certain principles; and that these principles, though varying without end, may be discovered by care and sagacity. All that he attempts is to direct our inquiries in this pursuit. Jan. 18. Read Sir J. Reynolds's sixth Discourse. At the opening he states the first object of these compositions to be, "to lay down certain general propositions proper for the formation of a sound taste." The name of genius, he afterwards observes, is usually given to such talents as, though acting on certain principles, could not be formed at the time by any known rules; that, as criticism advances, accordingly genius recedes; but that we need be under no apprehension whatever strides it makes, that intellectual energy will ever be brought entirely within the dominion of a written law. The proper object of an artist's study is to detect the latent cause of conspicuous beauties, and thence form the principles which will ensure their practical attainment. March 1. Read the debates respecting the Regency in the New Annual Register for 1788. The two parties appear to have changed principles on the occasion. The Opposition to have become sticklers for prerogative, and the Ministerialists inclined to popular courses. But both sides, I am afraid, and that which has my good wishes the most, were actuated in the contest rather by personal feelings, and the thirst for power, than a pure and patriotic zeal for the public good. The strong defensive argument of the Whigs, however, must not be neglected, that the prerogatives of the Crown exist only for the good of the People; that they constitute a part of the rights of the people, and that to abridge them in the person of the Regent, is to sacrifice the peoples rights in deference to the personal claims of the monarch. The Prince's letter to Mr. Pitt bears strongly in many parts the impress of Burke's mighty mind; particularly in those where his Royal Highness exposes the fatal consequences of dividing and disconnecting the royal authority; and deprecates the experiment which is to be made in his person, with how small a portion of kingly power the executive government of the country may be carried on. The most absurd part of the scheme of administration was the pretending to obtain the royal assent to a bill for supplying the royal incapacity, by the preposterous fiction of annexing the Lord Chancellor's seal. How curiously must men contrive to entangle themselves in their own conceits, to be driven to such vain and revolting illusions for extrication! Would it not have been more judicious, in every point of view, manfully to have met the difficulty that presented itself; and to have supplied, through the two remaining members of the estates, that power of which the exercise was suspended in the third ? April 4. Finished Richardson's Clarissa. This novel may display more talent than Sir Charles Grandison (though, when I recollect the character of Clementina, I should be disposed to contest even this point), but it has certainly interested and delighted me far less. Till the grand catastrophe we are exasperated to maddening impatience by the incessant and varied persecutions of the helpless heroine. Relieved, for it is a real relief, by the assurance that the worst that can happen has at length taken place, the mind proceeds with more satisfaction to contemplate the affecting and awful scenes that follow. These are finely worked up; but surely more might, and with a view to moral retribution, ought to have been made of the dying moments of Lovelace. The author's self-complacency through the whole piece is admirable; but, delightful as the sensation must be, somehow one cannot envy him. April 7. Read Horne Tooke's speech on the trial between Fox and him respecting the Westminster Election. His perfect self-command, his unalterable steadiness to his purpose, the clearness and accuracy of his ideas, and the commanding but unostentatious yet dexterous mode in which he expresses them, are admirable. Every thing yields before him. He never could have hoped for success (though he once maintained to me that he ought to have succeeded), in the direct teeth of an Act of Parliament; but it was a capital opportunity for delivering his sentiments, and he has made the most of it. The passage in which he protests that he would thrust out his hand, and burn it to ashes, if he thought he could impress the jury more strongly by it, is prodigiously forcible. Read Parr's Letter from Irenopolis to Eleutheropolis. A powerful, and considering that it was written in one day, a wonderful production; but the tone of presumptuous reproof too frequently predominates over that of correct expostulation; and we feel all the way that it is the Doctor haranguing, rather than a misguided party addressed. The title too, for such an occasion, is foolishly pedantic; nay, worse, it is absurd; a lover of peace may exhort his friends to freedom, but for one city to be talking to another on the subject, is preposterous. May 25. Finished looking over some of Prior's Poems. Sprightliness chastened with pensiveness, is their predominant character and principal charm. This charm indeed is too frequently dissolved by puerile conceits; but these must rather be charged to the account of the age than the poet's. Celia, speaking of her eyes, observes, that in a short time they "No longer shall their little honours keep, Shall only be of use to read or weep." Pope, in his Eloisa, has borrowed, and, as he always did, improved this thought: "No happier task these faded eyes pursue, Prior himself has not been so happy in imitating Denham, when, speaking of the same river, he says, "Serene yet strong, majestic yet sedate, Swift without violence, without terror great." The Alma is very humorous and spirited. Of the Solomon the matter is "And in the flowers that wreathe the sparkling bowl, Abra was ready e'er I called her name, The former is vividly picturesque; the latter as touchingly pathetic. Burke seems to have been fond of Prior, for I meet with several passages which he must have had distinctly in his recollection when he wrote. June 5. Read the strictures on Parr's Spital Sermon, in the Critical Review. I am surprised at their assimilating Parr's style to Burke's; for of styles possessing any pretensions to excellence, I never met with two which struck me to be so totally diverse. Burke's is the spontaneous effusion of a powerful, opulent, and impassioned mind, ipsa res verba rapiunt; and if it does not possess, as I admit it does not, the noble and unaffected majesty of Bolingbroke's, the condensed energy of Johnson's, the finished elegance and exquisite precision of Gibbon's, or the graceful, . rich, and sparkling vivacity of Hume's; yet for felicitous adaptation to all the purposes for which language can be employed, to instruct or to move, to convince or to delight, to expound or to illustrate, to treat the meanest subject with propriety and grace, or to expand and adorn the most magnificent, it stands, I think, without any parallel in English composition. Parr's is altogether artificial, at least; at first it must have been the elaboration of art, and is still too plainly the effort of scrupulous solicitude. Its characteristics are strength and power; but that strength sometimes degenerates into rankness, and that power occasionally assumes the aspect of dogmatical arrogance. Of flexibility, the distinguishing feature of Burke's, it has none; above all, it is totally deficient in the grand secret and capital charm of first-rate composition, light and shade, intention and remission. Instead of treating common things in a common way, and reserving great efforts for great occasions, Parr's mind seems always on the stretch. Nihil solet leniter, nihil definite, nihil explicate, dicere. With respect to the Sermon itself, I confess I was grievously disappointed; the whole labours heavily along, as if urged against the grain; nor is the main doctrine which it inculcates,-that universal benevolence, though to be encouraged as a feeling, is impracticable as a primary and exclusive principle of moral action,-either luminously stated or impressively inforced. Read Parr's Two Charity Sermons, preached at Norwich. There is a hardness and stiffness in his manner, a want of ease and grace in the introducing and putting of his arguments which are equally unfavourable to the purposes of delight, instruction, or persuasion. Many men, with half his talents and acquirements, would have written far better discourses. June 30. Lord Chedworth called in; had heard several of Rennell's sermons. Parr was there, and declared with great emphasis, that his spirit groaned with indignation to hear that intolerant bigot: seemed very vain of his late Sermon. From a note towards the close, where he talks of the labour it cost him, I had drawn a different conclusion; but his Lordship thinks it was merely singing exegi opus! July 25. Attended service at the collegiate church at Manchester. Dr. Blackburne preached very impressively on Jeremiah, xii. 1. "Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper.' He admitted the fact; and endeavoured to lessen and remove the difficulty; first, by exposing our narrow comprehension of the divine economy; secondly, by displaying the mischiefs that would result from special interpositions of Providence; thirdly, by urging the influence of conscience in diminishing the apparent sufferings of the virtuous and prosperity of the wicked; lastly, and above all, by offering to our view a future state of retribution. It was a noble and eloquent discourse. Looked afterwards, as a perfect contrast, into a Methodist meeting-house in the bottom of High-street; when the preacher, coarse as a Carmelite, and sweating with his labour, vehemently affirmed, that it was better to hold communion with God in a coal-hole, than to be endowed with all the wealth and power and beauty that fortune could bestow ! Sept. 5. Read in the evening Burke's Letter on the Duke of Bedford's attack. The whole finely written and spirited. The part in which he speaks of the loss of his son, and his own desolate condition, is in a strain of pathos probably unequalled; and what can transcend that in which he so felicitously introduces Lord Keppel ? Sept. 13. Looked through Wakefield's Notes on Gray's Poems. His style is wonderfully luxuriant, and he seems perfectly to enter into and to feel the spirit of the poet whom he criticises. The fertility too with which he discovers similitudes is marvellous; but if Johnson is penurious in his praise of Gray, Wakefield, I think, is lavish. There has always appeared to me an effort and elaboration in Gray's compositions very remote from the general spirit of poetical effusion. They are exquisite pieces of mosaic, curiously wrought, of the rarest precious gems; but in which we vainly look for the bold design, free handling, and glowing excellencies of a great painter. Against Johnson, Wakefield is severe, even to virulence : and there is a sentiment at the close of the annotations on the Bard, at which I revolt with disgust: "If at any time we feel ourselves dazzled by Dr. Johnson's bright and diffusive powers of understanding, we may turn for relief to his criticisms on Gray, his Prayers, and Meditations." Read Gray's Letters on his Tour to the Lakes. He saw little, and that little hastily; but what he did see, he sketched with the pen inimitably. The touches with which he occasionally gives life and spirit to the delineation, are exquisite. Yet in Gray's prose, as in his verse, there is something affected; and his wit, though very refined and pure, has the air of being forced. The description of the sunrise (Let. 6.) is incomparably fine. Oct. 2. Lord Chedworth looked in. Pressed much for my opinion whether Rennell (Serm. II.) was not right, in opposition to Lord Bacon (Essay I.), in thinking that Pilate was not captious or derisory in the question put to Christ (John, xviii. 38.), "What is Truth?" I told him that had the limiting article been prefixed, "What is the truth to which you have said you come to bear witness?" I should have thought the interrogatory serious and reasonable; but that, as it stood, it appeared to me put for no other purpose but to confound and silence; a notion which seemed confirmed by Pilate's presently going away, without waiting for, or at least, without receiving any answer. He still inclined to Rennell's construction.* Oct. 23. Finished Gilpin's Observations on the Lakes of Cumberland, &c. In the 16th Section he maintains that masterly but unfinished sketches please beyond finished performances, because "they leave to the imagination the power of creating something more;" and not, and not, as Burke affirms, "from the promise of something more in themselves." The difference does not appear very material; both mean that the imagination is stimulated to supply what is not represented. In the 18th Section he contends that beauty and sublimity are both mingled in Ullswater Lake, without destroying each other, as Burke predicates they must. The mediation of Price's doctrine of the picturesque seems adapted to set the whole right. Delighted as I am with Gilpin, I begin to think that for purposes of liberal gratification he views nature too exclusively with an artist's eye, and thus deprives of just praise, many grand and striking scenes in his Tour, while he overrates others. His sketches by no means correspond to the refinement of his ideas; and they are any thing but portraits of the places. Some of his little historical digressions are eminently pleasing; they are judiciously introduced, and most gracefully treated. Oct. 31. Lord Chedworth looked in-Discussed the late Peace. I said, I pretty nearly agreed with Sheridan, that it was an event which every man might be glad of, but no Englishman could be proud of: and but for Fox's ingenuousness and candour, should be startled at his unqualified exultation, He said he regarded merely the impartial justice of the case: if our pretensions were, as he thought them, unjust, he was glad that we were humbled. It might be weakness I observed, but I felt too much the spirit of patriotism to concur in such a sentiment, which, however I might respect in An interpretation differing from either of the above has been given by Dr. Whateley; but, however ingenious, assuredly not one that will receive a general assent. him, I should be sorry to find general. His lordship has no taste for Godwin's speculations, yet this view of the case is precisely in the spirit of his morality. With respect to Fox, his determined perseverance in setting aside all consideration of the new spirit which has broken forth in France, is utterly unaccountable. All his reasonings, by the neglect of so important an element, are rendered to my mind essentially defective. Can he have failed to discover this spirit? We can scarce think it possible. Yet his ingenuous and noble candour forbid me to think otherwise. Nov. 6. Lord Chedworth called in.—In the debate on the Preliminaries, I observed, all parties seemed strangely divided, disjointed, and shackled : and none free and resolute enough to take their real ground of attack and defence. I praised the chastened and statesmanlike tone which Fox had assumed. Windham is manifestly held in check by the unlucky proposals at Lisle. Lord Chedworth said, he apprehended that we differed most in our opinion of Burke, and mentioned that he was very bad on Hastings' trial, in the examination of witnesses, matters of evidence; but that Buller spoke highly of Sheridan on these points. I said, I thought Burke had most forcibly and justly described the Jacobin spirit, and that my experience fully warranted his account of it; but that it was probable his Lordship's rank had precluded him from seeing it in so undisguised a form as I had: he said, what he had seen of it, he thoroughly disliked. Nov. 8. Major M— with whom I dined yesterday, said that he had frequently met David Hume at their military mess in Scotland, and in other parties; that he was very polite and pleasant, though thoughtful in company, generally reclining his head upon his hand, as if in study, from which he would suddenly recover, however, with some indifferent question; extremely inquisitive, but quite easy to himself and all around him. One is glad to catch personal notices, however slight, of memorable men and of speculative philosophers. I know no one so memorable as Hume. He seems to have so far outstripped the spirit of the times, in his original and profound researches, that the world is in no condition at present to do justice to his merits. Went in the morning into court (at Bury Assizes) Heard Mackintosh in a game cause; disappointed; he displayed no great sagacity in his examinations, and was deficient in ease and address in his speech to the jury. Much too refined and metaphysical-cutting blocks with a razor. Nov. 14. Read Horne Tooke's letter on the Prince's marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert; here, as everywhere else, he is subtle, mysterious, paradoxical, and mischievous. I think one might justly apply to him the character he once gave me of Fox, on Covent Garden hustings,-" Sir, he is a cunning but not a wise man." Dec. 23. Finished Overton's tract. It is powerfully written, and I think that he makes good his cause, that the Evangelical Teachers, as they are called, adhere to the doctrines, and retain the zeal of the Church of England as originally established, and as still manifest in its Articles, Liturgy, and Homilies and that those who call themselves Rational Divines, are the true seceders from both undoubtedly, the latter have accommodated themselves to the prevailing reason, and indifference, of mankind; and have endeavoured to explain away the change by those subtle evasions, which, however they may delight by their ingenuity and novelty, can scarcely afford a momentary conviction, and shrink to nothing before an open manly attack. Overton has even the advantage where we might not expect it, in contending that their morality is more pure and strict, and urgently and |