing but caprice or jealousy, and whether he was the inventor or the echo of the imputations to which he has given notoriety, we do not pretend to determine. Lady Mary's character was certainly deficient in that cautious delicacy which is the best guardian of female reputation; and there seems to have been in her conduct something of that intrepidity which naturally gives rise to misconstruction, by setting at defiance the maxims of ordinary discretion.

(May, 1820.)

The Life of the Right Honourable John Philpot Curran, late Master of the Rolls in Ireland. By his Son, WILLIAM HENRY CURRAN, Barrister-at-law. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 970. London: 1819.

THIS is really a very good book; and not less instructive in its moral, and general scope, than curious and interesting in its details. It is a mixture of Biography and History-and avoids the besetting sins of both species of composition-neither exalting the hero of the biography into an idol, nor deforming the history of a most agitated period with any spirit of violence or exaggeration. It is written, on the contrary, as it appears to us, with singular impartiality and temper-and the style is not less remarkable than the sentiments: For though it is generally elegant and spirited, it is without any of those peculiarities which the age, the parentage, and the country of the author, would lead us to expect:-And we may say, indeed, of the whole work, looking both to the matter and the manner, that it has no defects from which it could be gathered that it was written either by a Young man-or an Irishman-or by the Son of the person whose history it professes to record-though it has attractions which probably could not have

existed under any other conditions. The distracting periods of Irish story are still almost too recent to be fairly delineated-and no Irishman, old enough to have taken a part in the transactions of 1780 or 1798, could well be trusted as their historian-while no one but a native, and of the blood of some of the chief actors, could be sufficiently acquainted with their motives and characters, to communicate that life and interest to the details which shine out in so many passages of the volumes before us. The incidental light which they throw upon the national character and state of society in Ireland, and the continual illustrations they afford of their diversity from our own, is perhaps of more value than the particular facts from which it results; and stamp upon the work the same peculiar attraction which we formerly ascribed to Mr. Hardy's life of Lord Charlemont.

To qualify this extraordinary praise, we must add, that the limits of the private and the public story are not very well observed,

nor the scale of the work very correctly regu- | plaud. We suspect, indeed, from various lated as to either; so that we have alternately passages in these volumes, that the Irish too much and too little of both:-that the standard of good conversation is radically difstyle is rather wordy and diffuse, and the ex- ferent from the English; and that a tone of tracts and citations too copious; so that, on the exhibition and effect is still tolerated in that whole, the book, like some others, would be country, which could not be long endured in improved by being reduced to little more than good society in this. A great proportion of half its present size-a circumstance which the colloquial anecdotes in this work, confirm makes it only the more necessary that we us in this belief-and nothing more than the should endeavour to make a manageable ab- encomium bestowed on Mr. Curran's own constract of it, for the use of less patient readers. versation, as abounding in "those magical Mr. Curran's parentage and early life are transitions from the most comic turns of now of no great consequence. He was born, thought to the deepest pathos, and for ever however, of respectable parents, and received bringing a tear into the eye before the smile a careful and regular education. He was a was off the lip." In this more frigid and fas little wild at college; but left it with the char- tidious country, we really have no idea of a acter of an excellent scholar, and was univer-man talking pathetically in good company,sally popular among his associates, not less for his amiable temper than his inexhaustible vivacity. He wrote baddish verses at this time, and exercised himself in theological discourses for his first destination was for the Church; and he afterwards took to the Law, very much to his mother's disappointment and mortification-who was never reconciled to the change and used, even in the meridian of his fame, to lament what a mighty preacher had been lost to the world, and to exclaim, that, but for his versatility, she might have died the mother of a Bishop! It was better as it was. Unquestionably he might have been a very great preacher; but we doubt whether he would have been a good parish priest, or even an exemplary bishop.

and still less of good company sitting and crying to him. Nay, it is not even very consonant with our notions, that a gentleman should be "most comical.”

was the funeral oration of Antony over the body of Cæsar, as it is given by Shakespeare; the frequent recitation of which he used to recommend to his young friends at the Bar, to the latest period of his life.

As to the taste and character of Mr. Curran's oratory, we may have occasion to say a word or two hereafter.-At present, it is only necessary to remark, that besides the public exercitations now alluded to, he appears to have gone through the most persevering and laborious processes of private study, with a view to its improvement-not only accustoming himself to debate imaginary cases alone, with the most anxious attention, but "reciting perpetually before a mirror," to acquire a graceful gesticulation! and studiously imitating the tone and manner of the most celeIrish lawyers are obliged to keep their brated speakers. The authors from whom he terms in London; and, for the poorer part of chiefly borrowed the matter of these solitary them, it seems to be but a dull and melan- declamations were Junius and Lord Bolingcholy noviciate. Some of his early letters, broke and the poet he most passionately with which we are here presented, give rather admired was Thomson. He also used to an amiable and interesting picture of young declaim occasionally from Milton-but, in his Curran's feelings in this situation-separated maturer age, came to think less highly of that at once from all his youthful friends and ad-great poet. One of his favourite exercises mirers, and left without money or recommendation in the busy crowds of a colder and more venal people. During the three years he passed in the metropolis, he seems to have entered into no society, and never to have come in contact with a single distinguished He was called to the Bar in 1775, in his individual. He saw Garrick on the stage, and twenty-fifth year-having rather imprudently Lord Mansfield on the bench; and this ex-married two years before-and very soon athausts his list of illustrious men in London. His only associates seem to have been a few of his countrymen, as poor and forlorn as himself. Yet the life they lived seems to have been virtuous and honourable. They contracted no debts, and committed no excesses. Curran himself rose early, and read diligently till dinner; and, in the evening, he usually went, as much for improvement as relaxation, to a sixpenny debating club. For a long time, however, he was too nervous and timid to act any other part than that of an auditor, and did not find even the germ of that singular talent which was afterwards improved to such a height, till it was struck out as it were by an accidental collision in this obscure arena. There is a long account of this in the book before us, as it is said to have been repeatedly given by Mr. C. himself-but in a style which we cannot conscientiously ap

tained to independence and distinction. There is a very clever little disquisition introduced here by the author, on the very different, and almost opposite taste in eloquence which has prevailed at the Bar of England and Ireland respectively; the one being in general cold and correct, unimpassioned and technical; the other discursive, rhetorical, and embellished or encumbered, with flights of fancy and appeals to the passions. These peculiarities the author imputes chiefly to the difference in the national character and general temperament of the two races, and to the unsubdued and unrectified prevalence of all that is characteristic of their country in those classes out of which the Juries of Ireland are usually selected. He ascribes them also, in part, to the circumstance of almost all the barristers of distinction having been introduced, very early in life, to the fierce and tumultuary arena of