seems to accord with mine, a very amusing poem; it excites a novel-like interest, but you discover nothing on after perusal. Scott bears a great part in the Edinburgh Review, but does not review well. He is editing Dryden, very carelessly; the printer has only one of the late common editions to work from, which has never been collated, and is left to make conjectural emendations. This I learned from Ballantyne himself in his printing-office."-vol. ii. pp. 104, 105.

"The Scotch society" says he, "disappointed me, as it needs must do a man who loves conversation instead of discussion. Of the three faculties of the mind, they seem exclusively to value judgment. They have nothing to teach, and a great deal more to learn than I should choose to be at the trouble of instructing them in."-vol. ii. p. 103.

Most of our readers have heard of Dr. Parr, and the name of Sir James Mackintosh is familiar to all. Of the two, William Taylor thus speaks.

"Dr. Parr and Mackintosh have been in Norwich. — They are both very dazzling men. One scarcely knows whether to admire most the oracular significance and compact rotundity of the single sentences of Parr, or the easy flow and glittering expansion of the unwearied and unwearying eloquence of Mackintosh. Parr's far-darting hyperboles and gorgeous tropes array the fragments of his conversation in the gaudiest trim. Mackintosh's cohesion of idea and clearness of intellect give to his sweeps of discussion a more instructive importance. Parr has the manners of a pedant, Mackintosh of a gentleman. Of course people in general look up to Parr with awe, and feel esteem for him rather than love, while Mackintosh conciliates and fascinates. In this feeling I do not coincide with others wholly. There is a lovingness of heart about Parr, a susceptibility of the affections, which would endear him even without his Greek. But admiration is, if I mistake not, yet more gratifying to Mackintosh than attachment; to personal partialities he inclines less. His opinions are sensibly aristocratized since the publication of his 'Vindiciæ;' but they retain a grandeur of outline, and are approaching the manner of the constitutional school. Mackintosh's memory is well stored with fine passages, Latin and English, which he repeats, and his taste in poetry inclines to metrical philosophy rather than pathos or fancy. Milton, Dryden and Pope have alone sufficient good sense to please him. Virgil he overrates, I think, and Cicero too. Style and again style is the topic of his praise. Careless writing, redolent of mind, is better than all the varnish of composition, merely artful. I was surprised to find him agree with the

French in thinking Bossuet very eloquent; and still more so at his rating so very high the panegyric mysticism of Bishop Jeremy Taylor. There are indeed exquisite, more than platonically beauteous passsges, but they are scattered thinly, like the apparitions of angels in pious story."—vol. i. pp. 297, 298.

In reply, Southey says,

"You give me a more favorable account of Mackintosh than I have been accustomed to receive. Coleridge has seen much of him at the Wedgewoods. He describes him as acute in argument, more skilful in detecting the logical errors of his adversary than in propounding truth himself, - a man accustomed to the gladiatorship of conversation—a literary fencer, who parries better than he thrusts. I suspect that in praising Jeremy Taylor and in overrating him, he talks after Coleridge, who is a heathen in literature and ranks the old bishop among his demigods. I am not enough conversant with his writings to judge how accurately you appreciate him. The Holy Living and Dying' everybody knows, and it has splendid parts. His 'Ductor Dubitantium' I procured just before my departure from Bristol, and it lies in my unopened baggage. What Coleridge values in these old writers is their structure of paragraph; where sentence is built upon sentence with architectural regularity, each resting upon the other, like the geometrical stairs at St. Paul's."-vol. i. P. 302.

But we are yielding too far to the temptation to extend our extracts, and taking leave of Southey, Coleridge, and the rest, we must say what we have to add of William Taylor in few words. Taylor was in his prime at the beginning of the present century. His writings in 1803-4, says his biographer, if collected, would fill, at least, five octavo volumes, and indicated "an extent of reading beyond any that we find recorded in the diaries of our most indefatigable men of letters." He rose early, engaged in study till noon, when it was his "almost daily practice at all seasons to bathe in the river," after which he invariably took a walk, making a circuit of six miles or more, always in the same direction, and in a solitary way, choosing a particular road, as he said, because being unable to cross the river except at a certain point, no "fit of indolence" could defraud him of his "allotted term of exercise." In his walk he appeared wholly abstracted, "conversing the while most animatedly with himself."

"There was something singular too in his appearance: his dress was a complete suit of brown, with silk stockings of the same color; in this quaker-like attire, with a full cambric frill protruding from his waistcoat, and armed with a most capacious umbrella in defiance of the storm, muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,' and fixed the astonished gaze and curious attention of the few passengers whom he met."-vol. ii. pp. 61, 62.

In 1811 the Taylors sustained a heavy loss of property, which made it necessary for them to exchange their richly furnished and hospitable mansion in Surry Street for a more humble dwelling and an altered style of living. The blow was severely felt, and William Taylor lost a portion of his summer friends, partly, no doubt, in consequence of the change, though the wildness of many of his theological speculations recklessly thrown out upon the public, probably helped to interrupt some intimacies.

In 1813 and 1814 he was employed in preparing for the press his volume of "English Synonyms Discriminated," most of which had already appeared in reviews, and which partook of the defects which such an origin would naturally involve. It is a work of great merit, however, and the use which Crabb, who published his "English Synonyms" in 1816, made of it without any specific acknowledgment, subjected him to the "serious charge" of literary piracy.

Mr. Taylor's powers, however, early began to show symptoms of decline. From 1819 to 1823 his supply of articles to the reviews grew less frequent, and the importunities of editors were daily more earnest and pressing. He was engaged in writing the life of his friend Dr. Sayers, but the work lagged; he felt a "morbid reluctance to application," and his writings began, at times, to exhibit decided marks of languidness. After 1823 he wrote little; a single article contributed by him to the Foreign Quarterly in 1827, is described by his biographer as a "tame composition," and his only literary effort after this period was the publication (in 1828-1830,) of his "Historic Survey of German Poetry" in three octavo volumes.

These volumes contain the fruit of his German studies. The merit of first giving an impulse to these studies in England, we suppose, of right belongs to William Taylor, as his biographer asserts; and had he accomplished even

less towards making the English reader acquainted with the history of German intellect, laboring, as he did, in a field till then untrodden, he would have been entitled to no small commendation. It was not to be expected that he should leave nothing to be done by those who should come after him. As to the work itself, the "Historic Survey of German Poetry," being made up chiefly from articles from reviews, contributed through a series of years, without being re-cast, a few connecting links only being occasionally supplied, it would have been strange, if it had not been defective both in plan and execution. It certainly wants unity and completeness, and has great defects and redundances. Some names, which hold a high rank in German literature, are either entirely omitted, or are only briefly alluded to, while the productions of inferior authors. are given at length, or have a space assigned to them altogether disproportionate to their worth. The work disappointed some of Mr. Taylor's friends, and as his warmest admirers are compelled to admit "does not satisfy the expectations which its title awakens." With all its imperfections, however, it is one of no little utility, especially to those commencing the study of German literature, and is in various respects entitled to respectful notice. Carlyle, whose opinions on many points differ widely from those of Taylor, commented upon it with some severity, in his way, in the Edinburgh Review for March 1831, in an article, "of so mixed a character," as Taylor's biographer very justly, we think, remarks, "that it is difficult to divine the real object of the writer." It contains much bitter and scornful criticism, mingled, however, with no slight praise. It allows that Mr. Taylor, " in respect of general talent and acquirement, takes his place above all our expositors of German things; that his book is greatly the most important we yet have on this subject. Here are upwards of fourteen hundred solid pages of commentary, narrative and translation, submitted to the English reader; numerous statements and personages, hitherto unheard of, or vaguely heard of, stand here in fixed shape; there is, if no map of intellectual Germany, some first attempts at such."

From the time of the publication of this work till his death, in 1836, Taylor's life was little more than a "melancholy blank." Any attempt at a general summary of

his character and merits as a writer would be out of place in an article so brief and slight as the present. We could much easier have prepared a longer article, our great difficulty having been to make a selection where there is so much we should have been glad to present to our readers. Mr. Taylor did not live in vain. He performed, as we have seen, an immense amount of literary labor, and with habits of less desultory study and pursuit, would have left behind him an enduring memorial. His friends, and Southey in particular, often urged him to undertake a work which should be worthy of his talents and place his fame on a permanent basis; and he, from time to time, formed projects and indulged visions, but his impatience of systematic and continued effort overcame his resolutions, and his reputation, we fear, will prove but transient and shadowy. We wish we could give in conclusion an extract from a letter containing reminiscences of him by Miss Aikin, written in 1841, and found at the close of the Memoir, but want of room compels us to omit it.

A. L.

ART. VII. -THE LATE REV. ISAAC ALLEN.*

We are glad that the sermons, the titles of which are given below, have been published. Preached, the one at the interment, and the other the Sunday after the decease of Mr. Allen, they contain a vivid and faithful picture of one whose memory we would not willingly let die. Although he held no conspicuous place among our clergy, yet his fidelity in his sphere and according to his ability, his many estimable qualities, his genial and affectionate disposition, fresh amid the infirmities of age, drew close the ties of friendship, and have left a distinct and agreeable

* 1. Discourse preached March 21st, 1844, at the Funeral of the late Rev. Isaac Allen, Senior Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Bolton. By RICHARD S. EDES, his Colleague. Worcester. 1844. 8vo. Pp. 20.

2. A Discourse occasioned by the death of Rev. Isaac Allen, of Bolton, preached at Lancaster, March 24th, 1844. By EDMUND H. SEARS, Minister of the first Congregational Society in Lancaster. Worcester. 1844. 8vo. pp. 16.

VOL. XXXVII. -4TH S. VOL. II. NO. II.

19