discernible only by the eye of his own mind, but a real model which he did not make, and which he cannot alter. Yet his is not a mere mechanical imitation. The triumph of his skill is to select such parts as may produce the effect of the whole, to bring out strongly all the characteristic features, and to throw the light and shade in such a manner as may heighten the effect. This skill, as far as we can judge from the unfinished work now before us, Sir James Mackintosh possessed in an eminent degree. The style of this Fragment is weighty, manly, and unaffected. There are, as we have said, some expressions which seem to us harsh, and some which we think inaccurate. These would probably have been corrected, if Sir James had lived to superintend the publication. We ought to add that the printer has by no means done his duty. One misprint in particular is so serious as to require notice. Sir James Mackintosh has paid a high and just tribute to the genius, the integrity, and the courage of a good and great man, a distinguished ornament of English literature, a fearless champion of English liberty, Thomas Burnet, Master of the Charter-House, and author of that most eloquent and imaginative work, the Telluris Theoria Sacra. Wherever the name of this celebrated man occurs, it is printed Bennet,' both in the text and in the index. This cannot be mere negligence. It is plain that Thomas Burnet and his writings were never heard of by the gentleman who has been employed to edite this volume; and who, not content with deforming Sir James Mackintosh's text by such blunders, has prefixed to it a calumnious Memoir, has appended to it a most unworthy Continuation, and has thus succeeded in expanding the volume into one of the thickest, and debasing it into one of the worst that we ever saw. Never did we see so admirable an illustration of the old Greek proverb, which tells us that half is sometimes more than the whole. Never did we see a case in which the increase of the bulk was so evidently a diminution of the value. Why such an artist was selected to deface so fine a Torso, we cannot pretend to conjecture. We read that, when the Consul Mummius, after the taking of Corinth, was preparing to send to Rome some works of the greatest Grecian sculptors, he told the packers that if they broke his Venus or his Apollo, he would force them to restore the limbs which should be wanting. A head by a hewer of mile-stones joined to a bosom by Praxiteles, would not surprise or shock us more than this Supplement. The Memoir contains much that is worth reading; for it contains many extracts from the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh. But when we pass from what the biographer has done with his scissors to what he has done with his pen, we find nothing worthy of approbation. Instead of confining himself to the only work which he is competent to perform-that of relating facts in plain words-he favours us with his opinions about Lord Bacon, and about the French literature of the age of Louis XIV.; and with opinions, more absurd still, about the poetry of Homer, whom it is evident, from his criticisms, that he cannot read in the original. He affects, and for aught we know, feels something like contempt, for the celebrated man whose life he has undertaken to write, and whom he was incompetent to serve in the capacity even of a corrector of the press. Our readers may form a notion of the spirit in which the whole narrative is composed, from expressions which occur at the beginning. This biographer tells us that Mackintosh, on occasion of taking his medical Degree at Edinburgh, not only put off the writing of his Thesis to the last moment, but was an hour behind his time on the day of 'examination, and kept the Academic Senate waiting for him in full Conclave.' This irregularity, which no sensible professor would have thought deserving of more than a slight reprimand, is described by the biographer, after a lapse of nearly half a century, as an incredible instance not so much of in'dolence as of gross negligence and bad taste.' But this is not all. Our biographer has contrived to procure a copy of the Thesis, and has sate down with his As in præsenti and his Propria quæ maribus at his side, to pick out blunders in a composition written by a youth of twenty-one, on the occasion alluded to. He finds one mistake-such a mistake as the greatest scholar might commit when in haste, and as the veriest schoolboy would detect when at leisure. He glories over this precious discovery with all the exultation of a pedagogue. 'Deceived by the passive termination of the deponent verb de'fungor, Mackintosh misuses it in a passive sense.' He is not equally fortunate in his other discovery. Laude conspurcare,' whatever he may think, is not an improper phrase. Mackintosh meant to say that there are men whose praise is a disgrace. No person, we are sure, who has read this Memoir, will doubt that there are men whose abuse is an honour. But we must proceed to more important matters. This writer evidently wishes to impress his readers with a belief that Sir James Mackintosh, from interested motives, abandoned the doctrines of the Vindiciae Gallica.' Had his statements appeared in their natural place, we should leave them to their natural fate. We would not stoop to defend Sir James Mackintosh from the attacks of fourth-rate magazines and pot-house newspapers. But here his own fame is turned against him. A book of which not one copy would ever have been bought, but for his name in the titlepage, is made the vehicle of the slander. Under such circumstances, we cannot help exclaiming, in the words of one of the most amiable of Homer's heroes, • Νυν τις ἐνησιης Πατροκλος δειλοίο Μνησάσθω, πᾶσιν γὰρ ἐπίστατο μειλιχος είναι We have no difficulty in admitting, that, during the ten or twelve years which followed the appearance of the Vindicia Gallicæ,' the opinions of Sir James Mackintosh underwent some change. But did this change pass on him alone? Was it not common? Was it not almost universal? Was there one honest friend of liberty in Europe or in America whose ardour had not been damped, whose faith in the high destinies of mankind had not been shaken? Was there one observer to whom the French Revolution, or revolutions in general, appeared in exactly the same light on the day when the Bastile fell, and on the day when the Girondists were dragged to the scaffold,-the day when the Directory shipped off their principal opponents for Guiana, or the day when the Legislative Body was driven from its hall at the point of the bayonet ? We do not speak of enthusiastic and light-minded people-of wits like Sheridan, or poets like Alfieri; but of the most virtuous and intelligent practical statesmen, and of the deepest, the calmest, the most impartial political speculators of that time. What was the language and conduct of Lord Spenser, of Lord Fitzwilliam, of Mr Grattan? What is the tone of M. Dumont's Memoirs, written just at the close of the eighteenth century? What Tory could have spoken with greater disgust and contempt of the French Revolution and its authors? Nay, this writer, a republican, and the most upright and zealous of republicans, has gone so far as to say that Mr Burke's work on the Revolution had saved Europe. The name of M. Dumont naturally suggests that of Mr Bentham. He, we presume, was not ratting for a place; and what language did he hold at that time? Look at his little treatise entitled Sophismes Anarchiques.' In that treatise he says, that the atrocities of the Revolution were the natural consequences of the absurd principles on which it was commenced ;-that while the chiefs of the constituent assembly gloried in the thought that they were pulling down aristocracy, they never saw that their doctrines tended to produce an evil a hundred times more formidable—anarchy; that the theory laid down in the Declaration of the • Rights of Man' had, in a great measure, produced the crimes of 6 the Reign of Terror;-that none but an eyewitness could imagine the horrors of a state of society in which comments on that Declaration were put forth by men with no food in their bellies, with rags on their backs, and with arms in their hands. He praises the English Parliament for the dislike which it has always shown to abstract reasonings, and to the affirming of general principles. In M. Dumont's preface to the Treatise on the Principles of Le'gislation'-a preface written under the eye of Mr Bentham, and published with his sanction-are the following still more remarkable expressions:-M. Bentham est bien loin d'attacher une préférence 'exclusive à aucune forme de gouvernement. Il pense que la 'meilleure constitution pour un peuple est celle à laquelle il est 'accoutumé......Le vice fondamental des théories sur les consti'tutions politiques, c'est de commencer par attaquer celles qui 'existent, et d'exciter tout au moins des inquiétudes et des jalou'sies de pouvoir. Une telle disposition n'est point favorable au 'perfectionnement des lois. La seule époque où l'on puisse entre'prendre avec succès de grandes réformes de législation, est 'celle où les passions publiques sont calmes, et où le governe❝ment jouit de la stabilité la plus grande. L'objet de M. Bentham, en cherchant dans le vice des lois la cause de la plupart 'des maux, a été constamment d'éloigner le plus grand de tous, 'le bouleversement de l'autorité, les révolutions de propriété et ' de pouvoir.' To so conservative a frame of mind had the excesses of the French Revolution brought the most uncompromising reformers of that time. And why is one person to be singled out from among millions, and arraigned before posterity as a traitor to his opinions, only because events produced on him the effect which they produced on a whole generation ? This biographer may, for aught we know, have revelations from heaven like Mr Percival, or pure anticipated cognitions like the disciples of Kant. But such poor creatures as Mackintosh, Dumont, and Bentham, had nothing but observation and reason to guide them; and they obeyed the guidance of observation and of reason. How is it in physics? A traveller falls in with a fruit which he had never before seen. He tastes it, and finds it sweet and refreshing. He praises it, and resolves to introduce it into his own country. But in a few minutes he is taken violently sick; he is convulsed; he is at the point of death; no medicine gives him relief. He of course pronounces this delicious food a poison, blames his own folly in tasting it, and cautions his friends against it. After a long and violent struggle he recovers, and finds himself much exhausted by his sufferings, but free from some chronic com plaints which had been the torment of his life. He then changes We his opinion again, and pronounces this fruit a very powerful remedy, which ought to be employed only in extreme cases, and with great caution, but which ought not to be absolutely excluded from the Pharmacopoea.' And would it not be the height of absurdity to call such a man fickle and inconsistent, because he had repeatedly altered his judgment? If he had not altered his judgment, would he have been a rational being? It was exactly the same with the French Revolution. That event was a new phenomenon in politics. Nothing that had gone before enabled any person to judge with certainty of the course which affairs might take. At first the effect was the reform of great abuses, and honest men rejoiced. Then came commotion, proscription, confiscation, the bankruptcy, the assignats, the maximum, civil war, foreign war, revolutionary tribunals, guillotinades, noyades, fusillades. Yet a little while, and a military despotism rose out of the confusion, and threatened the independence of every state in Europe. And yet again a little while, and the old dynasty returned, followed by a train of emigrants eager to restore the old abuses. We have now, we think, the whole before us. should therefore be justly accused of levity or insincerity if our language concerning those events were constantly changing. It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind. But it was not only natural, but, inevitable, that those who had only seen the first act should be ignorant of the catastrophe, and should be alternately elated and depressed as the plot went on disclosing itself to them. A man who had held exactly the same opinion about the Revolution in 1789, in 1794, in 1804, in 1814, and in 1834, would have been either a divinely inspired prophet, or an obstinate fool. Mackintosh was neither. He was simply a wise and good man; and the change which passed on his mind was a change which passed on the mind of almost every wise and good man in Europe. In fact, few of his contemporaries changed so little. The rare moderation and calmness of his temper preserved him alike from extravagant elation, and from extravagant despondency. He was never a Jacobin. He was never an Antijacobin. His mind oscillated undoubtedly; but the extreme points of the oscillation were not very remote. Herein he differed greatly from some persons of distinguished talents who entered into life at nearly the same time with him. Such persons we have seen rushing from one wild extreme to another,out-Paining Paine,-out-Castlereaghing Castlereagh,-Pantisocratists,-ultra-Tories,-Heretics,-Persecutors,-breaking the old laws against sedition,-calling for new and sharper laws against sedition,-writing democratic dramas,—writing Laureat |