wherein you will see the pictures of my chief adversaries hanged up in their proper colours; it is intended for the honest recreation of my ingenious friends.-To prepare myself for which work, I will read over Don Quixote once more; that having as good a subject of Sir Jerom (Sankey) as Michael de Cervantes had of him, something may be done not unworthy a representing next Bartholomew Fair." Whether Petty ever executed this proposed work we have no means of determining; if it exist in manuscript it must necessarily contain a vast amount of interesting details of contemporary manners and customs in Ireland during the Protectorate. The present work appears to have been written toward the close of the year 1659, and fully answers Petty's description of it as "an history of the survey and distribution of the forfeited lands in Ireland, and withall a series of my own services and sufferings, with references thereunto, and to that nation; which work consists chiefly of all Acts of Parliament, resolves of all general assemblies of the army, orders of the Council, acts of councils of war, results of committees, petitions of agents, references, reports, and accounts, &c., relating to all and singular the premises.' This volume fills a considerable blank in the history of Petty's life as well as in the civil annals of Ireland, and cannot fail to interest as the record of the progress of an experiment carried out on an extensive scale and with complete success during the infancy of science. It were, however, to be wished that a memoir of the author had been prefixed the work, as an accurate and detailed biography of Sir William Petty is still a desideratum, and the publication of the History of the Down Survey afforded an opportunity for its production which may not soon again occur. On the whole, the work has been edited in a style worthy of Major Larcom whose connection with the Ordnance Survey rendered him peculiarly fitted for the task, and whose exertions to promote the cultivation of Irish literature, and to elevate the national character, by making us acquainted with our ancient historical monuments have been more than once noticed in this journal.

Few will be found in the present day to defend the atrocious spoliation and destruction perpetrated by Cromwell on the Irish adherents of Charles I., or the confirmation of the Protector's acts, by a monarch so heavily indebted to the Irish as Charles II. The settlement of the "motley crew" of adventurers in Ireland, has exercised a marked influence on the

destinies of this country. Unlike the ancient English settlers, the mass of the Cromwellians never identified themselves with the true interests of the island. Their descendants, in general, became men, as it were, of a middle nation, exhibiting the vilest sycophancy towards the corrupt English ministers, who, in return, ruined their trade, excluded them from offices of importance in Church and State, and kept them in a condition of humiliating dependence. Under the withering influence of their ascendancy, knowledge, science, and manufactures languished, in consequence of the attempts to suppress education, and to extirpate all feelings of manly independence. The constitutional arguments of Molyneux, in favor of the ancient prerogatives of the nation, were declared rebellious; Swift's attempts to save the country from the nefarious designs of the English cabinet, and to revive her manufactures were accounted treason; while Lucas was driven into exile for asserting the principles of a free citizen. The press was fettered, the Established Church oppressed, education, at home or abroad, denied to the native population, and the Irish Roman Catholics were only to be traced through the Statute book by their blood. The example of the expatriated Irish in America, and the labors of Grattan and his associates, obtained for the country an interval of independence and unparalleled commercial progression; but, unable to contemplate the reform of a corruption which supported them, and heedless of the bright example of some of their own race, the ascendancy faction drove the nation into anarchy, and bartered her rights for a paltry stipend, at a period when they had it in their power to have made her a great and prosperous country. The completion of this suicidal compact gave a fatal, though unforeseen, blow to the power of a vicious oligarchy, the extinction of which enables us to look forward to a future unclouded by the tyranny of men who, while in power, lived on the prostitution of their country, and the oppression of their fellow-subjects, and who have not left a single noble monument, to identify themselves with Ireland, or to cause even a momentary regret at their final extirpation.

249

ART. II.-COCKBURN'S LIFE OF JEFFREY.

Life of Lord Jeffrey, with a Selection from his Correspondence. By Lord Cockburn, one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Scotland. 2 vols. 8vo. A. & C. Black, Edinburgh, 1852.

"By far the most considerable change which has taken place in the world of letters, in our day," it is to this effect that Jeffrey writes, A.D. 1816-"is that by which the wits of Queen Anne's time have been brought down from the supremacy which they had enjoyed without competition for the best part of a century. When we were at our studies, some twenty-five years ago, we can perfectly remember that every young man was set to read Pope, Swift, and Addison, as regularly as Virgil, Cicero, and Horace. They, and their contemporaries were universally acknowledged as our great models of excellence, and placed without challenge at the head of our national literature. All this, however, is now altered. It is no longer to them that the ambitious look up with envy, or the humble with admiration. It seems to be clearly ascertained that they are declined considerably from the high meridian of their glory,' and may fairly be apprehended to be 'hastening to their setting.' There are but two possible solutions for phenomena of this sort. Either our taste has degenerated, or its old models have been surpassed; either the writers of the last century are too good for us, or they are not good enough. Now, we confess, we are no believers in the permanent corruption of national taste; on the contrary, we think that it is, of all faculties, that which is most sure to advance with time and experience; that, with the exception of those great physical or political disasters which have checked civilization itself, there has always been a sensible progress in this particular; and that the general taste of every successive generation is better than that of its predecessors. There are capricious fluctuations, no doubt, but the great movements are progressive.

"We are of opinion, then, that the writers who adorned the beginning of the last century have been eclipsed by those of our own time. The former are sagacious, no doubt, neat, clear, and reasonable; but, for the most part, cold, timid, and

R

superficial. Their chief care is to be at once witty and rational, with as good a grace as possible. Their inspiration accordingly is little more than a sprightly sort of good sense. Little gleams of pleasantry, and sparkles of wit glitter through their compositions; but no glow of feeling-no blaze of imagination-no flashes of genius, ever irradiate their substance. They may pass for sensible and polite writers, but scarcely for men of genius.

"Our first literature consisted of saintly legends, and romances of chivalry, though Chaucer gave it a more national and popular character, by his original descriptions of external nature, and the familiarity and gaiety of his social humour. In the time of Elizabeth it was intrinsically romantic, serious, lofty, and enthusiastic. In the reign of James the First, our literature appears to us to have the greatest perfection to which it had yet attained; though it would probably have advanced still farther in the succeeding reign, had not the great national dissensions which then arose, turned the talent and energy of the people into other channels-first to the assertion of their civil rights, and afterwards to the discussion of their religious interests. The graces of literature suffered of course in those fierce contentions; still the period of the civil wars produced the giant powers of Taylor, and the muse of Milton. The Restoration arrived, and as all the eminent writers of the preceding period had inclined to the party that was now overthrown, and their writings had been deeply imbued with its obnoxious principles, it became profitable as well as popular to discredit the fallen party. Add to this, that there were real and serious defects in the style and manner of the former generation, and that the grace, brevity, and vivacity of that gayer manner which was now introduced from France, were not only good and captivating in themselves, but had then all the charms of novelty and contrast. But there would probably have been a revulsion towards the accustomed taste, had not the party of the innovators been reinforced. Dryden, carried by the original bent of his genius, and his familiarity with our older models, to the cultivation of our native style, was, notwithstanding, unluckily seduced by the attractions of fashion and the dazzling of the dear wit and gay rhetoric in which it delighted, to lend his powerful aid to the new movement.

"It was the unfortunate ambition of the next generation of authors to improve and perfect the new style, rather than to

return to the old one-and they did improve it. They corrected its gross indecency, increased its precision and correctness, made its pleasantry and sarcasm more polished and elegant, and spread through the whole of its irony, its narration, and reflection, a tone of clear and condensed good sense. This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits. They seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason, rather than of feeling or fancy. They made no pretensions to the glow of enthusiastic passion, or the richness of a luxuriant imagination; but, writing with infinite good sense, and great grace and vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in a tone peculiar to the upper ranks of society, and upon subjects that were almost exclusively interesting to them, they naturally figured, at least while the manner was new, as the most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers the world had ever seen; and made the wild, luxuriant, and humble sweetness of our earlier authors appear rude and untutored in the comparison.

66 The age which succeeded was still less an age of mental adventure. There never was, on the whole, a quieter time than that of the two first Georges. There was nothing to stir the minds of the people at large. They went on accordingly, minding their old business and reading their old old books. Certainly there never was so long an interregnum of native genius, as during about sixty years in the middle of the last century. The few sparks that appeared, too, showed that the old fire was burned out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another quality. Gray had the talents rather of a critic than a poet; Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture; Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of Pope without his quaintness, and his selection of diction without his coldness and eternal vivacity; and last of all came Cowper, with a style of complete originality-and, for the first time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry. In philosophy and prose writing, in general, the case was nearly parallel, till Junius and Johnson again familiarized us with more glowing and sonorous diction, and made us feel the tameness and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift. This brings us down," says Jeffrey, "almost to the