I thank God that I can, with a full and unfeigning heart, utter Amen to this passage.

S. 10. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by itself, which is not truly one; and such is only God.

Reciprocity is that which alone gives stability to love. It is not mere selfishness that impels all kind natures to desire that there should be some one human being, to whom they are most dear. It is because they wish some one being to exist, who shall be the resting place and summit of their love; and this in human nature is not possible, unless the two affections coincide. The reason is, that the object of the highest love will not otherwise be the same in both parties.

S. 11. I thank God for my happy dreams, &c.

I am quite different from Sir T. B. in this; for all, or almost all, the painful and fearful thoughts that I know, are in my dreams;-so much so, that when I am wounded by a friend, or receive an unpleasant letter, it throws me into a state very nearly resembling that of a dream.

S. 13. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without any poverty, take away the object of our charity, not only not understanding the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecies of Christ.

O, for shame! for shame! Is there no fit object of charity but abject poverty? And what sort of a charity must that be which wishes

misery in order that it may have the credit of relieving a small part of it,-pulling down the comfortable cottages of independent industry to build alms-houses out of the ruins!

This book paints certain parts of my moral and intellectual being, (the best parts, no doubt,) better than any other book I have ever met with;-and the style is throughout delicious.

NOTES ON JUNIUS. 1807.

Stat nominis umbra.

As he never dropped the mask, so he too often used the poisoned dagger of an assassin.

Dedication to the English nation.

The whole of this dedication reads like a string of aphorisms arranged in chapters, and classified by a resemblance of subject, or a cento of points.

Ib. If an honest, and I may truly affirm a laborious, zeal for the public service has given me any weight in your esteem, let me exhort and conjure you never to suffer an invasion of your political constitution, however minute the instance may appear, to pass by, without a determined persevering resist

ance.

A longer sentence and proportionately inelegant.

Ib. If you reflect that in the changes of administration

which have marked and disgraced the present reign, although your warmest patriots have, in their turn, been invested with the lawful and unlawful authority of the crown, and though other reliefs or improvements have been held forth to the people, yet that no one man in office has ever promoted or encouraged a bill for shortening the duration of parliaments, but that (whoever was minister) the opposition to this measure, ever since the septennial act passed, has been constant and uniform on the part of government.

Long, and as usual, inelegant. Junius cannot manage a long sentence; it has all the ins and outs of a snappish figure-dance.

Preface.

An excellent preface, and the sentences not so snipt as in the dedication. The paragraph near the conclusion beginning with "some opinion may now be expected," &c. and ending with "relation between guilt and punishment," deserves to be quoted as a master-piece of rhetorical ratiocination in a series of questions that permit no answer; or (as Junius says) carry their own answer along with them. The great art of Junius is never to say too much, and to avoid with equal anxiety a commonplace manner, and matter that is not commonplace. If ever he deviates into any originality of thought, he takes care that it shall be such as excites surprise for its acuteness, rather than admiration for its profundity. He takes care? say rather, that nature took care for him. It is impossible to detract from the merit of these Letters: they are suited to their

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purpose, and perfect in their kind. They impel to action, not thought. Had they been profound or subtle in thought, or majestic and sweeping in composition, they would have been adapted for the closet of a Sidney, or for a House of Lords such as it was in the time of Lord Bacon; but they are plain and sensible whenever the author is in the right, and whether right or wrong, always shrewd and epigrammatic, and fitted for the coffee-house, the exchange, the lobby of the House of Commons, and to be read aloud at a public meeting. When connected, dropping the forms of connection, desultory without abruptness or appearance of disconnection, epigrammatic and antithetical to excess, sententious and personal, regardless of right or wrong, yet well-skilled to act the part of an honest warm-hearted man, and even when he is in the right, saying the truth but never proving it, much less attempting to bottom it, this is the character of Junius ;-and on this character, and in the mould of these writings must every man cast himself, who would wish in factious times to be the important and long remembered agent of a faction. I believe that I could do all that Junius has done, and surpass him by doing many things which he has not done: for example,-by an occasional induction of startling facts, in the manner of Tom Paine, and lively illustrations and witty applications of good stories and appropriate anecdotes in the manner of Horne

my

Tooke. I believe I could do it if it were in nature to aim at this sort of excellence, or to be enamoured of the fame, and immediate influence, which would be its consequence and reward. But it is not in my nature. I not only love truth, but I have a passion for the legitimate investigation of truth. The love of truth conjoined with a keen delight in a strict and skilful yet impassioned argumentation, is my master-passion, and to it are subordinated even the love of liberty and all my public feelingsand to it whatever I labour under of vanity, ambition, and all my inward impulses.

Letter I. From this Letter all the faults and excellencies of Junius may be exemplified. The moral and political aphorisms are just and sensible, the irony in which his personal satire is conveyed is fine, yet always intelligible; but it approaches too nearly to the nature of a sneer; the sentences are cautiously constructed without the forms of connection; the he and it everywhere substituted for the who and which; the sentences are short, laboriously balanced, and the antitheses stand the test of analysis much better than Johnson's. These are all excellencies in their kind;—where is the defect? In this; there is too much of each, and there is a defect of many things, the presence of which would have been not only valuable for their own sakes, but for the relief and variety which they would have given. It is observable too that every Letter adds to the faults of these