be observed, and the same happy facility of converting trifles into engines of great power. * * * The peculiar sagacity of perception, and force of plain expression, which distinguished every effort of Franklin's mind, gave an especial value to his practical philosophy; and it derived an additional charm from the lively fancy with which he was also largely gifted. His fondness for matter of fact, and his constant habit of attentive observation, directed to every thing that passed around him, great and little, threw many of his remarks or arguments into the form of stories, insomuch that a cursory observer would think he was only amusing himself with those little narratives, while he was in reality proving or illustrating some important principle. The love of conciseness gave him a tendency to deliver apophthegms of a proverbial cast, in which he could at once condense his meaning, and make it easily remembered by the sportive and epigrammatic turn of the proposition. His predilection for whatever was the result of actual experiment, inclined him to adopt, and, as it were, rely upon those received adages, in which mankind have embodied the lessons of practical wisdom taught them by experience and observation. When we recollect also the constant play of a good-humoured imagination, which, through all his moral writings, enlivens without fatiguing, and enlightens without ever giving pain, we cannot wonder at the extraordinary merit universally allowed to those productions. In truth, they are superior to almost any others, in any language; whether we regard the sound, and striking, and useful truths in which they abound, or the graceful and entertaining shape in which they are conveyed. ANON. CHARACTER OF DR. GOLDSMITH. Ar this time I did not know Oliver Goldsmith even by person; I think our first meeting chanced to be at the British Coffee House; when we came together, we very speedily coalesced; and I believe he forgave me for all the little fame I had got by the success of my West Indian, which had put him to some trouble; for it was not his nature to be unkind; and I had soon an opportunity of convincing him how incapable I was of harbouring resentment, and how zealously I took my share in what concerned his interest and reputation. That he was fantastically vain all the world knows; but there was no settled and inherent malice in his heart. He was tenacious to a ridiculous extreme of certain pretensions, that did not, and by nature could not belong to him, and at the same time inexcusably careless of the fame which he had powers to command. His table-talk was, as Garrick aptly compared it, like that of a parrot, whilst he wrote like Apollo: he had gleams of eloquence, and at times a majesty of thought; but in general his tongue and his pen had two very different styles of talking. What foibles he had he took no pains to conceal; the good qualities of his heart were too frequently obscured by the carelessness of his conduct and the frivolity of his manners. Sir Joshua Reynolds was very good to him, and would have drilled him into better trim and order for society, if he would have been amenable; for Reynolds was a perfect gentleman, had good sense, great propriety, with all the social attributes, and all the graces of hospitality, equal to any man. knew how to appreciate men of talents, and how He well near akin the Muse of poetry was to that art of which he was so eminent a master. From Goldsmith he caught the subject of his famous Ugolino; what aids he got from others, if he got any, were worthily bestowed and happily applied. There is something in Goldsmith's prose that to my ear is uncommonly sweet and harmonious; it is clear, simple, and easy to be understood; we never want to read his period twice over, except for the pleasure it bestows; obscurity never calls us back to a repetition of it.. That he was a poet there is no doubt; but the paucity of his verses does not allow us to rank him in that high station where his genius might have carried him. There must be bulk, variety, and grandeur of design, to constitute a first-rate poet. The Deserted Village, Traveller, and Hermit, are all specimens beautiful as such; but they are only birds' eggs on a string, and eggs of small birds too. One great magnificent whole must be accomplished before we can pronounce upon the maker to be the ὁ ποιητὴς. Pope himself never earned this title by a work of any magnitude but his Homer; and that being a translation, only constitutes him an accomplished versifier. Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies, nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chamber in the Temple, he showed me the beginning of his Animated Nature; it was with a sigh, such as genius draws when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table. But pub lishers hate poetry, and Paternoster-row is not Parnassus. Even the mighty Doctor Hill, who was not a very delicate feeder, could not make a dinner out of the press, till, by a happy transformation into Hannah Glass, he turned himself into a cook, and sold receipts for made dishes to all the savoury readers in the kingdom. Then indeed the press acknowledged him second in fame only to John Bunyan: his feasts kept pace in sale with Nelson's fasts; and when his own name was fairly written out of credit, he wrote himself into immortality under an alias. Now though necessity, or I should rather say the desire of finding money for a masquerade, drove Oliver Goldsmith upon abridging histories and turning Buffon into English, yet I much doubt if without that spur he would ever have put his Pegasus into action; no, if he had been rich, the world would have been poorer than it is by the loss of all the treasures of his genius and the contributions of his pen. CUMBERLAND. CHARACTER OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. His illness had been long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude, without the least mixture of any thing irritable or querulous, agreeably to the placid and even tenour of his whole life. He had from the beginning of his malady a distinct view of his dissolution, which he contemplated with that entire composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation he had every con solation from family tenderness, which his tenderness to his family had always merited. Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many ac counts, one of the most memorable men of his time he was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity, derived from the higher branches, which even those who profess them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits, he appears not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to have been derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher. In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art, and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him, even on surprise or provocation; nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinizing eye in any part of his conduct or discourse. His talents of every kind-powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated in letters-his social vir |