power of throwing a ludicrous colour over incidents uncomfortably near the reality of his own life.

Goldsmith is also the most amiable of our satirists. He was full of "the milk of human kindness," and the range of his sympathies was wide. His ridicule is always on the side of good sense and good feeling. And he handles even his embodiments of folly and weakness "tenderly, as if he loved them;" as if, at least, he had a lurking toleration for them, and secretly recognised their claim to exist in their own way as varieties of multiform humanity.

The most exquisite of his humorous creations is Beau Tibbs, who figures in the letters of the 'Citizen of the World.'

OTHER WRITERS.

THEOLOGY.

Few of the theologians that we reckon in this period were men of high literary celebrity. The reason probably is that there was no exciting topic to vex the theological world, and put its foremost intellects upon their mettle. The Deists had been a hundred times answered before 1760, and no other heresy equally dangerous and exciting appeared until the ferment of the French Revolution. The great religious revival begun by Wesley and Whitefield gained no distinguished champions during the first half of the reign of George III.

One of the most eminent divines of the generation was Samuel Horsley (1733-1806), who has been called "the last of the race of polemical giants in the English Church—a learned, mighty, fearless, and haughty champion of the theology and constitution of the Anglican establishment." His first efforts in authorship were some mathematical tracts. In 1776 he published proposals for a new edition of the works of Sir Isaac Newton. About the same time he wrote on Man's Free Agency. His charge to the clergy of his archdeaconry in 1783 involved him in a controversy with Priestley concerning the divinity of Christ: in which controversy he is said to have displayed great learning, masterly reasoning, and impetuous dogmatism. He was made Bishop of St David's in 1788. When the French Revolution broke out, he stood forth in the front rank of alarmists, and declaimed with great vehemence against the "twin furies" -Jacobinism and Infidelity. His declamations against conventicles, and his disposition to favour penal laws against Dissent, brought him into collision with Robert Hall, who assails him as "the apologist of tyranny, and the patron of passive obedience," and describes a sermon of his as a disgusting picture of sanctimonious hypocrisy and priestly insolence." Horsley had an arrogance and dogmatism even fiercer than Warburton's, without any

thing like Warburton's genius for style. His sermons procured him respect from many that disapproved of his violence as a polemic; they are distinguished by breadth of view and clear racy expression.

Beilby Porteous (1731-1808), Bishop of London, was a divine of a much milder type, author of a poem "On Death," which gained the Seatonian prize in 1759, and the intimate associate of Hannah More, whom he is said to have assisted in the composition of her religious novel, Colebs in search of a Wife.' He wrote a life of his patron, Archbishop Secker, and published a variety of sermons, charges, and other devotional tracts. His 'Evidences' is still used as a class-book in schools.

The most distinguished Scottish theologian of the time was George Campbell, author of an able Dissertation on Miracles,' written in reply to Hume's Essay on Miracles, and a 'New Translation of the Gospels, with Preliminary Dissertations,' a work displaying the highest critical sagacity. We shall notice him again among the writers on Rhetoric.

PHILOSOPHY.

By far the most eminent psychologist of this generation is Thomas Reid (1710-1796), the founder of what is known as the Philosophy of Common Sense. He was a native of Kincardineshire, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen. He studied for the Church, and in 1737 was presented to the living of New Machar, a parish near Aberdeen. In 1752 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. While in this office he took part in the meetings of a literary coterie, of great local celebrity, which comprised several men that attained eminence in the world of letters-himself, Campbell, Beattie, and Gerard. In 1763 he was invited to succeed Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow. His 'Inquiry into the Human Mind,' which had been discussed by his friends in Aberdeen, and had been in part submitted to Hume, was published in 1764. The impulse to this work was given, as he said in the dedication, by Hume's Treatise of Human Nature.' He had not previously "thought of calling in question the principles commonly received with regard to the human understanding;" but finding that, "by reasoning which appeared to him to be just," there was built upon those principles "a system of scepticism which leaves no ground to believe any one thing rather than its contrary," he proceeded to subject the principles themselves to a close examination. "For my own satisfaction, I entered into a serious examination of the principles upon which the sceptical system is built; and was not a little surprised to find, that it leans with its whole weight upon a

hypothesis which is ancient indeed, and hath been very generally received by philosophers, but of which I could find no solid proof. The hypothesis I mean is, That nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it: that we do not really perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas." The Inquiry' has a polemical tone throughout, and contains a good deal of humorous banter directed against Hume upon the assumption that the arch-sceptic is bound in consistency to believe "neither his own existence nor that of his reader," and that "the intention of his work is to show that there is neither human nature nor science in the world."-Without attempting to define Reid's position relatively to modern analysts of the mind, we may give his views concerning the origin of knowledge in his own words. Against the opinion that all knowledge concerning external things is derived from the phenomena of Sense and the operations of the Intellect upon the phenomena, he contends that "many original principles of belief" are "suggested by our sensations." "Sensation suggests the notion of present existence, and the belief that what we perceive or feel does now exist. A beginning of existence, or any change in nature, suggests to us the notion of a cause, and compels our belief of its existence. And, in like manner, certain sensations of touch, by the constitution of our nature, suggest to us extension, solidity, and motion, which are nowise like to sensations, although they have been hitherto confounded with them."-After teaching in his Professorship till 1781, Reid prepared a more systematic exposition of the Mind, which appeared in two parts-Essays on the Intellectual Powers,' in 1785; and 'Essays on the Active Powers,' in 1788. He continued his studious activity till the very close of his long life, writing philosophical essays, working mathematical problems, and following the progress of physical science." In point of bodily constitution, few men have been more indebted to nature than Dr Reid. His form was vigorous and athletic; and his muscular force (though he was somewhat under the middle size) uncommonly great; advantages to which his habits of temperance and exercise, and the unclouded serenity of his temper, did ample justice." The mere fact of his originating a school of philosophy, even though we allow that his conclusions were supported by popular feeling, argues a large measure of intellectual force, in one direction or another; but very different opinions have been expressed as to his capacities for mental analysis. Various particulars in his style and in his favourite studies indicate a tendency to dwell by preference upon the concrete. He had no great turn for style; his composition deserves the praise of "ease, perspicuity, and purity;" it is, besides, neat and finished, and often moves with considerable spirit: but it has

neither the incisive vigour of Campbell, the copiousness of Smith, nor the original freshness of Tucker.

Abraham Tucker (1705-1774), author of 'The Light of Nature Pursued, by Edward Search, Esq.'-a work in seven volumes, four of which were published in 1765, and the remainder after his death-is in point of style one of the most pleasing of our philosophical writers. The son of a wealthy London merchant, having received an Oxford education and acquired many elegant accomplishments, he bought an estate near Dorking, and there lived a "retired and undiversified" life, "the exercise of his reason being his daily employment." He declined the political business that Burke held to be a duty intrusted to men of his station, and spent his time in a soft Epicurean endeavour to realise the maximum of tranquil happiness. He "apportioned his time between study and relaxation ;" and, when in London, "commonly devoted much of his evenings to the society of his friends, relations, and fellow-collegians, among whom he was particularly distinguished for his dexterity in the Socratic method of disputation." We may indicate his philosophical position in a loose compendious way by saying that he based his psychology upon Hartley's, and that his original ethical views are adopted, digested, and systematised in Paley's Moral Philosophy.' Paley candidly acknowledges his obligations. "There is one work to which I owe so much, that it would be ungrateful not to confess the obligation; I mean the writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq. I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. I shall account it no mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too much surface."-Tucker's style has several charms rarely met in philosophical works-charms, indeed, that are more or less incompatible with rigorous scientific precision. The diction is simple, thickly interspersed with colloquial idioms, and has an exquisitely musical flow. In every other sentence we are delighted with some original felicity of expression or of illustration. The loose and often ungrammatical structure of the sentences, and the diffusive rambling character both of the work as a whole and of the several divisions, forbid his being taken as a model for strict scientific exposition; but the popular expositor of practical wisdom might learn a great deal from his copious and felicitous language and imagery. Obviously, however, it will not do even for popular purposes to imitate him closely. The expense of his voluminous

treatise may have something to do with the general neglect of so ingenious a writer; but at any rate it is significant against close imitation of his style that the views of Happiness and Virtue in Paley's 'Moral Philosophy,' which are simply Tucker's summarised and formulated, are never referred to their original author.

Richard Price (1723-1791)-a Dissenting minister in London, who supported the cause of American Independence, and who was vehemently abused by Burke because from his pulpit in Old Jewry Lane he hailed the French Revolution as the advent of Liberty -made himself a considerable name in Ethical Philosophy. His 'Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals' was published in 1758. "He appears as the antagonist of the empiricism popularly associated with the name of Locke, and as the leading representative of his time in England of the double origin of knowledge. The doctrine of Price with respect to the Good and the True reminds us more of the Pure Reason of his great German contemporary Kant, than of the internal and commonsense school of Hutcheson and Reid." He also "reveals affinities to Platonism." 1 His style displays in no eminent degree either of the cardinal virtues of a philosophical work; he is not remarkably perspicuous, and he is far from being remarkably precise. His numerous political and economical pamphlets are written with considerable energy, 66 not unfitly typified by the unusual muscular and nervous activity of his slender person.'

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a Unitarian minister, illustrious in Natural Science as the discoverer of oxygen and other elementary substances, was an irrepressibly voluminous writer not only in science but in theology, philosophy, history, politics, and whatever happened to engage his interest. At the age of 22 he became pastor to a Dissenting congregation, and from that time till 1773 he occupied various situations as minister and as tutor, and began to make himself a name by his theological and scientific writings. From 1773 the patronage of the Earl of Shelburne enabled him to devote the most of his time to scientific and literary pursuits. He made his discovery of oxygen in 1774. In the same year he wrote a severe examination of the Common-Sense Philosophy, defending the principles of Locke and Hartley. In his 'Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit,' 1777, he avowed himself a materialist, and showed that materialism did not affect the arguments for the existence of God, or for the belief in a future state. His 'History of the Corruptions of Christianity,' 1782, was attacked, as we have said, by Horsley, and a hot war in pamphlets was carried on through more than one stage of rejoinder and surrejoinder. During the excitement of the French Revolution, his advanced opinions made him an object of aversion; his house in Birmingham

1 Professor Fraser, in the 'Imperial Dictionary of Biography.'