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Lecture the Forty-Fifth.

THOMAS REID-ROBERT LOWTH-HUGH FARMER-HUGH BLAIR-GEORGE CAMPBELL-RICHARD HURD-RICHARD PRICE-ADAM SMITH-WILLIAM HARRISGEORGE HORNE-JOSEPH PRIESTLEY-SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.

ROM the historians who occupied our attention during the last lecture, we pass to their remaining contemporaries in other departments of literature. Of these the first that we shall notice are Reid, Lowth, Farmer, Blair, Campbell, and Hurd.

THOMAS REID was the son of the Rev. Lewis Reid, and was born at Strachan, in Kincardinshire, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1710. He commenced his studies at the parish school of Kincardine, and thence passed, in his twelfth year, to Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he took his master's degree, and afterwards studied theology. For some time after he had completed his theological studies, Reid devoted himself to mathematics; and such was his proficiency in this department of learning, that he often, in the absence of the professor, supplied his place. Being now ordained, he obtained the living of New Machar, in Aberdeenshire; but in 1752, he relinquished this situation for the professorship of moral philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. While at Aberdeen he so greatly distinguished himself, that the degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon him, and his name became familiar to the literary circles throughout his native country. In 1763, he relinquished his professorship at Aberdeen, for the same chair in the university of Glasgow, and there remained until his death, which occurred on the seventh of October, 1796.

In 1764, Dr. Reid published his Inquiry into the Human Mind, as a designed attack on the ideal theory, and on the skeptical conclusions which Hume deduced from it. The author had the candor to submit the work in manuscript to Hume, and the latter, with his usual complacency and good nature, acknowledged the merit of the treatise. In 1785, Reid published his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, and three years after, those on the Active Powers.

The merit of Dr. Reid, as a correct reasoner and original thinker on moral science, free from the jargon of the schools, and basing his speculations on inductive reasoning, has been generally admitted. The ideal theory which he combatted, taught that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it; that we really do not perceive things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas.' This doctrine he had himself believed, till, finding it led to important consequences, he asked himself the question, 'What evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind?' He set about an inquiry, but could find no evidence for the principle, he says, excepting the authority of philosophers. Dugald Stewart says of Reid, that it is by the logical rigor of his method of investigating metaphysical subjects, still more than by the importance of his particular conclusions, that he stands so conspicuously distinguished among those who have hitherto prosecuted, analytically, the study of man.

In the dedication of his 'Inquiry,' Reid incidentally makes a definition which strikes us as very happy :-The productions of imagination,' he says, 'require a genius which soars above the commonly buried deep, and may be reached by those drudges who can dig with labor and patience, though they have not wings to fly.'

ROBERT LOWTH was the second son of Dr. William Lowth, noticed in the previous period, and was born at Buriton, in Hampshire, on the eighth of December, 1710. He was educated at Winchester school, and thence passed to New College, Oxford, where his ardent mind and devotion to study soon raised him to distinction. On leaving the university he entered into orders, and, in 1741, was made Hebrew professor of poetry, and in that capacity delivered the admirable course of lectures which he afterwards published under the title of Prelections on Hebrew Poetry. The reputation which he thus acquired recommended him to the Duke of Devonshire, who appointed him tutor to his son, the marquis of Harlington, and in company with this nobleman he made the tour of the continent of Europe. In 1750, he was appointed, by Bishop Hoadly, archdeacon of Winchester, and in 1755, when his old pupil was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lowth accompanied him thither as his chaplain.

Dr. Lowth had been but a short time in Ireland before he obtained the bishopric of Limerick, which, however, he soon after exchanged for a prebend of Durham. In 1758, appeared his Life of William Wykeham, which greatly enhanced his already exalted reputation. In 1766, he was made bishop of St. Davids, and two months afterwards was translated to the see of Oxford, where he remained until 1777, when he was preferred to that of London. Soon after his settlement over the see of London he published his most celebrated work, a Translation of Isaiah. In this great performance the spirit of eastern poetry is rendered with fidelity, elegance, and even sub

limity; and the work is an inestimable contribution to biblical criticism and learning, as well as to the exalted strains of the divine muse.

In 1783, on the death of the primate, Lord Cornwallis, Bishop Lowth was offered the archbishopric of Canterbury; but this exalted position, the infirm state of his health compelled him to decline. Domestic afflictions now rapidly succeeded each other, and under their oppressive weight this truly venerable prelate sunk into his grave, on the third of November, 1787.

While tutor to the Marquis of Harlington, Dr. Lowth composed a Short Introduction to English Grammar, which is universally esteemed, and has served as the source whence almost all succeeding writers, on the same subject, have drawn their materials.

HUGH FARMER, a distinguished dissenting clergyman of this period, was born 1714. He early entered the school of Dr. Doddridge; and after he had completed his preparation for the ministry, he settled at Waltham, where he remained until his death, which occurred on the fifth of February, 1787, in his seventy-fourth year.

In 1771, Farmer published his Dissertation on Miracles, a work of close reasoning and profound thought, and which still maintains its place as one of the bulwarks of revealed religion. He was also the author of several productions, of which the principal are, a treatise on the Worship of Human Spirits among the Heathen, Christ's Temptation, and an Essay on Demoniacs. It is on his 'Dissertation,' however, that his reputation mainly rests; as his other works, though written with much talent, are not pervaded with the same extent of interest.

HUGH BLAIR, one of the most popular and influential of the Scottish clergy of this period, was born in the city of Edinburgh, in 1718. He received his education at the university of his native place, where, in 1736, he took his master's degree, and after preparing for the ministry, settled over a country church in Fifeshire. His pulpit eloquence soon attracted public attention, so that he was induced to leave his country charge, and was successively preferred to the Canongate, Lady Yester's, and the High Church in Edinburgh; and upon the last preferment, in 1758, he received, from the sister university of St. Andrews, the degree of doctor of divinity.

In 1759, Dr. Blair commenced a course of lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres, which greatly extended his reputation; and four years after he published his Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, a production evincing both taste and learning, and, according to Lord Kames, 'a precious morsel of criticism.' In 1777, appeared the first volume of his Sermons, which was so well received that the author soon after published three other volumes, and a fifth which he had prepared, was printed after his death. In 1783, Blair, having meantime carefully revised his 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belle Lettres' gave them to the public; and such was the height to which this publication raised his reputation, that the king bestowed upon their author an

annual pension of two hundred pounds. The latter part of his life was passed in infirm health, and he died on the twenty-seventh of December, 1800, in his eighty-third year.

Of all Dr. Blair's productions, his Rhetorical Lectures enjoy the most wide-spread reputation. Though somewhat hard and dry in style and manner, these lectures still form a useful guide to the The arstudent. young rangement might be improved; but the work itself contains abundance of examples in every department of literary composition, and has also detailed criticisms on numerous authors, both ancient and modern. His 'Sermons,' however, are the most valuable of his works. They are written with taste and elegance, and by inculcating Christian morality without any allusion to controversial topics, are suited to all classes of Christians. In profound thought, close reasoning, impassioned eloquence, and devotional ardor, they are, however, inferior to the posthumous sermons of Logan, the poet. In private life Dr. Blair was cheerful and polite, the friend of literature as well as of virtue.

The following extract is from his introductory lecture on Rhetoric, and is a fair specimen of his style :

THE CULTIVATION OF TASTE.

Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science, and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisition of necessary erudition or the investigation of abstract truths.

The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere can not be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions can not always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How then shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agrecable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence.

Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue.

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