ART. III. The British Plutarch, containing the Lives of the most eminent Divines, Patriots, Statesmen, Warriors, Philosophers, Poets, and Artists, of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Accession of Henry VIII. to the present Time. A new Edition, re-arranged, and enriched with several additional Lives. By the Rev. Francis Wrangham, M.A. F.R.S. of Trinity College, Cambridge. 6 Vols. 8vo. 31. 38. Boards. Mawman, and Baldwin and Co.

M ANY years have elapsed since the first edition of this work was offered to the public; and, the undertaking having succeeded, a third appeared in 1791, which was briefly announced in our seventh vol. N. S. p. 105. The abilities of Mr. Wrangham, who has now assumed the office of its editor and continuator, are so well known to the literary world, that we need not enter into any discussion of his competency to the task; and, when he assures his readers that he has rearranged and almost re-composed the whole of the former lives, inserting many corrections and improvements, and giving more uniformity to the diction of the general mass, they will be ready to take his information on trust, and to admit the probability that the several compositions have been gainers by his exertions. We learn also that some of the biographies have been omitted, and some contracted, in order to make room for the expansion of others, in cases in which the individuals merited the highest distinction by their talents or their virtues; and whose examples the juvenile student might contemplate with the greatest probability of moral and intellectual advantage. The new lives which make their appearance in this collection are those of Sir John Cheke, Sir Philip Sidney, Colonel John Hutchinson, Dr. Richard Bentley, George Berkeley, Sir William Jones, and Lord Viscount Nelson.

As all the lives are arranged in chronological continuity, they exhibit the most striking features of the civil and ecclesiastical, the literary and scientific, features of the most important portion of English History; viz. from the reign of Henry VIII. to that of George III.; and, as they amount to the number of one hundred, and are comprehended in six well-sized octavo volumes, sufficient space has been allotted to each, not merely for a dry generality of biographical statement, but for some vivid and characteristic particularity of delineation. Each life is not a mere skeleton of the individual, with the date of his nativity and his death, the name of the place, that of his school, that of the college at which he took his degree, and the titles of the books which he published, but, as far as Mr. Wrangham's materials would admit,

he

he has animated and embellished the different narratives with interesting details, and with some of those minute circumstances which throw light on manners or on principles, and serve as lines of discrimination in the varied fabric of human conduct.

The lives of the Grecian biographer, whose name has been borrowed for the title of this collection, are particularly remarkable for the vivid portraiture which they draw of the sentiments, habits, manners, and personal or moral peculiarities of the individuals. His delineation is often so striking that the person is as it were restored to life on the page: the narration is not a mere inert and vapid collection of insignificant facts, or unimportant remarks: but the individual is made to re-appear in his original likeness, again to take up his former identity, and to talk and act as he did when the current of vitality was warm in his veins. This is the criterion of biographical excellence, and the attainment of it is the highest praise which the biographer can merit. It is this excellence which has made Plutarch the delight both of the young and of the old in different ages and nations; and even when the individuals, whose lives he has described, appear to have been placed in a period of antiquity too remote for any contact of immediate sympathy or interest in the present times, yet such was his research in procuring and his skill in selecting the particulars of his narrative, that the lives. of Romulus or Lycurgus, Solon or Numa, of Themistocles, Pericles, &c. still excite a sort of living interest, and are perused with a delight similar to that which we feel in contemplating the characteristic memoirs of more recent times. The truth is that Plutarch has been eminently successful in exploring human nature, not only in the mass but in the detail; and he never fails to embellish his page with incidents or maxims which are strikingly illustrative of those xoval Evora, those common sentiments, which find some fibres that vibrate in unison with them in the minds and hearts of human beings in all nations and climes.

If we can by no means bestow the same praise on the British Plutarch which we allot to the Plutarch of Greece, because we know not many modern biographers who in a single life, and none who in a collection of lives, can be placed on the same height of excellence with the biographer of Chæronea, or whose works may be read with equal instruction and delight, still we may safely assert that this British Plutarch' is very superior, both in matter and in style, to the former biographical collection under the same title. Moreover, the present editor has consiREV. JULY, 1818.

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dered the work as principally designed for the instruction and amusement of the more juvenile reader; and he has in consequence carefully expunged every sentiment, or expression, which might tend to vitiate or corrupt, and has erased those characters which contained no traits that could fitly be recommended to the imitation of youth. We can, therefore, with great truth, recommend these volumes to the perusal of the youth of both sexes, as likely to supply them with a rich store of examples for imitation, of precepts for practice, and of amusement for the social or the solitary hour.

We shall now give a specimen of Mr. Wrangham's labours in the present edition, by selecting a part of one of the new lives: viz. that of Sir John Cheke; (Vol. i. p. 364.)

This illustrious scholar was born at Cambridge in 1514; and admitted at the age of seventeen of St. John's College, where he speedily distinguished himself by his proficiency in the learned languages, particularly Greek, then much neglected in that University. After taking his degrees in arts, on the recommendation of Dr. Butts he was sent abroad at the King's expence to travel for his farther improvement; and upon his return, he was chosen Greek lecturer in his college. To this office no salary was annexed; but in the year 1540 Henry VIII. founded a Greek professorship at Cambridge, of which Cheke was appointed the first professor, when only twenty-six years of age. He had also the honour of being elected University-orator.

In 1544 he was appointed jointly with Sir Antony Cook preceptor to Prince Edward; and he appears also to have given instruction to the Princess Elizabeth. · At the same time he was appointed to a canonry of the newly-founded College of Christ Church, Oxford, which he subsequently exchanged for a pension. Edward VI., likewise, upon his accession, settled on him an annuity of a hundred marks, together with a grant of several lands and manors; and caused him to be elected Provost of King's College, Cambridge. His interest at court, indeed, sustained some temporary shocks, especially from his connexion with the unfortunate Duke of Somerset: but he still retained his office of tutor to the young sovereign, who was greatly indebted to him for the knowledge and virtue by which his transient reign was so illustriously distinguished. In 1550 he was appointed chief gentleman of the King's Privy Chamber; and the year following his Majesty conferred upon him the honour of knighthood, with an additional grant of considerable value. He was subsequently made Chamberlain of the Exchequer for life; in 1553 Clerk of the Council; and after a short interval, one of the Secretaries of State and Privy-Councillor.

Upon the death of Edward VI., with a view of sustaining the threatened interests of the reformed faith, Cheke entered into the criminal project of transferring the crown to Lady Jane Grey, to whose council he acted as secretary, That rash scheme being speedily quashed, he was committed to the Tower, stripped of the

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chief part of his substance, and not long afterward set at liberty. Having procured leave to travel, he visited Basle and Padua, where he directed some of his countrymen in their studies. He' then settled at Strasburg, where many learned Englishmen had associated to maintain the Protestant worship. There by the insidious invitation of his former friends Lord Paget and Sir John' Mason, who had reverted to their old creed, and his own unfortunate confidence in astrology, to the follies of which he was, unhappily, much addicted, he was decoyed in 1556 to Brussels, where his wife then resided; and on his way between that city and Antwerp seized by order of Philip II. and reconveyed to the Tower. Ultimately reduced to the terrifying dilemma, Turn or burn,' he was not proof against the fiery ordeal. Hoping, however, to escape the disgrace of a public recantation, he first made his solemn submission before Cardinal Pole, and humbly requested to be re-admitted into the bosom of the Catholic church. But the triumph over such a man was too flattering to be enjoyed in a corner. He was therefore compelled to repeat this humiliating act of his infirmity before the Queen and her whole court. His property was' now restored; but his recantation was followed by such bitterness of remorse, that he survived it but a short time, dying in 1557, at the early age of forty-three. He left behind him three sons.

Sir John was distinguished not only by the ability and diligence which he manifested in the revival of classical learning in this country, but by the example which he furnished of a more pure, perspicuous, and energetic style than any that was at that time to be found in English compositions. Mr. Wrangham justly remarks that he introduced short sentences, and his periods were not perplexed by Latin inversions, nor encumbered by a multiplicity of clauses. The two extracts, which are made from his work intitled "The Hurt of Sedition, how grievous it is to a Commonwealth," will furnish sufficient proof that his English prose was more clear," precise, and cogent than that of most if not all of his predecessors or contemporaries. The following passage, which is taken from the above-mentioned work, is very forcibly expressed. It is addressed to the insurgents in the west of England, who in the year 1549 had taken up arms to procure the restoration of Popery:

"Ye rise for religion. What religion taught you that? If ye were offered persecution for religion, ye ought to flee. So Christ teacheth you; and yet ye intend to fight. If ye would stand in the truth, ye ought to suffer like martyrs; and ye would slay like tyrants. Thus, for religion, ye keep no religion; and neither will follow the council of Christ, nor the constancy of martyrs. Why rise ye for religion? Have ye any thing contrary to God's book? Yea, have ye not all things agreeable to God's word? But the new is different from the old, and therefore ye will have the old.'

If ye measure the old by truth, ye have the oldest. If ye measure the old by fancy, then it is hard, because men's fancies change, to give that is old. Ye will have the old stile; will ye have any older than that as Christ left, and his Apostles taught, and the first church did use? Ye will have that the canons do establish: why that is a great deal younger than that ye have, of later time, and newlier invented; yet that is it that ye desire. And do ye prefer the Bishops of Rome before Christ? Men's inventions afore God's law? The newer sort of worship before the older? Ye seek no religion: ye be deceived; ye seek traditions. They that teach you, blind you; they that so instruct you, deceive you. If ye seek what the old doctors say, yet look what Christ the oldest of all saith. For he saith, before Abraham was made, I am.' ye seek the truest way, he is the very truth: if ye seek the readiest way, he is the very way: if ye seek everlasting life, he is the very life. What religion would ye have other how than his religion? You would have the Bibles in again. It is no marvel: your blind guides should lead you blind still."

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The above address was admirably adapted to the purpose for which it was designed, and proves that Sir John Cheke, who was a warm admirer of Demosthenes, had not studied that great orator in vain.

In our examination of these volumes, we have not remarked any passages which are likely to infuse illiberal or intolerant notions into the mind; and, as they present numerous examples of moral, scientific, and literary excellence, we think that the study of them must tend to enlarge the stock of useful and interesting information.

ART. IV. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. By Dugald Stewart, Esq. F.R.SS. Lond. and Edinb., &c. &c. Vol. II. Second Edition. 8vo. pp. 620. 148. sewed. Cadell and Davies.

MR.

R. STEWART is a writer of very high, and certainly in many respects of well deserved fame. We are inclined, however, to suspect that his reputation at present stands more elevated than his merits will ultimately be found to warrant; and we are decidedly of opinion that his principal strength does not lie in the quarter in which it is placed by the bulk of his admirers. As a production in the department of polite literature, the first volume of his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, (which was amply introduced to our readers in M. R. Vol. x. N.S. pp. 59. 203. and 366.) is full of elegant and pleasing disquisition; it presents many happy and ingenious applications of the philosophy of mind to the illustration of various subjects connected with the pleasures

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