lume at Ladies' Schools. This
celebrity was not reserved for him: instead of this he was destined to
give to his country a series of works illustrative of its literary and
political history, full of new information and new views, which time
and opinion has ratified as just. But the poetical temperament was not
thrown away upon him; it never is on any one; it was this great gift
which prevented his being a mere literary antiquary; it was this which
animated his page with picture and his narrative with interesting
vivacity; above all, it was this temperament, which invested him with
that sympathy with his subject, which made him the most delightful
biographer in our language. In a word, it was because he was a poet,
that he was a popular writer, and made belles-lettres charming to the
multitude.

It was during the ten years that now occurred that he mainly acquired
that store of facts which were the foundation of his future
speculations. His pen was never idle, but it was to note and to
register, not to compose. His researches were prosecuted every morning
among the MSS. of the British Museum, while his own ample collections
permitted him to pursue his investigation in his own library into the
night. The materials which he accumulated during this period are only
partially exhausted. At the end of ten years, during which, with the
exception of one anonymous work, he never indulged in composition, the
irresistible desire of communicating his conclusions to the world came
over him, and after all his almost childish aspirations, his youth of
reverie and hesitating and imperfect effort, he arrived at the mature
age of forty-five before his career as a great author, influencing
opinion, really commenced.

The next ten years passed entirely in production: from 1812 to 1822 the
press abounded with his works. His "Calamities of Authors," his "Memoirs
of Literary Controversy," in the manner of Bayle; his "Essay on the
Literary Character," the most perfect of his compositions; were all
chapters in that History of English Literature which he then commenced
to meditate, and which it was fated should never be completed.

It was during this period also that he published his "Inquiry into the
Literary and Political Character of James the First," in which he first
opened those views respecting the times and the conduct of the Stuarts,
which were opposed to the long prevalent opinions of this country, but
which with him were at least th