English catholic literature, and many of his publications are to this day regarded by his co-religionists as standard works of

doctrine or devotion.-COOPER, THOMPSON, 1887, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. IX, p. 442.

PERSONAL

Lord Kames and Mrs. Drummond, his wife, came from Edinburgh, which is an hundred miles from Denton, on purpose to spend a few days with me. His lordship is a prodigy. At eighty-three he is as gay and as nimble as he was at twentyfive. His sight, hearing, and memory perfect. He has a great deal of knowledge and a lively imagination, and is a most entertaining companion. I have promised to return his visit two years hence. I think as he has not grown old in the space of eighty-three years, two years more cannot have much effect.

If

it should abate a little of his vivacity, he would still have enough left.-MONTAGU, ELIZABETH, 1778, A Lady of the Last Century, ed. Doran, p. 246.

He received from nature an extraordinary activity of mind, to which his multiplied occupations allowed no remission, even in his advanced age; we find him as indefatigable in his eightieth year, as in the most vigorous and ambitious season of his life. The versatility of his talents were accompanied by a strength and acuteness, which penetrated to the essence of the subjects to which they were applied. The intentions with which he prosecuted such a wide diversity of studies, appear often excellent; very few men so ingenious, so speculative, so systematic, and occasionally so fanciful, have kept practical utility so generally in view. The great influence which he exerted over some of the younger philosophers of the time, several of the most distinguished of whom were proud to acknowledge themselves his pupils, was employed to determine their speculations to useful purposes. His conduct in the office of judge appears to have impressed every impartial man that

witnessed it, with an invariable opinion of his talents and integrity. As a domestic and social man, his character was that of frankness, good humour, and extreme vivacity. His prompt intelligence continually played around him, and threw its rays on every subject that even casualty could introduce into conversation.-FosTER, JOHN, 1807, On Memoir- Writing, Critical Essays, ed. Ryland, vol, I, p. 64. Lord Kames was in his person extremely tall, and of a thin and slender make. In his latter years, he had a considerable stoop in his gait; but when in the vigour of life, and particularly when in his dress of a barrister, his appearance is said to have been uncommonly becoming. His countenance, though not handsome, was animated and intelligent, and was strongly marked by that benignity of disposition which was a prominent feature of his mind. In ordinary discourse, his accent and pronunciation were like those of the better educated of his countrymen of the last age. The tone was not displeasing from its vulgarity; and though the idiom, and frequently the phrases, were peculiar to the Scottish dialect, his language was universally intelligible. A strong fea

ture of Lord Kames's disposition, was an artless simplicity and ingenuity, which led him at all times to express without reserve both his feelings and his opinions. This propensity gave frequently an appearance of bluntness of manner, which was apt to impress a stranger unfavourably, as erring against those lesser proprieties of behaviour, so necessary in the commerce of the world. But this impression was momentary; the same frankness of nature displayed at once both the defect and its cause it laid open the integrity of his character, and that perfect candour, which

judging always most favourably of others, was unconscious of harbouring a thought which required concealment or disguise. -TYTLER, ALEXANDER FRASER, 1814, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Henry Home of Kames, vol. II, pp. 329, 331.

Sceptical as we may well be of any high estimate of his mental calibre, he was a characteristic figure in his day, and accentuates many of its traits by exaggeration and by travesty. He represented all He represented all the indomitable energy of the race, and its persevering struggle against odds. When he attained to the dignity of the Bench, the long tension brought a reaction, and he turned with zest to the pursuits of what he deemed elegant literature and lofty speculation, undeterred by any consciousness of the limitations of his early training. . . As was often the case with his countrymen, he relieved the long restraint of toil by indulgence in antics that frequently fell to the ridiculous, and cultivated with assiduity the reputation of a wit, which degenerated not rarely into the indecency of the buffoon, and suffered the restraints neither of dignity nor of good taste. He was not a

great lawyer; he was in no sense a philosopher; his literary taste was frequently perverse; his political speculations were whimsical and often absurd; his wit had often much of boyish mischief, asserting itself against the restraints of authority, and never rose to the serenity of humour. But in his indomitable energy, in his industry, in his freedom from timidity or any bashfulness bred of his own defects, he was characteristic of his age.-CRAIK, SIR HENRY, 1901, A Century of Scottish History, vol. II, pp. 195, 196.

GENERAL

In my passage to America, I read your excellent work, the "Elements of Criticism," in which I found great entertainment: much to admire, and nothing to reprove. I only wish you had examined more fully the subject of Music, and demonstrated, that the pleasure which artists feel in hearing much of that composed in the modern taste, is not the natural pleasure arising from melody or harmony of sounds, but of the same kind with the pleasure we feel on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-dancers, who execute difficult things.-FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 1765, Letter to Lord Kames.

Among Mr. Hume's numerous disciples, I do not know one who ever read his "Treatise on Human Nature." In order, therefore, to be read, you must not be satisfied with reasoning with justness and perspicuity; you must write with pathos, with elegance, with spirit, and endeavour to warm the imagination, and touch the heart of those who are deaf to the voice of reason. . What has made Lord Kames's "Elements of Criticism" so popular in England, is his numerous illustrations and quotations from Shakespeare. If his book had wanted these illustrations, or if they had been taken from ancient or foreign authors, it would not have been so generally read in England. -GREGORY, JOHN, 1768, Letter to Dr. Beattie, Beattie's Life by Forbes, vol. 1, p. 141.

He had too much liberality of mind not to allow to others the same liberty in judging which he claimed to himself. It is difficult to say, whether that worthy man was more eminent in active life or in speculation. Very rare surely have been the instances where the talents for both were united in so eminent a degree. His genius and industry, in many different branches of literature, will, by his works, be known to posterity. His private virtues and public spirit, his assiduity through a long and laborious life in many honourable public offices with which he was entrusted, and his zeal to encourage and promote every thing that tended to the improvement of his country, in laws, literature, commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, are best known to his friends and contemporaries. REID, THOMAS, 1785, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Dedication.

The "Historical Law Tracts" of Lord Kames are conducted upon a very judicious system of investigating the natural principles of some of the most important objects of judicial science, and tracing the application of them in the Laws of Rome, of Scotland, and of England; but a comparison between the Laws of Scotland and England, conducted, I think, with great fairness, is apparently the leading object of the undertaking.—EVANS, WILLIAM DAVID, 1806, Pothier on Law of Obligations, Introduction.

The "Elements of Criticism," considered as the first systematical attempt to investigate the metaphysical principles of

the fine arts, possesses, in spite of its numerous defects both in point of taste and philosophy, infinite merits, and will ever be regarded as a literary wonder by those who know how small a portion of his time it was possible for the author to allot to the composition of it, amidst the imperious and multifarious duties of a most active and useful life.-STEWART, DUGALD, 1815-21, First Preliminary Dissertation to Encyclopædia Britannica.

His works are generally all an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity, and in this volume ["Essays on the Principles of Morality"] the latter quality, it appears to me, considerably preponderates. It is metaphysical-upon Belief, Identity, Necessity, etc. I devoutly wish that no friend of mine may ever come to study it, unless he wish to learn,

"To weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty, when the moon is full." -CARLYLE, THOMAS, 1815, Letter, Aug. 22; Life by Conway, p. 162.

His diction is tolerably copious, and his turns of expression often have something of the crisp ingenuity of Hume's, but his sentences are not very skilfully put together; his style wants flow. Curiously enough, his analysis of the mechanical artifices of sentence-making is one of the most substantial parts of his "Elements;"

it supplied both Campbell and Blair with all that they have to say on sentencemechanism, and contains some ingenuities that they did not see fit to adopt.MINTO, WILLIAM, 1872-80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 475.

In the present day, if Lord Kames is read at all, it is for his ingenious and æsthetic pleasure.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, acute speculation into the sources of A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 281.

Kames was an ingenious and voluminous writer, with a considerable knowledge of law and a great taste for metaphysics. His style, however, is crabbed and wanting in variety, while his learning is frequently superficial and inaccurate. BARKER, G. F. RUSSELL, 1891, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XXVII, p. 232.

Lord Kames was a man whose words have been voiceless to any generation beyond his own. Even by his own friends his speculations can hardly have carried real weight, however indulgently they were treated as the efforts earnest enough in their way-of an acute and ingenious, but ill-trained and ill-balanced intellect. CRAIK, SIR HENRY, 1901, A Century of Scottish History, vol. II, p. 194.

PERSONAL

The accounts of his private circumstances, in that kingdom, are given rather confusedly by his biographers; but it appears, upon the whole, that they were unfortunate. He supported an brother in his house, with a family as numerous as his own; and ruined himself

only

by his generosity. At last the loss of his wife, after a union of fifty years, the death of many of his children, and his other misfortunes, overwhelmed his intellect. Of this imbecility there were indeed. some manifestations in the latest productions of his pen.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

The pupil of Swift and Pope; the friend of Lyttelton and Chatham; the darling of the Prince of Wales; beau, swordsman, wit, poet, courtier, the minion once of fortune, yet unspoilt by all her caresses, he had long been known to Irishmen only as the saintly recluse of Longfield.KINGSLEY, CHARLES, 1859, The Fool of Quality, Preface.

A pure and noble-minded Christian gentleman, he lived in the world but not of it. Surrounded by its attractions, versed in its accomplishments, his heart was ever most faithful to his divine Master. It is almost hard to realise, knowing what court and city manners were in the reigns of the first two Georges, that he could have preserved his life so untainted and true.ABBEY, CHARLES J., 1887, The English Church and Its Bishops, 1700-1800, vol. I, p. 299.

A visitor to Brooke in 1775 described him as "dressed in a long blue cloak, with a wig that fell down his shoulders. He was a little man, neat as wax-work, with an oval face, ruddy complexion, and large eyes full of fire. Brooke sank into a state of mental depression on the deaths of his wife and of his children, of whom the sole survivor (out of a family of twenty-two) was his daughter Charlotte, who devoted herself entirely to him. Disease and grief rendered him at times. incapable of mental or physical exertion. -GILBERT, J. T., 1886, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VI, p. 426.

UNIVERSAL BEAUTY

1735

Having paid another visit to London, he renewed his acquaintance with Pope; and, with his encouragement, published his poem, entitled, "Universal Beauty. This poem forms a curious, but unacknowledged prototype of Darwin's "Botanic Garden." It has a resemblance to that work, in manner, in scientific spirit, and in volant geographical allusion, too striking to be supposed accidental; although Darwin has gone beyond his original, in prominent and ostentatious imagery.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

A brilliant but obscure metaphysical and scientific poem, entitled "Universal Beauty," was published in no less than six anonymous folio instalments in the course of 1735, and is now very rarely

met with complete. It was from the pen of an Irish squire, Henry Brooke (1703– 1783), long afterwards author of an unimportant sentimental novel, "The Fool of Quality." His poem deserves attention. It is written in very musical couplets, with, however, too frequent indulgence in the alexandrine. It is manifestly inspired by the optimistic philosophy of Shaftsbury. Brooke never fulfilled the promise of this remarkable first poem.-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, pp. 218, 219.

Worth notice, though it has been too highly praised.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 610.

THE FOOL OF QUALITY

1766

But the greatest excellence of all is that it continually strikes at the heart. It perpetually aims at inspiring and increasing every right affection; at the instilling gratitude to God and benevolence to man. And it does this not by dull, dry, tedious precepts, but by the liveliest examples that can be imagined; by setting before your eyes one of the most beautiful pictures that ever was drawn in the world. The strokes of this are so delicately fine, the touches so easy, natural and affecting, that I know not who could survey it with tearless eyes, unless he had a heart of stone. I recommend it, therefore, to all those who are already, or desire to be, lovers of God and man.— WESLEY, JOHN, 1780, ed., History of Earl of Moreland, Preface.

That best of religious romances, the "Fool of Quality." The piety there is at once most deep and most benign. There is much, indeed of elegant mysticism, but all evidently most heartfelt and sincere. The yearnings of the soul after universal good and intimate communion with the divine nature were never more nobly shown. The author is most prodigal of his intellectual wealth, "his bounty is as boundless as the sea, his love as deep." He gives to his chief characters riches endless as the spiritual stores of his own heart. It is, indeed, only the last which gives value to the first in his writings. It is easy to endow men with millions on paper, and to make them willing to scatter them among the wretched; but it is the corresponding bounty and exuberance