t
we know is embodied in a funeral sermon. For instance, Jeremy Taylor in
that way, or by his Epistles Dedicatory, has brought out the
characteristic features in some of his own patrons, whom else we should
have known only as _nominis umbras_. But a more impressive illustration
is found in the case of John Henderson, that man of whom expectations so
great were formed, and of whom Dr. Johnson and Burke, after meeting and
conversing with him, pronounced (in the Scriptural words of the
Ethiopian queen applied to the Jewish king, Solomon) 'that the half had
not been told them.' For this man's memory almost the sole original
record exists in Aguttar's funeral sermon; for though other records
exist, and one from the pen of a personal friend, Mr. Joseph Cottle, of
Bristol, yet the main substance of the biography is derived from the
_fundus_ of this one sermon.[17] And it is of some importance to cases
of fugitive or unobtrusive merit that this more quiet and sequestered
current of biography should be kept open. For the local motives to an
honorary biographical notice, in the shape of a Funeral Sermon, will
often exist, when neither the materials are sufficient, nor a writer
happens to be disposable, for a labour so serious as a regular
biography.

Here then, on the one side, are our English _eloges_. And we may add
that amongst the Methodists, the Baptists, and other religious
sectaries, but especially among the missionaries of all nations and
churches, this class of _eloges_ is continually increasing. Not
unfrequently men of fervent natures and of sublime aspirations are thus
rescued from oblivion, whilst the great power of such bodies as the
Methodists, their growing wealth, and consequent responsibility to
public opinion, are pledges that they will soon command all the
advantages of colleges and academic refinement; so that if, in the
manner of these funeral _eloges_, there has sometimes been missed that
elegance which should have corresponded to the weight of the matter,
henceforwards we may look to see this disadvantage giving way before
institutions more thoroughly matured. But if these are our _eloges_, on
the other hand, where are our libels?

This is likely to be a topic of offence, for many readers will start at
hearing the upright Samuel Johnson and the good-humoured, garrulous
Plutarch denounced as traffickers in libel. But a truth is a truth. And
the temper is so essentially different in which men lend themselve