own, and whose literary course pretty nearly coincided with his own in point of time, surmounted all competition, and in that amphitheatre became the Protagonistæ. These were Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Brown; who, if not absolutely the foremost in the accomplishments of art, were, undoubtedly, the richest, the most dazzling, and, with, reference to their matter, the most captivating of all rhetoricians. In them first, and, perhaps, (if we except occasional passages in the German John Paul Richter,) in them only, are the two opposite forces of eloquent passion and rhetorical fancy brought into an exquisite equilibrium, approaching, receding-attracting, repelling-blending, separating-chasing and chased, as in a fugue, and again lost in a delightful interfusion, so as to create a middle species of composition, more various and stimulating to the understanding than pure eloquence, more gratifying to the affections than naked rhetoric. Under this one circumstance of coincidence, in other respects their minds were of the most opposite temperament : Sir Thomas Brown deep, tranquil, and majestic as Milton, silently premeditating, and "disclosing his golden couplets," as under some genial instinct of incubation Jeremy Taylor, restless, fervid, aspiring, scattering abroad a prodigality of life, not unfolding but creating, with the energy, and the "myriad-mindedness," of Shakspeare. Where, but in Sir T. B., shall one hope to find music so Miltonic, an intonation of such solemn chords as are struck in the following opening bar of a passage in the Urnburial-" Now, since these bones have rested quietly in the grave, under the drums and tramplings of three conquests," &c.-What a melodious ascent as of a prelude to some impassioned requiem breathing from the pomps of earth, and from the sanctities of the grave! What a fluctus decumanus of rhetoric! Time expounded, not by generations of centuries, but by the vast periods of conquests and dynasties; by cycles of

Pharaohs and Ptolomies, Antiochi, and Arsacides! And these vast successions of time distinguished and figured by the uproars which revolve at their inaugurations-by the drums and tramplings rolling overhead upon the chambers of forgotten dead-the trepidations of time and mortality vexing, at secular intervals, the everlasting Sabbaths of the grave !—Show us, oh pedant, such another strain from the oratory of Greece or Rome! We will not, however, attempt a descant upon the merits of Sir T. Brown, after the admirable one by Mr. Coleridge and as to Jeremy Taylor, we would as readily undertake to put a belt about the ocean as to characterize him adequately within the space at our command. One remarkable characteristic of his style is the everlasting strife and fluctuation between his rhetoric and his eloquence, which maintain their alternations with a force and inevitable recurrence, like the systole and diastole-the contraction and expansion-of some living organ. For this characteristic he was indebted in mixed proportions to his own peculiar style of understanding, and the nature of his subject. Where the understanding is not active and teeming, but possessed by a few vast and powerful ideas, (which was the case of Milton,) there the funds of a varied rhetoric are wanting. On the other hand, where the understanding is all alive with the subtlety of distinctions, and nourished (as Jeremy Taylor's was) by casuistical divinity, the variety and opulence of the rhetoric is apt to be oppressive. But this tendency, in the case of Taylor, was happily checked and balanced by the commanding passion, intensity, and solemnity of his exalted theme, which gave a final unity to the tumultuous motions of his intellect. The only very obvious defects of J. Taylor were in the mechanical part of his art, in the mere technique; he writes like one who never revises, nor tries the effect upon his ear of his periods as musical wholes; and in the syntax and connexion of the parts seems to have

been habitually careless of slight blemishes.

Jeremy Taylor* died in a few years after the Restoration. Sir Thomas Brown, though at that time nearly 30 years removed from the first surreptitious edition of his Religio Medici, lingered a little longer. But, when both were gone, it may be truly affirmed that the great oracles of rhetoric were finally silenced. South and Barrow, indeed, were brilliant dialecticians in different styles; but, after Tillotson, with his meagre intellect, his low key of feeling, and the smug and scanty draperies of his style, had announced a new era,-English divinity ceased to be the racy vineyard that it had been in ages of ferment and struggle. Like the soil of Sicily, (vide Sir H. Davy's Agricultural Chemistry,) it was exhausted forever by the tilth and rank fertility of its golden youth.

Since then, great passions and high thinking have either disappeared from literature altogether, or thrown themselves into poetic forms which, with the privilege of a masquerade, are allowed to assume the spirit of past ages, and to speak in a key unknown to the general literature. At all events, no pulpit oratory of a rhetorical cast, for upwards of a century, has been able to support itself, when stripped of the aids of voice and action. Robert Hall and Edward Irving, when printed, exhibit only the spasms of weakness. Nor do we remember one memorable burst of rhetoric in the pulpit eloquence of the last 150 years, with the exception of

a fine oath ejaculated by a dissenting minister of Cambridge, who, when appealing for the confirmation of his words to the grandeur of man's nature, swore-By this and by the other, and at length, "By the Iliad, by the Odyssey". -as the climax, in a long bead-roll of speciosa miracula, which he had apostrophized as monuments of human power. As to Foster, he has been prevented from preaching by a complaint affecting the throat; but, judging from the quality of his celebrated Essays, he could never have figured as a truly splendid rhetorician; for the imagery and ornamental parts of his Essays have evidently not grown up in the loom, and concurrently with the texture of the thoughts, but have been separately added afterwards, as so much embroidery or fringe.

Politics, mean time, however inferior in any shape to religion, as an ally of real eloquence, might yet, either when barbed by an interest of intense personality, or on the very opposite footing of an interest comprehensively national, have irritated the growth of rhetoric such as the spirit of the times allowed. In one conspicuous instance it did so; but generally it had little effect,

It was not until the reign of Queen Anne that the qualities and style of Parliamentary eloquence were submitted to public judgment; this was on occasion of the trial of Dr, Sacheverel, which was managed by members of the House of Commons. The Whigs, however, of that æra had no distinguished speakers. On the Tory

side, St. John (Lord Bolingbroke) was the most accomplished person in the house. His style may be easily collected from his writings, which have all the air of having been dictated without premeditation; and the effect of so much showy and fluent declamation, combined with the graces of his manner and person, may be inferred from the deep impression which they seem to have left upon Lord Chesterfield, himself so accomplished a judge, and so familiar with the highest efforts of the age of Mr. Pulteney and Lord Chatham. With two exceptions, indeed, to be noticed presently, Lord Bolingbroke came the nearest of all Parliamentary orators who have been particularly recorded, to the ideal of a fine rhetorician. It was no disadvantage to him that he was shallow, being so luminous and transparent; and the splendor of his periodic diction, with his fine delivery, compensated his defect in imagery. Sir Robert Walpole was another Lord Londonderry; like him, an excellent statesman, and a first-rate leader of the House of Commons, but in other respects a plain unpretending man; and, like Lord Londonderry, he had the reputation of a blockhead with all eminent blockheads, and of a man of talents with those who were themselves truly such. "When I was very young," says Burke, "a general fashion told me I was to admire some of the writings against that minister; a little more maturity taught me as much to despise them." Lord Mansfield, "the fluent Murray," was, or would have been, but for the condensation of law, another Bolingbroke. "How sweet an Ovid was in Murray lost!" says Pope; and, if the comparison were suggested with any studied propriety, it ascribes to Lord Mansfield the talents of a first-rate rhetorician. Lord Chatham had no rhetoric at all, any more than Charles Fox of the next generation: both were too fervent, too Demosthenic, and threw themselves too ardently upon the graces of nature. Mr. Pitt came nearer to the idea of a rhetori

cian, in so far as he seemed to have more artifice; but this was only in the sonorous rotundity of his periods, which were cast in a monotonous mould; for in other respects he would have been keenly alive to the ridicule of rhetoric in a First Lord of the Treasury.

All these persons, whatever might be their other differences, agreed in this-that they were no jugglers, but really were that which they appeared to be, and never struggled for distinctions which did not naturally belong to them. But next upon the roll comes forward an absolute charlatan -a charlatan the most accomplished that can ever have figured upon so intellectual a stage. This was Sheridan-a mocking-bird through the entire scale, from the highest to the lowest note of the gamut; in fact, to borrow a coarse word, the mere impersonation of humbug. Even as a wit, he has been long known to be a wholesale plagiarist; and the exposures of his kind biographer, Mr. Moore, exhibit him in that line as the most hide-bound and sterile of performers, lying perdue through a whole evening for a casual opportunity, or by miserable stratagem creating an artificial one, for exploding some poor starveling jest; and, in fact, sacrificing to this petty ambition, in a degree never before heard of, the ease and dignity of his life. it is in the character of a rhetorical orator that he, and his friends in his behalf, have put forward the hollowest pretensions. In the course of the Hastings trial, upon the concerns of paralytic Begums, and ancient Rannies, hags that, if ever actually existing, were no more to us and our British sympathies, than we to Hecuba, did Mr. Sheridan make his capital exhibition. The real value of his speech was never at any time misappreciated by the judicious; for his attempts at the grand, the pathetic, and the sentimental, had been continually in the same tone of falsetto and horrible fustian. Burke, however, who was the most double-minded

But

person in the world, cloaked his contempt in hyperbolical flattery; and all the unhappy people, who have since written lives of Burke, adopt the whole for mere gospel truth. Exactly in the same vein of tumid inanity, is the speech which Mr. Sheridan puts into the mouth of Rolla the Peruvian. This the reader may chance to have heard upon the stage; or, in default of that good luck, we present him with the following fragrant twaddle from one of the Begummiads, which has been enshrined in the praises (si quid sua carmina possunt) of many worthy critics; the subject is Filial Piety. "Filial piety," (Mr. Sheridan said)" it was impossible by words to describe, but description by words was unnecessary. It was that duty which they all felt and understood, and which required not the powers of language to explain. It was in truth more properly to be called a principle than a duty. It required not the aid of memory; it needed not the exercise of the understanding; it awaited not the slow deliberations of reason; it flowed spontaneously from the fountain of our feelings; it was involuntary in our natures; it was a quality of our being, innate and coeval with life, which, though afterwards cherished as a passion, was independent of our mental powers; it was earlier than all intelligence in our souls; it displayed itself in the earliest impulses of the heart, and was an emotion of fondness that returned in smiles of gratitude the affectionate solicitudes, the tender anxieties, the endearing attentions experienced before memory began, but which were not less dear for not being remembered. It was the sacrament of nature in our hearts, by which the union of the parent and child was seated and rendered perfect in the community of love; and which, strengthening and ripening with life, acquired vigor from the understanding, and was most lively and active when most wanted."-Now we put it to any candid reader, whether the above Birmingham ware might not be

vastly improved by one slight alteration, viz. omitting the two first words, and reading it as a conundrum. Considered as rhetoric, it is evidently fitted "to make a horse sick;" but, as a conundrum in the Lady's Magazine, we contend that it would have great success.

How it aggravates the disgust with which these paste-diamonds are now viewed, to remember that they were paraded in the presence of Edmund Burke-nay, (credite posteri!) in jealous rivalry of his genuine and priceless jewels. Irresistibly one is reminded of the dancing efforts of Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Skeggs, against the native grace of the Vicar of Wakefield's family:" The ladies of the town

strove hard to be equally easy, but without success. They swam, sprawled, languished, and frisked; but all would not do. The gazers, indeed, owned that it was fine; but neighbor Flamborough observed, that Miss Livy's feet seemed as pat to the music as its echo." Of Goldsmith it was said, in his epitaph,-Nil tetigit quod non ornavit of the Drury-Lane rhetorician it might be said with equal truth, Nil tetigit quod non fuco adulteravit. But avaunt, Birmingham! let us speak of a great man.

All hail to Edmund Burke, the supreme writer of his century, the man of the largest and finest understanding! Upon that word, understanding, we lay a stress: for oh! ye immortal donkeys, who have written "about him and about him," with what an obstinate stupidity have ye brayed away for one third of a century about that which ye are pleased to call his "fancy." Fancy in your throats, ye miserable twaddlers! as if Edmund Burke were the man to play with his fancy, for the purpose of separable ornament. He was a man of fancy in no other sense than as Lord Bacon was so, and Jeremy Taylor, and as all large and discursive thinkers are and must be that is to say, the fancy which he had in common with all mankind, and very probably in no emi