"HODNET RECTORY, 10th January 1810. "I am much gratified with the attention you have paid to my review, and with your approbation of it. The poem on Talavera is very spirited, and only unfortunate in being necessarily compared with Scott; the author is understood to be Mr. Croker. The best article, I think, in the Review is the critique on Parr, which, both in wit, taste, and good sense, is superior to almost everything of Jeffrey's. I intend, as far as my necessary business will give me time, to contribute frequently to the Quarterly Review, as it serves to keep up my acquaintance with several interesting subjects, which I might else, perhaps, neglect. "I agree with you in thinking that my Russian notes are made more conspicuous in the Quarterly Review of Clarke's Travels than the proportion they bear to the rest of the work would lead one to expect. You will not wonder, however, that he himself should be treated coolly, when I tell you that the reviewer is a staunch Muscovite, and an 'old courtier of the Queen's,' during the most splendid days of Catherine. With the Edinburgh Review, as far as good words go, both he and I have reason to be satisfied. do not, however, think that, even there, they have been sufficiently acquainted with their subject to appreciate justly his knowledge of antiquities, the liveliness of his sketches of manners, and his power of comparing one nation with another, which are, I think, his strongholds. And they show a little too plainly their constant wish to make everything a handle for politics." I This article was followed by one on Turkey, by another on Gustavus IV. of Sweden, by another on Russia, and by his translations of Pindar. The last Mr. Murray published separately in 1812, along with the "Palestine," "Europe," and "The Passage of the Red Sea," with considerable notes, in a beautiful volume, Poems and Translations by Reginald Heber, which bore this dedication: "To Richard Heber, Esquire, the following Poems are dedicated, as a tribute of gratitude to the talent, taste, and affection which he has uniformly exerted in encouraging and directing the studies of his Brother." The poet's preface thus concluded: "The pursuits of a life which, though retired, has not been idle, joined to the peculiar duties of the author's profession, have permitted few opportunities of indulging in the relaxation of poetry. If the future should present, as is far from improbable, still fewer than H these, and forbid his adding to the following trifles anything more worthy of fame, he trusts, at least, that nothing will be detected in his pages repugnant to the first interests of mankind, to the cause of Liberty or Religion." Heber's review of De L'Allemagne in 1814 led Madame de Staël to appeal to John Murray for the name of the critic; of all the reviews on her work, she said, this was the only one which had raised her opinion of the talents and acquirements of the English. Nothing abler or more comprehensive was written on Persia, on the publication of the great work of Sir John Malcolm, than Heber's review of those two splendid quartos in April 1816. Pressed by a correspondent to utter a warning as to the danger to the liberties of Europe of an alliance between Russia and France, he feared less than that the rolling down of the wave from the north against the bulwark of British India. He thought that the first check which the Russian monarchy might receive in the west would be followed by a simultaneous rising in all her eastern provinces. "At any rate, some centuries are likely to elapse before the Muscovite terminus can have advanced in this manner to the Indian Ocean." In the eighty years since that was written the advance has exceeded the wildest anticipations. In 1817 his paper on Southey's Brazil appeared, and in 1820 his criticism of Milman's poem, The Fall of Jerusalem. As he wrote that generous eulogy Heber must have thought of his own youthful triumph. With Byron in his mind, he thus closed his review: "While by a strange predilection for the coarser half of manicheism one of the mightiest spirits of the age has apparently devoted himself and his genius to the adornment and extension of evil, we may well be exhilarated by the accession of a new and potent ally to the cause of human virtue and happiness, whose example may furnish an additional evidence that purity and weakness are not synonymous, and that the torch of genius never burns so bright as when duly kindled at the altar." In a letter to R. J. Wilmot Horton he thus introduces the most representative of all his reviews : "HODNET RECTORY, 26th May 1820. "My present theme is Southey's Life of Wesley · a theme much more copious, and one which interests me a good deal. How I shall succeed in it I do not yet know; it is no easy matter to give Wesley his due praise, at the same time that I am to distinguish all that was blamable in his conduct and doctrines; and it is a very difficult matter indeed to write on such a subject at all without offending one or both of the two fiercest and foolishest parties that ever divided a Church—the High Churchmen and the Evangelicals. . . "Wilson of the palms and plague' is standing for a Professorship of History at Edinburgh. It was reported that Sir James Mackintosh was to be his rival; but Wilson, in a letter to me, makes no mention of this, nor does my brother." With a fine discrimination and catholic impartiality, the reviewer, in an essay which covers fifty-five pages, holds the balance between the Arminian John Wesley, with his extreme heresy of sinless perfection, and the Calvinist George Whitefield, with the other extreme of predestination and reprobation. With admiring satisfaction, Heber quotes the famous foundery sermon on Free Grace," in which Wesley preached the true "decree" as William Carey and Andrew Fuller learned to preach it, and he himself went to India to proclaim it—God commandeth all men everywhere to repent. The reviewer's conclusion was that no common blessing must wait on the man who, while he avoids schism, endeavours to rival John Wesley in piety, self-denial, activity, and boundless charity. Heber's letters to Miss Charlotte Dod, in these years, were full of literary and even political news, expressed with brotherly frankness and affection. A BIRTHDAY SONNET "27th December. "And shall a wreath of flattering verse be twined In honour of the Saviour's advent blow, Thus may thy beauty and thy mental powers Him follow still in love, and faith, and fear.” In sending her a new volume of Venn's sermons, he describes the author as "an excellent man, who deserved the name of Evangelical not in the sense of a foolish and presumptuous party distinction, but as the most honourable name of a Christian minister." "LINCOLN'S INN, 23rd November 1822. "... Poor Gifford has been extremely ill, and I have had again to decline in form the management of the Quarterly Review. (This is most secret.) It has been a matter of grave deliberation who shall undertake it, in the first place as Gifford's coadjutor, afterwards, probably, as his successor. My first advice has been that it should not be a clergyman; my next was to recommend a young man of great talents, but perhaps too young. I believe the choice will fall on a Mr. Coleridge, son of the crazy poet so named, and nephew to Southey. He is spoken of as a very clever man. I only hope he will be sufficiently undutiful to reject all offered communications from his father, and to prune his uncle's essays to one-half their original length. I was once inclined to suggest Lockhart, the editor of Blackwood, and author of Peter's Letters; but everybody cried out that he was too great a blackguard. Gifford is, however, now well enough to decide for himself, and again to resume, at least for the present, the management of his Review. I have been extremely busy since I came to town with an article on the Church of England, its revenues, etc. My review of Lord Byron has been very variously spoken of. I do not think the people whom I should most wish to please are satisfied with it. They say (as my dear sister did) that I am too favourable to him, and speak too mildly of infidelity and atheism. I did not mean to do so, and I will own I have been greatly mortified at finding this opinion prevalent. Nor is my mortification diminished by finding the soi-disant 'liberals' very complaisant in their expressions concerning it. Heaven grant that this disappointment may make me more cautious hereafter, as well as more indifferent to the opinions of mankind! I certainly wished to conciliate the half-infidels, but I had not the smallest thought of giving ground to them; nor do I think I have. having done so. Yet I find the unknown author is suspected of I passed, last week, a pleasant, quiet day with the Bishop of London and his family at his country house at Fulham, and should have liked, if I had had time, to stay longer. We read over the Hymns together, and he suggested many alterations, some of which I like, others I cannot agree with; yet his general principle is very good-that, namely, in all hymns and prayers we are to think of religion first and poetry afterwards; and that the cause of religion is best served by great simplicity of expression. Of my own hymns he likes the most simple best, such as that on the Innocents,1 on St. John Evangelist,2 and 'Oh, Saviour, is thy promise fled ?' To Milman's he was less favourable than I could wish. He said they were very fine poems, but rather poems than hymns. My dear sister's hymn on Good Friday 3 he liked extremely; 'from its simplicity,' he said, 'and because it seemed to come from the heart.' He asked whose it was, and I had pleasure (as I always have) in saying some little of what I think of you. He strongly encourages me to add a selection of psalms to my hymns, and advises that some of what he called 'the poems' should be thrown into an appendix, under the name not of 'hymns' but 'religious poetry.' During the whole visit I was much struck by his calm, quiet manner and his apparent earnestness while talking on religious subjects. In quoting different devotional passages of the Psalms, his eyes glistened and his voice faltered in a manner which put me in mind of our excellent friend Bridge. Alas! Charlotte, when I find so many really good people in the world, how much do I feel ashamed of myself. Pray for me, dear friend, that while I am preaching to others I may not myself be a castaway! I "On inquiring at Cholmondeley House, I find they are none of them in town. I shall, therefore, keep Lord R.'s book till my return to town next term, when I will leave it in due form. am ashamed to say I have made but little progress in reading it, but when I tell you that I found it necessary to rewrite both of my two latter sermons, in addition to my labour bestowed on my hymns and the Review, you will not wonder, nor think me lazy. 1 "Oh! weep not o'er thy children's tomb; 2 O God! who gav'st Thy servant grace 3 more than merciful! whose bounty gave |