perusal. Their talents were calculated to produce mutual esteem, and their powers of conversation to contribute very highly to each other's amuse

ment.

Mr Millar had the art, in a most uncommon degree, of adapting his conversation to those around him. Even to children, he could make himself a most amusing companion; and no young person ever left his company without being charmed with his vivacity. His countenance was uncommonly animated and expressive; his stature about the middle size; his person strong, active, and athletic, rather than elegant. When he first entered a room, his manner was not altogether free from formality and constraint; but this continued only for a moment. The first subject that was started kindled animation in his eye, and seemed entirely to engross his mind. Never did he show the slightest absence, nor allow any carelessness, or contemptuous indif

*This was almost the only regular correspondence in which Mr Millar ever engaged. When absent from his family, he indeed wrote letters calculated for their amusement, and remarkable for the same playfulness which distinguished his conversation; but he was very averse to the preservation of any of his letters. His numerous avocations rendered it impossible for him to correspond with his friends, except when some kind of business required it.

ference, to escape him. Never, indeed, did he feel that languor from which they most commonly proceed. However trifling the subject might be, he was always lively and animated; his constant flow of spirits enabled him to extract some amusement from every topic, and every character; and his repartees, though not rising to that high species of wit, which can delight on repetition, flow ed so naturally from the conversation, and were accompanied with so much gaiety, playfulness, and good humour, that, perhaps, no company ever was dull or languid in his presence.

His conversation was equally agreeable to those who preferred subjects of a graver or more improving kind. His information reached to almost every subject which was likely to occur in conversation. He was completely master of whatever had been written on the sciences connected with the study of mind, and had added many new opinions and combinations to the discoveries of others. The whole range of history was familiar to him, and there was little in the manners or customs of any nation, which he could not state with accuracy, and account for with surprising quickness and ingenuity. Nor was he ignorant of the physical sciences, although his knowledge of them rather embraced the different theories by which the facts are

explained, than showed any very intimate acquaintance with the facts themselves. To the task of minute observation, or the drudgery of accurate experiment, he could not submit: but, wherever there was an appearance of system, his attention was roused so fully, that, for a time, it almost engrossed his mind. It was thus, that, after Lavoisier published his astonishing experiments, and no less astonishing system built on these experiments, Mr Millar, for a whole winter, thought of nothing but chemistry; and so great was his veneration for that philosopher, that no circumstance in the French Revolution struck him with so much horror, as the murder of the man whom he considered as the brightest ornament of the age.

In Literature and Belles Lettres, perhaps the most delightful of all subjects for conversation, Mr Millar was completely conversant. In his youth, he had read all the classics with such pleasure and discrimination, that, although his line of study was afterwards extremely different, he could always refer to the most impressive passages, and discuss, with much intelligence, their relative beauties and defects. His acquaintance with English Poetry was also very general, though his taste might be considered as somewhat fastidious. Mediocrity, in every thing, but particularly in verse, he was

accustomed to treat with marked contempt; and the frequent recurrence of such expressions in his conversation, joined to the ridicule with which, in a sportive humour, he sometimes treated even compositions of considerable merit, gave those not intimately acquainted with him, an idea that he had little relish for poetry. Perhaps the severity in which he indulged rather arose from a taste too delicate and refined. Seldom have I known any person more alive to the higher kinds of poetry; to those striking and sublime allusions, that rich and varied imagery, that loftiness of thought, and dignity of expression, which delight the imagination and elevate the mind. Nor did he confine his admiration to poets of the highest order; to Milton, Akenside, and Gray: He was highly delighted with the fancy, the elegance, and varied talents of Pope, the natural and impressive descriptions of Thomson, and that charming blending of melancholy with ideas of pleasure, which a great critic has failed to discover, in the little poems of Prior *. He was also well acquainted with the best French

*It is surprising that Dr Johnson seems never to have perceived this beauty in Prior. The same blending of ideas of pleasure and of melancholy constitutes the greatest charm in the writings of Horace and in the beautiful little odes of Cheaulieu.

and Italian Poets; but, while he was obliged to admit the more refined eloquence, and superior conduct of the French Drama, he always contended for the superiority of the English, in delineating the simple and genuine feelings of the human heart, and in using a measure of versification which is at once capable of approaching the looseness and facility of prose, and of being adapted to the expression of exalted and heroic sentiment.

Nor was Mr Millar averse to argument; or to the display of his ingenuity in supporting paradoxes, often the children of the moment. He was indeed so complete a master of debate, that it was unsafe to attack him, even when he occupied most disadvantageous ground. Ever acute and collected, he was apt, by slight sarcasms, to put his antagonist off his guard, and to surprise him by unexpected inferences from whatever was unadvisedly admitted. He overpowered his opponent by innumerable analogies, drawn from the most remote quarters, and presented in the most forcible points of view. He covered, with infinite art, the weaker parts of his own argument, and exposed, with much ingenuity, any mistakes or fallacies by which he was assailed. When fairly driven from all his positions, he often became most formidable: seizh