art or
science entire as a treatise, instead of breaking it down into as many
separate articles as it possesses technical terms--enabled this work
to avail itself to the fullest extent of the improvement. No author,
however great his powers, can be profound in the compass of a few
paragraphs.

Goldsmith could assert that in an essay of a page or two it is even a
merit to be superficial; and few there are who possess, with
Goldsmith, the pure literary ability of being superficial with good
effect.

But it is not enough to say of this work that it is enriched by
contributions from not a few of the ablest writers which the
present century has produced. It should be added, further, that it
contains some of the masterpieces of these men. No one ever excelled
Sir James Mackintosh in philosophical criticism. It was peculiarly his
_forte_. He was rather a great judge of metaphysical power than a
metaphysician. And yet it is this admirable critic who decides
that the exquisitely classical dissertation of Dugald Stewart,
written for this _Encyclopaedia_, is the most magnificent of that
philosopher's works; and remarks, in accounting for the fact, that the
'memorable instances of Cicero and Milton, and still more those of
Dryden and Burke, seem to show that there is some natural tendency
in the fire of genius to burn more brightly, or to blaze more
fiercely, in the evening than in the morning of human life.' We are
mistaken if Sir James's own contribution to this work does not take
decidedly a first place among his productions. The present age has not
produced a piece of more exquisitely polished English, or of more
tasteful or more nicely discriminating criticism.

There is an occult beauty and elegance in some of his thoughts and
expressions, on which it is no small luxury to repose,--lines of
reflection, too, along which one must feel as well as think one's
way.

What can be finer, for instance, than his remarks on the poetry of Dr.
Thomas Brown, or what more thoroughly removed from commonplace? He
tells us how the philosophic poet 'observed man and his wider world
with the eye of a metaphysician;' that 'the dark results of such
contemplations, when he reviewed them, often filled his soul with
feelings which, being both grand and melancholy, were truly poetical;'
that 'unfortunately, however, few readers can be touched with
fellow-feeling;' for that 'he sings to few, and must be _content with
sometimes moving a string in