the Earl of Strafford" are said to have been "ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an antique Jupiter," as though there could be any comparison between the finest practical head, and the finest ideal one, which could be fair towards either.

Let it not be supposed, however, that we do not find much to admire in the essay on Milton-hazardous as such a declaration may be, after what the author has himself said of it. Having duly deliberated, however, we will venture to express great admiration of the passages on "revolution," at pp. 39, 40, 41 (which we commend to Sir E. L. Bulwer's especial attention); and also of the character of Cromwell, at pp. 45, 46-which we commend to the especial attention of the " authority," who seems to be so shortsighted as to contemplate the exclusion of all pictorial recognition of the Commonwealth from the new Houses of Parliament.*

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Few essays were ever sent abroad in the world more calculated to improve the public understanding, and direct its moral feelings aright, than those on Moore's Life of Byron;" Machiavelli," and "Boswell's Life of Johnson." They contain many passages of sterling philosophy in the analysis and elucidation of character, in principles and conditions of public and private morality, and in matters of literary taste; all of which are set forth with unanswerable arguments and admirable illustrations. Among the latter we cannot forbear noticing the equally acute and amusing remarks on the hypocritical public horror at Lord Byron's separation from his wife, and because Edmund Kean "had disturbed the conjugal felicity of an alderman,”—common occurrences, of which the world takes no sort of notice beyond the newspaper paragraphs of the day, except about once in seven years, and then "the public decency requires a victim." His remarks on Dr. Johnson are excellent, and while they do every justice to all the good qualities of the great man" of his day, will materially assist in leading the public mind at last to perceive how constantly Dr. Johnson, in philosophy, in morals, and in criticism, was quite as wrong as he was pompous and overbearing.

The article on Warren Hastings is a model of biography.

*February the 22d.

It is biography of the most difficult kind; that, namely, in which the character and actions of the individual subject cannot be portrayed without a comprehensive history of the times in which he lived. Such writings are apt to be exceedingly tedious, and in fact to present a mixture of two styles of composition, that of the historian and that of the biographer, fitted together as they best may be. But in the case before us, while the state of the political world, the progress of events, the aspects of parties, the peculiar condition of the great continent of India, the characteristics of its various races, are all presented distinctly, and held constantly before the mind as they in succession change, swell into importance, or fade into obscurity, in the onward march of time;-so, with equal distinctness and constancy, is the individual Warren Hastings always held present to the imagination, as those events, and scenes, and characteristics acted upon him, or he acted upon them. The man stands revealed in this clear picture of his circumstances and his actions. We do not require to be told what was the peculiar nature of his intellect, his moral perceptions, his temperament. These we deduce from the history; any occasional remark upon him in the way of metaphysical analysis we read as a corollary, and can only say, just so,' or course.' Perhaps a skilful physiognomist might even pronounce on the features of his face after reading the whole. With the same skill as that displayed in presenting the history of his time, the men who surrounded him are brought on the scene.

of

Of the masterly essay on "Lord Bacon " we must content ourselves with saying that it is in itself a great work of harmoniously united history, biography, and criticism, each of the highest class, and of which there is not a single page without its weight and value.

Mr. Macaulay possesses great powers of logical criticism; a fine and manly taste and judgment; a quick sense of the absurd, with an acute perception of the illogical; great fairness, and love of truth and justice. His prose is a model of style. It is sculpturesque by its clearness, its solidity, its simplicity, without any mannerism or affectation, and by its regularity. But this regularity is not of marble equability; the strong and compacted sentences rather presenting the appearance of a Cyclopean wall, with the outer surface

polished. Continually the matter is of similar character with this style, and a brief section contains the growth of ages. Many single sentences might be adduced, in which are compressed clearly and without crowding, the sum of prolonged historical records, their chief events and most influential men, and how the events and the men acted and re-acted upon each other.

Mr. Macaulay has great and singular ability in making difficult questions clear, and the most unpromising subjects amusing. A good example of this may be found in his review of "Southey's Colloquies on Society," where Macaulay displays Southey's errors and wrong-headedness, and what the true state of the case is with respect to the currency, the national debt, and finance,-subjects which Literature had always considered as dry and impracticable as a rope of sand, but which in Mr. Macaulay's hands become not only intelligible and instructive, but incredibly entertaining.

Notwithstanding the many excellent remarks on poets and poetical productions, occurring in the course of his volumes and the acuteness displayed, not only in what Mr. Macaulay says of the so-called "correctness" of Pope, and Addison, and Gray, (as though their descriptions of men and external nature were not far less correct than those of the Elizabethan poets,) but in the more admiring tone he occasionally takes,-it might still have been doubted whether a writer, in whom the understanding faculty predominates, would be able to make that degree of surrender of its power, which the fullest appreciation of poetry requires. He might fear it would argue "unsoundness." Howbeit, in certain remarks on Shelley, we see that he can make the requisite surrender to one, whose poetry, of all others, needs it, in order to be rightly estimated. And it is a part of the means of forming the best judgment of poetical productions to know when, and how far that faculty should abandon itself, and receive a dominant emotion as fresh material for subsequent judgment.

The last publication of Mr. Macaulay-his "Lays of Ancient Rome"-may fairly be called, not an exhumation of decayed materials, but a reproduction of classical vitality. The only thing we might object to, is the style and form of his metres and rhythms, which are not classical,

but Gothic, and often remind us of the "Percy Reliques." There is no attempt to imitate the ancient metres. In other respects these Lays are Roman to the back-bone; and where not so, they are Homeric. The events and subjects of the poems are chosen with an heroic spirit; there is all the hard glitter of steel about the lines!-their music is the neighing of steeds, and the tramp of armed heels: their inspiration was the voice of a trumpet.

"Act freely, carelessly, and capriciously; as if our veins ran with quicksilver; and not utter a phrase but what shall come forth steeped in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire."

BEN JONSON, Cynthia's Revels.

THERE are some writers, whose popularity has been so long established, is so well deserved, and about the character of whose genius there is so correct a general impression in the mind of the public, that very little more need be said about them. But these are few in number. For, although it is not uncommon for the majority to be tolerably unanimous in its opinion of a favourite, it certainly very rarely occurs that such opinion is so perfectly satisfactory as to leave no opportunity and no wish to offer any further comment upon the individual or his works. Such, however, is the case with regard to Thomas Hood; and almost in an equal degree as to the late Theodore Hook; though the men are very different. We shall do little more, therefore,