ole
series--rogues and all), it is too painful to see a human being courting
and wooing the task of doing execution upon his brother in his grave.
Nay, even in the case where this executioner's task arises spontaneously
out of some duty previously undertaken without a thought of its severer
functions, we are still shocked by any exterminating vengeance too
rancorously pursued. Every reader must have been disgusted by the
unrelenting persecution with which Gifford, a deformed man, with the
spiteful nature sometimes too developed in the deformed, had undertaken
'for our fathers in the Row' an edition of Massinger. Probably he had
not thought at the time of the criminals who would come before him for
judgment. But afterwards it did not embitter the job that these
perquisites of office accrued, _lucro ponatur_, that such offenders as
Coxeter, Mr. Monck Mason, and others were to be 'justified' by course of
law. Could he not have stated their errors, and displaced their rubbish,
without further personalities? However, he does _not_, but makes the air
resound with his knout, until the reader wishes Coxeter in his throat,
and Monck Mason, like 'the cursed old fellow' in Sinbad, mounted with
patent spurs upon his back.

We shall be interrupted, however, and _that_ we certainly foresee, by
the objection--that we are fighting with shadows, that neither the
_eloge_ in one extreme, nor the libel in the other extreme, finds a
place in _our_ literature. Does it not? Yes, reader, each of these
biographical forms exists in favour among us, and of one it is very
doubtful indeed whether it ought not to exist. The _eloge_ is found
abundantly diffused through our monumental epitaphs in the first place,
and _there_ every man will countersign Wordsworth's judgment (see 'The
Excursion' and also Wordsworth's prose Essay on Epitaphs), that it is a
blessing for human nature to find one place in this world sacred to
charitable thoughts, one place at least offering a sanctuary from evil
speaking. So far there is no doubt. But the main literary form, in which
the English _eloge_ presents itself, is the Funeral Sermon. And in this
also, not less than in the churchyard epitaph, kind feeling ought to
preside; and for the same reasons, the sanctity of the place where it is
delivered or originally published, and the solemnity of the occasion
which has prompted it; since, if you cannot find matter in the departed
person's character fertile in praise even