life, increasing their pressure at
once by an inevitable sense of wrong, and by a feeling that the delight
of his youth must be the drudgery of his age? When the great Dryden, in
his seventieth year, was forced, in the bitterness of his heart, to
exclaim, "Must I die in the harness!" his language was a brand on the
common sense, as well as on the just generosity, of his country. We now
abandon the topic with one remark. This want of the higher liberality of
the nation has already produced the most injurious effects on our
literature.

All the great works of our ancestral literature were the works of
leisure and comparative competence. All the great dramatic poetry of
France was the work of comparative competence. Its writers were not
compelled to hurry after the popular tastes; they followed their own,
and impressed its character upon the mind of the nation. The plays of
Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Voltaire, are nobler trophies to the
greatness of France than all the victories of Louis the XIV., than
Versailles, than all the pomps of his splendid reign. Louis Philippe has
adopted the same munificent policy, and it will be followed by the same
honour with posterity. But, in England, the keeping of a stud of
racehorses, the building of a dog-kennel, or the purchase of a foreign
picture, is ignominiously and selfishly suffered to absorb a larger sum
than the whole literary patronage of the most opulent empire that the
sun ever shone upon. We recommend these considerations to Lord Brougham:
they are nobler than politics; they are fitter for his combined
character of statesman and philosopher; they will also combine with that
character another which alone can give permanency to the fame of any
public man--that of the philanthropist. His ability, his knowledge of
human nature, and his passion for public service--qualities in which his
merits are known to Europe--designate him as the founder of a great
system of public liberality to the enterprise of genius. And when party
is forgotten, and cabinets have perished; when, perhaps, even the
boundaries of empire may have been changed, and new nations rise to
claim the supremacy of arts and arms; the services of the protector of
literature will stand out before the eye with increased honour, and his
name be rescued from the common ruin which envelopes the memory of
ostentatious conquerors and idle kings.

The present volume contains biographies of Johnson, Adam Smith,
Lavois