promote the trial of any experiment that may suggest new means of usefulness, or which may perhaps be more fitted for some districts hitherto less accessible than others, we cannot too strongly express our opinion, that any such experiment ought to be considered only as an accompaniment to those means which experience has approved to be useful, and not as leading to the suppression of any tried instrument of good."

The deductions here drawn by Mr Foster and his colleague are unassailable, and we hope they will be carefully kept in sight, if government proceed any further. If, however, it be decided that the State shall teach Catholicism in its schools, or establish none, we trust it will do nothing more in the matter. We wish it to hold sacred the just rights of the Roman Catholic Priesthood, and to exclude every thing from its schools which could be fairly objected to as being calculated to make proselytes; but we wish it likewise to protect firmly the rights and interests of itself and the laity from encroachment. That Ministry which, directly, or by its acts, should admit, that the Roman Catholic Prelates, independently, or by command of the Pope of Rome, have a right to prohibit any of his Majesty's subjects from reading the authorized version of the Scriptures without note or comment, would in our judgment be guilty of something bearing a very strong resemblance to treason.

Our admiration is due to the Prelates of the Established Church, and especially to the Lord Primate, alike for their willingness to concede every thing consistent with their duty, and for their vigilant watchfulness over the momentous interests confided to their keeping. It is well for the Church, that in times like these, when she is surrounded by perils of all descriptions-when she is attacked on the one side, and betrayed on the other-when almost every thing in the conduct and policy of public men is calculated to disarm her, divide her against herself, and produce her overthrow, that her interests in Ireland are under the care of such Prelates.

The Eighth Report of the Commissioners bears the same date as the one

we have noticed; it relates to Maynooth College, and we have been unwilling to mix up anything it contains with our present subject. We propose to devote a separate article to the consideration of some parts of it, particularly those which bear on the question of allegiance. We feel great difficulty in parting with the pen without dilating on the present unhappy condition of Ireland. Through that, which on a former occasion we called a system of frenzy, confiscation, and iniquity, and which, in the face of the new Ministry, we again call a system of frenzy, confiscation, and iniquity, Ireland's agriculture and linen trade her two great sources of sub. sistence, are sinking into ruin. This system has made the most frightful additions to her previous miseries. According to Mr. Brownlow-whose conversion by Dr Doyle and O'Connell has immortalized him-two-thirds of her population are destitute of employment. What conduct has this produced in her "Patriots?" What are her Brownlows and Rices-the close-borough members of her Romish Church-the exclusive champions of her interests-doing for her relief? Are they introducing measures into Parliament for restoring and enlarging her trade in linens and yarn? Are they exerting themselves to regain a market and remunerating prices for her distressed agriculturists? they endeavouring to cause her great interests to flourish as the means of giving employment and bread to her starving population! No, they are clamouring for Emancipation! This, forsooth, is to resuscitate her agriculture and linen trade-this is to employ the idle, and feed the hungry, and clothe the naked. While they are thus clamouring, they clamour likewise for more of that free trade to which her sufferings are so largely owing! Speak of the march of intellect !-in what direction is the intellect of these patriots marching? If Mr Brougham's assertion be true, that "the schoolmaster is abroad," we beseech the learned gentleman to let the schoolmaster give a lesson to these Irish patriots. We shall perhaps say more on these matters on an early occasion.

Are

VOL. XXIII.

2 Z

Ir would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to chalk out limits to the range of legitimate biography. The world would seem to have a natural right to know much of the mind, morals, and manners, of the Chosen Few -as they exhibited themselves in private life-whose genius may have delighted or enlightened it,-to know more than in general can have been revealed in their works. It desires this, not from a paltry and prying curiosi ty, but in a spirit of love, or admiration, or gratitude, or reverence. It is something to the reader of a Great Poet, but to have seen him, to be able to say, "Virgilium tantum vidi." How deeply interesting to hear a few characteristic anecdotes related of him by some favoured friend! To have some glimpses at least, if not full and broad lights, given to us into his domestic privacy, and the inner on-goings beneath what, to our imaginations, is a hallowed roof! We must all of us, whether we will or no, form to ourselves an Idea of the person and the personal character of every great man whose achievements have commanded our wonder; and it must ever be most gratifying to all our feelings and faculties, to have an opportunity of comparing and correcting that Idea with the Reality, either as presented to our own experience, or represented by a picture painted to the life by the hand of another, in the colouring of truth, and in all its just proportions. We cannot bear to think that our knowledge of our benefactors - for such they are should be limited to the few and scanty personal notices that may be scattered, under the impulse of peculiar emotions, here and there over their writings; we cannot bear to think, that when the grave closes upon them, their memory must survive only in their works; but the same earnest and devout spirit that gazes upon the shadows of their countenances on the limner's canvass, yearns to hear it told, in pious Biography, what manner of men they were at the frugal or the festal board, by the fire-side, in the social or the fa

BY LEIGH HUNT.*

mily circle, in the discharge of those duties that solemnize the relations of kindred, and that support the Rooftree of domestic life.

This natural and blameless desire may, we think, be satisfied in almost all cases, without any risk being incurred of violating the sanctity of the Hearth. Are there not a thousand things about the habits of every man of genius, of which probably he is himself hardly conscious, yet, if he were, would have no wish to conceal them, that may be so narrated as to increase and widen our sympathies with his character, and after his decease serve to embalm his name in tenderer recollection? Nay, we see not why a fastidious, or rather fearful veil, should be kept perpetually drawn over his frailties and infirmities-for that frailties and infirmities he must have had we know well, nor could there be any danger of the due measure of our reverence being diminished by a word- -or sentence-if no more-from the lips of Truth, that spoke of them with the solemnity accompanying the consciousness of human imperfections, without rudely "drawing them from their dread abode !"

Much depends on the peculiarity of the character of the great or good man who is the subject of the biography. Minds there have been "that were like Stars, and dwelt apart," shut up in themselves yet shedding their light afar to bless and brighten. Of them little, almost nothing, can be known, but from their works. It is enough to know that they were the light of the age. Death changes them not; for being dead, they yet speak. Their books are themselves. There have been other minds that possessed immense power in utmost simplicity, and "in the eye of their great taskmaster," for ever working, forgot themselves altogether, leaving nothing to be recorded of their lives, than that they were pure and humble, and that they served God every day, their piety being made immortal on earth by the genius which it consecrated. Others again have lived less in their Studies,

it would seem, though they loved such calm, than in the toil and tumult of this noisy world-the "stir and smoke of this dim spot, which men call earth." Of them the world wishes to hear all, because it already necessarily knows much. Their labours for its good, and against its evil, were performed on the forehead of daylight, -before all eyes that chose to look, and all ears that chose to hear, and all tongues that chose to speak. They became thus the very property of the world they served, and their biography is at once minute and multifarious,-written by many pens, and many a different style visible of vituperation or panegyric. Yet out of that confused mass of materials, the "wide soul of the world dreaming on things to come," constructs for itself an Image of the Truth-of the man as he lived, moved, and had his being-and the historical character that goes down from age to age, is, indeed, that of the battler against Bigotry, and Slavery, and Superstition, as he prayed or preached against them, or brought down their towers and temples to the dust, or wrapt them into ruins with avenging fire.

There have been writers of distinguished powers, whose personal and literary character, it may be said, were at all times so indistinguishably blended, that it was hardly possible to speak, even to think of them as men, without also speaking and thinking of them as authors. They carried with them into society the air and atmosphere of the Study. Their talk was ever of books, and the makers of books. Intellectual power, and the product of intellectual power, were the prime objects of all their passions; and their own was the source of their chief enjoyment of life, its pains and pleasures, hopes, fears, anxieties, despondencies, exaltations, humiliations, and triumphs. Reverencing virtue and religion, and in their highest and most solemn moods willingly, and even devoutly, giving them the first place among all human endowments, they nevertheless seemed throughout all the ordinary hours of social intercourse with their brethren of mankind, imperiously to demand talent or knowledge, as an essential condition of their esteem. All their public friendships were with highly gifted men,such society alone did they much af

fect-and converse, to please and satisfy them, always needed, besides the spontaneous kindness of the heart, the premeditated reasonings of the head, feeling by itself being as nothing without the judgments of the understanding. To such a class belonged Dr Johnson. Accordingly, his biography by Boswell, minute as it is in its details, and pursuing him through all his peculiar personalities, is yet felt to be a justifiable book. Even if Johnson had not given, as he did, permission to that admirable observer and recorder to write his annals, which he did aright, still there would have been no breach of confidence, no violation of the sanctity of private life, in that gallery of successive portraits of that most extraordinary man. Even in what must be called his private life, there was generally some sort of publicity given to the display of his incomparable conversational powers; that such displays should have been suffered to pass away with the transient club-hours they illuminated, would have been a pity and a loss indeed and yet to embody such displays in a permanent form, it was necessary to embody likewise, and to embalm the singularities, eccentricities, oddnesses, strangenesses, uncouthnesses, brutalities, weaknesses, prejudices, bigotries, and superstitions, that clung to the character of the man. Without them, what would have been the biography of Dr Johnson? His character could bear them all. During life, they did not prevent him from loving, or from being loved, for he had a most tender, and a most generous, and a most noble heart. After his death, they have not prevented him from being respected, venerated, and ranked among the best and greatest men of his country. It was also necessary that his biographer, whose chief task and duty it was to describe his illustrious friend in all the glory and triumph of successful display and contention with the most powerful intellects of the time, in combats that often assumed even a gladiatorial character, should sometimes shew him in the obscure and dim retirement of his chamber, in that humble court, where the pride if not the pomposity of the worldadmired sage was laid aside, where he was seen sitting at frugal meals with persons utterly unknown, old

maiden annuitants, physicians of halfcrown fees, people too poor to be of any profession at all, decent cit-looking elderly gentlemen, name unknown, and waited on by that half-friend halfservant, the black man, who, in his own country, we presume, had been either a slave or a king. From the biography of such a man, what was there of his life and character that could well be excluded? Not much, and that, whatever, it might be, was excluded, or alluded to, and touched upon with a free but light and tender hand. Could we suppose Dr Johnson returning to life, and rolling from side to side in perusal of his own biography, we might figure him growling out an occasional curse, classical rather than profane, on poor Bozzy; but nevertheless, not on the whole otherwise than pleased, and satisfied, in spite of his wrath at such freedoms, that the picture was a strong, striking, characteristic, and not unflattering likeness of the Original.

The biography of Great Poets seems to be demanded by nature-especially of those who have steeped their poetry, not only in the light of inspiration, but in the heat of their own hearts. We cannot dissever them from the glories by which they are made immortal. Yet, we know that they could not have lived always in that excited and exalted state of soul in which they emanated their poems. We desire to know them in the ebb of their thoughts and feelings, when they are but as mere men. We do not doubt that we shall love and esteem them when the lyre is laid aside, the inspired fit passed away-and that even then, with the prose of life, they will be seen mingling poetry. Such a man was Cowper-and of all we have been let know of the "Bard of Olney," from himself or others, we would not willingly let the most mournful or afflicting anecdote die; for while "we hold each strange tale devoutly true," we feel towards the object of our esteem, our love, and our pity, "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.". That another hand should have suddenly lifted up or rent away the veil that hid the agonies of a mind still beautiful in all its most rueful afflictions, we might not have been able to endure, and might have turned away from the spectacle, as from one that we felt

our eyes were not 'privileged to behold; but the veil was withdrawn at times by the sufferer himself, who, while he implored mercy from his Creator, was not loath to receive the pity of his fellow-creatures-feeling, except indeed in the deepest, and most disastrous, and most despairing darkness of his spirit, that all their best sympathies were with him, and that he needed not to fear too rude or too close a gaze into his mysterious miseries, from eyes which he had often filled with the best of tears, and when mirth visited his melancholy, with the best of smiles too, although the hour and the day had come at last, when smiles were not for him, nor, as he thought, for any creature framed of the clay. Yet is his entire character, disturbed and distracted as it is seen to be, in beautiful and perfect consistency with all his poetry. But the sweet bells were out of tune, and jangled; the strings of the heart were broken or the keys reversed, and the instrument that once discoursed such excellent music, at last jarred terribly its discord, and it was well when it was heard to sound no more.

Of our Great Living Poets it might not, perhaps, be becoming in us now to speak, in these unpremeditated and imperfect effusions, but we trust that the world will one day or other have the biographies of such men, for example, as Scott, Southey, and Wordsworth. Why should the friends who have been honoured with their closest friendship, and who may survive them, be afraid or unwilling to speak, with that sacred reserve that will be imposed on them by the reverence of their own spirits? Such recital will strengthen the cause of virtue, by shewing that her ways are ways of pleasantness, and that all her paths are peace. The same harmony that pervades the great works of their genius will be found to have pervaded their life and all its actions

the same order and the same calm, Though much will have to be unrevealed, it will only be because there is much of what is good and best that can have no other abiding-place but in the memory of sons and daughters, and friends that are as sons and daughters;-but much may, and ought to be, and will be revealed, showing the links that connect the lofty with the low, and bind together, in a chain that may be made visible to all eyes,

moralize over his errors, except from his lips she hears

"The still sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest

all the children of humanity. The land that loves them living will desire when they are dead, to have the lineaments of their characters in imperishable portraiture, drawn by hands whose skilful touch is guided by the heart of affection; nor need such hands tremble in telling the truth-and nothing but the truth.

But among Great Poets, there have been, and will be again, men with minds often sorely troubled and distracted by the passions God gave them, -by the adverse aspect of fortune, and by "the influence of malignant star." That often sorely troubled and distracted mind has spoken in their poetry, and in their practice; and thus they have themselves made the whole world the confident of the darkest secrets of their spirits. Such a man, in some measure, was Burns; such a man, in full measure, was Byron. It would, in such circumstances, be most absurd to say, that all other tongues should be silent on all those topics on which their own had so eloquently and passionately descanted; but still, as they were witnesses against themselves, and likewise their own inexorable judges, calling on their own consciences to execute sentence upon them for their confessed misdeeds, which remorse, as far as it could, had expiated, it surely behoves their brethren, to mitigate justice by mercy, in the decrees they pronounce upon the "poor inhabitants below," who were strong to feel, and quick to know," though

"

Thoughtless follies laid them low, And stain'd their name." Nay, their brethren owed them more than both justice and mercy-pity, pardon, commiseration, and, without insult or injury to virtue, immortal fame.

Such has been the the doom, the destiny, the fate of Burns. If his vices were drawn in deepest shadows, his virtues were drawn in brightest sunbeams; and over the gloom, and over the glory, there was the light of genius. Therefore his country is neither afraid nor ashamed to see his character reflected with all its stains and all its purity in his works; but she looks on it steadily, though mournfully, with pardon, pity, and pride, and her heart and her eyes fill as she gazes on his pale marble bust. She will suffer no one now to preach and

power

To soften and subdue."

His faults and frailties, errors and vices, were all far more than redeemed, had they been many times greater than they were, by his generous and his noble virtues; and it is felt now over all Scotland, and in every land trodden by the feet of her sons, that the bad belonging to the character of a great man, may without danwhence it will never cease to send up ger be buried in his grave, from admonitory whispers; and that it is true wisdom and true religion to elevate the good into the light, and hold it for ever there, as an encouragement and an example

With higher and brighter intellectual powers certainly, but as certainly with deeper and darker moral transgressions, the same fate may be predicted for Byron. Not even the magic of his genius could ever transform vice, in all its most alluring or gorgeous adornments, into the fair apparition of Virtue, who is seen to be Virtue still,

Though some few spots be on her flowing robe,

Of stateliest beauty."

The strong and severe moral sense of the English nation will not suffer itself to be long deluded by the "false glitter" of imagination, substituted for the true lustre of virtue. Christianity so clears the eye that looks into the human heart, that as in the darkest and remotest recesses nothing can escape its ken through obscurity, so neither is its visual nerve ever long made “dark with excessive bright.' Thus the only high poetical criticism must be in the light of Christianity; for it deals with the manifestations, the phenomena of a nature which can only be understood in that light-else confounding and inexplicable. Byron's soul struggled in and against that light; yet had he not been born in a country where in many a temple that light is worshipped, he had never been the great Poet that he was-nor breathed so often those magnificent strains that, issuing from his better

and inner nature,

"Do shame the wisdom of the Sadducee."