few fpecimens may, however, probably be felected without difadvantage. The answer to Horace Walpole is not more remarkable for the genius. that pervades it, and the thoufand literary beauties it exhibits, than for the enchanting difplay it affords of undaunted, manly firmnefs. With out being outraged, into the fmalleft approach to thofe littleneffes and abfurdities that render the paffionate man an auxiliary in the revenge a gainst himself, he afferts himfelf with dignity; and retorts upon his antago nift with that graceful fpirit, fhall I call it? or, that inextinguishable fire, that, to a generous mind, is one of the moft attractive objects in the world. "In a debate, in the Houle of Lords, that took place about his grand climacteric; though worn down with age, with exertion, and, more than all, with the unremitted attacks of an excruciating diftemper, having occafion to obferve upon the declining liberties of his country, and the growing fpirit of the colonies, he afferted, with a boyish vigour that no other man could have exhibited, that, were it not for invincible obftacles, he would infallibly retire from Britain, and fpend the remainder of his days in that glorious afylum of liberty, of manlinels, and of virtue. "But the laft fcene of his life is, of all others, the most unparalleled. In whatever other views we may confider, and in whatever views, condemn it, as an example of neverebbing fpirit, we cannot but admire. His infirmities had now rendered his every limb the rebel of his will: the couch of laffitude feemed all that remained to him. The fituation of his country too, was arduous, hopelefs, and untried. The inexhauftible genius of a Chatham was forced to confefs, that he knew not how we were to be extricated. Yet, in these circumstances, with his lifelefs, nervelefs hand, he was willing to have grafped the helm. It was improbable, it was impoffible, he should have fucceeded. But thefe impotent efforts of immortal man; these inftances, in which the foul bursts the bands of earth, and stands alone, in confeffed eternity; are the most beautiful, the most pathetic, the moft fublime exhibitions, of which the mind of man is adequate to conceive. "The vices, if we fhould be difpofed to qualify them with fo harsh a name, of great minds, are ever nearly allied to their virtues. The manners of lord Chatham were, indeed, eafy and bland. His converfation was fpirited and gay; and he readily adapted himself to the complexion of thofe with whom he affociated. That artificial reserve, which is the never-failing refuge of felf-diffidence and cowardice, was not made for him. He was unconstrained as artlefs infancy; and generous as the noon-day fun: yet had he fomething impenetrable that hung about him. A mind, lofty as heaven, and expanfive as the element, was not a theatre for every emmet to traverse. His conceptions were neceffarily ag gregated: and ambition, that reigning paffion of his foul, that meets us at every turn, had introduced a fold or two into his heart that nature never made. "By an irresistible energy of foul, he was haughty and imperious. He was incapable of affociating councils; and he was not formed for the sweetest bands of fociety. He was a pleafing companion, but an unpliant friend. In his connexions of the latter kind, I am afraid, we fhall find little belide the name, He was like thofe inftruments of mufic, whofe grand and bolder tones will not readily accord with the lighter touches of a lefs manly inftrument: his foul was not made to blend and to bow. The difimiffion of Mr. Legge formed no epocha in his mind. His difpute with ear! Temple, however unexceptionable as to the fubftance, was, in its manner, unaccommodating and unamiable. Even his treatment of his humbler friend, Mr. Wilkes, was furely unjustifiable. That gen tleman has, in the moft public manner, afferted, that lord Chatham had feen, and applauded the Effay on Woman, fome years before it was brought forward, as an inftrument of his ruin. "The ambition of my hero, however generous in its ftrain, was the fource of repeated errors in his conduct. To the refignation of lord Carteret, and again, from the commencement of the year 1770, his proceedings were bold and uniform. In the intermediate period, they were marked with a verfatility, incident only, in general, to the most flexible minds. We inay occafionally trace in them the indecifion of a candidate, and the fuppleness of a courtier. In a word, he aimed at the impoffible task of flattering, at once, the prejudices of a monarch, and purfuing unremittedly the interefts of the people, "A feature too, fufficiently prominent in his character, was vanity, fhall I call it? or pride, and confcious fuperiority. He dealt furely fomewhat too freely with invective. He did not pretend to an ignorance of his talents; or to manage the difplay of his important fervices. Himfelf was too often the hero of his tale; and the fucceffes of the laft war, the burden of his fong. Cicero never talked more of the ides of November. But, if he were as boastful as Cicero, he had certainly much more, as a citizen, to boat of. Timidity was the firft feature of the Roman; and, even when he terrified Cataline into flight, he trembled: upon all other occafions, his conduct was fpiritiefs and unferviceable. On the contrary, lord Chatham was, at all times, intrepid. His fervices were more important, more continued; anded infinitely lefs to fortune And, exclutive of the memorable æra of his adminiftration, he may be confidered upon the whole, as the unaccommodating patriot of half a century. "Patriotifm itself, however, was the fource of fome of his imperfections. He loved his country too well: or, if that may found abfurd, the benevolence, at leaft, that embraces the fpecies, had not fuficient fcope in his mind. He once ftyled himself," a lover of honourable war;" and, in fo doing, he let us into one trait of his character. The friend of human kind will be an enemy to all war. He indulged too much, to a puerile antipathy to the house of Bourbon. And it was furely the want of expanfive affections, that led him to fo unqualified a condemnation of American independency. "But the eloquence of lord Chatham was one of his moft ftriking characteristics. He far outstripped his competitors, and stood alone, the rival of antiquity. When he took his place in parliament, it has been obferved, by a celebrated writer, that there were half a dozen speakers, in both houfes, who, in the judgment of the public, had reached nearly the fame pitch of eloquence, Voltaire represents them as rivalling, or furpaffing, the greatest orators of Greece and Rome. But the equality of their fame has juftly been confidered as an unanfwerable argument against this fuppofition. In an art which is either neceffarily, or cafu. ally, ally, in a state of mediocrity, twenty workmen will perform equally well; but, where true eminence has been reached, the comparative merit of the artifts will be no longer doubtful. And indeed, how cold and je. june, in a poetical view, do the harangues of a Wyndham, or a Pulteney appear? But neither of thefe objections can be urged against lord Chatham: he has tropes and fallies that may justly vie with the nobleft flights of antiquity; and he certainly leaves his coadjutors as far behind him, as ever did a Cicero, or a Demofthenes. "His eloquence was of every kind. No man excelled him in clofe argument, and methodical deduction: but this was not the ftyle into which he naturally fell. His oratory was unlib ured and fpontane ous: he rushed at once upon the fubject; and ufually illustrated it rather by glowing language, and original conception, than by cool reafoning. His perfon was tall and dignified. His face was the face of an eagle His piercing eye withered the nerves, and look through the fouls of his opponents. His countenance was ftern, and the voice of thunder fat upon his lips. Anon, however, he could defcend to the eafy and the playful. His voice feemed fcarcely more adapted to energy, and to terror, than it did to the melodious, the infinuating, and the fportive. If, however, in the enthufiafm of admiration, we can find room for the frigidity of criticism, his action feemed the most open to objection. It was forcible, uniform, and ungraceful. In a word, the most celebrated orators of antiquity were, in a great meafure, the children of labour and cultiva tion. Lord Chatham was always natural and himself. And perhaps action, in order to be various and beautiful, is, of all the accomplish ments of an orator, that which most requires the fupport of art. fchines; To the misfortune of the republic of letters, and of pofterity, lord Chatham never fought the prefs. How caly had it then been to have refuted thofe elegant critics, who have thought proper to tell us, that his language was incorrect, and his orations immethodical and fuperfi cial? How indifputably had he then taken his place, in the roll of immortality, with a Demofthenes, and a Cicero? But he voluntarily fubmitted, in a great measure, to that evanefcent fame, as a fpeaker, which was the inevitable misfortune of his contemporary, Mr. Garrick, as an actor. Pofterity will hardly be perfuaded, that in the meagreness of modern times, a Demolthenes fhould have exifted without his and a Cicero without an Hortenfius and a Cæfar. Pofterity will hardly be perfuaded, that one man could have concentered the arduous characters of the greatest ftatefimen, and the moft accomplished rhetorician, that ever lived. In a word, pofterity will, with difficulty, believe the felicity of Britain: that lord Chatham was, among the orators, what Shakspeare is, among the pocts of every age: "The child of fancy, he warbled the irregular notes that nature gave," with fo fweet a grace, as turned the cheek of envy pale, and drove refinement, and trammelled fcience, into coward flight. Honeyed mufic dropped unbidden from his lips. Had he, like his great predeceffor, addreffed his ef fufions to the troubled waves; the troubled waves had fufpended themfelves to liften. His lips were clothed with infpiration and prophecy. Sublimity, upon his tongue, fat fo enveloped in beauty, that it feemed unconscious of itself. It fell upon us unexpected, it took us by furprize, and, like the fearful whirlB4 pool, Various PARTICULARS of the LIFE of BARON HALLER. [From Mr. HENRY's Memoirs of ALBERT DE HALLER, M. D. &c.] A 66 LBERT de Haller, member of the fovereign council, of Berne, prefident of the economic fociety of that city, and of the univerfity of Gottingen, foreign affociate of the academy of fciences of Paris, and of almost all the learned focieties of Europe, was born at Berne, on the eighteenth day of October, 1708. His father was Nicholas de Haller, advocate and chancellor of the county of Baden, defcended from an ancient patrician family of the city of Berne; and his mother Anne-Mary Enguel, daughter of one of the members of the fovereign council of that republic. "Young Haller, in his very early infancy, manifested an uncommon genius, activity of mind, and facility for labour, together with that ftrength of memory, which is fo necellary to thofe who are defirous of comprehending many fciences, and purfuing their great operations; and that taste for forming collec tions, which contributed fo effential ly to the many valuable works which he afterwards published: "Born of a family which had always been diftinguifhed for piety, he was used, whch only four years old, to make short exhortations to the domestics, on the texts of fcrip. ture, at the customary family prayers. When nine years old, he had compofed, for his own use, a Chaldaic grammar, a Hebrew and Greek lexicon, and alfo an historical dictionary, containing more than two thoufand articles, extracted from thofe of Moreri and Bayle. Thefe collections he continued till his departure for the univerfity, at which period, the work was grown to a very confiderable extent; but he fuppreffed it afterwards, as being unequal to his ideas. Thefe premature talents were not the effect of his education; the mode of which was very unfavourable to their improvement. Young Haller's father was apprehenfive that his fon's eagerness to learn every thing, would be productive of only fuperficial knowledge; nor would thefe fears have been ill-founded, if he had not poffeffed an uncommon capacity. Urged perhaps by thefe motives, the advocate placed him under the tuition of a preceptor, who, though he poffeffed futhcient knowledge of the languages, derived his principal credit from the perfecution to which he had been exposed expofed by his religious opinions. This man's behaviour to his pupil was ftern and fevere, though his feeble conftitution, and ardour for ftudy, only required indulgence and proper direction. M. de Haller was only thirteen years old, when he loft his father, who intended him for the church, and whofe property was almoft wholly confined to the appointments of his places. But by lofing his father and his fortune, he acquired the liberty of chufing the objects of his ftudies, and became acquainted with the neceffity of depending entirely on himself. Nay, perhaps it was to thefe misfortunes, that he owed both his talents and fubfequent exalted reputation. "He was placed for fome time at the public school, where he gave many proofs of early genius and uncommon abilities. He paffed through his claffical examinations before the age that is prefcribed, and he tranflated into Greek the theme which was required of him only in Latin. After eighteen months spent in this flow and conftrained mode of inftruction, he obtained leave to pass fome time at Bienne, with the father of one of his fchool-fellows, who was a celebrated phyfician, and from whom he hoped to receive fome lights on the study of nature; but this new mafter was enthufiaftically attached to the fyftems of Defcartes, and conformable to them was the inftruction his pupil received. The young ftudent therefore preferred the fietions of poetry to thofe of philofophy; as frequently men of genius prefer the reading a mere romance, to a history mixed with fables. At this time he compofed feveral poems; and the houfe, where he refided, having taken fire, he rushed into the midst of the flames to fave his verfes, and having carried them off, congratulated himfelf on the prefervation of what he then efteemed his most valuable treasures. "Philofophy, however, foon prevailed; and within the fpace of one year only, after this event, his mind had arrived at fuch a state of maturity, that he had the refolution to condemn to the flames, the fame poems, which he had faved, the preceding year, at the hazard of his life. Among thefe poems were many fatires; a fpecies of compofition for which M. de Haller had already fhewn confiderable talents. "The time now arrived when our young student was to chufe his fituation; he wished to investigate nature, and he made choice of the only profeffion which would allow him to devote himself to that study' without referve, viz. that of phyfic. "Towards the end of the year 1723, he went to Tubingen, where he continued his ftudies, with unremitted ardour, under Camerarius and Duvernoi, and gave public proofs of the progrefs he made under thefe profeffors. "His travels commenced at the age of fixteen, and the full liberty he enjoyed at fuch an early period, might have been attended with danger, had it not been obviated by a fingular circumstance. The great concourfe of young men, who frequent the German univerfities, are left too much to their own direction. Haller, having entered, with his fellow-itudents at Tubingen, into a party in a debauch, the exceffes to which he was a witnefs, gave him a falutary disgust to them: From this moment, he renounced wine for ever, that he might be certain to avoid the abuse of it; and in order to guard more infallibly fror feduction, he thought himself 4 obliged |