and justly censured for many objectionable sentiments which he had advanced in his share of the publication. He died in 1773.

Abraham Tucker.

BORN A. D. 1705.-DIED A. D. 1774.

ALTHOUGH the name of Abraham Tucker is not even mentioned in some general biographical dictionaries, and is passed over in silence in Mr Stewart's Dissertation on the progress of metaphysical, ethical, and political philosophy,' yet the recommendation of no less illustrious a man than Dr Paley, who says of him in the preface to his 'Moral and Politica Philosophy,' "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;" and the high eulogium pronounced upon him by a still more distinguished name in metaphysical literature, Sir James Mackintosh, sufficiently warrant us to assign him an ample niche in our temple.

Tucker was born in London, of a Somersetshire family, on the 2d of September, 1705. His father, a wealthy merchant, dying soon afterwards, the care of his early education devolved on his maternal uncle, Sir Isaac Tillard, a man of great private worth. Young Tucker received the rudiments of his education at Bishop's Stortford, and in 1721 was entered as a gentleman commoner in Merton college, Oxford. Having passed through the usual course of a liberal education, and particularly applied himself to metaphysics and mathematics, he went into chambers in the Inner Temple about the year 1724, where for some time he devoted himself very assiduously to the study of law. In 1727 he purchased Batchworth castle, near Dorking, where he turned his attention to rural affairs, and spent a good deal of his time in the pursuits and amusements proper to a rich country gentleman. He had no turn for politics, and declined for this reason to offer himself as a representative for his county, though often solicited to do so. On the only occasion on which he ever took a part in public business, his political adversaries thought his appearance sufficiently ridiculous to render it the burden of a burlesque ballad; but Tucker did not feel at all sore upon the matter, and was so much amused with the figure which he made in verse that he set the ballad to music.

Mr Tucker was peculiarly fortunate in his domestic relations; and some of the finest and most touching passages in his great work have a reference to his felicity in this respect. His wife died in 1754, an event which overwhelmed him in the deepest affliction; and it was soon after this, and partly with a view to occupy and divert his mind, that he first turned his attention to the composition of that work which has won for him the approbation of two such competent judges, and is likely to hand his name down to posterity as one of the most distinguished of English metaphysicians. His first appearance as an author was in 1763, when in order to ascertain what reception he was likely to meet with from the public in the character of a writer on ethics, he put forth a sort of feeler in a small octavo volume under the title of Freewill, Foreknowledge, and Fate, a fragment by Edward Search.' This book consists, for the

most part, of a long chapter on Freewill, with a running commentary by Cuthbert Comment, a personage who performs the part of an interlocutor, and calls in question several of Search's positions. It was a peculiar conceit of Tucker's never to publish any thing under his own naine. His preference for the name of Search-under which the fraginent above-mentioned, and the first volumes of the extended work, were published—may be explained by an observation, which repeatedly occurs in his writings, to the effect that all the philosophers who had ever appeared belonged either to the family of the Searches, or that of the Know-alls. The minor works published by Tucker during his lifetime, were The Country Gentleman's advice to his Son on the subject of Party Clubs, which appeared in 1755; a tract, entitled 'Man in quest of himself, by Cuthbert Comment,' being a reply to some strictures which appeared in the Monthly Review in 1763; and a short treatise on Vocal Sounds.' Of his great work, The Light of Nature,' he made several sketches before he finally decided on the method he should pursue; and after he had ultimately arranged and digested the materials, twice transcribed the whole portion of that part of the work which was published before his death, in his own hand. The first two volumes, in five parts, were published by himself in 1768. For several years previous to his death he was affected with cataracts in his eyes, which terminated at last in total blindness; but with the aid of his daughter, and some mechanical contrivances for writing, he still went on with his work, until, in 1774, the whole was ready for the press. Before, however, the necessary arrangements were concluded for its publication, he was seized with an illness which proved fatal; and, on the 20th of November, 1774, he died as he had lived, with perfect calmness and resignation. The third volume of The Light of Nature,' in four parts, was published by his daughter three years after his death. The whole, as bound up, made seven octavo volumes, which were favourably noticed by the reviewers as they came out, but upon the whole attracted no particular attention. A second edition, in eight volumes octavo, was published in 1805; and an excellent abridgment of it by the author of 'An essay on the principles of human action,' in 1807.

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The Light of Nature' opens with an account of human nature as it exists in this world; the author then proceeds to speak of its capacities with respect to a future life, and of what may be expected either here or hereafter from the government and providence of God, so far as these are unfolded by the light of nature; afterwards he calls in the aid of revelation, investigates its foundation and evidences, explains wherein revelation and nature differ and wherein they agree, and proceeds to consider, with the aid of their united light, some of the most interesting questions respecting the Divine economy, and man's duties, and destiny. The author of the abridgment to which we have already referred, who must be allowed to have made himself a most competent judge, affirms of the larger work: "I do not know of any work in the shape of a philosophical treatise, that contains so much good sense so agreeably expressed. The character of the work is, in this respect, altogether singular. Amidst all the abstruseness of the most subtle disquisitions, it is as familiar as Montaigne, and as wild and entertaining as John Buncle." Dr Parr quotes it repeatedly in the notes to his Spital sermon, and places the author of it at the very head of English mo

ralists. An equally warm but more discriminating admirer of Tucker, is Sir James Mackintosh, who thus writes of him: "It has been the remarkable fortune of this writer to have been more prized by the cultivators of the same subjects, and more disregarded by the generality even of those who read books on such matters, than perhaps any other philosopher. He had many of the qualities which might be expected in an affluent country gentleman, living in a privacy undisturbed by political zeal, and with a leisure unbroken by the calls of a profession, at a time when England had not entirely renounced her old taste for metaphysical speculation. He was naturally endowed, not indeed with more than ordinary acuteness or sensibility, nor with a high degree of reach and range of mind, but with a singular capacity for careful observation and original reflection, and with a fancy perhaps unmatched in producing various and happy illustration. The most observable of his moral qualities appear to have been prudence and cheerfulness, good nature and easy temper. The influence of his situation and character is visible in his writings. Indulging his own taste and fancies, like most English squires of his time, he became, like many of them, a sort of humorist. Hence much of his originality and independence; hence the boldness with which he openly employs illustrations from homely objects. He wrote to please himself more than the public. He had too little regard for readers, either to sacrifice his sincerity to them, or to curb his own prolixity, repetition, and egotism, from the fear of fatiguing them. Hence he became as loose, as rambling, and as much an egotist as Montaigne; but not so agreeably so, notwithstanding a considerable resemblance of genius; because he wrote on subjects where disorder and egotism are unseasonable, and for readers whom they disturb instead of amusing. His prolixity at last increased itself, when his work became so long, that repetition in the latter parts partly arose from forgetfulness of the former; and though his freedom from slavish deference to general opinion is very commendable, it must be owned that his want of a wholesome fear of the public renders the perusal of a work which is extremely interesting, and even amusing in most of its parts, on the whole a laborious task. He was by early education a believer in Christianity, if not by natural character religious. His calm good sense and accommodating temper led him rather to explain established doctrines in a manner agreeable to his philosophy than to assail them. Hence he was represented as a time-server by free-thinkers, and as a heretic by the orthodox. Living in a country where the secure tranquillity flowing from the Revolution was gradually drawing forth all mental activity towards practical pursuits and outward objects, he hastened from the rudiments of mental and moral philosophy to those branches of it which touch the business of men. Had he recast without changing his thoughts,-had he detached those ethical observations, for which he had so peculiar a vocation, from the disputes of his country and his day,—he might have thrown many of his chapters into their proper form of essays, which might have been compared, though not likened, to those of Hume. But the country gentleman, philosophic as he was, had too much fondness for his own humours to engage in a course of drudgery and deference. It may, however, be confidently added, on the authority of all those who have fairly made the experiment, that whoever, unfettered by a previous system, undertakes the