astronomy, ancient physics, ancient logic, and the imitative arts; his Glasgow Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, Arms, were edited from notes by a student in 1896. There are editions of the Wealth of Nations by M'Culloch (1850), Thorold Rogers (1880), and Prof. Nicholson (1884). See Lives by Dugald Stewart (1811), Farrer (1881), Haldane (1887), and Rae (1895); and see the Rev. H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1902). John Home (1722-1808), author of Douglas, was born at Leith, where his father, though of gentle blood, was town-clerk; and he studied at Edinburgh for the Church. Taken prisoner fighting as a volunteer on the royalist side at Falkirk (1746), he made an exciting escape from Doune Castle; and next year he became minister of Athelstaneford, where he wrote the tragedy Agis, and, in 1754, Douglas, founded on the ballad of Gil Morrice. Both plays were rejected by Garrick, but Douglas, brought out at Edinburgh (1756), met with brilliant success, and evoked equal enthusiasm in London the year after. But its production gave such offence to the Edinburgh Presbytery that the author resigned his ministry (1757), and became private secretary to the Earl of Bute and JOHN HOME. From the Portrait by Sir Henry Raeburn in the National Portrait Gallery. tutor to the Prince of Wales, who on his accession as George III. gave him a pension of £300 a year, to which a sinecure of equal value was added in 1763. In connection with Home's withdrawal from the Church after he became known as a successful dramatist, it should be remembered that in England contemporary clerical opinion was almost equally hostile to the writing of plays by clergymen. Thus, when 'Estimate' Brown (see page 392) published his tragedies in 1754-56, Warburton, Hurd, and many other conspicuous clerics lamented that a clergyman should compromise his dignity by making a connection with the stage. The success of Douglas induced Garrick to bring out Agis, and to accept Home's next play, The Siege of Aquileia. Home produced also The Fatal Discovery, Alonzo, Alfred, and a few occasional poems. His prose History of the Rebellion of 1745 utilised his own personal experience somewhat too fully; the autobiographical element at times overshadows the main plot, and the work is, inevitably perhaps, disproportionate and episodical. Home married happily in 1770, and in 1779 settled in Edinburgh, where till his death he enjoyed the friendship of the Edinburgh literati-of Hume, Blair, Robertson, and 'Jupiter' Carlyle. He survived most of his contemporaries, and died at eighty-six. The last of our tragic poets whose works for any time held the stage, Home had interesting plots and occasional flashes of genuine poetry; but he did not succeed in discarding the pompous declamation of his forerunners. Patriotism, local feeling, and personal friendship made the Edinburgh critics absurdly overestimate the dramatic worth of Douglas, and men who should have known better set the play alongside, or even above, Shakespeare's best. A critic in many respects so judicial as Hume (a kinsman and friend) actually said that Home possessed 'the true theatric genius of Shakespeare and Otway; refined from the unhappy barbarism of the one and the licentiousness of the other.' Burns absurdly said that Home 'methodised wild Shakespeare into plan.' Some English critics were for a time led into undue enthusiasm. Even Collins, who dedicated to him his ode on Highland superstitions, makes rather much of him. Henry Mackenzie, the 'Man of Feeling,' was of opinion that the chief scene between Lady Randolph and Old Norval, in which the preservation of Douglas is described, had no equal in modern, and scarcely a superior in the ancient, drama; and Scott in this agreed with Mackenzie. Christopher North still thought nobody could bestow too much praise on Douglas. Now the presbyter-dramatist is perhaps too much contemned. Douglas, the young hero, 'enthusiastic, romantic, desirous of honour, careless of life and every other advantage when glory lay in the balance,' was the schoolboy model of Scottish youth for the best part of a century; the stock quotation beginningMy name is Norval on the Grampian Hills My father feeds his flocks was worn threadbare by much repetition. As a specimen of Home's style and diction, part of the discovery scene may suffice. Lord Randolph had been attacked by four men, and rescued by young Douglas; an old man, taken in the woods, is apprehended as one of the assassins, some rich jewels being found in his possession. Lady Randolph. Account for these; thine own they For these, I say: be steadfast to the truth; [cannot be : Detected falsehood is most certain death. [Anna, a maid, removes the servants and returns. Pris. Then, thus adjured, I'll speak to you as just As if you were the minister of heaven, Sent down to search the secret sins of men. Some eighteen years ago, I rented land Of brave Sir Malcolm, then Balarmo's lord; All that I had, and then turned me and mine- Received us there hard labour, and the skill The wind and rain beat hard upon our roof; At the dead hour of night was heard the cry Had caught. The voice was ceased; the person lost : By the moon's light I saw, whirled round and round, A basket; soon I drew it to the bank,. And nestled curious there an infant lay. Lady R. Was he alive? Anna. My noble mistress, you are moved too much : Pris. The needy man who has known better days, Lift up their hands, and wonder who could do them; Yet, for the wealth of kingdoms, I would not Lady R. Ha! dost thou say so? Then perhaps he Him, flourishing in youth, and health, and beauty. Though hard to be restrained, defeats itself.- To the last hour that thou didst keep the child. Pris. Fear not my faith, though I must speak my shame. Within the cradle where the infant lay Was stowed a mighty store of gold and jewels; And like a peasant breed the noble child. I set myself against his warlike bent; Lady R. Eternal Providence! What is thy name? [heart Anna. Just are your transports: ne'er was woman's Proved with such fierce extremes. High-fated dame! But yet remember that you are beheld By servile eyes; your gestures may be seen Anna. The moments of deliberation pass, Pris. If I, amidst astonishment and fear, Lady R. Thy words surprise me; sure thou dost not Pris. Sir Malcolm of our barons was the flower; To overlook the conduct of his servants. By them I was thrust out, and them I blame; And God so love me as I love his race! Lady R. His race shall yet reward thee. On thy faith Depends the fate of thy loved master's house. Rememberest thou a little lonely hut, That like a holy hermitage appears Among the cliffs of Carron? Pris. The cottage of the cliffs. Lady R. I remember "Tis that I mean; And all the land shall bless the man who saved Familiar quotations from Home, illustrating his didactic humour, are : The truly generous is the truly wise, And he who loves not others lives unblest. Things past belong to memory alone, Things future are the property of hope. Henry Mackenzie prefixed a Life to an edition of Home's works (1822). See Burton's Life of Hume (1846), 'Jupiter' Carlyle's Autobiography (1860), and the Rev. H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1902). Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), dramatic writer, was born at Clomquin, Roscommon, and educated at St Omer in 1738-44. He published the weekly Gray's Inn Journal, and so got to know Dr Johnson; and by going on the stage he paid his debts, and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1757. In spite of delays and a first refusal to admit an actor, in 1762 he was called to the Bar, but continued to write for the stage. His first farce, The Apprentice (1756), ridiculed the mania of the vulgar for acting; his second, The Spouter, satirised Foote and others; his most successful one, The Upholsterer, caricatured tradespeople who neglect business for politics. The Way to Keep Him (1760) was a hit; All in the Wrong (1761) was an adaptation of Molière. Almost all his plots are borrowed from Fielding, Voltaire, Molière, Crebillon, &c.; but his adaptations were sprightly, and continued to be played well into the nineteenth century. So did his poor tragedies Zenobia and The Grecian Daughter. He also wrote forgotten satires, dramatic poems, mockheroics, &c. His translation of Tacitus (1793) is elegant;' his Essay on Johnson and Life of Garrick are poor. To the last he was deep in debt. There is a Life of Murphy, founded on his own papers, by Jesse Foot (1811). John Cunningham (1729-73), the son of a wine-cooper in Dublin, was an actor, and performed several years in Digges's company at Edinburgh. In his latter years he sank into careless, dissipated habits, and resided at Newcastle-on Tyne in the house of a 'generous printer.' His pieces have a good deal of lyrical melody. May-eve, or Kate of Aberdeen. To beds of state go, balmy sleep- Upon the green the virgins wait, Till morn unbars her golden gate, Strike up the tabor's boldest notes, The nested birds shall raise their throats, And see-the matin lark mistakes, He quits the tufted green : Fond bird! 'tis not the morning breaks, Now lightsome o'er the level mead, For see, the rosy May draws nigh; "Tis Kate of Aberdeen.' Lord Hailes is the name under which the indefatigable antiquary and miscellaneous writer Sir David Dalrymple (1726-92) is remembered. The great-grandson of the first Lord Stair, he was born and educated at Edinburgh, was called to the Scottish Bar in 1748, and in 1766 became a judge of the Court of Session as Lord Hailes, in 1776 a justiciary lord. He was a sound and learned lawyer, but at his country-seat of New Hailes near Edinburgh, he gave his leisure to uninterrupted literary activity, largely in elucidating from the sources and putting on a sounder basis ancient Scottish ecclesiastical and national history. As a sincere Christian, he did not cherish great intimacy with Hume, Adam Smith, and their set; but though a Whig and Presbyterian, he was no bigot, and was highly esteemed by Johnson and Burke. He translated Hume's autobiographical fragment into elegant Latin, and edited the works of John Hales of Eton and the discourses of John Smith of Cambridge; and he refuted Gibbon, republished annotated old Scottish songs and poems, and wrote much on legal antiquities (proving that much of Scottish law was derived from English sources). He was the first to edit the Statutes of the Synods of the old Catholic Church in Scotland. Among his historical works are A Discourse on the Gowrie Conspiracy (1757) and Memorials relating to the Reigns of James I. and Charles I. (1762–66); the best-known are the Annals of Scotland, from the time of Malcolm Canmore to the accession of the House of Stewart (1776-79). This was the first critical history of the period, fully accepting the sound method laid down by Father Innes (see above at page 302), and was praised by Johnson in contrast to the 'painted histories more to the taste of the age'—an obvious allusion to Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. See Rev. H. G. Graham's Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century (1902). John Scott (1730-83), our only Quaker poet till Bernard Barton won his laurels, was the son of a draper in London, who retired to Amwell in Hertfordshire. There too the son, who was mainly self-taught, spent his days, improving his garden and grounds, and writing moral and descriptive poems, elegies, moral eclogues, epistles, and pamphlets on the poor-laws and political questions. Johnson, who 'loved Scott,' visited him here. Scott 'fondly hoped to immortalise' his home, and his chief poem is Amwell (1776). The following verses were obviously dictated by real feeling as well as Quaker principle: Ode on Hearing the Drum. To march, and fight, and fall in foreign lands. I hate that drum's discordant sound, Dr William Dodd (1729-77), a popular London preacher in the early years of George III., became known through his Beauties of Shakespeare (1752), and still more through his unhappy and shameful end. Born at Bourne in Lincolnshire, and educated as a sizar at Cambridge, where he was fifteenth wrangler, he took orders and settled in London; and there, as chaplain of the Magdalen Hospital, he charmed all the fashionable ladies with his charity sermons. Horace Walpole, who once went to hear him there, tells how he harangued entirely in the French style' and theatrically addressed a royal prince who was in the congregation, beseeching his protection. Dodd wrote some religious books, edited the Christian Magazine, became king's chaplain, LL.D., and tutor to Lord Chesterfield's nephew. His expensive habits, however, sank him hopelessly in debt; a simoniacal attempt to buy the rich living of St George's, Hanover Square, resulted in his professional disgrace; and after selling a chapel at Pimlico which he had purchased in his palmy days, he forged his patron's and pupil's name to a bond for £4200. For this he was sentenced to death and hanged at Tyburn in July 1777, in spite of a strong agitation for mitigation of his sentence, in which Dr Johnson, who wrote petitions for him, and also composed the sermons he preached in prison, took a leading part. After his death appeared a small volume of Thoughts in Prison, containing some penitent and edifying prose and verse, the latter much in the style of Young. Johnson, although he had done his best to save Dodd from the gallows, did not wish to see him made a saint,' and remarked with more than his usual asperity on the Thoughts in Prison, 'A man who has been canting all his life may cant to the last.' Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-78), hymn-writer, was the son of a major in the army; born at Farnham and educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Dublin, in 1768 he became vicar of Broad Hembury, Devon, and in 1775 preacher in a chapel near Leicester Fields, London. A strenuous defender of Calvinism, he was a learned, keen, and bitter controversialist. In a long-sustained theological feud with John Wesley he spoke of one of Wesley's tracts as a known, wilful, palpable lie, and said of another statement, that its 'Satanic guilt was only equalled by its Satanic shamelessness;' to which Wesley retorted that he refused to 'fight with chimneysweepers.' His Church of England vindicated from Arminianism (1769) and Historic Proof of the Calvinism of the Church of England (1774), his Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity (1775), and most of his work in verse are equally forgotten; but no hymn is better known than 'Rock of Ages,' first published in a Gospel magazine of 1775, which, in spite of its extraordinary mixed metaphors, has kept its hold on all religious denominations. In 1759 he had published Poems on Sacred Subjects; the Psalms and Hymns (1776) was a collection by various authors. Of his own hymns, that oftenest sung after 'Rock of Ages' is unquestionably 'Your harps, ye trembling saints.' The pious meditation or 'Address to his Soul,' beginning 'Deathless Principle, arise,' sometimes counted amongst his best poems, shows by its very first line how far it falls behind the better-known hymns. Toplady rose from his deathbed to preach a last sermon contradicting a rumour that he had withdrawn any point of antagonism to Wesley. There is a Memoir by Row prefixed to his Works (1794), and one by Winters (1872); and see Ryle's Christian Leaders of a Hundred Years Ago (1869). His schoolboy journal-mentioning a farce sub mitted by him to Garrick-was printed in the Christian Observer in 1830, and reprinted in the Gospel Magazine in 1899. Samuel Johnson, the most conspicuous figure in the literature of the eighteenth century, combined in a singular degree massive force of understanding, multifarious knowledge, sagacity, and moral intrepidity. His various works, with their sententious morality and sonorous periods; his impressive personality and manly character; his sincere Christian piety, great virtues, and unconquerable prejudices; his early and severe struggles; his love of society; his joy in those arguments into which he poured the treasures of a rich and full mind; his keen wit, remorseless repartee, and browbeating crossexaminations; his rough manners and kind heart; his curious household, in which were congregated the lame, blind, and despised; his very looks, gesticulation, and dress-have all been brought so vividly before us by his biographer Boswell that to all educated men Johnson is almost as well known as their own nearest neighbours. His massive figure seems still to haunt Fleet Street and the Strand, and he has stamped his memory on the remote Hebrides. In literature his influence was hardly less dominant. No prose writer of that day escaped the contagion of his charac"teristic style. He banished for long years the naked simplicity of Swift and the idiomatic grace of Addison; his summary way of refuting Berkeley's theory proved that he was not at pains to understand the bishop's contention, and he was unduly suspicious of all metaphysical speculation; and no doubt he looked askance on the poetry of imagination, now again reviving, while he unduly exalted the literature of the understanding. But he based criticism on strong sense and solid judgment, not on pedantic subtleties and fashionable vagaries; and though some of the higher qualities and attributes of genius escaped his observation and eluded his grasp, the withering scorn and invective with which he assailed folly, ignorance, pretension, affected sentimentalism, and licentiousness veiled or undisguised introduced a clear, pure, and invigorating freshness into the literary atmosphere. Such solid and substantial benefits may well outweigh not a few errors of taste or the caprices of a temperament constitutionally prone to melancholy and disease, of a humour little sweetened by prosperity or applause in the years when habits are formed and manners fixed. As a man Johnson was an admirable representative of the Englishman-insular prepossessions not excepted. As an author his course was singularly pure, high-minded, and independent; with more truth even than Burke he could boast that he had no arts but manly arts.' And when royal favour was at length extended to him, it simply ratified the judgment of the best and wisest in the nation. Johnson was the son of a bookseller, and was born at Lichfield on the 18th of September 1709. Educated at the grammar-schools of Lichfield and Stourbridge, he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, as a commoner in his nineteenth year, and, owing to his father's misfortunes in trade, was compelled to leave the university without a degree. He had been only fourteen months at Oxford, but during that time had distinguished himself by translating Pope's Messiah into Latin verse. For a short while he was usher in a school at Market Bosworth, and in 1735 produced his first prose work, a translation of the Jesuit Lobo's Abyssinian travels; but marrying a widow, Mrs Porter-who was in her fortyeighth year (Johnson himself was twenty-seven) -he set up a private academy at Edial near his native city. He had only three pupils, one of them David Garrick. After an unsuccessful trial of schoolmastering for a year and a half, Johnson went to London in 1737 accompanied by Garrick. He had written part of his tragedy of Irene, hoping to get it brought on the stage, but it was refused; and he now commenced author by profession, contributing essays, reviews, &c. to the Gentleman's Magazine, and writing for the same periodical a monthly account of the proceedings in Parliament, under the title of 'Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput.' Notes of the speeches were furnished to him, and he extended them, with a large discretion, in his own grandiloquent style, taking care, as he said, 'that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.' He was himself a staunch Tory and High Churchman to the end. In 1738 appeared his poem of London, in imitation of the third satire of Juvenal, for which Dodsley gave him ten guineas. Anonymously published, it instantly became popular, and a second edition was called for within a week. Pope inquired after the author, saying such a man would soon be known, and recommended Johnson to Lord Gower, who would have obtained for the poor poet the mastership of a grammar-school in Leicestershire had not the academical M.A. been indispensable, and this Johnson could not now secure. He struggled on, producing taskwork for Cave, the proprietor of the Gentleman's Magazine, and in 1744 published the Life of Richard Savage, his friend and comrade in adversity, who had died the previous year. This admirable specimen of biography-admirable in spite of its very serious inaccuracies - was also published anonymously. But it was known to be Johnson's, and his reputation continued to advance, so that the chief booksellers in London engaged him in 1747 to prepare a Dictionary of the English Language, for which he was to receive 1500 guineas. The prospectus of the Dictionary was addressed to Lord Chesterfield, who acknowledged the honour by bestowing on Johnson an honorarium of ten pounds. Seven years and more elapsed before the Dictionary was completed, and when it was on the eve of publication, Chesterfield-hoping, as Johnson believed, that the work might be dedicated to him- wrote two papers in the |