erature, rather than for any distinguished literary excellence, was born at Hagley, Worcestershire, in 1709. He was the son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, and after distinguishing himself at Eton school and at Christ's Church College, Oxford, he went abroad, and passed some time in France and Italy. On his return home he obtained a seat in Parliament, and became a popular opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. In 1737, he was made secretary to the Prince of Wales, who now extended his patronage to the opposition, and acquired popularity, by protecting Thomson, Mallet, and other men of literary eminence.

In 1741 Lord Lyttelton married Lucy Fortescue, of Devonshire, who, dying five years afterwards, afforded a theme for his muse, of no unusual interest. The following lines, which he on this occasion produced, are considered by many the most successful of his poetical efforts :

MONODY.

In vain I look around

O'er all the well-known ground,
My Lucy's wonted footsteps to descry;
Where oft we used to walk,
Where oft in tender talk

We saw the summer sun go down the sky;

Nor by yon fountain's side,

Nor where its waters glide

Along the valley, can she now be found:

In all the wide-stretched prospect's ample bound,

Nor more my mournful eye

Can aught of her espy,

But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie.

Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns,
Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns,
By your delighted mother's side;

Who now your infant steps shall guide?
Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care
To every virtue would have formed your youth,
And strewed with flowers the thorny ways of truth?
O loss beyond repair!

O wretched father, left alone

To weep their dire misfortune, and thy own!
How shall thy weakened mind, oppressed with woe,
And drooping o'er thy Lucy's grave,

Perform the duties that you doubly owe,

Now she, alas! is gone,

From folly and from vice their helpless age to save!

When Walpole and the Whigs were vanquished, Lyttelton was made one of the lords of the treasury. He was afterwards a privy counsellor and chancellor of the exchequer, and was eventually elevated to the peerage. He died on the twenty-second of August, 1773, in his sixty-fifth year.

Lord Lyttelton's poetical compositions were a mere pastime. He was a

warm friend of men of genius, and deeply sympathized in every thing that concerned them. Thomson, his particular friend, died before his tragedy of Coriolanus could be brought upon the stage. The tragedy was, however, acted immediately after the death of the author, for the benefit of his relations; and to increase its effectiveness, Lyttelton wrote the following prologue, which was delivered by Quin, one of the most celebrated tragic actors of the day.

PROLOGUE TO THOMSON'S TRAGEDY OF CORIOLANUS.

I come not here your candour to implore
For scenes whose author is, alas! no more;
He wants no advocate his cause to plead;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence confined,

No sect-alike it flowed to all mankind.

He loved his friends-forgive this gushing tear:
Alas! I feel I am no actor here-

He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart,
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,

Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal,
No words can speak it, but our tears may tell..

O candid truth! O faith without a stain !

O manners gently firm, and nobly plain!

O sympathizing love of others' bliss-
Where will you find another breast like his !
Such was the man: the poet well you know;
Oft has he touched your hearts with tender woe;
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause,
You heard him teach from Virtue's purest laws;
For his chaste muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire;

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
O may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add to grace his tomb:
Whilst he, superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet if to those whom most on earth he loved,
From whom his pious care is now removed,
With whom his liberal hand, and bounteous heart,
Shared all his little fortune could impart :

If to those friends your kind regard shall give
What they no longer can from his receive,
That, that, even now, above yon starry pole,
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.

When Quin spoke the lines—

He loved his friends-forgive the gushing tear:
Alas! I feel I am no actor here-

many of the audience wept audibly.

Lyttelton's most important works are The Conversion of St. Paul, and the History of the Reign of Henry II. The former is a short but excellent treatise, and is still regarded as one of the most subsidiary bulwarks of Christianity; and the latter abounds with information, and is written in a spirit of justice and impartiality. These valuable works, and his patronage of literary men, constitute the chief claim of Lord Lyttelton upon the regard of posterity.

Lecture the Forty-Fifth.

THOMAS REID-ROBERT LOWTH-HUGH FARMER-HUGH BLAIR-GEORGE CAMPBELL-RICHARD HURD-RICHARD PRICE-ADAM SMITH-WILLIAM HARRISGEORGE HORNE-JOSEPH PRIESTLEY-SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

ROM the historians who occupied our attention during the last lecture,

we pass to their remaining contemporaries in other departments of literature. Of these the first that we shall notice are Reid, Lowth, Farmer, Blair, Campbell, and Hurd.

THOMAS REID was the son of the Rev. Lewis Reid, and was born at Strachan, in Kincardinshire, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1710. He commenced his studies at the parish school of Kincardine, and thence passed, in his twelfth year, to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he took his master's degree, and afterwards studied theology. For some time after he had completed his theological studies, Reid devoted himself to mathematics; and such was his proficiency in this department of learning, that he often, in the absence of the professor, supplied his place. Being now ordained, he obtained the living of New Machar, in Aberdeenshire; but in 1752, he relinquished this situation for the professorship of moral philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. While at Aberdeen he so greatly distinguished himself, that the degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon him, and his name became familiar to the literary circles throughout his native country. In 1763, he relinquished his professorship at Aberdeen, for the same chair in the university of Glasgow, and there remained until his death, which occurred on the seventh of October, 1796.

In 1764, Dr. Reid published his Inquiry into the Human Mind, as a designed attack on the ideal theory, and on the skeptical conclusions which Hume deduced from it. The author had the candor to submit the work in manuscript to Hume, and the latter, with his usual complacency and good nature, acknowledged the merit of the treatise. In 1785, Reid published his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, and three years after, those on the Active Powers.