who possess unusual powers of memory with respect to any one class of objects are commonly as remarkably deficient in some of the other applications of that faculty. I knew a person who, though completely ignorant of Latin, was able to repeat over thirty or forty lines of Virgil, after having heard them once read to him—not, indeed, with perfect exactness, but with such a degree of resemblance as (all circumstances considered) was truly astonishing; yet this person (who was in the condition of a servant) was singularly deficient in memory in all cases in which that faculty is of real practical utility. He was noted in every family in which he had been employed for habits of forgetfulness, and could scarcely deliver an ordinary message without committing some blunder.

A similar observation, I can almost venture to say, will be found to apply to by far the greater number of those in whom this faculty seems to exhibit a preternatural or anomalous degree of force. The varieties of memory are indeed wonderful, but they ought not to be confounded with inequalities of memory. One man is distinguished by a power of recollecting names, and dates, and genealogies; a second, by the multiplicity of speculations and of general conclusions treasured up in his intellect; a third, by the facility with which words and combinations of words (the very words of a speaker or of an author) seem to lay hold of his mind; a fourth, by the quickness with which he seizes and appropriates the sense and meaning of an author, while the phraseology and style seem altogether to escape his notice; a fifth, by his memory for poetry; a sixth, by his memory for music; a seventh, by his memory for architecture, statuary, and painting, and all the other objects of taste which are addressed to the eye. All these different powers seem miraculous to those who do not possess them; and as they are apt to be supposed by superficial observers to be commonly united in the same individuals, they contribute much to encourage those exaggerated estimates concerning the original inequalities among men in respect to this faculty which I am now endeavouring to reduce to their first standard.

As the great purpose to which this faculty is subservient is to enable us to collect and to retain, for the future regulation of our conduct, the results of our past experience, it is evident that the degree of perfection which it attains in the case of different persons must vary; first, with the faculty of making the original acquisition; secondly, with the permanence of the acquisition; and thirdly, with the quickness or readiness with which the individual is able, on particular occasions, to apply it to use. The qualities, therefore, of a good memory are, in the first place, to be susceptible; secondly, to be retentive; and thirdly, to be ready.

It is but rarely that these three qualities are united in the same person. We often, indeed, meet with a memory which is at once susceptible and ready; but I doubt much if such memories be commonly very retentive; for the same set of habits which are favourable to the first two qualities are adverse to the third. Those individuals, for example, who, with a view to conversation, make a constant business of informing themselves with respect to the popular topics of the day, or of turning over the ephemeral publications subservient to the amusement or to the politics of the

times, are naturally led to cultivate a susceptibility and readiness of memory, but have no inducement to aim at that permanent retention of selected ideas which enables the scientific student to combine the most remote materials, and to concentrate at will, on a particular object, all the scattered lights of his experience and of his reflections. Such men (as far as my observation has reached) seldom possess a familiar or correct acquaintance even with those classical remains of our own earlier writers which have ceased to furnish topics of discourse to the circles of fashion. A stream of novelties is perpetually passing through their minds, and the faint impressions which it leaves soon vanish to make way for others, like the traces which the ebbing tide leaves upon the sand. Nor is this all. In proportion as the associating principles which lay the foundation of susceptibility and readiness predominate in the memory, those which form the basis of our more solid and lasting acquisitions may be expected to be weakened, as a natural consequence of the general laws of our intellectual frame.

Stewart's works, edited by Sir William Hamilton, with a Life by Professor Veitch, appeared in 1854-58 in eleven volumes; and see H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters (1902).

Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), long the Nestor of literary Edinburgh, was an imitator of Sterne in sentiment, pathos, and style, more careful of the proprieties, less addicted to excursiveness, but vastly inferior in originality, force, and humour. The son of an Edinburgh physician, he was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh, and made the law his profession. To qualify for work in the Exchequer Court, he went to London in 1765 and studied the English Exchequer practice; and on his return to Edinburgh he was made free of its literary circles, which then included men like Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, and Blair. In 1771 appeared his novel, The Man of Feeling, which was followed by The Man of the World (1773) and Julia de Roubigné (1777). Mackenzie was by far the most frequent and important contributor to the Mirror and Lounger, the first periodicals of the kind in Scotland, both of which he founded and edited (1779-80 and 1785-87); and he wrote some dramatic pieces, which were brought out at Edinburgh with but indifferent success. In the Mirror and the Lounger he imitated Addison rather closely, and was even called by Scott 'the Northern Addison.' At some time or another he imitated, deliberately or unconsciously, the most conspicuous writers of the century-not merely the Spectator group and Sterne, but Richardson, Fielding, and others. He accordingly never attained to distinction or individuality, but his style is always good and wonderfully free from Scotticisms. In the Lounger he had the glory of introducing Robert Burns to the Edinburgh wits and wider circles. The friend of David Hume, he was still reading papers in the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1812; and after 1820 was the life of the company and one of the most active sportsmen in shooting-parties at Abbotsford, along with Scott

himself and Sir Humphry Davy. And it was largely by a paper of his on the German theatre (1788) that interest had been awakened in Scotland in German literature. He supported the Government of Pitt in pamphlets written with great acuteness. In real life the sentimental novelist was shrewd and practical; he had early exhausted his vein of romance, and was an active man of business. And it is curious to remember that the Man of Feeling was much addicted to cockfighting! In 1804 the Government appointed him to the office of comptroller of taxes for Scotland, a lucrative post which entailed much drudgery. In this office, enjoying the society of his family, his many friends, and his favourite sports of the field, writing occasionally on subjects of taste and literature (for 'the old stump,' he said, 'would still occasionally send forth a few green shoots'), Mackenzie lived to the age of eighty-six.

His first novel is on the whole the best of his works, unless we rank above it some of his short contributions to the Mirror and Lounger, such as the tale of La Roche, an idealised sketch of David Hume. There is no regular story in the Man of Feeling; but the character of Harley, is bashfulness and excessive delicacy, entertain the reader, though the whole is very unlike real life. His adventures in London, the talk of club and park frequenters, his visit to Bedlam, and his relief of the old soldier and his daughter, are partly modelled on the affected sentimental style of the inferior romances, but show a facility in moral and pathetic portraiture that had till then been surpassed by Richardson alone. The character of Sir Thomas Sindall-Mackenzie's Lovelaceis forced and unnatural; his plots and intrigues imply a deliberate villainy and defiance of public opinion quite incredible in view of his rank and position in the world; and his deathbed sensibility and penitence are undoubtedly out of keeping with the rest of his character. The 'romantic' adventures of young Annesly among the Indians are described with much spirit. Julia de Roubigné, still more melancholy than the Man of the World, has no gorgeous descriptions to relieve the misery and desolation which overwhelm a group of innocents whom for their virtues the reader would wish to see happy. By this novel Mackenzie took a decided place amongst the literary abolitionists who followed Mrs Aphra Behn in denouncing West Indian slavery.

On Negro Slavery.

I have often been tempted to doubt whether there is not an error in the whole plan of negro servitude; and whether whites or creoles born in the West Indies, or perhaps cattle, after the manner of European husbandry, would not do the business better and cheaper than the slaves do. The money which the latter cost at first, the sickness-often owing to despondency of mind-to which they are liable after their arrival, and the proportion that die in consequence of it, make the machine, if it may be so called, of a plantation extremely expensive in its

operations. In the list of slaves belonging to a wealthy planter, it would astonish you to see the number unfit for service, pining under disease, a burden on their master. I am only talking as a merchant; but as a man -good Heavens! when I think of the many thousands of my fellow-creatures groaning under servitude and misery!-great God! hast thou peopled those regions of thy world for the purpose of casting out their inhabitants to chains and torture? No; thou gavest them a land teeming with good things, and lightedst up thy sun to bring forth spontaneous plenty; but the refinements of man, ever at war with thy works, have changed this scene of profusion and luxuriance into a theatre of rapine, of slavery, and of murder!

Forgive the warmth of this apostrophe! Here it would not be understood; even my uncle, whose heart

Harley sets out on his Journey-The Beggar and his Dog.

He had taken leave of his aunt on the eve of his intended departure; but the good lady's affection for her nephew interrupted her sleep, and early as it was, next morning when Harley came down-stairs to set out, he found her in the parlour with a tear on her cheek, and her candle-cup in her hand. She knew enough of physic to prescribe against going abroad of a morning with an empty stomach. She gave her blessings with the draught; her instructions she had delivered the night before. They consisted mostly of negatives; for London, in her idea, was so replete with temptations, that it needed the whole armour of her friendly cautions to repel their attacks.

Peter stood at the door. We have mentioned this

faithful fellow formerly. Harley's father had taken him up an orphan, and saved him from being cast on the parish; and he had ever since remained in the service of him and of his son. Harley shook him by the hand as he passed, smiling, as if he had said: 'I will not weep.' He sprung hastily into the chaise that waited for him; Peter folded up the step. My dear master,' said he, shaking the solitary lock that hung on either side of his head, I have been told as how London is a sad place.' He was choked with the thought, and his benediction could not be heard. But it shall be heard, honest Peter ! where these tears will add to its energy.

In a few hours Harley reached the inn where he proposed breakfasting; but the fulness of his heart would not suffer him to eat a morsel. He walked out on the road, and gaining a little height, stood gazing on the quarter he had left. He looked for his wonted prospect, his fields, his woods, and his hills; they were lost in the distant clouds ! He pencilled them on the clouds, and bade them farewell with a sigh!

He sat down on a large stone to take out a little pebble from his shoe, when he saw, at some distance, a beggar approaching him. He had on a loose sort of coat, mended with different-coloured rags, amongst which the blue and the russet were the predominant. He had a short knotty stick in his hand, and on the top of it was stuck a ram's horn; his knees (though he was no pilgrim) had worn the stuff of his breeches; he wore no shoes, and his stockings had entirely lost that part of them which should have covered his feet and ankles. In his face, however, was the plump appearance of good-humour: he walked a good round pace, and a crook-legged dog trotted at his heels.

'Our delicacies,' said Harley to himself, 'are fantastic: they are not in nature! that beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted, while I have lost the most delightful dream in the world from the smallest of them happening to get into my shoe.'-The beggar had by this time come up, and, pulling off a piece of hat, asked charity of Harley; the dog began to beg too :-it was impossible to resist both; and, in truth, the want of shoes and stockings had made both unnecessary, for Harley had destined sixpence for him before. The beggar, on receiving it, poured forth blessings without number; and, with a sort of smile on his countenance, said to Harley, that if he wanted his fortune told 'Harley turned his eye briskly on the beggar: it was an unpromising look for the subject of a prediction, and silenced the prophet immediately. I would much rather learn,' said Harley, 'what it is in your power to tell me your trade must be an entertaining one sit down on this stone, and let me know something of your profession; I have often thought of turning fortune-teller for a week or two myself.'

'Master,' replied the beggar, 'I like your frankness much; God knows I had the humour of plain dealing in me from a child; but there is no doing with it in this world; we must live as we can, and lying is, as you call it, my profession: but I was in some sort forced to the trade, for I dealt once in telling truth.

'I was a labourer, sir, and gained as much as to make me live: I never laid by, indeed; for I was reckoned a piece of a wag, and your wags, I take it, are seldom rich, Mr Harley.' 'So,' said Harley, 'you seem to know me.' Ay, there are few folks in the county that I don't know something of; how should I tell fortunes else?'

'True; but to go on with your story: you were a labourer, you say, and a wag; your industry, I suppose, you left with your old trade; but your humour you preserve to be of use to you in your new.'

'What signifies sadness, sir? a man grows lean on't; but I was brought to my idleness by degrees; first I could not work, and it went against my stomach to work ever after. I was seized with a jail-fever at the time of the assizes being in the county where I lived; for I was always curious to get acquainted with the felons, because they are commonly fellows of much mirth and little thought, qualities I had ever an esteem for. In the height of this fever, Mr Harley, the house where I ky took fire, and burnt to the ground; I was carried out in that condition, and lay all the rest of my illness in a barn. I got the better of my disease, however, but I was so weak that I spat blood whenever I attempted to work. I had no relation living that I knew of, and I never kept a friend above a week when I was able to joke; I seldom remained above six months in a parish, so that I might have died before I had found a settlement in any: thus I was forced to beg my bread, and a sorry trade I found it, Mr Harley. I told all my misfortunes truly, but they were seldom believed; and the few who gave me a halfpenny as they passed, did it with a shake of the head, and an injunction not to trouble them with a long story. In short, I found that people do not care to give alms without some security for their money; a wooden leg or a withered arm is a sort of draft upon Heaven for those who choose to have their money placed to account there; so I changed my plan, and, instead of telling my own misfortunes, began to prophesy happiness to others. This I found by much the better way: folks will always listen when the tale is their own; and of many who say they do not believe in fortune-telling, I have known few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned among servants and neighbours; and indeed people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose; they dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for every one is anxious to hear what they wish to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to imagine. With a tolerable good memory and some share of cunning; with the help of walking a-nights over heaths and churchyards; with this, and shewing the tricks of that there dog, whom I stole from the sergeant of a marching regiment (and, by the way, he can steal too upon occa sion), I make shift to pick up a livelihood. My trade, indeed, is none of the honestest; yet people are not much cheated neither, who give a few halfpence for a prospect of happiness, which I have heard some persons say is all a man can arrive at in this world.-But I must bid you good-day, sir; for I have three miles to walk before noon, to inform some boarding-school young ladies whether their husbands are to be peers of the realm or captains in the army; a question which I promised to answer them by that time.'

Harley had drawn a shilling from his pocket: bat Virtue bade him consider on whom he was going to bestow it.-Virtue held back his arm:-but a milder form, a younger sister of Virtue's, not so severe as Virtue, nor so serious as Pity, smiled upon him: his fingers lost their compression;-nor did Virtue offer to catch the money as it fell. It had no sooner reached the ground,

than the watchful cur (a trick he had been taught) snapped it up, and, contrary to the most approved method of stewardship, delivered it immediately into the hands of his master. (From The Man of Feeling.)

Robert Burns.

I know not if I shall be accused of such enthusiasm and partiality, when I introduce to the notice of my readers a poet of our own country, with whose writings I have lately become acquainted; but if I am not greatly deceived, I think I may safely pronounce him a genius of no ordinary rank. The person to whom I allude is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman, whose poems were some time ago published in a county town in the west of Scotland, with no other ambition, it would seem, than to circulate among the inhabitants of the county where he was born, to obtain a little fame from those who had heard of his talents. I hope I shall not be thought to assume too much if I endeavour to place him in a higher point of view, to call for a verdict of his country on the merit of his works, and to claim for him those honours which their excellence appears to deserve.

In mentioning the circumstance of his humble station, I mean not to rest his pretensions solely on that title, or to urge the merits of his poetry when considered in relation to the lowness of his birth, and the little opportunity of improvement which his education could afford. These particulars, indeed, might excite our wonder at his productions; but his poetry, considered abstractedly, and without the apologies arising from his situation, seems to me fully entitled to command our feelings, and to obtain our applause. One bar, indeed, his birth and education have opposed to his fame,-the language in which most of his poems are written. Even in Scotland, the provincial dialect which Ramsay and he have used is now read with a difficulty which greatly damps the pleasure of the reader in England it cannot be read at all, without such a constant reference to a glossary as nearly to destroy that pleasure. . . . [Here Mackenzie quotes a long extract from the 'Vision' and the whole of the 'Mountain Daisy.]

The power of genius is not less admirable in tracing the manners than in painting the passions, or in drawing the scenery of nature. That intuitive glance with which a writer like Shakespeare discerns the characters of men, with which he catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than to assign the cause. Though I am very far from meaning to compare our rustic bard to Shakespeare, yet whoever will read his lighter and more humorous poems, his Dialogue of the Dogs, his Dedication to GH, Esq., his Epistles to a Young Friend, and to W. S -n, will perceive with what uncommon penetration and sagacity this heaven-taught ploughman, from his humble and unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners. Against some passages of those last-mentioned poems, it has been objected that they breathe a spirit of libertinism and irreligion. But if we consider the ignorance and fanaticism of the lower class of people in the country where these poems were written, a fanaticism of that pernicious sort which sets faith in opposition to good works, the fallacy and danger of which a mind so enlightened as our poet's could not but perceive, we shall not look upon his lighter muse as the enemy of religion, (of which in several places he expresses the justest sentiments,) though she has some

times been a little unguarded in her ridicule of hypoc risy. In this as in other respects it must be allowed that there are exceptionable parts of the volume he has given to the public, which caution would have suppressed, or correction struck out; but poets are seldom cautious, and our poet had, alas! no friends or companions from whom correction could be obtained. When we reflect on his rank in life, the habits to which he must have been subject, and the society in which he must have mixed, we regret perhaps more than wonder that delicacy should be so often offended in perusing a volume in which there is so much to interest and to please us.

Burns possesses the spirit as well as the fancy of a poet. That honest pride and independence of soul which are sometimes the muse's only dower, break forth on every occasion in his works. It may be, then, I shall wrong his feelings while I indulge my own, in calling the attention of the public to his situation and circumstances. That condition, humble as it was, in which he found content and wooed the muse might not have been deemed uncomfortable; but grief and misfortunes have reached him there; and one or two of his poems hint, what I have learnt from some of his countrymen, that he has been obliged to form the resolution of leaving his native land, to seek under a West-Indian clime that shelter and support which Scotland has denied him. But I trust means may be found to prevent this resolution from taking place; and that I do my country no more than justice when I suppose her ready to stretch out her hand to cherish and retain this native poet, whose wood-notes wild' possess so much excellence. To repair the wrongs of suffering or neglected merit; to call forth genius from the obscurity in which it had pined indignant, and place it where it may profit or delight the world; these are exertions which give to wealth an enviable superiority, to greatness and to patronage a laudable pride.

(From The Lounger, 9th Dec. 1786.)

See Robert Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen (1834); H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1902).

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), a great chemist, an original and unorthodox theologian, and a Radical and unpopular political thinker, was born, a cloth-dresser's son, at Fieldhead in Birstall parish, near Leeds, 13th March 1733, and was carefully trained in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism by his pious mother. He learnt French and High Dutch enough to translate and write business letters in both languages for an uncle. After four years at a Dissenting academy at Daventry, in 1755 he became Presbyterian minister at Needham Market, and wrote The Scripture Doctrine of Remission, denying that Christ's death was a sacrifice, and rejecting the Trinity and Atonement. In 1758 he removed to Nantwich, where he ministered to a small congregation; several 'travelling Scotchmen' or pedlars who frequented the place he found to his surprise were none of them at all Calvinistical. Priestley became a tutor at Warrington Academy in 1761. In yearly visits to London he met Franklin, who supplied him with books for his History of Electricity (1767). In 1764 he was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, and in 1766 F.R.S. In 1767 he became

minister of a chapel at Mill Hill, Leeds, where he took up the study of chemistry. In 1774, as literary companion, he accompanied Lord Shelburne on a Continental tour, and published Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. But at home he was branded as an atheist in spite of his Disquisition relating to Matter and Spirit (1777), affirming from revelation our hope of resurrection. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1772, and to the St Petersburg Academy in 1780, and in 1780 too he became minister of a chapel at Birmingham. His History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782) and his History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ (1786) occasioned renewed controversy. His reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution secured him formal citizenship of the republic and election to the convention as deputy for Orne; an earlier and more important consequence for him was that it led a Birmingham mob first to wreck his chapel, and then break into his house and destroy its contents (1791). He now settled as a Unitarian minister and successor to Dr Price at Hackney, but in 1794 removed to America, where he was heartily received, and became a more convinced Republican and a more pronounced Unitarian; finally at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, he died, believing himself to hold the doctrines of the primitive Christians, and looking for the second coming of Christ. Priestley is justly called the father of the newer or pneumatic chemistry (as opposed to the phlogiston theory which his discoveries exploded); good authorities (see Nature, xlii. 1890) defend the priority of his discovery of oxygen (1774) and of the composition of water (1781), and deny Lavoisier's claim to be considered an independent discoverer. It was Priestley, not Bentham, who first coined the phrase 'The greatest happiness of the greatest number;' and the sentiment from the Corruptions of Christianity is characteristic: 'As the greatest things often take rise from the smallest beginnings, so the worst things sometimes proceed from good intentions.'

The following paragraphs are from Priestley's autobiographical Memoirs, the first extract having been written at Birmingham in 1787, the second in 1795, after he had settled in the United States:

I esteem it a singular happiness to have lived in an age and country in which I have been at full liberty both to investigate, and by preaching and writing to propagate, religious truth; that though the freedom I have used for this purpose was for some time disadvantageous to me, it was not so long, and that my present situation is such that I can with the greatest openness urge whatever appears to me to be the truth of the gospel, not only without giving the least offence, but with the entire approbation of those with whom I am particularly connected. As to the dislike which I have drawn upon myself by my writings, whether that of the Calvinistic party in or out of the church of England, those who rank with rational dissenters (but who have been exceedingly offended at my carrying my inquiries farther than they wished any person to do), or whether they be unbelievers,

I am thankful that it gives less disturbance to me than it does to themselves, and that their dislike is much more than compensated by the cordial esteem and approbation of my conduct by a few whose minds are congenial to my own, and especially that the number of such persons increases.

About two years before I left Birmingham the question about the test act was much agitated both in and out of parliament. This, however, was altogether without any concurrence of mine. I only delivered, and published, a sermon on the 5th of November 1789, recommending the most peaceable method of pursuing our object. Mr Madan, however, the most respectable clergyman in the town, preaching and publishing a most inflammatory sermon on the subject, inveighing in the bitterest manner against the Dissenters in general, and myself in particular, I addressed a number of familiar letters to the inhabitants of Birmingham in our defence. This produced a reply from him, and other letters from me. mine were written in an ironical and rather a pleasant manner, and in some of the last of them I introduced a farther reply to Mr Burn, another clergyman in Birmingham, who had addressed to me letters on the infallibility of the testimony of the Apostles concerning the person of Christ, after replying to his first set of Letters, in a separate publication.

All

From these small pieces I was far from expecting any serious consequences. But the Dissenters in general being very obnoxious to the court, and it being imagined, though without any reason, that I had been the chief promoter of the measures which gave them offence, the clergy, not only in Birmingham, but through all England, seemed to make it their business, by writing in the public papers, by preaching, and other methods, to inflame the minds of the people against me. And on occasion of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution on July 14th, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the meeting house in which I preached, then another meeting house in the town, and then my dwelling house, demolishing my library, apparatus, and, as far as they could, every thing belonging to me. They also burned, or much damaged, the houses of many Dissenters, chiefly my friends; the particulars of which I need not recite, as they will be found in two Appeals which I published on the subject written presently after the riots.

Being in some personal danger on this occasion, I went to London; and so violent was the spirit of party which then prevailed, that I believe I could hardly have been safe in any other place. There, however, I was per fectly so, though I continued to be an object of troublesome attention until I left the country altogether. It shewed no small degree of courage and friendship in Mr William Vaughan to receive me into his house, and also in Mr Salte, with whom I spent a month at Tottenham. But it shewed more in Dr Price's congregation at Hackney, to invite me to succeed him, which they did, though not unanimously, some time after my arrival in London.

In this situation I found myself as happy as I had been at Birmingham, and contrary to general expectation, I opened my lectures to young persons with great success, being attended by many from London; and though I lost some of the hearers, I left the congregation in a better situation than that in which I found it.