person I am speaking of were
given to duties which, I am told, have been the means of endearing him to
numbers, but which afforded no scope for that peculiar vigour and keenness
of mind which enabled him, when a young man, single-handed, with easy
gallantry, to encounter and overthrow the charge of three giants of the
North combined against him. I believe I am right in saying that, in the
progress of the controversy, the most scientific, the most critical, and
the most witty, of that literary company, all of them now, as he himself,
removed from this visible scene, Professor Playfair, Lord Jeffrey, and the
Rev. Sydney Smith, threw together their several efforts into one article
of their Review, in order to crush and pound to dust the audacious
controvertist who had come out against them in defence of his own
Institutions. To have even contended with such men was a sufficient
voucher for his ability, even before we open his pamphlets, and have
actual evidence of the good sense, the spirit, the scholar-like taste, and
the purity of style, by which they are distinguished.

He was supported in the controversy, on the same general principles, but
with more of method and distinctness, and, I will add, with greater force
and beauty and perfection, both of thought and of language, by the other
distinguished writer, to whom I have already referred, Mr. Davison; who,
though not so well known to the world in his day, has left more behind him
than the Provost of Oriel, to make his name remembered by posterity. This
thoughtful man, who was the admired and intimate friend of a very
remarkable person, whom, whether he wish it or not, numbers revere and
love as the first author of the subsequent movement in the Protestant
Church towards Catholicism,(22) this grave and philosophical writer, whose
works I can never look into without sighing that such a man was lost to
the Catholic Church, as Dr. Butler before him, by some early bias or some
fault of self-education--he, in a review of a work by Mr. Edgeworth on
Professional Education, which attracted a good deal of attention in its
day, goes leisurely over the same ground, which had already been rapidly
traversed by Dr. Copleston, and, though professedly employed upon Mr.
Edgeworth, is really replying to the northern critic who had brought that
writer's work into notice, and to a far greater author than either of
them, who in a past age had argued on the same side.

4.

The author