He was evidently most scrupulously honest and faithful in the discharge of his duty to his constituents; and, as we have seen, punctilious in guarding against any thing which could tarnish his fair fame, or defile his conscience. On reviewing the whole of his public conduct, we may well say that he attained his wish, expressed in the lines which he has written in imitation of a chorus in the Thyestes of Seneca :

"Climb at court for me that will

Tottering favor's pinnacle;

All I seek is to lie still.
Settled in some secret nest,

In calm leisure let me rest,
And, far off the public stage,

Pass away my silent age.

Thus, when without noise, unknown,

I have lived out all my span,

I shall die without a groan,

An old, honest countryman.'

He seems to have been as amiable in his private as he was estimable in his public character. So far as any documents throw light upon the subject, the same integrity appears to have been the basis of both. He is described as of a very reserved and quiet temper; but, like Addison, (whom in this respect, as in some few others, he resembled,) exceedingly facetious and lively amongst his intimate friends. His disinterested championship of others is no less a proof of his sympathy with the oppressed than of his abhorrence of oppression; and many pleasing traits of amiability occur in his private correspondence, as well as in his writings. On the whole, we think that Marvell's epitaph, strong as the terms of panegyric are, records little more than the truth; and that it was not in the vain spirit of boasting, but in the honest consciousness of virtue and integrity, that he himself concludes a letter to one of his correspondents in the words, —

"Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem;
Fortunam ex aliis."

LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND CHAR

ACTER.*

THE familiar letters of a great man, if they are sufficiently copious, written on a variety of themes, and really unpremeditated, probably furnish us with more accurate data for estimating his character, than either the most voluminous deliberate compositions, or the largest traditional collections of his conversation. The former will always conceal much which letters will disclose; will give not only an imperfect, but perhaps false idea, of many points of character; and will certainly suggest an exaggerated estimate of all the ordinary habitudes of thought and expression. The latter will often fall as much below the true mean of such a man's merits; and, what is of more consequence, must depend except in the rare case in which some faithful Boswell continually dogs the heels of genius on the doubtful authority and leaky memory of those who report it. Letters, on the other hand,

Dr. Martin Luther's Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken, vollständig aus den verschiedenen Ausgaben seiner Werke und Brieje, aus andern Büchern und noch unbenutzten Handschriften gesammelt. Kritisch und historisch bearbeitet von DR. WILHELM MARTIN LEBERECHT DE WETTE. 5 vols. 8vo. Berlin.

(Dr. Martin Luther's Entire Correspondence, carefully compiled from the various Editions of his Works and Letters, from other Books, and from Manuscripts as yet private. Edited, with Critical and Historical Notes, by DR. WILHELM MARTIN LEBERECHT DE WETTE.)

if they be copious, unpremeditated, and not intended for the eye of the world, will exhibit the character in all its moods and phases, and by its own utterances. While some will disclose to us the habitual states of thought and feeling, and admit us even into the privacy of the heart, others, composed under the stimulus of great emergencies, and in those occasional auspicious expansions of the faculties, which neither come nor cease at our bidding, will furnish no unworthy criterion of what such a mind, even in its most elevated moods, or by its most deliberate efforts, can accomplish.

If ever any man's character could be advantageously studied in his letters, it is surely that of Luther. They are addressed to all sorts of persons, are composed on an immense diversity of subjects, and, as to the mass of them, are more thoroughly unpremeditated, as well as more completely suggested ex visceribus causa, to use the phrase of Cicero, than those of almost any other man. They are also more copious; as copious as those even of his great contemporary Erasmus, to whom letter-writing was equally business and amusement. What appear voluminous collections in our degenerate days, those of Sévigné, Pope, Walpole, Cowper, even of Swift, dwindle in comparison. In De Wette's most authentic and admirable edition, they occupy five very thick and closely printed volumes. The learned compiler, in a preface amusingly characteristic of the literary zeal and indefatigable research of Germany, tells us, that he has unearthed from obscure hiding-places and mouldering manuscripts more than a hundred unprinted letters, and enriched the present collection with their contents. By himself, or his literary agents, he has ransacked" the treasures of the archives of Weimar, the libraries at Jena, Erfurt, Gotha, Wolfenbüttel, Frankfort-onthe-Maine, Heidelberg, and Basle"; and has received “precious contributions" from Breslau, Riga, Strasburg, Münich, Zurich, and other places. There are many, no doubt, which time has consigned to oblivion, and perhaps some few which still lie unknown in public or private repositories, undetect

ed even by the acute literary scent of De Wette, and his emissaries. But there are enough in all conscience to satisfy any ordinary appetite, and to illustrate, if any thing can, the history and character of him who penned them.

Even in a purely literary point of view, these letters are not unworthy of comparison with any thing Luther has left behind him. They contain no larger portion of indifferent Latin, scarcely so much of his characteristic violence and rudeness; while they display in beautiful relief all the more tender and amiable traits of his character, and are fraught with brief but most striking specimens of that intense and burning eloquence for which he was so famed. Very many of them well deserve the admiration which Coleridge (who regretted that selections from them had not been given to the English public) has so strongly expressed. "I can scarcely conceive," he says, "a more delightful volume than might be made from Luther's letters, especially those written from the Wartburg, if they were translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic, hearty mother tongue of the original. . . A difficult task I admit." He is speaking, of course, of Luther's German letters. Almost all, however, from the Wartburg are in Latin.

Of late years they have received considerable attention. M. Michelet, in his very pleasing volumes, in which he has made Luther draw his own portrait, by presenting a series of extracts from his writings, has derived no small portion of his materials from the letters; while all recent historians of the Reformation, especially D'Aubigné and Waddington,*

* We cannot mention the name of Dr. Waddington without thanking him for the gratification we have derived from the perusal of the three volumes of his "History of the Reformation," and expressing our hopes that he will soon fulfil his promise of a fourth. Less brilliant than that of D'Aubigné, his work is at least its equal in research, certainly not inferior in the comprehensiveness of its views, or the solidity of its reflections, and in severe fidelity is perhaps even superior. Not that, in this last respect, we have much to complain of in D'Aubigné; but as he has

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have dug deep, and with immense advantage, in the same mine. Not only do they form, as De Wette says, a diary, as it were, of Luther's life," "gleichsam ein Tagebuch seines Lebens"; but they enable us to trace better than in almost any history, because more minutely, the whole early progress of the Reformation.

As we conceive that Luther's character could be nowhere more advantageously studied than in this voluminous correspondence, we propose in the present article to make it the basis of a few remarks on his most prominent intellectual and moral qualities.

No modern author, in our opinion, has done such signal injustice to Luther's intellect as Mr. Hallam, whose excellent and well-practised judgment seems to us, in this instance, to have entirely deserted him. "Luther's amazing influence on the revolutions of his own age, and on the opinions of mankind, seems," says he, "to have produced, as is not unnatural, an exaggerated notion of his intellectual greatness. And he then proceeds to reduce it to assuredly very moderate dimensions, founding his judgment principally on Luther's writings.

Now, if Mr. Hallam had been nothing more than a mere critic, we should not have wondered at such a decision. It would have been as natural in that case to misinterpret the genius of Luther, as for Mallet to write the life of Bacon and 'forget that he was a philosopher." But when we reflect

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great skill in the selection and graphic disposition of his materials, so he sometimes sacrifices a little too much to gratify it, as, for example, in the dramatic form he has given to Luther's narrative of his interview with Miltitz (Vol. II. pp. 8-12). There is also a too uniform brilliancy, and too little repose about the style. But it were most ungrateful to deny the rare merits of the work. We only hope its unprecedented popularity may not deprive us of another volume from the pen of Dr. Waddington. His "History of the Reformation" is, in our judgment, very superior to his "Church History," though that has no inconsiderable merit.

* Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Vol. I. p. 513.